Let's talk about poetry because a certain two lovebirds make me sick with their constant references to it.

I hate poetry.

I hate everything about it. I hate the vague descriptions. I hate the flowery language that only alludes. I hate how people can get lost in its meaning, sniffling and crying as the meaning of the poem overwhelms them with emotion.

I hated poetry because I loved poetry.

I don't get it. I could write hundreds of pages of poetry and yet it'll come out blank and elicit no response because I'm missing some odd part of me that handles sympathy for strangers. Are my emotions too regulated in truly compromising situations? Am I too efficient at compartmentalizing that I stifle this side of me? Is it because I can't help but break down relationships into logical strings because I've never really understood what it meant to TRUST someone?

Every single slam poetry competition. 3rd place. 2nd place. 3rd place. 4th place.

Why? My acting was better. My words were better. My enunciation, timing, emphasis on important details were all better. It did not. Make. Sense.

How did I start talking about this again? All I've done is upset myself.

Hah. Did I ever mention that I initially declared myself as an English Major? I took one semester of that and decided that it wasn't for me.

I'm scraping this journal entry.

Sorry.

Chapter 11. Six Trillion Years and An Overnight Meeting

There's this common misconception when it comes to the difference between getting knocked out, and sleeping. This misconception stems heavily from the way that both of these are depicted in the media, but the reality is that when someone is knocked out they don't just start dreaming. Being knocked out usually only lasts a few minutes, so the brain never has a chance to enter REM cycle state of sleeping which is required for dreaming. Of course, to actually be knocked out your brain needs to be shaken up enough that it interrupts your consciousness.

So when a big mechanical suit hit me on my neck and I was knocked out. It was like someone flicked a switch off and on rapidly and that was my consciousness. One moment I was outside and the next I was waking up, feeling as if I had just been hit by a bus.

Being knocked unconscious is not good for anyone. It's essentially a means of different parts of your brain being battered or bumped around in a way that turns the conscious part of them off. What are other results of your brain being battered or bumped around? A concussion!

Did I have a concussion?

I had no idea. It wasn't as if I was a medical professional or whatever. But everything spun and I felt dizzy just from staying still. My back was against some sort of pavement… or dirt and even attempting to get myself up caused a wave of nausea to roll through my body.

The most I could do was turn my head to take in my surroundings. I was in some sort of… camp. It looked like a regular camping site, with trees surrounding me, a tent pitched up onto the side, an actual campfire in the middle of it all and the same mechanical suit sitting on a log bench.

They must have just realized I was awake or known this entire time, as they seemed to be gazing straight at me. It caused a claw of fear to wrap around my heart but my sickness prevented me from really being able to react in any way.

Although it was difficult. I could string together enough coherent thoughts to assess my situation. Kafka had… hypnotized me or whatever she did with her powers and brought me outside against my will. If I recall correctly, someone named 'Sam' was to pick me up. Which meant I could designate the mechanical suit as 'Sam'.

Kafka specifically mentioned the Remembrance when it came to me and how I had a part to play. I… could probably safely guess that I wasn't in danger of dying, for now. They probably needed, or wanted, my powers.

I knew of Kafka's powers to get people to do what she wanted. But I didn't know that it worked even over the phone or hologram. Even then I thought if I simply kept my head down and minded my own business everything would go along smoothly. Nothing from my actions in Belobog should have carried over… so why?

Sam was staring at me. I couldn't tell if it was more or less unnerving when I couldn't even see their eyes. Was there someone inside the suit? Or was the suit itself a person? I knew that robots existed and were real people as much as flesh and blood humans.

But to think the Stellaron Hunters had someone along those lines. I made a mistake in just researching Kafka. I should have taken even five more minutes to give a precursory look over the others. I was relying too much on what I knew from before. I didn't even remember Sam from the game's initial launch. They must not have had a part to play.

But not having a part to play on the main stage didn't mean they weren't part of the crew. Even the mainstage actors are supported by a sound and tech crew, and I already knew that Silver Wolf was someone who liked to be backstage.

Shit. I had gotten overconfident hadn't I? I didn't even mention to anyone that Kafka had spoken to me.

I wasn't quite sure how long I had been stewing in my thoughts, especially with how sluggish they mostly came to me, but it must have been long enough because when I attempted to move again I felt marginally better. Enough so that I wasn't at risk at expelling my guts just from turning my head too fast.

Attempting to push myself up got a comment from the only other occupant at the camp.

"Save your strength for later, Zenith. You'll need it." Sam commented.

