Piper 90: Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goneawaymod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
goneawayworld2021-04-10 09:37 pm
goneawaymod) wrote in goneawayworld2021-04-10 09:37 pm
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.]]
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.]]
no subject
She gestures at the memory of the chamber.
"I'm not sure when we'll get out of this, so now's as good a time as any."
no subject
no subject
"He was holed up in an old off-site storage facility. Freelancer had a lot of those, more than you'd think. It took me a years to track him down, especially once the Oversight Subcommittee started digging too."
The space behind Carolina is warping, slowly at first but then more definitely as the memory begins to fade into another one. Trees, overgrown concrete walls, a collapsed fence... Carolina makes her way through the abandoned facility alone but for the occasional white flicker of Epsilon at her shoulder.
"Epsilon got me in. The system wouldn't take my voice print anymore, but Epsilon? It thought he was the Director."
'Are you ready to meet your maker?'
'I got your back, Carolina.'
The Carolina in the present doesn't notice. She's remembering.
"I knew the security system was still online and that would be a problem. I didn't know what it was."
The memory blurs, fastforward, and finds them staring down an army. Every one of them is Tex.
The past Carolina freezes.
'Oh no,' breathes Epsilon.
'Church, what is this?' Carolina asks.
'He kept trying. He kept trying to get her right.'
"It was Tex. It was all Tex. Dozens of her," present Carolina says.
'You think these things are anything like the real deal?'
The black armored figures, in disturbing unison, punch one fist into the other hand and crack their necks.
'You have no idea what kind of trouble you are in.'
Finally, as her past self levels a pair of plasma rifles, Carolina notices what's happening.
"Oh fuck- I didn't know it was going to do this. Shit. Okay. It's fine."
She backs off and ends up standing next to York as the fight plays out.
'Carolina, I don't think I can do this much longer!'
'Just hold on!'
'Seriously! You need to slow down!'
'No!'
'Carolina! Calm down! Get ahold of yourself!'
"I couldn't beat her," she says in the present. Her hands are closed into fists and her shoulders are braced. She winces a little as she watches her past self slam into a metal crate, armor leaving a dent. She hits the floor. Epsilon begs her to get up, and she does.
'She was right. I can't do this. I can't beat her.'
Present Carolina looks away.
"I could never beat her," she and her past self say in unison. The inflection is the same, but present Carolina is much calmer.
She isn't looking away in shame, though. She's looking at what she knows is going to happen next.
Three plasma grenades stick to the heads of as many drones.
'NINE POINTS, YA DIRTY WHORES!'
"But I didn't need to beat her. Not alone."
The cavalry rushes in. The troopers are there. There's Tucker. There's Washington. Her disbelief radiates through the scene as the group rallies around Carolina.
'I told you they're not so bad once you get to know them,' Wash says as he pulls her to her feet.
"They came after us. I still- I didn't exactly give them a whole lot of reasons to. I was out of chances."
She smiles. Just a little.
"That's the thing about chances, York. You don't get to decide when you're out of them. It's all what other people decide to give you."
It's something she said to Wash, not too long ago. And the rest of the fight is a beautiful thing. She keeps talking.
"After this, we found him. I made my peace. That's... I'm not going to talk about why he's gone." She meets York's eyes, and there is something legitimately vulnerable there. "Don't ask me about that." She isn't ready to pull out that memory, it's something sacred, and her nails are biting her palm as she forces herself to stay far enough out of it that the dreamscape doesn't warp again.
"The official story is that we're heroes for taking down big bad Project Freelancer and bringing the Director to justice. I didn't stay with the rest of them, after. Wash did. Epsilon and I started hunting down equipment stolen from what was left of the project."
In the background, Epsilon has shut down the rest of the drones.
'What comes next, Carolina and I need to do alone.' Carolina will not let this memory go further. She will not. The image freezes.
"There's more that's happened since. But that's the story of how the rest of them saved my life."
no subject
The memory does freeze, though, and York smiles back at her. He doesn't ask what happened to the Director, her father, just reaches for one of her tightly balled up hands to try and ease the tension there.
"I'm glad they did. Even if you didn't stay with them, they-- you're different. Was this the start of that change?"
She's not unrecognizable. She's got the same humor he's always loved, the same fierce passion, but she's also grown into someone he wishes he'd survived to get to know. Maybe he can here, if she lets him. She was open enough sharing this, after all. This piece of herself that feels so important.
no subject
"I think so."
She raises and lowers her free shoulder, her tone a little ironic. "I needed a wakeup call and an asskicking. I found both out there."
And... grace, maybe. People who met her at her worst, with no guarantee that she could be better, still thought she was worth saving. But Carolina is not given to expressing that much, it feels too near self-pity.
"I crossed paths with them all again. We are supposedly, and I quote, completely retired from doing anything useful for anybody, ever." She glances significantly at the orange-armored memory figure.
"But I don't think I'm cut out for it. This isn't what I had in mind when I thought about finding work to do, but..."