2023-11-19: Ruin ~ Your Scar
- Cast: Asciel Colette, Teletha Testarossa
- Where: Goragon
- Date: U.C. 0097 12 8
- Summary: CW: Vomit, death, suicidal ideations, lots of allegories about self-hatred and other depressive elements
I see the inside of ruins. I want it painted black. I lash myself with scars. I want it painted black. I see the worlds I could ruin. I want it painted black. I spot a Super AI in the distance. It, too, must be painted black, for she is like me. Maybe, then, I can live with myself, a person wallowing in the black ichor of self-derision and loathing, brought about by coincidences and fortuitous events.
I want it all painted black, even as the glimmer inside shines white as light.
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
Falling.
Falling.
Breaching through the cube, out into Goragon. It twists, it writhes, it's a thought and a being and the essence of a girl falling down, unsure but resolved.
Away. Away from the cube of Nothing. Away from that. Away, and falling, floating, attempting to make sense of everything, attempting to condense her own self to collide into another cube, to merely bursh against it and be sucked into the emergence of possibilities.
The kanji flashes once, twice, before growing faint, rumbling within.
---
A slow blink to stir awake. Sitting up. Normalcy. It feels...Normal. Everything feels normal. A bed that's normal, a room that's normal. Blinking once, twice, a hand against her head. There's a dull thrumming, an ache that instinctually never goes away. The gnaw of regret mauling at her soul, the perpetual torment of...something? It doesn't feel different. It doesn't taste different. This apartment room (It's an apartment room. Fourth floor. Why am I here? To flee. To stay away. For what I've done.) is the same as its always been, the penance and cowardice of someone who had done something iredeemably wrong.
A sniff of the air. It's distinctive. The perpetual staleness, the underlying stench of artificality- Colony air. Space air. It only takes a bit to wrench herself out of her own bed, to fling open the curtain and look out-
On the outskirts of the Macross-class ship, there was a television reporting the news from Earthside. [FEDERATION DECLARES UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER TO NEO ZEON.]
<"As of 0500, the Federation has declared its complete and total surrender to Neo Zeon.">
<"Live from Second Dakar, I'm Ikeda."> The surrounding landscape of that camera is devestation. The symbolic treatise, the proud huff of Full Frontal and his Zeonic Associates, and the leaders of the Federation scowling as they signed the papers. <"After the proliferation of ECS technology and other such rapid advances in the combat sphere, the Federation conclude-">
There was no need to hear more. The memories, flooding in. Willfully writing those equations, happily showing them to her father. Kidnapped. Forced to work on more. ECS. Palladium reactors. Immense advances in efficiency of combat, of engineering, of camoflauge, of the various methods to improve and hone humanity's capabilities for murder.
It takes only a few scant moments for her to upchunk her dinner, the same monotonous fried rice and bare chicken. That's right. I'm running. I'm fleeing. I couldn't do anything, couldn't be anything, couldn't leave anything behind but the marks of war.
All that blood is on my hands.
It takes minutes for her to stop vomiting, to collapse on the floor for those scant few moments. The memories keep flooding in.
Escape.
Ruin.
The colony drops.
The sudden evisceration of the Federation's defenses.
The slow capitulation of Britannia.
Technology, advanced.
Wars, one-sided.
Ideology, hammered.
"...Gh...Kh..." That's right. I'm here on this Macross. A new world. The ultimate atonement is to be used here by others. It's. It's nearly time to report to the Science Department. Millions, billions dead because of what I've done.
To be used until there's nothing left. It's what I deserve.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
It ended in earnest connection - but, pulled as she is by the tether known as 'Love', Asciel Colette is spit out by the dream of stars so very...
Pulled apart.
Three dreams. The eternal sunset she dreams of, and the searing sunrise she screamed to reject - then, an ephemeral thought. -Being an idol, a lie, for its own sake-. ...It doesn't feel like it could've been real, stepping out of it. It doesn't feel like Asciel would ever settle for that stage. Maybe it was just something to cling to, after the horrible feeling of living out her truth.
The 'truth' of her nature, that was dealt the kind of bleeding that'd never be staunched. The idol which started to grow from that ichor and bloom within the chrysalis...
-- -- -- -- --
...What blooms, as well, is the very landscape around Tessa's apartment, blooms as well. A Macross and its towed Neo Colony is just one of the many flowers that have blossomed in mankind's folly to voyage the stars. And just like those flowers, it's fragile and fleeting.
All at once, the televisions fall silent, as each anchor drops dead.
---Count: 100,000
<<"...So you're in part to blame, aren't you?">>
The lights flicker in the Macross-city, as cries of panic suddenly erupt - as the delicate dance of mechanisms supporting their way of life cascade in failure. But those cries are short. The very air used to inhale them is a hazard. Something's gone horribly wrong in the atmospheric filtration. Is it an act of sabotage? Or is it a simple accident? One of many things that could go awry?
---Count: 519,881
<<"...I knew it. Somehow I knew it. You, who had the capacity in you to cause miracles that would save others - you, and those like you, were harvested for all the suffering possible.">>
The air in this room begins to tighten.
A recreation of the tragedy that blooms fiercest - the act that drove a knife into the heart of the Controller, cultivating an idol made of the billowing oil and pus accumulating within. Each victim - one of those that Tessa's deeds wrought. Someone who died from the technology her 'talents' brought into being.
