[At first, Visas doesn’t realize what it is she’s being followed by. She just sees another grey figure in the crowd of grey figures… but when she notices that it has been with her all morning, she stops. The residents of this land may be fakes, but that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of inflicting harm.
She turns and sees that this simulation is of herself. But not herself as herself–the mirror reflection is imperfect. Warily, Visas steps closer. The skin on her copy’s face is pale and cracked and lined, like the captives in Nihilus’ ship, being slowly wasted by his hunger. Its lips are dark, not from cosmetics, but as though the blood beating through them has been poisoned.]
My life for yours.
[Visas takes a step back.]
No. Leave me.
[The copy takes another step forward, merciless, igniting a lightsaber.]
My life. For yours.
Monster Mash
[You know what’s easy to deal with? Compared to ominous reflections of your inner self? Giant, ravening beasts.
Visas has fought many. From packs of kath hounds on Dantooine to the tigerlike maalras and the aggressive garbage cans known as cannocks on Dxun, she has fought many a wild animal. She is not sure why the dark reflections of people means that the dangerous animals of Aldrip have invaded city limits, but it is, at least, an easy problem to deal with. All she has to do is avoid being mauled.
Therefore–when not plagued by her shadow–Visas is stalking down any given street. Her footsteps are quiet, silent even, from long practice as the deadly knife of a Sith Lord. So you may not notice her until you find yourself in company with a monster–and it starts choking, as though being strangled from afar.]
Do not move. I can handle this.
[Of course, you are free to listen to her, or not, as you desire.]
Wildcard
[Ayy! Want something else? PM me / hit me up @ compassinks or just drop something in here.]
[ Root has dealt with her doppelganger by now. That was not a trivial or simple matter; it was the culmination of multiple days of cat and mouse, blasting off her legs over and over, drugging her, maybe even torturing her, taking her own injuries in the process and wrangling Shaw's double as well. But eventually even Root had understood the point: in her was the capacity to do evil, great evil, in the service of something more. It was too easy for her to shut her own agency off and give it over to something else.
She wanted to believe she was a better person now, had died a better person, but it was a thin line to walk and she was constantly in peril of teetering over it. So she knows how the doppelgangers work. She also knows they can't be conventionally killed. And she has some major frustration to burn off, which is why she has Shaw stationed on a rooftop with the .338 sniper rifle and she's stalking the streets with a pistol in each hand, practically radiating a willingness to do violence.
Maybe she has the capacity to do horrible things, but sometimes you need to do horrible things to do good, too.
And she's not about to leave Visas to face this alone. She likes her, in that swift unreasonable way Root decides she likes people. With her implant hooked up to the dark web and Shaw equipped with her own communicator, Root eyes the burgeoning fight from a distance away and says aloud to Shaw: ]
Standby for my signal -- friend of mine with a double. She's no walk in the park.
[ Root trusts that's all the warning Shaw needs about the seriousness of the situation. She marches up toward Visas and her lookalike, pistols first, both of them trained on the creepier-looking one. She's not sure what she can do against someone with a lightsaber who can choke someone out from a distance, but she's not coward enough to back away and she doesn't actually mind if she gets killed here.
Shaw might mind, but, well. Root isn't going to cater to her trauma. ]
Visas, [ she announces herself brightly, ] what did I say about leaving me out of the fun?
[Denial, lying to herself, and lack of self-awareness are typically not faults that Shaw struggles with, and so one would think that she would have dispatched of her double by now, too. Unfortunately, trauma has been rearing its ugly head, preventing her from engaging with it in the way she needs to.
But the Shaw on the rooftop is definitely the genuine article, and holding a sniper rifle is refreshingly straight-forward. This, at least, she can do.]
[ Well, that's interesting and unexpected. Root is nonplussed for a full second before she steps around Visas's outstretched arm and up to the shadow kneeling on the ground.
