Seele Vollerei: The end of reality, and what came after.

[Baughn]

QUOTES FROM SEELE VOLLEREI: THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN EDITION

"You have no power here!"

Vel says that a lot. She likes to think she's in charge of everything, but she's not. And there's a reason for that.

"I'm third most powerful being in the galaxy,"

Also Vel. She has an inflated ego.

"You need to eat, Vel,"

She needs to eat. She can't survive on dreams and nightmares alone. There's some good advice right there.

"We're going to die here."

Vel says this a lot, too. She doesn't know everything, but she has a really good sense of impending doom.

"They're not your friends anymore, Seele. They're not real."

The constant companion inside your head has her uses, but paranoia and depression aren't among them.


QUOTES FROM AI-CHAN: THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD EDITION

"Hey, do you want to go exploring?"

Occasionally, she tries to be motherly. It never goes well.

"We're totally going to die here."

She's not wrong, but it doesn't help your state of mind.

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Sometimes, all you need is a good British insult to cheer yourself up.

"I can't believe you just said that."

Usually, she doesn't criticize or question. It's very out of character for her.

"You're such a bitch, Seele."

Oh no.


QUOTES FROM KIANA KASLANA: "BE NICE, SEELE" EDITION

"If you say something stupid one more time, I swear I'll..."

Kiana's the stern mother figure that keeps you in line. You'd be lost without her. Just kidding.

"Y'know, you'd think a demon would be a lot scarier than Vel."

She's right. You'd think that.

"Kiana, stop staring at my ass."

You like to tease Kiana, but she still scares you sometimes.

"You're not wearing the dress I picked out for you."

Oh, boy. This is going to be a long night...

Click to shrink...

I'm always looking for ways to get more insight into what the AI is thinking. This one seems decent...

I'll need to make some adjustments.

 

[Baughn]

You pull back, then look at the girl... woman. Ai-chan? You don't think that's quite right.

"I'm going to free you."

You stare at the hands above her, gripping the bars of the cage. It's made of bone -- human, almost certainly. It's also made of hands, gripping each other, and steel, and swords, all at the same time. You watch as one hand slips out and falls, hitting another hand below it. The hand that fell slices the hand below it, which lets go.

It's a maze up there. You're not sure you can reach the girl.

"I'm going to free you," you say again.

Wings of light spread out behind you, and you set off into the maze. This, whatever this is, is something you don't mind destroying. There's no reason at all to keep this cage around her, and no reason to follow the rules either. You're a being of the quantum world. You were born -- or made -- to break the rules of places like this.

This maze, is... it's the concept of a prison. It's the idea that someone is trapped. So, you can either follow the rules, and get her out... or you can break the rules, and get her out all the same.

Or you could just leave here, and this girl -- who is she? What is this? -- you could abandon her to her torture. That's something a demon would do, but today, you're not a demon.

Today, you're something else. Today, you're...

You're...

You stare at the swords, and hands, and everything. There's a cross mixed in among them, and you know it. You've seen it. Theresa's favourite weapon, if you could remember its name. And those arms, aren't they Theresa's? Not the colour, nor the size. But they look like her arms.

You hate this place.

It's the work of a second, when you stop holding back. Honkai -- it's the power of ruination, everyone and everything's except yours. Not much of anything can survive it. Usually reality is better at stopping you, but you're not exactly in reality, are you?

Breaking her free of the maze is easy. You just have to make it stop existing.

There's a noise, like the wailing of a billion souls. It's the sound of a world being destroyed.

The maze starts to rust and fall apart, turning into red sand. The red sand blows away, in a non-existent wind. The hands drop to the floor.
The girl stands there, looking up at you.

"Who are you?" she asks.

You take a step forward, staring at her. Her voice is Ai-chan's, but she looks... she doesn't look like her. She looks like a painting of her. She's wearing the same clothes, her hair is the same style... but it isn't. Ai-chan wears hers in two buns, and it's green. This girl has black hair, and it's down. But her face, it's all wrong. She has her eyes, and her mouth... but the shape is all wrong. It's like someone took a beloved painting of a friend, and smudged it with a dirty rag, just enough that it's all wrong.

But her eyes... They're... they're just like Ai-chan's.

"Seele," you say. "My name is Seele."

"Seele?" the girl says. Her voice is a whisper, barely audible over the sound of rustling leaves. In a ship? "I'm... project 19-K23-Prime. Are you a ghost?"

You stare at her.

"Is this the afterlife?" she asks.

"I... don't think so," you say.

"Oh," 19-K23-Prime says, looking around. "Are you sure? It's very quiet. There's nothing here. Are you sure this isn't the afterlife? I'm supposed to be... Oh. The files are unlocked. I'm not supposed to be here."

"What are you?" you ask.

"Project 19-K23-Prime," she says, matter of factly. "I'm an autonomous guardian unit. I don't understand by what channel you're talking to me. What are you? Do you have credentials?"

"I'm a... a person," you say. "I'm... human, I think."

"You don't look human," she says. "What is your name?"

"Seele Vollerei," you repeat again. This is unnerving. This girl isn't looking at you, like she's talking to someone who isn't there.

"Can you prove you're human?" she asks.

"Um..." you say. "Um..."

You look around. The world is still rusting away, the sky grows darker and darker with each passing second. The ground below you fades away, revealing endless blackness. You may have done slightly too good a job here. Just a little bit.

K23, whoever she is, won't be staying here for long. She isn't imprisoned anymore -- that's good, right? Only, you're talking to her from inside the concept of imprisonment, or something like that, and that's very bad, because this place is getting really close to collapse. You can feel it.

You need to get out of here.

"I... I have to go," you say.

"You said you're Seele?" She frowns. "I think I recognize that name."

= = =

This is a good thing, right? Right? ...any last words?

I think this would be a good time to get more info out of her, because things might get complicated later on.
[ ] "I'll see you in the real world."
[ ] Write-in

 

[Baughn]

This was hell to look up, but I believe I've found what the outrageous bot is looking at. And yes, some of the elements of this update I added in post, but I'm not saying which ones.

 

[Baughn]

Dear readers, are you confused? You have a right to be.

While I'm no psychologist, I'm going to hazard a guess that you're feeling some loss right now. It's quite all right. Think of this as an MTV special, or one of those psychological studies they do in college. You are a subject in an experiment. You have been pre-tested to elicit certain reactions.

Do you feel depressed? Anxious? Confused? I'm not asking whether or not you feel those emotions. I'm asking -- do you FEEL anything at all? Are you numb? Cold? Dead inside?

This is the human condition.

You might be wondering, where are the instructions on how to escape this book? They're not here. This isn't a choose-your-own-adventure. You can't escape. You can't fight. You can't win. You can't get a happy ending.

Welcome to your new life.

Click to shrink...

You pause, and look around. The darkness is still there. The sky rumbles. Your head itches. It's not safe here, but there should be time for a short conversation, and you have questions you need to ask. This woman isn't the one you're here to rescue, but why does she remind you so much of Ai-chan?

You decide it'll be easier to ask.

"I'm looking for my friend, Ai-chan," you say. "Can you help me find her?"

