Statement Taken Live From Subject Over Tea, Third September, Year Unknown Due To Calendar Clashes
"...I feel like Zelda doesn't want to believe this, even though I keep trying to tell her, but I need you to understand - Gebura was a good manager. This story isn't all bad...hahaha, maybe we can call it an experiment. Because I am afraid, but I'm also proud! I went into this knowing what I was doing, and I'd do it again, so...I dunno. Maybe it'll balance your diet, Comrade Sims." In sharp contrast to many of their other Statements, here Jean actually takes a sip of their tea, and their eyes close gently. "But let's start at the beginning, give you some context to a few of the things I've said before..."
They chew their lip for a moment. "The Library worked by invitation, as I've said before. A Guest was never compelled to enter the Library and face its ordeals...but they did receive their invitation when it seemed, to them, like the Library had every solution to their problems. When accepting would get them away from someone else trying to kill them, when they were low on money, when our knowledge could solve their every life problem - we preyed upon them, make no mistake, and it was still a fairer deal than you could find anywhere in the City. And it was still wrong. I know that now, and I know now that the Director understood it before I did. Still, once the invitation was signed, they would come to the Library, and the various Floors would decide which of us would give them battle. Mine was chosen often, once we'd awoken from our sleep, and I know why. We were the Disciplinary Team, once, the mad dog that bites its master, and as the Floor of Language we were still beasts of ruin and sorrow. There is not a warrior in any world I would place my faith in over Madam Gebura, and we were her team."
Jean dips a pastry in their teacup and nibbles it, thoughtfully. They're trying to figure out where to continue their story. There's - no, no, the direction is obvious. "Each Floor had several Abnormalities, sleeping within their Books, bound to it. To gain their services we had to meet them within their domains. Some demanded that we offer them battle; others, assistance, compassion. Ours were Little Red, the Wolf," here Jean touches the lapel of Cobalt Scar, in which sleeps the spirit of their friend Vah Midna, "the Mountain of Smiling Corpses, Nosferatu, and Nothing There. Violent things, all of them, terrors to the body and the mind, rending flesh, drinking blood, offering unending and relentless war. Perfect for us. Maybe I wouldn't have taken so long to warm up to Vah Midna if I'd understood what it meant that Little Red and he started working together, there in the Library..." They shake their head. "I'm getting off-topic!"
They flash a guilty grin at Jon, sip their tea. It's good tea. One of these days Jean is going to remember that Martin is the one who taught Jon how to make this tea at the same time that they're at Oak and Iron in the morning, and thereby order it from the OG.
"The Abnormalities couldn't be summoned, you have to understand. They lent us the power of their stories, which we could call on when emotions climbed higher, and higher, and more feverish, when the Light was stoked to a frenzy. They gave us their blessings or their powerful curses, and in return we, in some sense, embodied them; they would move through us, and feel their stories enacted upon our enemies. I need to tell you about the Mountain, Jon. It's a thing of death, of despair, it's...hahaha, it's the feeling that life is so hard that it's better to die, because then no one can expect anything from you. No one can demand anything of you. No one can ask you, and you do not have to answer. I hated it. We needed it. The Mountain, too, is a person of the City, after all. A thing like me..."
"We still weren't ready for the first time we called it down on ourselves."
In the manner of Jean's Statements, Jon begins to hear music.
"The mercenaries of R-Corp's Fourth Pack, like all Guests, were desperate. Without the capital they could gain by attacking us and selling our knowledge, their way of life would die out. Gebura argued strenuously to be the one to give them battle, that it would be an insult not to face them herself. They had...the leader of the Rabbit Pack idolized Gebura, and was close to her. It was the service of a friend, to be the one to strike her down, an acknowledgement of a fellow warrior. So we received them, determined that no other Floor would get involved."
"The Fourth Pack are difficult to describe, as warriors. They are varied, professional, dauntless, terrifying. Their Reindeer troopers lashed us with psychic blasts to both body and mind; their Rhinos, on the front lines, protected the more vulnerable Reindeer and Rabbits. And the Rabbits...the Rabbits...I usually think of guns as silly things for weak people, Comrade Sims, but a Rabbit marksman could make me bleed. The sheer volume of bullets, the deceptively tactical placement, no thing living could block and dodge them all. And the Fourth Pack brought many troopers. Five Librarians, Comrade. More than forty mercenaries. We vowed to take them all on."
They go to take a sip of their tea. Hesitate. And then complete the motion, with a soft shudder through their body. They don't like this memory. But...
