deercountry | we begin vindicated [open]

Entry tags:

we begin vindicated [open]

Who: Anna Amarande and you!
What: Event catch-all
When: Throughout December
Where: In Trench, in the sixth layer of Recollé, and 9,920 years in the future

Content Warnings: Eye trauma, explosions, hunting, blood, likely mentions of sacrificial death and depersonalization

Creating a Winter Mourning comes as an easy feat to Anna. She's been doing more than enough of it lately in a much more literal sense. Having a blessing towards some of the Pthumerians she hasn't had the chance to commune with yet probably can't be a bad thing.

It's glowing, the light serving as a gently pulsing beacon outside her window. Looking at it is almost mesmerizing; for a moment, it feels like it's going to bring peace to the torment that she's been feeling inside since the month turned. She reaches out and touches it, and in an instant...

a. we forget who we were meant to be

It's 2019. From the other wall of a glass jar, a white-haired woman with one eye is crawling through a ruined, sickly-green lab. She is not screaming in pain, but she is crying. No blood spills from her face, but she still would never wish anyone to see her like this. Her hand comes down on shards of broken glass, but she barely registers it. The air around her swirls with white souls that, in the flickering light and the ambient energy, almost seem to take form around the pathetic, destroyed woman.

Anna never wondered what she looked like when this happened. She knows everything about the events that just transpired, and her spectral head looks to the area that her younger self is crawling from. The brain that stole her eye is dead, and within this sixth layer of reality, the boundary between Anna, A2, 2B, and Kainé is thinner than ever. It's a wonder that she's able to maintain her own form even as a memory, because as she thinks about it all, she can feel her body flickering to take on the shape of the other women. She looks around to see if anyone followed her down—if she's experiencing her own memories then it makes sense someone else is there with her—and mutters somewhat musically, "Pay no attention to the ghost that follows."

b. a broken image of how it should be

It's 11,941, give or take a year, and two YoRHa units stand off to the side watching an enormous explosion in the distance. Anna, or at least the person who people have come to know as Anna, stands behind a cleaner, less ruined version of the android she's turning into. That android is on her knees, almost ready to weep, in front of a massive army of bronze-bodied, red-eyed machines. In an instant, the android shoves herself to her feet and screams a battle cry. A wave of debris follows from the explosion, taking out nearly everything between her and the epicenter. The shockwave stops before it can reach the android, but she won't let that stop her from trying to take down every last machine in her path. Her sword, less elegant than the one on Anna's back, flashes as she goes on the attack.

Anna stands there, her eyepatch fresh and new in black, her clothing an elegant, meticulously-stitched dress, her heels adding even more height to her form. She is not moving, though, not joining the fight. Because she knows full well what this is and what just happened. The person next to her may elect to join the fight with the not-truly-nameless android, the one whose appearance would match Anna's perfectly were it not for the eyepatch, or they may wish to stand back and speak with her. The bloodlust that often fuels Anna in these battles is not present at the moment; instead, she almost seems relieved.

c. crack a smile and lie through our teeth

Or, perhaps, she doesn't touch the Mourning. She leaves it to rest in her home and takes her blade out with her to the streets. Her longcoat high, the brim of her hat over her face, her eyepatch gone revealing the intimidating black-gold glass beneath it. Her blade stays in one hand, and the gun that Ruby Rose has been training her how to use is in the other. Shields are nice, but not if they engender passivity.

She stalks the streets in the pale moonlight, succumbing to the vengeance deep within her. Emotions that should be directed inward are ready to explode outward, and she is fully prepared to become a creature of persistence. An android designed only for combat, ready to lash out at the world that has stolen her from the city she loves.

