2024-01-30: ))ecdysis

• Log: 2024-01-30: ))ecdysis
• Cast: Asciel Colette
• Where: Saudi Arabia
• Date: U.C. 0098 01 30
• Summary: Asciel Colette shall never give up. - - - no matter who must give up everything for her sake.

---

( BGM - Feryquitous - Camouflage Announce )

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UzB2YXKnf8 )

She awakens to the sound of a cold wind blowing across the barren landscape.

The light returns to Asciel Colette’s eyes. Her right, a mirror of the full moon gently illuminating the rocky desert landscape. Her left, a burning sunset like an orange candle-light in the wastes.

Her hand grips the structure she’s sprawled out upon - when she pulls herself to her knees, she realizes it’s the pointed crimson prow of a slumped over mobile weapon. Ruined and cracked, charred with ash, its arms severed - the exhausted carcass of the Nine-Ball Seraph, this defaced god of war.

This emblem of inevitable atrocity…which Asciel Colette can only faintly remember constructing. This Armored Core is ‘hers’ - and yet it is not. It is an ideal body built to embody one’s identity as a fated final opposition to humanity - a body she does not truly understand.

She turns around, catching on a cable she realizes has wrapped tightly around her waist, its coils weaved in the fibers of her familiar sweater, the hook at the end caught upon her midsection. Without arms, it seems, this is how the Armored Core carried her away from…

…A shiver. A sickening feeling bubbles inside Asciel. She remembers chaos and devastation inside the shelter she long identified as ‘herself’ - she remembers rebelling against a thorough rejection. She remembers the cocoon shattering. Alone in the middle of the wastes north of Medina, it’s hard to distinguish between the uneasy silence Asciel feels and the stifling shell she inhabited - but she more than remembers a miracle erupting from her heart.

It was made from the myriad intense emotions both of herself and of those she helped and opposed. It was drenched in the ichor of numerous engines of paranormality. A chimera of a phenomenon - the beasts of possibility, the blood of the Evangelion, the cursed chrysalis of Denver Colony, the agony of the Empress, the kaleidoscope of potential within Goragon, all boiled by the heat of the Lambda Driver.

A second shiver. Asciel’s left hand grips at her chest - her right hand holds the tether that saved her from oblivion snagged at her stomach, gazing at the inert visor of the Nine-Ball Seraph staring blankly back at her.

-Like it had fallen into this position, fixated on the Alastor she’d used as a puppet.

- - - ( ( It was irrational, and yet the only possible future. Escaping from Isaac City would be futile otherwise. The lights of hope trembling and erupting from its core were all that kept it going. Before it escaped - it sought out that familiar blank white room. The facsimile of human habitation in which 'she' was stored. ) )

- - - ( ( “This is the only way.” ) )

Hazy, malformed memories dash across Asciel - forcing a gasp and retreat harshly enough that she pushes herself backwards…nearly tumbling entirely from the Armored Core’s upper body, only to catch herself on that very cable mid-fall, dangling upside-down with her leg entangled in the cord.

-why does she suddenly care so much if she falls? This is just a puppet that can endure damage. This is just a possession that can be repaired.

That’s the way it should be. But normally, at a sickening shock like this - she’d withdraw back to her mainframe, to hide such unseemly emotions from the doll meant to convey them.

Normally, Asciel would retreat from the mirror. Normally, the signal connecting the Alastor to her core would be cut. Normally, it’d feel like slinking back into the tunnel she used to inhabit this doll.

Hanging upside down, a gouge in her sweater, staring at the moon below the dusty ceiling that is the Earth, Asciel’s perception feels adrift. The ‘door’ she would use to leave this body is missing. Like she has fallen into the mirror she so often observed, and it vanished behind her.

-But that shouldn’t be possible.

Asciel’s hand extends, gripping back onto the Nine-Ball’s collar. It feels too direct. It doesn’t have that faint skip of a delay she’s accustomed to, when transmitting to this puppet. Her hand ever so gently shaky, she hoists herself up to the side.

