[ChicletPrime]

12. Resonance's Power

• "the life you owe me - now is not the time to repay it."  did i kill Sylus before, in another lifetime? so i owe him my life in return when he asks for it? 
  
• unprecedented power!
  
• i think i'm becoming whole! oh BOY.
  
• i think myyyyy core is stuck to hiiiiis core. hi, Sylus! wanna be friiiiiends?
  
• woah. matching bracelets!
  
• my core is in love with his core and we cannot be parted. 
  
• lovely, no explanation from our darling leader. but that sigh was worth millions.
  
• meanwhile, back at the ranch-base, Luke says something he probably shouldn't have on the phone and Sylus' plan is to chop his arm off to get rid of the new jewelry.
  
• oh no, he meant MY hand. wow.
  
• i don't stay with him in the N109 Zone to figure it out so he shows me his gun and offers to destroy the aether core in my body. what is with you and guns!?
  
• yeah, let do yours first then, buddy.
  
• "with your current level of resonance, it won't last long".  oh reeeeally.
  
• but i saw a vision, Sylus. don't you dare tell me its not a big deal.
  
• oh. oh, he gave me the crow brooch back. i have heart feels.
  
• the fuck, was that Philos at the end there?!
  

[Coldsaturn]

So. Much. Good. Stuff.
I'm living for your commentary.

- "it sounds like Sylus is this world's answer to Hua Cheng"
Your brain. Incredible.
- I'm not gonna say where, but at some point Sylus is described in a way that is very biblically accurate, but it flies over MC's head because she doesn't know it's true
- "hey, were IS Xavier?"
At least Raf was honest when he dropped us at the bar and then left lol. Xav was so full of sweet promises but where is he now while we're being steadily seduced to the dark side one black card at a time?
- "hiiiii, Sylus. i guess you WERE here! no wonder i was ready to cut a bitch."
He really brings out the best in her <3
- MURDER HUSBAND AND WIFE
As a wise person said on youtube "they do crime...and each other"
- "if you have the audacity to die on me... you actually will meet your end."
brb sobbing quickly in the corner
there, I'm all new
- "hey, we set the place on fire! good move? nope, Wanderers don't burn. just me."
This made me cackle out loud. It's so much not her day (or week)
- "under the crystalllized skin, they seem human."
YUP. which, by the way, always gives me The Secret World flashbacks.
- "that has to be really close to right. i'm right, right?"
Everything checks out, dots are dotting and all
- "when we first met you said we were the same" and she thinks it's about the aether core, and Sylus says "sure, think of it like that" but we then learn that it's not the same aether core. So there's something else that makes them "the same".
- "so if his evol is whatever the black-red manipulating stuff is and the aether core is what gives him insight into a human heart -- my evol is to resonate with others and my aether core does... what?"
you COULD link the aether core to its placement. Sylus' core is in his eye, and his ability is related to sight. MC's is in her heart.
- "we skip the entire larceny heist with two sentences. i got the brooch (somehow) and Sylus will keep his promise (no kidding).  that is a real cop out, honestly. booooooo."
You will see it! It's the first Bond memory you unlock with him, "Midnight Stealth". You get it by reaching Affinity 10.
- "this beauty will bash your skull sooner or later."
that's just how they flirt, he actually likes it (not sure whether he likes it because he knows she means it or the opposite)
- "god, Sylus is so beautiful."
it really is unfair. Whenever he's on screen I magically find 3430 screenshots added to my album and I have no memory of them being made
- "... the Picture Of The Day on the main page is going to be Sylus for WEEKS."
AS IT SHOULD
- "refuse me all you want."
I won't spoiler, but take this sentence very literally and not in the way we're being wired to read it through romance books.
- We definitely did something to him in a past life. Part of that something involves our hand around a sword stuck in his chest and lots of blood.
- She gets the flashback and then suddenly they can resonate. So in part she's more emotionally open to him to do that, but there's also the fact that he told her that once she took the other half of the aether core there was no going back, and that was also the point where she got the flashback.
- Careful with what happens when she touches (absorb) the aether core: it breaks. That has never happened with the other cores, and Sylus is not surprised. "Its power belongs to you now. Naturally, the vessel will break as a result"
- "with your current level of resonance, it won't last long"
Which implies that with the full power he remembers her with, they'd be stuck permanently together or something?
- He also told us we'll be going to see more "visions" (flashbacks). 
- "At the confluence of the entwined timelines I hear it, a faint yet distinct heartbeat" and you see this light that pulses like a heartbeat descend on a dead, cracked planet, and light it from the inside. Indeed, Philos.

