002. [Video / Action for Ecruteak City] (backdated to the 19th!)

[foolishwren]

<sub>[It's the nineteenth, and the sun's not even up yet.]

[Not that that's particularly mattered to the network at large, considering both pleas for help and thoughtful rumination on how to get rid of the disguised ghosts have been zipping back and forth across cyperspace like busy little Combees nonstop. It's hard for anybody to sleep when a dead person has been standing awkwardly at the foot of your bed for several nights straight, so it's safe to say that nighttime posting's picked up quite a lot.]

[But it's that dark, gray-blue hour before dawn and most of the ghosts, by now, are gone. Nobody in their right mind is probably up right now to check what haunted nightowls are hollering into the void.]

[WHICH MEANS, IT'S TOTALLY THE PERFECT TIME FOR SOMEONE WHO'S BEEN STRAIGHT-UP AVOIDING EVERYBODY FOR THE WHOLE WEEK TO POST A VIDEO!]

[A darkened hotel room is the setting, and Heather Mason is the subject. The harsh blue-white glow of a 'Gear screen is hardly a flattering light-source, and the glaring shadows cast under her eyes make it obvious she hasn't been doing much sleeping. But well, this video ain't no makeup tutorial, so she doesn't care a whole lot about the fact that she's kind of a mess.]

[Once she's sure the 'Gear is on, she sets it down on some surface where it can show both her and a portion of the rest of the room, which houses three other figures: two little fox Pokemon on the bed, a Vulpix and an Eevee (who anyone that did much chatting with Heather during the festival will recognize as Cheryl), and an alarming specter by the curtains; A gaunt, severe woman in a plain dark dress, with hair so pale that it almost glows as it spills over her shoulders.]

[It's time to begin.]

[Heather gives the camera a tight smile, raising her hand in a stiff, to-the-point greeting.]</sub>

Heeeey, everybody.

Heather here. I honestly don't post a whole lot these days, sooo for those of you who don't already know me... I guess you're about to get one of the most awkward first impressions ever. Congratulations.

Anyway, I've been, uh. Spending some time with my ghost buddy here... _{[A clear nod, indicating the frankly spooky woman behind her.]} ... and we've been having a great time. Lots of screaming and crying on my part, for one thing, always fun, and there was definitely at least one broken appliance I'm gonna have to pay for when I check out of this room. And hey-- you wanna know the part that makes this a real good ghost story? That woman behind me-- she's a murderer. A genuine, bona fide killer. And my dad, the best person to ever enter my life, before or since, was one of her victims. Maybe her first. The last? Was gonna be me.

Crazy, right? Right out of a slasher flick, me and her. What a pair.

But I'm not actually taping myself right now to talk about that.

The reason I'm posting this is kind of... no, really self-indulgent, and it's probably not even going to be interesting to seventy-five percent of you, but... I don't know. Maybe someone out there needs to hear it.

So, here goes.

_{[She clears her throat, drumming a fist on her collarbone briefly.]}

Anyone who knows me, knows I've got one hell of a temper. Always been that way, always will be. We're talking, one day I'll be lowered into my grave and a thousand years later archaeologists will dig me up and open the coffin and immediately get punched in the nose by my skeleton. I'm not ashamed of that. My anger's what keeps me going, sometimes.

_{[Her tone is light, almost jovial... but then it goes serious in the blink of an eye.]}

But only one or two of you were around when the woman behind me came to Johto, for real, in the flesh. For the rest of you, I won't be cryptic about it.

I hunted her down.

_{[Behind Heather, the Vulpix's dark eyes gleam in the low light as it turns its head to the camera, ears flattened and several tails curling in enmity. The Eevee lets out a quiet chirp, leaning forward to groom at the tuft of fur atop the other fox's head and calm her.]}

What happened was... I won't say it wasn't important. But it's not what I wanted to talk about, either. This isn't Heather Mason's Fun Happy Murder Hour. I'll mention the part where I couldn't do it, I guess. I don't feel like that absolves me of much, but I know stuff like that matters to some people, and technically, I suppose that's something that separates me and her.

But the point... the point is...