"The fight was long, and grueling. And you have to remember what I've said before - though Director Angela would remake our bodies if we died, we lost the knowledge of this when we gave battle, so that we would fear our deaths and therefore build up the passion needed to stoke the Light and to summon the power of the Abnormalities. We knew the power that the Mountain offered to us, and it had been decided, all of us, that we would only resort to it in extremis. You understand? Only if everyone agreed. Gebura would not order us to do it, and she would not decide; we all had to say yes. And, hahaha, things were looking bad! Izzy was about to die, Mari was on their last legs, even I was losing that fighting spirit, and there were so many, so very many, many and more and each one of them a worthy opponent...so we said yes. We drew the Mountain down on us."
"The power of the Mountain is this: it kills Gebura's team, and feeds our corpses to her, amplifying her power. I still remember, it's burned into me, the way we started catching each other's eyes. Me to Mari, Mari to Dominic, Dominic to Izzy, Izzy to Madam Gebura. We knew. It had to happen. We thought it would be forever, you understand? We thought we were giving up our lives, and we still said to her: do it. And she drew the Mountain of Corpses down. It ground us up, and fed us to her, and later I awoke to be told of our victory."
"But."
They set their cup down in the saucer, with a soft clink, and their voice is low. "It hurt, Comrade Sims. It hurt to die, and it hurt while I was dead. I could not see. I could not hear. I know nothing of the battle after my death, but I know this: every motion from Madam Gebura was a world of agony. Every parried blow was a burn across flesh that belonged to her now. Every wound she took, I shared. It hurt, and it did not stop hurting; it hurt, and I knew nothing but pain or the brief absence of pain that only made it hurt more. It hurt like nothing that has happened to me before, or since, has ever hurt. But after the battle, the Assistant Librarians, we got together, and we agreed not to tell Gebura. We still haven't. She's a good Manager, Comrade. She cared for us, and fought to keep us at her side, to protect us and to let us protect her. If she knew the truth...if she knew the truth, she'd never call the Mountain again, and that was unacceptable."
"So we lied, and we never did tell her what it meant, when we said: yes, consume us, in the name of victory."
Jon is quiet, as he always is throughout Jean's statements. The music sits in the back of his skull, and slowly creeps away from him as it had crept in to begin with. Though he's taken many statements from many people at this point, Jean's somehow manage to linger at the forefront of his mind with the most sticking power. Perhaps it's the vicious, senseless violence, or the imagery they paint with gruesome, entirely-too-tangible strokes. He's never quite sure.
He takes a sip of his tea, letting out a breath as he's finally able to pull away from it, needing a few moments to process, not unlike a tape-player rewinding.
"Another R-Corp incident... you'd dealt with them with fair frequency, by the sounds of it. Or, all at once, and their attacks were all at once, but so distinct between each group," He remarks, tapping his fingertips against the tea cup. "I've spoken with Zelda briefly about the nature of your management, though, yes. Her opinion on that... has not changed, as far as I'm aware."
He pauses, his lips pulling into a thoughtful frown.
"...I'm not sure if that would remain the case, if she knew of the reality of the situation. I believe she's of a similar mind that I'd been, which was that your management had been... complicit, if not fully benefiting from the events you all endured. Not as a comrade of equal footing in as much of a leadership role as once can be, still so in the thick of everything, but still caught in the same snares that you and the rest of your team were in."
"I see that now," Jon nods, slow and somber. "I suppose I had just... assumed, really. That such positions, such power over people around them, would give them a lack of regard for those lost while dealing with these problems. I apologize for that."
"It's...okay." It's not, but Jean would like it to be. "There are bad Managers. Madam Gebura had to learn, she...used to be very monomaniacal, hahaha! But she did learn. She...was better even when being better was the hardest thing in the world. Sort of like you."
You know that sound someone makes, that light thing that isn't quite a scoff, fond and wistful? Yeah. "She was forever smoking inside the library. And we'd trade off being her personal assistant, because Madam Gebura can barely read. First person to joke about it, Patron Librarian of Language can't read. But she really did care, Comrade. She really did."
Better, even when it was the hardest thing in the world, sort of like you.
Jean brushes past it so quickly, for something that leaves a lump in Jon's throat that he struggles to swallow. It's hard to wrap his head around something so meaningful, likely one of the kindest things any friend of his has said about it, said so plainly as to be a footnote of a deeper explanation. His knee-jerk to push back against it isn't even granted the time. He simply has to sit with it and try to manage.
"From everything you've told me, I can see that she did," Jon agrees, gentler this time. "And we all have to learn our way out of bad habits. I'm glad she had the opportunity to do so, and did right by you and your colleagues. ...What was it like, working with her in the library?"
"...Intimate." Beat. "Not that kind of intimate," Jean clarifies. "At Lobotomy Corporation, she could not fight alongside us, as desperately as she wished to. The Library was, in some ways, a far vaster space. Its dimensions were not constrained by limitations like space, or engineering. And yet, there were so few of us there, compared to L-Corp Headquarters. Just five, for the Floor of Language, Madam Gebura included. We were in frequent contact; we often met with other teams to compare books, to socialize. She could be...difficult, to be around, it's true. She was so heavy with memory and regret that at times it was as if she wasn't there. And yet, when it mattered, she made herself be there, for us."
