notyourutopian | Open Action in the morning, the audio later in the day.

[Action]

It was an hour or so after sunrise when Eleanor arrived at the battle dome, arriving early enough that she was able to get the room she liked, a bit out of the way from through traffic. She had been working on her combat program for months, but a few weeks ago she had finally finished it. When she turned it on, the air shimmered and shifted until a large room formed, tinted red with the glow of emergency lights. There were large windows in several walls, and beyond them sat the hard, dark blue of the deep ocean.

Persephone prison. She had tried other places, but it came back to this. Her mother's stronghold, the last place she had been in Rapture before she had found herself in Luceti. She knew some of the details were wrong, but she had tried to get them as close as possible, with the various tunnels heading into other sections of the prison, the various small water leaks that were collecting on the floor faster than the aging pump system could keep up.

She set her bag down by the door, then fished from it the right glove of her diving suit, with the long, unpleasant syringe spear attached to it. She had opted not to wear the whole suit, dressed in a black ankle length skirt with slits up the side and a white blouse...honestly, she hadn't put the suit on in weeks and weeks. But the spear was the weapon she was most familiar with. And the one she would be using once she was finally sent back here.

She pressed several buttons on the control panel and then made her way out to the center of the room, her boots sloshing in the ankel deep water. At first, nothing happened, the only sound that of the water draining into the room, and Eleanor's soft breathing as she waited. This was all randomized, and she could feel the tension building inside her.

Suddenly there was a shout of gibberish from above, and she twisted around to see a man in a bloody rabbit mask standing on the upper walkway, his clothing torn and tattered. He was brandishing a baseball bat above his head and his beady eyes were whirling behind his mask. A splicer.

As if drawn by his insane shouting, more of them appeared from the surrounding hallways. A woman in a fox mask, her dress in tattered, shaking a tommygun. A man in an almost pristine suit juggling fire. And more behind them.

Round one, Eleanor thought, bracing herself as the group charged towards her.

Eleanor had never been trained to fight. What she knew, she had learned by watching her Father and the splicers battling it out in Rapture. So there was nothing elegant about it, no beautiful martial arts motions or carefully planned moves. Just a kind of brutal, heartless efficiency. The man with the bat jumped down towards her, and Eleanor caught him with her telekinesis and swung him around, ignoring his screams as she slammed him into a pillar with a wet, thick cracking sound. The woman with the gun stopped a few feet away, lifting her barrel and opening fire, but Eleanor was gone, leaving a swirl energy as she teleported behind her opponent.

She plunged the syringe into the woman's back, lifting her off the ground and dragging her along, crying and groaning, just in time to use her as a living shield against a pair of fireballs thrown by the third man. The woman's cries turned to screams, and Eleanor shook her off the syringe, tossing her aside like a rag doll before she charged the third man.

This fight took longer, he could teleport akin to the way she could, but eventually he stopped in the wrong spot and she caught him up with her power, driving him down under the water until he stopped moving.

More came, armed with their makeshift weapons, and she moved through them like a tiny reaper, leaving a stream of smoking, bleeding, dying bodies in her wake. The last man fell to a fireball that jumped from Eleanor's fingers and caught him in the chest, and he went up like a candle before collapsing face down on the floor.

And then, silence again. "Three minute pause," the program declared, and Eleanor let herself slump to the floor to catch her breath.

[Audio - evening]

[Eleanor doesn't address the journals often, really. She talks to other people, but usually isn't so social as to invite the attention herself. But something has been bothering her for a while, she eventually she flips the book open, careful not to turn the video on.]

Do you all ever wonder how they know the things they do, here? [She starts talking after a moment, deciding not to bother with the pleasantries.] I mean, how do they know what the right thing to inflict on us is? The things we want, or the things that bother us so deeply...they always seem to know.

When we were in that strange university, my mother called me. She was part of the illusion, but it was her. Her voice, her tone, her...personality. But she has never been here. Or at Christmas, people received things they wanted...sometimes things they didn't even know they wanted!

It just...I don't know. Do you think they can just read everything we're thinking?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah. Of course, I just wouldn't experiment on people. [She sighs.]

I'd hate to imagine everything those files would say about me.

Like, I totally hear you! [She sort of does. She doesn't know anything about Eleanor, after all.] Really, I bet everyone's files would probably have stuff they didn't want getting out.

Do you think there's like, some total creepo in the Malnosso whose whole job is to just put these weird files together all the time? They probably spend all day just like, poking around and digging up information, just to use it for experiments later. Ugh, that's so gross...

