Winding Ivory [continuation]

[Levenfish]

Before the MSPA forums went down, there was a certain adventure that was on its way to finishing, then the forums got cut.

Well, there were two, but the other one is too big a mess to go for at the moment. Hi, I'm Levenfish, once upon a time I wrote 216 Days and Winding Ivory.

It's been some years. But let's get back in the saddle.



There we are. The first of many frames to come, of Winding Ivory. What is the story? A very convoluted one. But let's see about salvaging a coherent storyline out of this monstrosity.

iI: Fuck off.

Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey, Ionian. Bernie. How was your sleep?

iI: God damn it I paid a lot of money to have the forums corrupted.
iI: Don't you have better things to be doing?

Yes, but I need someone to bounce off of while I riff on my recap on my previous work, because mercy is found only in shadow.

iI: Oh cultist simulator, aren't you so sophisticated.





So comes forth the protagonist. Youngest child of the Kimberly line, born without arms and a crippling psionic disorder that fractures the mind.

iI: How much of that is actually true?

The armlessness was implied. The rest was up to the audience.

iI: Did you know?

The notes are around here somewhere, I can always dig that up. Anyway. That very first frame was drawn on... November 13, 2013. We missed it by three days! Fuck!

iI: Is cursing allowed here?

This forum is based on a webcomic with Gamzee.

....

Anyway.



The first reference of Justine Kimberly, our wayward soul. I have no idea who the other one is meant to be.

iI: Alright, so six years. People wanna know. Have you gotten any better at the drawing? Social propriety stops us from pointing it out, but the art, man, it's no Ishida Sui.

Right, let me dig one up.





From a few months ago. The gentleman below her is one Orion Kimberly, her older brother, arms dealer, biokinetic, and eventual prophet of an offshoot of the Mirthful Church.

iI: You've been doing something since then, haven't you?

I have, but that'll go in the proper thread, AKA not this one.

Anyway, Miss Kimberly here, she's 17 years old at the start of the adventure. If you believe her. You see, one of the recurring mysteries was whether she was herself, or she was actually her twin brother James. When not struggling with false memories, guilt, and eventually a god complex for solving problems that she herself created.

iI: You into soap operas?

You into shutting up? Anyway! I actually have other things to see to, so let's cut it off here for now, Bernie. How's... uh. Who are you with these days?

iI: None. Jackass, I'm IN this adventure too eventually, it's been six thousand years since my story took place, yet I'm still implied to be in it!
iI: Never named, but it's made pretty damn clear it's me! And no one lives for that long.
iI: I can't even remember her name, anymore. But she was never important in the grand scheme of things, was she?

Well. Uh. I will leave you be.

[Levenfish]

The Kimberly manor, located in the outskirts, atop a hill. Nothing less for the founder and prime minister of the country.

iI: Alright, I'll bite. Where the fuck were her parents during all of this? I know at least the dad was around somewhen.
iI: Right before Orion killed him. What do you have against decent parenting?

If they had decent parents, we wouldn't have a story.



iI:.....sooo.

Your guess is as good as mine, honestly. I drew these as I wrote up the thing. And then I'd draw something different and rewrite those to match.

iI: How did you do anything?

I don't know anymore, it's 4:32pm, I just want to continue studying, clean up the house, and actually relax. But I'm here.

iI: Oh, this is effort for you, we should all be so reverent. Are you here to riff off me, or me off you?

Well, I'm writing your words, so I'm just talking to myself but making it less socially concerning.

iI: Move on already! Unless you're going to pull off a "There is no Urinetown! We just kill people!" thing, 20 words or less, fucker.







XP: You should write a play!

Why? Also wait you're not Bernie.

iI: Wait.
BB: Okay better. Also, Cali?!

XP:Because plays, even more than movies or books or games, make do with less. Less backgrounds, less effort, more effort on consistency.
XP: Bernie! It's been so long, I missed you. I really did.