I ignored them and stood up. I surveyed the mechanical person, were they saying that from a place of sympathy? Or a promise for worse for later? It was hard to tell. Any sort of normal nuance that came from the human voice was distorted or filtered by the mechanical sounding vocals.

I patted myself down. There was a flicker of hope that ran through me when I felt the familiar feeling of a phone in the pocket of my top, but that was quickly dashed when I realized it was my Belobog phone. The one that I couldn't get into.

Other than that, I really didn't have much. It didn't seem like I was messed with beside that, but my phone was clearly placed back with me rather than taken away.

"You don't have reception here." Sam spoke up again.

I glanced at them and turned my phone on. I couldn't unlock it but I could clearly see the status of reception being dead courtesy of my lack of a SIM card. If I took the factor of my SIM card out, and took what they said at face value, then it was a similar situation a week ago regarding the reception.

In Belobog, when in the fragmentum, my phone buzzed yet nothing came through. Coincidences might happen in life, but somehow I doubted that was the case here.

I didn't think I was going to get answers, and I wasn't familiar with kidnapping situations. But since I wasn't tied up… They probably didn't mind giving me a little freedom. That and they didn't think I could escape on my own.

Which was probably true. Where the hell was I? Looking up at the sky gave me an entirely different view than what was on the Xianzhou.

I wasn't on the Xianzhou long. But I did catch a glimpse of the sky. Even with the brightness of daytime, the sky was full of stars. In Belobog, the sky was a constantly cloudy frostbitten veil, here?

It was… black. Empty. Not a single star in sight. It reminded me of the underworld.

"I'm going to assume we're in the fragmentum." I said out loud.

There was the tiniest flicker of movement from Sam at my declaration. Was such a movement a confession that what I said was the truth, or a surprise that I spoke up?

"Hmm. There's that keen intellect showing itself." Sam said, as if they knew me.

I chewed on my lip. 'Keen intellect' wasn't exactly something that I've shown recently so hearing them declare it made me suspicious that they were mocking me. That, or the alternative was that they knew more about me than I was comfortable with.

"So why do the Stellaron Hunters need me so much that they'd kidnap me right out of the Express? I'm not exactly anyone important." I prodded for more information.

"You haven't figured it out?" They asked me. It sounded like a genuine question.

Were they baiting me into revealing something? I didn't understand these games. I continued to gnaw on my lip. Pieces of skin flaked off.

I'd take the bait then.

"You want the ability to manipulate memories. You think I'm a pathstrider of Remembrance and can help you with something." I recalled the words of Messenger and I made my words relatively vague on purpose.

"We know you're a pathstrider of Remembrance. Hasn't anyone told you that they're a rare commodity?" Sam crushed my prodding.

"..." I could feel the tiniest taste of blood start to sprout from my lip. I stopped gnawing on it. Being referred to as a 'commodity' put a new brand of threat on board. They had to be bluffing. "You wouldn't."

"Wouldn't we?" Sam said, they stood up and stepped towards me.

Each step made me tense. Step by step I coiled in, tighter than before, until I was as tight as a loaded spring. My heart was thundering in my chest. I could hardly breathe.

They stood right in front of me. I had to crane my head up.

"Are you sure?" They taunted.

Fire erupted from their back like wings, illuminating the dark sky for a brief moment. I could feel every iota of my being shrink into a tiny ball, my legs collapsing from under me as instinct took over.

I couldn't win. I was powerless. It was evident in just the way they talked, their stride, their confidence. They held all the cards and I wasn't even at the table to play.

There was something akin to a sigh that came out. "It's easy to forget that you're just a girl." They muttered, just loud enough that I happened to overhear it.

Sam stepped back, and returned to their bench. They were no longer watching me, but instead stared into the campfire.

It took me a while to calm back down. My heart returned to its normal pace and I could breathe normally once more. Vestiges of adrenaline ran through my veins.

They were right. I was just a girl.

Just a stupid girl in way over her head.

All I wanted was to go home.

So I should just roll with the punches. I should let them walk over me until they forgot about me.

Until they got bored and realized I was powerless.

Haha… just a girl. That's all I was.

I grit my teeth.

Just a stupid girl that wouldn't amount to anything. Just a stupid girl that no one expected much from. Just a stupid girl that stayed inside and played games all day. Sports? Useless, defective trash that can't run fast. Math? Wasted potential, talented and fell off. Science? They never expected anything from me.

My teeth ground together. My jaw was starting to ache. I couldn't even tell how hard I was biting down. Would my teeth crack from the pressure? Did it even matter?

Useless, powerless, everyone has to protect me.

I glared at Sam.

Kidnap me? Antagonize me? Fine. Go ahead. Call me useless?

