#like. this isnt even the funniest bit. but um; thats an aside;

[trainingdummyrabbit]

Woe. Extended Cocoa Monologue Be Upon Ye.

So. Her name is Cocoa. Theoretically. She's been around for a pretty long time, if not the longest when going by current employee terms. She's the one who works with Nothing There because shes the only one who. Can. A bit odd, she's almost entirely mute aside from a handful of phrases and words, and occasionally mimicking things said to her recently. She's considered to be a bit airheaded, not really paying attention to her surroundings and more often than not just kind of... cycling around the facility when not on the job.

She does a lot of things that would Seem normal on first glance, but are just.. kinda strange, when you actually pay attention to her. Like background actors pretending to be passerby, but when they get a lil silly with it and start like. Putting whipped cream on a carrot and eating it raw. Y'know. Girl Things. Most folks don't give her much mind aside from common pleasantries-- mostly because she just doesn't answer anything else. She just kinda stares blankly, no thoughts head empty, as if she doesn't understand. She's just silly that way though, so nobody minds.

When shes given a task, though, she's just. Entirely Different. Shes very methodical, cutting straight to the point-- oftentimes literally. It's where her experience with the whole Being A Lobcorp Employee really makes itself obvious. She can take a Lot of shit and just... Wont Die. She just gets back up! Easypeasy. It's almost mechanical-- and she barely seems affected at all by any of the Horrors(tm) that come with the whole... y'know. When it comes down to it, shes a little scary.

Nobody really Knows this necessarily, but before she was an agent, she was actually a clerk ! :] She just kind of... did her job. Was polite and enthusiastic, all that good stuff, model employee or whatever. but then, evidently, there was a pretty bad abno breach at some point, and she completely managed to hold her own, going so far as to be Almost Helpful! Astounding ! So they moved her around to being a fully functional agent! Something that has absolutely no consequences whatsoever !

. So, the horrors, right? Stepping out of exposition speak, Cocoa is an exploration on the split between human, monster, and object-- and what it means to define yourself within those terms. (It's honestly a common theme between the group as a whole, but they all tackle it differently.) Cocoa-- previously known as Holly-- was pretty much always a Highly Volatile person. Not that she ever showed it. A lot of her hinges on her desperate desire to be seen as Worthwhile, to be worthy of being kept around. Truthfully? She was always terrified of death.

She knew how the world worked. Either you made yourself useful and did what you were supposed to, or you were thrown out to the cruel whims of what the world does to people like her. She was, functionally, a Nobody. And she knew this. So she did her best to fit into the vision of somebody Useful. Polite, easy to herd around, noncombative-- all that stuff. It was grating, sure, but anything to keep her out of the bad books of people who could so easily crumble her already fragile life without a second thought. It was just what she needed to do.

So um. Unfortunately, pinning your entire identity on the whims of a conglomerated image of "other people" was never really sustainable. Not even remotely. Especially not for somewhere like the city. These sorts of things contradicted themselves, looped around, formed uncrossable chasms of expectation that she could never live up to even if she tried. And god, did she try. Constantly putting up a front was exhausting, but rewriting yourself completely every time you moved somewhere new? god can you even imagine.

She was just about Always tiptoeing a thin line between roles, teetering delicately between the gazes of those above her. Any action or expression or emotion contradicting from that image had to be immediately smothered, every step out of line earned a warning shot from herself that nobody else could really see. So like, no pressure!

So, going into Lobcorp, she was a model employee, secretly harboring the unstable energy of a dying star. Easypeasy. The abno escape was, as the kids say, "the last fucking straw in her miserable life," and she kind of just. blacked out, woke up, and it was over. She helped about as much as a clerk Could, but the fact that she was alive was an anomaly. Again, she is very very good at just... Staying Alive, when she shouldn't. So that was a pretty good vouch for her skill, even if she didnt present that at first. She, obviously, was pretty nervous about the whole thing, but if this is what she was being told to do, then so be it! Easypeasy! No big deal ! I'm sure Lobotomy Corporation is just an office comedy! She is very normal.

So, again, the thing about Holly is just that she. Doesn't Die. But the people around her sure do!! What happens around here is a bit of a blur, both to me and to her, but the long and short of it is pretty much this. Through the course of her acting as a full-title Agent, it did, shockingly in fact, Make A Lot Of Her Issues Worse ! Now not only did her Own life rest in her hands, but also a bunch of other people's! Crazy how that works.

