Once the puppeteer, now the puppet. A Drone-Tessa concept I've been thinking about. Hopefully the 6 people who followed me after the 1st drone-Tessa post like this lol. If anyone here has any thoughts or feedback on this, tell me, I'd be glad to hear it!
A day in the Elliott manor,
It had been some time since Tessa had awoken. Or Cyn rather, as the Solver declared her name to be. Tessa couldn’t tell how much time went by in the ruins of Earth. The clocks hadn’t been working since Tessa awakened. And ever since the Absolute Solver broke Earth to pieces, the Elliott manor didn’t have a fluent day schedule. With each day having an sporadic length, sometimes lasting hours, minutes, or seemingly forever. Even during the night, light was still reflected onto the Elliott manor’s surface, but the other pieces of Earth. Ensuring there wasn’t any end to Cyn’s playing.
Tessa couldn’t tell whether she could call the planet Earth, anymore. The Solver turned Earth into a debris field, with its minor pieces orbiting its largest piece, which contained the Elliott manor, now Cyn’s liar.
“No, ‘the stage’ is a better name,” Tessa thought, while laying on her knees, scrubbing a rug with a sponge. “For a pointless house of living dolls.”
It was quiet in the Elliott manor. Cyn usually spent her time torturing someone, though not always Tessa. Cyn also played with possessed puppets on far-off galaxies, and now she was sitting dormant in Tessa’s old room, playing her game of cat and mouse with mankind. In the meantime, Cyn always ordered Tessa around the manor, cleaning it pointlessly.
The first thing Cyn ordered of Tessa, upon her awakening, was to clean the blood leftover from the Gala event. Which Tessa did, cleaning the room roof to floor, yet the blood mixed very well with carpets, dragging Tessa to a stalemate.
“Dammit, If she hates blood so much, why’d she flood the back woods with it?” Tessa exclaimed silently, while looking up. “I suppose this must’ve been how she thought when I was free.”
Tessa sighed, and looked to her right, where her eyes caught a portrait of her old self, with her drones, all assembled together alongside her parents.
“Ah, when I was free…” Tessa thought out loud.
Tessa looked at J's face, and smiled, thinking back to the laughter they once sang, and how eager they seemed to help her when her parents had seemingly left her.
“It was all an act,” Tessa thought, her smile frowning, as she turned back to the blood soaked carpet. “Just a mask.”
Tessa began scrubbing the carpet with renewed vigor.
“Mother was right, none of them really cared after all,” Tessa thought, remembering the emotionless look in J’s eyes when her builder got struck down. “Took my name, my family, my home, even my whole name. Mother wasn’t even this cruel.”
Tessa’s scrubbing slowed.
“I really was just made to be someone’s fool, wasn’t I?” Tessa thought. “First pushed around by the parents, and now by an eldritch horror.”
Tessa stopped scrubbing, before slamming her fist down on the carpet.
“What am I thinking? I am still an Elliott, no matter what Cyn says,” Tessa thought. “And Elliott’s don’t quit.”
“Some day, I will get out of here. I have to,” Tessa thought, slamming the sponge repeatedly into the stained rug. “And when I do, I’ll burn this stupid blonde wig, I’ll call myself by my real name…”
Tessa gave one last knock on the floor.
“And I will kill every last one of those 4 traitors,” Tessa thought.
Tessa’s momentum slowed to a halt, her eyes closed in contemplation. Finally, Tessa let out a sarcastic laugh, as she begrudgingly lifted herself up, and sat up against a wall, trying to breathe, yet her own metallic body failed to draw in air. Letting out a few shallow laughs, she felt an urge to cry, yet no tiers greeted her metallic face. Finally, Tessa sighed, and slouched back.
“But how?” Tessa said quietly.