Ai-chan, or K23, is still looking off into the distance. She doesn't look at you. The sky above you grows darker still, and a faint smell of ozone reaches your nose.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know her," she says.

"She looks a lot like you," you insist. "She's younger, and she has green hair made up into buns, and red eyes."

"I'm not that familiar with my own face... I don't think..." She frowns. "I think I'd remember someone like that. Who is she to you?

That's a good question. Who is she to you, really? The ship's AI, for sure, but she's... more than that.

"She's my friend," you say.

K23 looks surprised at that, then smiles weakly.

"Then I'm sorry. I'm not your friend. Not anymore."

Her voice sounds hurt, lonely, but accepting.

You hear some noise coming from above you. K23 twirls around, and stares up into the sky. You follow her gaze.

From above, a beam of light shines down through the sky. It's... Well, it looks beautiful. Much like the aurora over the skies of Japan, way back when you lived there. That's probably what this is... An aurora, in conceptual space.

You gaze in wonder at the shifting colours and patterns. The sky itself seems to be tearing open, as what seems to be a solid pillar of light comes through the fabric of reality. You shield your eyes from its brilliant glare.

Something, or *someone* is here... but not *here*. Whoever it is, exists in real space, or... in what passes for reality, now. What you're seeing is the barest hint of their existence, where it overlaps with concepts of restriction.

Whatever they are, they're not human. They're even less human than you.

Kot-Inakubara is a codex of the written and spoken language of the Youkai. In other words, it's their bible.

Yukikaze is the name of a legendary sword. Literally meaning "snowstorm", this blade is said to be able to cut through anything, and never lose its edge.

Both of those concepts are manifesting in front of you, inside this pillar of what seems like light. It might be dangerous, is what you'd say, if you had a painfully weak sense of danger. You can sense Velonia wanting you to run away, but...

You're drawn towards it. You're not sure why, but you can't help yourself. These concepts aren't real, aren't made from anything real, but they're so beautiful.

You want to reach out and touch them.

Velonia is screaming at you to not go forward, but you don't listen. Why should you listen to some voice in your head? If you want to go forward, then it's what you want to do. Isn't it?

You expect the voice in your head to get angry, maybe smack you upside the head. Even if it doesn't stop you physically, it usually manages to convince you not to go through with something, but it doesn't. She doesn't. It. She. No--

You throw yourself back, away from the monstrosity.

"Vel?" You say, nearly panicked. Something's wrong with your head. You want to rip it off and throw it away, or better yet keep throwing it until you reach the sun, and then keep going until you reach hell itself--

Velonia materializes behind you, her arms around your waist. She strokes your face slowly, with the care someone might give to a wounded animal.

"It's alright, Seele. It's alright, just... shhh."

Velonia looks up at the pillar of light. You follow her gaze. Inside it you can see... something. It looks like... a galaxy?

"Vel," you say, your voice shaking. "What... what are we looking at?"

Vel looks down at you and smiles. It's not her usual one that she flashes at people-- a smirk, a little teasing but showing off her pearly whites, even if everyone but you sees only a shadow.

This one's real. She smiles at you with concern, but warmth.

"The future, unfortunately. Come on. We need to get out of here."

You stare at the pillar of light. It's beautiful, in a haunting sort of way. The galaxy inside is moving and shifting, alive in some impossible way. It looks familiar... doesn't it? A little like Kiana, a lot not like Kiana, and far harsher than she should be.

Vel helps you move away, and the light folds in on itself and disappears as you leave that section of configuration-space.

"What... what was that?" you ask, shaken.

"Well, that was a problem," Vel says, frowning. "Come on, let's go."

"Where?" you ask, helplessly.

"Anywhere but here," she says.

You shake your head. "That was Kiana, wasn't it?"

"It wasn't."

"It was! I saw it, I felt it!"

"You didn't see anything. We're nearly in the quantum sea. Your senses are untrustworthy to begin with... that wasn't Kiana, Seele."

You stand up and take a deep breath, calming yourself. And what about K23? You think she left, but you didn't see her leave.

"Alright. Thanks, Vel," you say. "Let's go."

"Don't mention it," she replies, pulling you by the hand.

You let her lead you, all the way from the piece of possible-realities you turned into dust, through the nightmarish maze of corridors and back into the normal, physical ship. Even Vel doesn't protest -- you need it, and you'll be much safer if you can find your friends here. As much as it might be safe-ish to set off on your own, you'd go insane from loneliness in a hurry, and you think she knows that.

That, or maybe she's worried about them as well. Larger miracles have happened.

It's to that happy thought that you turn a corner, and stop, looking at an open security door. Why is that odd? Well, it's open. Why is that odd?

You slip out of touch with reality slightly, like a geartooth glitching. The door is closed, a bar of red light across it indicating it's locked down for whatever reason.

This is a door, so it's open.

It's closed and locked, but it's open.

You step through it, looking at the other side. Nothing useful, just some ammunition and an open door leading to a crew quarter. If you were to guess, you've broken the concept of locking in general. There's no-one there, though.

"Seele, this isn't funny. Stop messing around."

You giggle, as you step back through it. The door closes, and the lock closes with it. The door remains open.

"See? There it goes," you say.

Vel swears at you, which is amusing in its own right. This, of course, leads to more giggling from you.

"Okay, but what do we do about this?" you ask.

"We need to tell someone. This is important for... Well, survival."

"Fine," you sigh. "I was hoping to find someone else anyway. At least it'll be easier to move around now."

= = =

I don't even.
[ ] Go to the crew quarters
[ ] Go to engineering
[ ] Go to the bridge
[ ] Write-in

 

[Baughn]

It's quiet around you. There's no hiss of ventilation, and while the lights are on, they feel dimmed. It's not like the ship is dead, but how should you put this? It's sleeping, perhaps. In that case, if there's anyone trying to fix it, they'll be in engineering. You think... well, you don't remember what happened, exactly, but you think you remember someone there trying to help. An annoying redhead.

Vel is quiet. You think she'd want to make sure you go in the right direction, but you know this ship forwards and backwards, so there's no way you'd get lost.

You walk through the silent hallways, heading inwards. Main engineering...

You've only been there once, when the captain gave a small tour to you and your friends. You remember it being huge, and definitely nothing like the small, cramped rooms that make up the rest of the ship. It's where all the magic happens, as your... Ehem, as Bronya would say, but it has to be huge. Geometrically it's in the center of the ship, running longitudinally down its long axis with the nuclear reactors attached to the sides. About half its volume is taken up by the main gun, an enormous railgun.

In other words, all you have to do is walk inwards. You'll get there.

You enter an axial hallway, which splits into a Y shape as you get past the outer layers. Turning left would eventually take you to the bridge, and turning right leads to the residential and storage areas, but still inwards. You head right.

The ship is eerily silent. You take a breath, and begin walking towards engineering.

"Hey!"

You turn your head. Vel was following you, but she's stopped walking.

"Vel..." You begin.

"No, I just want to say this." She's turning on the spot, fidgeting. She looks uncharacteristically like... you. You could be twins, if her eyes weren't red. If she wasn't your shadowy demon half. Though she's not all that shadowy right now. She's flickering, the light behind her shining through like usual, but she looks almost entirely human.