I'll consider it. And let you two have your moment. Well, I have to return to work anyway. Let's leave off the delving into the inconsistencies of early fanventures when it comes to worldbuilding another time.

[Levenfish]

BB: Your hair changed.

XP: I just let it down.

BB: I like it. I'm just happy to see a face I recognize.

XP: No, we both look pretty different. Remember back then?



And neither of you are easily legible against a white background, I'm realizing.

XP: Soooo.

BB: Oh my gosh. Pilgrim, you coming onto me?

XP: What? You wish. I remember we did this last time.

BB: Some things don't change.

XP: Our faces are different.

BB: Yeah you got hot. I don't know how to feel about any of this.

XP: I mean....



Should I give you guys some time, or....?

BB: Anyway. Right. So. You completely forgot to explain who that is.

XP: You can't just throw exposition at us unless you're singing about it, gosh.

That there is the Kimberlys' servant, confidante, and bodyguard, Periet Felona. She ended up becoming one of the Dreamweaver's, later on.
Still caught between whether to finish this or do a rewrite.

BB: You're literally making more work for yourself.

Literally nothing about this story makes sense in hindsight. As you'll see. We're still in chapter 0 of 10.
Like, a whole lot of stuff happens. There's even character arcs. But all of it just stinks of... why?!

XP: Was Homestuck any better about it?

Yeah but I can't do what he does. I'm too thick to be an e-boy.



XP: Alright, here's what you do.
XP: Don't try to be Hussie.
XP: Go for the throat. Be direct, be terse, tell everyone everything up front. People aren't obligated to read you, so treat their time with respect.
XP: Every single sentence should move the story or show who someone is.

BB: And make Justine likeable. Who the hell am I supposed to root for?

Justine didn't like herself, but I see your point.



BB: You used the excuse that she's 17 and doesn't know what she wants, right?
BB: Cause that happens, but it's boring. If I wanted to not know what to do, I'd just live my life.
BB: Or in my case, exist in your creative subconscious.

XP: Why don't you tell us what's going on here?

She's at the arts and crafts store. Putting together a disguise for police duty.

XP: 17 and already a cop?

BB: I mean, were the trolls any better?

XP: But they're trolls. They're alien to start with. Justine's... she is human, right?

She doesn't have some crazy alien heritage. Just human genetic defects.

XP: You could play that up. In the original, she had no arms, she had a brain disease, and think she was trapped in a male-presenting body while she waited for the statute of limitations to expire had to screw her up.

Counterpoint, however. I don't know how to write any of that well.
So I just write them the same as anyone else.

BB: How much of this do we actually need? Just cause it sounds cool doesn't actually make it cool.
BB: Shouldn't you know by now?

XP: Hmm?

BB: I'll explain later.



BB: This market thing, is it really needed?

XP: It establishes her as a normal person doing normal things.

BB: She lives apparently alone in a giant mansion with a personal psychic bodyguard and cook.
BB: She's passing herself off as her brother to avoid the murder charge that doesn't get expounded on until later.
BB: Also because the murder charge came from getting with a seadweller.

XP: Yeah that's problematic, let's not do that this time.

Yeah that can be scrapped, no problem.
Wait no, because she got blamed for that, but it was Robert's fault. He pulled it off because he was suddenly a wizard out of nowhere, because of Allison, but what Justine did was the only way only she could be blamed for it.

XP: The audience doesn't know who those are yet. You can explain it later.

BB: Give her some damn emotion. You always have the funny guy and the straight guy together for a reason.
BB: Unless you're Always Sunny. Then everyone's off their meds.
BB: Anyway, yeah. Make her less like granite, got it?

Why am I being told what to do by my own fucking characters?

XP: That's not allowed here. Haven't you read the forum rules?

BB: Because it's a bad attempt at trying to be meta when it's really not working.

Ouch.

BB: Bitch tell me I'm wrong.

