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Theory & Lore
TLDR: Firefly was trying to scare Acheron away, she was never talking to us, or even Black Swan for that matter and I can prove it.
Introduction
Sam's boss fight vs what we knew of them before Penacony always felt super sus to me, with how we're so key to Elio's plan and about to fight "The One who wouldn't let the man turn on the lights" and yet they spend a big chunk of their fight cracking one-liners and telling us to leave. Why? Even more when taking in her true motives we learn after 2.2 (getting us to know that getting stabbed is actually the way to get closer to the legacy). So I started to try to put pieces together.
The Hard Evidence
A) Elio's script for Firefly in Penacony contains, at the absolute least, the following information, with me bolding what prophecies I believe have already came true by the end of 2.2:
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The time and place we'd fall into golden hour
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Firefly and us would reap unforgettable rewards.
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To achieve her goals, Firefly will have to die thrice. (2/3)
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There was information about many people, Acheron was not among them
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Sam must get the Astral Express to chase after the Watchmaker's Legacy
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Sam's confrontation with the Astral Express is inevitable.
B) Firefly resents being a living weapon, with Penacony being an escape to her allowing her to be a normal girl, and from her conversations with Blade and Acheron, does seem to try to minimize collateral damage to innocents when on a mission.
C) Firefly admires the nameless and seems very genuine about it, to the point of getting the trust of Welt and Himeko, who had a very, very different reaction in the only other interaction she has had with a Stellaron Hunter. She also over time became able to see Misha and Clockie, who are invisible to anyone who isn't a Nameless.
D) Firefly interacted with Acheron exactly once, during the clockwork tutorial as hooligans were harassing her (while Misha was standing there), and gained no information from her other than the have fun on your date remark.
E) Firefly assumed Acheron was at most a neutral party, telling her after their fight that she should know that the Astral Express was not her enemy.
F) Elio's scripts have begun to become progressively murkier since the HSS tutorial, as if our existance is making them not be as accurate. We are also the only person so far we can see who can fully go against their scripts, refusing to board the Express, telling Kafka to fuck off, and not seeing the death of Robin with Aventurine. Kafka Blade and Firefly also show signs of having to play their scripts very much by ear, when the full script we see of Kafka's recruitment was a list of all probabilities branching from simply leaving a can by the road.
The Questions
Side note a) Lets check again on the second thing we know about the script, Firefly would also reap unforgettable rewards. While ours has a clear answer (the gaze of Xipe), I refuse to take "reuniting with a (possible) old friend in TB" or "get a few days vacation worth of being a regular girl munching cake rolls" as that, her reward has not come yet.
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I did not mark the last point of the script as done on purpose, because Sam didn't fight the Astral Express at all? The only member of it in A Child's Dream was us, and we explicitly didn't fight Sam, she tried to get us away from there but otherwise only fought Acheron and Black Swan.
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If she was going to take us to the Reef, why tell us that our detective game was over? Didn't she want to guide us there?
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Firefly had no information on Acheron when she is easily the most dangerous factor in Penacony, while she is strong Acheron is a different category of being entirely, and a real confrontation would've ended in untold destruction. The risk is far too great to leave her in the dark about this, so why didn't Elio tell her? Because he couldn't. I believe Acheron's status as an emanator of Nihility shields her from whatever Elio uses to predict the future.
My conjecture
I believe what happened was as following:
Firefly gets the script from Elio, including the previously mentioned things as well as the existance of the deeper dreamscape and that she will meet us there, she gets some variation of that we will be there with Black Swan and perhaps another Express member like March to fulfill the confrontation part.
When we finally meet her after she gives a hug to Sleepie, she sees something else, we're with an unknown person as well, she desperately looks again through her info but finds nothing, asks Silver Wolf who the hell she is and she hacks and finds she has a room booked as a Galaxy Ranger, which still gives no alignment information as we saw with Boothill being very cavelier about having conversations at gunpoint.
As this goes different to the script, the risk is very high, as we've seen from our 3 times violating the script that doing so means doom. She decides first as they've shown no signs of hostility to try to scare her off, then try with violence, and finally just taking us away, failing in all 3. We and Black Swan were supposed to be there, Acheron was not.
Side questions about Firefly in Penacony
What were then the spirit afterimages in a child's dream? Firefly was fine and we now know Sam is simply a suit of armor and a medical cabin. Who was with her? Who tried to lock her out? Who even made the images? I'm certain we'll find out in 2.3 but this is a big dangling plot thread on an otherwise cohesive story.
