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

[thebigsister]

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...

Comments

[thebigsister]

[All the cliches, all of them. They pulse in the memories and the words she borrows from others.]

It does offer quite the illusion of respite, does it not?

[fallen_stage]

[Kuja tilts his head to acknowlege her point as he polishes his curaiss.]

Especially when the alternative is death.

[thebigsister]

[Eleanor's smile turns rather sharp.]

I've never died, so I wouldn't know. But even that has been taken from us, here. The freedom to cease.

[fallen_stage]

[Kuja's quiet for a moment. The freedom to cease? Yes, he's heard of people who claim death can be a relief, but Kuja can't imagine a pain that would make losing his soul to the cycle to strip the memories from bearable.]

I almost did. I'm afraid I find the idea of constant revival to a blessing, but each to their own.

[thebigsister]

That's just the thing, though, isn't it?

[Eleanor sighs.]

What to do when the choice itself is gone.

[fallen_stage]

The choice...

[Kuja's hands still as he stares to middle distance, thinking.]

I never saw death as desirable, so I never thought of it as something one would choose. But if one wants it, and is forced to live, I can only imagine how awful that might me.

[thebigsister]

I've never cared much for death myself, unless I happen to be dealing it. Or revoking it.

[Eleanor sighs.]

But it's just another way in which we are chained. Life and Death are nothing else but choices, in the end.

[fallen_stage]

No, I suppose they -

[Hold up a moment.]

Revoke death? You mean here in the Tower, correct?

[thebigsister]

No.

[Eleanor shook her head.]

I had to ensure my Father's survival, even after his death.

[It's complicated, alright.]

[fallen_stage]

[Well. This could be very, very useful.]

You mean his soul?

[thebigsister]

And his body, yes. Until it was no longer possible to restore him.

I forgot about the vitachambers until now XD

[fallen_stage]

[His body as well? Surely she cannot mean... Kuja's hands still, face solemn as he tentatively hopes.]

You don't mean restoring his body by the usual means? That is, by healing or medicine.

mwahahaha

[thebigsister]

...mmm, it's more of a mixture of the two? Though in my father's case, it was straight up resurrection.

[Yeah, this is no big deal, right.]

[fallen_stage]

[It can't be. It can't be what Kuja is thinking. It's too miraculous.]

On my world, a person can be revived from life using the feathers of a phoneix. However, there is a time limit, since the soul doesn't linger for long, and without a soul...

[He can't help it: he shudders.]

Well there's nothing to bring back.

[thebigsister]

Really?

[She makes a curious sound.]

There is no time limit... back home. But the death must be untimely, that is to say, violent, and the person had to have died in the vicinity of one of the devices.

[She sighs.]

It took me ten long years, before my father could be revived.

[fallen_stage]

[For a moment, Kuja is breathless, staring at his hands. There's some limit, of course, but... it's better than a phoenix down.]

That's... amazing. I wish I had access to such things back on my world.

[Suddenly he's animated again, leaning forward, and he would take her hand if they weren't otherwise occupied.]

Tell me, how do they work, these devices?

[thebigsister]

A DNA scanner, primarily. The network of vita-chambers - that's what they're called - is all keyed to a particular DNA signature, in this case, my father's. If the person they're keyed to suffers a violent face in their vicinity, they will be recreated instantly.

[She pauses for a moment.]

It is... it is a lot more complicated than that, actually, but that's the basic process. I know more about keying and rekeying the network than the actual functions, though.

[fallen_stage]

So, with the DNA sequence...

[On his tongue is the unspoken "genome"; a slight superstition, Kuja doesn't like to say that word. On Gaia, he had no need to. Evidently Eleanor's word was more sophisticated than he thought.]

Those must be marvelous device, to retrieve the soul and recreate the body through its genetic code at once. Phoenix downs work on a purely magical basis. Perhaps using the technology could get a more controlled result....

[Great, now he's wondering how to recreate it with the resources he has.]

[thebigsister]

Perhaps, I only know of two people who benefited from it, though it was once intended for the general use of the population.

[She pauses a moment, thinking about it.]

Though given the state Rapture was left in, I think the technology might be lost forever.

[fallen_stage]

[Damn! What a cruel temptation, to raise his hopes only to dash them before they could bloom. Kuja's irritation doesn't mar the curiosity on his face.]

Was Rapture ruined? War, maybe?

[thebigsister]

Greed, more like.

[Eridan shrugs.]

Greed and human nature. Ideals are never executed the way one would hope for. No, Rapture was ruined by greed.

I like how Eleanor briefly turned into Jaderi there XD

[fallen_stage]

[Well. That could mean a number of things. Economic ruin, civil war, downright razing of the land, and so on.]

A country ruined by corrupted idealism and greed? I've seen such things, but likely not to the extent you know of.

dlkfhglfkgjh HUSH NOW.

[thebigsister]

[Fun story: I was threading smut once, whilst writing fanfic, it was like, five in the morning and I hadn't slept in like, three days. Suddenly, for some reason, suddenly there was throwaway line about Vriska in the middle of my porn. I still don't know what it meant or where it came from. Whoops. At least here it was just a slight slip of the finger, c'mon, it was bound to happen sometime, between Eleanor and Eridan.]

Calling Rapture a country is too kind a word. They hoped the be the country of the learned and the wise, but in truth they were little more than a city of daydreamers lost in their own greed. There was nowhere to run, and it was all their own damn fault.

LOL! how wretched XD

[fallen_stage]

Ah.

[How interesting! There was a fuller, lengthier story there, the stuff of epics. Or perhaps a tragedy.]

Created by ideals, they isolated themselves? I would imagine something like that happened, if they were abandoned on all sides.

[Of course, Kuja is still thinking of countries and landmasses.]

It was a sad, sad thing.

[thebigsister]

That was the idea, I suppose. But of course, it did not flourish as it was expected.

[Eleanor shrugs again, shifting to work her armor carefully.]

Then again, there is nowhere to run, under the ocean.