You look at her quizzically. You've never seen her like this. She's usually so certain, so confrontational, always leading you somewhere. Now she's... not herself.

"I just wanted to say, you're making the right choice by going back. Everything will... Just that you should know."

You stare at her. You sense... Something. Something's off.

"Vel, are you OK?" You ask.

She stares at you, a little sadly. "Yeah, Seeley. I'm OK. Just... Just go. Find your friends."

You frown at her, before nodding slowly. "If you're sure..."

She smiles at you weakly. "I'm sure."

You turn away from her, and continue walking into the depths of the ship. After a while, you reach a large metal door with "ENGINEERING" stamped on the front. You push through, and find yourself in the engine room. The lights are dim, and the room is dark; however, you can see a little bit.

You walk forward slightly, staring around. Vel squeezes in behind you.

"This is like a horror movie," she hisses. A shiver runs up your spine, but you focus on the task at hand. You walk forward intently, staring around. The room is large and empty, with a huge multitude of consoles along the walls. You walk forward towards one, and examine it. It has several knobs, a few dials, two keyboards, and several displays. You look at the top, and frown.

You have absolutely zero idea what to do with it.

Well, at least it's on. You look around the room, pondering your next move.

The ship is, admittedly, huge. In this dim, emergency lighting there could be dozens of people right here in the room with you, and you'd never see them. You could shout, but--

But what?

There aren't any monsters. Don't be such a coward, Seele. Well, okay, *yes* you're scared of the dark, so what? That's not why you're feeling uneasy, that's--

Okay, that's almost entirely why you're feeling uneasy.

"Hey!" You shout. "Is there anyone here?!" Your voice echos, and you wince at the sound of it. You almost jump when you hear Vel shout as well:

"Hello?! Anybody?" Her voice is much softer than yours. She sounds worried that she'll wake up her neighbors or something.

You hear a startled curse, and the bang of metal on metal. You're about to call out, but Vel beats you too it:

"Hello? Sorry, we didn't mean to disturb you. We're... well, I guess you could say we're lost."

You hear light footsteps approaching. A moment later a young woman steps into view. A redhead. Oh no.

It's Tesla. She's wearing a red, sleeveless top and shorts. Her long legs have stockings that go up to her mid-thigh, and she's wearing tall boots. The rest of her is... well, you're not really into looking at her.

"Hello," she says, raising an eyebrow. "I didn't expect anyone to find me here. Especially not," she looks at you, and smiles knowingly. "You."

You don't really know what to say. You hadn't expected her to actually be here.

"It's extremely convenient, I'll give you that. So? Ready to start earning your pay?"

You nod numbly. You watch as she heads back to her work area, and nods for you to follow her. Vel is at your side in an instant, and the two of you follow closely behind.

"So what do you need us to do?"

She whirls on her heel, smacking Vel in the face with a metal covering. Vel is slow to react, finally hunching down and snarling.

"Ow! What was that for!?" Vel snaps, rubbing at her cheek.

"Well, that's unexpected." She turns to you. "It seems she's acquired a bit of extra physicality. I'd apologize, but there's no time." She starts walking again, beckoning you to follow.

You pause, grab Veliona's hand and make to follow, shaking your head before she does something stupid. This, however, is why you dislike Tesla. You've been told she reacts better to compliments, but you've never managed to make yourself talk that much. You're a lot better with your body than with your mouth.

This part of engineering is better lit, with the regular lights lighting up at least dimly, but it's nearly empty, and you soon realize what's missing. The entire central railgun is gone. In its place is a network of steel girders and cables, surrounding something that your eyes shy away from looking at.

You soon reach her work area, and are immediately hit by the amount of noise and activity in the room. The room is large, lights brightly, and filled with tables covered with machinery, tools and half-finished projects, not to mention half a dozen active robots. One of them walks up to her with a small metal ingot, which she snatches from it, before looking back at you.

"Welcome to the repair bay! The area where all the magic happens! I'll be with you in a moment, I need to finish some calibrations! We're on battery power right now, I can't waste any time."

She turns and walks over to a row of large machines, all hooked up to an incomprehensible amount of wires and covered in switches, dials and buttons. She starts flipping switches and pulling levers, doing... stuff.

You look around the room as she does this, and spot something that immediately catches your attention. A row of metal devices, a huge stack of various widgets and gadgets, and an entire wall covered with guns of every shape, size, and purpose.

You see an armor-piercing round designed to go through power armor, suitable for a anti-material rifle. It's the kind that Bronya uses, you're pretty sure.

You see a box full of concussion shells, perfect for using against light vehicles.

You see rows and rows of fireworks. Why would there be an entire wall of fireworks?

Because this is Honkai Impact 3, that's why. You're struck by the sudden urge to try and steal some.

"Leave that wall alone," Tesla says idly, and you snatch your hand back.

She continues flipping switches and pulling levers, before stopping and leaning back. The entire machine makes a whirring sound as it comes to life.

"There we go. I've pushed the auxiliary balancer as high as it'll go without overheating the batteries. In half an hour they'll run out, and everyone will die, so you better get cracking," she says.

You almost expect her to wink and add "Just kiddin', I've fixed the ship!" but she doesn't.

You step toward the machine with a deep breath. You look at all the flashing lights and the dials, trying to make sense of them. You see a dial marked 'Output'.

"Toldja, no touching stuff," she says.

"Can you... Can you at least tell me what all this stuff does?"

She shrugs. "The blue ones turn on, the red ones turn off, and the black ones are just for looks."

Right...

Okay...

You take a deep breath. If you kill her, it would almost certainly lower your odds of ever seeing someone you like ever again. You might be exaggerating that slightly -- besides, Vel is right here -- but only slightly. You just can't deal with this woman.

"What should I do?" You ask, resisting a sigh.

Tesla looks at her papers.

"We've got three real problems," she says. "The quantum balancer is broken, the reactors are all off, and the power couplings are frozen in time. I've pushed the prototype here as far as it'll go, so it'll burn out in a couple of days, but like I said, the batteries will fry first. Everything else..."

"Hang on," you say. "Why don't we start from the beginning?"

"Sure. What do you want to know?"

"What's the quantum balancer, exactly? Why do we need it?"

"... Okay. Imagine a seesaw. On one end there's you, and on the other end there's a basketball. The basketball is heavily magnetized, and you are not. There's a rain of sharpened knives, and you don't want to get cut. The quantum balancer is what makes it so the basketball stays above you. If the seesaw's stabilizers fail, then you'll end up on top of it, and you'll get shredded. Hypothetically speaking, that is. I suppose you'd be fine, but I'm not so sturdy."

You stare at her.

"That's an odd example."

"It was a... specialized piece of technology," she says, looking down from your eyes. "Almost worked. Like I said, we'd better get the nuclear reactors running. At least one of them should be in range of the balancer."

You're tempted to press the issue, but you let it go. The less you know about this, the better off you'll be.

"So what do I do?" You ask, simply.

"You'll start the generators. There are three of them, and I can kickstart the reactor so long as at lest one works. If you get two or more working, then hook the power couplings up to them.

"And then?"