A hunter must hunt. She has no need for traps, for subterfuge. The Amaranth's strategy has never once progressed beyond having a sword. She stands there on the wet cobblestones, stock still in front of what may be prey or what may be an ally, insofar as there are any allies to be had in this wretched night. She tilts her head up and sniffs the air. "What's that smell?" she rasps out. "The sweet blood... it sings to me." It may be gauche to tell someone your blood type, but are you willing to risk silence?

d. in the end we would rather be anything but lonely

((more prompts to be added. if you're interested in more, DM me or hit me up on

roseward!!)))

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"Yuri might surprise you," Flynn laughs, letting that lightness creep in and stay, lifting them up. "He was drafted into being in a play once and really stole the show, quite against the script. Don't expect him to follow any sorts of rules. Is this your hobby, then? Music, things like that?"

"Yeah. I play electric bass and sing a little, but I'm not, like, a pro at either of them," she says, not sure if Flynn will know what an electric bass is. She has one in her bedroom, but she doesn't want to grab it quite yet.

"Music's the kind of thing that's been there for me when I felt like I didn't have anything else. I just think... there's so many different ways for people to put the way they feel down into words. And I wish this place had a bigger music scene, 'cause I love being in the crowd and supporting whoever's on stage."

She could go into a lot, like a lot of detail about specifics. But as the energy gets its hooks in her brain again, she can still keep herself under control. For a little. "I'm mostly into, like, emo, hardcore, pop punk, and I was just dipping my toes into prog a little more before I got brought here. Grew up on pop punk, though. Met Rose while a Fall Out Boy song was playing in the background and I learned every goddamn word of it." She laughs breathily at her own little personal confession and moves on past it.

"Anyway, like, yeah. I could fill you in on so much stuff. Anything from, like, Fall Out Boy or BMTH to, like, Haken or like real texture-y post-rock like Silversun, or—" There it is. She cuts herself off, grabs her Omni, and puts it down in projector mode between them.

"Listen, just look through my playlists and pick something that jumps out at you. I can tell you more. If you want."

"I want," Flynn says, as he leans forward even more until he's very nearly not on the chair at all. "Although I have to admit that you may as well have been explaining blastia formulae to me for all that I understood anything you just said. Those are... instruments? Kinds of music?" He flicks—a gesture, at least, that makes sense to him, as does the projection feature of the Omni—through the playlists, squinting at the unfamiliar name. "I grew up on the music from the Lower Quarter, which was largely loud, meant for dancing, and not precisely meant for children. Hanks had a fiddle. Is any of this for dancing?"

She laughs; that's not a totally unexpected reaction. Anna knows she gets pretty intense about this stuff. "Well, I mean. You could dance to a lot of this stuff, you know?" She points towards an EDM playlist, titled "got a good beat and i could dance to it", but doesn't open it up. "This is EDM—electronic dance music. That's the kind of stuff you go into a crowded club to hear, there's bright flashing lights and a DJ up at the head of the crowd controlling everything. Usually drugs, too," she adds dismissively.

There's another one called "horn jams" that she points to next. "There's ska, people skank to that, and that's just basically a lot of kicks and bouncing around and stuff. Lots of horn sections, off-beat guitars, usually the songs sound super fun but the lyrics are depressing if you listen too closely." And one last one for the moment that's simply called "elliot". "This playlist is all, like, modern folk. Fiddles and stuff, really simple drumbeats that you could play on a box or the ground, lots of big group choruses with really simple words. I wouldn't call it my favorite genre, but it's got a lot of charm to it. You'll see people dancing to that, too, but it's usually more traditional. That's probably what you're used to."

Flynn takes this in with the seriousness of a student presented with new textbooks, which is to say, with a lot of careful nodding and mouthing of words to really make sure he's got them. This does mean that for a while there Flynn is sitting there mouthing things like EDM and skank and looking very intent about it.

"They all sound fun," he admits when she reaches the end, "and I believe I'd like to listen to something I've never heard before. What is your favorite to dance to?"

Okay, all of this is completely worth it for watching him be all intense and serious about the word skank. But she's so caught up in her own little lesson, and in trying to answer Flynn's question, that she can't dwell on it more than just to give it a big smile.

