august catch-all (open + closed prompts in comments)

[grice]

Who: falco grice, 2B & friends!
What: a log with closed prompts and open prompts soon to come for the duration of august !feel free to reach out on my plotting comments, liberos or owlie#3609 if you'd like to plot something specific! i will definitely do personalized tls!
When: august!
Where: corners of trench!

Content Warnings: mentions of gore, body horror, will add as they come

Comments

[manyone]

[ Beatrice's own transfusion had taken place already--elsewhere, beneath the waves of the sea. It had been a fraught thing, too, and now here she was. Laying in a bed in Sanctuary trying to get some rest. It was strange, after days and days of not sleeping, only now with the curse flushed from her body did she finally begin to feel tired.

There's a face she doesn't know in the next bed over with pale hair and Beatrice turns her head a little to meet that curious gaze. ]

Curses are such awful things, don't you agree?

[robussy]

[ thankfully, she's managed to get a bit of . . . reinforcement in the bed she sits in. 2B weighs tremendously, and despite her nimble frame, it makes the bed creak and bends unnaturally beneath her. she sinks into her mattress. the few things holding everything up are the cases under the bed at strategic points to distribute the pressure.

2B flexes her infected fingers in her lap, both to help the intake of transfusion as much as remind her of what it was. ]

They're ailments, [ as if to correct and make sense of the word "curse" in her thoughts. something superstitious, intangible, much like souls were. she doesn't tend to ask many questions if an explanation is too far away, but there's a better one that fits this. she remembers the android gasping in her arms, the boy whose heart stopped when her blade ran through it, and thrummed right along with its fibrillations. something grows within her, the same feeling she felt for 9S: guilt. ] and it's . . . an awful end.

[ and they were lucky not to get so far. she wonders why. was it really luck? a lack of time and understanding? if she knew, maybe . . . she would've tried another way. ]

[manyone]

[ Ailments, curses, it makes no difference to Beatrice how exactly they're referred to, but there's something annoying about the way she's corrected. Hmph. Curses are curses! ]

An ailment comes from some sort of a disease. Curses are magical in their nature.

[ Prissily, as though she's correcting an obvious mistake. ]

Still, you're right. It's an awful way to go. I'm quite glad to have avoided it--and I'm sure you are too.

[robussy]

[ same difference!! says the android from a non-magical society. but she supposes it's something she should get used to distinguish. 2B accepts the correction with no rebuttal. ]

What I feel for the others is greater than my relief. [ just this— guilt and sadness at an intensity she's never felt before. 2B tightens her lips together as the silence afterward builds as if she's realized she's said too much. ] I couldn't . . . Keep them alive.

[manyone]

Don't be too hard on yourself.

[ Beatrice insists, gently. ]

Some people can't be saved. That's merely the truth of the world. This one or any other.

[robussy]

[ she doesn’t want it to be a truth, as much as she has always lingered so close to it, and despised it.

she wished she could kill god, if that even exists. ]

I can’t shut it off. [ it almost sounds like a quiet bother, though it runs harsher for her own feelings; how she wished there could be a code and then silence, not so much white noise and sound and emotion— she’s overstimulated from something already so overwhelming for her in times of high stakes, and bates a sigh through her nose. ] —Neither do I know why I told you.

[ a complete stranger who reached out, and one that she had perhaps reached out to first, but not with her words. ]

[manyone]

Emotions aren't meant to be shut off.

[ Trust Beatrice. She's lived her whole life feeling emotions she doesn't want to feel about people she really doesn't like. Or people she loves in spite of herself. ]

I don't either, but maybe you wanted someone to know.

[robussy]

[ sometimes, she wished she didn't have them. they were too cruel. they were overwhelming. today, they are more than what she thought she could ever handle. would this make her beyond what humanity had planned for her? ]

That's . . . hardly rational. [ the sound through her nose is audible. the expression she wears is one that knows the answer to her own questioning. most of what is felt isn't logical. she should know, trying to perform field repairs on a being that didn't have the vitals to survive. ]

[manyone]

Rationality isn't real.

[ Beatrice says with an amused, tired little smile. ]

It's something made up by humans to justify their decisions. SO many 'rational' people make a choice and then use being rational to justify it after they already know what result they want.

[ She doesn't mean it in a bad way, honest. ]

And of all things that humans have, emotions are certainly the least like rationality.

[robussy]

[ she has . . . so many questions, but the more she digs, the more questions surface. she dislikes it, but possibly a touch less than staying in the dark— or else she wouldn't keep looking for a light. ]

You speak as if apart from them. [ "them" instead of "us". 2B is not different and tightens her lips together. irony. ] Are you?

[manyone]

I come from 'them' but I am not the same as them. I am a Witch, divorced from humanity by the nature of my existence outside of their conceptions of both space and time, even if I came into existence by a most fervent and certain human wish.

[ If that makes any sense whatsoever to anyone but Beatrice. ]

[robussy]

[ she only has one bit of logic out of this. ]

You were created?

[manyone]

In a manner of speaking, yes!

[ Isn't it cool, 2B? ]

[robussy]

In what manner? You don’t have a Black Box signal.

[ 🤔 ]

[manyone]

I was born as a witch from the certainty of a girl's plans for revenge.

[ It's extremely meta, 2B. ]

[robussy]

That doesn't explain how you were constructed.

[ DEETS OR YEETS, says the android. ]

[manyone]

There isn't one. I came into being because of that certainty--I was and then I wasn't. But then I also had a childhood, so who can say?

[ She seems very smug about not knowing shit about this. ]

[robussy]

[ ........................ if her brows could twitch (they do). she honestly thought there was an answer, here! the realization that they've literally been talking about nothing for a few moments baffles and irks her. what a waste.

(even though she wasn't exactly doing anything as the blood dripped—) ]

Is this a Witch's pastime? Spending time on uncertainties?

[ she sounds mildly miffed! you set her up!! ]

[manyone]

Rather, spending time on certainties, but something like that, yes.

[ Sorry, Beatrice is just the worst. ]

[robussy]

[ if she were one to huff, grandly, she would. instead, 2B simply folds her hands back to her lap and awaits the rest of her blood to drip. it's almost done, and an exhale escapes through her nose once more. ]

You're contradictory.

[ in actuality, her whole existence seemed contradictory. ]

[manyone]

Kihihi! Well, if I were straightforward and easy to figure out, I wouldn't be a Witch would I?

[ Beatrice is in excellent spirits now, having thoroughly confounded her neighbor. ]

[robussy]

I won’t be making further assumptions.

[ she seems to have wanted to say one more thing— but realizing she doesn’t have a name on the witch, her lips awkwardly clip shut. she knows she’ll just either be wrong or bombarded with inconsistency! with the blood drip finished, she removes the tube from within her arm— all metallic from the flap of artificial skin precisely cut to allow access. ]

[manyone]

Assumptions are always a foolish thing to make. You should try and make deductions instead!

[ Beatrice is immensely pleased with having bamboozled the poor robot. She sits up a little in bed to watch as 2B begins removing the blood drip. ]

...Ah, you're made of metal?

[robussy]

[ goddamn it stop befuddling her hard drive!! she hardly has enough RAM for this!! ]

Metallic chassis, carbon fibers, filters, [ her slight pause is a gesture that there's more, a lot more. she just won't sit there and list them. ] I am an android.

[manyone]

[ Install more RAM then, nerd. ]

An android? Eh? What? Like... a robot?