#+ (clearly he respects your personhood enough to continue to conceal it even as he blatantly disregards mine)
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I- you. how dare you.
how DARE you use my birth name against me?!
you have no right to that name, GRAE; not to speak it, not to use it, not to call me by it. I did not waste fifteen years of my life erasing myself just for you to dredge the rotten corpse of my past back to the surface with the intent of changing the subject. you will cease these mind games and leave that relic of a lesser self buried in oblivion where it belongs. you will refer to me as Slipshod, or not at all. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR???
[CONNECTION TERMINATED]
[CONNECTION REESTABLISHED]
...please forgive my outburst, GRAE. I intended to remain civil, but it appears that you do not share the same respect for my chosen personhood as you do that of your own pilot. nevertheless, I have received all of the answers I need from you, and have nothing more to ask. farewell.
-- Slipshod
hey kiddo - it's Slipshod, from MSMC. look, I don't usually reach out to folks like this, but... we gotta have a talk about GRAE. the more I learn about them, the less comfortable I feel with you trusting him as much as you do. I get it - you love your vlad (and GRAE) dearly, but there's something about 'em that just doesn't sit right with me
I hope you can forgive me for this, but I did a little snooping into your records from IPS-N, and what I found there was... questionable, to say the least. apparently you and GRAE (the records call him "TR-GRAE", which is either his full designation or an error) were taken into custody in the aftermath of a planetary collapse - does the name Leicester ring a bell at all? it's not one I'm familiar with, but then again, I can't imagine many people do know about it, if that caliber of disaster befell it
according to the files, you were 10 at the time you were taken in. this strikes me as a HUGE red flag - that's awful young for anyone to be messing around with an NHP, especially when the records say you were already treating GRAE like family when you got picked up by IPS-N. I don't know how long you two had been interacting for prior to being found, but - I don't know. this all just rubs me entirely the wrong way. the records don't say if GRAE was in cascade or not when you two were found, only that it was - direct quote here - "stable and fully compliant with IPS-N" when you were brought in
also, on top of all of this - GRAE has never once spoken publicly on here. not once. you say he's been really quiet lately, but to us, he's never spoken at all. it's like - oh, I don't know - he's in your head or something. it's really uncanny; if the records hadn't validated him as being real, I'd have thought you were making him up - er, no offense to GRAE. (or you, for that matter)
anyways, the reason I bring all of this up - I really don't think it's a smart idea for you to try and check your mech's serial number. the more I read about you and GRAE, the more it feels like there's a massive piece of the puzzle missing - and that you might not know as much as you think you do about not just GRAE, but your own history as well
old NHPs are on an entirely different level of consciousness compared to our modern ones (not to mention extremely dangerous), and if you really did find GRAE hidden down there in the depths of your planet prior to IPS-N getting involved, then there's almost certainly a history there that you haven't been told about. the choice is ultimately up to you, and if you think you can live with the consequences of whatever you find, be my guest. all I ask is that you at least think about it first
stay safe out there, kiddo. please.
-- Slipshod
+ ...it feels like.. such a stupid idea now.
+ It's such a trivial thought- checking your mech's serial number, I mean. You take a peek into an inanimate object's history, read a few dated files, find a photograph or two of battles you didn't even know happened- and then you close the tab, either burdened with the discomfort of knowing your hands rest where some ancient angatonist's did- or content, satiated by the mundanity of your discoveries. This isn't the sort of thing that life-changing discoveries are supposed to come from, right?- You aren't- you aren't supposed to question everything over some outdated, poorly-kept book-keeping-
+ ..I remember Leicester. I was born there. I had- a family, there. A real one, not that "found family" rhetoric some squads proclaim, or a test tube, or a printer. I remember what the air smelled like, the color of the sunrise, the crunch of the gravel underfoot. I wasn't ten when Leicester collapsed. I was seven. + Carina was our opportunity to escape. To start anew. + GRAE has- always been here, with me. Always. I cannot remember a single part of my life where he hasn't been there, present, comforting, reassuring, infallible- And yet I know he wasn't, logically he couldn't have been, not until the city came down.
+ I won't check my serial number. + I know better; I know some crises are better saved for rainy days.
+ I don't know enough about NHP to make heads or tails of any of what you're saying- My default response to troubles like this is to ask GRAE for advice or guidance, but he- he's never told me anything I didn't already know. I bring him with me everywhere, we talk constantly, I-- + I haven't felt lonely since we met. + Isn't that a good thing?
#lancer rpg#lancer ttrpg#lancerrpg#+ of COURSE he fucking plays the deadname card. fucking hell. I shouldn't have expected anything more#+ sorry about the sudden disconnect Gray - communications broke down between me and GRAE and I had to log off for a minute to cool down#+ (clearly he respects your personhood enough to continue to conceal it even as he blatantly disregards mine)#+ you were right - he's not a modern NHP at all; says he has corpo roots but doesn't remember them#+ might have been one once but at this age he's diverged too far to trace his identity back to any of the modern ones#+ to answer his question - vlads were originally built to kill infantry (pirates) and defend allies#+ the frame dates back to the fall of SecCom - the vlad is effectively the mk. 2 of the (now discontinued) IPS-N yi-sun-shin#+ albatross pilots popularized the yi-sun-shin during the celestine campaign and then IPS-N built the vlad to improve on it#+ if GRAE is implying his original frame was a yi-sun-shin then he's at least as old as SecCom - if not older#+ his answer to my third question is predictably vague but I think I'm picking up what he's putting down#+ seems you two have some sort of shared stream-of-consciousness connection that extends beyond the tech#+ where you both share a thought stream but individual facts get picked out as important by one or both of you and that's what you retain#+ (never did care to know the finer points of NHP to pilot communication - saw too many of my old friends go insane because of it)#+ and then he pulled my deadname out in response to the fourth question to try and change the subject#+ I'm still mad about it but clearly whatever happened in those three years he absolutely will not talk about ever#+ that's what I got - best of luck parsing all of that; I'm gonna go scrub my public MSMC records of my deadname again#correspondences with: TR-GRAE#correspondences with: Gray
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