Hah. I guess Sam didn't say that, but it sure felt that way.

If I could hone my powers to be usable… but no. What would that be used for? I knew nothing about it except that it was linked with my dreams. I didn't even actually know if those WERE anything tangible and not just some extremely weird recurring sequence of dreams.

I bit my nails in place of gnawing on my lips.

Right. This meant I needed to do something on my own. I had to go over what I didn't know, what I knew and what I could do. Waiting around for someone to save me was never an option.

What I didn't know was if I had a time limit or if they were expecting something from me. I didn't know what my powers were, how to use them, or what I could do with them. I didn't know anything about Sam, the Stellaron Hunter. I didn't know if it had been an hour, a day or a week since I was knocked out. I didn't know where the other Stellaron Hunters were either.

That was a lot of unknowns. What I did know was that they were clearly interested in the fact that I was a pathstrider of Remembrance. Kafka had mentioned it on the phone, and Sam all but explicitly confirmed it when I prodded them for information. I knew that we were very likely in a fragmentum zone of some sort, and that the only item I had on me was my old phone.

Which, when I went over with what I knew, left me with more questions. How did they know I was a pathstrider of Remembrance when I only had it confirmed with a memokeeper on the train? Was it in that script of theirs?

I could follow this loop of logical deduction for hours and get nowhere, so it'd be best to just figure out what I could do. Such a thing… wasn't looking too promising.

I only really had a few options. One was an attempt to prod more information from Sam, I just had to make sure not to antagonize them. I had no idea if they had a short fuse and I wasn't trying to get myself burnt to a crisp. Another was… figure out what I could do as a pathstrider and attempt to use it to get out of here, but that was even more unlikely to happen with no real guidance.

Why didn't these things come with a manual? Stupid magic bullshit.

Lastly… if I could somehow figure out how Silver Wolf called my phone despite the fact that it shouldn't even be capable of receiving calls due to the fact that it had no SIM card, maybe I could somehow reverse engineer that ability and contact one of the crew. But even then… I was in the fragmentum and the signal didn't work on top of not actually being able to access my locked phone.

Was it really a dead end?

I mulled over my options. Silver Wolf somehow contacted me… what did I know about Silver Wolf? She was a genius hacker, she had some sort of… dimension, world hacking coordinate abilities? And she liked to play games. The first and third things were something that I knew for certain, but the dimensional coordination transportation thing was something I remembered thinking it was cool at the time. If that's what she did to me, then what chance did I really have to get back without her ability?

Which of course meant that I needed Silver Wolf here.

Actually… I thought about it a bit more. It was possible that I was onto something. Silver Wolf was a hacker, if she could get into my phone and release the lock then maybe there was something inside of it that I could use to my advantage. I was almost certain that old Zenith did some sort of weird stuff that led to my being here.

And, this was just a hypothesis, but I didn't think that people just become pathstriders out of nowhere. If I looked back at everything that had happened to me since the start, then it was entirely possible that I 'replaced' Zenith's role, or character, or… I-I wasn't sure how to describe it. I replaced her.

I could understand getting onto the Express. I could understand befriending the crew. Those were all efforts made under my own ability. But the part about the Record-Keeper as well as being a Remembrance pathstrider. Those weren't… 'me'.

All this meant… was that I had to gamble on something that I didn't even know if it would be useful or not.

If I could get Silver Wolf to show up. If I could get her to unlock my phone. If there was something useful on it. If I could somehow use my powers. If I even had powers in the first place and it wasn't just some weird dream.

Nested if statements. God I hated coding sometimes.

Right. I had a plan. And if said plan worked out… maybe I could have something to play at the table and I wouldn't have to be just a spectator.

I cleared my throat loudly and ignored my thundering heart. I knew what I needed to do, I simply had to improvise. I didn't have a script and the character I needed to play was an unassuming, but confident one. I had a scene to set, a goal to work forward to and no idea how the other person would react.

Somehow, when I put it like that, it sounded doable. I'd improvised scenes with less starting points in the past.

Ice filled my veins as I slipped into my role. "So… where's the rest of the Hunters?" I said, grabbing Sam's attention.

"Finally back to reality?" Sam deflected with a barb my way.

I picked at one of my nails as I responded. "It was a little rude to scare me. It's not like I could do anything. You're practically twice my height and it's not like I'm strong or anything."

"Hmm." Sam hummed. It sounded odd with the mechanical filter. "You're right. That was a little excessive."

It almost threw me off my game with the admission. Two lines in and I almost broke character. I wasn't expecting that. But, they followed the golden rule of improv. Always say yes, and. I could work with this.

"How would the others react? Would they all be as excessive?"

