deercountry | fall for me from reality [open]

Entry tags:

fall for me from reality [open]

Who: Anna Amarande and you
What: November catch-all!
When: Throughout November
Where: The Entertainment Feed; Anna's usual club; other locations TBD

Content Warnings: Manipulation, blood + oil, lacerations, restraints

a. hold shut the wounds of the past [for murderbot]

An android walks into the Entertainment Feed. Stop me if you've heard this one before. She's wrapped in a heavier coat than usual, black fur around the collar, and she's wearing a new-looking pair of black jeans with no holes in it except for the ones that the guy who made them put in there for her feet and torso. Her boots are the ones she used to sail with, and her jeans are tucked into them. And, because she's committed to her own brand, she's got a white t-shirt with a faded picture of yet another robot on it.

"Anna Amarande," she says to one of the drones, identifying herself like she'd been asked. "Fantasy Twitter user rin should be expecting me? We have some things to discuss."

b. to the rhythm of eternity [open]

Anna usually limits her performances at the bar she's taken to calling her home in Cellar Door to three nights a week, but lately, she's felt a little more inspired than usual. She's chalking that one up to the Tower's influence, and she'd feel a little ungrateful if she didn't bump it up to five nights a week for at least a little while. She's playing most of the songs in her repertoire over a given week, her voice and her bass on full display with any other instruments covered by backing tracks from the glowing projected screen of her Omni.

Of course, maybe you didn't walk into this bar to listen to Anna play music. Maybe you're here for a conversation—maybe something important, maybe just catching up with old friends. If that's the case, she's glad to wave you over to the booth that she's stolen for herself in the back, dimly lit but private. She's got a bottle of beer in her hand as she does it, and she tilts it towards the bartender as if to say "one more for my friend".

"Hey, glad you could make it. C'mon, let's take a load off for a bit. What's been up with you?"

c. there are burning cathedrals [for makima]

This is going to be interesting, she thinks. She'd met Makima online in a curious conversation about godliness, and she wonders very much whether it's going to play out the same way in person. Right now, she's dressed as normal; it's a little bit colder this morning, so she has her thick, fur-collared coat over those new black jeans and Hatsune Miku tee, and she's looking around the coffee shop for anyone who looks even remotely like a Makima.

"Hey," says the woman with more souls than eyes once she's pretty sure she's got the right person. "Sorry, usually the places I hang are a little... grungier than this. Hope I didn't keep you waiting long. You're Makima?"

d. turning the skies into glass [friend of mine]

"All right," Anna says, in the heavier coat she's been wearing this whole time. She shrugs her shoulders up to wrap the collar around her neck properly, and she adjusts the strap over her chest that secures her katana to her back. "We're here to find something to help the Tower. Thanks for coming along." She turns her head towards her companion and smiles appreciatively. "I'm not in the business of walking into danger alone anymore. So—"

She reaches into her pocket and slips the crescent necklace she'd gotten from the Reckoning over her head, around her neck. "This can make sure that at least someone already knows where we are, in case there's an emergency, but how are you with tracking? I don't think a lot of us have been out this deep in the woods before." She looks back out ahead of them; the trees might be starting to die off, but that doesn't make the thicket of branches before them any less intimidating. She rolls her neck until it cracks, then starts walking forward, because there's nothing else for it. "Let's save a god's life."

e. i cannot pretend that i never think of you [for ange]

She's lost track of time. The zealots didn't seem to enjoy what they found when they'd cut into her side very much, and she can still feel the blood and oil oozing out of her very slowly. If nothing else, she thinks, they know how to keep people alive enough to actually treat them like a farm. She would find it funny if there were anything to laugh about, that this is the second time this year she'd ended up strung up and in restraints waiting for something mysterious to return and do whatever it is that they want to do.

Right now, Anna feels woozy. Half-awake, really, with her head lolling and her white hair streaked with red. The zealots, from what she can remember, had left her alone for the moment to try to figure out what exactly it is she has inside her. She remembers frenzied talk about how the Tower can't accept any of this because it's not flesh, it's not real, and she can only assume that they're waiting to commune with whoever, whatever to get a real answer. Her thoughts are going in circles right now. She misses her friends, her loved ones, her family. She wishes that she weren't here. Hell, she doesn't even have her katana with her, so even if she found some way to get out of these chains holding her upright, the ones on her wrists spreading her arms wide and the ones on her legs binding them together, she wouldn't be able to do anything but tap into the teachings of Sensei Lawrence.