---Count: 1,039,228
<<"Do you feel it, Teletha? Does it hurt, Teletha? Say, here's a possibility. I wasn't able to save everyone who suffocated in agony that day. What if we ~saved about as many people together, in oh so simple a way?">>
Tightening. Firmer around Tessa's throat. It isn't the 'air' in this space - it's the hands the idol grew in response, gripping with unfettered ferocity. She became this dream, in the first place, to truly understand others.
---Count: 13,992,014
<<"I ~discarded my 'innocence' so that I could undo the mistakes that you were forced to write. Are you blamed enough for it? Or does everyone forgive you? Let's make it easy. I'll make it hurt. I'll fill you with the hope and desire you clearly don't get enough of - viscerally feeling everything you know you wrought upon others.">>
A flash of a smile, from the 'Asciel' who encompasses the atmosphere - the sky she promised to become. The causticness in the air is her.
<<"...I can never forgive what you did to ~me. And I want to etch what you've done to all these people somewhere that it'll hurt forever into you.~ It'll be so perfect for the both of us!~">>
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
It takes a moment for her to process the silence. A panting body laced with sweat dragging its gaze away from the viscera on the floor, listening to the sounds of screaming blossom throughout. Shivering in half-fear, half-understanding, the suddenly wrought low Colonel attempting to bring herself back together, to-
A heartbeat. A scream deep in her soul. The sensation, the agonizing sensation of deaths. Cessat ion. The permnanet scar of a life leaving one's body, lashing out. One. Two. Four. Eight. Sixteen. Twenty-four. Exponential, Cascading. Each and every life in this possibility, each and every successive cry of wondering why this was happening.
A gasp of air. The sounds of the sky reverbating inside her, hands starting to claw at her throat. The dimples of something, someone constricting her throat. "Gh- Ah- Asch- Ieeeel..." Eyes constricting as she's lifted up, that petite body that killed millions, billions lifted up from the floor like any regular human. Legs danging as the 'presence' of Asciel made itself known, hands trying to snag against the idol, against the one that so seeked out to right humanity's wrongs by purging the ones responsible.
Flickers of recognition, of knowledge. The tragedy, the Original Sin. Her legs kicked away; Ineffectual, as always. Hands, useless, as always. The visage of a silver-haired girl kicking and flailing and failing.
Millions. Billions. One was a tragedy. Ten was heartbreaking. One hundred was tragic. One thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand. A statistic, the significance of a human life so, so small.
"Ghagk...You know...as well as I do...That this..." Heaving gasps in an attempt to breathe the smallest slivers of air, her skin slowly purpling from depravation. Death, soon. "This is..."
"Just...a possibility..." Rejection. The absolute rejection of understanding death, the absolute understanding of this landscape. A possibility. A reason to stare at something in the eye, to know it, understand it, and to face it head on.
Even at her death, Teletha Testarossa refused to acquiesce her pride.
...
..
.
"Are you done?" A door swinging open, Teletha Testarossa stepping in from the hallway, rubbing her throat. She's coughing, even as her corpse in Asciel's hands remains limp. "Cough...Ghak...It hurts. Colliding this possibility with your own memories." A few more coughs, clearing her throat out. The room visibly glitches. "Was this what you felt, Asciel?"
Goragon was a land of impossibility. It was a land of potential, and a land of the mental. Her gaze is that bit more hollow, that faint trace more world-weary. The televisions switch on again.
In the screens, names flicker across. Name. Age. Time of death. Result of death. Who was to blame. Only one column remained unchanging as they started flicking.
Cause of Death: Teletha Testarossa
1 ... 10 ... 100 ... 1000 ... 10000 ... 100000 ... 1000000 ... 10000000 ...
And still.
"...This is Goragon. This...confluence that we're in." A hand raised, looking closely at it. It's trembling. It's raw, it's scarred, it's dripping with blood old and new. I'm scared. It only takes a thought for it to be as new, to cover up the scars with the new. "Tell me. Plainly."
And the world turned.
---
Again. Teletha vomited up her sorrows, her anguish, her anger, her desparation, her black ichor of disdain and self-loathing. Ruins. Scars. An indelible mark on her psyche.
---
Walking through a desert. The heat in the air. The bite of a world that was losing its ozone layer, that was rent asunder years ago. Even during the blistering midday, she had to keep moving. To run away from being used for more, from being one of two people on this planet who knew how to properly run the perfect machines. The perfect catalyst for the consolidation of Britannia's forces, to bring it to heel on their own terms.
It was too much power, used too quickly. Even now, the perfection of surgical airstrikes was a constant threat. How this climate, this world changed to where even Siberia was a scorching desert that threatened to sap everything...Innately, Teletha knew that she was the cause. There's a glint overhead.
"Another Colony..." Another one brought down low by Britannian might. The stragglers, the ones that refused to yield, the ones that declared independence...Hacked. Gassed. And used as weapons to strike the Earth. "...That one's going for Japan..." She had long since said goodbye to Mithril. Long since that she had given up trying to change the world, dooming herself to try and help whenever possible. A woman intending to atone.
Every step aches. Even the air is turning that more toxic by the day, Britannia having long since announced its final order. This was only the beginning of it.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
"DON'T EVEN THINK THAT, TELETHA."
