Xenoverse origins / R-010
Anna BananaOrigin story
A joke with nowhere safe to land
She could make a crowd laugh at anyone. Then she gave it the obvious choice.
Read the origin ↓
Placeholder artworkAnna Banana’s stage name began as an insult shouted from a balcony. She bowed, repeated it twice, and put it on the next poster. That was her talent: she could catch an embarrassment in the air and make it look rehearsed. Audiences adored her. Stagehands took a more measured view.
Her origin story belongs to the Xenoverse’s dangerous little theatres, where ambition uses frayed rope and applause covers the sound. Anna was not cruel by intention. She was careless in the particular way people become when being entertaining seems to excuse everything else.
If the joke needs someone else to catch you, learn their name first.
From the dossier
Chapter 01
The prank above the parade
The harvest parade passed beneath a row of balconies connected by old washing lines. Anna proposed an aerial routine that ended with the town’s pompous master of ceremonies receiving a basket of soft fruit on his ceremonial hat. The crowd would love it. The master would be furious. Both outcomes sounded like publicity.
The rigging crew said the line needed replacing. Anna said the old line had supported her before. They pointed out that support was not a hereditary obligation. She laughed, promised to keep the routine short, and spent the repair money on brighter ribbons. Her assistant, a quiet performer who checked knots obsessively, refused to take part without a second safety rope. Anna called him nervous in front of the company. Everyone laughed because she knew how to place a pause. The assistant went home. A small goblin watching from a drain took his abandoned seat.
Placeholder artworkChapter 02
A crowd that wanted more
The first crossing was excellent. Anna stepped above the parade while the master of ceremonies explained the significance of something nobody could hear over the cheering. She tipped her hat, swung under the line, and caught a balcony rail. The crowd demanded another pass. She had planned two. She gave them four.
Below, the goblin collected fallen fruit and signalled to companions gathering near the drain. Anna noticed them and added an imitation of their movements. The laughter swelled. She mistook its volume for permission to become less careful. At the last balcony, the old line tightened against a broken bracket. One strand parted. She heard it and continued because stopping would have spoiled the rhythm. It was a professional decision, in the sense that a great many disasters begin with someone defending their professional judgment against an inconvenient noise nobody else has noticed yet.
Placeholder artworkChapter 03
The star descends unexpectedly
The line failed halfway through the final turn. Anna struck the fruit basket, bounced against the parade canopy, and landed in a cart of decorative cabbages. The master’s hat remained untouched. Her own contained a turnip from a different display, an unexplained addition that made the scene look almost thoughtfully composed.
For a moment nobody knew whether to laugh. Anna tried to rise and discovered that her ankle would not support the joke. The crowd’s uncertainty frightened her more than the fall. She had built a life on controlling that instant between surprise and laughter. Now she could control neither. The goblins approached the cart and began taking cabbages, regarding her as an unusually noisy addition to the vegetables. Her assistant returned, cut her tangled ribbons, and helped her down. She attempted a witty remark. He asked whether she could put weight on her foot. It was a devastatingly relevant question.
Placeholder artworkChapter 04
The apology without an audience
Recovery was slow enough to become educational. Anna watched other performers use the repaired line, paid for by a collection among the crew. Her brighter ribbons hung in the storeroom. Nobody wanted them. They were perfectly good ribbons, which somehow made the lesson worse.
She apologized to her assistant privately. At first she made the apology clever, turning herself into the subject of an amusing little speech. He waited until she ran out of flourishes. Then she said that she had humiliated him for noticing a danger she chose to ignore. He accepted that version. They worked on a new routine in which the apparent accident was supported by three separate safeguards. Anna found the preparation dull until she understood that it gave her more freedom onstage. Reliability was not the enemy of a surprise. It was what allowed the surprise to belong to the audience instead of the surgeon.
Placeholder artworkChapter 05
A performer who knows the landing
Anna Banana returned with a routine about a ridiculous aerial star defeated by vegetables. The crowd laughed harder than it had at the original prank. This time the embarrassment was hers to offer, and the crew knew exactly how every fall would end. Her assistant received his own bow.
She remains a reckless wit in the Xenoverse roster, forever tempted to extend a joke one beat too far. The origin gives that temptation a cost she can feel when the weather changes. She still teases the powerful, steals an entrance, and turns insults into posters. She checks the ropes first.
The master of ceremonies eventually hired her for another parade. He requested a routine with no fruit. Anna agreed in writing, consulted the crew, and built a magnificent act around three empty baskets. The anticipation nearly destroyed him. It was her best joke yet, and nobody had to catch it with a broken ankle.
Placeholder artwork