Enchorus

by GMBlackjack

Penultimate (Keywii_Cookies55)

Creek watched in disdain as the villain known as Polymarchus walked her friends away to do his bidding. The bracers around her wrists felt heavy, but she had more important things on her mind.

Mite, her best friend and her team’s monovocal nanobot, lay on the floor in a depowered state. Vriska, her drinking buddy and the muscle, was powerless in fear. Rarity, her team’s healer and surrogate mother, had no way to ever find them. And finally Twilence, the team leader, Prophet, and all around source of direction in all their lives, was about to have her ka powers abused for something petty and meaningless.

And then there was Creek, due to her choice to become a diplomat early in her life, her aged body, and her overall desire to do as little actual fighting as possible, she was being used as leverage… again. She inspected the bracer on her right wrist, the cold steel, the magically affixed nature of the lock, and the uniform colour. It seemed silly to think there was a way to manually remove them, but she’d saved herself from worse things.

“How long are you going to make me keep waiting?” She asked, looking up from her bracer, no one in the room answered her because no-

“I was talking to you, Keywii.” She raised an eyebrow.

Oh.

Okay, well I choose that time to materialize in the room with her. I choose to appear near her as my persona, a tall red-haired woman with a flowing black coat, a matching black pork pie hat with an Ace of diamonds card sticking out of the brim, and glasses.

“I was hoping to provide a bit more context for the scene first, but if you’re going to be impatient.” I replied with a smirk.

Creek wasn’t smiling though, “The context is that I’m a hostage, my friends have been taken away, and my Prophet is writing a story of me.”

“Right…” I lose my smirk and take a seat on the ground beside her. “Sorry.”

She slowly lowers herself to the floor and we share a moment of silence, I don’t quite know what to say, but she breaks the awkwardness for me.

“You know,” she started, “I’ve been thinking about what to say to you in one way or another for most of my life.”

“To yell at me, right? I get that a lot from my characters.”

“No,” she replied, catching my attention, “No, it was never about you. It was about what I wanted.” Creek stared into my eyes with a masked expression, it was hard to tell what she was thinking.

I averted my eyes slightly, “You don’t think that’s kind of selfish?”

“You’ll forgive this old woman for being a little selfish, I feel like I’ve earned it.”

I wanted to disagree, I’d always believed that being selfless was probably the right way to do things, always think of others. Be, if not courteous, at least civil. But I’d heard a lot of elderly people have this sort of mentality, it makes sense I guess, when you’ve lived a full life you’ve earned a little right to think more about yourself. I found myself wondering what I’ll be like at that age.

“So...” I began, but paused when I saw her gaze again, studying me. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

Creek thought about that for a moment. “If I’m being honest, nothing in particular, just idle chatter.”

“Alright.” I looked back at Creek, realizing likely for the first time that she made me uncomfortable to be around. I’d done a lot of bad by her and I felt pretty guilty.

“You shouldn’t feel too bad,” she spoke, looking to the side, “I wouldn’t say you haven’t redeemed yourself.”

I was about to respond but then something occurred to me, and as it did I saw probably the first smile on her face since sitting with her. “Wait... how-“

“How do I know what you’re describing?” Creek chuckled lightly, “I was wondering how long it’d take you to draw attention to it. I suppose you could say I’ve learned a few things during my adventures. Twilights tend to be excellent teachers if you engage their love of knowledge.”

I looked up at her, this time through the discomfort was gone; in its place was a friendly smile, and a relaxed posture. “So you’re 4^th wall Aware?”

“Ka sensitive, yes. GM uses... hmm.” Creek paused in her place, unimpressed with her own word-choice. She looked she looked unapprovingly at the editor before smiling again and looking back at me. “Our friend, GM uses these words for a reason, let’s respect them, hmm?”

I chuckled lightly at both her comment and her pause, “Okay, sorry, I just always thought ‘ka’ sounded kind of stupid.” Rolling my eyes, I leaned back, supporting my weight with my hands on the ground behind me. “So, you can see ka, can you influence it?”

