4th Quest [Audio, early morning] [Dawntrail spoilers]

[bladeofnymeia]

[She's awake. Has been, since the weakest strains of dawn. But Firoza has not the energy or the desire to project any image of herself when she makes this post. She just wishes to speak to someone. Anyone. Even if no one deigns to respond.]

...So these months. The ones where new arrivals begin to appear. The hazy ones.

[A pause. A stifled sigh.]

They feel as dreams sometimes. Especially when whomever you met does not remain once the air clears. And...I am not opposed to dreams. Bittersweet though they might be. But it does make me wonder something.

[As much as Firoza is keeping her tone even, the emotion that seeps out is palpable. Heavy, tender sorrow. Longing and loneliness, and...a sparkling, defiant mote of hope.]

Do you think...a-and if this is personal to you, please, do not feel you have to respond. But could it be possible that the living are not the only ones who can find themselves here? That...that those who ought to have passed on, in one way or another, could still...appear?

[Just gripping those fuzzy memories of reuniting to her heart, bidding them not to escape. It would be too much.]

I ask only because...well. I adore you all, truthfully. Even if we have not been introduced properly. But I cannot ignore how sorely I miss so many from home. Both those who live, and those who do not. I just...even in a new form, I...I'd like to be a little selfish, and hope to see them again.

[She ends it there, but not without a definite sense of being torn by this desire. Both an insistent palm pressed to a deep bruise, and a gnawing worry tinged with gold.

"Am I as they were? So desperate to preserve their dead, allowing them no rest, no renewal? Stagnant and ever present in a dream?"

The thought doesn't mean to come out, but it does. Oh, it does.]

Comments

[bladeofnymeia]

[She keeps pace, listening. An interesting idea, to consider a world where its people did not believe in the soul. It's hard for her to imagine since it's so central to life and known knowledge - and her lived experience, encountering the souls of friends in the Lifestream itself being just one example.]

You believe in them, but...this isn't about souls. Okay. What is it about, then?

[shotinhead]

[ Deep breath. Time to explain, as he walks, leaning down slightly. He can do this. He won't be judged for it. He hopes. ]

So. The whole soul thing also sort of comes into this? But not fully.

To understand what I meant by-- how I got it, you and your pals' connection, gonna have to go back a few steps. Uh. So there I was back home, travellin' with a few of my friends. The doctor I've mentioned before, and my dogs. And then we saw a weird fallen satellite. It was still working, though? Projecting an image onto a screen.

I touched the satellite, because what else would you do? And. Uh. I blacked out. [ A pause, a beat. ] Accordin' to my doctor pal when I got back, it looked like I'd been vaporized. Like I'd died right in front of him.

[bladeofnymeia]

[She listens. Doesn't seem too shocked by the idea of weird technology falling from the sky doing weird shit. Just sounds like the wreckage of Dalamund to be honest. And, yeah, she gets it, you see a weird thing, you touch it. But-]

Vaporized...? I...can't quite visualize, I...is it akin to electrocution?

[She hasn't been turbo-electrocuted by an eternal child prodigy yet, but it's coming.]

[shotinhead]

[ How to explain it... ]

It's sort of like. He thought my body had been turned to just dust, being burned away into nothing. Painful way to die. Sorta like electrocution, I guess?

[ A deep sigh. Spoken like he's seen it too much. ]

Anyway, I was there one moment. Sudden pain. Then I woke up on a balcony elsewhere after being... tampered with. [ His voice drops more, his tail dragging behind him. ] Turns out the teleport was linked to some mad science lab in an old crater. Didn't use to be a crater, mind you. But hey, I wanted some fuckin' answers. 'course I did. So I stormed back into whatever fucking building I'd been pulled into.

[ A pause. It seems he's about to say a lot, so he is letting her say anything she needs. ]

[bladeofnymeia]

Gods...

[That's. That's fucking terrifying. That's as if you were instantly burned away in a fire, or totally incinerated by a plethora of magitek weaponry. Her brow is furrowed worriedly, because she's well aware that the man next to her is whole and alive in this dragon body, but still.

Still!]

...I probably would have done the same. Gotten angry, went looking for answers. Did you find them...?

cw: medical trauma, surgery (?)

[shotinhead]

[ There is a deep sigh, as his movements slow to a stop. ]

Yeah. Well, I found the fuckers, but-- okay. So. They were scientists who'd turned themselves into brains in jars, give-or-take, so they could live forever and do more research. With screens, too. And had forgotten what people were.

[ A snort. ] They thought fingers were dicks, for one.

Anyway. In this place where they were experimenting - Big MT, but we called it Big Empty because it was that crater-- [ Oh, he is yapping on, seeming anxious for once, looking to himself. ] --well. They'd taken parts of me while I was asleep, replacing 'em with technology. My heart, spine, and...