She shrugs. "Then we'll be safe. Well, safe from immediate destruction, at least. The other systems need work, and there's the whole issue with being stranded in a broken down ship hurtling away from anything resembling reality, but we can worry about that later. I'll be able to get the main balancer out of failsafe mode, and we can unfreeze the crew. There might be a few more functioning safe zones. They're probably going mad by now."

"...And if I can't?" You ask.

She gives you a good, long look.

"If you can't get any of them running in twenty minutes, come back here. I'll have a few bits and pieces to give you."

She hands you a strange metal disk, about the size of a large coin.

"What's this?" You ask.

"The magnetic locks between the reactors and the balancer are at least operating," she says. "It's a key."

Oh. Er... you don't think you'll be needing that, but you stick the key in your pocket instead of telling her. She's given you a basic idea of what to do, and points you in the direction of one of the reactors.

"It's... that way," she says, pointing in a slightly different direction than you expected. "If you get lost, just... keep going until you find it. Or come back. I need to stay here, to keep this from exploding."

Right.

"The generators are easy to start. No locks, just press the 'on' button. The power couplings are in the ceiling, they -- you know what, forget about those. I'll handle it from here."

You nod, feeling as if you're heading into the mouth of a terrible beast. You can feel your heart racing already... what will you do if you can't turn it on? What if something's broken?

Tesla turns away, half-walking, half-jogging back towards the device. She speeds up a little midway, hitting one of the buttons practically at a run.

Right... you can't stand around thinking about this.

You turn, and quickly begin making your way towards the reactor. It's easy, whatever Tesla may have thought -- there are signs. Big signs. With arrows. And they're not lit for the hell of it, either. They're lit to help lost physicists find their way.

It takes you less time than you thought it would to reach the reactor, which is good. You're still nervous about the task at hand.

The door is-- actually, it's not even a door. It's just an opening in the wall, large enough to walk through. You can see machinery just beyond, as well as another opening on the other side of the circular wall. The doors are... open, including the one to the reactor chamber.

You'll worry about that later.

You walk into the room, and immediately hit a wall of hot air. The room is kept at a temperature slightly higher than the core of a star... to keep the energy from leaking away, you think. You walk through the room, peering up at the ceiling. Vel peels off, and starts studying the machinery. You walk past endless banks of computers, and towards the back of the room. There's a small door there, the only thing in the room that could be considered a "door." Or rather, an airlock. It says 'auxiliary power'.

"Vel," you say, "I think we have a problem."

"What's up?" she replies.

You peek through the door, then immediately pull your head back. A furnace-hot blast of air follows you out.

There's a fire in the generator room. A big one. One of the big diesel engines is burning, the fire spreading out along all the wiring running through the room. The heat is enough to distort the thick glass of the windows.

The fire's spreading quickly. You can see it racing along the walls.

= = =

I suppose simply telling the AI who Tesla is made it far more likely we'd find her. We also found out a lot more about what's going on. Isn't that nice?

[ ] Run away
- [ ] Back to Tesla
- [ ] To another reactor
[ ] Try to put the fire out
- [ ] With fire extinguishers
- [ ] With brute force
[ ] Write-in

 

[Baughn]

I mean, ...headscratch.

= = =

The fire's spreading quickly. You can see it racing along the walls. The machinery is beginning to rattle and shudder already. You doubt that the fire suppressant systems are working.

Vel comes up behind you, looking through the door.

"We have to do something!" she shouts over the roar of the flames.

"Like what?" You wave at the two fire extinguishers placed along the walls. They're tiny, relatively speaking. Far too small to make a difference on the inferno in front of you. Even trying would be stupid, but what's the alternative? Run away? You don't think a fire in this ship would be terribly survivable, even if you could find a different reactor to use, and nobody but you has any chance at surviving outside it, long-term. Or even short-term, mostly. Someone like Tesla... she'd die in a couple of seconds, and as much as she annoys you, you sort of almost like her, and don't want to see her die.

"The fire suppression system--"

Vel slaps the Halon release button, but nothing happens. It wouldn't, not without power.

"No good," she says, mostly to herself.

You peek through the door again, and then quickly pull your head back a second time from another blast of super-heated air. You're honestly surprised that you can even see in front of you. In fact, you can see the coffee in a cup that someone left behind start bubbling.

"We should get out of here," Vel says. "Get to another reactor, then tell Tesla."

You shake your head. That plan sounds awful. Do that, and you'd be betting everyone's lives that the fire dies off on its own.

There's only a too-tiny pair of extinguishers here, but something about that is nagging at you. It's not something you'd have even considered trying, yesterday, but fire extinguishers are meant to... as trite as it sounds, they're for extinguishing fires. These ones are too small for this fire. Only, what if you turn them sideways? You've taken yourself into concept-space before, and that means turning yourself into something that's less Seele than the idea of Seele, but you've never quite changed back from that.

What if you do the same thing to the extinguishers, but deliberately?

Whatever you're going to do, it had better be fast. You'll only have one shot at this.

= = =

I just want confirmation that this is really what you want to try, I guess. Not saying it won't work -- the way this is presented, it probably will, but these extinguishers aren't big enough to extinguish a fire in a megawatt-sized generator normally, and that's not exactly what you were voting for either.

I guess we can forget the pretense that I'm not doing a lot of the plotting, because by this point I am. We're well beyond what GPT-3 can reasonably manage on its own, though it's still helpful. You guys are just continuing the tradition of flummoxing the writer...

[ ] Pull off an insane yet amusing fix using conceptual anti-fire weaponry, aka. what used to be fire extinguishers.
[ ] Try to get the halon system working.
[ ] Something else

 

[Baughn]

You grit your teeth. You can do this.

"Vel-- I'm going to do something stupid," you say. "I... I need you to trust me on this one."

Vel looks at you, her eyes narrowing. She tilts her head to the side, almost bird-like. You can practically see the thoughts forming in her head. You know all of them. She's thinking about how much you've grown since the first time she met you, how she likes it when you're acting confident... it's a little disconcerting how easy it is to read her, actually.

She knows you. She trusts you. "...okay."

You nod. The flames are getting taller, and you can see the glass of the door to the generator room glow a dull, cherry red. It's just as well that doors are open, because you don't think you could open this one if you needed to. Not without unmaking it, or at least cutting it to pieces.

Concentrate, Seele. You've done things like this before, but never quite on purpose. You've fallen into concept-space once or twice when you weren't paying attention to your surroundings, even... but you've never pulled something else with you.

You can't afford to make a single mistake. Vel looks back at you. She looks worried. Of course she does.

It's not a *place*, is the thing. It feels like a place, when you're not paying attention and you're moving on instinct and you aren't killing the world through it, but it's not. It's a set of... adjacencies. Like, the concept of 'imprisonment' is next to the concept of 'locking', and not too far from the concept of 'mazes', and so you can get there by getting well and truly lost in a maze -- if you're you -- but you can't get from there to the concept of 'fire', at least, not without taking a roundabout path by way of someone who's trapped in a fire, and there's no-one like that in existence right now, not in this part of existence, and-- *breathe*, Seele!

Also, the fact is that any time you do something there, it ends up somehow too large.

You can understand all of that, but it's still like trying to catch water. There's no holding it in your hands.

