thisavrou | ☠ VIDEO (dated october 15)

[Normally, Sans prefers text. It helped him sidestep the inevitable set of questions that arose when most humans got a look at him. Of course, text had its limitations. There was something about the old book that couldn't be directly translated through a roughshod filter of comic sans.

Lack of experience translates to poor focus when the video starts streaming, but aside from that blurriness the feed is notably steady. No gaps, no garbled words, no sudden disconnects. A nice change of pace for anyone who attempted network communication in the past couple weeks.]

Testing, one, two. [The video is focused on an old book, open to a few blurry pages.] Seems like the Nerd Herd came through, so here's hoping I am too. [Anyway.] These last few weeks I've been pretty booked checking out the library. There're some racy tomes in there, fyi, for those of you into that kinda thing.

[He flips the page. And, while blurry, the hand doing the flipping is definitely... fleshless. The page itself is hard to pick out specifics, but a lot of it appears to be annotated with handwritten notes.]

This one's a bit on the dry side, but for all the former Thisavrou residents... Well, looks like whoever survived came up with a nifty name for what went down with Mother. The Great Catastrophe. Catchy, right?

I'm gonna upload some pages. I get the feeling people who lived through it might be able to speak to its accuracy more than me. [The pages come in later, thankfully much more readable than the video.] Reason I'm wondering is, uh...

[He uploads another page. This one mentioning a passage of light. It bluntly details how several crew members walked into, but did not return.]

Look, I get the Ingress's been gone for three hundred years, but... sound familiar to anyone else?

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[Hey, at least this guy just figures the face on the screen is... alien. Instead of anything else. That's more acceptable.]

Three...

[Well there's a blow. But, that's probably something they can deal with later, right? Not as important as the rest of it. So he shakes it off, for now.]

It's exactly what happened to us. Back on the planet.

[That alien face is centered now, broadly visible for more than a few accidental frames. ... Centered may be the wrong word. He's still getting used to this tech, alright?]

The passages of light? [Sans can't frown, per se, but his brow bone creases with mild concern.] Heh... well, that sure is a thing.

[Considering where they'd lead the first time...]

That, and ... someone talking to us. I remember that much.

Why?

[Yeah, buddy you don't... look happy about this. As much as your "alien" face can look.]

Talking to you?

[Well that's new. He'd been all but collecting accounts of what happened on Thisavrou -- The Great Catastrophe, he guesses -- but voices?]

What'd they say?

It's fuzzy. But...

[He trails off, trying to fight through the memory haze for a little clarity.]

Mostly just. Directions. "This way".

[There might be a faint scritch of the pen out of frame, but otherwise Sans seems merely curious.]

You follow orders?

When the planet's getting decimated, you're way more willing to listen.

It honestly seemed like the only thing... we could do.

[Shiro would find no judgment from Sans. He's very big on following.]

So they were the ones that lead you here, huh? These voices?

You got it.

Maybe someone else got something more clearly. But a lot of us were... distracted.

[Getting their people out.]

Yeah, that's one word for it.

[From what he heard, anyway. The more he hears, the more Sans finds himself grateful he's getting the cliffnotes version.]

Didn't say anything about voices in here, but I guess if the people who went in never came back...

Then the people who wrote that would have no idea what we ... literally went through.

... and... it means some people survived back there.

Looks like it. [Sans isn't sure whether he should feel grim or pleased about that fact. In the end, his voice settles somewhere in the middle.] And it sounds like you weren't the last group to experience the whole beacon of light deal, either.

Good. That's... that's good. [He blows out a breath, as he says it. Not all the people back there were to blame for what happened. He would hold to that stance. Long as possible.]

Then what... happened to the people on this station? All the ones who evacuated here.

[To that end, Sans offers one big shrug.]

The record here ends without much fanfare. Might as well have been midsentence, for all the sense it makes to end it on an unfinished inventory list. I gotta assume they wouldn't pack up and leave without taking this with them.

[He sighs, rubbing a hand over his skull.]

Maybe they heard the voices, too.

... Unless they didn't have a choice. Like we didn't.

[But it doesn't explain why there aren't any personal effects left behind. Or food spoils. Residue. Something. The place is just empty.]

Any chance it's not actually just an inventory list? I'm probably going out on a limb here, but -- when something doesn't make sense as is, we should probably check another angle.

You're welcome to come over to the library and look it over, but this thing seems like the kind of tome that gets passed down through generations. An Oral History of the Great Catastrophe. I get the feeling they used this as much for record keeping and tracking these light passages as they did for bedtimes stories.

... Really dark bedtime stories, but still.

... Yeah. Really, really dark.

I'll ask one of my teammates to look it over. She's good with finding patterns. Like I said -- I could just be reading too much into things.

But weird, unfinished lists left in a library for someone to find? Either we're in a video game, or ... ?

[Who would ever be in a video game that's just crazy talk. Cough.]

[Sans doesn't finish Shiro's thought. Whatever possibility he could slot in didn't bode too well for their merry band of lost souls.]

Yeah, well, hopefully it's the tutorial, amiright? [Heh...] What's your friend's name?

[Or a kind-of-not-really-anime right??]

Here's hoping. [He shakes his head.] Pidge. Her name is Pidge. And... don't be fooled by how she looks.

She's the most brilliant person I know.

Heh, trust me, pal. Where I'm from, looks only getcha so far. [He taps the side of his skull for emphasis.] She stuck here, too? I'd like to meet her.