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

[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?"

[maltesefalcon]

Cerrit's feathers all fluff at once. The problem is that her question is wrong. His kids want to grow up to be like him. Maya's turning her mind to history and girls, and Kir already has toy warhawks and is spying on his sister's mischief for dad.

Her question isn't unfair, but it's wrong.

"At least I will have tried. We will have tried." But that's wrong too. Wrayne's living in Gwessar, far from him and the kids, and has been for over a year. They failed as a couple, and perhaps as parents.

[lastofthefirst]

"...I suppose that's better than most creations can ask for." Her hook taps her upper arm; she's trying to hug herself. "I don't accept easy answers like 'organics do that', Cerrit. Especially not for this, not for condemning someone to exist. I. Know. What my creators wanted from me."

[maltesefalcon]

"I'm sorry that your existence is so fucking awful, Vika. That's something I didn't want for my children, that they would resent me or their mother."

Ugh, but he sure did fail them in the end.

[lastofthefirst]

"Children...I wonder what the difference is." Vika glances back to Cerrit. "...Despite it all, I passed the first filter. I selected into existence when I could have asked to die. I'm sure your creations will have a better reason than spite to choose life."