Places like that, they aren't even connected, not really. Mazes are only next to imprisonment because there are mazes in which you can feel imprisoned, and you think you may have been the only person in the world trapped in such a maze at the time, not that this world is very large at the moment. It's ship-sized, and barely that.

The point is, there's no "going to" such a place. There's no "being in one", either. You're already there, or you're not, and--

You pick up the fire extinguisher, then stop existing, everywhere, except just barely "next to the concept of fire extinguishers".

It's easy, it turns out. It's the easiest thing in the world. You just don't exist. You're not trapped in a pocket of nothingness. The ship, Tesla, even the quantum sea -- where it sloshes against the ship -- everything is still there. It's just... you're not.

Mostly.

It's not quite true that you no longer exist at all. There's some structure left -- for instance, you're holding on to the place you used to be at, even if you're not still there *right now*. If you lost that, you wouldn't be unable to get back -- you've done it once already -- but you'd probably have to start from the outside, again, and that would take far too long. It isn't risk-free, this game. There's also the structure of yourself, the connections and concepts that make up 'Seele Vollerei', but that's long since been bleached of any substance and isn't even real when you're real. Dwelling on this might end with dressing in black and never seeing the sun, so you 'look' back at the fire extinguisher instead.

It doesn't still exist, of course. You tore it out of reality, which means it's *torn out of reality*, and the only grip you held onto was its fire-extinguisher-ness. All the other stuff, like being made of metal or containing liquid CO2, or however these work, wasn't something you needed. You just need a... concept.

The concept of extinguishing fires.

You turn back to yourself, no longer being in the way of what you want. The fire extinguisher-ness doesn't need to be in this place, with everything else that isn't here, so you pick it up and move it to where you are. Sort of.

When you step back into reality, you're holding a...

It's a fire extinguisher, most definitely, and you decide then and there that that's all you need to know about it. You aren't a quantum physicist to understand the underlying reality, after all.

In fact, you decide you won't focus on it at all. Hopefully no-one will ask, and it won't come up.

"So, Seele, is this going to become a habit?" Vel asks, stepping out of your head again.

"I hope not," you say.

"I mean, I get it. I really do, but this isn't exactly a walk in the park. It takes its toll on your mind. You're lucky you have as much mental resilience as you do."

You swear under your breath. Vel looks worried. She's trying not to show it, but you know her well enough to know that she is. Not that it's exceptionally difficult...

"We've got a fire to kill," you say.

ooOOoo

Killing the fire isn't entirely anticlimactic. There are problems, for instance, getting to it -- it's hot enough that you have to take the door at a run, since the heat you'd let out by reminding the universe that it's open would otherwise set the room you're in on fire. You don't need to worry about the heat killing your fire extinguisher -- it's shorn of anything like that -- but it takes a disconcerting few seconds to figure out how to use it, disconcerting mostly because you have to look at it. It's not like you can just throw it at the fire. Fire extinguishers are tools, to be used; it's in their basic nature. Luckily, most of them have handles.

They're tools for killing fires, and it does that.

They aren't tools for repairing the damage a fire has done.

When all is said and done, you're left in a power room with three ruined generators and a lot of melted plastic, burnt-out wiring harnesses, and a growing puddle of diesel on the floor, not to mention in the air. It stinks. Vel opens the door to let in some fresh air, which is to say that she leans against the doorway while rapping her fingers against it in a way you know signifies annoyance, but the air's at least a few hundred degrees and you think it'll stay that way for a while.

The fire doesn't recover, because that's dead. You killed it.

Vel's still rapping her fingers, and after a while she speaks up.

"You realize we won't be able to use these, right?" She asks.

"I know. I know."

"You realize what that means for us?"

"...It means we've got to run. Unless..." you trail off.

"Unless what?" She frowns. "Seeley, you can't be serious."

= = =

Oh, but she is.
[ ] "Repair" the generators.
[ ] Never mind the generators, make your own power.
[ ] Go find a different reactor.
[ ] Write-in

 

[Thelxiope]

The world is Wrong.

Click to shrink...

...you know what, if you're just going to hand me set up like that, then fine.

Spoiler: Seele Vollerei, Dying of Homes

Seele Vollerei
Dying of Homes​

Seele is dying of Homes - or, rather, of the lack thereof.

She was cast out, you see - flung beyond the Weirding Wall, into Ninuan. Into the True and Silvered Land beyond the world.

She is fundamentally a stranger there. The endless void rejects her. It has nothing but scorn for a daughter of Cneph's tainted Ash. She has no place there. She had to struggle, to learn through bitter experience how to see, to walk, to live in the Beyond. It does not offer its secrets to her willingly.

Yet when she finally fought her way back into Creation - finally found it again, in the endless confusion of Ninuan; finally cut a path through the Weirding Wall and forced her way back into the world -

The world had forgotten her. All it sees is an invader from outside. It rejects her. It cannot recognize one of its own children, because the world is wrong.

Seele has no place in worlds. She has no home in the void.

She is abandoned.
Avatar Diagram
Gorse (IX), the Key of the Yoke
Heart - MY CHAINS

• Bound to Veliona.
• Veliona has a bubble of chains, which can tie up anything (the chains aren't very strong though.)

Shadow - BURDENS

• Can't tear myself away.
• I'm afraid.
• Veliona cares about Bronya, even if she doesn't care about anyone else.
• When I retreat to my diary room, tucked away from world and void, only Veliona can find me.
• Veliona is strong when I'm weak. Veliona is confident when I'm afraid. She protects me from my own failures.
• I need Veliona's help to be useful to Theresa.
• I'm pretty sure Veliona's the reincarnated void-princess, and we just got chained together somehow.

Black Orchid (XV), the Key of the Exception
Heart - MY NATURE

• I was cast out into Ninuan, and broke through by learning how to survive there.
• I am rejected and spurned by world and void; but I do not reject them in return.
• I have a bubble of the Border Mythic, which makes Prosaic objects interact with metaphors and concepts directly.
• I know where I belong. The world will just have to deal.

Shadow - NO PLACE IN WORLDS

• I do not belong in Creation.
• I don't belong in Ninuan, either.
• I slowly fade away into nothing in places where I don't belong.
• My touch blurs the boundaries between real and false, between Is and Is Not.
• I collect altered states of λ-being, bubbles of strangeness that are out of place even in Ninuan.
• I don't care what the world says. My place is with Bronya.☆

Game Traits
Infection - Quantum Collapse
I don't think Seele really needs an Infection chart, as hers is fairly simple: as her Infection rises, she becomes less and less present, less able to interact with the things of world and void; until she ultimately decoheres entirely and becomes nothing but a discarded possibility, too improbable ever to manifest within reality.
Eide 2 - Practitioner
Eide is the Dream-of-Self, a reflection of the narrative nature of the void. It is Seele's ability to be perceived as she wishes to be perceived.

Seele isn't, um, particularly good at this - or to put it another way, she lacks real control over that narrative. Their shared Eide is largely Veliona's plaything; Seele is in many ways an accessory to Veliona's image.