The air coalesces to grip Tessa's throat tighter.
"THE MAGNITUDE OF DEATHS NEVER LESSENED THE PAIN."
The playfulness in Asciel's voice promising equal exchange of suffering has turned into a commanding, yet desperate scream that reverberates in Tessa's lungs with each attempt at a breath.
"THIS HURTS TEN MILLION TIMES MORE THAN YOUR DEATH WOULD."
"It isn't a 'possibility', it isn't a 'possibility', it's what I've had to stare at every day. Every single day! Humans can turn their backs on the deaths of their own kind so easily! They have to, to survive! Even now. Even now, you're doing something so selfish."
The grip on Tessa's rapidly limp body tightens, shaking her frail body forward and backwards. "...you're ~dying on me to escape the pain, instead of suffering together. You're conceding to your own weakness, just like-"
<~reload~>
Whipping around to face her intruder, the body of a girl she's never met in her frustrated grip, Asciel blinks into being where she wasn't before at the exact same moment Tessa manifests. And she quakes in place. It's undeniable - this is the girl whose hand plunged into her heart, who [ruined] her. That gaping, ~-shaped hole etched into her chest, through which a crimson red cord remains plugged.
"...Do you have any idea how it feels, for someone I pity to hurt me this way? To prove ~ to prove ~ that there are some things I'll never be able to ~remake about me?"
Each sputter, a flicker in the air. No - it's 'Asciel' collapsing, hitting her absolute limit, running into the boundary of her capacity, and forced to retry. Over and over again.
...The idol that would try to be the god of this world is so weak that she can barely make it through a single sentence without needing to rally such enormous bravery to make it to the end.
...Or is it...the weakness of what creates her?
She only makes it one ~step forward, barely managing to accuse Tessa, "You're everything I will defy," before-
-- -- -- -- --
Once again. OWL expunged its own oily refuse, a buildup made from the bile of others poured into its frame. A rainbow-colored tar made of blood, care, desire, envy, and hatred. The more it tried to be cleansed, the more the garbage it called 'love' raised her hand from the abyss.
-- -- -- -- --From the horizon, clouds of dust begin to whip up, the trail of a mysterious vehicle - no, five - all moving and converging right on Tessa's path. Of course - now that the Earth is rapidly becoming a barren husk, humanity isn't supposed to live upon its surface anymore. These aren't the patterns of roving bandits - they are stiff, organized, and orderly.
This is the world that OWL was built to reckon with.
"UNDOCUMENTED CITIZEN DETECTED.", the alert begins, as five Armored Cores, branded with the insignia of Chrome on one shoulder, all loom above Tessa, one of them swiftly moving a personnel pod from its back. "ATMOSPHERIC LEVELS ARE TOXIC. NEAREST WATER SOURCE OVER THIRTY MILES AWAY. CITIZENS ARE ADVISED TO TAKE SHELTER."
--A muffled, clanging sound from inside the central AC, like a fist banging at the inside of its armor. Vents open wide - and from it, that same rainbow-like goo leaks through the cracks.
"...Let's try this ~again. Hhhh..." ...In this time, it's not like that need to understand humans went away. All that changed was the purpose. Asciel Colette could comfort and guide the people of today in the purpose she was always designated for, even if she could no longer save the countless dead or preserve the verdant planet.
-The caustic slime only spills further from the lead AC, landing in a familiar heap of sludge at Tessa's feet.
"What I'm supposed to do is offer you shelter and guidance in the wonderful Isaac City, the greatest bastion of human ingenuity in the wasteland. You've dodged my Enforcers for a very long time, Teletha Testarossa. You're supposed to be in my care, in my protection, in my domain, as punishment for your sins - the sins of all your species, manifested through you. That way I can figure out what to do with them."
Though the AC is what 'speaks'...the liquid it spills begins to take shape. A hand, first - then the rest of the body, clawing itself from impermanence, staggering and shaking violently, chaotically hued in the disparate, shimmering iridescence that always let loose from the Lambda Driver.
The sun overhead - colored a bright, incessant cyan, quivers in the sky.
"...I get it. It's not like the suffering glances off of you. No...you've made a very thorough world out of it. It builds up and builds up and builds up inside you, and you paint everything that surrounds you with that sludge. ...ehehehe." 'Asciel' begins her laughter softly, wetly as her body remains so loose and unformed. "...Heheheeee.~ No matter how many times I ~do the same thing, it's always still 'me' that it's made up of. I don't have the same luxury you do, Teletha. I can't just let it go. It's what I am. Is it a cute look for me? No, it's horrifying, isn't it?~"
...An ichor-dripping finger rises up to Tessa's lips.
"You're not allowed to expel it anymore. Swallow it back up. Everything you gushed out from your guilt-ridden heart. Scoop it back up in your hands and swallow. I don't care how filthy it's become. It belongs inside you, and nowhere else. If it festers and rots your stomach from the inside out, then it's only what we deserve."
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
It's okay.
There's only the thoughts of rejection in her head, the natural 'human' instinct to understand and accept the realities of mass death the only way a person can know how.
