MissingNo
Inactive Member
((OOC: First things first. I want to make a note here that I don't like using other people's characters without permission. I wouldn't like to come back after an absence to find someone had been playing Tweak or Winter or any of my other characters...after a while, players can be very protective of their characters and what happens to them, which is very understandable.
You all know there's a "but..." coming next, don't you?
Well, here it is: BUT...I have been getting the feeling that it's time for a change for Tweak. And a major one, at that. Talks with Moon, and my own feelings on what's going on with her, seem to say that she needs to develop beyond who she is every time she resets. However, the problem has always been "How do you fix a glitch in a bio-weapon that destroys itself when you mess with it?" Sure, Tweak could probably eventually figure out a solution, but there would be much angst involved and I wanted to stay away from getting too far into the meaning of life from a neko's point of view (for now). That left pretty much one option.
Only one person both knew about Tweak, her condition, and was in any sort of position to help. And only one person had the nearly boundless optimism that was required to keep Tweak from falling into the inky emo blackness of her doubts.
So, Della, if you come back, I really, really hope you are happy with how I wrote Dream in this one-shot. I tried to imitate your writing style and stay true to Dream's character, and I hope I succeeded.
I'll let you all judge for yourselves and I'd welcome any feedback, especially concerning characterization of Dream and any technical issues with what I am doing for Tweak (If there are any serious flaws in my idea, please PM me before the next episode so I can fix them...thanks!). Here we go...))
---
"Good morning?"
A bandanna-clad, green-haired head poked into the storage-room-turned-shrine. Dark red eyes took in the organized clutter of various mechanical and electronic junk decorating it, a portion of the brain behind those eyes cataloging each piece as the rogue nekowalkyrie known as Tweak located the technology shrine's keeper.
Dream was seated in a cross-legged position before a massive statue of the Free State's logo, her back to the doorway. The druidess' robes splayed out over the floor around her with several lead wires running over and under the cloth, some connected to Dream with others just laying there as she stared with a spaced expression at the statue.
Constructed out of scrap metal and set in a seemingly random place in the room, the logo was the highly-recognizable moon-within-a-gear shape, but as a statue it was far from being simply that. As Tweak slowly stepped inside the doorway, which snapped shut behind her, she noticed that the logo vanished into a mess of shapes, then reappeared to disappear again as she moved around it. Then, as she continued examining it, she noticed that the seeming chaos actually hid dozens of symbols in the twisted metal, depending on the angle the statue was viewed, with everything coalescing into the Free State symbol at regular intervals before dissolving into the metal mess again. And, as with all Freespacer decor, the 'art' was a chromatic warzone, as if an egg-dying kit had been given to kids who had gone without their calming pills for a month and instead given free access to placebos. And, unlike the physical arrangement of the statue, the coloring seemed to truly have no rhyme or reason.
(Cookies to everyone who already knew that placebos are usually sugar pills!)
Tweak stopped a few steps away from Dream, unsure whether she was expected or not and hesitant to ask. With her routine altered by Kess' absence, Tweak had taken to sleeping with her journal in her arms, hugging it like a favorite stuffed animal in order to have it be the first thing she saw upon waking. (Of course, she had no idea that this was any different than usual.) Lately, ever since the Yu-Cranker episode, the first note after the one explaining her memory condition had been telling her to visit Dream at the first possible opportunity. And so she had, daily, either on her time off or after her shift.
The azure-haired druidess blinked a few times as if returning to her body. This wasn't far from the truth, actually, considering that the Polysentience could be considered an electronic version of astral projection, but that was beside the point. Since the Cirrus highly limited broadcasts to places beyond the station, the Freespacers aboard Cirrus had managed to arrange a miniature version of the PolySent on a local scale for all Freespacers to join and feel a little more at home. It was small, yes, and certainly didn't have the full range of opinions and access to information that the REAL PolySent had, but it was a taste of the familiar and still allowed the sharing of mental resources that the real one did. And that was what Dream had been doing when Tweak arrived, sharing her brainpower while she rested. But, now that she was awake, Dream broke into a wide grin as she noticed the neko standing nervously behind her.
