001 // text; username: grollschwert

[hauntedsavior]

What's up.
Are we doing introductions now? I guess we're doing introductions.
Name's Anna. Professional city defender and mostly robot girl.
Coming here from a place called Recolle that I'm pretty sure no one here knows about, which is cool.

Never been much for stuff like this, so, like, I don't know.
Anyone needs a katana at their side, look me up. I'm pretty damn good at it.
I might not know what's going on here, but far as I'm concerned, this is where I live now and it makes sense for everyone if I actually try to keep it safe.

And since I'm in full spaghetti at the wall mode right now, lemme just throw out some words, see if it triggers anything for any of you guys.
Zee Carlisle. Clarence Vanderweele. Layers of reality. Retrospec.
The Geteilts.
Nothing?
Yeah, didn't think so.

Anyway, yeah, flag me down if you see me on the streets and need some protection or whatever. I'm five ten and I only have one eye. I'm hard to miss.

Comments

[hauntedsavior]

Huh. Sounds pretty fucked up.
Guess I can see how that kind of thing can break a person, but it doesn't excuse, you know.
Everything else.
Didn't know her, and I don't get involved in family problems anymore, but I don't know if she deserves whatever penance she's getting here.
Sounds like it would be way easier for everyone else if she'd just died.
But since when is the universe set on making stuff easy for us?

[onerthes]

Looking upon it all? It made a certain amount of sad sense. We were trapped in the grief of a family who happened to have incredible power, grief that had taken on a life of its own as a child god died before her time.

At this point, with any luck? You are just stuck with the ashes of her family's problems. Julia is dead. Nothing can change that now, and the dream is done. We have risen among the ashes left behind by her nightmare. Thankfully it isn't all bad either.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah, well.
You'd be surprised how long ashes can smolder for.
's all I'm saying.
Especially if the flame was burning hotter than anything else there just before it died out.

[onerthes]

A very poetic way of putting it.

Also, almost certainly accurate. Her ashes burned fiercely, and the world is scarred by their passing, so there's bound to be 'something' left behind.

[hauntedsavior]

I have a way sometimes.
Just gotta find the last ones and stomp 'em out.
If that's what we want to do. If that's the right way to handle it.

[onerthes]

Warm yourself by the coals for a moment before you bring out the boot.
we might need a little bit of heat in the long run.

Just think of that as me saying "Keep your options open and think before you judge." This place can play tricks on you.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah.
Different kinds of tricks than Recolle pulled for most people, I bet.
But nothing I haven't had the misfortune of running into.
Running out of body parts for them to take, though. If that's how they work.

[onerthes]

Watch your head. They have a way of knocking it off from time to time. But thankfully losing body parts isn't what I'd call a "common" experience.

Based on what I heard of Wonderland, I believe "The more things change, the more they stay the same." The tricks will feel similar probably, but not identical. A lot of blood here, after all, and that place had an obsession with mirrors. I saw someone's memories of it.

[hauntedsavior]

Oh, this place has memory shit too?
Or Deerington did, I guess.
Sweet, hope everyone's ready for a super confusing time if they start probing me.

[onerthes]

In my case, the losing of my head was quite literal at one point.
But the dream did favor memory issues from time to time. I would say about every three months or so, something might torment or plague our perceptions of self and leave us confused. It was a surreal fugue that I suspect came more often because it was more effective at terrifying us than physical monsters.

Why, if I may ask?

[hauntedsavior]

Call me Elliot Page and Willem Dafoe, 'cause I've got two souls.
You know, like that shitty video game they were both in?
Whatever, it's not important. I do have two souls, though.
Two souls, two sets of memories. One's more patchwork than the other.
But that other soul's also the reason that if you chop off my head, all that's left is gonna be a robot.

[onerthes]

Why? After all Anna is so much prettier, hehe. I'm afraid that I tend not to try and know "Shitty Video Games." I have a bit of bad experience when it comes to finding out things about them, but I will take your word for it.

[Man, at least her mousepad hadn't followed her to this place...]

Ah, I think I sort of understand. It is as if you are two people, two lives within one personhood. And one of those was as a robot? Would that be accurate?

[Look, it was a testimony to the fact that she'd heard weirder things that this only phased her a little bit.]

[hauntedsavior]

It's not "as if" I'm that, it's actually that.
I'm Anna Amarande, normal everyday human.
She's YoRHa Type-A No. 2, futuristic combat android.
Together we're... I don't know.
I don't have a cute name for the two of us.
I'm still myself, and she's her, and she's inside me, I guess. But I was "meant" to be her, so that's why my soul resonates with hers and changed everything about me.

I don't know. I was always the weird one in Recolle, I think.
No one else really thought about the person they were merging with like I did.

[onerthes]

I don't know that there would be an easy way to describe what you've experienced. But, I think you are who you are, even if you are two people at once as well. Anna will do well, if that is what you want to be, even if she is also the other.

I don't think that's odd at all. I'm more surprised that they wouldn't want to know more?

[hauntedsavior]

Nah, it's more than just wanting to know more.
Found out more about A2's life when I kept getting her memories and I just... I don't know.
Wanted to help give her a better ending to her story.
Lots of other people treated it like it was some unknowable curse, which, like, yeah, I get it for some of them.
You get back memories of being the reason your world ended, that'll fuck with you.
But A2... I don't know. She deserved better.
She changed my life, so I wanted to change hers.

[onerthes]

Oh, that sentiment I think I understand.

In fact, I think you will fit in well among those who are here. For as unpleasant as the circumstances are, there's an element among many who are here that wants this place to be better for those who are here than it was before.

Perhaps you will be able to give both of yourselves a better life in time?

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah. Here's hoping.
Not like I have any other choice, right?
Well, I could always start slicing at random places in midair to see if it tears any holes in reality. That could get me home.
Or it could make everything way worse.
Either way it'll be interesting.

[onerthes]

I think you might need quite the magical blade or technique to get away with that. And if you did, perhaps it would make things much worse, so best not to. No need to invite disaster.

And it will definitely be that. I can assure you.