"Man. Okay, so I'm really not much of a dancer, but it depends how I'm feeling and what kind of show I'm at." She slaps her thighs, gets to her feet, and moves a little further away so her limbs don't hit Flynn or anything. Her arms start swinging back and forth with her elbows bent, and she starts kicking rhythmically. "So this is what skanking looks like, but if you do it faster and harder," which she explains but does not demonstrate, "It turns into moshing. That's for harder music, stuff where the only thing you can do is get all your energy out in a huge pit of people up near the front of the stage." She keeps it going for another couple seconds, then stands up straight and brushes her hair out of her face with an embarrassed sort of grin.

"Favorite, though? I don't know. Moshing's fun if you have a good pit and nobody's being an asshole about it, but that really depends on the show. Most of the time I just throw a song on in my room and dance around to it. No real style or anything."

"Then," Flynn says, with a smile threatening to overtake his whole face, "we should do that. I don't know about you, but I'm always energized after a battle like the one we just fought. Dancing seems a perfect way to take off that energy, and learning is best done by doing, after all."

He pushes himself to his own feet a moment later and immediately tries to let his arms hang like Anna's had, a little furrow of concentration between his brows. She'd let them swing, sort of, like pendulums, and then her feet kept the beat. Having spent a lifetime watching and trying to imitate drills, Flynn can pick up on the movements easily. He's just... really, really stiff about it. So incredibly stiff, like he's learning a sword drill instead of a dance.

See, at first Anna's thrilled to see Flynn get up and join her, because god she wants to see this happen so bad. But the more he tries, the more... mechanical the whole thing seems, and this is coming from a goddamn robot. She stops trying to dance alongside him and grabs his shoulder gently instead.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but you look like you've never tried to relax before in your life." And she is trying very hard not to sound like Yuri right now, no matter how sure she is that these are also words he's told Flynn. "Come on, just loosen up your arms a little first." She shrugs her shoulders and rolls her neck back, then tries to go full jelly bones with her arms and shakes back and forth to show Flynn what he should be doing.

"Don't worry about doing it perfectly like me. Just be yourself with it."

"I am taking that the wrong way," Flynn informs her in just about the snottiest noble tone he can manage, which is to say that he lifts his chin a little and narrows his eyes. "You sound like Yuri."

Mission: failed?

Even so, Flynn watches her for a moment longer, because as much as he's teasing he does actually want to get this right. It's important to Anna, or at least the whole thing surrounding it—music, dancing, letting go—is, and therefore he needs to take it seriously and not dance like he's wearing armor. He can do that. He can absolutely, definitely do that.

For sure.

He tries.

He tries so hard, shaking his arms like Anna, trying to let them hang loose, but they're still kind of stiff at his sides like he doesn't want to let them fly out and hit something. "Is... that the point of dancing this way? To loosen up?"

"I know I do," she says, and she can't help but grin. The expression fits her face a lot better than anything dour, not that she's trying to lean into a Yuri impersonation or anything.

"And this, right now? This whole thing isn't dancing yet. This is just me trying to get you to get some fluid in your movements," she says, grabbing for his arm and seeing if he can actually hang, metaphorically speaking. "Like, come on, dude. I know you know how to do it. Just get all nice and loose, and then..."

Actually, hm. Maybe she should start with a little bit of an easier song. She bends down to her omni and picks something easy to start with. "Here. Just try to follow the drums with your body. The snare is on two and four," she says like that'll matter, like she has enough knowledge to explain music theory to him, and like he's not just gonna do it on one and three anyway. She bobs her head in time with the snare just to get it started, then when the rest of the band comes in, the wave travels through the rest of her body. "Like this."

He's gonna do it on the one and three anyway.

Of course he is, he is trained on the rhythms of war and not exactly on the rhythms of the dance floor, and more than that, he's just.