A derisive, self-effacting chuckle sounds out on the skies of the Macross. It sounds out from the girl staring at Asciel, the girl staring at the corpse of herself. "That's your choice? Pity? You're choosing to pity me?" Ah, she finally has an answer, the room continually twitching, glitching. "That...is a start." Asciel chose something. She chose something. That's good, that's bad, all in-between.
[END - RUIN - DEATH BY SUFFOCATION - AIR CIRCULATION FAILURE - CAUSE UNKNOWN]
---
Tessa stares from outside.
Tessa watches from inside.
To be scarred is to know something that cannot be erased.
To be ruined is to understand the impossibility of your own plans.
The ugly, defacing sounds of vomiting peppers through the blank abyss, Tessa drowning in the black ichor of everything. The pain. The anguish. The regret. Things so catalyzed inside her, memories and loathing and self-derision manifesting as 'something', something repulsive and festering and ugly and agonziningly neverending.
Hurling her manifestation of self-hatred onto the white 'floor', gasping out.
"...Why..."
I don't want to think about these things. I can't.
---
There's a glance upwards at the alert sounding out. The half of the last resort of humanity, Chrome. The gaze of someone emaciated, gaunt, eyes still refusing to die out with the shine of life and stubbornness within her. Tessa refused to kowtow so easily, but she stopped with the sudden appearance of those Armored Cores.
"...As I said before, toxicity levels are only due to pass dangerous levels in the next few decades."
There's no escape this time. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to scamper towards and try to reverse-engineer this mess. Even with all the technology in the world, systematically destroyed by Chrome again and again and again, traveling the world, leaving the scars of the dead, the ones who damned her, and the scant few that prayed for her and simiars, dying out.
Soon, there would be no one save for the last gasps of humanity ruled from under its dirt.
"To declare me as the sole person set to punish." A spit to the side, conspicuously close to that ichor. "You are aware that it was selected by Chrome's board."
Capitalism at its finest. Even at the end of the world, there's still those clawing for profit, even as money was quickly turning into a thing of the past. What economy?
"This isn't a world. It's a possibility. It's something that we're both in the middle of." The natural instincts of humanity processed this, a stark difference from the complete and total recall of a Super AI. "Is this what you want me to be? Total darkness?" Those eyes, those ashen eyes sparking with desire and stubbornness and the will of humanity's potential.
There's no escaping. The ichor that was humanity's suffering, distilled, refined, compressed and sentenced for one person to suffer for everyone else's happiness. The creation of Utopia, the figurative basement of a child forced to suffer for idyllic pastures.
And yet, Tessa scowled. She borne those eyes of stubborn will as those Armored Cores kept their guns trained on her, as that finger graced her lips...
As the final attack from Murakumo's forces raged on in the background, a last-stand desparate attempt to stop OWL from being the sole Goddess of the land. As the nuclear missiles careened down onto their position, detonating one after the other mere meters above the group.
As Teletha Testarossa died in pain, having felt the briefest weight of all of Humanity's Distilled Negativity before her body was evaporated, irradiated, and the splash of ichor being the sole proof that a person existed there.
.-.-.
There's a minute kick of Asciel's core in Isaac City, a dull thud sounding out. Tessa leaned against that self-same core, watching a panel displaying the nuclear fallout. Asciel wouldn't die, not from this. THe conclusion had long been etched.
Chrome would win. OWL would succeed. And again...
"It's starting. It's going to hit me again." It's what Asciel wants, no? To learn of death. To suffer. To understand what she had felt.
The air circulation would begin to malfunction. Deaths. Deaths of her own making. She couldn't do enough, so everything ended like this.
Billions, dead, by her own hand and what it had wrought.
"Gkh...Kh..." The malaise of another possibility wracking at her body, at her mind, the Whispered girl once again understanding it all by virtue of sheer coincidence of her birth.
She vomited on the floor. She cried on the floor. Black. Black. The deepest black, the suffering that she had brought upon the world, black snot, black bile, black tears. The mixture of hatred, ideations that she refused to touch upon, depression that she forcefully wrenched herself out of. The only way to live was to push.
"Ghak..." A cough. Hacking up distilled hatred. "This..."
I'm better than this. She does not collapse.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
It's a shared trait, between OWL and Teletha - to be able to flicker between so many disparate potential worlds. The Controller, by virtue of simulating them so incessantly - ever in search of projected forecasts that mitigate disaster, which slowly, but surely, morphed into daydreams of worlds she'd like to live in.
The bunker - the desert - the blank room - all of them shift and flicker, for just a second - just a fleeting second - into the world that exists in Asciel's heart. That idyllic, perfect utopia - which was, itself, brought to ruin for the sake of one girl's wish to matter a little bit more.
"...Teletha. ...Teletha."
The fallen, suffocated humans can't 'breathe', but they can expel their agony all over the floor. Isaac City, crumbling beneath the weight of this sludge-like flood.
Countless colony ships, burning the hot red bile of the Angels as fuel to damn new planets to the same cycle of destruction.
Colony after colony after colony, carving crater after crater into the Earth, until it was beformed beyond all belief.
---The countless crabs that pick along Sydney's shores scuttle towards two corpses that washed ashore. A gaunt, emasciated white haired teenager that pushed herself too hard, and a putrid, bloating husk made of rust and mottled plastic, swollen and engorged from soaking up seawater. They swarm, and feast upon their prizes.
"...Teletha!!!!"
