#why look

[confinedinthisflesh]

if i see one more person say this is a nightmarish video i'm going to scream

[cynicaldesire]

Split - Protomen - Part ??

Shrieks entered into his audio processes, no filename or directory visible. He dared to shift his eyes around, hoping to find a source, a direction, but found only Winona sitting on a shut down power module for the neighborhood. Her brow lifted, curious, over tired but encouraging eyes. The screams quieted for a moment.

He lifted his hand toward the targets, a set of helmets from dead robots from the city. They ranged from Enforcer to random cleaner bots. Sobs started up, threatened to leak liquid from his optical sockets.

Memories, then. Reminders of who he had been prior. Reminders of what happened to the humans under Wily’s management. Rule. Protoman clenched his jaw and forced his processes to target the helmet furthest from Winona. Just a simple cashier robot, smooth helmet with the barest of humanoid features. They didn’t need them, but it made it easier to subjugate the city if they resembled humans. Wily had done studies. He ranted frequently about the results, about how humans were so fragile and disgusting, but he also knew that to keep his hands on the wheel, as he called it, necessity demanded it.

And he had never been able to improve on Light’s designs.

He swallowed – unnecessary – and stiffened his arm. The targeting system had completed all possible calculations ages ago, but hesitation stayed his finger.

“You okay?” Winona shifted on the faded green metal box.

Protoman took a slow breath and lowered his arm. A number of emotions whirled inside him, constricting his chest. He looked to her, barely recovered from rebuilding him, but still dedicated to helping him. He  couldn’t stand the idea of lying to her, but fear and shame caught in his throat.

“Yeah, just getting used to these new processes.” He loaded a smile onto his lips, only too late did he realize the program did not extend to the rest of his facial features.

She offered him a smile. “You can take it slow. I know Wily is breathing down our necks for your return, but you’re your own person now. You can make the choice.”

Protoman furrowed his brow. His own person? “I refuse to leave your mother-“

Winona raised a hand. “I know, I know. And I appreciate that. We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

The furrow deepened. “Why would you-“

She laughed once, genuine, and made to speak. The humor bubbled up again and she laughed harder, enough to cover the bottom half of her face with a hand.

Protoman tilted his head, watched her. It reminded him of someone else, someone he knew once, in two different times. At first, a beautiful spot of freshness in a dank city, then again, a warm embrace for a lonely revolutionary. Though, the memories mixed a bit, confused themselves.

The ghost, he decided. The ghost of a man that died fighting in his helmet, only to be reborn through it. He took a deep breath – unnecessary – and holstered the weapon to free up his hand. Not that he needed to, he reminded himself, he had two hands.

“Sorry.” Winona took a slow breath, recovered from her mirth. “It’s a bastardization? I guess. Of a saying. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it’ and ‘Burning bridges’. Something my mom used to say. Habit she picked up from her friends.”

Protoman nodded absently. “Cynde… still has a lot to offer. And Wily has a lot to pay for. I’d hate for you to miss out on more time with her because of me.”

Winona turned her head slightly, brow furrowed. “’Cindy’?”

His eyes closed. She always hated when I called her that. The ghost again. “Yeah. Your mother.”

Her lips pressed into a line. “Cynthia.”

He nodded again. “Yeah, sorry.”

She tensed and motioned back to the building. “I’m getting a little hungry. Mind if I…?”

He shook his head. “I should get back to practicing.”

A short nod led her hesitantly back toward the apartment building. Protoman didn’t bother to watch her leave.

Light had done his best to explain to them what he had done. But none of them could fully grasp what it meant, how it would manifest. Protoman looked to his hands. Both hands, identical, barely creased. He curled them and unfurled them a few times. The creases barely remained.

The memories of Cynthia felt foreign and familiar. The memories of his actions felt familiar and wrong. He could only process them through his own programming, but Joe’s memories brought with them feelings he shouldn’t have. He loved Cynthia, not as a mother or a friend, but as more. But his processes knew he didn’t, struggling to categorize her as something else. Not a lover, not a wife, not a mother. What then?

And where did that leave his feelings for Winona? He wanted to classify her as daughter, based on his – Joe’s – memories, and yet…

“How’s it going out here?” The crunch of rubble accompanied Light’s question.