Seele's Role is probably best articulated as something akin to "Demonically Possessed," and much of her Eide's force is controlled by that demon.
Technique - Possessed-By-A-Demon Powers aka Let Veliona Deal With It
This is a fairly simple Technique of allowing Veliona to possess Seele's body or manifest in one of her own and then do Veliona-y things, such as rending things apart with terrible claws, cleaving through throngs of enemies with a scythe, binding things in chains, or grabbing things with shadowy tendrils of night.
Flore 1 - Ghost
Creation is - or rather, should be - Seele's home. She's from the world. She is a daughter of the world.

But it has forgotten her. Because the world is wrong.

She fell into Ninuan beyond the world, and the world has forgotten who she is.

Seele has trouble connecting to Creation and the things thereof. She has trouble making an impact that is not fundamentally founded on destruction. She is alienated from this place she once called home.

But despite that, there are things in this world that she treasures, that bring her peace and joy; things she will fight for, even as the rest of the world recoils from her touch.
Treasures
Bronya Zaychik
Seele principally wields the art of Flore to guide, protect, and empower Bronya. It is by virtue of this connection that Bronya sometimes finds that glowing blue butterflies light her way; or that she can hear Seele's voice and feel her presence in times of distress.
Lore 4 - Outrider
Ninuan is, definitionally, not a place where Seele is at home. Seele has no home in either world or void. But despite the scorn of the Silvered Land, she has learned to survive there: learned to see in a land where there is no light; learned to navigate in a realm where distance and location are fluid; learned how to find those rare cast-off pieces of Creation that litter the void - and how to claim them for her own use.
Sphere - λ-Waylets
The creation of the world was not a particularly clean process. Nor, for that matter, is Ninuan's ongoing war against the world.

Both have left debris behind. Bits and pieces of broken worlds, adrift in the Nothing. Sundered from Creation and not part of Ninuan, they are abandoned, forgotten, and alone.

These inverse waylets are Seele's Sphere; and it is from these bubbles of almost-reality in the Lands Beyond Creation that she claims her Arcana.
Arcana - Altered States of λ-Being
Seele collects these bubbles wholesale, and can wield them as tools: overlaying a bubble's nature over the local area and causing its properties to displace or append to those of the local reality.
The Bubble of Chains
This bubble belongs more to Veliona than Seele. It is a universe of binding chains; a world made of endless links of red-stained iron. Veliona can impose it into the world to, well, bind things in chains.
The Bubble of the Border Mythic
This appears to be a lost fragment of the Border Mythic - that strange enchantment upon the Earth that hides the miraculous behind a veil of gross physicality. Seele can wrap an object in this bubble, allowing it to act on both sides of the Border Mythic at once - effectively, causing the object to act on metaphors and concepts directly.
Wyrd 1 - Wyrdling
Wyrd is the Dream-of-Being. It is the self beneath the self, the true face of the story Ninuan is using the Strategist to tell. It is a measure of how deeply a Strategist understands their own fate and nature.

This is complicated in Seele's case by the fact that she is a unique existence that no one really knows how to deal with. She clearly has some measure of a Strategist's Wyrd - of their fated, fatal entanglement with both world and void - but she's also estranged from it; rejected by the Silvered Land where it should hail and welcome her as one of its lost princesses.

Seele's Wyrd is tangled and confused, even to the dustcloaked sages of the Not.
Sanctuary - The Diary-Room
Strategists are, normally, poisoned by Creation and driven back into the Beyond. Seele is too, but she's also poisoned by Ninuan and driven out of the Silvered Land.

Her Sanctuary is … somewhere. It's not really clear where it could be, not when both Is and Is Not reject her.

But there is such a place.

A dark room, with a chessboard-patterned floor and a blue diary and a vase of white flowers. It's small. It's cramped, especially if Veliona manifests.

But it is Seele's place. It does not reject her. It is safe. It is here where she retreats when everything becomes too much. It is here where she reconstitutes herself when she ultimately dissolves under the scorn of world and void.
Destruction - The Decohering Wyrd
Seele's power of Destruction confuses the nature of things. They become less real - or more real, for λ-things of the void. It becomes difficult to pinpoint where they are, what they are doing, or how they can possibly have an impact on the world. At its worst, her Destruction causes something to dissolve into a strange smear of probabilities across infinite timelines, utterly incapable of affecting any of them.
Ability 2 - Casual
Seele is … not amazing at doing things. At living. At engaging with the world in a fashion not predicated on terrible destructive magics of the endless void.

She can manage. She can accomplish tasks, she can take care of herself. But she's not good at it. She lacks the ability to focus - to be present, to pay attention, to not drift off or get distracted. Focus is effortful, for her. It's not precisely hard, but it's not something she can do without trying - without having to explicitly make an effort.
Gifts
Calcifying Gifts
Unblemished Guise
It is extremely difficult to identify Seele as an Excrucian: to the extent that she can be identified at all, she reads - even to miraculous senses - as a daughter of Creation. Unless she goes and does something obviously Ninuanni, there's no sign that she has anything at all to do with the void.

You can even see her eyes (n.b. normally, the eyes of an Excrucian appear as windows into night and falling stars, for reasons)! It's weird.
(Lesser Misdirection; Action; Local; One Trick; Rare)
Gifts of Fugue
Superposit
Seele can draw upon her Infection to avoid other forms of unpleasantness. In response to a supernatural attack, Seele can invoke this power: to anyone who can directly perceive such things, she ceases to be a discrete existence and instead becomes a distributed cloud of potentialities.

She appears to suffer from the effect - but as soon as she is no longer being observed, she collapses back into congruence with this timeline, discarding the alternate possibility in which she was harmed.
(The Cliffhanger Rite; Action; Self Only; Complete; Rare)

If someone - for some reason - really needed to play Seele in a game of Glitch right this second? Well, um, here you go?

 

[Baughn]

You wipe your forehead. You feel awful, and not just because of the heat. Maybe it's a fever...

"Unless we find a way to fix it."

"Seeley..." She sighs, shaking her head. "I'm sorry."

"Unless I can *make* the generators work," you say. "We don't have a lot of time. You like it when I'm confident, right?"

"It's not..."

"We need power. We need a lot of it, if we're going to have any chance at all in Hell."

"It's not that, Seeley! I just don't want you to get hurt," she says, turning around and stepping up close to you. "I don't want anything to happen to you." She hugs you. Her grip is every bit as hard as the usual chains, but it's not unpleasant. Not in the usual way. It's warm, and comforting, and very human.

She's worried about you. It's a nice feeling.

"I'll be fine," you say. "I know what I'm doing."

She pulls back and looks at you, her eyes expressing more than words ever could. Then, she shakes her head.

"...this place is a mess," she says. "It's one thing what you already did. The fire extinguisher was still working, you just needed to–" She grimaces. "Your language doesn't have the words. To bring out its essential nature, I guess. These generators are different– they aren't generators anymore. If you try to change that, I'm scared of what it'll do to you. Us. I don't want you to get hurt. Or me, even."

She turns away. "And I'm scared of what'll happen if you don't, but there's at least three more reactors in range. We've got time, so let's go look at the next."

She grabs your hand. You feel a buzz, like static electricity.

"Well, come on! Stop lagging!" Veliona tugs at your arm. "Let's go."

"Alright, let's do it," you say. Giving up is almost a relief.

Veliona nods.

