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

[parannoyed]

He's a little surprised at the tears. Not that they're there at all but that they're there when she's been watching a memory of him. He tells himself they're from earlier, from her breakdown in the hotel, but he's not so sure. He's not so sure that she feels nothing seeing this.

He's shaking - vibrating - with feelings he can't even pry apart and identify because they were previously compartmentalized in little boxes that have apparently just been knocked open.

But he manages to calm, manages to still himself.

Manages to continue being kinder than she probably expects.

"Then the next step is to figure out who to be instead. I told you before, not all of who you used to be was bad." She was a mega bitch from the start, but early on, before the head fuckery that was done to her, she was kind of their bitch. "Maybe start there."

[ownperson]

She presses her lips together, shifting on her feet and folding her arms tight under her chest. Admitting this feel as weird as admitting everything else she has to him from the truce conversation to now, but...

"Remembering who I was, it's... it's hard. Separating it all. It's like it's all this big, tangled ball of fuckery that I don't know where one part ends and another begins. I don't know... I don't know when that me was, when I stopped... being that. Started being... this."

[parannoyed]

"I only really know the difference between one you and the you that shot me," he said. "But you used to be - it was like -"

How to encapsulate the South he'd actually trusted at his back.

"You were kind of always a dick." Helpful. "Just...we could count on you to be a dick at everyone else for us."

And then there is a memory. It is of a mission - a bad one. One that dipped him, South, and Wyoming temporarily off the leader board (though South at least scored above the other two) even if they climbed back up again later. They were with Wyoming, pulling god-knows-what (given they were lied to about it so often) at a Charon Industries base.

They got righteously fucked by a whole lot of dudes suddenly showing up with way too many rocket launchers. Despite all of them diving out of the way, one hit a little too close to Wash and the shockwave and ensuing damage to a walk0way send him careening over a railing with a panicked yelp.

His head slammed into another walkway with enough force that he saw double, and he stumbled in a way that made it clear he was at least lightly concussed.

Which made the fact he was right in the line of fire of a fucking heavy machine gun generally a FUBAR situation all around. God knows how he'd managed to hold onto his rifle through that, but he managed to pick off a few soldiers around it - but not enough. Not enough of them fast enough. He only just managed to stay ahead of the trail of bullets that arced towards him and stumbled behind some kind of concrete outcropping, yelling "Son of bitch son of a bitch son of a biiiitch!"

Trying to lay down any fire was pointless. Every time he tried to get an angle around, the bullets pounding around him grazed his arm or his gun, making it impossible to line up a shot. Tossing a grenade? Also nada - they shot it out of the air with their rifles, all without letting up with the machine gun. Firing while the HMG was reloading? A big fat nope because they were smart enough to lay down covering fire then too.

"I could use a little help over here!" he called over the comms. "I'm pinned down by an HMG and pretty sure I'm concussed because everyone's got a twin now and I doubt they're all like you, South!"

"I'm currently taking heavy fire and can't move!" calls out Wyoming, in that weird, ridiculous accent of his.

"Fuck fuck fuck, South!" Wash calls out, his voice high and anxious, as the concrete around him chips away. A hole actually pings through a narrow spot in the concrete, just next to his helmet. "I'm losing cover!"

[ownperson]

There's a burst of laughing that edges just to the side of mocking that comes over the radio before there's a loud thunk beyond Wash's cover, and the stream of bullets suddenly veers off to the side.

"Fucking hell, Wash, you're so dramatic. Give a girl chance to clear a fucking path!"

There's the tell-tale sounds of full-weighted impacts, of someone in power armour plowing their way through soldiers who very much are not. It's not a quiet entrance, because South has never been a quiet person. She throws at least two men bodily over the level's railings, kicks another guy so hard he goes head over heel, leaves a bunch of limbs bent ways they should not be bent.

Gunfire rattles off and the HMG tries valiantly to correct its position, bullets pinging and chipping at the floor and structures around their desired target, but before they can start beating down Washington's cover again the stream of bullets suddenly cuts off entirely as she slams her fully armoured weight down on top of the barrel and sends its last sputtering of bullets into the ground.

It's operator doesn't get the chance to do anything about it, because the operator's dead right after. Shotgun blast, always effective.

[parannoyed]

"I'm not dramatic!" he insists, in that usual defensive tone of 'But guuuys, I'm a big kid, too, why can I be part of the big kid club?'

