Invasion!

[goneawaymod]

Who: The New Hires
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After Intermission
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 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 cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can control any other memories they'd like to show people. Of course, there's always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up memories unbidden.]]

Comments

[gempathizing]

[ Attaching some specific content warning potential to each individual memory, just to be safe! Welcome to the Steven Quartz Cutie Pie Demayo Diamond Universe memory palace, mind your step. Some memories on offer are:

a. Steven versus Spinel aka the big climax of the movie where Steven gets the best song on the soundtrack, frankly. (warnings: a little bit of blood in the beginning + violence throughout)

b. That time White Diamond pulled out Steven's gem. (warnings: violence towards children, emotionally abusive language/gaslighting, some body horror/emetophobia)

c. Encountering Cluster gem experiments for the first time. (warnings: body horror, some violence)

d. And one of the many examples of Steven's habit of going above and beyond in his efforts to extend emotional labor olive branches to grown adults. (warnings: child endangerment, reference to parental death)

Steven's mood and possibly conversational quality are... going to vary in the aftermath depending on the memory in question and how he's viewed it, so slide on in here however you like and I'll kinda work things up on a case by case basis.

Although it is safe to say be prepared for apologies, because he'll almost definitely start off assuming his weird psychic dream powers weren't cut off after all and that this is somehow his doing. Being a magical boy... it's simply not always glamorous.

Feel free to reach out for plotting, hashing out closed starters, requesting some other memory options, questions, etc. ]

D

[bringinghopewithme]

[Bunny skids into this memory just in time to witness one of the visibly alien adults lashing out at Steven for - as far as he can tell - bringing up the possibility that she wasn't someone's closest confidant?

It's nowhere near a justified reason to yell at a child, but none of the other adults in the room comfort Steven after he's been yelled at. They dissolve instead into yelling at each other, fleeing the room, attending to the matter of a fallen portrait instead of reassuring Steven that nothing he's done is wrong. An adult lashing out at him is their problem and not his - but they just allow Steven to accept it as his problem, when this kid is . . . how old is this child? 8?

Crikey. [He tries to get Memory Steven's attention.] This isn't mine to see, I know that. I can look away if you want but I can't do anything about hearin' it.

C

[somnioergosum]

[Ronan had witnessed some truly terrible events. When he was awake, when he was asleep, but in all the cruelty of people and demons and his own imagination, he'd never seen this. That was a brand new kind of horror.

But with everything he had seen, he seemed to take it in stride. He'd recoiled at the strange gem... things. But after he caught his breath, he settled back into his usual tense, upright posture. His eyes were a little wider. His jaw had tightened. But those were small give aways, easily missed.

Shit. That's fucked up.

d

[onlyordinary]

[Vanya's understanding of how normal families are 'supposed' to operate is skewed. She gets that. So at first, she wonders if the strange relationships she's seeing on display are just in her head. Steven looks like he's... ten, perhaps? Eleven? Twelve at the oldest, and Vanya can't imagine having an emotional outburst like that in front of one of her students that age. But maybe that's just because they're her students, not her children, and she doesn't like emotional outbursts anyway.

But the longer she watches the memory, the more... wrong it feels. All the adults stay behind and then allow the child to run after the woman in the middle of an emotional crisis. Why did they do that? Why is the boy so eager to help that he's putting himself at physical risk? And the woman keeps jumping away as the boy struggles to follow, risking his life, asking if he did something wrong as the woman refuses to answer. The boy almost falls to his death and then the woman just lets him climb back up the cliff. And then he coaches her through her feelings like a trained therapist while she relives something having to do with what seems like her lover. Is that woman related to the boy? His mother, maybe? Jesus Christ, Vanya really hopes that the woman hasn't just willy nilly made a hologram of the little boy's missing mother appear just to make it all about herself.

Vanya watches the memory play out, her brows furrowing deeper and deeper as she does. By the end, yes, she's certain this is wrong. Maybe the women in this memory aren't verbally crushing the little boy into dust, but they're still forcing him into a role he shouldn't have to play.]