_{[Man, she really should have written an outline or something. The words are there, she wants to say them. But after so many sleepless nights, it's kind of hard to find a way to get into it without a big meandering ramblefest first. She shakes her head a little, waving a hand for the camera.]}

If there's one message I don't want anybody watching this to take away from it, it's that grownass adults shouldn't take responsibility for the shitty, cruel things they do. Hell, no. It doesn't matter what your sob story is, you gotta own it when you're responsible for somebody else hurting.

No exceptions, that's fuckin' life. You suck it up and deal with that, or you wind up going under.

But here's the thing, okay?

You can't choose where you come from, and if it's a bad place, not everyone gets to leave. Especially if everything in the whole fucking world seems dedicated to keeping you there.

I mean, fuck, we're talking about kids, for crying out loud.

_{[She's talking fast now, gesturing for emphasis and compensating for the way her voice is getting tighter by just forcing the words to come out quicker.]}

Life isn't a Boxcar Children novel, a seven year old can't just pack a suitcase and hop the next train when every single figure of authority they've ever known wants them to stay exactly where they are, to do and think what they're told and nothing else. Even if the things they're being told are the sickest, most horrifying shit you could ever imagine. Things that made a grown man give up everything he ever had and spend the rest of his god-given life always on the run, never resting, to make sure the little kid he took out of there would never have to go back.

Places like that exist, and when they're the place you're born, you'd better fucking pray that someone like that man reaches in from the outside and helps you get out, because if you don't get out early, let me tell you, bud, you're never getting out.

_{[She stops abruptly there, catching her breath, before pointing a quivering hand over her shoulder at the woman, even as her gaze is still locked onto the camera, dead-set.]}

She... never got out.

_{[Oh boy. Here come the tears. Heather swipes a rough hand over her eyes, laughing. It's kind of a pathetic, watery laugh, but she'd rather do that than do a bunch of gross boo-hooing on-camera.]}

Haha, fuck. Look at me.

That's actually why I went after her here, in this place. Not because of what she did to my dad, or even what she did to me... but because I just couldn't-- couldn't listen to her cling to all that bullshit, I couldn't stand hearing her justify what she did, and have the nerve to call me a liar for trying to tell her the truth about that place, about... those people.

It made me so fucking angry, at her for being too freaking blind to see it, and...

... And at.. and at me, for getting out.

For getting out and not taking her with me.

<sub>[And then she's quiet for a moment, turning her eyes away from the camera slightly and blinking a whole lot, swiping a hand under her nose with an ugly sniff. The only sounds are the hum of the hotel room's AC unit. The ghostly woman in the background remains silent, even though her expression had gone from stoic to one of immense sadness. Because holy shit, the Misdreavus behind this illusion had not signed up for issues this messed-up, dog.]

[Heather's voice is thick when she speaks up again.]</sub>

... Thing is, that's fucking stupid... how can a little kid who can barely escape something with her own life possibly save another? How could I have possibly done that, when all I could do was literally run like the hounds of hell were after me?

How?

And how could that kid know anything other than getting fucking beaten like a dog whenever she stepped out of line? How, when they wouldn't let her know anything else? When they told her the rest of the world was nothing but filth and that the only way to save it was to purge it with fire? She was... a baby! She was still drawing little smiley faces on the sun in red crayon when they were trying to snuff that out and drown it in their fanatical bullshit!

How the... how the fuck did either of us even have a chance to turn out okay? How was it fair?! We were just kids!

_{[Another pause, another heavy swipe across the eyes.]}

Okay, okay... I've been just... barfing words at nobody for like twenty minutes, this's just getting embarrassing now.

If anyone's even made it this far without being like 'holy shit, this chick is a basket case' and changing to someone else's channel, you deserve a trophy or something.

I'll just finish by saying, if anyone out there... if any of you were in a bad place as a kid, if any of you had to get out for your own good... it wasn't your fault, okay?

Even if there were others who weren't as lucky, who you couldn't take with you because literally all you could do was run.

And if you were one of the ones who couldn't, and... and you still have a hard time, letting go of it all, or even believing that the people who did all those things to you were wrong?

That's not your fault, either.