"I just process things verbally! In an occasionally panicked tone!"

Now free of his hiding place he spins around what's left of his cover and takes out a few people coming out across the courtyard but his aim is definitely off. He compensates slightly by shooting in a wider arc. A waste of ammo but better than not hitting anything at all.

"Also, I wasn't joking about seeing double and that's also not me being dramatic!" He's clearly trying but he's stumbling like he's drunk. Even with a helmet, hitting your head straight on steel after falling from that height is concussion-city.

"Normally, I'd be keen to crack on," says Wyoming, stumbling into the courtyard. His suit is clearly compromised in a few places and he's bleeding through some of them, "but I'm also injured and we seem to have found ourselves in quite the stickywicket."

There are more and more guys piling in and they can hear a ship in the distance. Theirs is not due yet.

"Does he really always talk like that?" Wash asks, still picking off enemy soldiers, despite tilting on his feet. "Or is he just fucking with me?"

He and Wyoming hadn't been paired up so often by this point, and someone putting on an absolutely ludicrous accent to fuck with the newbie was the kind of thing someone would do.

[ownperson]

"He really always talks like that," South says, with an almost audible roll of her eyes. She's picking off enemy soldiers with more shotgun fire, until she runs out of ammo for it and ends up just beating a guy over the head with the butt of it. "It's possible he's fucking with all of us, though. Stickywicket?"

She doesn't struggle any without a weapon; South's always been a force of nature in a fight, she knows how to use momentum and her size to her advantage. Still, she grabs a discarded rifle at the next opportunity, as she rolls up onto her feet from a roll.

Just in time to send a burst of fire into a guy coming up on Wash's six, and then turn and slam her armoured boot into the head of a guy who thought that was an opportunity to catch her off-guard. It was not.

"Fucking hell, rookie, you look like you're about to keel over," she says, coming up at his side. She tries to peer around for sign of the enemy ship's approach, but never takes her attention off the fighting, either. She has no trouble picking off soldiers Wash is missing with his double-vision aim. "And your aim's gone to shit. Fuck, you aren't kidding—ugh, do we seriously need to call for extraction?"

[parannoyed]

Wash suddenly gags inside his helmet, barely holding it down. Fortunately he ate light before missions.

He answers her question with a question.

"Is nausea a good thing after a head injury?" He asks, sounding incredibly nauseous, and also now slurring a bit.

That'd be a yes.

"I'm afraid we need to make the call," acknowledges Wyoming, looking unsteady himself. "Preferably before I bleed out."

[ownperson]

"Jesus fucking... hey, Command," and just like that, she's calling it in, still picking off soldiers with rifle fire as she does, "everything's gone to shit, we need extraction. These two chucklefucks got themselves injured, the rookie sounds like he's about to hurl in his helmet. I can clear us an LZ but we've got enemy aircraft inbound so you're gonna have to be fucking quick about it."

Such a professional on the radio.

She barely waits for the response before she's picking off another group of soldiers with rapid gunfire. She looks back at Wash.

"Don't wander off, stick at my four o'clock and try not to shoot me, instead of the enemy, rookie. We can clear a route and an LZ if we play this right, even with your shitty concussion aim and Wyoming's— everything."

[parannoyed]

"At least it's not my everything," he shoots at Wyoming, because nothing so far has endeared him to Wyoming.

South, he doesn't exactly like, but the way she's willing to instantly take a possible hit in the rankings for a failed mission for two injured teammates? Yeah, that wins some points.

It's a rough go, but Wash does as he's told, and even despite his condition, manages to cover her a few times. The effort he makes doing it when he can barely stay upright is obvious. They all eventually make it and stumble into the Pelican and feel the ship vibrate as it shoots off. The sudden motion makes it so Wash has to rip off his helmet - it snags his short hair as he does - for some strange reason - and he immediately throws up on the deck plating.

He's actually bleeding from the back of his head, which really shouldn't be happening. A concussion is one thing - that can happen just from your brain sloshing around in your head - but the helmet should've protected him from that.

Then he sees what the fuck happened to his helmet and says, "Jesus fucking Christ."

He holds it up and shows the piece of broken helmet that was pressed inward - pushed there by a piece of shrapnel, probably from the rocket that had exploded close to him. It had almost pierced through, but been stopped just short of actually doing it. But the end result was that it had dented a chunk of his helmet into his head, probably at high speed, and had been so far in it wasn't really visible from outside.