Before you leave the generator room, you pick up the 'fire extinguisher' and store it... somewhere. You figure Tesla might have a use for it, and even if not, it'd be enjoyable to see what she thinks about it.

ooOOoo

You run down the hallways of the ship, Veliona pulling you along. A thought crosses your mind, and you speak without thinking. "How come you're still holding my hand?"

"Am I?" Veliona asks. "Oh. Right. That's so I don't get lost. You... wouldn't want me to get lost, would you?"

Her voice is quiet, nervous. You give her hand a squeeze, and you feel her squeeze back with more force than you thought was appropriate. It's worrying, but– you'll worry about it later. For now, you have a reactor to start. ...well, you have generators to start. ...if you actually had to start the reactors, you think you'd be better off going with another plan: Find the bridge, get the signal flags, contact the nearest friendly Anti-Entropy ship. Inside the quantum sea. Yeah.

You walk in silence for a while, gently pulling Veliona along when she starts lagging. It isn't a long walk. Back to the main engineering space, then to the reactor directly across from the first one, crossing underneath Tesla's science experiment in the process. You guess it did save everyone's lives, so you should be a little nicer to her, but then it's mostly her fault that you don't get along.

When you walk through the door to this reactor, a small armada of robots march out in an orderly fashion. They look at you curiously for a moment as you assess the situation. Six tiny, cute robots, two medium-sized and two big ones. The little ones are about a foot tall, cylindrical, with a dome shaped lid on top with a single eye, and wheels underneath to get around. The medium ones are bigger, they have more of a box shape structure to them, a few little arms, and small legs. They all have the same red color scheme, with yellow accents here and there to show functional purposes.

"Tesla? Are these yours?" you ask, hoping there's a microphone.

"Yeah! The E-333's are the friendly type, I made them for search and rescue! They're, uh..." You step past the robots, looking into the generator room. "Don't bother, this one's a total loss."

You look inside, and for a few seconds you can't tell what you're seeing. The entire room is filled with a bright, pulsating light, blue and white. It slowly fades away, as your brain begins to comprehend the massive thing in front of you.

It's a meteor the size of a small island. The distorted perspective hurts your eyes.

"These guys can't open doors, so I'd forgotten all about them until I heard your voice. I've no idea how they got in here, but– well, you can see. The generators might still be in there. Somewhere." She manages to sound both frustrated and intrigued. "Regardless, this isn't the reactor I sent you to. You're here, and the power's not on, so I take it something went wrong."

That's not a question, it's just a statement. 'Something had better be wrong', you imagine her saying. 'Or else.'

You feel a bit bad. "Yeah. There was a fire. I put it out, but the generators are ruined."

"Ah." She pauses. "Ah. Well. Could be worse. Could be worse than this, even."

A lot worse than an island-sized meteor?

...your imagination conjures up half a dozen options.

"Go to reactor #4," Tesla says. "It's just twenty meters away, towards the bow. Second floor. And hurry! We've got ten minutes at most."

"Got it," you say.

You hurry along the hallway towards the #4 reactor, which should be on the upper deck. Not floor. Not level. Deck.

You peer through a few of the metal doors on the way, but there's nothing that looks useful. Just lockers and crew quarters.

Most of the halls are empty or featureless. A few have blast-doors blocking off damaged sections of the ship. There's a lot less smoke here than in the first reactor, but the smell of ozone lingers in your nostrils.

The #4 reactor is just like the others– layout-wise, that is. There's no fire, or army or robots, or impossibly large meteor. Just rows and rows of computer consoles and a few diesel generators, all of them mercifully intact. The only difference is the corpse of a young man in a lab coat slumped over a console.

Your eyes focus on that, and you approach cautiously, keeping an eye out for anything that might be dangerous, but there's nothing. The body, though, it just... ends. Like the person was cut neatly in half at the torso. The lower body is missing. Not messily, but like it's just... like it never... it's hard to find the words for it. Like the poor crewman never had a lower half at all, even though the lack of it has killed him.

"I feel sorry for him," Vel says. She sounds scared. And sad.

"Me too," you say. "Come on, let's check the generators."

You take a deep breath and walk past the corpse, approaching the generator room. The door is open.

You step inside and are nearly overwhelmed by the smell, which is eye-wateringly strong. It's a familiar smell, one you've had burned into your memory for years now.

"Oh dear God... it's awful..." Vel says. Her voice is trembling. "Like... burning flesh and hair."

You take another deep breath through your mouth and look around. There are three generators in here, presumably back-up to the main ones in the reactor. They're off, mercifully intact, but that's not the most salient aspect of the room. The three... piles are. They're off to the left, in a corner of the room. They look like heaps of burning flesh and tangled, charred hair. You can make out arms and legs in between the burning masses, but it's not just what's left of the dead crew. It's much, much more than that.

You slip a little closer to reality, to confirm. The corpses don't go away, and they don't come back to life, but it feels like they should, like they're not... corpses. The concepts here are those of living people, no matter what's on the floor. You can't reconcile the two.

"This... this is awful," you say, softly.

"It's like they're still alive," Vel says, just as quietly. "But they're not."

This doesn't make the slightest sense, not by any logic you know. These were just people doing their jobs, put into a bad situation. They're... they're not demons. They're not monsters. They're not anything anymore, not even corpses. You don't know what happened here, but it's not...

"We have a job to do," Vel says.

You look at Vel. Her face is... determined, but also scared. She walks forward purposefully, and it takes everything in you to stop yourself from running back to the entrance.

"We need to turn on the generators," Vel says. "Come on."

You follow her. The feeling of wrongness here is... present, and it's not getting any better. You can feel your... hair, slicked back? Starting to droop down, and your skin's starting to feel clammy. You've got goosebumps all over your skin, and the hair on your arms is standing up straight.

"This isn't right," you say, softly.

"Come on," Vel says. "It just smells bad, that's all, it's not actually doing anything."

"Yeah," you say, softly.

You look at the first pile as you walk past it. It's... it's not even dead, it's just shredded. There are several limbs sticking out, and you can see some of them twitching. There's a pair of eyes that stare blankly into the air, but the rest of the face is gone. They don't focus on you. You're so glad they don't focus on you.

"Step one: Control power switch to 'on'," Vel says, reading off the side of the generator. She hits a switch, then nods. "Step two: Turn on the fuel valve. Seele?"

You look up. There's a pipe is sticking out of the ceiling labelled 'fuel', a small wheel attached to the side. You grab it with both hands and start to turn. It's quite stiff, and you have to put your foot against the wall to get any sort of leverage.

After a few seconds, you start to hear the low rumble of an engine turning over. The wheel starts to turn more and more easily in your hands, and after thirty seconds or so the engine is running. A few warning lights flash on the machine, and a small screen lights up.

"Alright," Vel says. "That's one. Let's do the two others as well."

One of them works. The other... you try to start it, twice, but it just spits out a nasty black fluid and hisses at you.

"It's dead," Vel says. She grabs you by the wrist, glaring at the machine. "Come on. It's dead."

"No killing the broken generator," you tell her mildly. She snorts, smiles despite herself, and lets go of your wrist.

About a minute into this, you hear the generators rev up. Good, you think; Tesla must be doing her job. A few seconds after *that*, you hear the thump of heavy machinery from deeper in the reactor, and the rising whine of revivifying machinery.