"TWEAK!" In a multi-hued-and-blue blur, the druidess flew at her fellow 'Spacer and landed critical hit tackle-hug. "I thought you forgot! Well, I suppose you HAVE forgotten, but...you came! This is very, VERY good, because we're about to fix your problem once and for ALL!" The Freespacer released Tweak, who was still recovering from the unexpected hug, and began moving around the room, gathering items and setting them on what had possibly been intended as a work table, but was already covered in miscellaneous items so that it just appeared to be one of the many piles of scrap scattered around. But Dream found places for her gathered items all the same. "Yep, gonna fix it so you don't need to lug around that book or worry about it getting lost or ruined, won't that be GREAT?"
Allowing herself a small smile, the 'Spacer neko watched Dream. It was hard to not smile, not with the bundle of energy fairly radiating excitement in front of her. But even so, the mention of "fixing" her sparked an alarm bell. "Fix...me? Fix what?" The moment the words left, she closed her eyes and shook her head before looking at Dream again. "You mean my memory?"
"Of COURSE, what else? We've only been workin' on this for the last three weeks--" Dream paused, her hands stopping their sorting through a tangle of colored wires as she looked at Tweak with a sad smile for a couple seconds. Then she sighed dramatically and nodded. "Back when we first met, I knew without one doubt that we were supposed to do something importantly nice to each other somehow. And not those simple kindnesses that we're supposed'ta give everyone in the universe, but a double-good sort of kindness-doing that no one else could do for us." She pulled out a cable that was as thick as her index finger and as long as she was tall, popping it out of the tangle and tossing it on the floor behind her. "Took a bit for me to figure out what I needed to do for you, but ya know what? I found it!" Twirling back around to grin at Tweak, Dream held up a small device like a long-lost artifact or a first-place trophy.
Tweak watched Dream and listened to the small 'Spacer's excited speech. Glancing down at the book on her leg, the neko rested her hand on its cover. There had been schematics, sketches, in some of the recent entries, but she hadn't been able to decode the notes that had gone with them yet, not as quickly as the other entries anyway. This had gotten her curious: What was so important that she'd encoded it so thoroughly? She looked up at Dream at the blue-haired one's exclamation. "What do you mean?"
"We-e-e-e-e-ll-l-l-l..." Dream brought the device back down to look at it closer, skipping over to the workbench to set it with the other gathered pieces. "When we were coming over on the Resplendent Herald of the Star-Winged Smile, we got to know each other a bit." Dream's smile turned thoughtful. "I decided then that I'd help you in whatever way I could. And I know that, if you could remember, you would do the same for me...actually, even though you can't remember, you STILL do the same for me! No more talking now, access file one-six-nine-seven-five-three-dash-zero-six-six-five..."
Tweak frowned as her mind seemed to do the requested task on autopilot. Suddenly information started scrolling by and her eyes widened.
It was a user manual. For something called a "nekowalkyrie". As she read it, though, she realized that it was for her.
Dream watched as the adopted 'Spacer went through the same series of emotions as the other days since the discovery, though with minor variations. No two days had been exactly the same, which fascinated Dream on other levels while saddening her seeing her friend living like this. A bit of hope was still there, though, and speaking of...
"What am I?" Tweak looked at Dream after about a minute. "What was that?"
Dream put her hand on Tweak's. "You're a neko. An artificially created life-form built as a slave by the Yamataian war machine to fight for them. But you've escaped them, so don't worry about that now." The druidess smiled. "It was kinda by mistake, but we found that your brain is a bit like a computer multi-booting several operating systems in it. So it looks like your memory is broken, but there are things separate from your normal memory that are still intact. Hardwired information, like how to talk and fight, for example."
Tweak's brow furrowed as she listened. Dream wandered over to the table where the items were and started assembling them as she continued the explanation.
"For some reason or another you've blocked most of that intact data from being consciously accessed. Your...what'd the manual call it? The part of you that helps you fight, the Tactical Operating System, it runs separately from your mind and has access to everything, but it only shows you what you ask it to or what it deems you need to know about what's around you. And that happened to not include you, I guess.
"Anyway, once we found this hardwired data, we found the manual, and with that we figured out that fixing you the permanent way was going to be impossible. Your body was made to prevent that, to the point that it'd kill you in a way that you couldn't be brought back." Dream let out a short sigh and returned to Tweak carrying a small box. "BUT! Fear not, there was a solution to be found, and I promised you that we would indeed be the finders! Ta-DAAAA!"