She seems perfectly fine, mostly just because her immediate instinct in stress is to just. shut off. Panic, fear, anger-- none of that has any place in the role of a Useful Employee. She can't have doubts, cant have regrets, she just has to Move. So she just lets her body do what needs to be done, and tunes back in when everything is over again. It's not Easy getting to know people in a situation like that, but somehow she Did actually manage to make a friend! Though, I suppose, not that difficult, because "being friendly" is a very good Employee Trait to have, so obviously she has it. But, well, it Was nice! Was. Lobotomy Corporation Is A Tragedy ! Whoops.

So obviously, having a small bit of solace taken away from you is, to put it lightly, Not A Great Experience. But well, it wasn't exactly just that necessarily. To her, that person was everything that any model person Should be. Effortlessly. Intrinsically. They simply Were, and through the plain act of Being A Person, Unapologetically, was... well, it was refreshing! Silently, it was everything Holly Wished that she could be, but just couldn't gain the courage to reach. It wasn't even any huge event that killed them, it was just... some stupid mistake. The core of it simply came down to... well, if they couldn't do it, how could she? Her, hoping to be better than someone like that? Was that even possible? And this is about where things start . going sideways.

So. Her whole deal with Nothing There. It wasn't anything big. Not really, in the grand scheme of things. In all honesty, it was more of a Resignation. At this point, she'd already been kind of spacey and distant-- even for her own standards-- so of course, nobody would really notice much of anything. (Again, another good trait of a Useful Employee.) Working with NT for the first time was. odd. Nobody really knew what to make of it at the time, but Holly hadn't died Yet, so she was as good a choice as any. And seeing the damn thing, well. yeah, it was disgusting, but it wasn't what affected her the most. Rather, it was when it tried to start Speaking.

Calling it Horror isn't exactly correct, but it wasn't exactly... incorrect, either. All she could really do was watch it try to form words over and over, messy and stilted, inherently flawed. A crude imitation of something she should understand. Disgusting, sure, but not for the right reasons. Because all she could really see was a microcosm of herself. A horrible little excuse for a creature trying to pretend to be human, pulling itself together by the seams and stumbling over and over, painfully close yet uncomfortably alien to those it was trying to imitate. And she could only watch, as emotions she'd done her best to suppress slowly clawed their way back up.

It was then she had a choice. To confront what exactly it was that she'd been desperately locking away, that raging sensation of emotion, of desire, of anything-- or to resign herself into disappearing completely, letting herself drop all of the baggage of that flawed facade of "humanity" and allowing it to be replaced with... for lack of a better term, a Variable. an Anything Else. But... she was never very good at confronting herself, was she? So she sat down, and began correcting the entity's speech, forming both It and Her back into the shape that they "should" be. And at the same time, letting go of a "self" that could no longer exist anymore.

The thing about her, simply, is that-- again-- she doesn't die. Not the way that people do, not the way that people Should. But then again, "Holly" hasn't existed for a long time, by the start of everything. Anyone who Knew who she was never really had the chance to, with the way she was-- not that any of them were alive to be able to tell. She never answers anyone asking what her name is. or what her job is, or... well, much of anything. So people just call her Cocoa, because that's the only thing she seems to like :) And well, people say it confidently enough that others just Believe them, and Cocoa doesn't care enough to correct them, so like. whatever. Cocoa is here to do her job. Nothing more, nothing less. And nobody is going to stop her, because she's damn good at it. Nobody knows there was even a problem to begin with. Silently, wordlessly, the "person" she used to be simply... disappeared. And nobody was there to hear it. Which makes things... difficult.

Because she doesn't remember any of that. None of her peers do, either. She feels "fine," simply enacting whatever it is she needs to do. And because of that, people simply just Believe Her. It was as if "she" had never really existed at all. And at the end of it all... she was entirely indifferent. There was work to do, you know? No use worrying over some kid who couldn't handle the pressure. Happens all the time, right? And so the world moves on, without a second thought.

Not a second thought at all.

#pikocs #projmoon #long post #LONG fucking post i mean it #reading this back is so funny. 'stepping out of exposition speak--' No The Fuck You Aren't #anyway this is my little beast she can be trusted adn she is so so normal. perceive her at yuor soonest convenience <33 #i also. want to put down that ive been writing this group Before i read wonderlab which makes several things. VERY funny. #like. this isnt even the funniest bit. but um; thats an aside; #anyway this is like; an entire offshoot branch of Lcorp for context; and a lot of logistics im working out still #and a lot of logistics im just 'ehhh whatever' about so ^w^ #but theyre just a horrible little jumble of 'oh god oh fuck oh shit' and th worlds most Unfortunate timing #and the worlds most Characters of ever who simultaneously make each other better and Significantly Worse <333 #ill uh. ill get to everyone eventually. probably. wapow ✌