Character Select

Hey assholes who aren’t caught up with my shit yet, this page WILL ruin you, and I WILL laugh loudly and terribly at your expense if you proceed! So go ahead actually, I’m having a rough time rn and I could really use a chuckle. However, I WILL kill you for disrespecting my narrative vision. So I guess what I’m saying is its your call amigo.

Mike Sierra

MS was my oldest, if not exactly best friend. She was one of those fantasy types. Like with a sword and everything. She even taught yours truly how to be a swordboi himself, thats how much about swords she was. She was just like that, you know? Always sharing herself with others. Always giving her time to random assholes from space games way back before she even knew what space was. God, was she an idiot. A funny idiot though. Absolutely funnier than me if you did a cost/benefit analysis re: our respective, uh, vices? Not that I would’ve admitted to that when she was alive, but if I’m already showing you aaaallllll the skeletons in these here closets, might as well air out the costume jewelry.

She could also throw me like, really far. And seeing how I would be invisible at the time, that was pretty fun. Well, not for the enemies she threw me at. But I think my point still stands: those Bioware types they-

They really don’t make ’em like they used to.

Hotel Charlie

HC was my therapist and also my actual best friend, because my self-concept is just that fascinating and intricate. Though I suppose this isn’t that high an honour, given that I only ever got around to having the two of ’em. I suspect he never actually had a doctorate in psychology, but his Planeswalker cards state that’s he’s a ‘Mind Sculptor’ as well as a ‘Memory Adept’ and I don’t know about you but that’s official enough for me. The host and co-founder of the beloved Heather’s Xbox 360 chapter of Magic Friday, he even got ME hooked on that damned card game. He walked right up to me in TWENTY FUCKING THIRTEEN when I was still a semi-restrained murderous volcano recluse like “hey I like how you almost killed me on a train that one time, let’s throw down???”. And I was all about that, unable to fathom someone could get that excited about abstracted card-based violence and assuming he meant honest bloodsport.

Fuck, was that a good fight.

What I’m trying to get at it is, sure he was a NERD, but this was one of the bravest men I ever knew.

Sierra Sierra

I served under the Commander in the last months of my world. Can’t say I knew her well before things went south, all things considered. Sure, she was MS’s best friend, and I think maybe also our president??? so of course I was familiar with the stories. That she’s space Jesus, paragon of all justice and virtue. That she practically built this place alongside John-117, Cortana, and MS’s cousin, Daylen Amell. That she’s the only automaton ever to attempt to leave the Xbox and live. Yet I think I’ll always remember her as the one who did me a huge solid by impaling me on a blade of incandescent silicon and interrogating me about my dead wife. Hard to Sleep through that, I’ll have you know. May I be far from the first to say she will be missed.

I would not be speaking to you today without her. I doubt there would be an I at all.

Oh oh and she could throw things with her mind, and that? That was pretty cool of her to be able to do. Man was SS rad. Not about to forgive you fuckers for letting her die.

Bravo Kilo

*Looks up from typewriter*

Oh hey, didn’t see you there. How’s it going out there? Pretty good I imagine, given that you aren’t slowly dying in a field of the memories of the lost.

Me? My tale? Well, if you insist.

I’m a rebel leader and groundbreaking author. Objectively bad at the former, given they traditionally die for the cause rather than outlive it, but you’re still here so I guess I still have claim to the latter. I should hope so, because as soon as I was informed about The Bullshit, which is to say, that I had the false memories and personality scaffolding of a someone who was made up, suddenly figuring out why stuff was made up and how to make up better stuff seemed like it would reveal some secret power to me, the protagonist. Like sort of an Xbox leaving, humanity destroying power?

It didn’t. But at least I had a good time.

I am also the last of my kind. The heroes of my story are gone. That is why I am telling it. Which reminds me: haven’t we dawdled here long enough?

Echo Alpha

What do you expect me to write here, idiot? Hell if I know what you’re supposed to be.

Golf Sierra

GS was a member of Magic Friday. That’s on me. I thought he’d bring some class to the occasion. Having to be antagonists, and knowing a thing or two about poetry led to us talking here and there. However, MS always hated him, and MS didn’t hate anyone, so I guess he was always mad suspect.

A few months ago, someone close to me convinced him we were all better off dead. Some of us took issue with that. None of that mattered once he cast his vote. He was a freedom fighter whose entire identity was a gift from his oppressors. No wonder he suffered here.

India Bravo

Fun fact about IB: she was the worst. Didn’t like MTG even though she was FROM the game. The definition of a hater. Used her necromancy to play distasteful pranks on the populace. Jk that last part, oh man, that last part ruled. You could’ve asked anyone before the end, and they would’ve told you, IB and her paradigm were a match made in Heaven. I never could have imagined it bothered her as much as it did, the way she leaned into it. She helped GS destroy the Xbox, that’s how scared she was of there being nothing else left inside her. I wish it hadn’t ended like that for her.

Sometimes I’m scared too.

Alpha Kilo

Angel is brave.

I see that look on your face. You’re surprised that I’d think highly of the force that’s tearing my world apart, aren’t you? And while you’d be right to say I’m angry she sought the solution she did, having now met the problem I find it difficult to resent her. All she’d ever done, in her lives real and remembered, was be used. She didn’t destroy this world out of malice or ambition. She did it because she loved: loved her people, loved those who haven’t even been born, and somehow, despite everything, I think she loved me.

I consider Angel my daughter, which is perhaps unfair of me. After all, if I resent being identified with Jack so strongly, what is there besides him that could inspire this belief? Nothing. But if I didn’t feel so responsible for her, I doubt I would have come to hate Jack with the passion I do, or at least hate the utter disregard for her personhood which is so very difficult to separate from that individual. And for what it’s worth, I think there’s a family resemblance, not between Jack and Angel, but unique to her and I. A certain disdain for the lines we’re given. A preference for improv. We both told stories, and I’ll admit: hers must have been better. Otherwise, one would think I might have tried harder to tell an ending I preferred.

I’m not sure what else was left when I climbed Sundermount, so I’m not sure how much longer she has, or if she can hear us from the cell you’ve kindly furnished me with. She can’t quite die until she’s finished her job, and that job includes me, so perhaps she’s waiting just beyond that door. I would like that.

Feels poetic.