retrospec | 3 ★ [video/text] [FIGHT CLUB]

[For those who haven't seen Dante in a while, he looks a little bit different when the camera clicks on. What was once white-blond hair has now gone pure silver, and his eyes, rather than going gray with the rest of the blues and greens of the world, are still the bright shade of aqua they'd turned back in April. For all his sarcasm about how Jim missed and took the wrong color from him, Dante knows he looks almost identical to the boy he's been remembering these past few months.]

All right. I know I'm not the only one who's been getting weird memories and abilities recently, but what I want to talk about today is this.

[He holds his hand up in front of him, and in a swirl of dark shadows, Soul Eater appears for him to take hold of, also still blue in all the right places.]

Weapons. A lot of people have ended up with them recently. Some of you might have gotten them in the mail, some of you have found them. But one thing's the same--whenever you get it, you know that it's yours.

There are a lot of us that are getting memories back of fighting, too. I don't know how many of you have given it a try, but when I tried to fight the way I had in those memories... it all started coming back to me. How to fight, how to defend... all of it.

So now we've got a bunch of people with weapons they barely know how to use, and a lot of us with memories of fighting but no way to test it out without risking that someone's gonna get hurt.

[He lets go of the sword and Soul Eater disappears back into the shadows.]

Last month, Retrospec managed to take us by surprise. I don't think anyone was expecting to wake up six inches tall or have to fight off spiders or cicadas. But it could happen again. We don't know what their end game is and we don't know what they're gonna throw at us next. And who knows? Maybe next time we won't have to fight. But with how many of us are remembering that sort of thing... I think it'd be a good idea for people to learn how to defend themselves, just in case.

Which brings me to the point of all this: I've been working with a few people and we're putting together network-wide training sessions. Tatsuo Kihara has been able to get us space at the Utsuki Dojo in Tisse on Sundays, 6 PM to midnight. We'll have wooden weapons to practice with so that nobody has to worry about accidentally shanking someone, and that way if you don't know if you did any fighting in the past, you can give it a shot and see if you remember anything. Both Doctors Trevelyan and Sutcliffe have said they'll be there when they can just in case anybody does take a shot too hard.

We've been working on finding people to teach different weapon styles like swords or spears or throwing knives so that you can try out all kinds of different thing.s Some people have offered to teach self-defense too, so even if you don't want to learn to fight offensively, you can at least learn how to defend yourself.

Our first session's going to be this coming Sunday the 18th. I'll be there right at 6:00. Let me know if you have any questions.

[Dante out!

A little bit later, he'll also make a text post to make sure he gets anyone who might not have watched the video. It's mostly the same information, but at the top he'll post the quick and dirty:]

Dante Rantanen
6/13 near Birch Hills

Retrospec Weapons/Self-Defense Training Sessions
Utsuki Dojo in Tisse
Sundays starting June 18, 6 PM to midnight

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

it's only edged on one side, the spine is too wide and rounded off to cut through anything but the bottom of the wing gets a lot thinner and takes an edge pretty easily

so it only cuts from one side, but i've only found one thing so far it couldn't cut through

yeah. i haven't really thought about it too much, but it's like i reach out to grab it and it's there. i can set it down if i want and pick it back up, but once i'm done with it it disappears, almost like it's reacting to my thoughts

that's convenient, aside from being a bit unsettling. i assume that means only you can use it.

[Which is definitely handy to have when it comes to being given a weapon.]

what was it that it couldn't cut?

[Oh, that's a loaded question! Dante considers it for a moment before locking his reply.]

not that i want to broadcast it, but that guy who got the red arm last month, noah

he asked me to help carve a chunk of it out so the doctors could try and analyze it

turns out even though this sword can cut through metal or rock, it couldn't cut through that arm

but his cousin would probably kill me if she found out so keep that to yourself

[Not to mention the lectures he could look forward to from Ardyn and Togusa. At least Grell would understand?]

[Well then. Still, it's not like he's going to hold it against the kid or judge either of them for; it seems like a reasonable thing to try to do.]

that's one hell of an arm, then. i suppose it makes sense the only things it couldn't cut would be other nonsense we've gotten from retrospec. which likely means they have access to things to protect themselves from the weapons they're giving us.

[Curses.]

that's not too surprising, if our theory about the binary code in the tunnels is right, they'd be able to change anything they wanted just by swapping a 0 for a 1

we won't beat them just playing by their rules, that's for sure

[Well, Ren doesn't entirely know what that means, but he's definitely interested in hearing about it.]

your theory? [He may already get the gist of it—the whole matrix idea and programming metaphors—but he doesn't know what the tunnels have to do with it.]

i've been remembering a lot of stuff about data. the past me, wherever he was there was some way to convert real things into data. not just programming it into some sort of simulation but actually CONVERTING it somehow. you could convert entire places and all of the people that lived in it and it'd keep functioning inside the data-world

and the other me could apparently go into those data worlds because i remember using a trick to pick out parts of the coding and trigger some sort of subroutine and alter reality

i mostly just used it to unlock doors or make defenses self-destruct, but i bet if you could do that, you could change the code to make bigger changes too

[You following him here?]

it would make sense you could do more than that, if what you're saying was possible. and it does sound similar to what is going on here.

[He's not the most computer savvy, but he knows enough to see the parallels between what's happening here and changing a few variables in a program. Or a game.]

i assume the conversion was making a copy?

[Dante frowns on his end, shaking his head.]

not entirely

most of it was a copy, but not everything. there was this machine that could transport something from the real world into the data world and vice versa

if you put something into the digital world using it, it removed that thing from our world entirely. this bright light surrounded it running code, and when the light disappeared whatever was beneath it had disappeared too

when i went into the datascape, that's how i did it. and it as ME there, not some avatar i was controlling from outside the simulation. i was inside of it interacting with everything like it was real

[His past life was weird, man.]

3 ★ [video/text] [FIGHT CLUB]

no subject

no subject

private;

private

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private

let's just say perma-private here lmao

sounds good!

sorry, was waiting on regain approval!

Dante Rantanen 6/13 near Birch Hills
Retrospec Weapons/Self-Defense Training Sessions Utsuki Dojo in Tisse Sundays starting June 18, 6 PM to midnight