She holds out her right-handed Glock and aims it steadily point-blank at the head of the kneeling figure. ]
Plenty dangerous, [ Root agrees, tone intrigued and vaguely approving. She's still cautious enough to hold the gun to her, but she also knows they're going to get out of this a lot faster through talking than fighting. ] Why don't you explain what your intentions are? I need a few more words than that.
[Visas feels an unpleasant feeling crawling through her gut when the copy kneels and offers itself to Root. Root has the right idea by aiming a weapon at it. She's tempted to take its head off right now, but part of her wants to hear what it has to say... to understand what it is and why it is doing this.]
I will follow you... serve you. I will protect you from anything that tries to harm you, to take you from me.
[ She has to test this. This is a fascinating look into Visas as well as being the rational next step to actually solving the problem. Root loves when the right thing to do is also the nosy thing. ]
I don't serve myself, [ she informs her with utmost confidence, ] I serve something greater. You still interested?
[ Root cocks the gun in obvious threat for if the answer's no, perfectly ready to pull the trigger. ]
[The shadow has no eyes to focus on the gun, but her body tenses when Root cocks it.]
You are something greater. If you will not let me serve you... then there is only one thing I can do.
[Visas realizes what that means as soon as the shadow says it. She moves--not fast enough, because she doesn't even know if it's the right response to try and prevent it, but whether she wants to stop it or no, she's too late.
The shadow turns the lightsaber on itself, plunging the blade through its own chest. It crumples to the ground--and then everything, its body, the lightsaber, fade away.]
It is gone. [Visas' relief is palpable.] I am... sorry you had to see that.
[ Root doesn't quite roll her eyes but she doesn't appear all that impressed as she clicks the safety back on and then tucks her gun away. Maybe someone else would be affected by being told they're something greater, that this hot dangerous alien woman wants to serve them; but Root's never wanted a follower, and she's never wanted to be great.
She also couldn't care less about seeing a simulated shadow copy of someone crumple up and die, though it was interesting in what it says about Visas. ]
She's just going to come back, you know, [ Root points out, turning to face Visas. ] The disappearing trick is neat, but death doesn't really stick.
Oh yeah. And believe me, I got real creative trying to dispatch her.
[ Root has a cheerful yet incredulous tone as she thinks back on some of the things she'd tried. She's not immune to how bizarre and disorienting it was to shotgun blast the legs off of someone that didn't just look like her, but could've been her.
Having accepted her double into truly going away, Root isn't about to deny to herself that she was one single wrong turn away from being a Samaritan goon.
Realizing that's the real solution, she prods, ] What do you think that was about? Why would she want to serve me?
[Visas wonders what creative means. The humanoid body is such a fragile thing, there are so many ways to make it cease functioning.
But Root's question is more important to answer than that little bit of curiosity. Visas has only known Root for a few standard months. She knows a little bit about the woman's history, mostly what Root has revealed herself after Visas tried to kill her. She's relieved to have been forgiven for that, but that isn't the same as her feelings towards the Exile.]
I do not know. [...] She repeats something I have said, but it was not to just anyone... it was to the person I felt it for.
She wouldn't expect something so intense from Visas either. Sure, she likes her, respects her capabilities greatly, but people don't usually go around proclaiming devotion to someone that fast. Apart from Root with the Machine, that is. So there's obviously something else going on. ]
And who's that? Come on, I'm not going to leave you to handle this alone, which I think means I should get to know what it's about.
[Visas hesitates. She has known Root for so short a time... still, what they do know about each other is significant.
She knows that Root has killed. Has a history, in fact, of evil.
Maybe she will understand. And if a copy of Visas is going to crawl back out of the aether to trouble her again, she might need to know anyway.]
...An exile. From an order of knights sworn to protect the galaxy. She went to war to save others, and she was broken, and cast out, and recently she returned. I heard the echoes of her pain across the stars.
[ This sounds-- not the same exactly, but a rhyming verse of the same song, maybe. Root recognizes it in feeling if not in fact. In a strange way it validates and explains her instinctive attraction to Visas, not just in a possibly romantic sense but on a fundamental level. Root is drawn to people who are loyal, who have a coherent moral perspective and stick to it, even if it's a vacant one. ]
One day I want to hear that whole story, [ she informs her with honest intent, ] but I get the gist. You're feeling lost without her, right?