How... often did this happen? If you don't mind me asking. [Vanya asks the question softly as she hesitantly sits down on the grass. She's not one to pry into other people's lives, but... it looks like maybe Steven could stand to have someone listen to him.]

Stacia

[credit_not_blame]

Credit Not Blame (cw: non-sexual teenage nudity)

[credit_not_blame]

That's a...whole lot of naked, yelling kids.

It's early evening in this clearing in the woods and there are approximately two dozen brown teenagers yelling over each other in confusion while equally-confused adults of various races attempt to throw blankets on them and keep them from running deeper into the trees. A visibly-younger Stacia (though not as young as the naked kids) appears at the edge of the clearing, flanked by two white men in their early twenties, one with ash brown hair and one with fiery red. After a moment of confused staring, they join in the wrangling. Suddenly, two words break through the din.

"Mom! Dad!"

The yelling stops as the teenagers focus their collective attention on a utterly gobsmacked Latino in his late teens or early twenties and a mixed race woman of similar age who seems torn between surprise and delight. The teens descend on the pair like a tidal wave and resume yelling over each other, but at least they're not trying to escape into the woods anymore.

The remaining adults are still confused, talking among themselves before someone in the crowd goes "oh! The pond!"

Everyone looks to the pond at the edge of the clearing, then turns and looks at Stacia and the two men with her. Stacia blinks a couple times, then raises a finger in the air as if to make a point.

"I will accept credit for this, but not blame."

[grimbiker]

[I wrote a lot so you get links to a post, just remember to thread here! The first one is long enough that it can be played out as unfolding while we thread but the second one happens really fast. We can still tag after if your character wants to talk to Sirius about it right then. Also the first memory can shift into the second memory if you want your character to stick around for it.]

a. The Secret Keeper memory, just before the Fidelius charm when Peter becomes the Secret Keeper. Sirius plays with Harry and James calls him out on not trusting Remus.

b. Sirius finding Peter, failing to kill him, and getting framed for murder.
CW: Murder, self-amputation, referenced blood and gore (no details), mental breakdown

[thewholeofthemoon]

Remus isn't certain what to make of what's happening. Like most of the Order, he done a bit of Occlumency, but this feels somewhat different. At least partly because he doesn't expect it to happen.

Finding himself in James and Lily's living room, though, is a punch in the gut. But not as much of a punch as watching Sirius with Harry. It's not the first time he's seen it, of course, but it's a reminder of happier times. Simpler times.

But then the conversation starts and...Remus has to find a place to sit down. A place he has to move from when James and Sirius have to move to sit down. As the conversation keeps going, Remus has to put his hand over his mouth.

Because it's true. Everything that Sirius had said is true...

To that point, at least.

Remus pauses, then reaches over to pinch himself. "How...how do I know this is real?" he finally asks, watching as James goes to pick up Harry. "How can I know that this is the truth?"

Begging James, who of course can't hear him. And can't answer him.

[princesspower]

1. Horse Girl

[ Maybe it's during a moment when Adora is catching a cat-nap (ha) or when she's just trying to rest. Either way, there's a memory. The first time she'd ever seen a horse. There's a sense of confusion but also a sense of absolute joy and wonder at finding out that there's so much more to the world than the drab industrialness of the Fright Zone.

"What is THAT?" she asks and she sounds so full of wonder, so amazed, so floored.

Then she even gets a chance to pet it.

It's a positive memory, honestly. Which is probably good, because a lot of hers aren't. ]

2. We Were Just Children

[ Other memories that crop up are less happy. The facility that the memory-walker finds themselves in is a little decript and ramshackle; an industrial green with grim hallways and gratings. There's the pitter-patter of tiny feet and a voice calls out "Catra? Where are you?"

A very young Adora comes around the corner, brow furrowed as she peers into the gloom.