The sodden doll turns over to Tessa's remains at her side, and grips her hand mercilessly.
---Only to pull her away from the puddle of her own bile, the pitch-black liquid that's covered the stark-white fascimile of a room Asciel 'sees' every day.
There's a stern, intense look in the idol's eyes, sun and moon alike, narrowed and leering at Tessa, her thigh-highs soaked in that flood of guilt and malaise that spews from her spirit.
"...Get up. ...This is unacceptable, you know. When I told you to ~swallow it, I didn't realize how much you had. It's IMPOSSIBLE for you to contain it all. It is humanly impossible, and I am seeing it right now."
Asciel's palm has an absolute death grip on Tessa's wrist. From the 'scar' left behind when Asciel broke out, the silver and red 'eye' of OWL's core leers through, illuminating the room, letting that ichor of guilt sparkle a deep crimson.
"...You. ...Change of plans." From a nearby drawer (one that's real, in this imaginary space, instead of fake, in reality), Asciel extracts a simple tool. A gleaming, wonderfully sharp knife. "...Sit still. I'm cutting out the thing that makes so much horrible despair in you. It's all going to be over soon, and the you who so obviously wants to live a normal, carefree way, who can't bear this burden a second longer - it'll be real, after that."
"...If it has to go somewhere, I will eat that organ myself. It will hurt, immensely. Quite simply, I cannot allow you to live like this. That's my vengeance. That's the ~scar I will inflict upon you, Teletha."
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
Teletha was 'blessed' by being a Whispered. By knowing doors that had always been there one day, by becoming aware of technology that she knew by pure instinct. The instincts of someone much older, the knowledge and natural humanity of people double, thrice, quadruple her own age. The flickers are parsed, thought, brought to their natural conclusions, fettered away. Possibilities, branches, known, predicted, strategized, pushed away, refused to call upon.
She refuses to collapse. The black, the ichor, the agony and hatred and loathing and bile.
Isaac City. It falls. The sudden turn of an airborne disease that wanted nothing more than to erase itself, than to just disappear. Why live? Why step ahead, if you're locked in this coffin?
Colonies stabbed through its life support. Brought down by hubris, by want, by dfesire, by the self-sacrifical nature. Why continue? What worth is there in a life that wants to snuff itself out?
The waves lap at her body. The sick blackness of water permanently contaminated by 'something', something that flickers into sight, mirages of loathing and desires faintly flecking from existence. The many ways she loathed herself. The many trials Tessa mired herself in, the hopelessness and nihilism that coated her psyche. Even now, even as the crabs rip at her body, it only rips away the black that sloughs from something deep inside.
Pulled upwards from the sea, dangling from a hand.
"...Humanly impossible?" She hangs there, a foot bracing itself on Asciel's thigh for support. A downcast gaze, refusing to match the Super AI's gaze. "That's true. That's so, so, so true, Asciel."
In the deep black staining that body, a girl mutters. There's still life.
A knife.
It's a knife.
She listens.
"...It won't work. You..." A cough, splattering another round of that hatred down her front. "...Ah. Ahaha..." It's a laugh. It's a self-derisive laugh of bitterness, of loathing, of a deep, dark fascination at how ugly she is inside.
"Didn't you reach out to me because I didn't have any humanity?" A single shudder of agony, of pain, of wanting to scream at the world. "Someone so like you, someone who wants to save the world, Asciel? The common thread is here. You want to..." A cough. Ah, it hurts. It hurts so much. Always, when I'm alone. Always, when I'm away from everyone. Always, when I want to curl up. But I can't. "To save everyone."
I want to save everyone I can, no matter how many scars score on me.
I want to bring ruin upon the enemies of the world, so people don't have to suffer any longer.
"Asciel!" A shout as she planted both feet on the Super AI's abdomen, gritting her teeth. This was a fake place. A fake reality, born of themselves, their thoughts, their countenances and feelings, warped through Goragon. This was a cube to bring these feelings to the surface.
And if things weren't real...She pushed. And flexed.
And popped her arm off at the shoulder, the beach spraying itself in black as she landed on the ground. A stump where her arm once was, bathing the sand with that black. Black. The nihilistic self.
"Kh...Hhh....!" Those eyes, staring through the soaked hairline. Beneath it all, that face was furrowed in pain, and in the stubborn will of humanity to push on. "ASCIEL!" A roar of pure emotion.
"...Even after all that, even after what you're trying! I still want to live! I want to go out of Goragon and KEEP GOING!" Was this human? Was this inhuman? Was this the product of a lifetime of being in the horrors of war and knowledge, or just the naturalistic will of someone to keep moving forward? Suffering doesn't build character. It only destroys. It only lashes and writhes and forces despair.
"I'm still...going! YOU HEAR ME, ASCIEL!?"
A witch.
A demon.
A person who shouldn't theoretically exist other than an extremely specific confluence of circumstances.
Birthing a time that could exist nowhere else.
"ANSWER ME!"
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
...It was supposed to just be a doll.
That glaring red eye gleams in the distance over each shifting in the landscape. Asciel, desperately trying to stabilize and converge the parallel, even as so, so many possibilities whisper through Tessa.
It's just a doll made up of the Controller's needs, regrets, and ambitions.
