towerofanimus | [OPEN] I feel this burning inside, a feeling no one should know...

Characters: Eleanor Lamb and YOU!
Setting: Floor 15, the workshop.
Format: Starting with action, but I'll match your preference.
Summary: It's time to put all that compound intellect to use and brush up some borrowed skills to give her suit some much needed maintenance. So behold, Eleanor Lamb is actually looking like a human and not some weird monster out of a horror game.
Warnings: Hopefully none? Will add as necessary, though.

[The suit needs to be mended or patched in places where monster claws have worn it. Her harpoon and her ADAM needle need a little sharpening and some good hits with a hammer to straighten them after they've been crooked slightly. And of course, she needs to check the airtight seals on her helmet.

Eleanor, unfortunately, only owns another set of clothes that aren't her suit: a rather girlish white dress. Two of them, in fact. But she's been using one of them as a nightgown, the other relegated to the empty depths of her trunk. Without any other option - and no, working around naked was obviously not an option - she moves about the workshop in such clothes, barefoot and wearing no protective equipment, as she goes about giving her suit proper maintenance. She's slightly distracted, busy rummaging her own mind to find the right set of memories or skills to complete the task at hand, but of course... she's hardly defenseless even without the suit. Absorbed by her task, she doesn't notice when she begins half-humming, half-reciting a familiar poem/song:]

In the House of upside-down, cellars top floor, Attic's ground. In the House of upside down, laughing cries and smiles frown. In the house of upside-down, found is lost and lost is found...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Mmm, I wouldn't know." She looks back at her hands, moving confidently around. "I didn't... exactly learn this, the conventional way."

[A look that betrayed his curiosity.] How did you learn it?

[She smiles.]

I never did, but someone, somewhere did, and now I have their memories.

You have their memories? [He looked confused.] How?

ADAM.

[Eleanor paused a moment to give him a look, before she continued with her movements, unhurried.]

The substance known as ADAM was used to genetically alter and "better" people from my world, but as a side effect... as one of many, many side effects, it keeps an imprint of the memory and personality of whoever is infused with it.

[She shrugged again, running a finger along the sharp edge of her harpoon. Then she points to the extraction needle placed on the other end of the workbench.]

See that? You extract ADAM from corpses with it, and then it is recycled. That used to be my job, when I was Little. But then at some point they put a lot of ADAM into me, and I inherited all the memories and skills in it.

[ADAM? Shion blinked but frowned when she began to explain. Something that altered others, this... energy? magic? It sounded more like technology than magic... Children gathering from corpses...

The horror of it hit Shion and he stared at her in horror, and sympathy... This was worse than anything he had witnessed even in the West Town.

Then this... substance had been put into her and she had the memories of those who were dead...]

Oh...

I'm sorry.

[She laughs a little self-deprecatingly, pausing her work.]

That probably didn't make much sense at all, did it?

No sorry... it is just that there was nothing like that where I come from... I think I understand...

[He hoped he didn't... that what he had thought was wrong, that it was less... wrong...]

I'm sorry.

[She looks a little sheepish.]

I'm... Perhaps I said too much? I am not entirely sure what is acceptable or not.

[Her frames of reference are all... screwed but most agree on "as much as you're comfortable with", and she's comfortable with a lot.]

No... you don't have to apologise... I wasn't expecting that but I don't think it's not acceptable... [Shion doesn't have many reference points either but he figures that he only finds this so strange and wrong because he knows so little. He's probably reacting all wrong, he tries to stop shaking, concentrate on the conversation.]

You may speak of whatever you wish... I will try my best to understand...

Oh. Well...

[She pauses for a moment, trying to think straight.]

Perhaps... perhaps you could ask and I'll do my best to answer?

Oh erm... [He thought back over what she had said, he really hadn't understood any of it...] So what exactly is ADAM?

Ah, a substance produced by a particular brand of seaslug people from my city found. It has... unique properties, allowing extensive DNA manipulation.

[She shrugged, back to the original point.]

It also keeps imprints of people's memories and personalities, when it passes from one person to the next, so... there's where the memories come from.

Oh... [Shion nodded, still not fully understanding but accepting.] And you have absorbed a lot of this substance, so you have memories that are not your own...

That's precisely it. I have the memories of those who used it before me. It's not entirely unusual, I believe.

That's really interesting, I have never heard of anything like it before. It must feel weird, to have other peoples memories in your head.

They can be ignored.

[Sometimes, she does not say, smiling wryly.]

And they have their uses, so it's not all bad. It's just something one needs to get used to, in the end.

I guess so... [He wondered if it was something you could truly get used to or ignore.] So there are many things you know how to do without learning them?