deercountry | the balance of complete and incomplete [open]

Entry tags:

the balance of complete and incomplete [open]

Who: Anna Amarande and you!
What: January event catchall
When: January
Where: The Snake Den and around Trench

Content Warnings: Eye trauma, blood, swearing, artful robot nudity, will add as they come in

a. i will trust the artist molding me [the snake den]

Anna doesn't really need much help right now cutting loose at the Snake Den. Madam G has been on her list of Pthumerians to check out for a while, and even if there had been some kind of reluctance to begin with, now that she's here mingling in a borrowed suit she feels downright comfortable. It's like she's ten years younger, and though her voice is still smoky and she's still missing an eye as far as physical age goes, socially she's just. Free, right now. It's nice.

It's nice enough that, when she's not striking up conversation with other people, she decides to indulge herself in the open mic. Borrowing an electric bass from backstage, she walks up, sits down, plugs in, and grabs the mic. "This is one from back home," she says, "By a band called Silversun Pickups. It's about finding freedom and acceptance and love in the places and with the people that everyone else tells you to stay away from. They'll say that the only way to be who you are is to file yourself off. That you need to hold yourself back to make other people comfortable without ever worrying if you're comfortable." She's talking very passionately for someone who doesn't think of herself as a motivational speaker. With a confident look, she finally leads into the song. "Let's bury that lie, Trench. This is called 'The Pit'."

And she starts playing, and she starts singing. And when she doesn't need to be playing and her hands are free, even she's not really sure how she does it, but she finds a way to channel her androidinous self to modify her own voice—just for a little bit, just to test it out. Just to see what happens, before she snaps back into the final lines of the song. And regardless of how it's received, once she's done, she puts the bass down and gently thanks the crowd. Her heart-simulacrum is pulsing faster than it should be as she gets off the stage, and she waits there in the wings in case she happened to inspire anyone with that performance.

b. the echo of what is and what will be [the shedding ceremony]

This is... not a good month for Anna outside of that, so far. For her time at the Snake Den, yes, she's still resonating with A2, and she's still who she thinks she is. But it never really takes long for her to start shedding her own skin again, and damn her brain but she can't stop fucking picking at it long enough to avoid the transformation.

The first time it happens, Anna emerges in a pure white dress that she's wasting no time in staining red. Her hair is longer, cleaner, and in lieu of a katana she's brandishing a blood-red shortsword in her battles with these beasts at the edge of the city. Taking zero precautions against pollution or corruption, she swings her blade right at the neck and lets the blood spray wash over her. When it stops, she hunches forward and shrieks out a strangely melodic note while the beast falls over dead. Her back straightens, and it's clear even from whatever distance anyone may be watching at that she's no longer entirely who people might know. The flower blossoming from her right eye is a good early warning sign, but you'd better act fast, because her good eye is a blazing red and she's rushing towards her spectator with that bloodblade at the ready.

The second time is much less interesting by comparison, but it's not doing her much good. Because the second time, she's just... a normal 29 year old. Both her eyes are fine, she's fully organic, and she doesn't know how to use a sword. In fact, she's taking her time and walking slowly through the streets of a town that she's starting to get to know better, wondering what her life even is anymore. Her Omni helps her keep connected with back home, sure, but nobody can get in touch with her no matter how hard she tries. And she woke up, for lack of a better word, with this katana that she's got on her back, and the first friendly-looking person she sees, she just asks outright, "Hey, uh. You have any idea why I would have a sword if I don't remember ever actually owning a sword?"

c. i am creation both haunted and holy [wildcard]

((got anything else you want to do? hit me up here or at

roseward!! also: source for the suit image and lyrics for the cover.))

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That makes his laugh a little, a soft huff of a laugh as he takes the sword to look it over. He glances up at her, still trying to see if she's fucking with him, but... no. It doesn't seem like it.

He pulls the katana out of its sheath, to the chagrin of the vendor whose stall they're near, and clears a bit of a space to go through a few moves. Yep, that's sure Anna's sword.

He hands it back to her, hilt first.

"Yeah, you have. But it seems like you don't remember it, huh?" If he were more careful, maybe he wouldn't be so direct about this, but, well, this is just who he is. "You use it, a lot. We hunt monsters together." He looks her over, noting all the differences again. "Let me guess: you woke up like this with a weird gross skin next to you?"

Okay, that's. New. Like, not totally unexpected, since she can logic together that if she owns the sword and the sword has bloodstains on it, then she's been the one using it, but she just. Has absolutely no memory of it. Or at the very best, a hazy one, like she's trying to recall it through reflections in a smoke-filled room.

