Some Legends Are Told, Some Turn To Dust Or To Gold [CEREALIA INBOX]

[zerotohiro]

'Busy, leave a message!
...oh, you've reached Hiro Hamada. Whatever. Still busy!'

Hamada art by D-Joel, found on tumblr

Comments

[zerotohiro]

Are we sure ALL of them are hers? I didn't get mine from her directly and I know a couple of other people didn't either. Is it possible somebody's copying her instead to throw us off of their trail?

[souperb]

[ ...? that's news to her, actually. she just assumed everything was from aria... ]

i didn't know that.
did they all end up acting the same way? developing features, following you around?
and it's possible they could all be working together too
though i still don't understand what the masks were supposed to do besides annoy us

[ she was fortunately spared from alien-kun shenanigans. ]

[zerotohiro]

Yeah. Mine showed up next to my bed one morning after the carnival, scared the crap out of me and the cat. It started following me everywhere and it developed the barcode after a while. Still not entirely sure what THAT means either.

Supposedly? The masks are our true selves or something like that. What was yours anyway?

[souperb]

[ okay. nice, aria. her true self is apparently: ]

dripping with blood
which could mean a lot of things. i won't deny that the thing is accurate, if it's taking that direction

[ well isn't that a. reassuring thing to say. but she's not going to deny she's got a bloody as fuq past—hiro's seen enough of that already. ]

and its at least a lot easier to make out than yours
aren't barcodes meant for scanning at the store?

[zerotohiro]

Oh.

[Judging by the fact that he doesn't respond immediately after that, he knows exactly what that means and now he's busy processing the whole "Milla's dead" thing. Right. Okay. Did he know that? Does he remember that? Somehow things like that just don't really sit well no matter what.]

...you're right, that's a lot easier to make out and thankfully I don't have to explain to you what a barcode is. That's what I don't get. I'm not a product so what does it have to do with anything? A couple of us figured out what some of the masks mean, but that one stumped us.

[Then again, the alien did say he held some value. So that's ominous.]

[souperb]

[ she thought that was vague enough that the immediate response would be haha you're a murderer but whoops. not that she knows what the mask exactly means, so milla's going to take his lack of immediate response as that being the conclusion he got anyway. she'd probably pause if someone told her "yeah my bloody mask is bloody because i, myself, am bloody" except.

maybe not. ]

which ones did you figure out?
maybe it was whoever gave you that mask's way of marking you as a product

[ ha ha ha. no, really, that's the only thing she can think of. why the heck would you put a barcode on someone? unless your true self is a box of cookies in the junk food aisle, what truth does that even show. ]

like that makes any sense

[zerotohiro]

We figured out the bloody fingerprints, the blood dripping masks, and the ones that're broken. Sort of. Some of the other ones I kinda figured out later after talking to people but still not enough to get a real answer.

And what about if I don't want to be a product? They could have asked.

[There's a pause though.] ...but it could mean there is a price at stake here.