[Levenfish]

XP: But who is Justine Kimberly?

BB: Well narrator?
BB: Who is she? I ask because the sooner you don't need us the sooner we can go.

XP: Oh c'mon you're having fun!

BB: It also means the sooner this dunkass finishes this and gets back to stuff he's supposed to be doing. Like studying for an abstract math test next week.



BB: That's a seadweller and someone else. I don't think this is Justine anymore.

XP: Yeah who is this?

I have no bloody idea. If something looks out of place, it was 70% because I was into it at the time.

BB: Aren't you still into cyberpunk?

Yeah, and?

BB: You're hopeless.

XP: What did the cyberpunk add to the story?

I feel like we're overanalyzing this.

XP: And why's that?



Do I look like a professional author to you? Or an aspiring professional author? I have neither the inclination nor skill to pull it off to that honed a degree.
Also, slowly coming to realize. If everything's a disjointed mess, then not everything needs to be covered.

BB: Wasn't half of this to own up to your previous mistakes?

And what does that get me, exactly? Street cred that I've been around? Let's accelerate this. I already have a new, more coherent plot in mind.

XP: What do you have in mind?



Well. We'll see. Still forming. Oh right, recap. Yeah, something about... uh, standard dystopian fare over in the states. Seattle and NYC, specifically. With a stopover in Chicago for some business with one of the Furies.

BB: That was actually something worth a damn. How'd they work?

They were scientists aligned with the angel Gazardiel, and they persisted in being a thorn in Justine's side.





Alecto died fairly early on, I think. But Tara and Megan didn't. And then there was Fred. Or... Isabella? Difficult to track names.
They betrayed Justine later on, after she press-ganged them into working for her. She should've seen it coming, but well, she didn't.

XP: Too many big names. You can't do Game of Thrones.

BB: Well, maybe the last season.

XP: Bernie, shut up.
XP: Less characters. Tighter story. Small steps.

BB: Sometimes you just need a lot of people.
BB: But given I know what you do, you should stay small.

XP: What did they want?

I don't know, and I don't know if that's because I don't remember or because they didn't have anything but to survive.

BB: Goddammit. Have a person. Have something they want. Explain why they can't have it.
BB: How hard is that?



Sooner or later I'm going to get accused of being a writing seminar in disguise.

[Levenfish]

She was also a... proficient artificer.

XP: Losing steam there?

It gets more and more unrealistic the deeper this goes.

BB: You're still in chapter 0 and no one knows you enough anymore to have sympathy.
BB: Suck it up and move on. Jeez.

Cheeky note I'm still being pushed around by figments of my own imagination. At any rate.



This particular upgrade ends up being relevant. If I recall correctly, spikes that shoot out into even more spikes to turn someone into a pincushion from inside out.

BB: Metal.

XP: Did we skip over a bunch?

Yes, but that's because those aren't important. If need be, I'll use them to describe the cyberpunk hell that most of the story takes place in when she actually gets there.



Naturally, Periet, or Penelope as she came to be in my notes, is a cheeky git.

BB: No wonder you called us up of all people, you don't write anything else.

XP: To be fair, humor's lighter than drama.

BB: Also harder.

XP: I don't know about that.

Anyway, after this is... ah right, this is where Lumari comes into play.
The veteran partner, and also Robert's former partner.

XP: Justine's brother, right?

The eldest, at 22. Then Orion at 20. Then James is 17, being twins, but he came out first. So she's the youngest.

BB: Where the hell is Orion during all this?

Probably out doing pirate stuff with Vaneti. You'll meet him.

BB: Shaula?

Oh right! You met his ancestor way back then.

BB: The Solitaires. That guy perpetually had a stick up his poop shoot. Just, never let up.
BB: So your rewrite. Who's still gonna be in there?

Robert, Orion, and Vaneti still have to be in it. They all serve pretty big roles.

XP: Isn't Robert dead?