[ She can't make eye contact with Visas, but Root is too practiced at body language to give up the attempt; she stares at her hood where her eyes would be with all-too-knowing fervor. ]
She turned your whole understanding of existence upside down and now she's not here. It can feel like anything, anyone, would be better than going back to who you were before.
[Root has... a shockingly good summary of the emotional experience, for someone Visas has known for so comparatively short a time.]
...yes. Yes, I feel lost.
[She has drowned in this feeling for months now. Alone, holed up in her basement, moving from rote task to task to maintain her survival... she has felt it deep within her. So why does it feel so different to speak the words aloud?]
[ Sunlight is a great disinfectant, as the saying goes. Root's not the type to seclude herself and wallow when she experiences loss -- she goes rather the other direction -- but she understands the difficulty. Speaking things out loud opens you up to dealing with them, which is much harder than pushing past in resolute silence. ]
You're not the only one to find something better and dedicate yourself to it.
[ Root sounds utterly comfortable admitting this, no trace of shame or reservation. If anything, she's proud. ]
I'm without her voice here, too. [ She can make decisions on her own, obviously -- she's been making hard choices on her own since she was a teenager -- but it's not the same. Sympathetically, ] You meant to stay with her forever, right? Just like I did. It hurts to be without her.
[ And she had, effectively, been with her forever in the end. Knowing the Machine took her voice after Root died to save Harold, an action effectively in her service as well, brings her immeasurable comfort. But it's still not the same as having her. ]
Nothing lasts forever. The stars implode and die, galaxies collide and spin apart. The lives of being such as we--even in the longest-lived species--are hardly a puff of dust in the wind.
[So ephemeral. So fragile. When Nihilus opened her vision to it, to witnessing how much life and death happened in a single instant throughout the infinite stars. The meaninglessness of it all...
...until she heard the Exile, the pain within her echoing across the distances. When she saw her soul, cracked and scarred. A person who could understand better than anyone the futility of life and living. And yet she refused to accept the lesson. With her broken footsteps and steely eyes, she strode across the Galaxy, forcing back emptiness and despair.]
But that does not mean that life is futile. I had believed that as surely as fact. She did not. Would not, though she had every reason to. I would have followed her for the rest of our lives. I cannot forget the lesson she taught me, but... I am at a loss on what to do with it, now.
[ It's couched in flowery language, sounds like something out of a futuristic play, but Root quickly grasps the point beneath what Visas is saying. She'd felt so much the same. ]
The universe is infinite and chaotic and cold, right? [ she asks in a tone of agreement, voice turning quieter as she quotes herself, a conversation she'd had with Harold that she still thinks about regularly. ] I believed that, too. Until I met her.
[ She gets it -- and she gets how it feels to suddenly be without her direction, but from long before she'd arrived here. Root has had to live as the Machine's hand in the world without her voice or direct guidance so many times by now. It's not that it got easier, but she got more confident in doing it as she went along. And she'd gone directly against the Machine's words several times to boot, when it was wise and when it was unwise, things she regretted and things she absolutely doesn't. She's not a puppet; she's a partner.
Challenging, ] You can still follow her even if she's not here. Or do you not know what she'd want you to do?
[ Root can't know what the Machine would want from her with her usual specificity and direction, her blind faith in following her carrying her through; but she can know in principle what she'd want from her, and that has to be enough. ]
[Visas looks down. What would the Exile want her to do... Visas has been trying, inexpertly, to do what the Exile herself would do. Protect people from monsters, restrain her hand from violence unless entirely necessary. But there was so much more to the Exile than that... her intuition, her strength, her ability to connect with others.
Visas lacks those things. In the company of the Exile it was easy to follow her lead, almost instinctual. But she cannot work the Exile's will without her here.
But then, would the Exile want that? She had always been uncomfortable with Visas' desire to serve.]