Wow, weird. ]

3. For the Honor of Grayskull

[ This one is different than the other two; there's no sense of drabness here. Instead there's brightness. Color. Adora stands on a bridge of light, facing what looks like a hologram - a tall woman sketched out in blue and white. Or, well, it's probably Adora, if she were three feet taller and bulked out. She wears a fluttering outfit, a crown, and her eyes have something of a glow to them. Adora holds her sword above her and rainbow light cascades around her as she struggles to try and control something - herself, maybe?

"It is time," the hologram intones in a mechanical sounding voice.

"I won't be controlled-!" Dream Adora (She-Ra) responds with a grimace, sounding as if she's struggling against something, "I am not a piece of their machine! I am not a weapon!" ]

[valkywhee]

Oh my gosh! Adora, you were the cutest little kid!

[Nora's kind of figured out what's going on here, and her priorities, as ever, are...very Nora.]

Mac

[morebetter]

[CONTENT WARNING: animal death, implied child sexual abuse]

I. 7 Years Old

“Dad! Daddy!”

It’s the middle of the night in a cramped house with cigarette stains on the ceiling, and a seven year-old boy stands at the top of a staircase with frayed carpeting. He’s staring down at a gaggle of people at the front door, a man and a woman in nightclothes and four armed policemen, at a scene which appears to have gotten contentious the instant handcuffs were broken out. The man in the wifebeater and boxers is putting on his shoes, which is difficult when he’s being manhandled by the officers. A female officer tells the woman in the nightrobe that they have probable cause to search the whole house.

“…you have the right to remain silent…” one of the officers recites, cutting himself off as he notices the boy rushing down the stairs.

“Leave my dad alone!” The boy, absolutely earnest, tries to kick at one of the officer’s thighs. His face is red, already slicking with desperate tears.

“Ronnie!” The woman grabs the child by his hair. The kid squeals and tries to wrest himself free in vain. She yanks him. “Shut up!”

“Dad! Dad!” He flails and grabs for the man in handcuffs. The man looks back at him, and the boy stops, frozen by the expression on his father’s face. It’s not one of hatred, but one of disgust.

“Get him upstairs.”

The police officers politely ignore Mrs. McDonald dragging her crying son back up the stairs.

II. 32 Years Old

“-pretty fucked up that your dad’s trying to kill us, dude,” says the guy.

The short guy, Mac and a blonde woman are huddled in coats, sitting on what appears to be a roof and passing a bottle of whiskey around. Mac has cuts and abrasions on his head, and two long lines of dried blood tracking from his ear canals to his throat.

“No, dude,” Mac says, “he’s not really trying to kill us because he warned us he was going to kill us first. He knows that we’re badass enough to predict a threat, develop an escape plan, and execute it to completion. This is all about how much faith he has in me, bro.”

The blonde woman takes a swig and looks at the short friend. “Is he serious right now?”

“Dead serious,” the short friend grumbles and rolls his eyes.

III. 39 Years Old

"You're eating the dog!" Over the dining table in a house that would be beautiful if not for the trash piled everywhere, Mac's laughing with unhinged, terrifying fervor at the man across the table from him.

"Oh, God! What is wrong with you?" shouts the other man over Mac's keening, hysterical laughter, spitting out his dinner.

Mac stops laughing and starts yelling. "I don't know, I guess it was just a cry for attention! You didn't even blink twice when I told you that the dog was dead!"

"I can't live with you anymore in this goddamn place." The other guy gets to his feet. "I'm out of here."

IV. 9 Years Old

Mac and his short friend lay in the dark in a pile of limbs in a child-size bed with the kind of uncharged intimacy only children can get away with. The boy’s head rests on Mac’s chest, and both have much-abused stuffed animals tucked into their arms. The room is small and dingy, with a sleeping bag on the floor that Mac has clearly abandoned to sleep next to his friend. Crayon drawings are pinned to the walls with blue tacks, some houses and stick figures of people and animals, others violent scribbles. Mac’s rambling.