BB: Yeah but he's still in the original that way, technically.

[Levenfish]

And by partner, I mean girlfriend. They were going to get married one day.

XP: Awww.

BB: Hmmph.

XP: Hey, Bernie?

BB: UH.

XP: I'm just teasing.
XP: Or am I?



Anyway, they meet, they hug, and this is where exposition gets done.



There's a lot of exposition. I've come to realize worldbuilding is by far, my strongest trait when it comes to these things.

BB: Yeah but that's not a story. That's a setting.

I know.

XP: You think too big. But I already said to go small once.



And there's food.



BB: And now there's not.

Yeah I dunno either.

XP: So what do either of these characters do after?

Lumari's honestly a side character, but a normal one through which one can see the mess that is the country during the invasion, while Periet helps Orion and the rest of the B-team push them back.

BB: Y'know, just an invasion, no big deal.

It was alluded to, but they were never fleshed out much.

XP: Tsk tsk.

[Levenfish]

The Coldwind himself, Vaneti Shaula. I recall a great deal of consternation trying to explain why he hadn't been caught before.

XP: Why?

Because it always begs the question, why is a thing the way it is? In this case, why is some tinhead with a sword able to raid the country when an entire continent, or The Continent, as it was put there, can't take them down?

BB: There's a ton of reasons.

Would you like to tell that to younger me?



I could also benefit from Photoshop.

XP: Pira— wait no we technically can't endorse that. Forum rules.

BB: Still got Paint Sai?

Briefly tried out FireAlpaca.

And then there's a joke.



And then the implications.

XP: We're skipping over things?

A demonstration of her policing at work, but it won't be relevant, so cut.



BB: Pills? This ever come up elsewhen?

Given her mental instability deepens without access to her medication, yes. Having an improperly formed psychic apparatus as a birth defect does that to someone.
So would no arms, but luckily her father is a military conqueror and a cyberpunk CEO.

XP: And the bandages?

Something that makes no sense in hindsight. It was going to imply bindings, but the adventure then goes on to show that technology is sufficient enough to fully remake people's bodies cleanly, so she wouldn't need to hide like that when she can just get surgically altered.

BB: But someone would know.

Should've gone with that, but James was studying to be a doctor, and wouldn't you know it, the 14 year old knows how to do complex surgical operations, because of course he does.



Ah I remember what happened to their mother now. She got hospitalized for... something, possibly being shot, and the storm's coming, so they want to get there before that gets to her.

BB: The spirit storms.

The dead return to the land of the living to swell their ranks. Also sets up a tie-in to Auriga Alanat and Hamal, though I don't know if they'll make it into the rewrite.

XP: So you're doing a rewrite after all?

BB: Does that mean we can stop the recap early?

Yes, and no.

BB: Why?!

I need to buy time while I get those things prepped.

[Levenfish]

So about those storms.
They were just a thing, I don't know either.



XP: And the wall?

A reason for them to have to be on foot instead of in their car.

XP: And their car?

.....huh.

BB: Nice.





Honestly there's not a whole lot to go over here. Your generic fight scene with ghosts.





BB: And she's got a flamethrower.

XP: What, you don't?

BB: I had an axe and a pistol. I still do.



Oh right, the car.

XP: And who's this?

I don't remember if it ever got established.
But yes, someone sabotages their car.

BB: Just a setback. Sabotage the butcher shop by killing off all animals. Just subversive things.





XP: Your explosions need work.

I'm going to refrain from using them whenever possible.

[Levenfish]

Not a whole lot to say here, but that's also due to acceleration and due to life events necessitating my withdrawal for the holidays.

XP: Bernie, we should have a Thanksgiving dinner!

BB: It's just the two of us.

XP: Yeah, and?

BB: Do you know how to cook?

XP: Oh right.

BB: Well I can, so. Wait.

XP: I'll meet you at 7.