"Got it in one," she says with a tone of wonder behind the words—though more at how practiced he is with the blade and how, apparently, so is she. "And it looked like snakeskin, if I had to guess. So I'm not the only one it's happening to, huh? You included, um—" And she racks her brain for a second, trying to pull out something that sounds familiar. "—Yyyyuri?"

"Got it in one," Yuri repeats with a grins. It's weird, having someone he considers to be a very close friend not know him, but, well, that's life in Trench, it seems. He tries not to let it get to him. "Happened to me, a week or so ago. I was ten for a while."

And that? That was weird. Weirder still to now have fresh memories of being that age. "So, what's the deal with you? Younger? Less... metallic?"

"Metallic?" she echoes like the idea is totally new to her. "Don't know what you're talking about. I'm, like, 29, 30 in June, but I guess you'd be the one who knows if that's older or younger." Her mind is still pretty sharp for someone who's been working a dead-end tech support job for the past several years, if she does say so herself.

"And I don't think I have any metal parts." She extends both her arms in front of her, careful not to get in anyone's way, and inspects the skin there. "Nope, all bio. What kind of prosthetics is the one you know working with?"

The whole parallel and/or alternate universe thing that she's clearly running up against can wait until she has a better idea of what's going on.

He honestly didn't know how old Anna was. He's a little shocked by it. 30 feels so old to him, a lifetime from now.

"It's kind of complicated, but a lot of her?" He gestures to his own face, as that'll tell her that she's missing an eye. "There was something about an android, but if it doesn't ring a bell, I'll probably say it all wrong."

Because it was all a little beyond him, but he got the gist. And he did see her lose the eye, say how hard that was for her, how traumatic. He doesn't need this other Anna to live through that again.

"Alright, so you're probably younger, less prosthetic, but you're still here. Welcome to Trench, I guess. Sorry," he shrugs a shoulder. It's not really the best place to be on a good day, and who knows if this is a good day.

"Well, willkommen yourself, I guess. This is a hell of a way to get introduced." But she's still pretty upbeat about it, no matter how weird it is. "Man, I hope my boss doesn't get pissed at me if I'm late coming back from vacation," she says, rubbing the back of her head with her hand as she focuses on what is clearly too mundane of a problem right now.

"All right, cool. So you know where the sword came from, and I've got a weird pile of snakeskin back at home, and the version of me that you know, like we've got some weird alternate universe thing going around, is an android. Like, full on robotic person." She puts a hand on her hip idly as she considers what to do next.

"Well, uh. Is she good at hunting? 'Cause I could probably get good at that if I need to. This place doesn't look like it's much for... vlookups and pivot tables, or whatever. Don't have a ton of other skills under my belt, and if all the shows I've seen are anything to go by, parallel universes don't fix themselves fast, you know?" A beat. "...Do you know? Or am I just making no sense."

Honestly, she lost him at "vlookups," his eyes glazing over.

The question catches him and he looks back at her, brows raised. "Uh... no clue. Things usually go back to normal here, after a while. But, yeah, learning to fight is a good thing, no matter what you wanna do."

But is Yuri a good teacher? Not exactly. Except that he gets an idea, a smile curving his lips. He jerks his head away from the market. "C'mon, I'll show you some stuff that you'll probably find pretty cool. And, uh, just tell your boss you got taken to another world that's infested with monsters. I'm sure she'll understand."

Hold on, back to normal? She... internalizes that, and tries not to think too much about it. It feels like she has a timer, now, and that's not. Fantastic. But she'll ignore it until it stops being a problem.

So instead, she nods earnestly, with an eager look on her face. It's that kind of go-getter attitude that got her places in the workplace, and she's feeling okay about that. "Hell yeah, dude, let's learn how to do some cool stuff with this thing. Never been much for the damsel in distress role." She smirks as she shifts her stance and raises her sword, though at least she knows enough not to point it towards anyone as she waves it utterly without a single iota of skill in her body. "And when I get back, I can just intimidate my boss into giving me as much PTO as I need. It's the perfect plan."

"Hell yeah. Maybe you can keep the sword," he has no idea what PTO is either, but he's going to roll with it. It's probably weird world-specific stuff he doesn't need to now.

He waves her to follow him, and they're out of the sparse winter crowd at the market, heading for the edge of the city where they can play with fire without hurting anyone. "You done anything weird since you got here? Things you can't really explain?"

It's a nice walk, honestly. She could get used to it around here. The air is crisp, there's not too much snow, there's enough nature to keep her satisfied... it's a little like home, if she doesn't think about it too hard. And that's exactly what she's doing when Yuri asks that question that seems to take her off guard.