So, we stayed around a week at the N109 Zone and as a result: we became a mafia wife, got back the other half of the aether core thus unlocking a whole bunch of weird visions and memories, gained an appetite for all things illegal, learned emotional regulation to resonate with insanely hot men we don't trust, and learned there are way bigger sharks in the ocean than Onychinus. We'll go back a new woman, Xavier will be proud, Zayne will be concerned, Raf will get wet, and boy oh boy things WILL happen in the next section!

[ChicletPrime]

I was two or three chapters in when i thought.. maybe i should slow down and give time to absorb? and then i thought, fuck nah, i don't often get a whole chunk of hours to just sit down and splurge on a story, let do this thang! so you got to experience a serious stream of consciousness right to the face.  sorry!

- "when we first met you said we were the same" and she thinks it's about the aether core, and Sylus says "sure, think of it like that" but we then learn that it's not the same aether core. So there's something else that makes them "the same".

iiiiiinteresting. maybe its the hunger at the core of us, or something. he seems like a guy who might like to devour things too. there's too much unknown at the moment in terms of where Sylus comes from and whatever his entanglement is with the MC and/or a (or many) previous incarnation(s) of her. Maybe we were one being once and got split apart. Maybe we were twins.

you COULD link the aether core to its placement. Sylus' core is in his eye, and his ability is related to sight. MC's is in her heart. 

i will be cheesy and say our aether core makes people fall in love with us, if we love them first. that would be all sorts of terrible and why Rafayel is upset with us somewhere underneath it all. maybe we feel so strongly for things or people that we end up destroying them. Lemuria drowned, after all - or maybe burned. Philos is cracked apart and maybe we were there for that too.

You will see it! It's the first Bond memory you unlock with him, "Midnight Stealth". You get it by reaching Affinity 10. 

i will go look!

- "refuse me all you want."
I won't spoiler, but take this sentence very literally and not in the way we're being wired to read it through romance books.

you said you were pretty up on FFXIV for somebody who doesn't play it. do you know Fandaniel? because of him, i absolutely look at things as exactly as they're said as one of the possible options. i will take this under advisement.

i am a tiny bit put out that getting a whole core together doesn't immediately jump us into Danger Doll range. maybe its just a practice thing, or maybe we need to learn to really commit in order to get the most out of our new wavelength possibilities.

i had dinner and talked a bunch about the story to someone and i have no answers or even where exactly this is going, but its definitely starting to feel like pawns on a chessboard and sacrifice over and over, trying to reset the entire game. its not me, i don't think, but something is trying to re-do everything. i'm suddenly new, and Philos was dead and was alive again too. what's the difference, really? a whole heart, beating in time.

hmmm.

Zayne will be APPALLED.

---

on the previous episode:  "ONLY SHE CAN SAVE US! YOU OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW..."  wooo! i'm important! everybody wants to chop up my innards to sell to the highest bidder! except "..That thing is with her."  what thing?"

IS THAT 'THING' SYLUS?!?

[Coldsaturn]

"maybe i should slow down and give time to absorb?"
Never.

- Yes, Sylus story is locked behind his myth, so you're forced to watch that to understand where he's coming from. It's one of the movie nights. The sad thing is that Long-Awaited Revelry literally ends Sylus' presence in the main storyline. From now on you'll only see him in cards/events/affinity rewards. Which sucks, I know, cn players have been complaining for months but infold was busy preparing caleb's drop in the main story, so now that that has been sorted out we hope we'll go back on schedule.

- I love you theory on MC's aether core. You accidentally got very close to it while speculating somewhere between here and the start of this chaos.

- "or maybe we need to learn to really commit"
The thing is: she doesn't know what the aether core does to her beyond giving her protocore syndrome and now visions.
We (players and MC) know that based on the experiments they were doing on her as a child, there was something they were doing that at every iteration was making her gain more fusion and power with the core. What that involved we don't know. It might not be something we can immediately experience like a surge in power.
We did just learn that she can absorb power from at least one aether core (because it was already the other half of what she had? Because that's just something she can do to aether cores?)

- "pawns on a chessboard and sacrifice over and over, trying to reset the entire game"
Not a bad deduction at all!
The question is: how many players are there?

- "IS THAT 'THING' SYLUS?!?"
That would actually be so funny for so many reasons. Accidental genius joke.