BB: This is supposed to be a Thanksgiving dinner, not a regular date dinner.







Anyway, some dead bodies and more ghost fights later, they arrive at the hospital where Caitlin Kimberly-Said is.
If I recall, she's either not there or dead, but the dead part seems unlikely for me to have done this early into a story.

BB: Uh huh.

Shut up, lover boy. Don't you have dinner to cook?

[Levenfish]

And we're back. Thanksgiving break took longer than usual to break out of. Anyway, where were we....

BB: I'm busy cooking dinner while Pilgrim's out doing god only knows what.

Didn't you have a thing with not acknowledging god?

BB: Yeah but I'm also not dying at 30 anymore, so we can drop some of the cultural differences.
BB: I'm not actually a character here, I'm only here so you can bounce ideas off someone that's belligerent towards you.



Anyway. The pair arrive at the hospital room where she should be staying.





And she's not there.

BB: To no one's surprise.

Really? Thought it could go either way. She could be dead, she could be there, she could not be there, they could never have actually been there and all this is just a dream.

BB: And just like that all those are just as predictable too.
BB: Stop trying to run before you can crawl and kill me I sound just like her now.
BB: Hey, between the two of us, one more thing. Why is she hot?

Because I'm the author and I can torture my characters all I want you little shit.

BB: Is anyone in anything you ever write not hot?

It rarely ever comes into play. But I need something to remain interesting while illustrating.

BB: How's the aphantasia working out?

We don't know that I have that. But anyway, yes, aesthetics. Lots of gold and purple and blue.

BB: Moon shenanigans?
BB: ....please no Vriska. Don't be a Vriskapologist.

There's nothing wrong with not being strong enough to make the cycle of violence end with you.
And I can say that because that was a recurring motif in your story.

BB: Was it, though?
BB: Was it really?

[Levenfish]

I don't know what's with the needle.

BB: A knife?



Ah right, this was when I thought torture was the cool sort of edgy.

BB: Yeah, but hear me out.
BB: Reputation's worth a lot. They don't torture the ones they need to actually get info out of.
BB: They do it to keep up appearances.
BB: And that's if you don't buy that they're also a bunch of idiot clowns that do it for shits and giggles.

Anyway, this was to foreshadow that she'd been arrested for murdering her then-boyfriend.

BB: And her daddy didn't know? Somehow, humor me, I can't see the prime minister appreciating the church carving up his own daughter.

There's another part you're missing.

BB: ....what?

She has prosthetic arms. Why the hell would she flash back to losing fingers she never had?

BB: You motherfucker.





BB: Oh right, these things. Did I ever see an imperial drone in my fanadventure?

Not that I can recall.
I'd end up reusing this design for the hivemind.
Why not recycle old designs? If they work enough to mass produce them for the drones, they work to use on other templates. That's how military works.

BB: You have this problem where you think anythin' Alternia does is for the efficiency.



BB: So were you on the quantity or quality side?

The what?

BB: Some people think drones are mass produced tin cans.
BB: Some think they're unstoppable murder machines.

Didn't that one flash see Dirk cut them down by the dozens?

BB: Quantity. Got it.

[Levenfish]

BB: Busy?

A little bit. Let's move on.



Periet uses bag!





It's not very effective!

BB: Have you ever even played Pokemon?

Nope.





Oh look it's the church.

BB: Great.

Everyone likes the church. Where else will they get their paint from?

BB: Anyway, who is this?

The transition to the next scene, of course. You know your tropes, you can tell what happens next.

[Levenfish]

Needless to say, the purpleblood one-shots the drone.

BB: Uh huh.



I don't remember why this was here, though.

BB: Handing something back?

Why something back?

BB: Don't know.







And then they arrived at church.

BB: Short on time today?

Is it that obvious?

BB: I'm not as snarky as usual, so yes.
BB: Take a break.

No.

[Levenfish]

Of course, this is a trap.

