Bloodteller: Genesis

Lynx in the Machine

Personally, Saffron hated the curfew with a rotting passion, and -as a result- ignored it whenever he could. Due to current circumstances and whatnot, tonight was going to be one of those nights.

"Alright Nela," Saffron decided as he situated himself in the now empty computer room. "How do we find out who that not-Shadow person was?"

"Give me a minute..." Nela promised. "I need to..."

Nela trailed off as something started to happen on the computer screen. Saffron had to squint to make sure he was seeing it right, and what he saw made him recoil in surprise; A figure seemed to softly glitch into existence on the screen- at first as a simple, Mobian like form before refining itself into a Mobian lynx. Saffron continued to gawk as the lynx Mobian started to color itself in, like a child scribbling colors into a coloring book. As the colors reached its body, the lynx started to gain clothes as well. When the lynx was properly colored and clothed, there on the screen was brown lynx Mobian with black markings on her face and her ears.

"How do I look?" Nela asked, but the lynx's mouth moved, admittedly scaring Saffron more than it should have.

"Does my avatar scare you?" the lynx curiously asked, again in Nela's voice, as it tilted its head at him. Words still failing to come out, Saffron just shook his head.

"Oh good." she smiled with a little clap of her hands. "Now, let's find out who you saw. Can you describe him for me?"

For this, Saffron shook himself from his surprise to answer her. "He looked like Shadow." he adamantly claimed. "But his bracers were gray. In fact, he didn't have any real color on him, he was just all gray and stuff. Oh! And he didn't have a mouth either."

"Oh, interesting!" Nela claimed as the avatar spun around, then extended its arms that some how made several windows appear on the screen. The windows then started to display several photos of Mobians Saffron didn't recognize. As more photos started to appear and disappear far too quickly for him to keep track, Nela's avatar brought up another window that displayed rounds and rounds of code that Saffron couldn't deceiver to save his life.

From there, a hushed silence filled the room as Nela (or was it her avatar?) shifted through all the data and possibilities that laid in Soleanna's history. It took some time, but the rapid change of pictures and data slowed down, and Nela's avatar turned to look at Saffron again.

"Saffron...?" Nela quietly said as if something was troubling her.

"Yeah?" the rabbit child nonchalantly replied.

"According to this data, you looped 13 times- 9 of those times there were severe causalities for your group."

He hadn't been aware of it at first, but Saffron had flinched. "Yeah, so?"

"I... I'm sorry you had to see that."

"It's not a big deal. With great power comes great responsibility, right?"

"Saffron, you're seven! You shouldn't be seeing those things!!"

Saffron looked away, refusing to say anything else about the situation. Nela must have known this as her avatar pulled up a picture of the mysterious not-Shadow and some other data that she knew Saffron could read easily.

"This is who you saw." she softly said to him to gain his attention again. It seemed to work as Saffron looked back at the screen.

"Mephiles." Saffron read off the data.
"His full moniker is Mephiles the Dark." Nela explained, bringing up more files. "There was a reality where he was created as a half from Soleanna's god, Solaris through some rather unethical experiments. It's a complicated story for now, but Shadow apparently had a hand in capturing Mephiles the first time, and accidentally released him 10 years after. This allowed Mephiles to literally claim Shadow's shadow (try saying that five times fast, ha!) and took on his appearance for a time."