Part 2: Leaving the Watchtower and the hour is getting late

[Olvelsper]

"How'd you get here, Ryder?" Jan questioned the spiky haired man sitting with them. May as well get him to open up a little, since he had been pretty quiet the whole trip. "And don't feel bad about the water, lots of people drink it by accident."

[RyderHakubi]

"Me... I remember dying.  I remember being on a planet while the Aspects of Death and Order fought over the life of some girl.  I remember being ripped apart Shi as he tried to destroyed the planet we were all on..." Ryder muttered.  He really hated dying and remembering that fact sucks.

[Olvelsper]

Jan blinked. "Well, yours is the most grand entrance yet, I believe." He shook his head.

[RyderHakubi]

Ryder looked up, an increasingly emo look on his face, "Yeah, I know.  Can't beat having the planet blown up, and THEN having some being try and kill you by posing as your mother..."

Ryder sighed.  What did he do to deserve THAT one?

[Shukuen]

"Do a lot of people die to get here?" Leets asked quietly, suppressing a shiver. "Is dying the only way to get here?"

[RyderHakubi]

"No," Ryder mentioned to Leets turning to him, "I didn't die... I don't think I did at least.  I mean, yeah, I died again when Shi blew up Spira, but I think I fell through a portal... or I died, I don't know."

[Olvelsper]

"Well, obviously not. Like I said, a lot of people just appeared here out of the blue. The professor here, for instance. Or you. Near death experiences are just one way of showing up here."

[Shukuen]

"Oh, good." Leets sighed in relief. "I'd hate to think my last moments alive was in a tunnel of chicken feathers."

[Halbarad]

"I don't believe I died, no," Clyde agrees. "The train was simply empty when it arrived at the platform."

[Olvelsper]

"Well, after I was shot, I woke up to a dead city as well. No one was there, and the world seemed like a shell of its former glory. Even the sun looked about ready to go nova. I traveled to the mountains, and saw a lion there."

[Halbarad]

"A lion?" Clyde seemed curious. "Odd... I met a dwarf that gave me a carving of a lion. Bit of an odd coincidence - what did it do?"

[Olvelsper]

"It woke me up after I had passed out. Had an odd glowing stone around its neck, though. Shaped like a shooting star."

[Halbarad]

"Probably mere coincidence," Clyde shrugged. "I doubt one has anything to do with the other.

"Out of curiosity, though. What do you know about that tower you mentioned earlier? I fear I wasn't paying all that much attention at the time."

[Olvelsper]

"Well, from what most people tell me, it's probably *not* coincedence." Jan frowned. "Everyone I've talked to told me that they were alone when they arrived. You and I actually met other people when we were crossing over, Leets was being chased, and Ryder- something was actually going to kill you in the form of your mother." He looked disgusted with that. Jan hated it when the weak tried such underhanded tactics.

[RyderHakubi]

"It... was more than that.  The enemy took my memories... they made something out of my past, something that in one life, might have been my future.  They tried to trap me and kill me without my knowledge of anything." Ryder added to Jan's explanation.