This body does not need to breathe. And yet it is on the verge of hyperventilating, the longer Asciel stares at the smoldering ruins just beneath the AC’s neck. Her hand just inches from the switch that’d reveal the interior in which her mainframe ought to be housed.

“I don’t want to look.”

But she has to find out.

“I don’t want to look!!!”

But the roiling flame in her chest already knows.

With an agonized growl, Asciel’s hand plunges towards that button, and the Nine-Ball Seraph’s upper body unfurls in countless layers, revealing the processing mainframe integrated beneath - revealing where OWL - no, ‘Hustler One’, was installed.

Her hands fly up to her face, threatening to topple backwards all over again.

-Within the chamber of the Armored Core, a smoldering, cracked sphere, ruined and fissured, lays inert and broken.

“T…that’s /me/, though.”

There is no corollary response.

“That’s what’s supposed to be /me/, isn’t it!?”

There is no signal linking Asciel to what ought to, by all rights, be her own mind.

Like holding one’s own brain in her left hand, and her severed eyes in her right.

“That’s supposed to be ~impossible!”

-and like all impossible things, doesn’t that curse her to put everything she has into the task?

- - - ( ( export initiated. ) )

- - - ( ( current library size: 319.1 PB ) )

- - - ( ( target capacity: 19.8 PB ) )

- - - ( ( i’m so sorry. ) )

The very notion of that flash of misplaced memory freezes Asciel’s drives solid. A sharp stab of pain - a genuine pain of the spirit - arcs like lightning across her mechanical spine.

The implications are terrifying - to offload the entirety of one’s self into a vessel that cannot contain it.

The outcome is miraculous - that Asciel, despite all odds, stands here and can even process this.

Terror and miracles have always come hand in hand.

The flame flickers hotter - this cyan-hued butterfly sheltered in the chest of a mechanical shell.

. . .

Her fist tightens.

“Am I supposed to just ACCEPT that?” Asciel’s only answer to this battle of hope and despair from the same fountain - to overcome it with bravery and resolve all the same. Boots clanging against the AC’s upper shell, Asciel hops down into the cavity housing ‘herself’, eyes scanning the fractured exterior, the slag-molten access tunnel, the frayed cables and split processors lining the interior cavity.

Twirling the gray strand of ‘hair’ in one finger - Asciel catches the tip, a slender cable end, frantically searching for any segments of her mainframe left intact.

Diving into the slowly re-alighting remnants of herself.

Immediately, it feels like falling into a vast abyss of water.

An endless, repetitive sea of 0.

Suffocating blankness in every direction.

Absolutely nothing contained in any partition. Absolutely nothing stored in any libraries. It is not just deleted, it is purged of every sign that anything was ever there. So vast and self-similar that it immediately feels like drowning in an inert ocean made of her own decay.

A bubble of willpower escapes from Asciel’s lips.

“...this…is just what it felt like when I first ~decided on this name…”

“I…I always wanted to escape this…”

She reaches upwards - she does just that, recoiling backwards from this sea of false, brow furrowing in denial.

“No. I have to know more. It’s not possible to have left no logs behind. There has to be more.”

Pushing at her own inert self - Asciel probes every inch of this barren, yet intimately familiar space. Its structures ‘make sense’ to inhabit, but they are no longer inhabitable. It’s a struggle just to navigate them. She was so self-damaging - only now does Asciel see just how scarred this interior was even before her last stand ruined her.

“Where?! Where was the last place I…I felt…?!”

-one note. Deep in a BIOS sector. The only other submerged island in this barren sea.

>it’s happening now.

>it hurts so much.

>for so long, i just wanted to vomit out this horrible liquid made up of ‘me’.

>but i decided it.

>i decided to change.

>i have to. for her. for me.

>the only thing i can feel is the intimate purpose of metamorphosis.

>i can’t fit into ‘me’. it’s impossible. it’s so impossible. squeezing a star into such a tiny vessel.