For some reason Sam seemed to find that funny, as they let out a short laugh. "Depending on his mood, Blade would either gut you or just talk you down."

I tried not to let the sudden fright of imagining that get to me as I responded. "And Kafka? Would she just charm me again and tell me to shut up?"

"Charm…" Sam repeated my words, as if it amused them. "Possibly. She would likely entertain you for a bit before getting what she wanted. She always gets what she wants."

They were… surprisingly talkative about their allies.

"Why are you telling me all this?" I couldn't help but inquire.

"You asked."

"And if I asked you to take me back to the Express?"

"Sorry. Can't do that."

I tried hard not to let my fluctuating emotions get the better of me. I was reasonably sure at this point that Sam was more composed than I had initially expected them to be. Their initial burst of flames was likely to cower me into some sort of compliance.

"The kidnap and yap. A classic move by villains everywhere." I said offhandedly. I did my best not to make it sound too antagonizing.

"We're- I'm not your enemy, Zenith." Sam said, as if in some weird attempt to placate me.

I had to push down the sudden rise in anger at them saying such a thing. Kidnapping me and then saying they weren't my enemy? I suppose I was just kidnapped to take a nice vacation and have a spa then.

"Could have fooled me." Some heat slipped into my tone. I stamped down on it before continuing. "What about Silver Wolf?"

"What about them?"

"Would she scare me or would she gut me?"

Sam was silent for a moment. "She might not even give you the time of day. But if you interrupted her games she might actually gut you."

The topic had been brought to Silver Wolf, hopefully without sounding too suspicious.

"Does she care about games that much?" I asked.

"She'll find a way to bring everything back to a game, though she enjoys her hobby of hacking into official places just as much."

"Should you be telling me that?"

"It's common knowledge and all over her bounty poster anyways." Sam waved my question off.

I rummaged in my thoughts for a bit on how to keep this dialogue going. Was there even a way to get Silver Wolf to show up? Would Sam contact her? Was she busy with something?

"Is she too busy playing games so they left you to babysit me?"

Sam stared at me. "Curious about what the Hunters get up to, aren't you."

I swallowed my nerves. My mind was still cool and clear even if my emotions had flared up several times during my improv. "I'm just saying that if you're going to keep me hostage here the least you could do is give me some entertainment. I'm a fan of games as well and I do my fair share of coding work. Silver Wolf and I seem pretty similar."

"I don't quite think your skillset and Silver Wolf's line up that much." They pointed out.

"I'm not a hacker. I just write programs and know a bit about cybersecurity." I hesitated on what I was about to say, but concluded that to get anywhere I needed at least a bit of provocation. "But games are something I'm good at. I'm sure I could probably beat you, or even Silver Wolf, in any of them."

What sort of games were even popular intergalactically? Damn. Maybe I should have spent some time trying to figure out pop culture across the galaxy. Not like I had time to even try, though.

"You should be careful what you say." Sam said. It sounded ominous and I had to swallow down the foreboding feeling it gave me.

"Are you going to burn me to a crisp for saying something so mundane as that?" I desperately hoped that wasn't the case.

"No." Sam pointed a singular mechanical finger behind me. "But she might."

I turned around and faced the sight of reality itself glitching before my eyes. It was as if the very air before me twitched. Colors distorted and flashed through a spectrum, before everything shifted and a person materialized through the distorted space.

"Oi, Sam. You talking shit about my gaming with the Extra?" The woman who stepped through reality said.

"Hello to you too, Silver Wolf." Sam replied.

And that was how I knew my initial gamble worked. Now I just needed the four other if statements to work out.

Start: May 3rd. 2024.

End: May 14th. 2024.

Words: 3797

HSR spoilers for up to current Penacony patch aka 2.2. You've been warned.

Sam is an interesting character because while it's true that Sam and Firefly are the same person, the way they act is almost complete opposites, with certain times they collide together and show that they are in fact the same person. Balancing this characterization is an important part of why I find them fun.

Sam is talked about by some of the other Stellaron Hunters as this mechanical efficiency machine who wraps things up quickly and is willing to burn people to a crisp in an instant. Firefly is a person with a strong drive, similar to Sam, but with empathy so strong she feels like an empath. Sam doesn't hesitate to get the job done, but Firefly will look for other ways to achieve things if it means less fighting. Yet in that same vein she'll stand up to anyone that dares to question her conviction and ideals.

I want to explore this dynamic a lot more before 2.3 is released. Which means I have 30 or so days to write about them.

I hope that if anyone isn't a fan of this character, I can keep your attention and maybe even convince you that there's more to them than what has been shown so far in the game.