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[darkinferno]

Dante Rantanen

"Hey, you've reached Dante. I'm not in right now--you know what to do."

VOICE | TEXT | VIDEO | ACTION

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backdated to june 24th; text

[twelfthspark]

Hey, asshole.

[It's a term of endearment... kind of.]

Remember anything lately?

[darkinferno]

[He can roll with it. "Asshole" isn't the sort of thing he takes offense to being called!]

a few things

you?

[twelfthspark]

A few things.

So don't just sit there, give me the details

[darkinferno]

[Hmm... where does he want to start? Dante's got a lot he remembers, and he's not sure what's relevant to Arlene and what's not. So in the end, he goes for what he feels is the biggest bomb he's got so far.]

it's possible to convert people and places into data. not just to make some sort of model of them, but to take the actual data of a whole city and make it into some sort of datascape

i've remembered a few places like that, i think

[twelfthspark]

What, like in the Grid? They need to pick a genre for these memories and stick to it. 🤔

[darkinferno]

you're telling me

your turn, what's something you've remembered?

[twelfthspark]

You.

Except like five years younger? lol baby Dante

[darkinferno]

me except five years younger? what was i doing?

i haven't remembered anything with you in it yet

[twelfthspark]

Being passed out on the floor, but that's not the juicy part.

[of course she's gonna drag out the suspense for as long as he'll let her]

[darkinferno]

great

so what was the juicy part? and where WAS all of this?

[Being passed out on the floor...? That's definitely not something he remembers, though by its very nature Dante guesses he wouldn't remember it... still, nothing he's remembered so far has anything to do with a scenario where he'd pass out--in fact, from everything he remembers, passing out sounds like a pretty bad idea!]

[twelfthspark]

IDK where. Interior design kind of sucked. Just blank white, everywhere. Boring.

[answer the question, Arlene]

[darkinferno]

i've been there

[He doesn't know why he's so positive, but he is. He remembers being in a place that's entirely white everywhere--it's where he'd met his fake. There's a possibility that maybe that isn't the place she's talking about... but for some reason he's positive.]

get to the point already

[twelfthspark]

Fine, fine. No appreciation for building suspense at all 😩

You were a fake. A clone of some guy named "Riku". Phony.

[darkinferno]

[It's the name his eyes catch on first. Riku. Riku is this guy he's been reliving the memories of, this guy with the silver hair and the bright aqua eyes and the sword shaped like a bat's wing. Riku is the name of the boy that lost his heart to the darkness, that was wandering through that afterworld.

Not "Dante."

At first the rest of it is only secondary. But after a couple minutes he rereads the test, the name "Riku" still running through his mind on repeat... but wait. That's wrong. He remembers meeting a fake him.]

what are you talking about arlene

i wasn't a fake

i was real

[twelfthspark]

How sure can you be of that? He looked *just* like you, and I bet he thought he was the real one, too.

[It nags at her like a lingering itch: the awareness that her memory was only a brief part of a greater scene, conversation without context. It feels like she should be able to remember more if she really tries, and maybe then they'd know who's really right.

In the absence of that... well, the answer is always more trolling, isn't it? Maybe she'll provoke him into telling her more.]

[darkinferno]

[No. He was the real one. He distinctly remembers the other version of him saying he'd been made out of Dante--out of Riku's own data. Why would the real Riku be saying that to a replica...?]

how do you know he was named riku?

[twelfthspark]

How do I know any of this shit? 🙄

[darkinferno]

you're right, stupid question

let me rephrase

who said his name was riku? you? or someone else?

[twelfthspark]

Someone else. A kid who was all shocked he wasn't actually this Riku guy.

[darkinferno]

and what'd this kid look like?

[C'MON ARLENE GIVE HIM THE DEETS ALREADY]

[twelfthspark]

idk, he had hair like an anime character.

[Says the girl with antennae.]

Nobody I know now.

[darkinferno]

[ARLENE YOU ARE THE MOST UNHELPFUL]

yeah but /i/ might

you know you want to figure this out just as much as i do-- [Maybe even more; after his last few memories Dante isn't sure what he wants to do with them...] --so why don't you cut the crap and give me all the detail instead of making me go through this cross-examination bullshit

[twelfthspark]

I don't remember his face very well OK? He had blue eyes and stupid spiky hair, he was pretty young and that's all I remember about him so you're just gonna have to deal.

[darkinferno]

[...................................nope

nope nope nope nope he's not doing this

fuck this shit he's out TIME TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT]

fine whatever

i'm pretty sure the place was castle oblivion though

[twelfthspark]

You think so? The colors (or not) fit the other castle better.