[ChicletPrime]

- "IS THAT 'THING' SYLUS?!?"
That would actually be so funny for so many reasons. Accidental genius joke. 

damn it!  :P  i hate when i really have a great theory and its soooo wrong it makes somebody else laugh. on the upside, c'mon! it was the perfect conjoining of three theories at once! i should get at least half points for being creative.

i will think more! and start the next section tonight while I ponder ALL of that last section, because there was a bunch going on that's for sure.

The question is: how many players are there? 

Well, I read the "interview" with the reporter and the researcher gal (Tiana?) and they deliberately put in a speculation about a hypothetical higher being, that exists in both our past and our future at once so that our past and future would be fixed from their perspective, but would have their own future path still to follow. That was definitely some sort of blatant clue but trying to mash that into everything else has been a bit mind boggling for me. Also, its really hard to tell if the thing that "opened its eyes" at the end of the last episode was just the Wanderer Sylus and I fought, or something else again that has yet to arrive or make its presence known.

They give you a problem and then immediately they solve it sometimes, so it might not be that deep. But fighting a Wanderer (as big and bad assed as it was) just doesn't seem like 'enough', you know? So I'm betting on something a little more 'mystical' still out there. Maybe is the animus mundi of Philos, I dunno.

[Coldsaturn]

You get all the points for cooking up theories with the at times very limited info you have!

That post you mentioned with the theme of converging timelines and the past-present-future being one and what if someone existed above that separation etc. is a text that is still being analyzed in the fandom. It could be a meta way of introducing as canon the multiverse we're working with (all the LIs timelines being overlapping but separate), it could be a way of hinting at future plot developments, or something else.

You do still get very important basic info from the part of the mainstory you still have to play through (including anecdotes and world underneath), so you still have some fuel to add left

[ChicletPrime]

okay. onward!  (i dreamed about Sylus on his motorcycle off and on all night, it was weird.)

Prologue to Tomorrow
Eyes of the Storm
Chapter 1: Imbalance

• 334.2mb. booyah! on the quest to run out of space as fast as possible
  
• (i am still amazing how big the Deepspace Tunnel was, you know, as i sit here and watch this thing download. it was creepy and beautiful at the same time)
  
• oh no, not THIS backdrop again! i just got out of this place, why do i have to go baaaack.
  
• okay, shady guy with shady poker chip money as protocores are being traded and sold.  why infold didn't spring for a nice wallpaper behind this, i don't know. i feel sullied being back here again.
  
• all the news on ze dark webz is about aether core speculation. scanning the pages that popped up but its all pretty generic.
  
• an infinity symbol, encoded login.. this guy is from EVER. i would guess the fancy guy that gave the mysterious jewelry sized box to Rafayel that we didn't get any closure on come to think of it.
  
• people talking about a heavy wanderer attack, queries about the "protocore field" collapsing in the N109, protocore smugglers being tracked...
  
• okay, some sort of location jump
  
• following some sort of protocore smuggler into a hotel which is not THE hotel from last time. 
  
• or maybe this is a Hunter raid? who is Simone?
  
• this VA is very unpracticed. but apparently this is my current partner. and we're following the smuggler into the fancy new hotel it seems for "Operation Aether Ordeal."  who comes up with these names?
  
• "Simone has the Micromodification Evol." well, that was specific. everybody, take notes! 
  
• oh, she made my gun better at some point so now i like her. She probably has Sylus' very distant and faint acknowledgement of existence as well.
  
• ah, timeframe.  it was two months ago that the events of yesterday actually happened for the main character. are we still resonating with Sylus? i can't see my wrist, damn it. probably not. i find that personally distressing.
  
• "... and i even managed to... " even managed to WHAT, Simone? squirm my way into Onychinus' ranks by looking devastating in a black dress?
  
• (she's probably talking about my power upgrade. into the N109, got myself a manicure and a several hundred new rank levels, and right back out escorted by two deferential men in bird costume. i am just that good.)
  
• oh apparently i haven't told ANYBODY that i have it at ALL. well, go the hell me for keeping my big mouth shut for once.
  
• oh sure, right out loud in this elevator, lets talk about my maybe aether core. are you sure you disabled ALL the bugs?
  
• the auction for the half of the aether core wasn't a big secret? i mean, yes it was, but it was all over the N109 if you had the money to buy into it the game, which means that anybody who was anybody was at least aware of it. why is Simone trying to make like this is suddenly a new thing?
  
• oh, hang on. two month time skip. N109 is now buzzing again about a possible new a-core(n)?
  
• more than one aether core, yup yup. i have one, Sylus has one, now a third is out there, or rumored to be.
  
• yeah, deja vu flashback going up this elevator to the top.
  
