Last Day

Originally posted on MSPA by Stickmeister.

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SpoilerShow

Seconding.

Also, Last Day being bad should be the LEAST of your worries.
This is hilarious, and I'm going to show it to all my friends (even though they don't read fanadventures, I'm showing them anyway)
Last Day is by far the best adventure I've read in a while.
I would draw fanart but that'll have to wait after U4G
(Also Last Day kind of inspired the black and white theme I'm going with in my current adventure. I was all "Hey that's cool, it's black and white and it's still some bitchin' art. I could do that." So yeah. Sick props to you, dog.)

Thank you very much! The black and white style is both on part of my own laziness, but also fits the intentionally boring setting of an office. Color wouldn't really fit! Although I use color where needed, it's better without.

The art in your adventure is quite nice, so I'm glad to be a relative influence on it!

Anyway, today's update took a while and is very, very big, and also very important.

You are now the receptionist lady.

You have been talking to La-La for quite a while now, almost 20 minutes.



"Hey," you ask her "I just remembered, what was that about someone named Lu-Lu that Manfreddie mentioned? A friend?"



"...Oh!"



"O-Oh, yeah. Her. Yes." Her face instantly flushes.



"Well, we've really opened up, haven't we? I've only told Manfreddie about this, but I suppose I can tell you.

"Her real name is Lempi Lehtonen."

> Manfreddie: TEAR. DOWN. THIS. DOOR.

"I DEMAND YOU OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW."



"Whoa whoa whoa", Beetle says, "I don't open doors for nobody but babes. Besides, it's locked, so I can't open it anyway. You need a key."



"I don't know what your thing with ducks is, but I can't do anything to help out. I'm going out for a smoke break. I'll catch you guys later."









"GODDAMMIT! GODDAMMIT! WE NEED TO GET IN HERE! RIGHT NOW! SHE COULD BE HURT. OR SHE COULD BE..."



"Manfreddie!" you interrupt him, "I've never seen you lose your cool like this. Do these ducks really mean that much to you?"





"...More than you could ever know."



Lahja begins to tell her story. "I had been browsing the internet more than a year ago in my apartment and talking in an online English chat room. We were discussing languages and cultures when I had mentioned my Finnish parents and knowing a fair amount of Finnish. Another user had replied that she was from Finland. I asked her what Finland was like, as I had longed to go there--I have had many relatives visit from Finland, but we could never afford the plane tickets for my family of 4."



"Our topic eventually branched from Finland to many different topics, mostly our interests in singing and dancing. And surprisingly, she too had a great interest in...well, everything I was interested in. And we had introduced other interests to each other as well, such as cuisine, both American and Finnish. I eat quite a lot of American food, and she insisted that I should try some Finnish cuisine, which I've never had, and...oh, I apologize, I'm rambling..."



Elsewhere, Manfreddie had begun to tell his tale. "I worked at a car dealership in Ashland. I went to the library in search for a specific book when a man named Ivan had approached me to tell me he had also wanted to check that very book out, and that was their only copy. After a polite debate, he had simply stated we should check it out together."



"It was a book on birds."



"Lempi--she says to call her Lu-Lu for fun, although I prefer her name for it's meaning--had said she wanted to see what I looked like. More importantly, I didn't want her to see what I looked like, as I had never been confident in my appearance. But she convinced me anyway, so I had bought a basic webcam and hooked it up."

"Our conversations continued for a year and a half. We had talked nearly every day about every topic one could imagine, and she made my work here more interesting than it would have ever been. We had eventually knew everything about each other, she had lived by herself, and there was one particularly fateful day. She told me she couldn't sleep because she could only hear voices from somewhere else. So she had asked me to sing to her to ease the silence that filled her home.

"And she said...she said she loved me. And she wanted me to live with her, in Finland."



"Ivan was handsome and one of the nicest people I've ever met. He was always saying we should do everything together, especially watch birds together. We had seen so many birds in Ashland, we could name every one of them. When we lived together, we built birdhouses together, though we were always against owning a bird as a pet because...because Ivan always said 'Birds need to be set free.'"



