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

[zerg_rush]

[People who've seen ghosts fight and lived to tell about it describe their fighting style as dancing. While Kerrigan's movements do have an art to them and flow into each other as uninterrupted as choreography, there's most certainly no joy in it anywhere—not the savage pleasure of combat or the sadistic thrill of killing or even the calm satisfaction of a job completed. The Confederacy didn't want soldiers. It wanted weapons that would wield themselves, and that's what the ghost program was designed to forge.

Ghosts don't have names, and hearing hers stops the replay of her fractured memories. She whirls on the source, blood flying from the blade of her combat knife, then blinks in confusion. Dan's face belongs to another era entirely, and the last decade slams back into her mind like waking from a dream. She straightens, the hand holding the knife dropping to her side.]

Shit.

[She huffs out a sigh. Screw this.]

You're Loken's friend.

[That makes him tentatively okay, but Loken puts up with that MacDonald idiot, so Kerrigan finds his non-combat-related judgment to be suspect.]

[hallelujahjunction]

[In response to her lowering the knife, he shows his empty hands, confirming the agreed-upon disinclination for violence. It seems like possibly the right context for that clarification.]

Yeah. He's fond enough of me, and the feeling's mutual. [He puts his hands back in his Rig jumpsuit pockets.] Sorry, I didn't mean to be wandering through your personal life or nothing, you know how it gets here.

[But as odds are they'll have to keep sharing memories a little while longer, because that's how this works. Last time Dan went through this, he and Bunny ended up stuck in each other's minds for something like twelve straight hours, so he tries to think of small talk.]

...You fight real efficiently.

[zerg_rush]

[Kerrigan, as it turns out, is appalling at small talk. It's a minor miracle she and Loken can carry on a conversation.]

That's about as convincing as telling someone their art is "interesting."

[She's not upset. It would be more worrisome if Dan had been genuinely complimentary.]

You don't have to be polite. I know it's awful.

[hallelujahjunction]

I'm polite by nature. [He grins at her, but he's also very clearly avoiding looking too hard at the corpses. He's used to blood and violence; it's not that he's squeamish about gore. He's just sad over it. He's always sad over it, for the killers and the killed, because sadness is the only constant when it comes to folks dying, no matter who or why. There's always sadness and injustice and missed opportunities somewhere along the lines.]

Someone told me if you focus your mind, you can decide what memory we go to next. In case you don't want me to know nothing. I won't be offended, I've been trying to keep people out of my head with it all morning.

[zerg_rush]

It's not really a secret.

[Kerrigan shrugs. Everyone in the Confederacy knows ghosts are single-minded, undetectable, unstoppable assassins. The propaganda ministry works hard to make it that way, and for once they don't even have to deviate from the truth much to do it.]

But I'll try to find something less bloody.

[It's clearly bothering Dan, and mental focus is one thing Kerrigan definitely has. She is, however, a little short on good memories, so she reaches for a neutral one.

Full night. She doesn't remember which planet, but it must be the high latitudes, because the aurora shines unfurled against the stars, making silhouettes of trees and the distant mountains. Between that, the several moons in the sky, and the snow reflecting it all, she doesn't need night vision and has her visor up, seeing in color rather than shades of green or red. Her boots crunch on snow pack as she runs, winter air burning her lungs in a way she doesn't mind, not compared to gas or smoke or the lethal pull of vacuum. For once they're ahead of schedule, so she can just relax and jog the rest of the way to the staging area.

Next time she takes a Vulture, though.]

Better?

[hallelujahjunction]

If it works for you, it works for me. [Kerrigan's the person here with her mind being violated; it feels gauche for Dan to even anticipate, much less demand, that she cater the experience with his wellbeing even tangentially in mind. There's just no good way to say that.

But what does that matter, when they're running on snow against a sky absolutely resplendent with light and color and moons hanging like paper lanterns throughout a sky crowded with its own light? This may not be the most beautiful place Dan's seen in the world, but as he starts to run alongside Kerrigan, adjusting to the cold as the brisk air makes a sudden assault on his tobacco-ravaged lungs, he realizes he can't think of one more striking in its unearthly beauty.]

Where is this?

[zerg_rush]

Koprulu Sector.

[Tobacco is one of the vices humanity brought with them when they settled the sector, but it's not one Kerrigan's ever tried. Unfortunately for Dan, she can run for hours even in inhospitable conditions.]

I don't remember which planet this is. If I'm thinking of the right mission, I was there to plant false intel in the systems of a Confederate base, so it's probably one of the Outer Colonies.

[Planets blend together in her mind, not places she thinks of as homes, just as stopovers where missions happen. Home, insofar as she's ever had one, is the sterile surroundings of a military base or starship, not a single location so much as a single feeling, the impersonal sameness of institutional settings, governed by function and populated by people selected for function as well...]

Everyone in the base was bad at their jobs, so I didn't end up killing anybody on this one.

[...In theory, anyway.]

[hallelujahjunction]

[Dan's panting heavily by this point, because while he's relatively athletic and the regular Planker torture sessions have boosted his physique quite a lot, there's only so much you can do with 1) lungs full of tar and 2) keeping up with someone like Kerrigan.]

That's...fortunate for them, then. There's something to be said for the immunity of fools.

[Dan did just get a heavy dose of exposure to what Kerrigan looks like when she does kill.]

Successful mission?