Tweak looked down at the device Dream handed her. It was a case about the size of her book and able to fit in the journal's holder on her belt, but made of what her mind identified as recycled milled durandium and had a vacuum-sealed construction. From one edge there was an all-purpose datajack with a line already attached. "What is it?"
"It's your new memory!" Dream was fairly jumping with excitement. "You'll never have to forget details ever again! The problem was simply this: You live a day, go to sleep, and everything's wiped. Your brain can't move on, so...it's like writing a word with your finger in iron filings spread over a table. Then put a magnet under that table and the word is erased. This device downloads a copy of your memories before they can be erased and you can access them whenever you need to! Go on, try it! Oh, just let me--"
She took the cable from Tweak's hand and spun the neko around to plug the jack into the port at the back of Tweak's neck. Tweak's eyes widened in surprise, then glossed over as the initialization took over her attention.
The druidess and the engineer had been careful not to make the program intrusive. The manual had told them that intrusion of any kind would set off the neko body's anti-tampering systems, destroying the intruder or the body. Both agreed that neither option was good, so when the box was plugged in it let itself be identified by the TOS and the neko's natural device manager and then waited for Tweak to access it. From there, Tweak would have to mentally copy data from her mind into the box and access memories written on her own. The box (They were going to have to find a name for this device, Tweak thought) was just there, a passive device.
To test it, Dream had Tweak copy over the memories she had of that day up until then. It was an odd process for the neko, but she found a way to do it. In a way, it was like recording in her journal, except she could store emotional memory, video, and innumerable other data-set types, as well as text notes.
Accessing the memory was also odd, and Dream told Tweak that it had caused her to go into a trance-like state. Tweak agreed, noticing that she felt lost in the memory as if it were happening. "I guess I shouldn't try remembering things in a battle, huh?"
"Or maybe you can," Dream mused. "You can make things appear in your vision, right? Make it like a screen. You won't have the emotional content, but you'll be able to see what you need."
Tweak looked at Dream, then smiled. "You're right!" The happy smile softened as she thought about what was happening here. This was going to change her life, change everything. No one else would know it, but she and Dream would. Pulling her friend closer, Tweak gave Dream a hug. "Thank you so much, Dream," she whispered.
You all know there's a "but..." coming next, don't you?
Well, here it is: BUT...I have been getting the feeling that it's time for a change for Tweak. And a major one, at that. Talks with Moon, and my own feelings on what's going on with her, seem to say that she needs to develop beyond who she is every time she resets. However, the problem has always been "How do you fix a glitch in a bio-weapon that destroys itself when you mess with it?" Sure, Tweak could probably eventually figure out a solution, but there would be much angst involved and I wanted to stay away from getting too far into the meaning of life from a neko's point of view (for now). That left pretty much one option.
Only one person both knew about Tweak, her condition, and was in any sort of position to help. And only one person had the nearly boundless optimism that was required to keep Tweak from falling into the inky emo blackness of her doubts.
So, Della, if you come back, I really, really hope you are happy with how I wrote Dream in this one-shot. I tried to imitate your writing style and stay true to Dream's character, and I hope I succeeded.
I'll let you all judge for yourselves and I'd welcome any feedback, especially concerning characterization of Dream and any technical issues with what I am doing for Tweak (If there are any serious flaws in my idea, please PM me before the next episode so I can fix them...thanks!). Here we go...))
---
"Good morning?"
A bandanna-clad, green-haired head poked into the storage-room-turned-shrine. Dark red eyes took in the organized clutter of various mechanical and electronic junk decorating it, a portion of the brain behind those eyes cataloging each piece as the rogue nekowalkyrie known as Tweak located the technology shrine's keeper.
Dream was seated in a cross-legged position before a massive statue of the Free State's logo, her back to the doorway. The druidess' robes splayed out over the floor around her with several lead wires running over and under the cloth, some connected to Dream with others just laying there as she stared with a spaced expression at the statue.
