Filia's dream was blurry and dark. She couldn't make out much besides the vaguely humanoid splotches in front of her standing in what might have been a small foyer.
"V-Vitale, p-please, we can explain, j-just... c-calm down..." The woman's shaking voice is faint and seems like it might have been familiar once, but Filia couldn't put a face to it.
"Calm down!? Sure, let's do this nice and calmly. Ottomo, find the girl..." The seathing reply is just as far off and untraceable.
The woman screams before being abruptly silenced by a series of ear splitting bangs. Then, through the haze and darkness Filia can make out a very detailed figure. A tall, lanky figure in a blood splattered business suit. It had an outstretched, cartoonish face made of metal, vaguely resembling a bird but with a metal mesh over the front shaped in an oversized smile. The mechanical man approached slowly, soulless yellow flashlight-eyes trained on her. She can't move.
Slowly the figure comes closer. It towers over her, inhumanly tall. A gruff voice from somewhere in the distance screams out her name. He tells her to get down but it's too late. A scratchy recording of cheesy, nineties pop sounds out from the robot's metal smile. The pointer finger on it's right hand lines up directly at her face, revealing the smoking end of a hidden gunbarrel. Finally, in time with the beat, the robot performs an unnecessary but clearly well practiced arm wave. The motion travels down its arm with an incredible fluidity for a body made of iron and brass. The wave flicks it's hand up, then down, And a flash of light consumes her vision. Filia feels like she's falling.
"P-present, Mrs Victoria..!" Filia calls out on pure instinct as she darts upright, a motion that causes her head to throb. She cradles her forehead in her hand and feels damp gauze as she tries to blink the dark spots out of her vision. Filia then slowly realizes she doesn't know who Mrs Victoria is. As her vision clears she sees she's wearing a school uniform so maybe it's her teacher? But as she looks around it's clear she's not in a school.
She was in a bedroom, a large one, with fluffy pink carpeting and an overabundance of bookshelves, illuminated by a warm afternoon light from a floor to ceiling window. Filia would have found it all comforting if the bed she lay in wasn't covered in disgusting used bandages and scattered pill bottles she couldn't read the labels of thanks to her aching head.
Revolted, she threw off the covers and took to her feet, but the room began spinning and her legs trembled beneath her. Immediately, she fell forward towards a bookshelf, but as she winced in preparation for another head wound, something caught her and gently lowered her onto the plush carpet.
A gruff, masculine voice chastises her, "Sheesh, careful will ya? I already had to put your skull back together once today. Make me do it again and the job's only gonna get shittier." She thought the voice sounded familiar. It might have been the one that called out to her in her dream.
"Oh, okay," Fillia looked around the room for the source of the voice or what caught her, but couldn't find anything, "I'm, uh... sorry about that... Mr. Mysterious, Disembodied Voice..?"
"Don't sweat it, kid."
Fillia sat quietly with her back against the bookshelf, long, black hair pooling around her. She really hoped the voice would start to explain itself, or her head wound, or where she was, or anything really, but 'Don't sweat it, kid.' seemed like all the info it was volunteering.
Instead, Fillia took the moment to get her bearings. The bedroom she was in felt somewhere between a lazy teen's room and a library. Books on top of movies on top of dirty laundry on top of books. A brief look at the titles behind her on the shelf revealed some interesting taste.
"The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Hamlet, and a collector's edition hardcover of Kill la Kill?" A quick flip through the manga's page's left Filia's cheeks bright red, "Wow. Whoever lives here-"
"Is the Canopy Kingdom's biggest giga-nerd? Totally!" The gruff voice cut in with harsh laughter.
"... I mean, I thought it seemed pretty cool, but..." Fillia trailed off as she slid the manga back on the shelf.
"Hahaha… Ah, hell…" The voice's tone became a little less harsh, "Kid, you can't take the stuff I say so seriously! I was just joking."
"Oh?" Filia cocked an eyebrow. "So you actually think mythological theory, and anime girls with big titties and giant swords are cool then?"
"... Okay, you got me there. That stuff's dumb as hell."
"Knew it."
"But like, YOU can still like that shit! Look kid, don't let and old fart like me ruin your fun. You don't need anyone's approval to be you. Okay Filia?"
"Wow… Hehe, that's kinda cheesy."
"Oh, Come on!" The voice was somewhere between an angry yell and a petulant whine. "This is quality life advice I'm dishing out for free here! Take the girl who lived here for example: she had all this shit she loved, but she was so scared of looking weak, that she never told anyone about it. Even her best friend, who probably would have felt the same way, but nope! And then, when she lost her…" The voice, which had been rising in intensity as it told its story, suddenly became quiet before meekly asking, "This doesn't mean anything to you does it?"