She laughs dry into the darkened, empty room. Someone's going to save her. Right?

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Murderbot winces at way Anna Amarande refers to it. It's not a fantasy character, but it supposes Trench counts. Twitter must be the name of a non-fantasy social media network, which is ridiculous, because where—outside of Fantasy—would birds sing your social media entries?

The irony scans. Yeah yeah Eden Rin isn't its "real name." It doesn't have a "real name." SecUnit is what kind of construct it is. Company SecUnit is the make. No further name besides the identifier in machine language that humans cannot even properly process (if all computerized systems disappeared, bond companies like the Company would have a hard time telling their SecUnits apart)(not that it would matter since they were gone)(sorry, that wasn't a well thought out hypothetical situation, but you get the point). Its personal name is personal and private and not for public knowledge by which it means anyone's knowledge outside of people who take advantage of it forcibly shutting itself down not to murder said people and then look through its inorganic memory system. Moderate hard feelings, Gurathin.

Murderbot steps into the lobby and waves a social greeting at Anna. "Would you prefer a private room on the floor for books or for music?" it asks.

Technically there are private rooms on all of the floors, but the movies/serials and gaming floors are more heavily trafficked. Plus, Anna's coming to where it lives and does business. It can give her that much choice over the meeting spot.

Edited (subject line) 2022-11-03 00:02 (UTC)

Ruby Rose wasn't one to not make an effort to visit her friend at least once while she was performing. And at least for the moment Ruby hadn't been in the heckling mood. She had however cheered her heart out and clapped like a maniac between songs. As any good friend should.

She's quick to slide into the booth once Anna is settled down. She crosses her arms when Anna says one more and quickly chirps in. "Just a soda for me, thank you."

And then she turns back to Anna.

"Oh you know. Just- Getting used to the changes in life you know? Thought I'd come support a friend."

Scorpia was aware that the couple would be performing together eventually and was excited at the chance to watch the duet in action! Not to mention that it's a good reason to listen to and support a fellow musician of Trench. And she just really is feeling the music vibe even more than usual this month, it's wild!

On the night in question, she gives them a standing ovation, complete with cheers and whistles. "Woohoo!! Bravo! Bravo!! Bravissimo! You guys killed it!!"

"Oh, wasn't expecting the choice," she says honestly, her head turning and her eye meeting Rin's. Her eye's got a crinkle to the bottom of it; she knows how to be pleasant, and she's smiling like they aren't about to talk about something very serious. One of the inside pockets of her coat has a notebook in it that feels just a little heavier.

She approaches, closing the distance in the conversation and giving a half-wave. Very casual. "Let's do music. Would love to see what you've got going on up there, and maybe I can introduce you to some more, or something." She tries not to look too sheepish as she admits, "I don't think I know how you've got this whole place working, really."

Anna looks past the two of them towards the bar and sees one of the people there staring back at the table. Extremely rude, she thinks, but doesn't say; her attention is back to the two of them.

"I appreciate it, Mrs. Rose-Ushiromiya. Thanks again for inviting to your wedding," she says with a smile clear on her face. "We've needed a celebration like that for a while." And she leans forward on the table, now that she's settled in a little. "So how's married life treating you so far, anyway?"

Edited 2022-11-03 22:33 (UTC)

Anna laughs as the song finishes, and she decides to come down a little bit on the stage (since it's a natural lull in the set anyway, and she wants Kainé to have the chance to breathe) and sits on the edge, with her feet dangling a couple inches off the ground and her bass in her lap.

"Hey there, big girl," she says like she hasn't missed a beat. "Long time no see. You having fun here tonight?" she asks like it's not plastered all over everybody's faces. "This is probably a little different from the last time you saw me play, huh?"

Scorpia grins, calming herself and waving with a pincer while coming up closer to where she's sitting on the stage.

"It has been a while, hasn't it?" Somehow it's been about a year since she first heard her perform those unexpected songs! She'll probably try to catch her performances more regularly from now on, though. "Oh yeah, you definitely changed things up. Still great music, but a different genre of greatness! I'm so glad I caught this."

Murderbot shrugs, its gaze landing first on Anna's eye patch (because it is not an eye but is in the location of an eye and would seem like a great choice except for misinterpretations) then her ear, the far ear from the functional eye. It's already awkward, and this is the 'easy' part.

It returns toward the stairs since it figures Anna, like it, can handle multiple flights. "I have a lot more digital offerings than physical media," Murderbot says, "Physical media is more fragile, difficult to get a hold of, and fewer people can use it at a time." It may prefer digital because that was the only option it had for so long and because then it doesn't need an external device, but it was around in its universe. Like hard currency cards.