Constructed out of scrap metal and set in a seemingly random place in the room, the logo was the highly-recognizable moon-within-a-gear shape, but as a statue it was far from being simply that. As Tweak slowly stepped inside the doorway, which snapped shut behind her, she noticed that the logo vanished into a mess of shapes, then reappeared to disappear again as she moved around it. Then, as she continued examining it, she noticed that the seeming chaos actually hid dozens of symbols in the twisted metal, depending on the angle the statue was viewed, with everything coalescing into the Free State symbol at regular intervals before dissolving into the metal mess again. And, as with all Freespacer decor, the 'art' was a chromatic warzone, as if an egg-dying kit had been given to kids who had gone without their calming pills for a month and instead given free access to placebos. And, unlike the physical arrangement of the statue, the coloring seemed to truly have no rhyme or reason.
(Cookies to everyone who already knew that placebos are usually sugar pills!)
Tweak stopped a few steps away from Dream, unsure whether she was expected or not and hesitant to ask. With her routine altered by Kess' absence, Tweak had taken to sleeping with her journal in her arms, hugging it like a favorite stuffed animal in order to have it be the first thing she saw upon waking. (Of course, she had no idea that this was any different than usual.) Lately, ever since the Yu-Cranker episode, the first note after the one explaining her memory condition had been telling her to visit Dream at the first possible opportunity. And so she had, daily, either on her time off or after her shift.
The azure-haired druidess blinked a few times as if returning to her body. This wasn't far from the truth, actually, considering that the Polysentience could be considered an electronic version of astral projection, but that was beside the point. Since the Cirrus highly limited broadcasts to places beyond the station, the Freespacers aboard Cirrus had managed to arrange a miniature version of the PolySent on a local scale for all Freespacers to join and feel a little more at home. It was small, yes, and certainly didn't have the full range of opinions and access to information that the REAL PolySent had, but it was a taste of the familiar and still allowed the sharing of mental resources that the real one did. And that was what Dream had been doing when Tweak arrived, sharing her brainpower while she rested. But, now that she was awake, Dream broke into a wide grin as she noticed the neko standing nervously behind her.
"TWEAK!" In a multi-hued-and-blue blur, the druidess flew at her fellow 'Spacer and landed critical hit tackle-hug. "I thought you forgot! Well, I suppose you HAVE forgotten, but...you came! This is very, VERY good, because we're about to fix your problem once and for ALL!" The Freespacer released Tweak, who was still recovering from the unexpected hug, and began moving around the room, gathering items and setting them on what had possibly been intended as a work table, but was already covered in miscellaneous items so that it just appeared to be one of the many piles of scrap scattered around. But Dream found places for her gathered items all the same. "Yep, gonna fix it so you don't need to lug around that book or worry about it getting lost or ruined, won't that be GREAT?"
Allowing herself a small smile, the 'Spacer neko watched Dream. It was hard to not smile, not with the bundle of energy fairly radiating excitement in front of her. But even so, the mention of "fixing" her sparked an alarm bell. "Fix...me? Fix what?" The moment the words left, she closed her eyes and shook her head before looking at Dream again. "You mean my memory?"
"Of COURSE, what else? We've only been workin' on this for the last three weeks--" Dream paused, her hands stopping their sorting through a tangle of colored wires as she looked at Tweak with a sad smile for a couple seconds. Then she sighed dramatically and nodded. "Back when we first met, I knew without one doubt that we were supposed to do something importantly nice to each other somehow. And not those simple kindnesses that we're supposed'ta give everyone in the universe, but a double-good sort of kindness-doing that no one else could do for us." She pulled out a cable that was as thick as her index finger and as long as she was tall, popping it out of the tangle and tossing it on the floor behind her. "Took a bit for me to figure out what I needed to do for you, but ya know what? I found it!" Twirling back around to grin at Tweak, Dream held up a small device like a long-lost artifact or a first-place trophy.
Tweak watched Dream and listened to the small 'Spacer's excited speech. Glancing down at the book on her leg, the neko rested her hand on its cover. There had been schematics, sketches, in some of the recent entries, but she hadn't been able to decode the notes that had gone with them yet, not as quickly as the other entries anyway. This had gotten her curious: What was so important that she'd encoded it so thoroughly? She looked up at Dream at the blue-haired one's exclamation. "What do you mean?"