"I can't say it does, but I guess I appreciate the sentiment? Does this make you my manly sounding conscience or something?" Filia smiled but wished she had a better answer for this ghost or hallucination or whatever he was. It seemed to her like he was clearly dealing with something emotional.
"Kid, if you're gonna be relying on me as your conscience, we're both already in trouble." He let out a bit of a chuckle before sighing, "...You really don't remember anything, do you Filia?"
"No. I guess other than my name and a surprising amount of these books, I don't recall anything, not even about myself." The air felt suddenly heavy as neither spoke. Filia noticed she was toying with a lock of her long black hair as it spilled around her on the floor. Was her hair always this dark?
"You know..." Filia broke the silence, albeit unassuredly, "this could maybe end up being kinda fun?"
There was almost a chuckle, "Am I hearing you correctly, kid? Are you saying being an amnesiac could be fun?"
"Well, just hear me out okay?"
"..."
"So I don't know anything about anything anymore, right?"
"...yeah?"
"But you do. So, you get to be like a narrator inside my head! You can exposit on everything we come across."
"..."
"Doesn't that sound fun?"
"Kid, you just gave me a chore! Why would explaining crap you should already know be fun for anyone here in the slightest?!"
"Don't be a stick in the mud! You can have fun with it. Put your own spin on stuff, you know? "
"And you?"
"Well, uhh, I get to learn all about a whole new world, right? How's that not exciting?" Filia didn't know how to tell him that all the main characters of good manga had amnesia, so she just left that part out.
"I don't like how happy you are about the side effects of head trauma, but alright kid. I'll… ugh, exposit for ya from time to time."
"Yessss!" Filia did a little victory fist-pump, "Alright, where to now, Mr. Narrator?"
"You see that window across the room? Walk on over to that and we'll make our escape."
Filia looked around to make sure she wasn't missing something. "You want us to escape from a comfortable, upper-class, suburban house? Can't I just use the front door like a normal person?"
"...You don't wanna see what they did to the people downstairs."
Filia felt a chill as she reached up to feel the bandages around her forehead "And, who are 'they,' Mr. Narrator?"
"A pack of thugs who own this town who call themselves the Medicis, and before you ask; yes, they're the reason you have that. Now stop calling me 'Mr. Narrator,' okay? The name's Samson."
Filia pulled herself shakely to her feet, leaning heavily on the bookshelf, "Alright Samson, but you're aware that if I'm having this much trouble standing, jumping across rooftops like a feral girl isn't exactly doable, right?"
"You just leave that part to me, toots."
"Don't call me 'toots'." She dropped her voice a few octaves to give a dumb sounding impression of him. It made him chuckle.
Filia tried to push off the bookshelf, but instead of moving herself forward, the shelf began to roll to the side on the small wheels that she didn't even see it had. She stumbled but held onto it, managing to pull herself upright again.
"You alright, kid?"
"Yeah, I just didn't expect it to-" Filia yelped in shock at what she'd just revealed with the bookshelf out of the way. "Umm, Samson? you said you knew the girl who lived here, right? Well, did you know about uh…" She gestured to what she uncovered.
"Whoa… No, I mean, I knew she kept her interests to herself, but I never thought she'd be into… Haha! Wow, I'm actually speechless." Behind the bookshelf, pinned to the wall was a densely packed collection of dark posters of a freakish, heavy metal looking band with the name "SLIPKNOT" printed on each. Every band member in the posters wore their own hideous mask that either made them look like a serial killer, a rotting zombie, or a tragic construction accident at a BDSM convention. There weren't just posters either. t-shirts, a few vinyl records and even some provocative, if poorly drawn fanart of the band members was all clustered behind this poster.
Despite saying he was speechless, Samson can't stop his shocked, sputtering chuckles, "I mean, damn! This makes me sad I never pried into her music collection. I coulda teased the hell out of her over this!"
Filia simply remained silent.
"No comment, kid? Nothing?"
Filia muttered something inaudible towards the carpeted floor.
"What was that, kid? You gotta speak up-"
"I SAID THIS SHIT IS AWESOME AND FUCK WHOEVER LIVED HERE FOR THINKING THEY HAD TO HIDE IT!"
"FUCK YEAH, KID! THAT'S THE SPIRIT!"
"YEAH!"
"YEAH!"
Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump!
The pair's voices went silent as the house shook with the noise of heavy boots running up a stairwell.
Samson whispers to her with a steely sternness,"Kid, you gotta get us out that window. Now!"