[ Deep breath. He can do this. Looking right at her. Tail pressed to the ground. One of his claws going to the scar around his head. ]

Well, my brain. But I was still acting like myself, even with my brain removed. Replaced with-- well. Technology bullshit.

CW: Endwalker and Dawntrail Spoilers for sure

[bladeofnymeia]

[Firoza slows along with him. Stops. Becomes very still, the more of the tale that unravels.

People who abandon their flesh to live on. To continue their ambitions, to push onward towards a spiraling abyss of horror. To insist upon impressing the fate they had created for themselves upon others, and for that which once made them to be stripped away and forgotten.

She had seen it with the Ea. With the Omicrons. With the Endless, to a degree.

Firoza reaches out a paw without hesitation to reach out to Six's free hand, if she can even reach it. If he'd accept the contact as comfort.]

That shouldn't have happened to you. They shouldn't have...you didn't get a choice. I...

[It feels trite to apologize for something she didn't do. But still. It does solidify something in her heart, something that a friend once had presented to confront despair. That whatever made someone themselves was much more than their bodies, their minds, their souls, even if it was hard to define. Because Courier Six was still himself, despite it all, if he felt it was so.]

[shotinhead]

...I didn't get a choice.

[ He repeated, quietly. But in the way he doesn't feel like he has choice quite often. ]

But... I mean... I--

[ A little sigh. His expression dropped more, trying to not explain every single thing. He has so many stories, and yet, he needs to focus. He took her paw, gently, claw to paw. ] Thankfully. Uh. My brain was still alive. Put in one of those tanks, not a floating one but one that gave it a voice. It-- it and me were separate. And holding different thoughts.

Dawntrail Spoilers

[bladeofnymeia]

[Clutching that claw with her little paw!!!!]

...I can imagine it. Unfortunately.

[She's just. Thinking about the split between the Otis who lived on to take care of Gulool Ja in Heritage Found, and the one who had continued on in Living Memory. (Because she did not get to everything with Actual Living Sphehe by her canon point.)]

So wh...what...happened?

[shotinhead]

...we talked, me and him. He was given a voice by the machine he was in. [ Perrin, notably, can't help but still call his brain male. Gender stuff is hard! But he seems to be dropping his voice more and more, his claw - still wrapped around Fizoras' hand - tightening. ]

He decided to stay behind. Stay safe, after the threat of the Think Tank was pacified. [ His voice is a whisper, as if he's telling a secret. And perhaps, in a way, he is. ] He hated me, after all. For how much of a risk I was. [ At least, that's how he saw it. ]

[bladeofnymeia]

[I mean, it's...their gender? Gender is gender, and how you feel you are is how you are. How could it be weird? Unless brains just...since they were only brains, were too good for the concept? Mm, best to leave that kind of pondering for someone smarter and more educated on the subject.]

Hated you? But...even if you were separate, you were once one. [Unless this is a self-loathing thing, which she could understand a bit more.] He couldn't have existed without you in the first place.

[shotinhead]

...He'd prefer to be safe and scheming, I guess. But, I mean. It is true he wouldn't exist without me. I told him that, but.

...Well. I feel sort of bad since I seem to have him back here.

[bladeofnymeia]

...Huh?

[Wh. Huh? What? Wait. What??]

How - how do you know?

[shotinhead]

First of all, I don't have any tech in this head, unless you've seen me glowin' blue though my scars. And, like... I have a heartbeat back, so I probably have the rest of it.

[bladeofnymeia]

But...

[Firoza points a paw to her own head.] Only one set of thoughts, then? Or...more?

cw: discussion of mental illness

[shotinhead]

Honestly?

...I've always had multiple sets of thoughts, so, like... it's different, though. Either I'm makin' up what he's sayin', or it's the usual thoughts.

[ Oh. Oh, he should explain. In his own clumsy way. ] It's not like I'm possessed by ghosts or anything, but, I just have voices in my head sometimes? It got worse after the bullet to the head, but I've had 'em for pretty much my whole life and... fuck. This sounds even crazier.

cw: continued discussion of mental illness

[bladeofnymeia]

[Hmm. It's. It's not something she can relate to, not really. After all, Ardbert may be inside of her, but he doesn't speak to her in her mind - and if he did, it's something she'd have welcomed instantly. This feels more like a hostile part of oneself piping up and ruining your whole damn day.

Still, while she doesn't understand, Firoza listens. She thinks. It certainly doesn't change her thoughts on who Courier Six is - if this is how he's always been, then how does knowing make him any different than the Dragonite she'd known before? It doesn't. She just...gets to know more.]

...It must get frustrating, sometimes. Having other voices there like that.

[Girl doesn't know what to say but it is an accepted truth.]