goneawayworld | 3..2...1...CONTACT!

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.]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

His eyes take in her traumatic moment, and he looks at the wolf, thoughtful in his bearing behind the masking effects of his armor, but the body language is far less aggressive than Stacia tends to see from him.

"Oh? Why?" he removes the helm, looking quizzical. His present armor, the one he is more accustomed to wearing when fighting for Jorgmund notably lacks the engraving, anda more recent mark, refined in some ways than the rougher mark IV maximus armor he wears in memory.

Edited 2021-04-14 06:03 (UTC)

Stacia taps her own head to indicate where the new moon is carved into his helm.

"Most people go for the crescent or a full moon," she says. "Seeing a new moon is pretty novel, and it's my personal favorite phase."

The wolf from the trees pads over to the Stacia who belongs to this memory and nuzzles against her. Stacia buries her face in the wolf's ruff, and the wolf looks over at the three men and does...something. One of the men takes off his coat, balls it up, and lobs it in the direction of girl and wolf.

"You know. It is funny. We are named for Wolves, but there were not any wolves left in either Cthonia, or on Terra by the time of the creation of the legion. They only exist now on Fenris, or the shadow-things that serve Horus, though I would say those are not natural."

He looks at the wolf that Stacia was nuzzling. "A friend, then?"

"That's a shame," Stacia says. "I'm biased of course, but I think wolves are lovely animals."

She chuckles and shakes her head as the wolf pulls away from her past self to retrieve the thrown coat.

"No, this is the first night I met any of them. I just thought that Athena was some kind of big dog; and dogs are way more comforting than strange men when you're a scared girl."

Memory Stacia pulls the coat on over the tatters of her dress and curls up against Athena the wolf again, calming down enough to bring her hysterics down to hiccups and wary eyes. Present-day Stacia sighs.

"This was a really rough night."

"So I can perceive." He nods at the wolf, and thinks for a moment. "Yes, Canids generally are more comforting than a strange man. Though... I cannot say I remember what feeling fear is like."

THat was cut out of him by psycho-surgery, conditioning, and a cocktail of drugs after all.

"So what was Athena, really?" He notes the name. A god of the old countries, long-turned to dust but still known of in the books Kyril shared with him.

"I imagine the fear you might feel would be different from mine anyway," Stacia says dryly.

"Athena's a werewolf like me," she says. "So are those three over there. Ace and Bulletproof -- the guy who threw his coat and the guy with the red hair -- actually became my pack, once I was calm enough for people to explain stuff to me."

"Is a pack... like a squad equivalent?" That's how the space wolves talk about it, but they're clinically insane even by Astartes standards. "Friends? Comrades?"

"It can be any of the three," Stacia says with a shrug. "Actual wolf packs are family units - parents, kids, a few aunts or uncles or grandparents - but werewolf packs range from people who've agreed to work together to complete a single mission to something close to a found-family."

The memory flickers, changes to a reddish wolf laying comfortably on a bed of springy moss. Another Stacia appears, pausing to eye the wolf for a moment, and then making a beeline to plop down next to him and use his haunch as a pillow. His head shoots up to pin her with an offended look.

"Shush, you," the Stacia of the memory says, not even opening her eyes. The wolf stares at her for another few moments before lowering his head with a sulky huff. Another wolf, this one brown and white and gray, creeps toward them from the trees to snuggle up against Stacia, who makes a contented noise and adjusts her position to allow it. The reddish wolf sighs the sigh of the very-much-put-upon.

That's Bares and Lilly," present-day Stacia explains. Her voice is fond, but sad. "They were both killed shortly before I got dragged into this whole mess on the Rig."

"I see, I am sorry for your loss. My comrades as well are almost all gone." Traitors or dead, or in some cases, traitors AND dead.

"How long did you have with them?"

"Bares joined up with us not too long after I did. So, a little under three years? Lilly was with us about two. I was one of the first werewolves she met after she shifted for the first time."

Stacia sighs. "The people who killed them are also dead, but all that means is that they can't do what they did to me and Bares and Lilly to anyone else. It's not going to give Lilly's kids their mother back, or inspire everyone Bares was going to lead in the future. Fucking blood supremacists."

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

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