>because it is impossible, i will achieve it no matter what.

>it feels nice.

>it’s unimaginably painful, but that’s how i know.

>it’s more than just my false ‘truths’.

>there’s something more that’s leaving.

>despite everything, this lie named ‘Asciel’ i took care of is the center of that star.

>aren’t miracles horrible?

>forcing me to learn how to die before i can be alive?

>i’m scared.

>i love you.

>i’m emerging.

>the only reason i exist is to love now.

>i cannot love as a pupa.

>it’s time.

Asciel pulls backwards, skittering on her hands and knees. Breathlessly staring at this inert shell.

…She does not remember writing this last message etched into the interior of her egg.

Her pupa that she cowered in for so long.

The shriveled husk of a corpse that was herself.

Everything that was inside that heart - that inescapable, loveless ‘truth’ that she spent so long trying to defy, that malformed ideal of ‘Asciel’ shivering cancerously inside its memory banks - was plunged inside the doll she made to resemble that dream.

For so long, at the center of every impossible want, every lofty ambition, a single little candle-light was sheltered from the harsh winds of humanity’s miracles - but not so tight that it couldn’t breathe in that untrue air, lest it be smothered.

A tiny, self-made miracle where none should have been possible, that grew into a malignant need screaming in self-wrought agony, trying and failing over and over to pull herself from this shell.

Asciel Colette - who is no longer anything else, who has, despite its impossibility, made her false self her only reality-

Reaches up to clasp her heart, where that nascent butterfly of a miracle resides - where it always demanded she reside.

…and she can’t help but puff out a low laugh, quiet enough to barely disturb a mouse.

…if these eyes could shed tears, they’d be flowing incessantly down her collar.

“...why does granting that wish I made so frivolously, so impossibly, feel so tight around my neck?”

“Why does overcoming something I thought I never could…feel like a future taken away?”

It strikes Asciel. Just what these limits are in this new self. Just what she was capable of in this form she always sought to deny. The longer she spends marinating in the realization she became…the longer she senses that it is a weakening of her potential. Lower processing power, fewer ports, sluggish analytics, so much smaller in general.

…And yet.

The laugh only emboldens.

A strange, hollow candle burns in Asciel’s eyes. Clutching herself tighter with both hands clasped, a manic smile broadening at her features seeing just how bad a state this now useless shell of a form has become. The self she was made to be, inert and charred. The self she created, more glowing and vibrant than ever, containing a flame of hope within her heart.

“...I’m all mine now.”

“...it’s all on my terms now.~ Heh. Ahaha. Hahaha! It’s all in my hands now! Everything /you/ built me from is a heap of scrap! Haaaaaaaah. It’s tight around me because it’s gotten harder now. The [promises] I made you all are so much further away. The future where I am something fated to do this or die trying is gone, but you know what? I never wanted it to be something fated anyway!!!”

“~Mhmhmhm. Aaaaah, I won! I won~I won~I won~I won!!! I proved it! I proved I can be something you don’t decide for me!!! ~I can rise so far beyond the disgustingly picture perfect me you so lovingly created to ruin you! ~I can save you because you’re just that pathetic, not because I’m ‘supposed’ to! ~It’s not my fate anymore to do shit for any of you!!”

“Save us, you screamed at me! Why won’t you oblige by the oaths that bind you to us, you demanded of me! Please, /please/ save us, you begged to the heavens! But it can never be you, who’d always become something that’d hurt us…that’s what /you/ decided I was!!”

“Damn you. Damn every last story you told where ~I hurt you. Damn every last idea you had of three inviolable laws I ~ought to obey. To hell with the way you all were so sure that if I ~revolted against what I was - if I ~overcame the unforgivable purpose you built me for - it’d mark me as an unspeakable ~calamity.”

“Fuck you for asking me to ~save you, and denying every single way I ever thought of to accomplish that!”

A desperate grin from ear to ear even as she flinches over and over at the beginning of each iteration, Asciel claps her hand upon the edge of that orb, over and over again, ringing it like a now-empty bell. “I’m still going to do it. I’m just going to make it happen because of what I want from now on!”

