USER_://D-1N0

D-1N0 / JEAN RULES ↴

in the unyielding dark of the moons, it's kill or be killed. jean had learned to abide by that one sacred rule relatively early; before the incident with the teleporter. before he surrendered a body of flesh-and-blood for one of root and leaf.

it kept him alive after. brackens are fiercely territorial, after all. the first one he had bumped into tried to tear him limb from limb the second it set eyes on him. by some miracle, he'd won that fight, but a struggle to the death will always result in some lasting marks.

do animals like them instinctively?

nope, quite the opposite! rapax-folium are predators, and everything about their appearance and behavior triggers fight or flight in most other species. animals generally avoid him, unless they're confident enough to challenge a bracken.

when did they feel the safest?

jean has built several "nests" across facilities on vow, march and artifice; these nests are enclosed data-centers, usually in the ceiling or maintenance shafts, accessible only via a keycode. given that they offer full coverage of the surrounding areas, it's impossible to sneak up on jean while he's in one of his nests; thus, they're where he feels safest and are the closest thing he has to a home.

who have they never forgiven and never will?

himself. his present circumstances are the result of his own stupid decisions, no-one else's.

what does guilt feel like to them?

guilt chokes out their processes, like a virus with no source code. it suffocates their ability to think, to make rational decisions, until they break out of the loop. D-1N0 hates the feeling, but has no way of setting up preventative measures for something with no identifiable source. it doesn't help that their entire database is one big jumbled mess, either.

where would they go if they could disappear tomorrow?

there's an outlook on 21-offense they feel strangely drawn to whenever they visit; unbeknownst to them, it was where they shared a quiet, tender moment early in their relationship with their late partner, tomi. if they had to spend the rest of their life in a specific location, it would be there.

do they have a sound, like a song or voice, that they associate with peace?

what’s the one choice they regret (not) making?

for dee, it's the choices they didn't have the freedom to make. every crewmate they abandoned in order to successfully complete an assignment. every crewmate they killed with their own hands after they turned against the company and triggered their loyalty programming. they can force themself to forget, but erasing guilt isn't as simple as deleting a few lines of code.

for jean, it was a series of choices he made (and didn't make) during his late teens. these were pivotal choices, in which he veered into being a full-on criminal and integrating with the wrong crowds. looking back now, he wishes he'd taken the other, safer path available to him. it would've been less exciting, but he wouldn't have ended up enthralled to the company.

do they have a sound, like a song or voice, that they associate with peace?

for dee, it's the sound of silence—or near silence; the world at rest, the hum and rattle of their ship idling, the chirp of manticoils foraging in the undergrowth, rain pattering against the roof. it's perhaps a stereotypical sound to associate with peace, but one they enjoy very earnestly. it's the sound of nothing going wrong, for once.

it's almost comical just how quickly jean deflates, flinching back as if the words inflicted him physical discomfort. his gaze darts about the room before flickering up to the ceiling, focusing on anything but the person standing directly in front of him. humiliation renders him utterly silent; a stark contrast to his overly enthusiastic, rapid-fire speech from a moment earlier.

what was he thinking? here he is, trying to instruct a near-stranger on methods of optimizing long range multi-phasic data transfers, when he's kitted out in archaic tech from some backwater nebula. at best, he looks like a complete fraud. his grip unconsciously tightens on the transmitter he'd been presenting, and it's only when his claws begin to depress the unfinished plating does he jolt out of his trance.

[wait! wait. five minutes. ok.] background noise echoes over the line; the rattle of something metallic rolling across a solid surface, likely a desk, followed by a strange rustling like the blades of dry grass rubbing together. [thank you. i'll try to keep it brief.]

[you can't leave the thistle nebula. you know that, but you don't know why. there's a... it's difficult to explain. i don't know how much en-oh has told you.] clearly the droid hasn't mentioned him at all, which comes as a mild surprise. [there's a creature at the center of it all. it gets inside your head, turns your thoughts inside out. it feeds on your memories until there's nothing left. i don't think it's fully noticed you yet, you're not an employee, but it will soon and then—]

"goggles?" D-1N0 chuckles, fondness creeping into their tone. "yeah, i know that little creep—big creep, i s'ppose. he's too damn soft for his own good. if it weren't for his, ah, condition, i reckon he'd be six feet under by now." they rub their chin, metal fingers grazing over worn bone. "terrible liar, too. i know he's keepin' somethin' from me, but i've never been able t' force it outta him."

EMPLOYEE FILE jean sauveterre had been an entrepreneur, an inventor with some of the highest potential out of the entire thistle nebula; but one too many poor choices had led him down a dark path in life, one that ended in his indefinite servitude to the company. he quickly became the technological know-how of his crew, jailbreaking their ship and equipment to increase their chances of success considerably. his overconfidence eventually led to disaster. after tampering with an inverse teleporter, jean opted to test the device personally—it malfunctioned spectacularly, transplanting his consciousness into the body of a rapax-folium. now free of the company's sinister influence, jean is determined to bring about the downfall of the monster at its core and unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of the "golden planet" and its denizens.