Thunder and Webs C130 [Gold]

Ripley begins to consider an avenue of his powers he'd long been wary of, as he learns the art of mind manipulation.

Chapter 130: The Art of Mind Manipulation

February 20th

4:03 PM

Ripley

I’d been up for nearly eighteen hours working away at Cecil’s mind. I didn’t want to half-ass this, so I manually sifted through memory after memory to try and stitch everything into some semblance of coherence while maintaining the core identity of both his characters. It was… beyond difficult. The mind was complex, and I was effectively trying to fuse two distinct people into one person.

“You should ask Elsa for help.” Daylight said.

Begrudgingly, I did.

———

6:29 PM

“Ripley. It's impossible,” Elsa said firmly, “and I have a Feature designed for repurposing memories. You’re trying to fuse two distinct people into-”

“One person. I know…” I groaned, smacking the side of my head. “But hey, it's worth a try.”

“We don’t know this guy, Ripley,” Elsa said. “We don’t need to-”

“You didn’t know me once…” I offered a counterargument. “You manipulated my memories and then fell in love with me. Not saying you’ll do the same for this guy, but… I don’t think the argument of not ‘knowing a person’ is a valid justification for… not helping them. Founder, El, he came to me looking for help. I might not be able to give him what he wants, but… I don’t want him to suffer for it. Or to die.”

She looked guilty, and even I felt… a rush of something after I got those words out, but her fingers reached for mine, and she nodded. “Get Starlight.”

“Starlight? You… want to Synchronize?” That was a first.

“It will help us… and it’ll train you.” She said with a soft smile. “Fuck, I’m… its difficult to change, but for you, I will.”

———

“This is weird.” Both she and I said as Starlight bridged our minds. Dreamweaving reacted strongly to Codex and combined with Starlight, it was almost laughable how easy it would be for us to alter Cecil’s entire personality to our choosing completely. Instead, we were trying our best to keep his personalities, which, paradoxically, was even more difficult.

“We need to do this systematically,” Elsa said in her Avatar form as we watched a memory of Cecil teaching his toddler daughter to dance. “Search for commonality in both identities.”

She swapped to a memory of ‘Corporate Cecil’ humming the same song he had been dancing to with his daughter. Then, I watched as she manifested threads to link both memories together. “If you can’t find conscious commonality, look unconsciously… and if you can’t find it there? Subconscious.

“Is there a difference?” I asked while observing her.

“There is…” She nodded, and I could feel the shuddering meteors of colliding memories reducing in their self-destruction. “Cecil’s been a part of SynTec for about 22 years, so you ready to sift through all that with me? It’ll take… weeks.”

“Might as well start.” I smiled, reaching for her fingers as she wove thoughts.

———

February 21st

Elsa was silent as we saw Cecil filing for divorce. His wife had cheated on him. What was funny was that… his corporate side would never know. He’d always assume that when he clocked out, he’d have a wife waiting for him at home. Hell, Corporate Cecil didn’t even know he had a daughter.

———

February 22nd

Remarrying, Cecil and his new wife agreed early on to go for couples' counseling, and by proximity, Elsa and I were forced to go through it with them as we searched for threads to bridge his mental states.

“I just… have difficulty trusting people.” He said.

“I want to be someone he can trust.” His wife said.

Elsa’s finger grazed my thumb as she looked down… I lifted her chin up to kiss her.

———

That night at my apartment, I was groaning as I reviewed Cecil’s memories in my head, drawing up webs of patterns to try and orchestrate links between twenty-two years of split identities. I didn’t even know I’d fallen asleep, not until I found Elsa nudging me and Alice presenting the worst case of scrambled eggs I’d ever seen.

“We made breakfast for you, Mr. Donovick.” Alice chuckled. “Though, fair warning, its kind of shit.”

“I just thought that maybe, since you always cook for us, we could do the same for you.” Elsa rubbed her neck. “But it is shit.”

I laughed, brazenly taking a spoonful of the egg and regretting it... but also loving it. I spent the rest of the morning trying to teach them how to make a proper meal, and the rest of the morning passed with Elsa and I trying to plot out possible ways to web Cecil’s mind back together. Our plans escalated to more wild, from relating the size of his coffee cup to his wife’s tits… funnily enough, they had actually changed around the same time.

“You know, you guys are kinda cute together in a weird, dysfunctional way.” Alice said, mouth full of egg. “I don’t get why everyone always ships you with Silvereye.”

“Exactly!” Elsa said very quickly. The rest of the morning devolved to both of them shit-talking Diana.

At least they became friends.