He's trying so hard. He watches Anna as closely as he can with an intensity that frankly kind of matches the song building around them, and then as the chorus hits, he nods, takes a breath, and.... starts nodding his head on the 1 and the 3, trying to feel it.

He's trying so hard. She appreciates him so, so much, no matter how wrong he's doing it. Between the two of them, they're bobbing out every beat of the measure, and this is one time that she'll actually say, "Okay, try to match me on this. Good work staying on the beat, but you gotta shift it a bit." She's trying to be gentle about it because she's not really sure how to put it into clear words.

"It depends on the music, but, like. A lot of music is split up so you can count to four over it." She waits very pointedly for that hit going into the second verse to be over, just so it doesn't confuse anyone (including herself), then starts counting once Patrick starts singing about last calls and last resorts. "One, two, three, four, one, two," and she goes on and her body only moves on the two and the four. "See how you can kind of feel it better that way?"

"Yes," Flynn says, a little surprised, feeling the count and the beat align. It really is a little like fighting: feet here, arms here, tuning into the rhythm of your breath and your opponent and their motions. Only, instead of an opponent it's a song and Anna, there in front of him, guiding him. He loosens up a little more with each passing measure, starting to smile as he really feels it. "Yes! This makes plenty of sense—are there no moves? No steps?"

"Not really," she says with a shrug now that things are getting somewhere. Oh, this is good. She'll have to hold off on, like, Haken for now—no sense throwing him into that kind of thing quite yet—but she thinks he's got a real solid grip of 4/4 for now and that kicks a ton of ass all on its own.

"There's definitely some songs that have dance moves with them, like—" oh, god, she can't think of any "—'Gangnam Style' and stuff like that. Lots of k-pop, actually, but that's not really my thing so I don't know much about it. Most of the dancing at the shows I go to is just... go absolutely nuts with it as long as you're staying on beat."

"So," Flynn fills in, still moving, with even a few little shuffle-steps thrown in because, frankly, he's used to the ordered partner-dances of the Lower Quarter and he can't not fall into them, "stay on beat and improvise, in other words? Yuri would love this! He loves to make things his own and not follow approved techniques."

Anna laughs at that, because Flynn's totally right. On a couple different counts, really. "Yeah, dude, you got it. Unless you're doing something that's choreographed on purpose? You feel the music, you move around the way that you want to, and that's what it's all about."

In an effort not to sound like she's describing the hokey pokey, she continues, "It really helped me out when I was stuck in a boring office job, before any of this stuff happened to me. You go in, you deal with the same garbage day in day out, then you clock out and head to whatever crappy little dive bar you can find that's playing the loudest show you can think of."

The song gradually comes to an end while she's talking, and it moves on to the next absolute smash goddamn hit from that album. "And just let loose." Her body sways a little more slowly and one hand goes up like she's holding an invisible lighter. Almost forgetting that Flynn's there, she starts idly humming along. Please interrupt her, Flynn.

Flynn's not going to interrupt her. Of course he's not: not when the entire point of this endeavor was less to teach Flynn to dance and more to get Anna out of her own head and into somewhere a little happier. That she's humming like this, swaying with the beat and having a good time, means that it's working, and so Flynn just sways right along with her, listening to the foreign, wild beat. Yuri would like this music, he thinks. It's the sort of thing that gets the blood pumping, that would be good to listen to before heading into a fight.

He can understand, then, the idea of losing yourself in music. It's like a story, like an escape, a place to go when your life is something less than you want it to be and you have no power to change it. It wouldn't be what Flynn would do, but he can understand it, certainly: Hanks used to laugh when he was dancing when he would laugh at few other times.

And, really, it's nice to share this with Anna. He will be here for hours, probably, prodding her into showing him her favorite songs, learning what makes her happy.

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we begin vindicated [open]

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faLL OUT BOY; GOD; YOU ARE MY FAVORITE PERSON

recovering scene kid anna amarande is ALWAYS here

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