And it feels like the weight is too much to carry [November Open]

[lastofthefirst]

Who: Vika and YOU
What: November Open
When: TAKE A WILD FUCKING GUESS BUDDY
Where: Around Town, Edge of Town, The Mine(tm), Oak & Iron
Warnings: Existential horror, chronic (robot) illness, Vika's kind of a bitch



In the final cut [People Watching]

One might find one's Vika out around town. She doesn't do things like eat or sleep or, you know, most of the reasons Pumpkin Hollow has to socialize, and yet here she is! At the Oak & Iron, hanging out near the Forges, even at the Library, kinda just looking at the various people around with an unusual amount of animation for her. While Vika does indeed check out some books at the library (all of them about clockmaking), for the most part she's kinda just observing and click-click-click-clicking away. If your character is particularly fashionable you might even get approached; she's got some clothing questions, you see. Otherwise, well, that's on you.

In the final scene [Edge of Town]

Maybe it's the noise - a strange, reverberating pulse - that gets your attention near the edge of town. Maybe it's the ice. The source is obvious enough once you get there, though: Vika is practicing. Her weapon arm has changed since she got here, and one of the big ways it's changed is that it now has a utility built in. The frozen blasts it fires leave behind patches of thick ice, and she's running herself through her paces with remarkable agility. Those overlarge legs on her body push her into swift dashes extended by the ice, and she's not shy at all in using the blasts from her weapon to freeze over the surface of the river in chunks she can land on and then leap from. For all that Vika is a lurching zombie, this is as alive as she's ever looked here in town, with a fluidity that might be unbelievable if you've seen her before.

The animals have wisely left this area, but there's a first come first served opportunity to assign this robot a Pokemon brave enough to be near this...

There's a final girl [Oak & Iron]

Vika doesn't eat, but she does need to be wound. She's slowly coming to peace with the idea that it's going to be a team effort even if she does get a hand installed, and it's...

...Weirdly nice? In any event. So here she is, taking up table space and blissfully unaware that this is rude behavior because nobody on the staff is gonna be the first person to tell the gun-armed zombie robot that she needs to buy something or leave. Help a bitch out before she starves to death, would you?

And you know that she should be screaming [The Mines]

Pretty sure Vika is the only PC miner in the game so this prompt exists literally just in case there's plot down in the hole here. Her job has, thankfully, provided her with tools she can put on her arm while on the clock, as well as a dedicated partner; Mika (yeah, we're going with that) doesn't need to swing the pickaxe at all, instead loading the cart since Vika, y'know, fucking can't.

Wildcard

Come at me

Comments

In the final scene

[thelatechrisfreeman]

Chris is indeed watching Vika as she practices with her modified gun, and Rowan the Phantump has accompanied them. When Vika leaps from ice floe to shore, Rowan gives a cheer and claps their little hands with glee.

Chris waves after that, since the noise will definitely get her attention. "That's amazing, Vika!"

[lastofthefirst]

Yeah, the noise definitely got her attention. Vika's weapon comes up, then goes right back down; it's just Freeman.

Wait. It's not just Freeman.

"...J-j-just to m-make sure, you h-have a life form with you? I'm not g-glitching?"

Mentally: what the fuck, what the fuuuuck -

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"Oh, you can pick them up? Yes, Rowan is one of the new kind of ghosts in Lockwood Forest, and we made friends a while back!"

Rowan basically looks like a tree stump with glowing red eyes, suspended in a black mist. And it's floating next to Chris and watching Vika with curiosity.

Chris continues, "There's a lot of different kinds... big and small. Lots of people have made new friends with them."

[lastofthefirst]

Something sparks in Vika's neck, followed by an automated message in Polish instructing the listener to consult the user's manual. Then, with perfect clarity, the emotional shock of what she's heard having been enough to cause an actual shock connecting her voicebox: "Ghost?"

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"Um, yes." Chris takes a few steps closer, looking worried. "Are you all right?"

Beat.

"Oh! Maybe you're from a world where the spirits of the dead don't linger. Like Dr. Watson."

Damn Canon Characters And Their One-Liners

[lastofthefirst]

"Pretty sure there wouldn't be the GDP of five different nations in my development if people had a Get Out Of Samsara Free card, yeah."

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"But the ghosts are still here, bound to the physical world. That isn't release." Chris lightly rests a hand on Rowan's head. "The subtle realms beyond, I assume, would be closer to a release. And even then, the world doesn't like to let us go."

[lastofthefirst]

"So you just...you just have a dead person that follows you around?" Work with her here Chris, you've got the chance to get in on the ground floor before Vika's seen so much as a single episode of a Travel Channel ghost hunting show. Be the accurate education you wanna see in the world.

[thelatechrisfreeman]

So be it. Lecture incoming.

"When someone dies, the spirit or the animating force is separated from the body. The body is purely of the physical world and it will decay, but the animating force endures -- invisible and intangible to the living, but present." Chris shifts their stance a little wider, something similar to parade rest, though they keep their hands clasped in front of them. "In most cases, in a normal situation, the spirit is drawn to what I call the Between -- a waiting room of sorts before they are sent on their way, to whatever lies on the other side of death. They don't linger in the physical world.