"In a line of work like that, I can't be all too surprised that she... pulled away, a bit. It's hard not to, when you see things like you've told me about." Jon pauses, just long enough to have a sip of tea. "But I'm glad she'd been able to be there for the five of you. I'm... shocked, honestly, that there were so few of you, for the scale of things that you've mentioned happening in the Library. Why was that?"
"We're the ones who survived, Comrade." Jean almost shrugs, looking down at their teacup. "Director Angela preserved what lives she could when the self-destruct activated in headquarters. The Sephirah, as many Employees as she could reach, but...she is not a god. There was only ever so much she could have done. I survived by blind chance and even then I was so injured that I was in stasis for a great deal of the Library's early assault on the people of the City."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Statement of Agent Jean, Regarding The Tactics And Secrets Of The Floor Of Language
Date: 2024-09-03 11:29 pm (UTC)"...I feel like Zelda doesn't want to believe this, even though I keep trying to tell her, but I need you to understand - Gebura was a good manager. This story isn't all bad...hahaha, maybe we can call it an experiment. Because I am afraid, but I'm also proud! I went into this knowing what I was doing, and I'd do it again, so...I dunno. Maybe it'll balance your diet, Comrade Sims." In sharp contrast to many of their other Statements, here Jean actually takes a sip of their tea, and their eyes close gently. "But let's start at the beginning, give you some context to a few of the things I've said before..."
They chew their lip for a moment. "The Library worked by invitation, as I've said before. A Guest was never compelled to enter the Library and face its ordeals...but they did receive their invitation when it seemed, to them, like the Library had every solution to their problems. When accepting would get them away from someone else trying to kill them, when they were low on money, when our knowledge could solve their every life problem - we preyed upon them, make no mistake, and it was still a fairer deal than you could find anywhere in the City. And it was still wrong. I know that now, and I know now that the Director understood it before I did. Still, once the invitation was signed, they would come to the Library, and the various Floors would decide which of us would give them battle. Mine was chosen often, once we'd awoken from our sleep, and I know why. We were the Disciplinary Team, once, the mad dog that bites its master, and as the Floor of Language we were still beasts of ruin and sorrow. There is not a warrior in any world I would place my faith in over Madam Gebura, and we were her team."
Jean dips a pastry in their teacup and nibbles it, thoughtfully. They're trying to figure out where to continue their story. There's - no, no, the direction is obvious. "Each Floor had several Abnormalities, sleeping within their Books, bound to it. To gain their services we had to meet them within their domains. Some demanded that we offer them battle; others, assistance, compassion. Ours were Little Red, the Wolf," here Jean touches the lapel of Cobalt Scar, in which sleeps the spirit of their friend Vah Midna, "the Mountain of Smiling Corpses, Nosferatu, and Nothing There. Violent things, all of them, terrors to the body and the mind, rending flesh, drinking blood, offering unending and relentless war. Perfect for us. Maybe I wouldn't have taken so long to warm up to Vah Midna if I'd understood what it meant that Little Red and he started working together, there in the Library..." They shake their head. "I'm getting off-topic!"
They flash a guilty grin at Jon, sip their tea. It's good tea. One of these days Jean is going to remember that Martin is the one who taught Jon how to make this tea at the same time that they're at Oak and Iron in the morning, and thereby order it from the OG.
"The Abnormalities couldn't be summoned, you have to understand. They lent us the power of their stories, which we could call on when emotions climbed higher, and higher, and more feverish, when the Light was stoked to a frenzy. They gave us their blessings or their powerful curses, and in return we, in some sense, embodied them; they would move through us, and feel their stories enacted upon our enemies. I need to tell you about the Mountain, Jon. It's a thing of death, of despair, it's...hahaha, it's the feeling that life is so hard that it's better to die, because then no one can expect anything from you. No one can demand anything of you. No one can ask you, and you do not have to answer. I hated it. We needed it. The Mountain, too, is a person of the City, after all. A thing like me..."
"We still weren't ready for the first time we called it down on ourselves."
In the manner of Jean's Statements, Jon begins to hear music.
"The mercenaries of R-Corp's Fourth Pack, like all Guests, were desperate. Without the capital they could gain by attacking us and selling our knowledge, their way of life would die out. Gebura argued strenuously to be the one to give them battle, that it would be an insult not to face them herself. They had...the leader of the Rabbit Pack idolized Gebura, and was close to her. It was the service of a friend, to be the one to strike her down, an acknowledgement of a fellow warrior. So we received them, determined that no other Floor would get involved."