The Copium
A) Acheron shattered the prophecy, by taking the place of the Express in the confrontation and already derailed a bit of the Penacony script including the fight with Sam. She managed to get some things back on track but not all of it
oooor B) We want Firefly to be cured and join the express, maybe she misinterpreted the script, and the third Death and confrontation is "Galactic Terrorist Sam died fighting the valiant Astral Express, with the help of a young girl joining them named Firefly", a very clean solution to her other identity that leaves a lot of plausible deniability for the nameless to take her in. Obviously this depends on a cure being found, but I want to keep my copium.
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Good point about Firefly being able to see Clockie, I didn't really catch that first time around. The assumption that only those following the path of the trailblaze being able to see him does lend credence to the theory that Firefly will join the Express.
I'm hoping the third death for FF is the "death" of Sam the Stellaron Hunter and the birth of Firefly the Trailblazer
I didn't even consider this omg I'm hoping
I always thought that the Clockie she sees during the Hanu segment was just a dude on a costume, sorta like how you can talk to "Clockie" on the Studio but if you emo tune him to sad he'll turn into a guy lol.
however Hanu's clockie appeared out of nowhere like the real clockie, I don't think people can do this in peacony.
So... I think I can actually disprove your theory about Firefly/Sam not knowing about Acheron. In the quest "Gentleness, the Name of Nocturne" at the secret spot, Firefly is talking about how time is frozen equally for everyone in the dream and she goes on to list all the "major players" in the story:
The "wandering Ranger" is definitely a reference to Acheron. At that point in the story, we have no reason to believe that she had met Acheron yet, so the most likely source for this information would be Elio's script.
(This, incidentally, was also one of the hints about Firefly's true identity in 2.0, because she did not list "the Stellaron Hunters' Sam" or anything, even though we saw them in the dream prologue.)
Another piece of evidence is that Acheron's name (and finally full name) is listed in all the credits which list Elio as Script Supervisor, so it implies that Elio was indeed able to foresee all the permutations of what happened in the dream. Them having the credits that way with Elio listed seems a clear suggestion that it was all foreseen in his script (even if he chose not to reveal many details to Firefly).
Personally I think the confrontation we got was actually what was referred to in the script, but her script is just very vague and subject to interpretation. She knew that the Astral Express wasn't her enemy, but the script said she'd have a confrontation, so this was the end-result -- it's a confrontation in form even if it's not what you might initially think it means ("they'll fight you" (true) vs. "you'll be their enemy" (false)).
Either way, if they are actually going to resolve Firefly's character arc now (there's always a chance they just kick the can further down the road), it seems pretty clear that some sort of major change is coming in her life. The story has indeed placed several signs that align her with the Trailblaze. Having her be the "spokesperson" that provides the retort against Sunday on behalf of the Nameless was a big one from a narrative point of view, in addition to the Clockie/Misha hints (which is a clear contrast to the Firefly we met in 2.0). Back in 2.0 she also spoke about how much she genuinely admires the Nameless and their way of life. So at the very least, her travelling with the Express and leaving the Stellaron Hunters would not surprise me and does seem consistent from a narrative point of view.
Edit: That said, at the moment I'm not too sure if there's a clear plot thread that supports how they'd heal her condition. After 2.0, you might initially think she'd be willing to abandon herself to the dreamscape to allow her to live out the rest of her days in freedom, but her character development in 2.2 when facing Sunday shows her rejecting that option. So perhaps there's at least some way to calm or stabilize her condition so she can live a much longer life (even if it's not cured entirely). There is still the Stellaron to resolve (which turned out to be the Watchmaker's Legacy), and they could potentially still go somewhere with Memoria or with the Trailblazer's own Stellaron somehow, but I guess we'll see if they go this route at all.
I mean, extending lifespan is kind of a joke in Honkai.
You have Mobius in the HI3 side creating genetically modified immortal supersoldiers (KeBin, Fu Hua), you have Herta inventing de-aging, you have the Abundance and all the bullshit involved with it. Heck even Seele (Herrscher of Rebirth) could fix Firefly by just making her a new body without ELS, lol.
The question isn't "Is there a cure for Firefly?", it is "Where is the cure for Firefly?".
Fair enough, I just think it would be a bit preferable from a narrative point of view if it was clearly foreshadowed somehow. Personally, for that reason, I think it'd be cleanest if it had something to do with the Stellaron, since she was looking for the Watchmaker's Legacy partly for this reason, this turned out to be the Stellaron, she's currently a Stellaron Hunter, and the Stellaron issue isn't resolved. How that helps her, though, obviously who knows. That's why I was also thinking somehow connect it to Memoria.