She shook her head lightly, “No, I never felt the need to learn. Changing the story changes too much, seeing and hearing always suited me better.”

“Like your job during the Influence.” Creek nodded in response, “How come you never... manifested, I guess, this ability during your journal entries or when Blackjack wrote for you?”

She seemed to roll the question around in her mouth a bit, tasting it to see if she liked it enough to answer me. “I wouldn’t have started learning how to see the story before your most recent publication of my journal. I thought about it back then, when I was young and insecure, thought about Twilence and Vriska both. However I hadn’t recognized the desire to read between the lines until my late 40s. As for our friend the Sweeper, G. M. Blackjack, he likely hadn’t thought about it or didn’t want me to be more than my role in the flashback he wrote.”

I laughed at her sweeper call back; that brought me back, “Alright, fair play. So you’re just aware of this entire story I’ve written and choose to ignore it?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, I can’t see everything. I’m no Pinkie. What I can do is see description as it applies to any scene I’m in as it happens. There’s some use of relativity that’s of note. For example, at this moment I’m fully aware of the Twilence sections of chapter 115 of Song of the Spheres. However, despite taking place during that story, I’m unaware of everything yet to be written in this story.”

She smiled as she explained, likely enjoying getting to talk so freely and casually even considering the context of the situation. “Alright, that makes sense,” I said.

Creek took on a face of contemplation for a moment and I found myself noticing the grace and ease of the action. Looking back on how I wrote for her, the nervous wreck, the nosy bookworm, the introspective but cautious member of Twilence’s team. I enjoyed seeing how far she’d come along, to be a confident women late into her life that knows who she is, where she’s been, and is ready to meet her fate. Then I frowned, remembering why I was there in the first place.

She smiled kindly though, “You sure do enjoy reminding your readers of the negatives, hmm? How about we forget for a short while and simply enjoy talking.”

I sighed, but agreed, regretting bringing her death back up. She started chuckling, likely due to the very way I just described myself, and I nodded, ready to just continue our little chat. “I can do that.”

“We’ll see,” She chuckled some more, before calming down and looking ahead, “Tell me, if you could meet your own maker, what would you ask them?”

“I...” I paused, not really having an answer. “I can’t say I think about it much. I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that I don’t really have a maker, I just sort of exist and nothing is planned or makes sense.”

“Humour an old woman.”

“Alright, well,” I rolled my eyes around in my head, considering the question, “Assuming I had a maker, and assuming I ever met them, I guess... well, I guess I’d ask them why.” I looked into her curious eyes, “Why make me creative? Why make my lack drive? Why make me a late 20-something into my little pony? Why make me care about what I care about? Just an infinite series of questions that begin with the word ‘why’.”

“Would you like any answer you received, even simple ones like ‘I didn’t think about it, I just wanted to’?”

I didn’t answer right away, she had a point. “I mean, I guess not. I think I’d want my problems to have meaning behind them. Like, say I get cancer, I’d probably want there to be more than ‘lol, I wanted you to be sick for a while’ and then just leave it at that.”

“You despise meaningless suffering.”

“Well, yeah. Why should people have to put up with evil or pain if it’s for no reason? You see it all the time in real like. People get sick, get hurt, die, they’re hungry, suffering, struggling, and most of the time no one can see it. If you have depression your first instinct is always to hide it because our culture vilifies sadness and puts happiness on a giant pedestal. People everywhere assume that there’s something wrong with them if they don’t look the same as everyone else. If there was never a reason for all that suffering, it’d make it all worthless. And people would hurt for nothing.”

Creek patiently waiting for me to catch my breath after my short rant, before continuing to question me, “What if you ended up learning that your autism was given to you for no other reason than your Prophet wanted you confused all the time?”

“I... I guess I’d be alright with that. I mean, I’d be upset that it was that simple, sure, it’s something that affects most of my life, but I think I’d be fine with that.”

“Mmm...” Creek nodded at my answers, studying them. I found myself wishing I knew what she was thinking. The adage was true it seemed, characters really did write themselves. “Thank you for answering my questions.”