February 23rd

We’d stabilized about 8% of Cecil’s memories, enough to create a ‘shield’ of sorts that would slow down the rate of his dissolving mental state. In the evening, Diamante messaged me, not for anything… personal, he had a request. For his cats.

Mentioning it in front of Alice sent her into a frenzy of pleading to join in.

———

February 24th

Taking Alice to Diamante's old mall hideout wasn’t something I was too keen on, but as annoying as she could be sometimes... I wanted to spoil her a little for the poor hand life had dealt her.

She loved the kittens more than I think anyone has ever loved anything. Both black cats hopped in her lap, and she couldn’t keep her hands off from petting them or picking them up for cuddles. “Aw, you’re so fucking cute, I want to eat you!”

“Is that normal?” I looked at Diamante.

“Seraphina, strangely, would say the same thing. Said it was cuteness agression.” The presence of Alice mildly weirded out Diamante, but I assured him that she would stay silent. The threat of having a notorious cyberterrorist as a girlfriend was enough to convince Alice that her Net presence remained… lacking in any personal details of ours.

Diamante and I caught up as I plucked out the prosthetics I’d worked on yesterday. One of his cats had lost a leg, and the other one had lost an eye. He coughed. “So, how’re you doing… in general… you know, uh…”

“You’re bad at this, you know.” I kicked his leg. “It's difficult, but… hey, life’s not so bad right now, I think.”

“Glad to hear.” He said with genuine warmth. “Twi told me that you and Diana had a chat. How’d it go?”

“Better than expected, still no Dreadwiring, but… I think things are sort of cool between us for the moment. Honestly, I expected her to… hate me more. I cut her arm off and shot her in the head for fuck's sake.”

“Well, I shot you in the head.” He shrugged.

“Hm, and I returned that favor.” I reminded him, readying the prosthetic leg as I called for Alice. “Hey, uh, bring that cat with no leg here.”

“His name’s Limp.” Diamante said in a scolding tone.

“Limp?” I laughed. “You called the cat that’s missing a leg… Limp? What’d you call the cat missing an eye?”

“Her name is Blink.” He said shamelessly.

I couldn’t stop laughing from his horrid naming sense. And to think, he complained about mine. I sedated Limp. They tried to claw at me as I held them down, while Diamante was shouting that I was being too rough, that Limp deserved better than to be treated like my human patients. I asked him what he meant, but he remained firm.

“Whatever, Limp’s grown a lot since I last saw ‘him’.” I made small incisions through the fur as I slipped Standard-Grade Neurowiring in. “Do cats grow this big, this quickly?”

“Ah, turns out they ain’t cats,” Diamante said, almost sounding proud. “Zoologist friend told me they’re pumas from the wilds.”

Alice looked like she had stars in her eyes as she squealed. “Holy shit, these are puma kittens?”

“What’s a puma?” I asked.

The silence was palpable until Diamante cackled. “I thought you were smart, kid.”

“You know, so did I.” Alice sneered. “Turns out Dreadwire is a big dumbass.”

The rest of the evening devolved into them making fun of me, with Diamante sharing stories of my dumbassery to Alice.

At least… at least they were friends now.

———

February 25th

“You’re overworking yourself.” I said to a slumped Elsa watching recordings of Cecil’s memories. “Take a breather.”

“I can’t.” She said as I put a blanket on her. “I’m trying to…”

“I know, El.” I kissed her forehead, “I can tell how hard you’re trying.”

———

February 26th

“Why’re you making it look like me?” I stared at the first step of the Lifeline Project me and Starlight were working on. Based on Skeleton’s drone manufacturing, Heart Seeker, and my own tech, Starlight currently had an endoskeleton that was being armored to resemble Dreadwire.

“It’s a proof of concept.” She replied from several drones at once. “Figured that if we’re making a doppelganger of Silvereye, might as well build a version of you from the ground up and see what we can blend from each to make Lifeline. But don’t worry, it’s… not as expensive as the real you. Quite brittle, if I’m being honest.”

“Uh huh,” I eyed her with scrutiny as I saw drones weaving Livewire into the drone’s Arachnodyne. “You know this all comes from your allowance, right?”

“Wait, what?!” Starlight’s drones turned in a panic. “You didn’t say that!”

“Well… it is now.” I said, hoping to teach her some budgeting skills.

———

February 27th

I was still waiting from Twilight to see what progress was being made on the brothel Alice had once been a part of. So far, she’d confirmed an initial case was in the process of being conducted, but so far, a majority of the police’s work was being thrown into Soul Killer. Some people claimed that Soul Killer was taking the police away from covering real cases. Others constantly spread paranoid posts speculating about who in their life might be a soulless thrall. Then came the theories: Soul Killer being a human-made MAL, or a government experiment in flower pollination gone wrong.