[As absolutely horrible as the idea is, Pilouette almost never skips an opportunity to gossip about the Malnosso as a whole.]

...Probably. [Eleanor is a bit more jaded about these things than most people.]

Where I come from, there was a scientist who's entire reason to exist was to find ways to turn little girls into monsters.

So a guy looking through our secrets is hardly a stretch.

[Well, that's...horrible. It's like just when she thinks she's heard the most horrible things possible, she learns more horrible things and with everything she's seen already, she has no reason not to believe it.]

Y-Yeah, I guess that wouldn't be much of a stretch. [After a brief moment, she drops her voice down to a half-whisper. She's not even sure why, but it just feels like she should.] ...But there's really someone who just...turns girls into monsters where you're from? But like...why?

[Eleanor just sighs softly.]

It is a long, complicated, unpleasant story.

O-Oh...

[Pilouette takes that to mean that she probably shouldn't ask more about it. ]

Um! But you know, you've got me thinking...if they're really like, gathering up all this information on everyone like we think they are, they must be putting more thought into all these experiments than I thought. [Never mind that scientists are supposed to put a lot of thought into these things.] But I wonder what the point of bugging everyone with such super specific stuff could be...?

Well. If they're trying to gain information about us, they would have to cast a wide net in order to ensure they find it. So they'd have to use as many tools as they could.

[Hmm.]

How did you think they were planning their experiments?

...To be honest, I, um, kind of thought they just thought of a thing and then did like, whatever. I mean, some of these shifts are so weird that I can't think of what they could even learn from them.

[Now that she thinks about it, it sounds a little silly, but...still.]

L-Like that time they wiped everyone's memories and gave us cards with fake stuff on them. And they've turned me into a dog like, twice. What's that about, huh? Like, what kind of results are they even looking for here?

I have no idea. Maybe they were hoping to see how people adapt to being animals, to use in some type of weapons program.

[It just popped into her head, like that. From the depths of memories she tried so very hard to ignore.]

Most of the things they do to us seem as though they might be applicable to some type of warfare.

You think so?

[Pilouette is quiet for a moment as she thinks that over.]

That...That makes a lot of sense. I mean, if they're at war with those cultists, it only makes sense that they would do testing for...war and weapons and stuff. It's pretty scary to think they could be doing that kind of testing on people. [Especially considering that some of them are kids or just regular people, many of whom shouldn't be anywhere near a battlefield. However, many of them do end up on the battlefield whether they belong there or not.] I guess it wouldn't surprise me if it's true...

People will do almost anything if they think it will benefit them. [Bitter Eleanor is bitter.]

If anything, what they do here is at least understandable, even if it's awful. They are fighting a war for their very survival.

That's true...if it's to save lives, I guess it's not so bad. After all, the cultists just want us all dead. I guess being experimented on is probably the better option...

[Especially after the last draft. Though she still has her suspicions, if it's for a greater good, then what else can they do?]

But what you said about people doing almost anything to help themselves...like, I don't think all that many people are like that. [She would like to say she could count herself among those that aren't like that, but...well, she's done plenty of things to try and get what she wanted. She can't help but feel a bit guilty when she thinks about it.]

Being experimented on is never the better option. [There's an edge to Eleanor's voice.] I don't mean I approve of it. I just said I understand why they do it.

[Understanding is not the same thing to her at all.]

I'd like to think you're right about people. [But she doesn't.]

[When she hears that tone in Eleanor's voice, she's a tiny bit startled. Maybe it's some kind of sore spot or something...]

It's not like I like it or whatever, either, you know? It's just that...even if they're using us for experiments, it's better to be alive, right? I mean once you're dead, like, dead dead, you can't really do much of anything, right?

A-And I know I'm right about people! ...I think. [Because she's never really sure about anything.] I mean, I've been helped by people even when I couldn't do anything for them. [Though, it could be that she's just been more fortunate than some.]

Maybe. [Eleanor wasn't entirely sure about the better than dead thing.]

Who knows, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe people are better than I think they are. I hope you're right. People here seem to be. Most of the time.

Really, I guess I can understand like, being kind of...apprehensive about people, especially in a place like this. [After all with the kind of people who show up here, Pilouette wonders about people sometimes, too.] But I think that because we're in a place like this, we have and try and trust people when we can, you know?

[A little too optimistic perhaps, but...well, that's just how she is.]

Open Action in the morning, the audio later in the day.

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