"The Fourth Pack are difficult to describe, as warriors. They are varied, professional, dauntless, terrifying. Their Reindeer troopers lashed us with psychic blasts to both body and mind; their Rhinos, on the front lines, protected the more vulnerable Reindeer and Rabbits. And the Rabbits...the Rabbits...I usually think of guns as silly things for weak people, Comrade Sims, but a Rabbit marksman could make me bleed. The sheer volume of bullets, the deceptively tactical placement, no thing living could block and dodge them all. And the Fourth Pack brought many troopers. Five Librarians, Comrade. More than forty mercenaries. We vowed to take them all on."
They go to take a sip of their tea. Hesitate. And then complete the motion, with a soft shudder through their body. They don't like this memory. But...
"The fight was long, and grueling. And you have to remember what I've said before - though Director Angela would remake our bodies if we died, we lost the knowledge of this when we gave battle, so that we would fear our deaths and therefore build up the passion needed to stoke the Light and to summon the power of the Abnormalities. We knew the power that the Mountain offered to us, and it had been decided, all of us, that we would only resort to it in extremis. You understand? Only if everyone agreed. Gebura would not order us to do it, and she would not decide; we all had to say yes. And, hahaha, things were looking bad! Izzy was about to die, Mari was on their last legs, even I was losing that fighting spirit, and there were so many, so very many, many and more and each one of them a worthy opponent...so we said yes. We drew the Mountain down on us."
"The power of the Mountain is this: it kills Gebura's team, and feeds our corpses to her, amplifying her power. I still remember, it's burned into me, the way we started catching each other's eyes. Me to Mari, Mari to Dominic, Dominic to Izzy, Izzy to Madam Gebura. We knew. It had to happen. We thought it would be forever, you understand? We thought we were giving up our lives, and we still said to her: do it. And she drew the Mountain of Corpses down. It ground us up, and fed us to her, and later I awoke to be told of our victory."
"But."
They set their cup down in the saucer, with a soft clink, and their voice is low. "It hurt, Comrade Sims. It hurt to die, and it hurt while I was dead. I could not see. I could not hear. I know nothing of the battle after my death, but I know this: every motion from Madam Gebura was a world of agony. Every parried blow was a burn across flesh that belonged to her now. Every wound she took, I shared. It hurt, and it did not stop hurting; it hurt, and I knew nothing but pain or the brief absence of pain that only made it hurt more. It hurt like nothing that has happened to me before, or since, has ever hurt. But after the battle, the Assistant Librarians, we got together, and we agreed not to tell Gebura. We still haven't. She's a good Manager, Comrade. She cared for us, and fought to keep us at her side, to protect us and to let us protect her. If she knew the truth...if she knew the truth, she'd never call the Mountain again, and that was unacceptable."
"So we lied, and we never did tell her what it meant, when we said: yes, consume us, in the name of victory."
no subject
Date: 2024-09-04 06:11 pm (UTC)He takes a sip of his tea, letting out a breath as he's finally able to pull away from it, needing a few moments to process, not unlike a tape-player rewinding.
"Another R-Corp incident... you'd dealt with them with fair frequency, by the sounds of it. Or, all at once, and their attacks were all at once, but so distinct between each group," He remarks, tapping his fingertips against the tea cup. "I've spoken with Zelda briefly about the nature of your management, though, yes. Her opinion on that... has not changed, as far as I'm aware."
He pauses, his lips pulling into a thoughtful frown.
"...I'm not sure if that would remain the case, if she knew of the reality of the situation. I believe she's of a similar mind that I'd been, which was that your management had been... complicit, if not fully benefiting from the events you all endured. Not as a comrade of equal footing in as much of a leadership role as once can be, still so in the thick of everything, but still caught in the same snares that you and the rest of your team were in."
no subject
Date: 2024-09-05 01:24 pm (UTC)"We were all of us children of the City, Comrade. Even Director Angela. There was no escape."
no subject
Date: 2024-09-05 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-05 07:50 pm (UTC)You know that sound someone makes, that light thing that isn't quite a scoff, fond and wistful? Yeah. "She was forever smoking inside the library. And we'd trade off being her personal assistant, because Madam Gebura can barely read. First person to joke about it, Patron Librarian of Language can't read. But she really did care, Comrade. She really did."
no subject
Date: 2024-09-06 02:55 am (UTC)Jean brushes past it so quickly, for something that leaves a lump in Jon's throat that he struggles to swallow. It's hard to wrap his head around something so meaningful, likely one of the kindest things any friend of his has said about it, said so plainly as to be a footnote of a deeper explanation. His knee-jerk to push back against it isn't even granted the time. He simply has to sit with it and try to manage.
"From everything you've told me, I can see that she did," Jon agrees, gentler this time. "And we all have to learn our way out of bad habits. I'm glad she had the opportunity to do so, and did right by you and your colleagues. ...What was it like, working with her in the library?"
no subject
Date: 2024-09-07 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-07 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-07 03:18 am (UTC)