#ansi lore

Summary: These two songs represent Ansi's childhood that she spent together with Hobie.

My Reasoning: I chose Moon River because the song has a nostalgic feel to it. The lyricist for Moon River states that the lyrics "are reminiscent of his childhood." This song also sounds like two kids playing make-believe, similar to how Ansi and Hobie used to play as kids.

I chose We'll Meet Again because it felt like the perfect goodbye. Neither Hobie nor Ansi knew if they'd ever see one another again but they liked to believe that one day they would.

Lore: It was September 21. Ansi was only eight years old at the time. Her father (Benjamin Taratella the assistant director of Alchemax) was tinkering away at his home workshop when he accidentally opened up a portal to Earth-138B. Just as he was able to close it, a small boy came hurtling through.

Stranded in a completely new and unfamiliar place, seven year old Hobie Brown immediately started to cry. Poor Benjamin didn't know what to do since his daughter rarely ever cried.

Ansi was enjoying her mid morning snack when she heard the cries coming from her father's workshop. So with cookies in hand she made her way to the basement, annoyed at whatever disrupted her snack time, to see what the noise was.

To her surprise she was met by a teary eyed young boy and her father frantically attempting to calm him down.

Upon realizing that the sounds were coming from the boy she immediately opened her mouth to let him have. However, she decided against it after remembering how her mother popped her the last time she told someone to shut up.

One thing she did notice about the boy, aside from the irritating sounds he kept making, was the way his eyes, while teary, never looked away from her box of Fudgetown cookies. So she offered him a cookie saying that in exchange he wasn't allowed to cry anymore for the rest of the day. (She was a very blunt and straightforward child. T'was the autism)

Hobie was so shocked by Ansi's rude offer that he immediately stopped crying. He was irritated now. He argued that he couldn't control how he felt and so the deal was unfair. Ansi, however, had completely ignored his words. She was much more interested with his weird voice and his strange paper-like aesthetic. So of course she spoke her thoughts aloud.

This led to a back and forth fight of Ansi calling Hobie weird and Hobie saying that he wasn't which grew into a physical fight. (Thankfully Ansi's mother had come home at that point and broke the fight up. She wasn't happy with finding a random boy in her house. Much less one who was fighting her daughter right in front of her husband. Benjamin knew Ansi could hold her own so that's why he didn't do anything.)

Somehow despite this terrible first meeting they soon became completely inseparable over the two years that they were together. (Unfortunately for Ansi's parents this meant there were now two trouble makers in their house.)

Sadly, the day came when Hobie finally had to go home. It was a very tearful goodbye for the both of them (more so on Hobie’s part than Ansi's.)

Unfortunately, before Ansi was able to fully process this her entire life was turned upside down. This was the start of the worst years of her life.

To Be Continued

Summary: These two songs represent Ansi's beginnings as a child star.

My Reasonings: I chose a popular song by Shirley Temple to mark the rise of Ansi's child stardom.

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes is the first song that Cinderella sings in her movie. The main theme of the song is that despite the pain you're currently facing you can't give up the hope that things will change for the better. At this point of Ansi's life she feels the same as Cinderella because she believes this change in her life is only temporary. This song also illustrates Ansi's childhood naivety. She thinks that it won't be long before her life goes back to normal despite the obvious signs that it won't.

Lore: Ansi had always been a tech genius. By the time she learned how to count she was already typing out zeros and ones. Her programming abilities only improved as her father taught her more advanced skills. By the time she turned ten she was more versed in computer code than some senior programmers at Alchemax.

She was so good that her father started bringing her to his job at the Midwestern Alchemax branch. (That and the fact that she was driving her mother, who was attempting to homeschool her, insane.)

Nobody actually believed in her abilities. They thought that she was just a privileged brat that they were being forced to babysit. There were some who had more aggressive opinions that they didn't even try to hide. Ansi had become very familiar with the hushed whispers and dirty looks whenever she entered a room. (She also had to deal with racial prejudice since she was one of the few black people on site.) 

Most of the time they just ignored her. The few who pitied her gave her small and meaningless tasks (which only took her a couple of seconds to complete). She never complained to her father about it being surrounded by tech was enough for her. 

However, things changed the day a computer worm infected Alchemax's server. It started off slow. Desktops were running slower than usual. But many assumed it was due the precarious nature of the weather in the Midwest. It was impossible for their systems to be breached (Despite Ansi's constant warnings about the major weaknesses in their system). But it wasn't long before the slowness of the desktops went from a minor inconvenience to completely unusable. Panic began to spread across the facility. No one knew the cause of the worm or how it spread. The only thing they could do was stop it before it got to the super computer. Fortunately, Ansi's laptop was the only one unaffected since no one ever connected it to the mainframe. They all watched in awe as she effortlessly took down a computer worm that took the entire programming staff days to just slow it down. If Ansi didn't interfere they would've lost billions of dollars worth of tech. And yet in just a couple of hours Ansi was not only able to get rid of it but completely reverse the state of the infected computers. 

(It's quite easy to take down a worm that you created yourself.)

After such a miraculous feat people had to acknowledge her abilities. Soon she was put on bigger projects and given more difficult tasks. She was well known throughout the facility as their very own Coding Princess.

She was almost always at Alchemax. Even when her mother gave up and put her in public school she still went after classes. However, there was always one day in the year where her father refused to let her go with him to work. She knew why. It was the day of the annual progress report. 

The one day in the year where the head of Alchemax came to check out their tiny facilities. 

The one day in the year where her grandfather visited the area. 

(Somehow he always found time for work but could never find time to say hello to his own family.)

She didn't know why her father was so against her grandfather learning about her abilities, but she never pressed him about it. Sometimes she wonders what he would've said if she had asked. At the very least she would've been prepared for what was to come.

No one had expected the director's surprise visit. 

Somehow he'd gotten wind of the virus outbreak that had almost compromised the entire database and he was absolutely livid. 

Ansi knew of her grandfather's temper but she had never seen the man so red in the face. It wasn't long before he went from fuming to actively hostile, Ansi felt bad for the innocent workers who were standing near him. 

After leaving them bruised and bloodied he finally calmed down and said that everyone who worked that day would be fired unless Ansi went back to Seattle with him.

Ansi didn't care too much about the people working there but she still agreed. (It's one of the tech capitals of the US. Of course she was gonna say yes.)

Her mother was overjoyed to finally get recognition from her father while her father was absolutely terrified. He knew what the director was capable of but he was powerless. Assistant director was just an empty title given to him because he was the son-in-law of the director.