“…and the monsters in the closet, and the ones from outside the windows too. If any monsters or bad guys come in through the windows, I’m gonna kick them right in the bird, like, kapow!” When he gets louder on the sound effect, Mac’s friend shifts a little, roused from falling asleep, and Mac lowers the volume in his heroic fantasies. “I’ve been learning all these roundhouse kicks from Bruce Lee. He’s basically my mentor. If I kick them right in the kisser all their teeth will just fly out and they’ll have to grow new ones. It’ll be so badass.”

Downstairs, a man and woman are talking. The man is inaudible, but the woman says “I set up the couch for you, Jack. You can’t sleep in Charlie’s room tonight, Ronnie’s spending the night. Isn’t it sweet how those boys get along? Having a friend is so good for my Charlie.”

“Can you punch the Nightman too?” Charlie asks, yawning, easing off to sleep.

“Right in the nose, dude.” Mac catches the yawn contagion as well. “You’re always safe when you’re with me.”

IV

[bringinghopewithme]

[It's such a cute little scene for Bunny to have fallen in on that the dissonance of the whole scene smelling of Mac and the fact that at least one of the kids present has desperately needed a bath for days is . . . almost possible to tamp down on.

But not really, because the smell of the room and the children and the tone of the kid who wants protection in the night all suggest a plethora of problems. Bunny's first urge is to leave the room quietly, to leave the kids to their sweet bonding, second urge is to hide some gifts silently before he leaves, third is to set up a stakeout position to wait for this "nightman," who could be Pitch or could be someone more mundane and, horrifyingly, worse -

But this is a memory, and his presence is even less tangible here than it would be back in his world. Any gifts he has to leave behind are immaterial, and there's no aid he has to offer the child who wants - he sniffs - yes, that's little Mac - to protect him in the night.

He looks around for the real Mac to address his "I'm not here on purpose, something brought me" disclaimer.]

Nora!

[valkywhee]

Lots of video links, but I provided summaries in brackets.

THE FUNNY ONE: School Daze [WARNINGS: none, but the animation is bad and the physics are anime]

[valkywhee]

In Which Beacon Academy Employs Questionable Pedagogical Methods

Feel free to jump in between sections, because the memories don't cover a continuous stretch of time. (If you're canon-familiar, it's the Beacon initiation arc.)

"Can you imitate a sloth?"
[Nora is a chatty morning person. Ren is not.]

Just fucking yeet some kids off a cliff.
[The Beacon Headmaster is moderately crazy and also Volume 1 was very cartoony, so anyway, on their second day the kids get catapulted off a huge cliff and into a monster-infested forest to go on a fetch quest because sure why not.]

"I still don't think that's what a sloth sounds like."
[Nora, who seems to have just stayed in the trees and looked for Ren, watches him kill a snakelike Grimm, makes her "sloth call," and dangles upside down to boop him on the nose.]

"Aww, it's broken."
[Nora (one assumes) picks a fight with a bear-like Grimm and somehow starts riding it, because, y'know, Nora. She kills it as a winded Ren catches up and tells her not to do that again. She's not listening and advances the fetch quest, snatching up an oversized rook chess piece and declaring herself queen of the castle while balancing it on her head. Ren doesn't like that either, because he hates fun.]

MONSTER FITE
[The gang manages to get the attention of two giant Grimm, a scorpion and a raven, that they're not good enough to fight yet. They try running away into the depths of a vast abandoned temple, but the creatures pursue and the teens are forced to stand and fight. Everyone is predictably getting their asses beat until they start using teamwork, because obviously. Nora strikes the finishing blow on the giant scorpion, killing it by driving its own stinger into its head. Yay! She and Ren get assigned to a team and the school anime seasons kick off.]

Aleifr

[aleifr]

 

The Raid

[aleifr]

[CW: Violence, Violence involving Children, Blood, Underage Drinking]

Aleifr’s memories of the day are scattered.

