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

[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."

[maltesefalcon]

"And with the talons, neither shoes nor gloves are a thing that happen. I shred right through them. And the feet are important for landing, of course, so leaving them uncovered is fine."

For certain values of fine.

"I'm Cerrit. It's good to meet you, Vika."

[lastofthefirst]

"I'm sure all your deep friendships start with death threats." Click-click-click-click-click...

"...My first cape was a gift. For ornamentation, like you said. Don't know why I took it. Not like I was trying to impress anyone. But now it's gone, and I miss it."

[maltesefalcon]

"Would you want a similar one? Or something different, new, that you chose for yourself?" He glances at the one she currently has. "I think I saw a seamstress shop in town."

[lastofthefirst]

"...I want to understand why I miss something I don't need, from someone I don't even like, which could only function to make me palatable to people I don't respect. But those ad copy words of yours don't seem tuned to philosophy, Cerrit."

[maltesefalcon]

"Want it plain? You miss it because it was yours." Simplest answer, but he bets it's also true on some level.

[lastofthefirst]

"And what makes something mine?" Here she looks back up, sharp and inquisitive, the same doubt in her eyes as there is in slum urchins a thousand worlds over. "People say it is? It was given to me? I sure didn't make it, not that I have any respect for creators either."

[maltesefalcon]

"At the risk of tautology? Being special enough that you miss it when it's gone. When you don't have it anymore."

He shrugs. "I'm an investigator, Vika, not a philosopher. I miss my home and my family? Why? They meant something to me. Why? They were mine. Why? They just were."

[lastofthefirst]

"Tch." But she'll take it. Eyes back down; looking directly at someone paying attention to her is a lot for Vika. "Family...siblings?"

[maltesefalcon]

"Wife and kids." This is quieter. "Wrayne, Maya and Kir."

[lastofthefirst]

"...You're a creator." Vika stands, slowly; her joints don't like that at all, creaking and straining. "Why?"

Hope you weren't expecting empathy for your loss, Cerrit.

[maltesefalcon]

"Well, when a daddy eisfurra and a mommy eisfurra love one another very, very much..."

[lastofthefirst]

"I said why, smart ass. You created people."

[maltesefalcon]

"Organic people tend to do that." It's her phrasing that sticks in his gullet like a too-large gob of meat. But Maya and Kir are people. He knows they are, and they're people he thinks he'd like absent any relationship.

"Wrayne and I thought we were going to work together to raise two intelligent, amazing kids, who'd go on and do amazing things."

[lastofthefirst]

"..." Vika looks away, and her voice goes so low that the audio snow intrudes on it. "And if they're not? If your creations don't care to burnish your legacy? If you're the maker of failure and strife, what then?"