3..2...1...CONTACT!

[goneawaymod]

Who: The New Hires
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After "Don't Touch That Dial"
Warnings/Notes: Possible in every memory, warn in subject lines.

Contact.

It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking across the Top Deck. Taking a slow breath between reps in the training room.

The New Hires are connected. Mental pathways locking together, they're forced into one another's innermost beings. Thrust into one another's memory palaces where the mind collects and stores everything that makes them who they are. The core of their beings are only a few steps away and no one can help the violation.

To make matters worse, it comes with no explanation or no ability to pull out and stop. Once they're through the first memory, perhaps they can find a way out, but they're already witnessing some event from their host's past. And, if they left, who knows whether or not they'd end up accidentally invading another memory palace?

And if they were there, who was in theirs?

[[So, how this works: the memories can either be viewed in spectator mode or the guest can be experiencing everything themselves. The person whose memories are being shown, the host, can watch as their current self or take the form they had of their past self. They can talk about the memory with the "guest" that's visiting.

They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can control any other memories they'd like to show people after. Of course, there's also always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up other memories unbidden.]]

Comments

[pain_train]

The helplessness of the situation is inescapable. Wrath knows what it's like to watch an op going bad in the worst way. To not be able to do anything about it. To lose comrades and friends. And there's nothing she can do. She can't leave--she already would have, if she could--and just curling up in a ball and closing her eyes and covering her ears really isn't going to cut it, either.

With flight impossible, the other solution easily at hand is fight. Which is fine with Wrath, because she's always been better at fight. Best case scenario, she'll get knocked out of this. Worst case scenario, it's still a good distraction for her... friend? coworker? fellow inmate? whatever... instead of just standing around and watching the death unspool.

Wrath's stance shifts subtly, from the sympathetic person she tries very hard to be to the machine that fights and loves nothing more than the feeling of a bruise and a mouthful of blood. It's easier to be that, anyway. It's what she's always been, as far as she can remember. She only took a break from it after her bones got pulped. "You want me gone? Make me."

And just in case it's not clear enough what kind of invitation that is, she curls her right hand into a first and goes in for her first punch.

[ragefeathers]

"Make me.", Wrath says and it is all the invitation that Mackenzie needs. A fight, even in her mind palace or whatever the fuck this place is, is just what she wants. What she needs. She takes the first punch without flinching and then lunges. Midway through her leap, she ceases being a human and instead is a nine-foot tall half-wolf, half-woman, all-monster. Teeth like knives and claws like swords. One massive paw shoots out faster than any human could hope to match to swat at Wrath, as if Kenzie can simple smack the other woman aside and have done with the whole thing.

"Fuck you--!" Normally, she might not be understood in the Garou tongue but it's her memory and her brain, so everyone gets to understand what she says here.

[pain_train]

Wrath isn't strictly human anymore, and hasn't been in years. She's also not quite prepared for what's coming, and the war form of a werewolf is going to have an effect on almost anyone. Maybe all that helps her get moving is the instinct developed after fighting a lot of other very inhuman looking things. At least this isn't a dysthrope; there's not the smell that goes with it.

She starts to dodge after a humiliating split second of freezing up, but it's too slow. She still takes the hit and goes tumbling. She turns that into a roll, sinking the fingers of her artificial replacement arm into the floor to stop the skid and come up to a crouch.

Unfortunately, they're still in this nightmare. Maybe she should just take a full hit... no. That's never been her way of doing anything. She is almost certainly going to lose this fight, but she's going to take her licks honestly.

Wrath snarls and charges with all of the speed synthetic muscle fiber offers, launching herself up at the wolf-monster's face.

[ragefeathers]

Later, Mackenzie will give Wrath this: she has some guts to try and go toe-to-toe with a pissed-off Garou in the warform. In the moment, though, she just wants to slap down this impudent bitch who thinks she's good enough to challenge her. She barrels at Wrath, intent on bowling her over to the ground so she can set her teeth into her and shaking until she stops moving.

Fuck her. Fuck everyone. Fuck this stupid, shitty world that left her alive.

[pain_train]

Wrath gives as good as she can, but she doesn't have her sword and punching really hard and fast only gets you so far against someone stronger and arguably faster. But she doesn't give up until she is very, very mangled.

