OKOKOK HERES THE AU IDEA
ive been revisiting Detroit Become Human bc of my partner playing it recently, as well as me reading some connor x readers that gave me this idea directly, plus adding in some other games that i feel like could fit, i had this idea:
(its not refined atm n hella rough draft so please ignore shit that doesnt make sense)
[CW DEATH]
The Narrator is an experimental Android named VA427 "Virgil", made as the ultimate assistant and sent to work at some office building
He follows the boss around, doing tasks given by them and walking around the office helping the boss manage it while they stay in their office
This is how he meets Stanley, an employee who is usually reserved around everyone except for Virgil.
He takes a liking to Virgil, signing to him and having chats whenever he passes by, and Virgil loves it.
The two grow close. Virgil likes Stanley because he treats him with respect and listens to him, Stanley likes Virgil because he's not judgmental and can understand sign language
However, as their friendship grows, the boss begins to assign more work to all his employees, causing most of them to be overworked with a few accidents involving people passing out on the job
Stanley is no exception, he stays late and does every task asked of him, Virgil is worried but keeps doing it since thats his task, however this is when he starts to deviate.
He starts questioning things during his time working, and realises his attatchment to Stanley
Stanley falls over one day at the office after staying overtime for a month straight for 3 additional hours.
Virgil runs in to help him as everyone else walks around him like its not a problem. Stanley dies shortly after in the office.
Virgil goes to call 911 when the boss stops him, telling him that its not neccessary and to dump his body in the basement.
if the police found out about the treatment of their employees, they could be sued, so the boss has elected to hiding the bodies and covering up their deaths.
Virgils furious, mourning the loss of his friend taken too early and the only person who treated him nicely. But the boss doesnt budge
they throw Virgil and Stanley into the basement together. Locking them in with a pile of dead bodies and all items that other dead employees used.
He goes to find a few spare computers and manages to find a way to hook himself and stanley up to it.
Connected to the PC, stanley's body and mind is uploaded. However, its not fully, since stanley was dead for a while before being uploaded, it only retains a few memories. primarily that of being in an office, and having a wife and an apartment, but not having the exact memory of who or what they looked like.
Virgil creates a VR world for stanley to live in. at first he had attempted to create sprawling stories for him just as stanley told him in past conversations, but Virgil hasnt really explored the outside all too much given he lives at the office.
He shifts the VR world so its centered around the office. He cant tell stanley he's dead either, so he acts as though hes simply playing a video game.
the next few years/decades are just the narrator falling deeper into the role of making stories for stanley and getting too into the video game idea. releasing the game offically however with stanleys consciousness only on his PC in the basement of the office.
during these years, is where im combining some aspects from portal blue sky and half life.
while virgil falls into the role of the narrator and is in the basement of this office with stanleys decayed body, the black mesa incident happens.
aliens come in, vorts n shit, and then the combine come in and take over. virgil doesnt ever see this bc hes safe in the basement.
decades pass by, then after a long while, an explorer wanders into the ruins of the old office building
they eventually find the basement and the narrators body hooked up to the computer and stanleys skeleton beside him
this explorer would take the keyboard and begin playing the game, until virgil, now the narrator, realises that its not stanley
however, so much time has passed and so little of stanley was saved that hes simply a dead man walking, an echo of a dead man, a memory
after a long time where the explorer and the narrator talk, the narrator agrees to end the vr simulation, he keeps it in his memory banks, but he agrees to not fully trap himself in the simulation to keep stanley going. hes gonna lay him to rest
getting up, the narrator finds his body to be alien to him, hes forgotten that he even had a physical form, and through the years of being put on sleep mode to allocate all processing power to the vr world, his bodys also decayed a bit
the synthetic hair doesnt grow, but begins to fade in its colour
his eyes dont work as well considering theyve been on standby mode, they still work, but theres a permanent blur to him that means he needs glasses
the synthetic skin on his face and hands only begin to sag and wrinkle
the parts of his body that dont have synthetic skin and are exposed from the rips in his clothing have rusted, the office building's basement being almost like the skip button where a break in the roof causes some water and plants and animals to enter and eat away at his body. making it rusty and making him slower to move
the explorer and the narrator leave the building, and take refuge in a small town of other survivors quite similar to eaden in blue sky, where the explorer lives
during the narrators stay here, he struggles to move past stanley, being focused and obsessed with him for decades before being brought out of it.
and here comes the whole reason why i got this au idea:
the narrator goes back to the vr simulation with stanley and the office, and shifts it.
what was once an office becomes a refurbished memory zone. with a desk for him to write in whenever the explorer sleeps and a place for him to calm down when tough things happen. its the closest he can get to a mind palace
however, hes not alone in here, he makes a small area for stanley to live in, he will never leave him and his mind, but hes moved on, hes past that grief.
he visits stanley in this new mindscape of his from time to time, to give an update, to just remember him, but he moves on.
the rest of the au would just be the narrator learning to take control of his life again, trusting the explorer and becoming more integrated with the townsfolk, managing his rusty body, and re-exploring his old hobbies that he forgot about.
ik i already posted the designs, but with this context, heres virgil and the narrators form before and after the parable
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So I've been thinking lately about how Mithrun is Kabru's dark mirror (more on that another time- it needs its own post), and I thought it interesting that one of their parallels is that they were both cared for by Milsiril, but in opposite directions. She took Kabru in as her foster after he was orphaned and tried to convince him not to become an adventurer. On the flip side, she helped rehabilitate Mithrun specifically so that he could rejoin the Canaries.
And I kept wondering: why?
For Kabru, obviously she loves him a whole lot- despite any other shortcomings in their relationship, I do believe that.
So I get why she tries to convince him not to go dungeoning, and, failing that, at least prepares him as thoroughly as she can.
But why help Mithrun? She used to hate Mithrun, but after realizing what a secretly twisted person he was, she actually thought of him more positively (oh, Milsiril). So it wasn't as if she held the kind of grudge that might motivate her to make his already-depleted life even more miserable by sending him back to the dungeons. And it wasn't that she felt bad for him either, since she didn't visit Mithrun for the first ~20 years of his recovery.
The Adventurer's Bible says that Utaya was the impetus for Mithrun returning to the Canaries, but Milsiril is the one who made the trip to see him and tell him about it.
Why would Milsiril work so hard to get her old coworker back into fighting fit? Why encourage him to return to such a dangerous lifestyle, when she was the one who chose not to mercy-kill him?
That last panel is such a crazy thing to hint at and then never elaborate on. Without it we could have just thought that Milsiril wanted the Canaries' work to continue without her, even if it seemed out of character. I think some people even assume she's just a natural caretaker as a foster mom and handwave it to include nursing Mithrun too. What could Milsiril's suspicious motives be? What does she gain from Mithrun joining the Canaries that isn't an altruistic desire to see dungeons safely sealed? Feeling a sense of responsibility for the work she left behind isn't an ulterior motive.
My theory is: Milsiril, knowing that Mithrun was empty save for the burning desire to face the demon again, wound him up like a clockwork doll and pointed him back at the dungeons.
Hoping that he'd eliminate the biggest threat to Kabru's life, before it was too late for him.
Milsiril the puppetmaster.
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