"The Feed still has some, don't worry. As people request specific items in physical formats, I accommodate them as much as I can," Murderbot adds. It pauses as they pass a couple people on the stairs. Not that anything they're talking about now is a giveaway, but what it wants to say next could still be a clue, something suspicious, something interesting.

"I have a lot of experience working with shitty technology," it says, "Broken technology isn't that different."

"Hey, I'm glad you made it out. And that you made it a whole year," she says, like that's something a little more impressive to comment on. To the Trenchies around them, she's pretty sure this comes off like someone meeting a fan, but Anna at least knows better.

"I've been practicing, maybe with a little help from the Tower, maybe with some help from other people." She shrugs. "You know how it is. So, you still singing? Anything I should've been catching this whole time?"

"Is that so?" she replies, listening to Rin's words even more carefully as that last line comes up. Sure, this could all just be a conversation about busted-ass 8-tracks and laserdiscs, which are easily the oldest forms of media that Anna's touched (minus that one time she'd stumbled over a box of punch card paper), but she's not a total idiot. Besides, Rin had insisted on privacy.

"I have a sweet spot for physical media myself," she says, trying to continue the conversation normally as they walk. Trying to keep the metaphor going, more like. "Sure, digital stuff is convenient and all, but it's trapped in the cloud. You can't touch it and you sure as hell don't own it. Someone decides to shut off the server one day and it all goes away." Okay, maybe it's not all metaphor, because that one is damn close to her real opinion on things.

"With physical stuff, though. You know that it's right there with you the whole time. You get the chance to take it out, to look at it, to hold it." She looks over at Rin like what she's really saying isn't on some level blisteringly obvious. "You get pretty acquainted with it. All the places where if you push just a little too hard, it'll all crack apart."

Murderbot glances over at Anna, not sure anymore whether or not Anna is talking about media or about 2B. If it's about 2B, is that about the way they are backed up, so if they die, they load into a new chassis? Is Anna saying that someone could delete them in an instant? If the android server is shut off do the mobile unit androids also shut down? In the memory Murderbot was in, they lost connection to Command, and they still fought just fine. They just possibly died died, instead of partial memory loss.

It doesn't know what the point is, if it's a metaphor, so it decided not to engage with it as a metaphor. That's too much coming from different universes and operating systems/principles.

"I'm not sure media works the same way across our universes," Murderbot manages. It opens the door to the media floor and ushers Anna into it. "Please look while we walk. You can pick something up if it interests you."

The physical music media is a mix of CDs and albums because Trench, for all it differs from the cultures Murderbot sees on media, is a place that was Earth, filled by many people from other forms of Earth. The technological bias is there too. Earth and blood based, and Murderbot is not using bloodbased.

With the number of people who have come and gone from the world, it increases the fondness of seeing someone else who's stuck around here for a long term.

"Oh, you bet I'm still singing!" she nods along eagerly. "That and Night Walking are pretty much my two things. I have been building up a lot of songs! Songs I make myself, and also ones I here from Trench or other worlds. I'd like to think all or most of them are worthy of being caught!"

"Of course- Gosh. That's a mouthful, I'm so used to my name rolling off the tongue." She didn't sound upset about it. It was just a change and change was good thing. "It was great to have you, and everyone else too. We need more reasons to party here." She let's an elbow rest against the table. She hears someone speak up from the bar but it's mostly slurred so she ignores it.

"Married life has been good. We found a nice little place in Cassandra that we're going to move into. It's- I mean it feels the same but kind of lighter you know. You aren't just looking out for yourself anymore. Someone's always there and has your back."

[ makima doesn’t forget things. she knows she’s marked coffee with an online stranger, so anna is right on the money when a woman with braided red hair and a long leather coat large enough to hide her curves happens to meet with her. or, rather, makima smells her. she’s not like the others, and she’s the only one asking for her. what exactly is she—?

she’ll have to find out through a thorough coffee date. as prim and quaint as ever, makima smiles the way she always does to greet people— perfectly, and for what seems like too long, she doesn’t blink her wildly colored, ringed eyes. who doesn’t know hatsune miku? ]

Bull’s Eye. I wouldn’t call you grungy, Anna. [ a pause, ] Unless you meant musically?

"Oh shit, for real? You're doing originals?" She leans in a little more, though since her body is a firmer object than most, she can't really bend in as close as she'd like with the bass where it is. Still, from how her eye's going wide, it should be clear she's into it.

