R1 DEADLAND

[lockdownmods]

[it’s strange, for the people who were already dead, the shift in scenery is sudden and complete. For those who have just arrived? It’s like you’re back where you left?

How strange.

But if you ever need her, you can always reach out to the guardian of this place.]

LOCATIONS
Note: locations lag a week behind the living counterparts

Comments

[machrophage]

The hell are you apologizing for?

[The things Connor had said to Vivienne drift to the surface, at that thought about having your eyes opened - and with it, the impression of Lordgenome, skin tanned and scarred by countless battles, their lord, their king -

And Nia. Nia, the last princess, the doll who had learned to stand on her own, both a girl of fifteen and a young woman, unnaturally white-blue hair blown by a bullet, streaming behind her down a wedding aisle. Nia Teppelin, the Anti-Spiral's messenger, but first a girl who asked -

Father, why do I exist?

Lordgenome's hobby was creating children, but not ever raising them. Once they were old enough to think for themselves, they were discarded. Every beastman knows this, took it as proof that their lord cared nothing for humans even though he himself was one.

And that knits into that undying loyalty, and Connor's accusations that Vivienne had just created AI to love her, and it tangles.]

You're alive. That's the place you have to start.

[preconstruction]

[ there's relief knowing that viral understood that part, too. the concerns he had about vivienne, about her ai. seeing it play out from virals past just drives it home that much more. it was like he told vivienne -- he was lucky that kamski had never programmed the androids the love him.

but more than any of that, it's viral's words that are so important. ironic, when he'd pulled away to spare him having to experience his death, but important all the same. because for all he might have been dead back home -- ]

I am alive. We both are.

[machrophage]

[More and more ironic, given that Viral was supposed to watch and witness for all of history. Never to die, always to survive and tell history from the perspective of one who saw it happen.

And now here he is - ]

As long as that's true, we can move forward.

[ - Lordgenome even then, even in the process of making him something else, couldn't see anything but static. But when you're capable of change, your perspective changes moment by moment, experience by experience, and what you know and think about that history changes.]

[preconstruction]

Move forward and drill through the roof.

[ he hasn't forgotten. the most important part of all of this. ]

[machrophage]

[And across the connection that's still there, he'll get some of the context - Kamina, coming out of the prison to see the moon hanging so close in the sky and Kittan's hand snapping up to point at it, my drill is the drill that creates the heavens - but only in half-formed flashes.]

Onwards and upwards, but never backwards.

[preconstruction]

Thank you, Viral. For everything.

[ it's so sincere. this means so much to him.