"In some cases, however, the spirit remains here. Often retracing the steps that led to their original demise, but sometimes freer than that. The causes can be internal -- strong emotions at the time of death can ground a spirit to a place -- or external, such as a slaughter of many or particularly violent death for one. And they need... guidance to the Between. What form that guidance takes can vary. But it's those spirits who linger, rare as they are, who become ghosts. Ghosts usually have no way of interacting with the living, unless that person is particularly sensitive to the presence of spirits. It's a lonely existence.

"These ghosts can be seen and felt. Many of them are animals, things that never were human. And the majority are friendly. So... people go out to make friends."

[lastofthefirst]

"..." Vika's hook goes, lightly, to her chest; she looks down at it, blinking faintly. "Strange," she murmurs, but it has none of the doubting bite or habitual sarcasm she's so often shown. "I don't think that can be my fate, Freeman. The bit of me that I use to be me is...clingy."

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"Maybe it isn't your fate," Chris agrees, in a soft voice. "It could be that you'll endure in the physical world, and not have to worry about spirits and what's beyond. I hope there's peace in that, too. Someday."

[lastofthefirst]

"...You misunderstand, Freeman. This is not a question of spiritual uncertainty for me. My consciousness is stored in a very specific part of myself whose second primary function is to permit continuity of my self between bodies. This shell isn't my original body and it wasn't my last either; I 'died' dozens more times after this shell was disabled. There have been. A lot. Of Vikas."

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"Oh. Thank you for explaining."

Chris thinks over what she's said, and then they say, "Forgive me, I don't mean to sound argumentative. But the way that you describe it... sounds more like there has been one Vika in many bodies. One unique person. Do I have that right?"

People Watching

[maltesefalcon]

The birdman cometh!

Cerrit notices Vika doing peoplewatching near the forges, and he can't help but be curious. He makes his approach from an alley behind two buildings, specifically trying to slip right up beside her in the stealthy way a level 14 rogue is capable of.

"What exactly is it you're looking at, when you're watching them?"

[lastofthefirst]

Vika has all the perception of someone who comes from, say, a canon where enemies spawn 0.5 screens away and move directly towards her.

Which in turn means her immediate reaction to Cerrit is her gun arm coming up with an audible charging sound.

"People r-r-really like g-gambling with my p-personal space," Vika murmurs. "Congratulations on w-w-w-winning the coin flip. This t-t-time."

[maltesefalcon]

"Huh. You're well-armed, aren't you?"

...Cerrit, now is not the time to pun at the hair-triggered robot girl.

[lastofthefirst]

"I have h-half an arm and a quarter of it is pointed at y-you." The weapon powers down, and Vika resumes her former watchful posture, elbows resting on her knees. Her eyes move to track the various people going about their busy days. "...Their clothing and p-paraphanelia. Bags, sacks, c-coats. Y-you might be noticing I only wear a cape. Hazard me a guess why."

[maltesefalcon]

Cerrit, in his arrival shirt with holes slashed in the back for wings, pants cut mid-calf and cuffed and his bare-ass bird feet out for all to see, gives her a sympathetic look.

"Because there are assumptions about how clothing works inherent to the fashion industry here, and you don't fit the standard template."

[lastofthefirst]

"N-n-not a bad guess." Vika finally looks up.

Looks away again.

Looks back up. "...Educated g-guess I s-suppose. Nice to m-meet you." Gaze back on the people walking. Vika has a look of...determined thought, on her face. A human might be grinding their teeth right now. "This b-body exaggerates s-some clothing problems. Metal sh-shreds c-cloth a lot f-faster than flesh does."

[maltesefalcon]

"Leathers would have the same problem, but slower." Cerrit clicks his beak. Which is a bit like grinding one's teeth as well, or biting on a lower lip. "Is it the functionality of clothing you're envying, or the potential for self-expression through ornamentation?"

[lastofthefirst]

"Big f-fan of ad c-copy language are we?" Vika frowns. "N-not sure I'd say envy. M-more th-thinking. Once I have a hand-d-d - fucking -"

Thump!

"That can't be good for my wires...once I have a hand pockets might be nice and all, but the thoughts are. More about what clothing means. Humans wear clothing so they don't die. Everything else is secondary to not dying, it's prosthetic fur and hide. I don't have that need. So...what even is clothing?"

[maltesefalcon]

"Self-expression through ornamentation. Like I said. Occasionally an indicator of social status or belonging to a particular group--like military uniforms, or cultural dress or fancy fucking formal gowns that shift color in the lights and fit your form perfectly because they were tailored for you this morning and mean to show off how absolutely stunning and magically perfect you are."

...Shhhh, he doesn't have a lot of feelings about Patia and Laerryn and their dresses, not at all.

[lastofthefirst]

Vika's face really does have a lot more expressiveness than she typically uses it for. Case in point, the targeted look of pure skepticism aimed at this bird man.

"Okay. My kind is a population of six in a world of billions. Here it's two, me and that insistent doctor, out of, what, a few hundred? A thousand? Does it follow that we need clothes to be accepted as people?"

[maltesefalcon]

"I'd say not, but again, I know being isolated from all of your own kind and viewed like you might belong in some sort of zoo or something. I've already accepted your people-y-ness, for whatever worth that carries. Hard to hold this kind of conversation with someone who's not people."

[lastofthefirst]

"Tch." The voicebox isn't fully connected; Vika's sigh comes out as more or less the sound of a modem dialing up, shrieks of the damned and all. "...You can call me Vika. I guess with those scales on your legs you know something about wear and tear yourself."