He doesn’t remember waking up that day, but he remembers preparing with his elder brothers and sisters. He remembers seeing Helka putting on her armor, Arvid sharpening his axe, Freja muttering prayers under her breath all morning. There was a tension in the air. Not an anxiety, but the pregnant pause that seems to settle over the world before an oncoming storm.

It lingers through the day, even as he boarded the wyrmboats along with the rest of the Ascommani hersirs. Aleifr was younger than the rest of them, despite standing nearly as tall as the men and women around him. He’d only recently seen the end of his third great year. He was old enough to hunt and fish and work the rigging of a wyrmship, but not old enough to sail for a murder-make. Not old enough for war, no matter how good he was with an axe.

He was only aboard the wyrmboat because they sailed to avenge his father -- to find the cowards that had ambushed him on the ice and left him on red snow -- and he’d let no man deny him his share in that.

He remembers the rough, chopping waves making the deck of the wyrmship buck under him. He remembers feeling sick, despite the fact that the sea had never set his stomach churning before.

He remembers seeing the Hradcana’s islands in the distance - the details of their rocky beaches and the settlement beyond them blooming into view as the islands inched closer. He remembered Helka barking for everyone to raise their shields, and doing so without hesitation despite not knowing why, and then understanding as he felt the hail-rattle of falling arrows pelting down on them.

He remembers the halt of the boats running aground, and ice-cold water splashing around his ankles and soaking into his boots as he vaulted over the side.

The memories are hazier then. It’s a blur of roaring war-cries and clanging steel. Axes rise and fall, swords cleave through shirts of mail and heavy boiled leather, stabbing spears striking home or splintering against shields.

Things come into focus again when one of the Hradcana warriors rushes towards him. He’s bigger and stronger than Aleifr was then, and a blow from his axe would have cut Aleifr’s thread for sure … but his frenzy got the better of him. He was whooping, brandishing his axe over his head, and it betrayed his attack long before he made his stroke. The warning he gave made avoiding it easy, and the force he put into it left him off-balance. He was wide open, and Aleifr buried the smile of his axe into the side of the man’s neck.

The big man’s thread was cut and he tumbled to the ground, the force of his fall wrenching Aleifr’s axe out of his hand.

He remembers stopping there and staring. He’d expected to see something there, on the man’s face. The snarl of anger he’d wore only moments ago, a grimace of pain from wound that’d killed him, fear in his eyes for whatever brief moment he felt his thread fraying … but there was nothing. His face was slack. His eyes were empty, and the void behind them pinned Aleifr where he stood.

He stared until a spray of snow, kicked up by the charge of a Hradcana hersir, crossed his vision and pulled him back.

The world blurs into madness again, ringing weapons, splintering shields, and screaming men. At some point, Aleifr’s axe returned to his hand. He found Freja in the melee, and stayed beside her for as long as he could. He remembers cutting two more threads during the fighting, but he couldn’t recall their faces. Everything was too fast, too chaotic … he wasn’t thinking, he was just fighting. That was all, that was what would keep him alive.

Eventually, the resistance fell away. The Hradcana were falling back to reinforce their settlement and gather more men. The Ascommani didn’t chase. They’d paid blood with blood, and had no need to spill more. The message had been sent.

He didn’t know whose blood was on him. It wasn’t his, but he could feel it, staining his hands and seeping through his mail and into his shirt. He could still feel it on his skin, like the faint tingle one feels when they've leaned on a limb long enough for it to fall asleep, even after he returned home and scrubbed himself clean. He felt it throughout the feast his tribe held to celebrate their victory and honor their fallen.

Helka had given him his first lanx of mead during that feast. Said he was a man now, and he should be allowed to drink like one. Then she'd leaned in more closely and quietly told him that it would help.

It did. The warmth it filled him with distracted him. Made it easier to forget the absence in the Hradcana hersir's eyes, and how empty his family's tents seemed without his father there. He still wasn't used to that.