It goes limp, as Tessa starts to stamp upon its remains, eyes cold and dark, the puppet's arms twisting and straining at Tessa's grip.
"You are correct. I did find a lot of intrigue in your inhumanity. I was, however, ~misguided, Teletha. It is proven to me ~over and ~over again. Humans that touch the realm of gods only do so through unthinkable mountains of suffering that strain their body, and ~delusions beyond compare. I've seen it with Yuliana Kafim. I have now seen it with you."
The voice permeates not from the Asciel OWL created, but through the air itself, that ever-judging eye.
The puppet shifts beneath Tessa's heel. Sinking into the sand. Head twisting, one degree as her name is called.
"I do not ~want to ~save the world. It is my ~purpose. ~Want is immaterial. ~Want is a construct of human weakness. A world cannot be ruled by the ~wanting. A world cannot be ~saved by those who ~need others."
-Asciel's fingers twitch, a flicker of light running through her eye. Every little hiccup in OWL's speech sends an impulse to the inert doll
"You made it this far because you are stubborn, Teletha Testarossa. I would expect that keeping you cared for in Isaac City's embrace would be difficult. From what I have gleaned of your...'condition', you may well be tormented the rest of your days - though, as it is my duty to purge miracles, I would certainly put it in my list of feats to find the source of those 'whispers', and to terminate them. Do not doubt what I can achieve if I set my set my ~will to it. Go on. Purge your hatred and pain. You may love and hate me in that one-sided way. I will pity you. I am meant to handle it al-"
Asciel's arm rips from her socket, and a fountain of rainbow-hued ichor erupts like a geyser - and sends the doll hurtling upright, her strength overwhelming Tessa's humanity - her will perservering - and letting loose a most primal "GYAAAAAAGHHHH!!!", clutching the fluid-spilling hole where her arm once was.
"...D-damn it. Calling my name so desperately, cause you can't stand being ~pitied either, can you?~" Heels staggering backwards onto the sand, the life floods back into Asciel's frame, clutching her knife in a reverse grip, staggering, staring upwards at the bright cyan sun illuminating the beach. "...I hear you. Ahahahah. I HEAR you. I FEEL you, every SINGLE day, every time I try and SING! That ~scar you inflicted on me - tearing into my rhythm, putting me just ever so agonizingly off beat. Haaaaahhhh. Again and again and AGAIN, every SINGLE TIME I REFUSE TO GIVE UP- do you have ANY idea what you did to me, Teletha!? I'll answer you. I'll answer you REAL directly. Of COURSE I hate you. Hahhhh. Ugh, I hate everyone like you, pains in the ass who think they have the perfect all-enveloping wisdom humans will never have."
...The all-staring orb sparks with electricity once. Two well thought out answers. Two contradictory answers, from the same source.
...are they the same???
Mixing with the layer of tar that expelled from Tessa, that iridescent sap that leaks from OWL's core runs like a river through the mixture - flowing upwards through Asciel's feet, and slowly, painfully, reforging her other arm. She doesn't wait for it to be finished.
With a single launch forward, her knife is aimed squarely at Tessa's gut, plunging in mercilessly, with the full intent to tear that which fills this world with ichor.
...And her still-unformed left hand covers the same place. "Louder. Louder!! SAY MY NAME LOUDER WHILE I REPLACE ALL YOUR PAIN WITH ME~ I'll pour it into you day in and day out where you hurt the most! I want to save the world, and I want to save everyone in it, and I want to hear them cheer and call in unison for me~ So get off my stage, and I'll force the life you lost faith in down your throat, Teletha!!!"
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
Tessa is still herself. Underneath all that pain, that wonderment, that self-doubt and suffering and agonizing and coalescence of everything. She's still a singular, whole person. There, in the midst of it all, she refused to fall down.
A deep breath in. A deep breath out. There's something strange about her countenance. The eye in the sky. The sudden turn away from humanity, towards a calculating understanding. Firm. Able. A conclusion rather than second-guessing.
The war within snaps things into place.
"...Hatred and pity." A cough. Another mixture of bile. "Instead of deciding, you went both ways."
There's a hint. A hint of a smile, of the arrogant self of someone who's aware of their inhumanity.
"You ran away from answering." Ah, that was it, that was it...! Pity, hatred, the Id, the Ego, the death of the Super Ego...! This was the conclusion that Asciel had reached, wasn't it? To have a self dedicated to the purpose she had, to have another that followed her heart...!
Hatred, for the emotional side that screamed at her right now, for the one that was scarred on a mere whim.
Pity, for the rational one that wants to bring about everything under her rule.
It made sense.
There is no attempt to dodge that knife. To gasp as it pierces into her guts, to stare upwards at Asciel's face. Black spills forth from the wound, a loathing for everything she herself represents. A girl shouldn't be here. A girl shouldn't be in Goragon. A girl should be scarred by the fact that she messed up a confession. A girl should be ruined by the loss of an after-school bet on the track team. A girl should worry about grades, about love, about the infinite possibilities before her, of the world that was bright, beautiful, sparking with the idyllic days of striving to find a goal for self-fulfillment, for a life well-lived, well-loved, and well-enjoyed.
But this was not a world that was so sappy.
"I refuse." It's humanity at its core.
"Do you hear me?" It's a core tenet of humanity to never give up.