"Uh, like what?" she shoots back. "I mean, I've been having some... weird dreams lately, I think? Stuff where, like—okay, so this might sound crazy, but bear with me. I'm pretty sure I knew your name because I heard about it in a dream. And I think you were teaching me how to fight with swords in that dream."

Now, she would have no way of knowing that her blood type is different now just because she has no frame of reference for it. That's not stopping her from justifying things. "But that's not the only one. I feel like I'm getting that weird sense of deja vu a lot more often lately, like even with normal conversations I could swear that I had just dreamed them." Reality has a funny way of warping itself around to make sense inside brains that aren't prepared for the truth.

"...huh," Yuri glances at her with a slight frown. That is weird. Really weird. "Not really what I meant, but damn that is weird. I meant like... making fire or ice or something. You really dreamed about me?"

That makes him feel kind of nice, in a weird way. That he was important enough to Anna to make his way into her subconscious like that, not withstanding the deja vu part.

"Most of us, Sleepers, we wake up here being able to do stuff we were never able to do before. The other you, the one I know, can do what I can do: we can use fire and ice. You done anything like that?"

"Oh, uh. No, not really," she says, but it kind of makes sense that she wouldn't know yet. "I mean, is it, like..." She flares out her hand in front of her and makes a whooshing sound like a torch turning on. When nothing happens, she glances over to Yuri and keeps her arm extended.

"Do I have to say some magic words? Sim sim sala bim?" Her fingers strain again as she tries it. Nope, doesn't look like anything's gonna happen. "I got nothin'. I don't think I can do elements. Unless I'm doing something wrong?"

"Weird. The you I knew is pretty damn good at them. Showed me a thing or two." He holds up his hand, flicks it a little to make fire play over his fingers, then he turns his hand over at the whole things covers in ice. But that's cold, and he curses, shaking it off, dropping shards of ice to the ground.

"But, hey, maybe you need to get the hang out it. I couldn't do much when I first woke up, either."

He leads her out of the walls of Trench to the forest outside of it, a place he's spent quite a bit of time with her. It feels kind of weird, showing her it, because they explored it together.

"You're really good at lightning. Maybe that's the one you need to try."

And that's the thing about it, is that it feels familiar. They've been here before, or she has, or something like that. It's that same dreamy feeling that she pulled Yuri's name from, and it sets her head on a tilt as she gets out there with him—when she's not idly snapping her fingers like she expects a spark to come out of them or something.

"All right, uh. Hoo boy," she says, exhaling and adjusting her stance. Her legs brace for a moment, and then all at once, she stomps the ground twice and reaches a loosely-curled fist into the air like she's trying to pluck a lightning bolt from the sky. "Thun-der!" When nothing happens, and almost perfectly in time with an internal tempo, she repeats, "Thun-der!!"

And when attempting to channel AC/DC does her no good, she lowers her hand and hooks her thumb into her pocket. "I don't know, dude. I don't think it's my thing. I mean, that's the most badass song about lightning that I can think of and it's not doing anything, so I'm out of ideas." See, she's got jokes. That's kind of the thing here, is that she's a lot... happier, right now. Almost in wonder at being out here in nature, outside of Recollé even if she still doesn't understand how Trench works.

"So, like. All right. I'm still here for however long," she says, and this is the point where she seems less happy but she's still able to push past it, "So let's skip the elements and go with the basics, right? Maybe it's all tied together." She tries, very hard, to twirl her sword like the movies do. It falls out of her hand, and she almost scrabbles for it before remembering that it's sharp and that she shouldn't touch it.

Once it settles, she bends down to grab it with a sheepish look on her face.

All of these antics have a grin on Yuri's face. It's not that he's judging her, not really, he's just amused. This is Anna, but it really is Anna without everything the world's done to her, Anna like she could be. It's nice, really nice, to get to meet her like this, and he laughs out loud when she drops the sword.

"Yeah, definitely the basics. Hell, you probably shouldn't start with lightning anyway, or sword tricks," but, well, he does a sword trick to show off, tossing his high in the air. It twirls a few times before he seamlessly catches it again. "You ever held one of those things before?"

"Holy shit," she says under her breath, her eyes watching the sword twirl until he catches it effortlessly. "I mean. I've swung one around at the Renn Faire before, but I spent most of my time, uh. Watching people like you do stuff like that," she says honestly, not really seeing a need to lie about being a nerd.

"I don't even think I'd know where to start." She raises her sword, turning herself 90 degrees from him so he can get a profile and she doesn't have to worry about stabbing him. Both hands are on the hilt, because that seems right, right?, and she just. Raises it over her head and swings the blade straight down in front of her. You know, like in movies? Like how there's samurai movies. "Is this. Close?"