• ooooh delicious Sylus voice. hello, darling. jog my memory, do.
  
• no, wait. really. what did i forget? i am forgetting SO MUCH STUFF.
  
• oh, once again, we are the same. but how, Sylus? how are we the same and why am i seeing Philos again?
  
• okay out of the vision/flashback, back to work
  
• what the fuck?
  
• "the moment you meet up with the target, Evol will be transmitted through your contact lenses device to alter his memories".  nani?
  
• 1) "Evol" will be transmitted? its not a fucking laser beam! admittedly Xavier flashes as fast as one 2) through my CONTACT lenses? what the hell is powering them to transmit anything at all 3) to do what now? i am going to stare at somebody and rearrange their brains long distance?
  
• that is one fucking hell of an Evol if its being channeled remotely from whoever actually has it. maybe we're all just mind controlled minions this whole time.
  
• ITS MY EVOL!? dude, i resonate to boost power levels, not alter memories!
  
• shit, do i alter memories of people around me? WILD. unless thats my new aether core skill?
  
• i have to be misreading this. so Simone seems to be implying the Inspector Very Gadget lenses are her creation and.. my evol is mentioned again? maybe i shouldn't be playing this story when i'm this tired. this really doesn't make sense and i'm usually faster to figure out what they really meant through the awkward sentence structure. coming back to this maybe it'll make more sense the second time around. (EDIT: no implication that the mind altering Evol has anything to do with me in specific, apparently we're just a... conduit through the lenses?)
  
• protofield disruptor, check.
  
• yes, Sylus would be pleased at me for picking up at least marginally better bluffing skills, i agree.
  

• the ethical implications of this contact lens technology are going to bother me all night, i just know it.
  

[Coldsaturn]

"no, wait. really. what did i forget?"
I think MC was talking about all her visions, which I believe she recognizes as memories, but they're too fragmented and out of order to make sense of them.

- Yes, Simone has very fancy gadgets, including gadgets that...imagine they contain a certain evol's microchip. I guess her micromodification evol makes her perfect for creating these pieces of technology. If MC is wearing that gadget, she can amplify that evol from micro to macro effects and use it where it's needed.
I never really thought twice about this part because it's a power not that different from some stealth skills from dnd where you can disguise your appearance through magic so that the person in front of you is not really seeing you, but you didn't actually change your looks, it's the person's brain who doesn't perceive what they're seeing. There might have been a bit of translation mumbo jumbo here, where what they're doing is not actually rewriting someone's memories as much as their short-term memory of what they're seeing. But then I wouldn't really bat an eye if it was legit memory modification, too.
It's a sci-fi world and we have both technology and super powers. It can happen.

There are ethical implications for A LOT of things that are happening in this world. Alas, they have a war against wanderers that conveniently justify any means, and then a race to technological progress in the name of saving humanity from mortality that doesn't really care for collateral damage. Changing someone's short-term memory is nothing.

[ChicletPrime]

apropos of nothing, i think i am just going to decide for myself that Resonating is very much a two-way street and the reason our gal gets all murder-vamp around Sylus is because we just fall into his mindset, because we're constantly trying to vibrate on his wavelength even if we don't realize it (and even when we couldn't do the big connect).

like, our girl is just always trying to matchy-match her environment - she gets into an argument with a fruit-seller over the price of apples and two minutes in, she's Resonating at him without meaning to and even without an evol to hook into, her personality shifts that tiny bit towards 'haggling fish-wife'.

which would, extrapolating for five more seconds, mean that the LARGEST personality with the STRONGEST evol in her vicinity is going to dictate how far the personality warp/merge goes.

/just thinking, don't mind me.

FURTHER FURTHER thought -- the stronger we get, the more we warp everybody around us to match what we want them to be. :D  Sylus probably doesn't need to worry, but Zayne might have to plant his feet a little harder.

---

going to have to hand wave the high-tech micromacro-evol thing myself i guess - its ugly, honestly.  if you have a mutant superpower, how the FUCK  HECK do you stick it into a gadget at all? they just shouldn't have use the word 'evol' there, and just made it a flat out gadget with heading-for-dark-gray ethical considerations.

again, extrapolating out to world building, that would probably means anybody with an evol that can protect against brain modification (null-shield/field evol?) would be in high demand across all business corporations in both underground and overworld settings. maybe part of corporate espionage is getting rid of the pesky secretary with the dampening field, or bribing them to stop at the crucial moment of the negotations.  oooh, Inception!

[ChicletPrime]

/spends half the evening annotating the Card Deck with little symbols for the protocore polarities so its handy