At which point the bloody mess of her hits the ground with a definite splat and lays still. But it's very different ground. A broad expanse of pale sidewalk in the middle of day, though there's something a little wrong with the light. There's no natural sun; a glance up shows only the smooth, pale curve of a far-off dome that seems to be emitting the light. The buildings around are massive, glittering, metal-and glass towers. The one that looms over them is the tallest of the bunch, 100 stories exactly. Shards of glass and shreds of paper rain gently down around.

A hovering vehicle that has a medical corporation logo drives rapidly up, coming to an almost silent halt. Two people jump out of it and start trying to scoop the wreckage that is Wrath onto a stretcher. "Get the helmet--" "--no, it's the only thing holding the spine together--"

"Oh, cool. It did work." Wrath, whole and clean, is standing next to Mckenzie again like she's always been there.

[ragefeathers]

Kenzie stands over the mess that used to be Wrath, her chest heaving from the effort of the fight. For all that she was merely a human (enhanced with Weaver tools) she had put up a good fight and there's a twinge of regret. Maybe this was only a memory, a trick of the mind--but she'd gone all in on the woman.

And then Wrath is next to her again. Kenzie's warform dissipates--rather than shifting, she is simply Kenzie again and not a nine-foot tall walking death machine. She stares, blankly, at the mess that the medical personnel are trying to preserve as a person.

"...Wait, this actually happened to you?" She stares at Wrath, almost not sure she believes it.

[pain_train]

"Kind of? I didn't get mauled by a big wolf-person with giant teeth, though." She points straight up. There's still streams of paper and debris gently falling down; due to the sheer height, it's hard to discern a point 370 meters up. "I got thrown out the window on the 100th floor."

She squints and start slowly moving her finger down down until she's about a third of the way along the building. Barely discernible, there's a dark mark that starts there, and goes down for about 30 floors. "That's where I got Howl... my sword... into the side of the building." Tracing that line down. "And that's where Howl snapped. So... I really only free fell like 30 stories before I hit the pavement." She shrugs.

[ragefeathers]

Mackenzie looks upward and squints, shades her eyes against the light of the dome. There's a low, appreciative whistle.

"...Damn. Nice job with the sword, girl..." She murmurs. At least she's been distracted from her awful memories by someone else's awful memories for the moment?

"Surprised they managed to scrape you up off the pavement and get you walking around like it never happened again, being fuckin' honest."

[pain_train]

"Thanks!" Wrath says brightly. She is actually proud of the entire not dying thing, even if she had some dark days initially.

"Whiskey--my doctor--said I only survived the impact because I already had so many augments, and it was all combat grade tech. They had to re-grow my skeleton from scratch so I was in full anti-grav traction for months." She frowns. "And then my spine grew back all fucked up because of ports, so there was a while where I could only walk with a cane and everything hurt all the time. That... sucked."

[ragefeathers]

"Egh. Sounds like a fuckin' mess. Looks like you ended up okay." A pause as she considers.

"Augments? That's like... technology they stick in your body, right?" Her nose wrinkles. Ew, Weaver-shit.

[pain_train]

"Yeah. It was rough for a while, but then..." She tries to breeze over the next part without thinking about it too hard, since that's nothing she needs to relieve or Kenzie needs to see, not the broad white hallway of a spaceship. "My back got broken again while I was in the Fleet and there were better doctors there."

She nods. "Synthetic muscle fibers to tune up strength and speed, mostly. Replacement organs and limbs come after injuries. Stuff like that."

[ragefeathers]

"Egh." Kenzie can't hide her disgust. "Synthetic shit? Wouldn't catch me putting that crap in my body."

Sorry, she's kind of an eco-terrorist, Wrath.

[pain_train]

Wrath shrugs. "It's the only reason I'm alive. Most of it's replacement parts from when I got shot or chewed up or whatever. So it's like. Get the replacement liver or die." Then she grins. "The only stuff I volunteered for was the synthetic muscle fiber cause I wanted to rip tanks apart with my bare hands. That was fun as shit."

[ragefeathers]

"Okay ripping shit up is fun, I'll give you that," Mackenzie says with a huff. "I just... I can't see putting that shit in my body. Ugh. No offense." Her nose wrinkles in distaste.

"Like. I mean, I guess I get it. Humans don't get all the shit garou do."

[pain_train]

"We gotta make do with what we can make ourselves, right? Cause yeah, we don't get to..." She mimes going Rar.

"Hey, since we're in my city..." Maybe this is how these memories work. No other way to tell. "Come on. My favorite noodle place is like two blocks that way."

No need to watch herself getting scraped off a sidewalk any longer. She knows how it all godes.