Protoman looked up to his father – co-conspirator?

Light paused. “Not well, then.”

Protoman’s brow furrowed. “What do you know, old man?”

White hair and beard nodded as Light drew closer. “You’re a prototype. But… I see the conflict in your eyes.”

Said eyes rolled as Protoman turned away. “They’re just cameras. You should know-“

“You’re so much more than parts, Proto.”

His jaw clenched. “You made sure of that.”

He felt anger, raw and unfocused. He knew Light intended to compliment him, to remind him that he wasn’t just a machine, but it felt disingenuous. Light stood as the catalyst for both the inception of machines and the rise of Wily. In his attempts to save humanity from themselves, he had only provided the tools for man to destroy themselves. He had been the cause of his death, a death that only served Wily. Both times.

Protoman closed his eyes tightly. Both? The Tower. The explosion. The fall. Not him though. The knife?

He lifted a hand to his head. The… knife? It glittered in the dark as it cut all the connections that kept him functional. Wielded by a younger Light as he protected a young man.

“I thought I could change things. I was wrong.” He paused to shove his hands in his pockets. “So I made something I thought could change things. I made you. But I…” He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.”

Protoman felt a pain enter one of his background processes. “You killed me.” A constant sharp pain flared in a sensor behind his temple.

The old man sagged, looked very much his age. “And I have no excuse for that. I sent you to liberate a people that refused-“

Protoman felt a different anger, a rage not his own. A different program. “You killed me.”

Grey eyes narrowed. “Joe?”

His head shook, not his own will. Something else woke from buried deep in his processes. “I was ordered to do those things. I knew no better then.” Protoman felt non-malicious code overwrite his primary functions. He felt himself suspended, a background task. Still conscious, but obviously not in control.

Wrinkles formed over the old man’s face. “Winona told me what you did for Wily.”

“I know better now.” Protoman’s voice pitch-shifted, adjusted to the new owner. “I know better now that the things Master Wily ordered me to do were wrong. I regret so much. But I experience a pain, an anger, when I remember what you did. That you murdered me.”

Light turned his head slightly, wary. “You’re… Not Protoman or Joe, are you?” He lifted his chin. “Do you even remember your name?”

Protoman felt his head shake. “You never had the chance. Wily simply called me Sniper.”

Light narrowed his eyes. “Ah. The lapdog. The one that killed Emily and countless others.”

He would’ve gasped, would’ve flinched, had he been in control. An involuntary process automated by Winona’s new programming. This new entity, Sniper, simply dropped his head in a single nod. “I knew no better.”

Light’s hands drew into tight fists. “But you do now, is that it.”

Sniper nodded again. “I understand the necessity of my end. I understand I performed terrible things. So why do I still feel anger that you killed me?”

“You have sapience now. Something you did not experience before. You’re trying to understand it. It’s never the same for more than one person. You might be frustrated that you were killed at all, or that it was by my hand.” His shoulders lifted. “I have enough blood on my hands as it is.”

Sniper lifted Protoman’s chin. “You do?”

A sniffle escaped the older man. “It was with your completion that Wily was able to take over the City.” He raised a hand to rub at his nose. “It is through you that I have sinned. Everything you have done is my fault, my responsibility.

“I’m sorry I killed you. If that’s what you want to hear. But you had to be stopped. And… maybe I wanted revenge. For Emily.” His voice seemed thready, a observation Protoman noted.

Sniper lifted his hands. “Emily… Stanton. Collateral. Wily brought me for protection, to help, to distract if you showered up, but then the woman arrived. And when she fought back, he directed me to kill her.”

Protoman watched corrupted images play from an archaic data storage. Colors warped, like a negative, blurry, compressed poorly. The red hair, stained redder with blood. A letter rested on the floor by her corpse. A young man stood in an open doorway, keys in hand. A rooftop peppered with shards of glass.

Light lifted his brow. “You remember that?”

Sniper nodded. “Barely. My systems have been corrupted from constant attempts to copy and overwrite. She was important to you.”

Another sniffle. “Very.” Though his voice sounded stronger, defiant.

More images cycled through. These resembled microfilm, high-contrast black-and-white photos. They moved almost too quickly for him to make sense of them. Though they looked similar to Wily’s underground dungeon, to the laboratories in the Tower and the new compound. A few stood out as obvious newspaper articles, even a tombstone.

