Americans have strange taste in dining establishments. Or maybe it's just a human thing in general...?
[ waffle house is liminal space. anyway, she seems distracted, not entirely looking at minako, but as minako approaches she might hear snatches of a conversation...? (until the end of the audio log, obviously)
hmmm, surely that's the entire memory and it's safe to approach, right? (no, but she's going to do it anyway, probably.) ]
[ are you kidding? with that kind of cliffhanger? it's absolutely not the entire memory, and she knows it. she's just hoping the resolution is significantly less tense than those files were building it up to be. ]
No, I think that's just Americans. Mystery takoyaki is a perfectly normal dish, after all!
[ well. because the camp is a bitch, this is also about when the full memory of a factory (until 3:53) swallows them both up. it's- affected, somehow, is the best way to say it, white noise and static threading around the edges, signal interference making details flicker every now and then, but the most important portions remain vividly intact. alarms are blaring, the situation is in chaos, and you are being attacked on all sides by hostiles, some of which had been allies just scant moments before.
but after that desperate declaration- 'i want to live!'- the memory fades to static entirely, only fading back in with this (until 18:53). still as fragmented, in a way, as the one prior, but the image is stark and haunting. your sister and yourself in the middle of a ruined factory, smoke in the air and blood on the walls, signs and sounds of recent fighting obvious both in the near vicinity and in the distance, after one final duel she forced you into, a duel you never wanted.
and yet... you're completely unharmed. you realize this is the ending she intended from the beginning. the virus affecting both of you, that would burn away at everything of your self until there was nothing of you left, she took that entirely on herself, just to give you the chance to live.
you didn't know anything. you didn't know any of this until it was too late. too late to do anything but grant the final thing she asked for, to die as herself and not as some red-eyed (her eyes were gold) hollow shell, here in this damned building that's already become the final resting place of everyone else who was here.
your sister steadies your gun for you. the memory cuts off abruptly into static after you fire. ]
[ Minako can almost feel it - the desire to live, strangling and all consuming, before it practically gets snuffed out in an instant.
'you couldn't know,' she wants to say to that younger, unscarred 45, 'it's not your fault' - but that's impossible now. she's not here, is she? there's just this 45, who's had to carry the weight of surviving, all this time. ]
[ it takes a moment to reorient, shunting orphaned processes to the side and cutting off access to various files in memory and reprioritizing current intake from external sensors.
(her cloud's a mess, she knows, the delays in her processing getting to the point where it's starting to be noticeable again despite the ways she compensates.) ]
[ she waits, while 45 gathers herself. two years, huh...? ]
Is it longer than it feels, or the other way around?
[ do the days stretch on, leaving 45 wondering how it could only be two years? or are the memories so fresh that sometimes, she looks around, wondering how it could only be two years? ]
A squad shrouded in mystery. ▓▓▓▓▒ has met them once, and others can only guess at the members' identities from rumors. Members of the squad all have advanced AI and high capacity for independent operation. Rumor has it that Squad 404 usually deals with ░▓▒▓▓▓▒▓▓▒▒▒░░
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w3, wednesday
Date: 2020-07-03 09:57 am (UTC)Oh, 45-san! How'd it go today?
no subject
Date: 2020-07-03 03:44 pm (UTC)[ waffle house is liminal space. anyway, she seems distracted, not entirely looking at minako, but as minako approaches she might hear snatches of a conversation...? (until the end of the audio log, obviously)
hmmm, surely that's the entire memory and it's safe to approach, right? (no, but she's going to do it anyway, probably.) ]
no subject
Date: 2020-07-06 04:54 am (UTC)No, I think that's just Americans. Mystery takoyaki is a perfectly normal dish, after all!
[ hmmm, how to ask about it... ]
no subject
Date: 2020-07-06 05:28 am (UTC)[ hmm, how to ask about it indeed. ]
no subject
Date: 2020-07-06 06:17 am (UTC)[ that sure is a perfect segway into: ]
Speaking of secrets, may I ask who 40 is?
no subject
Date: 2020-07-06 07:21 am (UTC)[ hm, that sure is a mood change. ]
I take it you saw something?
no subject
Date: 2020-07-06 09:28 am (UTC)Just heard something. Um...
[ ... ]
Are you and your sister... friends?
no subject
Date: 2020-07-06 02:42 pm (UTC)[ ah. maybe if she explains it as simply as possible that can get through a conversation without triggering a memory share. ]
She and I were made for the same reason. But she's the reason I survived.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-08 09:03 am (UTC)Did something happen?
no subject
Date: 2020-07-09 07:09 am (UTC)[ bluntly. ]
I killed her.
[ well. because the camp is a bitch, this is also about when the full memory of a factory (until 3:53) swallows them both up. it's- affected, somehow, is the best way to say it, white noise and static threading around the edges, signal interference making details flicker every now and then, but the most important portions remain vividly intact. alarms are blaring, the situation is in chaos, and you are being attacked on all sides by hostiles, some of which had been allies just scant moments before.
but after that desperate declaration- 'i want to live!'- the memory fades to static entirely, only fading back in with this (until 18:53). still as fragmented, in a way, as the one prior, but the image is stark and haunting. your sister and yourself in the middle of a ruined factory, smoke in the air and blood on the walls, signs and sounds of recent fighting obvious both in the near vicinity and in the distance, after one final duel she forced you into, a duel you never wanted.
and yet... you're completely unharmed. you realize this is the ending she intended from the beginning. the virus affecting both of you, that would burn away at everything of your self until there was nothing of you left, she took that entirely on herself, just to give you the chance to live.
you didn't know anything. you didn't know any of this until it was too late. too late to do anything but grant the final thing she asked for, to die as herself and not as some red-eyed (her eyes were gold) hollow shell, here in this damned building that's already become the final resting place of everyone else who was here.
your sister steadies your gun for you. the memory cuts off abruptly into static after you fire. ]
no subject
Date: 2020-07-18 08:01 am (UTC)'you couldn't know,' she wants to say to that younger, unscarred 45, 'it's not your fault' - but that's impossible now. she's not here, is she? there's just this 45, who's had to carry the weight of surviving, all this time. ]
... How long ago was that for you?
[ how long have you been suffering, she wonders ]
no subject
Date: 2020-07-19 07:00 pm (UTC)(her cloud's a mess, she knows, the delays in her processing getting to the point where it's starting to be noticeable again despite the ways she compensates.) ]
... Two years? Something like that.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-26 04:51 am (UTC)Is it longer than it feels, or the other way around?
[ do the days stretch on, leaving 45 wondering how it could only be two years? or are the memories so fresh that sometimes, she looks around, wondering how it could only be two years? ]
no subject
Date: 2020-07-26 05:30 am (UTC)echoes from someone who doesn't exist anymore. deprioritize, suspend. ]
I don't keep particularly close track of how much time's passed, so I'm not sure how to answer this question.
[ she's simply kept herself very busy since then. ]