"I've been trying to get into that, too, but I'm definitely not there yet," she says, not going into too many details on that one for the moment. "I don't know how the people I'm covering do it. What kind of stuff do you write about?"

"Wow, we spent all that time rebuilding the house and you're not even gonna live in it." The words might seem harsh, but she's smiling the whole time and it's dripping with sarcasm. "I hope it's a good place for you two, though. After all this excitement, you two deserve a quiet life for a while."

As quiet a life as this place allows, at least. As the words escape her lips, she hears further commotion from the bar, and it draws her attention a little more than it probably should. Her lips draw down into a frown as one of the patrons swipes his hand along the bar and shatters a glass; she can feel the air go still. Her eye narrows.

"Heads up, Rubes," she cautions, like they're at the precipice of an explosion.

Scorpia smiles and props herself against the stage while she speaks to her, delighted by her excitement!

"Yep, I've got some of my own! I do a mix of things. I try to focus on warm and comforting feelings. Like an hug you can hear, you know? But I do some bittersweet stuff too. Because, y'know, that's part of life here in Trench. Working through the hardships and sometimes struggling to keep everything going... I try to incorporate Trench stuff too! So, uh, yeah, trying to draw on lots of things across the board!"

Well, I try to clean up when I'm meeting new people.

[that's a lie, and she says it with a smile that's probably genuine enough to make it an obvious joke. she settles into the chair across from makima and keeps that pleasant demeanor as she takes in this new person. she looks good, is the first thing anna notices. interesting eyes; her guess isn't the only thing that's a bullseye, is it?]

I don't really do grunge. Nevermind dropped, like, half a year before I did. I'm more into, like, scene and emo, stuff like that. Mid-two thousands, you know. [she's talking like she already expects makima to know what's going on.] One of the bands I used to be a little into just did a collab with Miku, apparently, so I thought I'd celebrate. [that part is not a joke.]

You into music much yourself, Makima?

"Nice, nice. I think it's good to, like, try to focus on as much good stuff as you can, you know?" She's nodding along in approval, glad that someone else is doing the stuff that she hasn't quite been able to get a handle on yet.

"I had... let's be honest, kind of a shit summer. So that's what a lot of what I've been writing about has been focusing on, you know?" No need to go into details, really. "Unpacking all of that shit is gonna be a long process. And yeah, some good stuff came out of it, but... yeah, it's bittersweet. Good word for it." She looks around the crowd, sees the faces of some of her regulars, and gives them a broad smile. Maybe that can be one of the good things.

"Where do you perform, anyway? Just anywhere?"

Anna smiles, and doesn't laugh, because she feels like maybe she misstepped or something, and it's probably fine. Whatever. It isn't the first time she's gotten something wrong this month (it does seem to be happening a little more often, which is odd), but Rin seems to be okay with moving past it. It's totally fine.

She enters the floor and immediately starts looking around for something that's a little more familiar, because that's what she does when she feels uncomfortable. Spotting the spine of a CD from a band that she knows intimately, she grabs at the physical media and pulls out a copy of Homesick by A Day to Remember. And if she didn't know better, she could've been the one to donate this, but she hadn't actually made any donations yet. Serendipitous.

"Oh, nice," she says, holding the CD case in her hands. "I got this etching from a song on this album," she adds, and she sloppily rolls up one of her sleeves to reveal some thin lines etched into her metallic arm that look like they could be piano roll notes—or they could just be lines, and she knows it's unnecessarily hard to tell. "It means a lot to me. Wasn't expecting you to have it here. I might chill with it in another room once we're done talking, if that's okay?"

Since its universe isn't known by anyone else, its music isn't known to anyone else, not in advance, and it isn't as popular as Earth music. Which is fine. That's the reason most of it isn't on this physical media. Give people what they want, right? Murderbot wants people to have moments like the one Anna is having, the need to reach and grab something and hold it close. The way it feels about The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

Murderbot starts the soundtrack softly in another internal input. Soothing. It's calming, the way it always has been; here, with Anna, to plan to help 2B, the music also reminds Murderbot of SupportUnit playing the soundtrack for it when it de-squidded, when it didn't even know fully who it was, but it wanted that music. 2B deserves that too.

