>>5572656<span class="mu-i">I will be here with you, forever and always.</span>
>A split vote from last thread, we are conflicted about claiming these words as our own.Your heart aches with the powerful emotions flooding in from all around you, tears threatening to spill from your own eyes in sympathy with the ones displayed on Peedee’s looming countenance. As immersed as you are in the young intelligence’s psyche, you cannot seem to separate your own feelings from hers — loneliness, fear, longing, but above all else: hope.
You know you need to clear your head before you commit yourself to more than you bargained for but after such an exhausting battle of wills the effort to block her out — here, in her place of power — is too much.
<span class="mu-b">Part of the Crew, Part of the Ship(1)</span>The best you can manage is to acknowledge that these feelings aren’t your own, and try to make your decisions in the light of that.
“Peedee, I-” you’re cut off as with a lurch the entity effortlessly lifts you from the chaotic sea of her mindscape in the palm of one enormous disembodied hand. As the noise of subconscious emotions and random data inputs drains away with the white waters, you are able to rally your thoughts somewhat. You know those words — forever and always — hold deep meaning with the young intelligence. To claim them as your own would all but guarantee her loyalty, especially if you meant them, but to do so would be… wrong somehow. You think of your murdered Brother, and late Father and reach wordlessly for where you know the crack in your visor lies back in your physical body. You can’t even guarantee you’ll survive the next few hours let alone forever. A twinge of existential dread causes the hand supporting you to flinch as the feeling is shared across your linked minds. You stagger, managing to stop yourself from tumbling overboard just in time by grabbing one of her thumbs for support.
“<span class="mu-s">You didn’t mean it?</span>” Tears begin to well once more in her digitally displayed eyes and the stormy sky threatens to whip itself back into a cyclone.
“No, no, little… er, big guy,” you hastily forestall the waterworks before they overwhelm you in turn, “that wasn’t me you heard, see? Something, or someone from deep down in your systems called that out to you.”
She sniffs, a gust of wind whistling through digits sounding you. “<span class="mu-s">Th-then who?</span>”
Who indeed. You quickly recall the warm feeling that suffused and energised your flagging mind, and the comforting words accompanying them. It was almost familiar... Where have you felt that sense of relief and reassurance before? Right, back when you first learned that PD-113 was a still active command code, that its owner was possibly still frozen in cryo after all this time. The worry that drained away into relieved contentment. Comparing the feeling with your connection to Peedee and your memories of the other entity… it could only belong to the latter. So who would know and care about-
