#ayla.talk

Your name is Sollux Captor, and you have a penchant for getting yourself into situations with your soulmate that are less than desirable.

“Stop pokin’ me.”

“That’s a little hard like this, genius,” you snap back, then scowl as Eridan digs his elbow back into your stomach.

“You’re too short to be the big spoon, Sol.” This was a long-standing argument, but you always insisted that something felt wrong about being the little spoon, and no other form of cuddling made either of you feel quite... Right. You think it must have been the way you were summoned.

—> Be Sollux from last year

You are now Sollux from last year. It’s mid July in Texas, and the weather is miserable; people are still setting off fireworks every night, as if they haven’t got the memo the fourth of July is only a single day. Karkat likes to joke that hell has nothing on Texas in the summer, and you have to agree. You haven’t exactly been back to hell in awhile, but the longer you’re here the more enticing it feels

Texas is in no way your home, but the last time some stupid kids at a party summoned you, you’d decided to stick around. Karkat has semi-permanent residence here, after all, with his weird ass human boyfriend. You usually crash at their house, but Kanaya and her wife are visiting and something about the blonde gives you the chills. She always looks at you like she knows something you don’t.

The stars (or what you can see of them) are beautiful. You have half a mind to make roots here, in this godawful town with it’s godawful name (Stardust, how cheesy is that) with nothing for you, if for no reason other than to feel like you’re doing something with your life. Rose has said this is a sign of yearning for domesticity, and that you should find a partner. You know there’s no point, because everyone you meet either pities you or runs away. There’s no room for romance in there.

Being a demon in this town is weird, though. Different. Many other demons (those you know and those you don’t) have taken up residence here, and it seems to be a safe haven for those like you. The humans don’t run and scream quite so much. The hunters leave you be if you don’t hurt people.

Long nights are good for philosophical thinking, but sometimes this gets cut short. The one thing that life in this town doesn’t change, though, is the stupidity of children. You recognize the familiar pull of a summoning as soon as it’s happening, and after a few seconds you blip out of existence before landing on your feet on a wooden floor and—

Something’s wrong. You feel excruciating pain, enough to make you fall to your knees gasping. The floor is warm, wet, sticky, and the smell of copper in the air makes it easy to recognize; blood. The wood is covered in it, with it flowing in between the cracks of the boards and filling little knotholes in puddles. It doesn’t take long to find the source; there’s a demon on the floor directly in front of you, circled in a summoning pattern that loops with your own. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in the room— no. No one alive. There are bodies, and the smell of death is making you sick. Your head is pounding now, and you do the only thing you can conceivably do; you crawl to the other demon, ignoring your own pain as much as possible. You’ve felt this before; they’re a sort of empath, a very powerful one, and in their state they’re projecting everything they feel as a plea for help. It probably killed the humans, but you’re tougher than that.

They look like shit. There’s blood all over their face and clothes, and much of it seems to be coming from slits on the side of their neck and their sides— oh, fuck. Gills.

You’ve never been the strongest person, so you figure it must be adrenaline that drives you to try and pick them up. They’re a fish or something, fish need water. The moment you touch them, though, it feels like your head is going to split apart; a chorus of screams is resonating in your mind, and only one of them is yours. You pass out before you can do anything to help the dying demon before you.

—> Be Erisol

Something’s wrong. Your body is too heavy— no, it’s too light— there are weird things on your neck and side— no, those belong there— your mouth feels too full— it feels emptier than it should—

You take a deep breath. Breathe, breathe, breathe. That’s what Kar always says— no, when has he ever said that to you? You aren’t so close to him that he’d know when you were upset, because you avoid him then— no, you run to him then—

“Shut up!” You snap, and the voice is barely yours. A little of this, a little of that, and— it’s time to get serious. Something is wrong. You shouldn’t exist.

Flipping through your memory is easy enough; you were summoned by a group of teens, who then casted spells on you from some sort of book. You passed out from the pain and presumably lost control of your projection. Then you walked in and saw you passed out and bleeding on the floor—

Wait. Wait. You can’t see yourself, that doesn’t make sense, none of this makes sense and you don’t know who you are. Panic claws at your chest, and you have the first unified thought for the last ten minutes, which is the instinctive need to run to Karkat and have he and Dave fix it.

—>

“Dude, you’re so fucked. I think you’re gonna have to talk to Rose.” That was exactly what you didn’t want to hear, but Dave has always been good at saying things you don’t like— no, Dave is one of your friends, and you like being around him—

With a frustrated whine, you bury your head in a pillow. You want to stop thinking; this is terrifying. You hear the telltale click of heels on tile, then muffled on carpet.

“Oh, dear.” Rose tuts, and she sits gingerly next to you on the couch. “Sol—“ She pauses. “Eri—“ Another pause. “You look terrible,” she finally decides on, and you bare your teeth into the pillow.

“No shit, Sherlock. What’s wrong with me?”

“A botched ritual,” she responds immediately. “It’s a forced joining ceremony, usually used between a human and a demon or two humans, rather than two demons. I think that’s the problem; the spell wasn’t made to encompass so much power, and now you’re, well.” She gestures at you, and Dave is standing behind her, grimacing. “You’re definitely joined, I’d say.” It takes all of your willpower not to jump at her and wring her neck, but you manage.

—>

It takes a few months for Rose to prepare what she needs to get you back to normal, and in that time you’re forced to stay at Karkat’s house. The first time you see him, his name sounds something like “K-Kar” but by this point you’ve settled on using just KK or Kar interchangeably. You slowly get to know yourself; your two life stories, likes and dislikes, friends and foes. Two people weren’t meant to be one, but you think you manage well. One half enjoys it for the closeness, and the other can’t admit it but they do, too. A lot of your time is spent laying around having conversations with yourself, all but dead to the world around you.