He wasn't alone, though. Aila was there with him after the feast. She didn't have the blood tie to force her way onto the raiding party. Might not have been allowed even if she did, considering she was a little younger than he was.

She hadn't come with him on the raid, but she'd been waiting on the shore for their return. She'd fussed over him as he washed the blood off of himself, and worried over bruises he didn't remember getting. She sat with him during the feast and snuck sips from his mead - thinking she was being discreet despite the fact that her cheeks were almost as red as her hair, when the truth was that everyone else was too caught up in the revelry to care.

She had walked him to his family's tents, and they'd sat down and talked. He didn't remember what they talked about. He just remembered that her being there made it easier. That she actually managed to coax a laugh out of him, despite the strange numbness he felt.

Time passed and it grew late. She needed to go home, but as she got to her feet, he reached out and took her hand.

"No."

She stopped, and for the first time that day, Aleifr looked like the scared thirteen year old boy that he was.

"Please."

She looked him over, and gave him a small smile. She sat back down, next to him on his furs. She leaned against him and rested her cheek on his shoulder. When he lay down, she lay down next to him and nuzzled into his chest.

He slept soundly that night.

Alloran - cw Yeerks

[takenalive]

[People are screaming, but it's a distant, distorted sound. There's this pervasive damp, oily, organic smell. This is some kind of huge cave lit in gloomy purple, big enough to fit multiple football fields, with a stadium-high ceiling. There's a great gray lake or pool, buildings, and a lot of creatures, predominantly humans but some big centipede-like ones and tall reptilians too, among scattered others.

It's hard to tell much. Everything more than a few feet away from Alloran is out of focus. He's collapsed in an uncomfortable-looking position, almost face down, with two legs crumpled under him, breathing slowly. All his eyes are open and glazed and he isn't moving. There are cuts showing through his coat, and dried blood. Three of the big reptile aliens are standing over him as well as one human, a comparatively petite woman with long pale hair. Her voice is comprehensible, if fuzzy. She sounds young.]

Time. Get him up.

[The alien guards crouch and lift Alloran up together, causing a few new nicks and scratches with the blades sprouting from their bodies. Each one is seven feet tall or so, taller than he'd be standing but with nothing like his bulk. One is only carrying his long tail. He barely stirs. The human keeps pace as they all approach the pool. She puts a hand on him and pulls the fur back to reveal yellowy-orange skin that she presses something to - a last bead of liquid gleams as she pulls it back. Almost instantly Alloran shivers, nostrils flaring. The guards lay him down at the edge of a platform that extends over the pool and hold him down, two crouching to use their hands, the third standing on his tail and opening a cut with their claws. The girl tsks.]

Now look what you've done, Offret! You're not a soldier here. You have to be gentle.

[Sights and sounds are becoming clearer. The screaming is coming from people in cages or along two low piers that extend out like this platform. Calm people, humans and reptilian aliens, walk down one pier and kneel or crouch over the water. Each drops something from their heads - it looks like a gray slug, emerging from the ear - that vanishes into the opaque metallic water. Then that person either gets up, mostly still calm, and walks away, or they start to struggle and another reptilian alien or two hauls them up and into the cages between piers. On the other pier, calm people and people dragged from cages fighting and shouting go out, and their ears are pressed to the water or their heads are ducked. Everyone leaves that pier calmly. Among the humans there are elderly people and adults and teenagers and, though not many, children as young as five. One in a full-throated howl for Mommy cuts off abruptly and stops crying, expression turning to a businesslike mild irritation as she gets up and rearranges her clothes.

The human who's just dosed Alloran with something is a girl, a skinny teenager with a confident air. She pokes Alloran's side with the toe of her shoe and clinically watches him stirring and trying to struggle as he's held down.]

We might need a higher dose on the counteragent, or earlier application. He's coming out of it more slowly than I like. Unless he's faking. Are you faking it, Andalite filth?