He feels the back of his head. It's bloody but it doesn't feel like anything's been jabbed into his brain. Maybe his skull, though. Christ.

Despite his earlier panic in the fight, he doesn't look that shaken by it. He's not in danger anymore and it's not exactly his first close call. He mostly looks impressed at far the damn thing went in.

"Thanks for making the call and getting me out of there," he slurs. "I don't think it went in too deep but I think my skull's fractured. I'll let the Director know in my report you weren't the one that blew it."

Later on, he actually did.

An actual team player. He'd always been one back then, checking in on teammates, reassuring them when they failed. How many times had many of them had bitten his head off for it now and again? Or sniped at him about making things worse by trying? There's a reason he hovered around five or six on the chart and it wasn't just how much catch up it'd taken to move up from the very bottom of the rankings.

He didn't have the edge for anything beyond five or six. Couldn't outrank people that driven to beat everyone else. It's why another version of South had thought he didn't have the nerve to kill her and had unfortunately been wrong because of not recognizing the shape he'd been battered into.

Wyoming huffs indignantly at Wash's implication they both fucked it up and Wash gives him a 'Really?' look because come on, it was mutual.

"Don't give me that look, you're bleeding more."

[ownperson]

"Okay, that's more fuckin' impressive than a simple concussion," South says, because jesus christ, that could have ended badly. "You got damn lucky, looks like I was almost carting your damn body out of there instead of just babysitting you."

South is still South, there's some things that have never changed; or, well, that's not quite true, because as much as she's always been rude, she used to have a better sense of balance about it. There's no real attempt at insult behind the 'babysitting' comment, it's just the kind of shit she expects any soldier their rank to be able to take from a teammate.

"You both fucked it up," she affirms, on Wash's side, giving Wyoming a look. "Big time. I probably took out more of those guys than either of you and I have maybe a few bruises. So yeah, damn right, rookie."

There's an actual flash of gratefulness in her, because no matter what point in her life she's at, South doesn't turn her nose up when someone acknowledges she did a damn good job.

"Alright, assholes, fucking triage before we get back to the ship. Wyoming, deal with your own shit, you can get at it. Rookie, let me at least clean that damn head wound so they can get a good look when we arrive."

Though she'd almost forgotten that, forgotten moments like these. Missions like this one were a dime a dozen, it's not until the memory is playing out that South really remembers it at all, and that branches off into remembering other little things. The earlier days of the Project, when things weren't so fucked. When she wasn't so fucked.

[parannoyed]

"Okay, but if I say back up, back up fast, because that means I'm going to throw up on you."

He'd forgotten a little of this too. The part where he sat on one of the seats, holding onto the edge like his life depended on it, as she cleaned the wound on his head.

It wasn't exactly tender, it was just the basic patching up most soldiers would give any other soldier, but it was still so different from right now. He was just sitting there, with his back to her. Trusting her.

It doesn't just show her he was right that she used to be someone worth being again - it actually helps remind him, too.

The Wash that was watching this all silently finally turns to her.

"That," he says, pointing, "You could be that. Maybe not to me, because I sure as hell don't trust you at my back like that anymore, and I may never trust it again. But you can be that to everyone else. There's got to be at least a few people here you haven't pissed off yet."

[ownperson]

Her gaze lingers there for a long moment, on this memory that should be so inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things; just one mission, just a normal interaction between squadmates, somehow rendered strangely important by all the ways things have changed, since then.

When she pulls her eyes away, she gives Wash a look, but it's not got much strength behind it. "I haven't pissed off most people here, asshole. But... point taken."

She scrubs a hand back over her face, groaning under her breath. Okay. Okay.

It's undeniable proof, a memory of his bringing out a memory of hers. It's something that even everything going on with North can't take from under her feet. It's not exactly a whole new foundation, but it's something to stand on when everything else around her feels so unstable. She wasn't always this.

Or— not this, because this, whatever she is right now, isn't either of these things; she's not the South that let her brother die and shot Washington in the back, but she's not that South, sitting there cleaning Washington's head wound, either.

She's somewhere stuck in-between, trying to figure out what direction to turn; towards one of them, or off in another direction, adjacent or otherwise.