"We-e-e-e-e-ll-l-l-l..." Dream brought the device back down to look at it closer, skipping over to the workbench to set it with the other gathered pieces. "When we were coming over on the Resplendent Herald of the Star-Winged Smile, we got to know each other a bit." Dream's smile turned thoughtful. "I decided then that I'd help you in whatever way I could. And I know that, if you could remember, you would do the same for me...actually, even though you can't remember, you STILL do the same for me! No more talking now, access file one-six-nine-seven-five-three-dash-zero-six-six-five..."
Tweak frowned as her mind seemed to do the requested task on autopilot. Suddenly information started scrolling by and her eyes widened.
It was a user manual. For something called a "nekowalkyrie". As she read it, though, she realized that it was for her.
Dream watched as the adopted 'Spacer went through the same series of emotions as the other days since the discovery, though with minor variations. No two days had been exactly the same, which fascinated Dream on other levels while saddening her seeing her friend living like this. A bit of hope was still there, though, and speaking of...
"What am I?" Tweak looked at Dream after about a minute. "What was that?"
Dream put her hand on Tweak's. "You're a neko. An artificially created life-form built as a slave by the Yamataian war machine to fight for them. But you've escaped them, so don't worry about that now." The druidess smiled. "It was kinda by mistake, but we found that your brain is a bit like a computer multi-booting several operating systems in it. So it looks like your memory is broken, but there are things separate from your normal memory that are still intact. Hardwired information, like how to talk and fight, for example."
Tweak's brow furrowed as she listened. Dream wandered over to the table where the items were and started assembling them as she continued the explanation.
"For some reason or another you've blocked most of that intact data from being consciously accessed. Your...what'd the manual call it? The part of you that helps you fight, the Tactical Operating System, it runs separately from your mind and has access to everything, but it only shows you what you ask it to or what it deems you need to know about what's around you. And that happened to not include you, I guess.
"Anyway, once we found this hardwired data, we found the manual, and with that we figured out that fixing you the permanent way was going to be impossible. Your body was made to prevent that, to the point that it'd kill you in a way that you couldn't be brought back." Dream let out a short sigh and returned to Tweak carrying a small box. "BUT! Fear not, there was a solution to be found, and I promised you that we would indeed be the finders! Ta-DAAAA!"
Tweak looked down at the device Dream handed her. It was a case about the size of her book and able to fit in the journal's holder on her belt, but made of what her mind identified as recycled milled durandium and had a vacuum-sealed construction. From one edge there was an all-purpose datajack with a line already attached. "What is it?"
"It's your new memory!" Dream was fairly jumping with excitement. "You'll never have to forget details ever again! The problem was simply this: You live a day, go to sleep, and everything's wiped. Your brain can't move on, so...it's like writing a word with your finger in iron filings spread over a table. Then put a magnet under that table and the word is erased. This device downloads a copy of your memories before they can be erased and you can access them whenever you need to! Go on, try it! Oh, just let me--"
She took the cable from Tweak's hand and spun the neko around to plug the jack into the port at the back of Tweak's neck. Tweak's eyes widened in surprise, then glossed over as the initialization took over her attention.
The druidess and the engineer had been careful not to make the program intrusive. The manual had told them that intrusion of any kind would set off the neko body's anti-tampering systems, destroying the intruder or the body. Both agreed that neither option was good, so when the box was plugged in it let itself be identified by the TOS and the neko's natural device manager and then waited for Tweak to access it. From there, Tweak would have to mentally copy data from her mind into the box and access memories written on her own. The box (They were going to have to find a name for this device, Tweak thought) was just there, a passive device.
To test it, Dream had Tweak copy over the memories she had of that day up until then. It was an odd process for the neko, but she found a way to do it. In a way, it was like recording in her journal, except she could store emotional memory, video, and innumerable other data-set types, as well as text notes.
Accessing the memory was also odd, and Dream told Tweak that it had caused her to go into a trance-like state. Tweak agreed, noticing that she felt lost in the memory as if it were happening. "I guess I shouldn't try remembering things in a battle, huh?"
"Or maybe you can," Dream mused. "You can make things appear in your vision, right? Make it like a screen. You won't have the emotional content, but you'll be able to see what you need."
Tweak looked at Dream, then smiled. "You're right!" The happy smile softened as she thought about what was happening here. This was going to change her life, change everything. No one else would know it, but she and Dream would. Pulling her friend closer, Tweak gave Dream a hug. "Thank you so much, Dream," she whispered.