"...and...and I almost didn't believe it when I had been told Ivan lost his life to heart complications 5 months ago."



"Over this last winter, I've had a goal. I was going to raise enough money for a plane ticket and live with Lempi. For once in my life, I was excited as ever to face the day and go to work, because I knew I was one day closer to reaching my goal. It had been a very good distraction for the dreadful winter we have been having. I even lived in the cheapest apartment available and have been mostly surviving on Ramen, bread and milk just so I could reach that goal more quickly."

"And on my next payday I reach my goal. I've never been more anticipated than I have ever been in my life, Jennifer! I'm so excited!"



"The biggest regret I have made in my life was moving away from Ashland and living in Cleveland. My apartment was quiet. Absolutely silent. I could not handle it. I got rid of all of my birdhouses. I couldn't take it. My job was far worse. I never showed any emotion, to anyone. Even though I was friendly and nice to everyone I met, nobody knew what was really going on. Not even La-La. I have kept it to myself for all these months."

"My apartment continued to be silent until the BOSS had offered me three ducks and a tripled pay after I had discovered the true intentions of the company. Those three ducks reminded me of Ivan, and everything we had done involving birds. I accepted immediately. And then, my apartment was not so silent. It was full of love. I had loved my ducks as much as I had loved Ivan. It's...strange, I know. The ducks did not replace Ivan. They were memories. Memories that I couldn't let go. Memories that I missed living. They brightened my day at home and at the office. They were more than pets.



"I...don't know if I have a problem. I just want Ivan back. And now, one of my ducks is gone forever...just like Ivan..."

...You don't really know what to say. There's a long pause. A very long pause. You want to say something, but know you can't.





"...Birds. Birds need to be set free.

"...I get it."



When you take in the story, you begin to consider the new technology that has strengthened relationships. It's not really all too different to knowing the person in real life when you can talk to them just as much and share just as much.

When La-La finishes her story, she says with a red-hot face "And...that's it I guess. What do you think?" And you don't really know what to think.

You tell her "I don't know what to think. Other than I support you entirely! So there's that! Hahaha!"



"That...that means a lot to me. Thank you."



"I understand what he has been saying to me for years! Of course! I...I think telling someone else my feelings has made me finally realize that I need to get over Ivan. I don't need to hide it any more."



"And I know we can fix this! We can stop this virus. We can stop EXECUTE! Ivan wouldn't want me hanging my head. He wouldn't want me to mourn over his loss. And most of all, he wouldn't want us to be wasting time when we could be saving lives!"

"Let's stop this! Because I know we can! Because he would want it!"

"Let's take this motherfucker down, Ted!"

SpoilerShow

[img]images/smilies/headbonk.gif[/img] I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M ATTEMPTING TO WRITE A TRAGIC BACK STORY AND TWO GAY CHARACTERS. Not that I shouldn't write gay characters, quite the opposite in fact as I always believe in sexuality equality in my stories, it's just that these sort of things is unbelievably easy to screw up and I've never written like, any continuing stories beforehand. So let's hope I didn't fuck it up.

I never actually planned Manfreddie to be an important character. He was never supposed to appear past the first hiatus update. When I promoted him to main character, I decided that I was going to somewhere flesh out the fact that he was gay. I merely dropped that fact because he was a homage to Freddie Mercury, but when I thought about it, to drop that fact as a joke and never bring it up again is poor writing.

And after he became a main character and ganged up with Ted, I was beginning to accidentally make him smarter than Ted, 'cause he figured out pretty much everything and knew how stats worked. So he was this buff, handsome guy who knew everything. And that's bad. Which is when I decided to merge both of these problems together and give him a back story.

And La-La...when she was first introduced, I decided then she was gay, but when I foreshadowed the fact that she had a girlfriend in another country, there was NO TURNING BACK. I eventually decided in the last update that I was going to get through Manfreddie's backstory, so I was like, "okay let's do a two lines no waiting and tell BOTH at the same time for dramatic suspense"

And I'm just really hoping it worked.

uh okay that's it. Hope you guys liked this update 'cause it took forever to draw and many hours to write.