_{[Throughout her talk, the sky through the window's been lightening behind her, and a tiny sliver of sun is just starting to poke out over the dark rooftops beyond. Heather doesn't notice. Her smile is strained, but she doesn't let it break.]}



Please believe that. Please.

It's not your fault.

<sub>[The white glow of the encroaching sunrise fades out most of the scene there-- but in the final frames of the broadcast, the ghost of Claudia Wolf visibly fades out, and the little Eevee's silhouette in the background takes on the color of the sun and begins to grow.]

[The feed ends there.]</sub>


[OOC: For CR still in Ecruteak who know which inn room Heather is in, they can find her snuggling her Brand New Espeon(tm)! and being really weird and emotional about childhood friends. Also, THIS GOT REALLY LONG I'M SO SORRY.]

Comments

[Text]

[callbacks]

[Dave wouldn't have been able to change the PokéConnect station if he wanted to. He hangs on every word, curled up in the safety of his inn room's closet, blanket around his shoulders, Umbreon in his arms.

It's...it's like she's talking to him. Even if he doesn't get all the stuff that kind of sounds like she was raised in a fucking murder cult or something, the rest of it--

'...if anyone out there... if any of you were in a bad place as a kid, if any of you had to get out for your own good... it wasn't your fault, okay?']




thank you


for saying that





im glad you got out

[Text]

[foolishwren]

<sub>[Heather doesn't reply for quite some time-- lack of sleep aside, the sheer emotional exhaustion alone pretty much wiped her out, and one of the reasons she'd posted at ass o'clock in the morning to begin with had been so that she wouldn't have to talk to anybody afterwards.]

[But around noon, Dave will get a text message in return!]</sub>

Hey no problem... and yeah. Me too.

[There's a pause. She's not sure she wants to assume anything, but well... he did thank her...]

Same goes for you, wherever you came from

I hope this place is better

[Text]

[callbacks]

[Oh, hey. She got back to him.]

hahaha
hilarious and not at all traumatic ghost shenanigans aside
yeah
this place is a pretty wild upgrade from my last digs
or like
any digs ive previously dug

[Text]

[foolishwren]

_{[SLOW BUT SURE WINS THE RACE.]}

haha yeah sometimes this place DOES throw curveballs at you, like this freaking ghost thing

but man, believe it or not, this was kinda TAME compared to the stuff that happened back in the beginning, with the ghosties.

I think they've been getting nicer over the years or something haha

[ Audio ]

[11121_assumption]

[ Walter stated at the screen, listening to Heather carefully. That ghost...seemed familiar. But he couldn't quite place her. Heather's words...they're not for him. He speaks calmly, quietly, his Cubone dozing by his hip. ]

The world is cruel, corrupted by humanity's greed and sins. We can only pray for God for cleanse it and usher mankind into Paradise. There may be the occasional kindness - [Eileen's gift of a doll to him when he was homeless and alone, and most recently Rhys offering to mark his birthday with him just out of...out of goodness. It still was hard to swallow, that Rhys had done that for him. ] - but it is not enough to absolve society. Only the Holy Mother can truly free us from suffering.

[ He can't see what Heather meant by this message. He didn't even register that what had happened to him was wrong - it just was how things were in his mind. He knew others had better lives, lives with parents who cared and friends and weren't forced into prisons or savagely beaten for wandering too far, but he couldn't link such distant dreams to himself. It was a thought he never had, that he could have ever had such a life. ]

[ Audio ]

[foolishwren]

<sub>[Walter doesn't get a reply for some time.]

[And not just because she set her 'Gear on "vibrate" and then passed out for several hours.]

[The truth is that even when she woke up around early noon and got the message, she listened to it over and over, then ignored it in favor of responding to everyone else and spending time with the people she'd been virtually ignoring the whole time Ghost Claudia (tm) was following her around, and then came back to her hotel room and listened to it several times again.]

[A few years ago, she knows exactly how she'd have responded to it. Fear and anger (and of the two, mainly the latter). Outrage, even. Because how dare her roots reach into this world again?]

[That's certainly how she'd responded to Claudia.]

[... But things are different now. She's different.]