Then there were supporters of Soul Killer… because, of course, there were. Nihilists, anarchists, Genefreaks, and others all saw Soul Killer as some sort of…

I didn’t quite know the word…

“Messiah?” Starlight said, sitting on Alice’s head opposite me in this diner. I’d come here back with Hoaqin last year, and the burgers were worse than usual. Cursed meat regulations.

I almost felt nervous about my ignorance given prior bullying. “What’s a Messiah?”

Elsa answered this time, “some mythological figure who can supposedly lead everyone to heaven, or more or less, make them think they’re going that way. It’s very cultish, in my opinion. Basically idol worshiping on steroids.”

“I see.” I chewed my own burger, thinking to myself as I looked out of the window. Not too far away, a wall was grafittied with a holographic depiction of Silvereye, shining and splendid, crushing red-spider lilies in her hands with the caption: Be her thunder, report Soul Killer.

A waiter came by and put down a milkshake for Alice before snaking her gaze on the tattoo on Alice’s forearm. She smiled. “That’s a nice tattoo, I got one myself.”

“Oh, you do?” Alice grinned. “Where?”

“No place a kid like you should see.” The waiter smiled as she turned around to serve more tables.

Elsa looked pissed for some reason. “What is it with women and tattooing Dreadwire on their body?”

Alice sneered, leaning forward. “Hey, let’s just say… a lot of women share your taste.”

“I know! But what makes him so… I’m just saying, it’s mostly women on the Net.”

“All-black. Good with his hands. Brooding. Mysterious.” Alice said in order, the shadows on the table tilting slightly. “Ugh, if only they knew the truth.”

“Hey,” I flicked her forehead, “what happened happened to that awestruck girl who-”

My Preservation Matrix activated. The shadows were wrong.

The darkness cast from beyon the window over the diner’s table had grown too large, too quickly and Hypermind Prime was just quick enough to react as I grabbed Alice’s shoulder, while the Arachnodyne stretched from my back to dig into Elsa’s arm. Shriekstone cores from my legs pushed me from a stationary position into the air as I flipped and saw a truck speeding towards the diner’s window — right where we were seated.

I dragged both Alice and Elsa out of the path as concrete and glass shattered to the crashing truck, careful not to break their limbs as Starlight worked quickly to Synchronize with me. But the waitress was also going to die. One more Arachnodyne limb yanked onto her shirt and heaved her away from the path of destruction as the truck embedded itself into the diner. Almost immediately, the perpetrators exited the truck.

All wearing Black Dragon masks. As time resumed to normal, the patrons of the diner screamed as twelve masked and armed Adapters left the truck, each of them wielding katanas while their Shardware and Mutations roared at me.

“Elsa, Alice!” Without my mask, I improvised. Just like when I assumed The Ripper Ego, black cloth replaced my facial skin, but the patrons had already seen the Arachnodyne. “They’re after me! Just get ou-“

Preservation Matrix activated again as I felt a solid hand squeeze on the steel of my shoulder. The waitress who I’d saved suddenly had cold eyes and unbelievable strength as she heaved me away and sent me smashing into the truck. My Arachnodyne caught me in a wrench of metal and shattered glass, but not before the masked Black Dragons swung their blades down in a unified fashion and required me to skitter and deflect, but I already saw it.

The waitress had pulled out a long and curved dagger of black steel that had crimson veins running along its hilt. Elsa’s eyes were shifting to black-and-white as she pushed Alice away but my Arachnodyne had already engaged a javelin tip as the waitress plunged the dagger.

The Arachnodyne speared through her forehead until it was caved in. Blood and brain dribbled down the waitress' face, but she remained standing with a smile despite the top half of her skull being decimated — and the dagger hit its mark.

Everything had happened so quickly, so planned, that we had no time to react.

Elsa’s eyes went wide as a dagger penetrated her temple and its tip broke through steel, bone, blood and brain to poke out the other side. Her fingers twitched as she tried to grasp for the blade’s hilt, but it viciously yanked out of her and sent her body thudding on the ground. Her eyes faded in color, as a weak wheeze reached for me. “Ri…ley…”

The waitress, still missing half her head, greeted me with a warm smile as she spun the dagger in her hands and took a crouching stance. 

“Greetings, Dreadwire. You may know me as the First Prince of Muramasa: Crouching Dagger.”

---

Crouching Dagger might be my favorite antagonist lowkey... we'll get to see more of him in the next chapter: The First Prince.