[He lifts his head with an effort, glaring while the reptile aliens make sounds that might be laughter. He does not speak. The girl says something to the effect of Oh, here and one of the big reptilian aliens pushes the side of Alloran's head down. His legs thrash and his tail heaves, but he's pinned. Soon he goes still. At the girl's signal, the guards back off and he stands up, stalk eyes swiveling in a quick glance all around, lifting a back hoof and planting it again, curling his tail in a high scorpion arch. The side of his head is dripping.]

Welcome back, Visser Three. Was the pool to your liking?

<Adequate, Sub-Visser Fifty-One. Crowded and disorganized but I see you have had an effect.>

[His soundless voice is Alloran's, but... colder, layered with malice and contempt. Moving too fast for the human eye to track, his bleeding tail thwaps and the blade is suddenly against the throat of the guard who had been standing on his tail. The reptilian alien stiffens, holding perfectly still.]

<You! It's the very edge of treason to damage my host. One might wonder at your loyalties, Offret Three-Two-Three. Admit it! You're in league with Visser One!>

Re: Alloran - cw Yeerks

[credit_not_blame]

[This is very different than when Alloran had started 'singing' at the new hire meet and greet. She isn't getting the sensations this time -- which is good, she'd probably completely lose her shit -- but the visuals and sounds are...horrifying.]

[She can't quite bring herself to yell, not sure if it would make much difference with all the yelling and crying going on in the background. But she does take her shoe off and chuck it at evil slug-controlled Alloran.]

Phos (cw: body horror)

[shipoftheseus]

[Phos is...younger. Sort of. Gems don't really seem to align with the way normal organic species grow and age, but it's undeniable that Phos looks different in this memory. A little bit shorter, the crystalline strands that make up their "hair" a little bit longer. The distinct gold arms are missing. Actually, they don't seem to have any kind of arms, just the stumps of their upper arms. The ends are the neat breaks of a gemstone with perfect cleavage, exposed minty green crystal highlighting just how very inorganic they are.

The scenery is a snowy shore, a cliff face stretching up towards a cloud-filled sky. There's another Gem with Phos, in a white version of Phos' black uniform with nearly translucent silvery-white hair and eyes. Despite the weather, they're both in, like...booty shorts. It's a sharp contrast to the ill-fitting Jorgmund uniforms, that's for sure.

The other Gem drags over a large chunk of some kind of gold metal, lumpy and raw-looking. They press it to one of Phos' arm stumps and the massive weight of it immediately drags Phos to the ground. The two appear to be discussing the matter, whatever said matter actually entails. Light slowly spreads over the area as the cloud cover starts to clear, glinting off the Gems' hair brilliantly, and the white one casts a guarded look at the sky. They stand and turn away from Phos with a soldier's straight posture, saying they should head back with a low, husky voice.

Phos is clearly too distracted to respond, however, as the gold metal starts to bubble and ripple in an almost liquid-ish manner. It wraps around both of Phos' arm stumps, slowly stretching out in unsettling pseudopods while Phos shoots their friend a confused, uneasy look.]

I don't think...I can...

[The other gem stares in shock, a black shape suddenly appears in the clear sky overhead, spreading in strange symmetrical smears like an ink blot.

The gold continues to engulf Phos while they shout their distress to the equally confused other Gem. Phos calls them "Antarcticite". Before anything can be done about the situation, Antarcticite suddenly dodges out of the way of an ivory spear that comes abruptly shooting down from above. The black shape above manifests as a sort of floating platform on a roiling black cloud, ivory figures crowding it with weapons at the ready.

Half buried beneath rippling gold, Phos manages a shaky apology that the other Gem dismisses, readying a jagged black sword of their own. They launch themself up with a superhuman leap and dive straight into the fray in the air. From the cloud above come the sounds of battle, explosions and Antarcticite shouting, while on the ground the gold completely overwhelms Phos and bubbles around them. It slowly settles into a solid shape, a solid metallic cube with just thin slats along the side, and Phos remains trapped inside, up to their neck in liquid metal.