BB: Too early. You don't know that. You're stereotyping yourself before you've even had a shot.



....the next one is actually maybe a bit gory, so we're going to skip that one.

BB: It's just her tearing someone's heart out through their back!
BB: Alright I can see why that might be a problem.
BB: Who are these guys?

Honestly? I have no idea. I don't remember. Something to do with the inclement psionic freak weather.







BB: So anyway that's when I started shooting.



Justine asked where the bag was. Periet had already thrown it. In her defense, it actually worked this time.



I remember now, somewhat. It was done from elsewhere. Though for what reason I can't be too sure of. Maybe Vaneti sabotaging the country?





BB: Half a sword can still cut.

Yes, but then this happens.



I don't remember why Periet's raising her arm.

BB: Maybe she's asking if she can go home.
BB: Was Periet meant to have a happy ending?

Being the Dreamweaver's chosen, no ending at all. The adventure would continue for her. Then again, so would it for Justine. But maybe that lack of an ending is the ending.

[Levenfish]

Lumari and Robert were cops, after all. And being troll cops, they'd be more brutal than normal human cops.

BB: Wouldn't know. Guild officer. I think.
BB: Fighter, not cop. Or soldier, for that matter. Which is probably why I had problems with Sarese.
BB: Sarese Qentas. I remember her. And Cirona. Zhaest. Fercex, Juliana, ugh, Lucas.

Lucas was an out and out edgelord and deliberately so.

BB: You still made the character.
BB: Anyway where were we?







Evidence Robert's been doing something in his spare time.
It's magic. Robert's learning magic from Allison, who has yet to appear.

She'd be crucial for the original, planned ending to this fanadventure.
Justine always had a habit of comparing herself to Robert, because he did the one thing she wouldn't, which was sacrifice their own life, and through it, everything they could ever be, for her.
And she didn't feel like she deserved it.

BB: Common enough. And she'd come face to face with him at the end?

The magic that should've gone to her when she was thrown forward in time went to Robert instead, because she taught him, and the stream thought he was the destination by how he used it more frequently than she did.

BB: She didn't actually like that, did she?
BB: Justine.

No. At times she took it as an insult. To her? He knew she could never match up to what he did for her.
Enraged her to no end. And that's before her sanity took a beating.

BB: So would she have lived through it?

Of course she would. The question is who wouldn't. And that's a long list. But by then her father would've been killed, both her countries she called home would've been wrecked, not that she hadn't already tried to do that once.

BB: Save someone that didn't need saving?

[Levenfish]

And when she wakes up, everything is gone.

BB: You feel rushed.

It's dragging on. There's a lot to cover.



There's a random flas— you know what no, let's remove that and move on.





Behold, one of the main fuckfaces Justine deals with for... surprisingly not that long. Vaneti Shaula, originally from another world and definitely not a Risk of Rain expy.
His thread is intertwined in a lot of places, but not as much as it could've been.

BB: You want to tell an epic but that takes a lot more than you got.

I arguably already was.



Anyway, she gets Luke'd, but it's alright, since they were metal arms to begin with.



And the connection, it's her brother Orion on the line.

BB: He an asshole?

He's not but he tries to be because he doesn't want to join the family business.

BB: Politics and angel hunting.

Mainly the first one. Orion would call Justine a prick with towering arrogance and an ego the size of the moon that doesn't know when she should stop and can't admit she makes mistakes.
Justine would accuse him of being a waste of potential that can't decide whether he's more lazy or scared on top of being a privileged bastard trying to slum it.

BB: They don't get along well, do they?





Not particularly, no.

[Levenfish]

And here the siblings finally meet. Orion Kimberly, the biokinetic pirate with something to prove.

BB: To the man?

He doesn't know either.



There's Isabella, currently masquerading as Fred. I'm realizing she was supposed to be a mirror to Justine/James, but she could easily be seen as genderfluid.
I hadn't actually considered this in depth, they were whatever I needed them to be to get the point across.

