Hello there ! Before you start reading this little story, I wanted to apologies for its mediocre quality. This is my first fanfiction, and also probably the longest text I've ever written, so I'm sorry a part of it if not everything sounds a bit clumsy. It's also the first time I try writing in English (which I've only been studying for a few years) so there will probably be quite a few mistakes. I still hope it will be somehow enjoyable ^^' Feel free to give me your critics, I'm looking forward to any kind of feedback. Without further ado I wish you a fun time reading !
Chapter 1 : Melody in the night
It had been a wonderful day. Autumn had already started to paint the world in red and gold, and had also greeted everybody with two weeks of rain. But no cloud had dared to cover the sun today.
The falling leaves started to dance under the setting lights as a slight breeze rustled through the gardens of the League. For a moment, their stretching shadows seemed to take life, as if they were celebrating the end of the day.
It had truly been a wonderful day...
...right ?" Orianna thought to herself as she slowly walked down a large corridor.
Most of the other champions had stopped what they were doing and were now admiring the spectacular sunset through the windows and from the gardens. They seemed happy.
"And sunlight makes happy. So it has to be a wonderful day. " concluded the young woman. Satisfied with her analysis, she took a better hold of the heavy bag she was carrying and continued her walk down the corridor.
During yet another contest to see who would make the strongest alcohol, Ziggs and Singed had blown up a part of the women dormitories. The involved champions had, much to their demies, been forced to move to a new location.
But it didn't bother Orianna. She hadn't felt any kind of attachment to her room, nor to the stuff she had lost in the fire that had followed the explosion. After the incident, she had just picked up what she could still use and followed the other homeless champions.
Those were now gathering in front of the crystal windows of the corridor in order to catch a last glimpse at the slowly fading sun. Orianna sighed, deciding to leave them behind and find the way to her new room on her own. She actually knew the way perfectly, since she had a precise map of the League engraved in her memory, but a randomness factor had been added to her "mind" in order to make her reactions more human.
She lost herself twice before a summoner was kind enough to show her the way.
The place was bigger than her former residence, but was also very empty, as most of her furniture had burnt. In the living room, a lonely rocking-chair was facing an empty shelf, and in her bedroom, the bed was missing a mattress. The rest of her rescued possessions fit in the wooden trunk at the end of her bed : a few clothes, two books, a can of oil, a rusty tea-pot, a mug, a framed picture of her "father", and her biggest treasure, an old gramophone. After a short reflexion, she took that last one back out of the trunk. It was only 10 p.m., she still had time for one last dance.
Since she was "born", dancing had always been something very important to her : it had always been something very satisfying.
That's how she worked : she couldn't "feel" emotions, but doing certain things brought her satisfaction. That included fighting and winning games, but also acting like a human...and dancing.
She had memorized each piece of music in her large collection, movement by movement, tune by tune. With each dance, her moves had become more perfect as she was slowly overcoming her randomness factor.
But before she started dancing to a music, she had to analyse it precisely. She didn't understand nor did she care about the feelings the composer wanted to transmit. It was rather a mathematical dissection : every note was carefully taken out, observed, then put back, in order to find out what logical links bound her to the others, what role she played in the immense structure of the music.
It was only once everything was understood, once every tune was explainable, that Orianna could start dancing to the music.
She actually just had finished analysing her newest acquired piece, and was eager to start dancing to it. She went back into her living room, carefully carrying the gramophone, her companion following her closely. She put the old machine on the shelf, and turned around as she ordered her ball to push the rocking-chair aside in order to make some space.
But she stopped in the middle of her motion as a new information popped into her "mind" :
"My whole vinyl collection is gone."
She knew her face was simulating a sad expression, maybe even a crying one, but she didn't really care.
She sighed.
"It's the second time today, that never happened" she thought "Well, it's all replaceable...expensive, but replaceable."
And with that she decided it would be best to prepare for the night.
She showered quickly, cleaning her gears from all the old oil and dirt that had accumulated along the day. After using the drier function of her ball, she greased her joints with fresh oil, rewound her spring, put on a black nightgown, and went back into the living room.
It was already dark outside, but she decided not to go to sleep just yet. Her randomness factor sometimes caused her to have such unexplainable mood changes. She pulled the rocking-chair in front of the large window in her living room, and slowly sat down, contemplating the clear night sky.
"One day I'll have to take a closer look at all these stars. There has to be some kind of logic behind constellations. Why else would people find them so beautiful ?" she mused.
But her meditation was interrupted by her suddenly feeling something. She immediately reactivated all of her sensors to determine the nature of what she had felt.
It was a sound, that her human simulation system classified as "enjoyable", and that didn't have any direct meaning : it was music.
But something was quite odd : Orianna felt satisfied.
"I haven't danced yet. I haven't even started analysing it." she realised.
It was unsettling, and even more exciting : she didn't discover new ways to satisfy herself every so often. Even though it was now quite late, the young woman's curiosity had been piqued, and she decided to stay up a bit longer to analyse the music.
She applied algorithm after algorithm, separating what she had heard and was still hearing into tiny fragments, comparing them, reassembling them, then separating them again. But the more she worked on it, the more complex it became. What started to appear wasn't just a simple logical structure : every tune seemed to have his very own meaning, and what held those tunes together wasn't just plain logic.
Her process of thought was interrupted as a second sound joined the first. It was a voice, coming from the room above hers :
"DO YOU KNOW WHAT FUCKING TIME IT IS ?! YOU'D BETTER FUCKING STOP THIS SHIT YOU FUCKING MIKU-WANNABE, OR NEXT TIME I SEE YOU I'LL MAKE MYSELF A SECOND KITTY CAT SKIN WITH THESE FUCKING UGLY PONYTAILS OF YOURS !"
"Weird" Orianna thought, still deep in her analysis "just as I thought it couldn't get any more complex. How does this fit into the harmony. It really doesn't make any sense."
She decided to process the voice later, and went back to the music. The latter had, to her uppermost disappointment, stopped at the same time as the voice. All she had left was the part she had recorded.
She sighed. And realised it was the third time in one day.
An idea had sprouted in her "mind" a while back, but she had considered her to be too absurd and had that for rejected her.
This very idea was now making her way back into her thoughts, not seeming so unreasonable anymore. The more she thought about it, the more those tunes resembled a language.
Everything in her "mind" was telling her it was music, and not a song of some sort, but it also seemed far too complex to not hold any further meaning.
Realising she wouldn't be doing any big breakthrough this night, Orianna decided to go to bed. She slipped under her cover, and turned of the lights. The lack of mattress didn't really bother her, but it still felt strange.
As her consciousness slowly faded into the dark emptiness of her sleep, somewhere in her "mind" she hoped she could one day listen to more of this strange music.