[So while the message is downright blood-chilling, practically reaching out of her speakers to clutch at her heart and lungs with cold black fingers, she thinks long and hard about what to say before replying. And when she does reply, it's in an even, unreadable voice.]</sub>

When did you get here, and who told you about the Holy Mother?

[ Audio ]

[11121_assumption]

[ There were a few minutes before Walter answered, as he was researching the Pokemon he had acquired during the festival; a Shuppet, that had followed him around until he decided to try throwing one of the pokeballs he had been given at it.

His reply is calm and affable. There was no intended hostility in Walter's words. To him he was only speaking facts, truths he had been raised and devotedly believed in. He didn't even realise what affect he would have on her and hadn't intended to frighten her at all. For once. ]

A few weeks ago. I was taught about the Holy Mother at the Wish House.

[ Audio ]

[foolishwren]

<sub>[... Wish House... Wish House... the name feels like it should be familiar. But as crisp as some of Alessa's memories are, so much of that time is hazy. It's something she's normally grateful for (who in their right mind would WANT to remember it?), but now it's kind of frustrating.]

[It still rings a bell, though. Just... a dull, dusty bell.]

[An... orphanage? Was that it? She doesn't know... but one thing is clear. There is another cultist in Johto. And she hadn't even known about it.]</sub>

Okay.

Look, I don't know who you are, and I literally just delivered an entire screed on why I don't expect you to believe me.

But you were lied to, and hard.

I'm sorry, and whatever it is you went through there, it was wrong. This is a better place. _{[Claudia had called it Paradise. Sometimes... Heather doesn't think she was wrong.]} I hope you'll give it a chance to show you just how wrong the... Wish House was.

_{[A pause, and then her voice grows stern.]}

... But hear this.

If you do anything to hurt the people here in the name of the Order, whoever you are, I will come down on you so hard that no god in this world or any other could stop me.

Understand?

[Text]

[wing_attack]

[... It hurts. It hurts and he's been crying, and he can't stop crying even as Heather finishes her video. It's hard enough that she's saying these things, but her face, her expression...]

we'll always have the sky

right?

even if other people couldn't

[Text]

[foolishwren]

<sub>[Like the other messages to come in over the 'Gear, Heather doesn't read or reply to it for another few hours. As (mostly) calm as she'd been throughout the emotionally-charged video, it had worn her out.]

[But like she'd ever leave a message from her favorite hawk unanswered.]</sub>

hell yeah and like I'd ever let anyone take it away from us

we EARNED that sky

[Text] [Private]

[wing_attack]

yeah. we did.

[He's quiet for a minute or so before he sends another message.]

the girl who tortured me. taylor. i morphed her once.

she was burned in a fire and crippled. she was prom queen. she was everyone's dream girl. she became a voluntary controller so that the yeerks would give her back some of what she used to have. and i morphed her and i think that just got her madder because she saw what she'd lost.

she was fierce. like rachel. i think some of that fierceness was her own instincts.

i want to feel bad for her. she lost so much. she just wanted it back. i wouldn't want people to abandon me just because i got messed up, either.

but she gave up control. she willingly helped to ruin lives. so i can't feel bad.

but i do. and she tortured me, hard enough that i broke. and i feel bad for her.

it's messed up. we're all so freaking messed up.

[Text] [Private]

[foolishwren]

<sub>[Heather waits until she's sure he's done typing before she replies.]

[While she'd known Tobias had essentially been a child soldier in an intergalactic war, this is the most explicit detail she's ever gotten on the matter. It's fucking heartbreaking.]</sub>

You don't need to feel bad about feeling bad for her

I don't feel guilty for hating what Claudia did to me, no matter how much it hurts to know that what she became couldve been prevented

but the hurt's still there, even if I tried to ignore it for such a long time

you feel bad because you have a heart and because you don't want other people to suffer

that's not a bad thing, Tobias

messed up, yeah

but not bad

you're not bad.

text;

[shiro2hero]

[He doesn't know this kid well. Hell, they've only spoken twice. But it seems wrong not to say something. Anything. Text is... safer. It seems safer. You can edit text. And he's about to try and say something leader-like and brave up until:]

[fucking angry, at her for being too freaking blind to see it, and... And at.. and at me, for getting out. For getting out and not taking her with me...]