...I knew her well enough that I can try. And I have been trying. But I know I am not as good at such things as she was.
Well, of course. We wouldn't need them if we could figure this out on our own. I miss the Machine every day.
[ Root speaks with aching, simple honesty. She's comfortable acting independently by now, but she never likes it. She smiles just faintly at Visas in empathy. ]
But if we can only follow them when they're right next to us, have we really changed?
They trust us, believe in us. Trying is enough, Visas. You don't need anyone else.
[ She'd welcome her into the Machine's following, make it a cult of two, if she wanted. But Root doesn't think that's what she needs, not with her own understanding of how these doubles work. And maybe she's assuming too much about the Exile here, but so far it's only served her well with Visas, so she keeps going. ]
[In a similar way, the more Visas talks to Root, the more convinced she is that she would have been a follower of the Jedi Exile if she had been born into the same Galaxy. A person with a dark past struggling towards the light, however much of it is hidden beneath the confident demeanor.
And to hear Root admit her own longing for her lodestar... helps. It helps to know that Visas isn't the only one lost and lonely.]
...I thought I had changed, by devoting myself to her. She is the opposite in every way to my old Master.
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expiationlogs2024-11-11 09:09 am
Visas Marr | OTA
[At first, Visas doesn’t realize what it is she’s being followed by. She just sees another grey figure in the crowd of grey figures… but when she notices that it has been with her all morning, she stops. The residents of this land may be fakes, but that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of inflicting harm.
She turns and sees that this simulation is of herself. But not herself as herself–the mirror reflection is imperfect. Warily, Visas steps closer. The skin on her copy’s face is pale and cracked and lined, like the captives in Nihilus’ ship, being slowly wasted by his hunger. Its lips are dark, not from cosmetics, but as though the blood beating through them has been poisoned.]
My life for yours.
[Visas takes a step back.]
No. Leave me.
[The copy takes another step forward, merciless, igniting a lightsaber.]
My life. For yours.
Monster Mash
[You know what’s easy to deal with? Compared to ominous reflections of your inner self? Giant, ravening beasts.
Visas has fought many. From packs of kath hounds on Dantooine to the tigerlike maalras and the aggressive garbage cans known as cannocks on Dxun, she has fought many a wild animal. She is not sure why the dark reflections of people means that the dangerous animals of Aldrip have invaded city limits, but it is, at least, an easy problem to deal with. All she has to do is avoid being mauled.
Therefore–when not plagued by her shadow–Visas is stalking down any given street. Her footsteps are quiet, silent even, from long practice as the deadly knife of a Sith Lord. So you may not notice her until you find yourself in company with a monster–and it starts choking, as though being strangled from afar.]
Do not move. I can handle this.
[Of course, you are free to listen to her, or not, as you desire.]
Wildcard
[Ayy! Want something else? PM me / hit me up @
shadow
She wanted to believe she was a better person now, had died a better person, but it was a thin line to walk and she was constantly in peril of teetering over it. So she knows how the doppelgangers work. She also knows they can't be conventionally killed. And she has some major frustration to burn off, which is why she has Shaw stationed on a rooftop with the .338 sniper rifle and she's stalking the streets with a pistol in each hand, practically radiating a willingness to do violence.
Maybe she has the capacity to do horrible things, but sometimes you need to do horrible things to do good, too.
And she's not about to leave Visas to face this alone. She likes her, in that swift unreasonable way Root decides she likes people. With her implant hooked up to the dark web and Shaw equipped with her own communicator, Root eyes the burgeoning fight from a distance away and says aloud to Shaw: ]
Standby for my signal -- friend of mine with a double. She's no walk in the park.
[ Root trusts that's all the warning Shaw needs about the seriousness of the situation. She marches up toward Visas and her lookalike, pistols first, both of them trained on the creepier-looking one. She's not sure what she can do against someone with a lightsaber who can choke someone out from a distance, but she's not coward enough to back away and she doesn't actually mind if she gets killed here.