When Rose finally has her unjoining ritual ready, a sense of fear and loss rises in you like the tide, soothed only by internal promises that you can stay together as two, just not as one.

—> Be Eridan

The fighting starts just two weeks after you and Sollux are separated once more. You’re still both at Karkat’s house, under the watchful eye of Kanaya and Rose; most waking moments are spent with you clinging to Sollux, feeling a sense of loss at being by yourself again. He lets you do it, holds your hand when you ask, even crawls into bed with you of his own volition at night.

You’re both confused. You didn’t even know each other before this; the confusion is what starts the fighting. He’s scared, you’re too close, you know too much; you’d know this even if he weren’t projecting his deepest fears outward every time he saw you. He starts taking his anger out on everyone, and Dave seems to be the only one who can calm him. Karkat tells you to watch your projection, because the jealousy, murder-y vibes are starting to creep Dave out. Sollux avoids you, and the next few weeks are miserable; the loss is palpable, a physical ache in your chest.

—>

You’re not sure what changes, but Sollux slowly starts joining you at night again. At first it’s just the same bed, but eventually he wraps his arms around you, pressing his chest to your back. After a few weeks, you get the courage to acknowledge him without fear it’ll make him leave.

“You’re a little too short to be bein’ the big spoon.”

“Shut up.” He presses his face into your neck and you smile, radiating feelings of warmth and contentment.

—> Be current Sollux

Eridan is sort of a mystery to you. You didn’t know him before that summoning, but something about him makes you feel protective. You freaked out once for a few weeks because Rose said something about soulmates, and it wasn’t until Karkat lectured you about how terrible you were making Eridan feel that you ignored what she said and went back to trying to behave with some semblance of a normal person.

Being with Eridan is easy, in a way. Your personalities mesh or clash depending on the day, but he’s always happy to just sit with you when you need quiet, and he’ll let you just hold his hand if you get too freaked out or lonely. In the grand scheme of things, you two were joined for less than half a year, but it felt like an eternity to learn to navigate a new body and new responses to things. You miss it more than you think you should.

Eridan gets it, though. For the most part, when you try to explain how you’re feeling about it he mirrors your concerns. There’s no handbook on how to handle separating into two people after being one, no Unjoining For Dummies, so the two of you are on your own.

On a side note, you’re almost entirely sure Rose coined the phrase “unjoining” to fuck with you.

—>

Eridan’s needs are fairly simple. He has to apply a water based lotion or gel to his gills every two hours or so to make sure he doesn’t die or something, and any sort of praise is met with enthusiastic response. He feeds off all emotion, but positive is what he likes best.

You, on the other hand, are more difficult, and it’s a miracle how he puts up with you. You feed off technology, and you’re constantly putting the power out for brief stints of time (which drives Karkat fucking bonkers, but everyone else laughs it off). The voices of the damned can force you to lock yourself away at times, and Eridan, saint he is, will pull up a chair and sit near you until you feel normal again.

Nothing is “normal” anymore. Something in you aches for Eridan, even when he’s right next to you, and you’ve never depended on another person so much in your life. The first time he says he loves you, the only thing that keeps you from bursting into tears is how much love he radiates, making you feel warm and whole. As it is, you’re choked up enough that you can’t say it back, just clutch him to you like a lifeline from a rocky shore.

act won begins with an endearingly shitty title screen. you can start a new gmae, load a save, set your gmae preferences, get help, or quit like a chump. starting the gmae begins the neon genesis evangelion opening; this can be skipped with a simple click or a press of the spacebar, but i prefer to watch it all the way through to get the full experience.

after the intro, the scene opens on the white house, where obmama is breaking up with izzy. izzy is soon ushered away, tears and all, so that sweet bro can take his rightful place on screen. you play the gmae as obmama’s cousin, who you can name yourself after obmama asks sweet bro to take you on a date.

the date begins at the washington monument, with mount rushmore as the background (an endearing touch, and something that adds more character and hilarity to the gmae). sweet bro rattles off a few paragraphs of information about the monument, at which time you are prompted to a multiple choice question. clicking “interesting” prompts another question (“not really” will end the gmae, and “absoutley” will continue several more paragraphs of information) while “go on” will continue several more paragraphs of information.

after awhile sweet bro decides to see if you’re paying attention; the scene switches to a jeopardy game, with sweet bro asking you a total of two (2) trivia questions about the monument. answering the first question incorrectly prompts a nigh philosophical speech from sweet bro; the bad end warning flashes up on the screen, followed by kazoo kid trap remix.

if you answer the first question correctly, the second question is a manual input answer. i’ll admit it had me stumped for quite awhile, despite being so obvious by the time i got it-- if you need to ask help for the question, try thinking a little first! getting this question wrong after getting the first question correct prompts sweet bro to lecture you about paying attention, then repeat the last several paragraphs (while a jeopardy music remix plays) before bringing you back to the jeopardy game.

once both questions have been correctly answered, sweet bro seems to be overjoyed. he’s about to ask you (presumably) on a date, when he suddenly remembers that he has a previous engagement to attend-- lunch with a friend. the screen fades out, and when it returns both sweet bro and hella jeff ask if you’d like to join them for lunch. this is the good end to the gmae. 

after some music plays, the words BLOOPER REAL pop up, and clicking or pressing the spacebar brings you back to the title screen. the implication, clearly, is that the gmae is perfect as is, and no hals, obmamas or sweet bros made mistakes while creating it.