[Suddenly, he's very, very glad this is text. And that he's the only one awake in his vicinity right now.]

Are you going to be all right?

[He'd had it typed up and ready to go, before that sucker punch. Might as well just hit send.]

text;

[foolishwren]

<sub>[Poor Shiro won't get a reply to his compassionate question for a good long while, because Heather needed to take a big fat emotionally-drained nap after posting that soliloquy.]

[But eventually he'll get a return text!]</sub>

Yeah

I always am eventually

text;

[shiro2hero]

[No harm done. He probably should have tried a nap himself, but...]

Isn't that the truth?

["always fine eventually". Isn't that always how it goes?]

[He debates leaving it there. Except he can't -- he doesn't have it in him to drop the conversation there.]

I know we've only talked a few times, but. Hopefully 'eventually' is sooner than later.

text;

[foolishwren]

Gotta love oversharing in front of near strangers haha

hopefully you weren't too weirded out

that video was just... a long time coming.

Like 'several years' long.

Action

[a_sin_for_him]

[It's a great deal, all at once. Lust has been aware, of course, that Heather came from a difficult life and overcame troubling hardships. But the details were never given, and Lust has never been one to pry or press. Heather's past is her own, to share or not as she chooses. And apparently she's chosen to share.]

[Lust's awake when the broadcast goes live, in her own room at the Ecruteak hotel, troubled by thoughts of her own specter and the past week. She lies in bed a bit, on top of the covers, idly stroking Amoz and watching the ceiling. She isn't quite sure what to say. Some of what Heather said hit home, but her mind is more on the other woman than anything else.]

[Ignoring her own ghost, she pulls a robe on over her pajamas and wanders down to Heather's door. She knocks, softly.]

It's me.

Action

[foolishwren]

<sub>[At first, there's no answer. Because Heather needed a minute to debate whether or not she wanted to ignore it and stay isolated for awhile, or actually let her friend in.]

[But after a second, there's a rustle of blankets and footsteps on the floor, and Heather opens the door with one hand. The other is supporting the lanky, lavender beast that used to Cheryl the Eevee.]

[Heather gives Lust a very tired smile and steps away from the door, leaving it open for her to enter if she chooses.]</sub>

Hey.

Couldn't sleep either?

[a_sin_for_him]

No, I couldn't.

[Lust offers her own tired smile, but it doesn't reach her eyes. She slips into Heather's room and lets the door close behind her.]

It seems a great many old wounds have been ripped open, these last few days.

[She doesn't know what else to say. Honest words still don't come very easily to her. And what can she say? This isn't her pain, it's Heather's.]

Video

[dreamsofahero]

*Sion's up early less because of the ghost that's been trailing him (which he's been pointedly ignoring, and more due to natural inclination to be up at such ungodly hours, so it's little surprise he sees the post. Which.... well, even if quite a lot of it doesn't quite apply to him, there's enough common ground on some points that he can't help feeling some empathy for her*

That's a burden no one should have to bear.

*even if his particular situation had been a bit different, he knew far too many people who had been put through similar kinds of hell*

Video

[foolishwren]

_{[She doesn't respond for quite some time, not until after she's slept off the energy debt her emotional performance cost her.]}

Yeah, no one.

Unfortunately, there's way too many of us no ones who don't really have a choice about it.

Re: Video

[dreamsofahero]

I know.

*there's a certain... almost sadness in his expression when he says that*

I wish there were a way to change that.

[Text]

[notachocobo]

A lot of people needed to hear something like that.


Thank you.

[Text]

[foolishwren]

_{[He doesn't get a response until much later in the day, but eventually, one comes!]}

I figured that even if the details were unique, I probably wasn't the only one out there who had to escape their homelife as a kid

I'm glad that I wasn't just shouting into the void

[Text]

[notachocobo]

[It's alright; he's not offended.]

I'd imagine there are a lot of people that went through something like that. Even if the details are different, the message is still the same.

You definitely weren't.

Are you alright though? Talking about things can be




It's not easy.