But totally agree that there's no shortage of options if some other explanation they haven't directly foreshadowed with her yet.
True, I forgot about the "Wandering Ranger" part in her base, the entire section about the script not containing info about Acheron came from their dialogue at the start of 2.1
Combined with the red text when we're trying to talk to Welt about her made me think her ability of being really hard to talk about also applied to Elio's script, as she ended up being an extremely big and dangerous player to leave "not a thing came up" on a plan that was just a few more things going wrong away from death. Had the fight between the two continued we'd still be toiling away in Sunday's dream as Firefly would be dead for realsies probably, with Aventurine barely surviving his slash thanks to shattering his emanator-powered cornerstone.
Yeah, I guess maybe we can assume that "not a thing" means either a) no details other than referring vaguely to a "wandering Ranger" in the "cast list" (but no specifics provided to Firefly) or b) somehow she figured out about her in a different way (from Silver Wolf?).
Another possibility (if we assume it's not a continuity flub) might have something to do with Ena's Dream. The insinuation seems to be that Ena's Dream was leading us through a recreation of reality that had a few small flaws (like Misha showing up in reality -- a small mixup). It could be that the dream's recreation of this line is also slightly off, incorporating characters that Firefly actually wouldn't know about yet at that stage, because the dream isn't fully precise. But if this is actually the case, then it means anything we saw could be somewhat suspect, and it's hard to really have any firm theories or speculation. But we already know the dream is flawed, so we can't say for sure just how flawed it was.
The easiest way is probably to haul her ass to HSS and ask Herta to shove her in one of them puppets
The notion of her last death being Sam's death is very plausible tbh
Regarding Elio not seeing Archeron:
If that is the case, how would the Penacony crisis even be solved? I mean, it was because an Emanator of Nihility was present and scaring the dreamers to wake up out of fear, that Ena's dream was shattered.
His script doesn’t have every details, Firefly said her scripts has always been brief. So she can do anything outside of the scripts, but the fate will always remain the same.
So if Acheron isn’t here, Sparkle bombs might’ve taken her role of panicking people up instead.
My headcanon is that Acheron doesn't need to be in the script, because in every single possibility, Acheron always acts in accordance with their goals.
!!!!2.2 SPOILERS!!!!!
I just realized.... according to the story, only the Nameless could see them. So in spirit Firefly is already a nameless. Could this actually be foreshadowing of her joining the Express for good? Copium prob, but still.
Also, you just know they're gonna milk her char story where she 'dies' to allow our finale to play out. We'll see it from her PoV and it'll be a tearjerker 100%
I mean. It makes sense. For the trailblazers(the trio) are people with no home to return to(Dan heng couldn’t return the loufu,March and TB don’t even know where they are from). Glamoth is a destroyed empire. Even if Firefly got what she wanted and get rid of her illness. She has no home to return to. Which opens the doors for the express. A place for people that can’t return to their worlds.
I can see Firefly joining tbh. Or be with the stellaron hunters.
I think if Firefly joins express her fate is even more sealed 💀.
That train is filled with death flag from front to the back.
It’s ok, trailblazers get a level up when they die
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I think... Maybe the "Mecha" she talks with SW refers to Boothill and they were discussing who are the real galaxy rangers in the script among him and Acheron.
No I don't want Firefly situation to be resolved now, they should take times to develop her first in encounter on different planet across galaxy, so it have more impact
Also using Acheron to solve every problem will make the story feel cheap, that's why I don't like OP character because either she solve every problem or nerf/using whatever excuse so that she doesn't hog the spotlight. If she can derail script so easily, Elio and SH whole existence is pointless
Well, one thing about the script is that Elio will leave some details out of it if necessary.
We already have an example from Kafka during interrogation with Fu Xuan.
So personally, Acheron's name didn't appear in Sam's script is not that surprising. Coupling with how his script is always short & vague.
The only thing I’d disagree with is that MC’s potential somehow has the ability to mess with scripts when we’re still clearly being lead by the hand by the SHs as opposed to just opening possibilities. MC being able to not help Kafka isn’t a sign of anything because the scripts do not TELL the future, they GUIDE the future among all the possibilities.
Sorry, when did she see Misha? I remember her seeing a Clockie in the Hanu section but I don't remember her seeing Misha
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She tells you explicitly when you meet back up at the start of 2.2's story (it might depend on which dialogue choices you pick) that she wanted the part of the journey through the deeper Dreamscape you spent together to be with Firefly, not Sam, which is why she didn't tell the truth during the fight.