Let’s Not [Obliterate]
Chapter 193: Haunted by the Past

First Day 23:44, Carriage One, Dema’s & Theora’s Room

Theora woke when she felt Bell activate [Last Stand].

She was already on her feet rushing to the door when she slowed, noticing that there was no immediate danger; Bell still seemed at full strength, judging from her aura. So, Theora softly knocked against the door instead of barging in.

“Are you alright?” she asked. “Can I come in?”

“Yes,” Bell whimpered.

Theora found the room lit just by Bell’s glow. Tendrils wafted in the air through several layers of shielding — protective bubbles, force fields and ice. They all gave way as Theora approached. She ducked and stepped over the tendrils to reach the bed — and with it, the huddled-up sad heap of jelly called Bell.

“What happened?” Theora asked.

“Bad dreams,” Bell murmured. She lifted her head to look at Theora with teary eyes — eyes that didn’t exactly look sad, more upset, or confused. The tears seemed to be a physical reaction from whatever had caused her to activate [Last Stand].

Theora sat down on the bed next to her, and when she subtly indicated her lap as an offer, Bell let herself fall down on it immediately. She grabbed onto Theora’s garments, protecting them from acid with skin-tight barriers. Theora then offered a hand, which Bell took instead.

“No need to barrier off if you hold my hand,” Theora said. Acid began to sting her skin just a moment later and was then quickly numbed by prickling venom. Trying not to savour the feeling too much, Theora asked, “What did you dream of?”

“Memories.” Bell’s voice was a whisper, and she turned her head in Theora’s lap to look away into the room. Bell lay surprisingly but comfortably heavy there — after all, she was almost entirely made out of water. “I… I told you how I’d eventually get old Bell’s memories back, right?”

Theora gave a nod. 

“Yeah… It’s still going to take a while, but the process apparently just started.” Bell said the last few words in a much dryer tone. “I remembered how I died back then. I mean, that time I went to visit the Singularity.”

Ah… well, that certainly sounded unpleasant. “Anything I can do?”

“It’s just part of being a Medusa,” Bell continued. “It’s going to be fine. Well, some of us really hate the process. Like… sort of depends on how your past life went, if that makes sense? If one was unpopular or even kind of a scumbag, then the polyp may not want to remember… Others want to remember as fast as possible. But like… Imagine there is this person you hate and you know that no matter what you do, you will slowly turn back into them as you recover their memories. Sounds horrifying. That’s why there are counsellors among my people just for that phase.”

“How…” Theora trailed off, unsure if the question was proper. She went with it anyway when Bell waited for her patiently. “How do you know all that?”

“Ah.” Bell sighed. “Apparently, the first time I polyped, None and Dema were completely caught off-guard by suddenly having a baby Bell in their hands. They barely knew what to do, but they slowly figured stuff out. Apparently, there are specialists among my people who can help with the process, which I told them when I got my memories back that time around. So None went to visit them to learn how to take care of it… of me?” Bell shrugged. “Agatha helped out a lot.”

That name was new, wasn’t it? Theora didn’t remember having heard it before. “Agatha?”

“Yeah.” Bell was sounding increasingly sleepy as she went on. “One of the specialists I mentioned. None added her to the alliance, so I can chat with her when I’m in the System’s range to figure stuff out.”

Ah… and now they’d gone and left that range, hadn’t they? Theora would need to talk to Dema about this later.

They lay there silently for a while. If Theora’s understanding of the situation was correct, then Bell would eventually remember everything about her past lives. Even things that happened a thousand years ago, in Bell’s childhood. Which meant that this Bell would eventually also remember that time she and Theora had first met. 

Theora didn’t. She only knew because the old Bell had told her about it.

“What’s…” Theora paused. “What’s it like for you? How do you feel about suddenly remembering parts of your past? You said some Medusae don’t like their former selves… what about you…?”

Bell squished Theora’s hand a bit more, turned her head a little further away. “I, uhm… I kind of see her as my big sister? I think. I look up to her and all the things she accomplished… and the people she managed to save. I… I admit that it feels comforting, knowing that I can grow into someone who will stand on equal footing with some of the most capable heroes that ever existed. I’m not scared about becoming her, just… I kind of worry that she will be disappointed in what little I managed to do before she came back.”

“I don’t believe that’s how she will think. You and her seem quite similar.”

Bell’s eyes widened, and she clasped Theora’s hand very tight now. “We are?”