Sniper dropped his gaze. “I see. There are no… apologies I can make.” Light’s jaw clenched. “I understand.”

Light took a step forward. “Where is Proto?”

Sniper tapped his head. “Here. Unharmed.”

The old man took another step forward. “Do you intend to stay?”

Sniper shook his head. “No. I am… not fit to survive.”

Light stiffened. “Where will you go?”

Sniper shrugged. “I would return to my own sectors. You will never hear from me again.”

Light hesitated. “My assistant could find you a new body.”

“No.” Protoman felt fear, shame bleed into his suspended processes. “I don’t deserve continued operation. But I fear if I shut down my own processes, it will harm the new programs. I deserve no less than isolation.”

Light closed his hand. “If you ever come to a different conclusion, I’m sure my successor will be happy to help. She… is far more forgiving than I.”

Sniper nodded. “I am very sorry, Father.”

Protoman felt the entity diminish, close processes, the pain in his temple returned for a brief moment. He looked to his hands, flexed them a few times of his own volition, and looked to Light.

“Sniper?” Light shifted nervously.

“Gone.” Protoman dropped his hands with a sigh, readjusting his vocal pitch and tone.

The older man visibly relaxed, startling smaller than during his conversation with Sniper. “Fuck.”

A compulsion closed the distance between them so Protoman could place a hand on his creator’s shoulder. The old man placed his hand on Protoman’s, patted it a couple times. No words exchanged as he took a few moments to collect himself.

“I should… tell Winona about it. Make sure we scour your code for anything else.” Light moved to turn around.

Protoman held tight to his shoulder. “I know what it’s like.” No processes commandeered his speech. “I know what it’s like to follow orders without any kind of care given to what they are or who they hurt.”

Grey eyes turned back to him.

Protoman dropped his hand. “That’s why you needed me to have humanity, isn’t it?”

Light nodded.

The robot pressed his lips together. “Let’s get upstairs. We have much to discuss.”

[thestarsare-shiningbrighter-blog]

Whimsy Comes in Threes || Kit and Ella

The day was in-ex-orable, petites. That was precisely the word. It poured - the heavens of the earth opened above and down came the deluge, rain running in gorges and rivers and waterfalls down the trunks of trees, over leaves, soaking into the earth and dripping in quick three-four time from every single twig, branch and cranny of the woods. And here we are then, here we are - stuck in the woods without boots or a hat and father will be most put out, quite absolutely.

The boots - fine boots though they were - had gone the way that most boots are apt to go if one takes it into ones mind that perhaps one should be hurrying to catch up with ones dog and the boots get stuck in the mud and then voila you lose the damn things in the dam’ river you were wading through because they are traitors and cowards. And pos-i-tive-ly dreadful footwear. 

His hat had fallen prey to the wind an hour hence. 

All in all, it was a day to laugh at. Christopher called out once again for his blasted dog, the wench was laughing at him somewhere, he just knew it. “Matrona! Would you come here! I am not playing a game, woman!” He wiped his hair back from his forehead and blinked away the water from his eyes, looking up into the belly of the storm. Taranis bellowed his wrath somewhere up in the darkness, and more rain poured down. He was drenched from his jerkin to his feet - and he must look a royal sight, or rather a non-royal sight because, my dear, princes simply do not wander the woods in this manner. Didn’t you know?

“Matrona!” He turned and walked to the nearest tree, leaning on the trunk and trying to get enough shelter to be able to see clearly. “Matrona - where have you gone to?”

cinders-and-glass-princess

[kharrisdawndancer]

[gearsofchange]

Remember

It means nothing. And everything.

[grabablanket-blog]

Why look?

I know this has happened at least once to someone. I want someone right now, to talk to, to cuddle with, to hug and all that. I'm torturing myself, listening to Christmas music, talking to this guy who is adorable! I'm pretty sure I don't like him, it's just how he talks is cute haha. So anyways, I tell myself why look for someone who will love you when there is already who have loved you even before you were born. I try and try to tell myself that but it just feels different. Sigh. Well I'm sure this will past but I just want to let it out :)

Take Care and God Bless Dani.