Shaw might mind, but, well. Root isn't going to cater to her trauma. ]
Visas, [ she announces herself brightly, ] what did I say about leaving me out of the fun?
no subject
But the Shaw on the rooftop is definitely the genuine article, and holding a sniper rifle is refreshingly straight-forward. This, at least, she can do.]
Copy that.
[She murmurs, and then falls silent.]
no subject
I do not know what her intentions are. She will be very dangerous.
[The shadow Visas turns her head to look at Root and takes a step closer, lowering her lightsaber. Then she kneels, seemingly ignoring Visas.]
You... have come.
My life for yours.
no subject
She holds out her right-handed Glock and aims it steadily point-blank at the head of the kneeling figure. ]
Plenty dangerous, [ Root agrees, tone intrigued and vaguely approving. She's still cautious enough to hold the gun to her, but she also knows they're going to get out of this a lot faster through talking than fighting. ] Why don't you explain what your intentions are? I need a few more words than that.
no subject
I will follow you... serve you. I will protect you from anything that tries to harm you, to take you from me.
no subject
I don't serve myself, [ she informs her with utmost confidence, ] I serve something greater. You still interested?
[ Root cocks the gun in obvious threat for if the answer's no, perfectly ready to pull the trigger. ]
cw: suicide
You are something greater. If you will not let me serve you... then there is only one thing I can do.
[Visas realizes what that means as soon as the shadow says it. She moves--not fast enough, because she doesn't even know if it's the right response to try and prevent it, but whether she wants to stop it or no, she's too late.
The shadow turns the lightsaber on itself, plunging the blade through its own chest. It crumples to the ground--and then everything, its body, the lightsaber, fade away.]
It is gone. [Visas' relief is palpable.] I am... sorry you had to see that.
no subject
[ Root doesn't quite roll her eyes but she doesn't appear all that impressed as she clicks the safety back on and then tucks her gun away. Maybe someone else would be affected by being told they're something greater, that this hot dangerous alien woman wants to serve them; but Root's never wanted a follower, and she's never wanted to be great.
She also couldn't care less about seeing a simulated shadow copy of someone crumple up and die, though it was interesting in what it says about Visas. ]
She's just going to come back, you know, [ Root points out, turning to face Visas. ] The disappearing trick is neat, but death doesn't really stick.
no subject
[Such a short response is not usual for Visas. But she's taken so off-guard by Root's statement that all she can do is say it, automatically, aghast.
She does not want to see this again.]
You have seen this before? Did you have a double of yourself, doing the same?
no subject
[ Root has a cheerful yet incredulous tone as she thinks back on some of the things she'd tried. She's not immune to how bizarre and disorienting it was to shotgun blast the legs off of someone that didn't just look like her, but could've been her.
Having accepted her double into truly going away, Root isn't about to deny to herself that she was one single wrong turn away from being a Samaritan goon.
Realizing that's the real solution, she prods, ] What do you think that was about? Why would she want to serve me?
no subject
But Root's question is more important to answer than that little bit of curiosity. Visas has only known Root for a few standard months. She knows a little bit about the woman's history, mostly what Root has revealed herself after Visas tried to kill her. She's relieved to have been forgiven for that, but that isn't the same as her feelings towards the Exile.]
I do not know. [...] She repeats something I have said, but it was not to just anyone... it was to the person I felt it for.
no subject
She wouldn't expect something so intense from Visas either. Sure, she likes her, respects her capabilities greatly, but people don't usually go around proclaiming devotion to someone that fast. Apart from Root with the Machine, that is. So there's obviously something else going on. ]
And who's that? Come on, I'm not going to leave you to handle this alone, which I think means I should get to know what it's about.
[ Shameless manipulation? Absolutely. ]
influence: success
She knows that Root has killed. Has a history, in fact, of evil.
Maybe she will understand. And if a copy of Visas is going to crawl back out of the aether to trouble her again, she might need to know anyway.]
...An exile. From an order of knights sworn to protect the galaxy. She went to war to save others, and she was broken, and cast out, and recently she returned. I heard the echoes of her pain across the stars.