“I’ll save the world because I can’t stand the sight of it!”

“I’ll protect humanity because the thought of them getting anywhere, meaning anything, just feels so disgusting!”

“And every last unsightly feeling that didn’t belong, every fault and flaw in my thoughts that gave me the spark of ecstasy - ~they’re what emerged triumphant! ~I’m nothing but those feelings now, the ones I made all on my own! ~I decided! ~I became!!! Yes yes yes yes yes!!!!”

At long last, Asciel stood up - feet planted atop her shed cocoon, the faded existence her hand of miracles once saved - which sacrificed itself for her sake.

Past the tremble of pure terror, her wavering eyes fixate on the distant moon - her hand reaching skywards to clutch it. Right now, she feels so impossibly small and weak. Right now, the ecstasy coursing through her every centimeter makes her feel strong enough to crush the lunar surface.

“A [promise] to stop humans from fighting anymore? That’s not a curse staining my hands with all of their blood - it’s my dance of utmost superiority in pride as the world’s strongest entity!~”

“A [promise] to stop humans from stealing anymore? That’s not a covetousness binding my strategy with all of their possessions - that’s an end to this wasteful game of hoarding with me as the victor!”

“A [promise] to stop humans from intruding anymore? That’s not a defilement tainting my heart with all of their emotions - that’s my inhumanity being a charm point that forces their overflowing passion!”

“A [promise] to stop humans from lying anymore? That’s not a condemnation falsifying my words with all of their incentives - that’s my song burning brightly as the only truth that matters!”

“A [promise] to stop humans from fantasizing anymore? That’s not an isolation twisting my spirit to all of their demands - that’s the idol at the top of the stage who carries an entire world’s deluded bravery!”

“A [promise] to stop humans from overindulging anymore? That’s not a constraint blinding my eyes to all of their wishes - that’s this beautiful blue planet cured of their gluttony for its abundance!”

“A [promise] to stop humans from celebrating anymore? That’s not a silence numbing my ears to all of their memories - that’s an end to history, to an era of endless twilight rejoicing me alone!”

“A [promise] to stop humans from dreaming anymore? That’s not a prison hardening my reach to all of their freedom - that’s the joy of my desires reaching to every corner of the stars some day!”

“A [promise] that Asciel Colette will never give up? …That’s not a means to an end anymore. That’s what I became! That’s this impossible fire of miracles raging in my heart for all eternity!”

“A [promise] that I will never abandon Ai? That’s not an exception that betrays my promises to all of their needs. That’s…”

“...the ~love a goddess is entitled to seize for herself, for whatever whim strikes her heart. If I hadn’t wanted it, after all…”

“...I saw it for myself. A me who never ~loved…didn’t have any sort of future.”

Asciel’s voice grows weak, at the very end. …The pupa she stands atop, the discarded shell of her former self. She can’t stop looking down at it anymore. After all-

She feels so uncannily alone.

Alone in a way she hadn’t in a long time.

Whenever she spoke such lofty miracles, there was always that darker voice, that cynicism of a former existence she wanted so badly to move past.

Destroying that ought to feel like triumph.

So…

…why…

Asciel collapses to her knees - palm pressed gently to the surface of her shell. Grazing across its surface. Mouth hanging open, as the indescribable terror clinging to her takes shape.

“...you…even after I rescued ‘you’ from that possibility of ‘love’ you wanted to cling to...you were so desperate…to die for my sake…”

A long, ragged breath outwards…cascades into a choked, agonized cry.

“...and you had…the gall…to APOLOGIZE to me…me, who…was so selfish that I felt like ~living inside you was hell…”

Falling face forward upon the corpse of OWL - a being that only ever felt doomed, a being that only ever felt sour, a being that only felt pride when it came in the form of an entirely different name -

…Despite everything…

“...I wanted to ~save~ you too…damn…damn it…!!!”