BB: To the man?

I'm not THAT lazy to just copy-paste, am I?

BB: I'm a figment of your creative imagination I'm not here to play therapist.



And Allison Milosha, the time-displaced magician from centuries before.





BB: So?

What?

BB: You've been thinking of how to write the rewrite.
BB: You're no longer considering Orion, are you?

Going for a smaller, more self-contained story. Something feasibly done within the year.

BB: Is it remotely going to be the same?

Same characters. Justine's probably still going to be ambitious, controlling, and reckless. People like character development.

BB: Then where's mine?!

You used to be so much more innocent.

BB: I can say fuck now.
BB: I wanted something other than generic loss of others, but alright.
BB: Well I'm alone now, definitely. Just Pilgrim now.
BB: She's not bad, just... I didn't grow up with her. I don't know her that well, and she doesn't know me that well.
BB: We wouldn't be together in any sense of the word if circumstance didn't force it.

[Levenfish]

BB: But enough about me, back to Justine.



Anyway, she heals.



Then she does a ritual to find out what they're facing for their plan to raid an ancient crypt located near the brooding caverns.



The Aquanaut is there, for some reason.

BB: Gotta protect the kids.



Except I don't remember the transition and Justine wanders off.



And meets back up with Lumari.

BB: Riveting.

Listen it's late at night.

[Levenfish]

And then they end up in the caverns.

BB: Doesn't the Friendsims have an updated version?

This was made back in 2013 or so, we didn't have that then.
We still had Homestuck. The glory days.



Oh, and there's a flashback to this for some indiscernible reason.



BB: A tomb?

This is a one-off that was repurposed into a plot thread far, far later.
There was something of the tomb Vaneti aimed to steal, belonging to one Raldes Sopsen, the last tridenseer before the empress died and took the entirety of Laniakea's FTL travel.
Laniakea being the supercluster in which the Milky Way is, and here, whatever the hell the trolls' galaxy is called.



Instead, there's a jammer? I think?

BB: So what did Sopsen do the whole time?

Use a laboratory somewhere in.... near the Caspian Sea or India, somewhere along that area, given by that time Justine and Valentina traveled through China and met up with Ashton in Chandrigarh.
Creates a virus that mutates psionics into... imagine an edgier, grimdark version of voidrot and that's pretty much what it was.
I can't remember his motivation for it, if it was generic doomday villain or something else.

No, I remember now. This was in response to Justine taking drastic steps to combat the grimdark infestation emptying the oceans of life.

BB: So it was her fault.

Now you got it!

BB: It was the only option she could do at the time. Or is that the point?

Even without her only being a 17-year old teenager with mental problems, perfect information is impossible. She could predict a lot of problems from what she did, but mutant voidrot apocalypse isn't one of them.



Oh, and Soheil and Vaneti spar. This won't be the last of either of them. Valentina gets both of them to meet up in Seattle some time later.

[Levenfish]

My recollection's dim. So Allison shows up to take control of Justine.

BB: Obviously.

Why else would they have let her leave?

BB: Does Orion know?



I don't remember, but he's busy gunning down people.
Mundane use of biokinesis, being strong enough to carry that heavy a gun.



I don't remember what this is for. That's likely Careph, who I don't know if I talked about before. A priest in service to the country that Justine crosses paths with.

BB: Wasn't it implied he carried out the gratuitous backstory torture?

Maybe, but I think I ultimately left it up in the air, with subtle leanings against it.
Too edgy, even for me.



Anyway, that's... when did Zaniah get here?

BB: How many people did you introduce?

In my defense, all of them show up later on. Every single named character so far is recurring.

BB: So who's she?

Jadeblood who's part of the same anti-angelic society Justine's grandfather is. Old enough to remember its founding, if memory serves.

BB: Do jadebloods or rainbow drinkers even live that long?

They do now.

BB: Oh shit.