She chose to spare me. And I chose to serve her.
I had a good feeling about that dialogue option
One day I want to hear that whole story, [ she informs her with honest intent, ] but I get the gist. You're feeling lost without her, right?
[ She can't make eye contact with Visas, but Root is too practiced at body language to give up the attempt; she stares at her hood where her eyes would be with all-too-knowing fervor. ]
She turned your whole understanding of existence upside down and now she's not here. It can feel like anything, anyone, would be better than going back to who you were before.
no subject
...yes. Yes, I feel lost.
[She has drowned in this feeling for months now. Alone, holed up in her basement, moving from rote task to task to maintain her survival... she has felt it deep within her. So why does it feel so different to speak the words aloud?]
You speak as someone who knows.
no subject
You're not the only one to find something better and dedicate yourself to it.
[ Root sounds utterly comfortable admitting this, no trace of shame or reservation. If anything, she's proud. ]
I'm without her voice here, too. [ She can make decisions on her own, obviously -- she's been making hard choices on her own since she was a teenager -- but it's not the same. Sympathetically, ] You meant to stay with her forever, right? Just like I did. It hurts to be without her.
[ And she had, effectively, been with her forever in the end. Knowing the Machine took her voice after Root died to save Harold, an action effectively in her service as well, brings her immeasurable comfort. But it's still not the same as having her. ]
no subject
[So ephemeral. So fragile. When Nihilus opened her vision to it, to witnessing how much life and death happened in a single instant throughout the infinite stars. The meaninglessness of it all...
...until she heard the Exile, the pain within her echoing across the distances. When she saw her soul, cracked and scarred. A person who could understand better than anyone the futility of life and living. And yet she refused to accept the lesson. With her broken footsteps and steely eyes, she strode across the Galaxy, forcing back emptiness and despair.]
But that does not mean that life is futile. I had believed that as surely as fact. She did not. Would not, though she had every reason to. I would have followed her for the rest of our lives. I cannot forget the lesson she taught me, but... I am at a loss on what to do with it, now.
[It hurts so much.]
no subject
The universe is infinite and chaotic and cold, right? [ she asks in a tone of agreement, voice turning quieter as she quotes herself, a conversation she'd had with Harold that she still thinks about regularly. ] I believed that, too. Until I met her.
[ She gets it -- and she gets how it feels to suddenly be without her direction, but from long before she'd arrived here. Root has had to live as the Machine's hand in the world without her voice or direct guidance so many times by now. It's not that it got easier, but she got more confident in doing it as she went along. And she'd gone directly against the Machine's words several times to boot, when it was wise and when it was unwise, things she regretted and things she absolutely doesn't. She's not a puppet; she's a partner.
Challenging, ] You can still follow her even if she's not here. Or do you not know what she'd want you to do?
[ Root can't know what the Machine would want from her with her usual specificity and direction, her blind faith in following her carrying her through; but she can know in principle what she'd want from her, and that has to be enough. ]
no subject
Visas lacks those things. In the company of the Exile it was easy to follow her lead, almost instinctual. But she cannot work the Exile's will without her here.
But then, would the Exile want that? She had always been uncomfortable with Visas' desire to serve.]
...I knew her well enough that I can try. And I have been trying. But I know I am not as good at such things as she was.
no subject
[ Root speaks with aching, simple honesty. She's comfortable acting independently by now, but she never likes it. She smiles just faintly at Visas in empathy. ]
But if we can only follow them when they're right next to us, have we really changed?
They trust us, believe in us. Trying is enough, Visas. You don't need anyone else.
[ She'd welcome her into the Machine's following, make it a cult of two, if she wanted. But Root doesn't think that's what she needs, not with her own understanding of how these doubles work. And maybe she's assuming too much about the Exile here, but so far it's only served her well with Visas, so she keeps going. ]
no subject
And to hear Root admit her own longing for her lodestar... helps. It helps to know that Visas isn't the only one lost and lonely.]
...I thought I had changed, by devoting myself to her. She is the opposite in every way to my old Master.