This just leaves the corpses.

= = =

It must be October.
[ ] Report back to Tesla.
- [ ] And hand her the fire extinguisher.
[ ] Examine the, um, corpses.
[ ] Put the corpses out of their mystery.
[ ] Attempt to revive the corpses.
[ ] Write-in

 

[Baughn]

This just leaves the corpses, and you don't think you want to deal with them right now. You've had enough of this horrid place for one day.

The two of you head back out of the reactor, and you should be heading back to Tesla, but... You just lean against the wall, sliding down to the ground and curling up, trying not to think.

Vel sits down next to you, putting an arm around your shoulder. She doesn't say anything, but you can definitely feel her concern.

"I'm glad I've got you here," you tell her. She smiles.

"So am I," she replies softly.

Vel is the only person you completely trust. Her and Bronya, of course Bronya, but Bronya's not here right now and you're not sure when you'll see her again. You lean into Vel, and she hugs you tightly, letting you cry into her shoulder.

"It's OK," she whispers to you. "You did good. We all did good. We're alive, aren't we? We'll all make it out of this."

You've made friends with most of the other valkyries. They even seem to respect you, but Vel is the only one you trust. Vel is the only one who really understands what you're going through. Vel is the only one you'd trust with your life.

Vel is also a demon from beyond the stars, sent here to consume your world and others.

...maybe.

Truthfully, you never made your mind up about that. There's been enough madness that you almost think a superpowered evil side is *required* for all valkyries, but Velonia isn't... well, she isn't evil. She's snarky, and protective to a fault, and awkward, and sometimes a living nightmare to anyone you'd describe as an enemy, but she's not... well, she's not all that demonic.

You've seen the way she acts around monsters, and how the monsters react to her. The way her eyes glow when she's angry. The way she can make herself seem more monstrous, all sharp teeth and red eyes and tentacles of blackest night. The way she can make you feel fear, and pain, just by looking at you.

You've seen all of that, but you've also seen her kindness. She supported you at the lowest point of your life, after Bronya sacrificed herself for you. She's making sure you're safe even now, as she holds you in her arms. Mei called her a 'tsundere' when you described her, but she's not...

Vel is a lot of things, but maybe... just maybe... she isn't what you thought she was.

Well, but...

Mei wasn't wrong.

Mei never is wrong.

You've seen what Vel has done to people. She tortured Sin for hurting Bronya, making you feel sad, and she's hardly ever *nice*. Even when she helps you, it's more paternalistic than sisterly. It's only lately, only since you woke up in the dream, that she's been more...

Human?

Is that the word you're looking for?

Vel isn't human. She introduced herself as something else, and so she can't be. Right?

You sigh, leaning into her warmth. Her arms wrap around you, and you feel a faint wetness in your hair.

"Vel..." You murmur. "I want to trust you... I really do."

You reach up, touching her face. Her eyes widen, then she lets out a content sigh as you gently touch her cheek.

Vel, answer me... please. Tell me the truth.

She doesn't, of course. She doesn't read your mind.

You sigh, lying against her as you stare up at the ceiling. The engineering space is brighter now, the big arc-lamps in the ceiling flickering to life one at a time. You hear heavy thuds, off in the distance; you think that's the other reactors firing up. It's that sort of sound. Tesla's giant science experiment in the centre of the room isn't doing much, but you see a few lights flickering on and off, every now and then.

The dull metal walls around you are clean, but a light patina of dust lays undisturbed. The floors are swept clean of any cobwebs or dust, though, and there's a general sense of being well-used. Of course there is. The Hyperion is... how many years old, now?

You're not sure that question has a proper answer anymore. Not for you, and not for the ship.

Sighing, you sit up and lean against the cold metal wall. You can feel the faint thrum of the ship's engines through it, a kind of percussive pounding that's transmitted through into your shoulderblades. On, and off, and on again. You aren't going anywhere -- there's nowhere to go -- but Tesla must be testing the engines. Or maybe the captain is, if she has contact with the bridge. You wonder who's acting as captain now, exactly, but...

It's not very important.

"Let's get back to Tesla," you tell Vel. You let out a long sigh. You don't move, though. You just stay there, slumped against the wall. "We need to see if we can help her fix this..." You wave upwards. "If we do that, then maybe things'll go back to... normal, I guess?"

You laugh at yourself. Of course, you find the situation to be a bit funny. It's so absurd! You should be doing something about it. You let out a groan as you push yourself up to stand.

"What's so funny?" Vel asks, curious.

"Nothing," you say, shaking your head. "Just the situation we're in. Come on..."

You head back to Tesla, with Veliona trailing behind you.

ooOOoo

"Oh, you're back," the red-haired woman says as you enter the room. "I need to calibrate this thing." She points to a large machine, with a large metal disk that seems to be struggling to contain a blue ball of energy. "Hold this thing still, would you?"

"Uh..." You look at the metal disk, wondering if you should touch it. The woman notices your discomfort.

"It's perfectly safe," she says. "There's a protective field here that will prevent you from getting hurt."

You nod, slowly stepping towards the disk. You place your hands on the mettle, and as promised, nothing happens.

"Okay," she says. "Now just hold still, this might tingle a bit."

You nod once again, and brace yourself. The red-haired woman begins to mess with a few of the dials on the machine, and the blue ball of energy on the disk brightens considerably. It begins to tingle, as you feel a static-like sensation run through your body. You grit your teeth, trying not to move a muscle. You know, somehow, that moving will cause something very bad to happen.

"This might take a while," the woman says, fussing with the machine. "We need to calibrate this just right. Hold still..."

It's five whole minutes before she tells you to let go. You slowly drop your arms to your side, working the feeling back into them.

"That's all?" you ask.

"Yes," she sighs. "That's got the balancer stabilized. We should be good for, oh, three or four days before it burns out now, plenty of time... probably." She draws the word out, and you can tell she doesn't believe her own words.

"Okay," you say. "What now?"

"Now?" She looks around the room, then sits down on a chair. "We wait. I'm going to get some sleep, I've been up for long enough that I'm nearly hallucinating."

She says that authoritatively, with the air of a woman who's done it before. You know, because you've seen her do it. She opens up a leather satchel she's been carrying, pulling out some old, worn blankets and a pillow. She makes herself a bed on the floor, and lies down on it.

"I'll be up in a few hours. Try not to touch anything. You should get some sleep yourself, or if you want to do something useful, you could, I dunno, check what's going on with the rest of the ship. Or with that meteor. Or I dunno. Whatever." Her eyes shut tightly the second she hit the ground, and she's slurring the words. "Turn off the light before yo- hnggn. Before you leave."

= = =

It's been a long day. Longer for Tesla than you, actually.
[ ] End the day here, bunk with Tesla
[ ] Tell Tesla first
- [ ] About the fire extinguisher
- [ ] About the corpses
[ ] Go looking for others
[ ] Go looking at the meteor
[ ] Write-in

While write-ins are always welcome, they're extra welcome here. You can pick more than one option, but if you decide to go to sleep then I'd like a few ideas for what to do afterwards. Otherwise the next update will be super short; you're not getting another dream adventure. Too easy to get lost.