It's a good thing, maybe, that he has no idea what a Renn Faire is. But he nods along, by now he's used to not getting everything people say about their worlds.

He laughs again as she does that move, nodding. "I mean, sure, if you want to behead someone, but I'm guessing that isn't gonna be most of what you do."

He tosses his sword from hand to hand before it lands back in his left hand and he holds it out in a ready position. "More like this. You really never used one before? I swear the Anna I know can't be that much older than you, and she's crazy good."

Except, maybe she is? Is she older than 30?! He's friends with someone older than 30?! Help him, please. He might be having an existential crisis.

"For real, never touched one before," she confirms, trying to mirror his motions with her own dominant right hand. It's not just his hands that she's trying to copy; her stance changes, too, both as a swordfighter and in a more general sense. He knows what he's doing and this mysterious other Anna clearly trusts him, so it can't be too bad of an idea to match him this much.

"Maybe her prosthetics are the things that have all the sword skills," she offers, mostly as a joke. That's, coincidentally, actually the case, but it's not something this Anna would know. "Do I really look that young? I mean, I feel old. Maybe she just never got clean or something?"

"You must be a quick study, then. Honestly, I got no idea how all her... your prosthetics work. There's something about an android? I think you become half android," is he supposed to tell her about her future? He doesn't really know. He doesn't know how much this counts. He goes through a few move, a thrust, a parry, moving fast at first to show the move, then slower so she can more easily follow along.

Yuri considers that last question, watching her as she practices. "I dunno about that. You just look... happier," which maybe isn't what someone wants to hear about their future self, but you know.

"Half-android..." She repeats it like it's totally out of nowhere for her, and the idea almost makes her stance falter. And then he says that she looks happier like this, and she frowns just a little.

"Does she not like being an android?" she asks, still trying to follow the moves and carefully, slowly match him. "Or does she not really talk about it?" comes the knowing follow-up. Anna can't be too different across different universes.

Yuri snorts a short laugh. At least she knows herself. "Yeah, that one. I'm pretty amazed you--she? told me about it at all. I dunno if it's about liking it or not. She's just been through some shit. I dunno how that works, me telling you about this. Hey--"

He taps her sword with his own, to get her to pay attention to it. "Got hot steel in your hand. Could cut off an arm if you're not careful."

"Oh, sh—right." Okay, no, head in the game, Anna. Come on, you've got this. She strengthens her grip on the sword and doesn't say anything for a moment so she can instead focus on the moves and getting her form down.

But that doesn't last as long as she'd like. It doesn't take more than a few minutes before she's back trying to probe for information about this other version of herself. "It probably means she trusts you," she says. "I've always been the kind of person who keeps it all inside her until she finds someone who can actually put up with it. So either she trusts you a lot, or you do a real good job pretending to give a damn."

She dings her blade against his and gives him a friendly, confident look. "Pretty sure it's the first one. So you definitely matter to her. She'd probably move the world to keep you safe."

"Really? And here the Anna I know is an open book," he says it with a grin. He's joking, because Anna is the same as him, trusting rarely and sparingly, but trustworthy when you have it. Normally, he isn't quite this forthcoming, but something about meeting Anna all over again makes it easier:

"I do give a damn," he says it because it's true. It's an easy thing to say, with a little quirk of smile at her, pushing her blade back lightly. "Nice one. Yeah, we... she helped me out, of a tight spot, when we first showed up here. Guess that solidified it, huh? Well, I trust her, and you, too."

"And I guess that means I should trust you back, right?" She does already, of course. It's not just the idea of this other self trusts him so she needs to; it's that he has a sword and he hasn't used it to try to kill her yet, and that counts a lot for trust where Anna's sitting.

"So maybe I can ask you something." She clashes her blade again; she's picking it up, but the blows are still nowhere near as skilled as she probably could be. "You gonna ask her about me? You know, once I disappear and head back into... wherever it is that you think I'm gonna go."

It's a good question, and Yuri meets her blows easily, concentrating on putting in just enough force to challenge her, but not enough to put either of them in danger, not just yet.

"I might, yeah. It's not every day you meet a friend again. But, hell, you know how you are. You'll tell me what you want to tell me," and he doesn't have any problem with that. She can keep all her secrets she wants, as long as they keep going hunting together. "But, who knows. You could be here to stay. Never know with this place."

But after a second: "If I was gonna ask her, if she comes back, what d'you would freak you out the most?"

the balance of complete and incomplete [open]

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