With a nod, Theora leaned back against the ceiling, head tilted upward. “Yeah. Remember how much respect you had for her when you and I first met? How you defended her? Well, she’s like that too. She will defend those who she perceives to be most in need.”

Theora thought back on that day around thirty years ago, when she witnessed Bell erect a continent-wide barrier to hold off the Rains of Fire. How several little kids then came running from their homes to engulf her in hugs, and how she’d treated them kindly and with respect.

“That includes children,” Theora concluded. “So no matter what you do now, you won’t disappoint her. And… Dema, Isobel, and I, we are the same.” Theora smiled. “Even though on the moon, you were the one who protected us.” Her expression waned to a more serious look as she gently lay a hand on Bell’s bell — “And if you only did that because you were worried you had to prove yourself to us, and to your future self, then I’m sorry we haven’t been able to communicate to you properly that you don’t have to do that.”

Bell nodded, letting out a sob. The tears standing in her eyes dropped out and she started crying, swallowing snot and wiping her eyes with her fingers.

When she was slowly calming down a few minutes later, Theora spoke again, softly. “A long, long time ago, you did something like this for me too. I woke up from a bad dream — not about my past, but about my future.” She paused, catching a bit of strength, to try her best to keep talking for a while to help Bell calm down. “Or what I thought to be my future, at the time. And you were the one who noticed, got up, and chased me down. Heard me out, consoled me. It’s always when I find myself at my worst moments that Bell finds me.” Theora sighed, her hand still grazing over Bell’s hat. “I’m really glad to have you. Both you and your… your ‘older sister’. She is a big reason as to why I feel at home in our world.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Bell sniffed, and then suddenly giggled. “On the note of chasing me down — I can’t believe you woke up from my [Last Stand] like that. That was almost instant.”

“I told you I’d be here.”

Bell sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s just… things are easier said than done, right?”

Theora tilted her head. Were they?

Bell mulled over it, rubbing her lips together. “Though it makes sense. You were there to wake us up on the moon too, when the sky burned. How do you do that?”

Theora combed her fingers through her hair in thought. How did she do it?

“I just wake up.”

“I assume it’s because shifts in presences feel violent to you? I tried that, but… It just doesn’t wake me up. You’re like a mom who wakes from her newborn moving in their cradle, huh?”

Theora blushed at the thought. She was a mother, in a way, and she sure would wake up if Isobel had a bad night. But luckily, that girl slept like a rock.

“I wonder if I can figure out something like that, though,” Bell mused. “It would be so useful… because the idea of barriers is that you have to set them up before something bad happens. So either have them running forever, which costs tons of resources, or activate them on demand and risk being late. It sucks. But…”

“But if you knew something bad was about to happen, you could pull it up in time,” Theora added, nodding. “Well, Dema says people can make Skills themselves. Perhaps you could try making a Skill that warns you of danger?”

Bell’s eyes lit up, a wave rocking through her tendrils. “You think I could make one?”

The words of old Bell rang echo in Theora’s mind — she’d once explained that in order to make a Skill, one needed to think it was possible, and the Skill had to fit one’s character. That’s why Theora couldn’t make a Skill to return home back when she was stuck in space.

“I think you could,” Theora said, both because that kind of Skill seemed very much in Bell’s character, and to help her think of it as doable. “With enough effort.”

Bell seemingly already started with that ‘effort.’ The cogs turned in her mind as she frowned. But then she stilled. “By the way. There’s something I wanted to ask you, now that we’re alone.”

Theora tilted her head. “What’s up?”

“The train… something feels off about it,” Bell said in a whisper. “The fact that there are, like… different classes of people?”

“Passengers and staffers?” Theora offered, and found Bell nodding along. “Yeah, I noticed that too. And you have to pay for tickets.”

“It reminds me of the System,” Bell said. “Heroes and Non-Heroes. Do you think the train is a System?”

Theora leaned back against the wall. It was a difficult question to answer with so little information, but at the very least, the signs were there. “It’s uncomfortable,” she admitted. “I assume the cause could be some kind of secret. I want to figure it out.”

Bell was quiet for a while. She seemed deep in thought, her frowned expression twitching every now and then. Eventually she spoke again, with a much lower voice.

“So, what then? When you find a source of imbalance?” Bell swallowed. She likely knew the answer already, but the question held more weight to her than she let on. “What will you do if you find something that causes suffering on the train?”

Theora leaned back, staring at the ceiling, old bones creaking under her own weight.

“I will dismantle it.”

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