It stares, not at the fact Anna has a metallic arm (oooh, so does JollyBaby) but the fact that she etched it. It's terrifying and amazing at the same time. The only things etched onto Murderbot's metal parts is the Company's logo. That thought squirms uncomfortably, like hot projectiles piercing its skin to clink clink clink against the inorganic parts beneath the skin and muscle tissue. Like the logo melts under the weight of Murderbot's discomfort (it is, but Murderbot doesn't know that; its internal mechanisms aren't made to detect that impossibility).

"The Entertainment Feed is for everyone," Murderbot says. Sure, in the Corporation Rim most people had to pay, but Murderbot hacked it. Here, there is no capitalism. People donate media or leave things for barter if they want, but Murderbot doesn't demand anything. It doesn't even ask for anything.

It leads Anna into a quiet room, shuts the door, and checks the vicinity for any problems, including the ventilation system. Being paranoid may not be great for mental health, but Murderbot has great attention to detail. "I'm not good at small talk," it announces, waits half a second, "Are you set to go right into things?"

If there's a subroutine they need to follow, it can handle a script. Otherwise, 2B is waiting on them.

Scorpia frowns as she listens to Anna. She's glad that she sees the value of positivity, but it's also a shame that Trench seems to have subjected her with hardships. She won't press her for details, though.

"I see. Channeling those feelings into songs and music can really help for sure... It can be real therapeutic stuff!" She nods along in agreement. And then she chuckles a little at her question. Though that's a bittersweet question for her, she tries to answer it lightly. "I'm pretty much any anywhere kinda gal! I used to have regular gigs at a few places, but they, well, their owners all ended up squidding it up." She gives a little shrug. "So what're ya gonna do?"

"Ah, yeah, that's the thing, right?" she says, glossing past how miserable that kind of thing actually can be. "You know, I've been thinking about, like, starting a bar of my own or something, but I think this is the kind of setup I like better."

She gestures out past both of them, towards the bartender she's gotten to know pretty well, and she nods at him and flashes a thumbs up. "I find a place that Trenchies run and I just get to be friends with them instead. That way I don't leave anyone screwed if I ever end up squidding out, you know?" And she's back to the conversation at hand. "They can find a new musician if I peace out, but if I'm running a business and I vanish, that's a ton of Trenchies out of work. Wouldn't want my last act here to be a huge middle finger to them after I spent the past however many months trying to keep them all safe."

See, this is nice. Anna's dogshit at small talk when something bigger is on the table, and right now, protecting and keeping 2B safe is way bigger than anything else. She's taking in as much as she can, listening and observing without speaking, learning as much as her eye will let her and her brain will retain; she doesn't necessarily trust herself much. But it's better than standing around with her thumb up her ass.

Once she's settled in the quiet room and things seem suitably safeguarded (something else that she isn't sure she understands the necessity of), she reaches into the interior pocket and pulls out the notepad that she'd transferred her electronic notes to. Something about sitting out under a tree, thinking through things, doing it the old fashioned way... it helps get the words flowing. (She thinks of the words "I know. It helped." and doesn't think too hard beyond them. In tandem, "You are terrible at this." and "Bitte." float to the top of her memory. She ignores those. She has to.)

"So I know I said I would give you more details about Recollé and everything, but I cut it down to the kind of stuff that you'd need to know about so we can figure out, like, a good place to start." She flips a couple of the pages over, revealing a few more detailed notes similar to these, but comes to a stop at the header for July and August of 2018. "Basically there were a couple months where the barriers of reality got... fuzzy," she says, which feels like the least precise but nicest way to describe it.

"Whoever was in charge of it," she continues, bypassing the dramatis personae for the moment, "Found a way to put me inside of A2's code while what I understood of A2 took over. It was a lot of battles, a lot of blood and swordplay, and if I'm honest I still don't think I get how it all worked. But I saw A2 from inside and I had a lot of time to sit and wait to be rescued." She hasn't written down any blocks of code or anything, or at least nothing better than pseudocode and not in this part of the notebook, but she's still confident. "I would be able to find what we're looking for, and I can check for failsafes when I'm in there. But I think we both knew it wasn't going to be as easy as changing 'canHurtHumans' to true."

Luz was not one for usually going to bars, but getting some early hallucinations have already got her looking for something that would distract her from that and the chill in her bones. She popped over to Cellar Door, a place she was starting to get more familiar with and happened upon a singer she hadn't heard before.

Before long, Luz was humming along, and had a little bit of fire now than she had.

When she stopped singing, Luz walked over.

"That was really good! You sing here often?"

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fall for me from reality [open]

hold shut the wounds of the past [11/02]

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c !!!!!

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B (I'm totally showing my age, but hearing that Poe again just gives me FEELS man)