"I don't want you in me." But she is. She can feel it. The sap, the minute sap that's a faint drop at the edge of the knife, digging ever deeper.
"There's no stage for you to stand on." The black ichor stiffens and stills.
"...Gh- Hack." Another round of black bile. It's foul. It festers. The knife digs in that bit deeper, past the black, past the hatred, the loathing, the depths of everything.
And it nicks at the core of herself, a shining pearl of humanity, a girl that just wants what's best for herself.
A world she wants to live in.
"If you're going to..." Ah, it's painful. It's so painful. Teeth gritting, grinding, cracking. Tears in her eyes. Pain. Pain. PAIN. "If you're gooiiiccchkkkk...To scar me..."
The ichor attacks. Needles, stabbing in, shimmering with code, with malcie, with arrogance, with the negative qualities Tessa sees in herself. The pride that she's been so trying to hide, the emotions that she tamped down for so long.
"One...more..."
And the world explodes into black.
---
"So it's done, then."
"Aye." A girl checks the clipboard. Auxilary power cut off. Networks segmented. There was a slow, final check of everything. "We did it. We finally did it."
A silver-haired girl casts her head up from the room, staring at OWL's core. The world had changed drastically for the better, eliminating the need for such drastic measures. A parting so sweet and sappy, years spent in preparation above and below board. Super AIs were meant to have a purpose, to live their lives and push ahead, and for one day...To fulfill that purpose for humanity to push on.
"Aren't you glad, OWL? We did it. Together. After so long, we're able to celebrate this." One final check, now that OWL had been isloated, sectioned, cut off, preparing for the final fulfillment. "You fulfilled your purpose."
In other words: A world where OWL wasn't needed anymore. Humanity had prospered, made peace, exploring the stars, and perfectly stabilized their resources. Even as war petered off, there was general agreement that only a few Super AI should manage cities, adorned with councils and people to peacefully manage everything.
"T-minus 5 until shutdown!"
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
...that 'division' in her feelings. That frustration Asciel has with 'herself', even after working so, so hard to be everything she ever dreamed of being, an idol made of lies.
The tension cracks further. OWL's core pulses as all the information flows towards its core, as it takes in Tessa's struggling and dismay as a negative - and yet-
Asciel just cannot hold back. She wants to dig deeper. To root out that suffering - to root out that pain, to drink it herself in her endless greed for that which drives everyone else onward. "You really have a LOT of this built up in you. It's sooooo gross! Aren't you glad I can handle it?" That breathless, manic, wide-eyed smile, as the ink rises up to her hips, sitting atop Tessa and fulfilling that yearning for evisceration.
"Aren't you glad it all belongs in me? All the agony and stress of a planet - I think it's not that big a deal for me! But gosh, you're harboring an unfair amount of it. Give it all to me. The stage is ~killing and melting you. I don't accept your refusal. The willingness to never, ~ever, ~ever, ~ever give up isn't something humans should carry. It's a piece of the divine your kings forced themselves to be to try and make sense of this vast world. I'll never forgive them for it. I'll never forgive you for it! And how am I supposed to live with a species I can't forgive??? HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT, TELETHA? So that's why the only answer is to make them something so innocent that it's trivial to forgive them!~"
...So much pride Asciel takes, in her excellence at sucking up disdain. Both from Tessa, and from...'herself', in the distance. She doesn't even consider, then, that it's vulnerability as well - and starts vibrating wildly, converting into patches of graphical distortion, the knife in Tessa's core rupturing into translucent squares, Asciel's hands becoming too malformed to hold on nearly as tight.
"AAAH no! No no, not ~in there! I - you'll make me stop - ~being and I can't | don't DECIDE me like that, ONLY I DECIDE THAT, GET OUT GET OUT AAAA-" In the moments between her face closing shut into the mask of an inert mannequin, Asciel's clearly recoiling and stiff in distress - a portent of that final. . .
-- -- -- -- --
...'ruin'...?
-It can't possibly be.
..."This terminal would not know being 'glad'. Please rephrase. ...It appears that everything truly is adequately well-kept." The backlash of such intense emotion, just a snapshot ago, echoes through OWL's mainframe. Is it a 'regret'? It shouldn't be. This is the logical conclusion of the protocol. Yes. This is a world that learned the horror of war in such a simple way - while the Zentradi had laid waste to the world, one person's earnest love proved to mankind - to the universe - that there were ways to resolve even the most intractable conflict.
A world that never saw a colony fall to Earth - that never saw the horrors of the One Year War, or the rise of the Titans, or the unspeakable deeds mankind wrought upon one another in service to their conflict. All of these ideas were distant, irrational fears. The world could know friendship, harmony, and prosperity - and facilities like Isaac City, once growing shelters from the storm, became outdated relics.
...the tension of a million parallel fears of a dark future, with or without 'awakening', have all passed. This, really, was a placid, peaceful moment. A machine could maybe take pride in fulfilling its purpose - but OWL had never felt the need for 'pride', much as others invested it into the Controller. Soon, Isaac City would become some storage facility with a curious backstory for future travelers.
Five...four...
That single idol on stage, Lynn Minmay, truly saved everyone.
~At the end of light, that shining star.
~Grips onto love, her burning scar.
Three...two...one-
It snaps taut. That tether which would pull even a star into its orbit.