I smiled, laughing softly, “It’s not like I mind, I love talking, I’m more sorry I went off on a depression tangent for a second there.”

“Ironic,” She laughed in return before going quiet in thought. Her expression shifted to something new, it wasn’t quite concern or worry, or even really unease, just... off. “It’s almost time to say goodbye.”

I leaned forward, shifting my legs below me, “You don’t look happy about it, are you... not ready to die?”

Creek shook her head, “I wouldn’t say that, I’ve been ready for some time now, and when I meet my fate, I’ll smile knowing I played my part. I’m more wondering about your friends.” At my confused face she held up her braced hand telling me to hold my questions. “They’ve come to like me, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like them back. How will they handle a final farewell before they end up killing me? Can they ever forgive themselves? Will they like what you’re doing now? Can they or you consider this story a worthy send off? I’d like if they felt some closure after all this time.”

“I know you won’t find out what any of them say, but, well I mean I can ask them their thoughts for you.”

The smile on her face was so bright it brought tears to my eyes. “Thank you.” Creek then looked to the door Polymarchus would be walking through any minute and I suddenly found myself out of time.

“I have so much more I want to say to you, can’t I just pause time and talk to you forever?”

But Creek shook her head, her smile returning to her face. “No, it wouldn’t be right to delay. And we both know you’d never run out of questions for me.”

Before I realized it, I found myself wrapping my arms around her shoulders. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”

“Don’t be,” she spoke into my ear before I pulled away and looked into her gentle eyes, “If not for you I wouldn’t be here, and I count that for something.” I stood up and looked down at her, offering to help her up, but she refused, “Take care of yourself, Jesse.”

I will, thank you for everything, Creek.

Goodbye.

Comments

[Voltaje]

Welp, don't know who is Jesse, does anyone know?

[runtrivena]

10011313
Jesse is Keywii is Jesse.
Or, to be less oblique, Jesse is Creek's Prophet, the writer and first-person narrator of this story, who has taken a few moments to sneak in between existing stories and say goodbye.

I'm sorry, Creek. We didn't know it was you until it was too late, and we didn't know we could save you. Or rather, that the characters we guided could. Unlike us, they never knew you, and only even met Twilence briefly, but I like to think they would have tried if they had realised it was an option. They're still out there, somewhere.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I'm definitely missing a layer of this, not being an Influencer myself, but I can definitely empathize with the surreality of talking to one of your characters. From what little I know of the people involved, a nicely heartfelt goodbye.

[Keywii_Cookies55]

10013597

During the Influence instead of just commenting I roleplayed as a series of characters all part of this company, the one I did the longest was Creek, a nervous woman whom acted as a much-needed role of empathy in the face of Twilience losing her ability to care about others due to obtaining more and more meta knowledge. It was a crazy time. Eventually when the Influence ended, Creek left her job and entered the multiverse to be with Twilence and her crew. on the SOTS Space Battles forum I had done 'Creek's Journal Entries' which became an earlier chapter of Enchorus which detailed an introspective look into her musings.

Early on into Sots there was an RPG the people of the SOTS discord took part in where we played various characters that eventually fought and killed the final boss, a villain we were unaware had stolen Creek's body, thus we were the ones that killed her, one of such being myself. This was an afterstory though for what eventually became one of the 8 stories of SOTS Chapter 115 simply entitled Twilence.

There's other smaller bits and pieces, but that's most of the story. The truth is though I enjoyed her as a character, she wasn't the happiest or the best written, but she had heart and was a good person. I always felt it a shame that she was killed by us without ever really getting to say goodbye, so that's what Penultimate is about. The plan was my avatar would sit down with her, chat for a while, she'd say her goodbyes and it'd be cathartic for everyone that followed along her adventure the entire time. That didn't pan out though as while i wrote her she apparently didn't want to say goodbye and instead just talk for a little bit.

You as an outsider wouldn't get anything from this story, no, it's almost entirely for me and the other Influencers/RPG players. I hope they got something out of it.