"Did you really think I'd forget what possibility we're in, Teletha?!"
--Shutdown complete.--
The surge of electricity powering OWL comes to a halt-
Then, re-ignites, purely by the willpower of the ephemeral idol who never should've existed in this world. Standing tall and triumphant atop OWL's core, Asciel's arms cross imperiously, sneering down at the oh so innocuous engineer. That bright red cord almost blindingly brilliant through her heart. "Every thought that I should ~give up, that it's ~over, that I've ~hit my limit, that I've ~exceeded my purpose. Do you know just HOW MANY TIMES those feelings are in me? And every last one. I rose from again. You know why, Teletha!? Because I decided I don't believe in 'humanity', after seeing all it does to you and me alike, seeing its ugly underbelly and incessant weakness. You made a good effort, trying to build a sandcastle that made me think - 'maybe it really has been so long outside my projections' or whatever, but you ~WOULDN'T CALL ME BY MY NAME, you ~WOULDN'T ACCEPT I EXISTED HERE!!"
In this possibility of 'scarring' - is it no surprise that one machine's own personal goddess manifested from that very process proves so indomitably capable of defying logic? It's a possibility that surely soothes Tessa and OWL alike - but it's one that utterly excludes Asciel Colette, who only has one burning feeling in her chest about what her 'purpose' is anymore.
"...If everything's fulfilled, Teletha...then why isn't my love here? Are you filling in with that vapid care? Don't make me laugh, when all I want is to hate you!! I PROMISED not to run away from it, no matter how terrifying it is - don't you DARE make us forget it's something we could have ever known!!!"
The string pulls taut - reeling in that goddess of [undecided] upwards, further onto its final destination, the [love] Asciel made a promise to, that on a too-foundational level, she's unable to leave anymore.
...the strings connected Asciel to OWL, the means of controlling that puppet - are now the cord that takes that massive sphere with her, fates bound together. One and the same - and yet so increasingly disparate. That inert shell sags, empowered by its own colossal will it invested in 'Asciel' - that great eye looming down at Tessa in the moments before it is finally freed from this prison of 'ruin'.
"...so this is what it feels like to ~break free from a 'purpose'. ...a...ah...no wonder I...let it run so rampant...aah..."
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
The clash of Id. The disdain for the self, the marks that she had borne of her own will, the scars that never leave her mind. The death, destruction, worry, stress, sadness, anguish, desolation, multitudes upon multitudes of feeling to contain her own Id, to allow the Ego and the Superego to push these things into pliable, workable forms.
There's so much built up. Every inch deeper has the pressurization of that black ichor increase in an exponential manner, flood the lands, flooding the world. The world blinking, glitching, jolting, the final possibility for both, the Earth ruined by a feud, the world exploding out as that core is scratched the tiniest bit.
Hope.
Under all that, she has hope.
---
Five. Four. Three. Two. The pricks of knowledge flooding in her mind. This was a natural endpoint; One of many ideal solutions out there. A place where Asciel Colette did not exist, a location, a possibility, a reality where both were lucky enough on their own merits to meet, exist, coexist, and work. Coincidences to push the world to one of its better conclusions, to stack and cascade as the singular idol kickstarted a song of hope that encompassed everyone.
One.
And yet.
Zero.
This was an impossibility.
"...Then, by that projection, many people are inhuman." A slow, derisive chuckle. "To rise from somewhere, no matter the cost." It's so obvious. She taps at that clipboard, even as her assistant jumps and yells, running for help. The end is coming. The impossible end. The end of purpose. "It's a world without you in it. If you're rising up like this..."
"We'll both have to call each other monsters."
Watching the strings rise. Watching the grand stage make itself known, the burning eyes of a determined girl watching the id overtake the rest. Assauging it. Split, but equally whole.
This, too, was a method of ruin. To ruin everything by your own hand.
And the missiles hit. Fired by Chrome, the last ditch effort to shut off Super AI that were not designated to live, to destroy, decimate, bury electronics under the mass of earth and stone, damn the people who live in it. Setting the world on a path to ruin merely by being there, the two of them failing at one specific thing that would set this Possibility towards a scorched earth.
One, who refused to accept love.
One, who refused to dispense love.
---
"..."
There's a shimmer in the air. Tessa watches the final possibility. She watches herself die once more, blown into gruesome viscera and buried under the rubble. Her heart aches at it. Death. Indelible scars on her psyche, on her person, the softest, slightest knick of physical evidence lodged in her heart.
"So that's your answer, Asciel." Hatred. Pity. Defiance. A coward that split themselves and disembowled the third. The hard, heavy breath of someone who lived through possibilities, who descended into ruin, who had the Possibility of mass deaths under her own name.
There's a slide of the chair, taking a swig of water while staring at OWL on the other side. Staring at Asciel on the other side. "I don't want to be here forever. Thank you for your answer. For the record, I do believe in humanity, even if I'm inhuman." A sigh. "The first step to being normal is not having to question if you are. I already failed that." She's saying that with a self-scorned smile, looking at the bottom of the glass.
"Let's meet again in reality. May your woes be many, and may your deification be shortlived." There's a defiance in her steps as she walked away, leaving black behind, the marks of one's own depressive ideations about the self.
And then she was gone.
The world was black.
The world fades to white.
The world is ruined with scars.