There's one more grand explosive sound overhead and the cloud platform bursts into pinkish smoke. The visibility from Phos' gold prison is limited, but fragments of ice-like crystal rain from above. Phos can just catch sight of a loose gloved hand dropping and skittering along the earth. It's an unnervingly long few minutes of silence before, mercifully, the distant sound of Antarcticite's voice muttering to themself can be heard. Phos shouts for their attention and they make their way over with uneven steps, prodding at the cube with the clink of stone on metal.

Despite their mutually questionable states and Phos' groaning from their prison, their banter is familiar-feeling. Phos complains as the tall heel of one of Antarcticite's shoes pokes through the slats of the cube for leverage while a gloved hand tries to pry at them, the other Gem meeting all Phos' whining with exasperation. They don't appear to be making any headway, but Phos just sighs and smiles while Antarticite bangs away at their prison.]

Still, I'm glad you're sa–

[They're interrupted by a sharp shattering sound as an arrow lances straight through Antarcticite's neck. Agape, Phos can only stare through the slats as the other Gem literally falls to pieces just outside the walls of the cube. Icy shards scatter through the air and Antarcticite has only enough time to make a shushing gesture before they crumble. As if in response to the silent command, hands of gold form out of the metal around Phos and cover their mouth to smother the instinctual scream.

Make sure Sensei doesn't get lonely. And take care of winter for me.

Maybe it's just some strange quality of the memory. Surely there hadn't actually been time for all that to be said in the moments before they shattered completely, but to Phos' perception it's definitely Antarcticite's voice.

Outside the cube, some of those ivory figures descend down ropes. Up close, they're eerie – all identical and blank-faced, slim and genderless and dressed in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Buddhist influences. They silently approach the scene carrying shallow basins and begin gathering up the scattered fragments of gemstone.

Phos watches mutely as one picks up Antarcticite's foot, still in its heeled shoed.

The ivory figure pauses, the strange golden cube seeming to catch their attention, and for a moment they start towards it while Phos sits, voice smothered and entirely trapped. But some silent signal from its comrades seems to draw the figure away again and it drifts off to rejoin the rest as they head back towards the ropes.

Seeing Antarcticite's pieces being taken away right in front of them, Phos finally fights free of the golden hands covering their mouth.]

Do what I say, you worthless junk!!

[The closest of the figures turn back at the sudden shout as the gold re-liquifies and ripples around Phos. Arrows from somewhere above sink into it harmlessly. The roiling gold peels back from around Phos like lotus petals. They stagger under the weight of it, and as if in response to their desires a wave of it lashes out and through the closest figure. Antarcticite's foot drops to the earth as the figure dissipates into smoke.

Phos gasps and falls to their knees as cracks run through their whole body, excess gold seeping out and solidifying instantly. It's reminiscent of kintsugi, fixing broken pottery with gold lacquer to highlight the damage and make art of it. Gold drips from around their eyes and runs down their face like tears and they force themself to their feet under the weight of the metal.

A volley of arrows rains down from above, another of those cloud platforms that must have appeared while Antarcticite was distracted trying to free them. The gold seems to suddenly start to work with them and Phos lurches forward, a stream of the metal stretching out to grab Antarcticite's fallen sword as they rush towards the platform. Gold propels them upwards on a column formed under their feet, but they're forced back from the platform by a wall of arrows that the alloy just barely manages to shield them from.

They clatter back down to the ground as the platform drifts away, moving out over an ocean filled with broken sheets of ice. It moves fast. Phos rushes after it with a burning determination, stumbling in the snow and tumbling and falling back into a run without stopping.

Shards of mint green crystal scatter as they run, their body continuing to crack under the strain. The ignore the damage, the pieces of themself falling away, fixated solely on the quickly departing platform.

They come to a cliff and the alloy launches them up once again on a column of solid gold. At its peak, Phos hurls Antarcticite's sword after the distant platform.

It sails into the sky, making distance Olympians could only dream of.

It still comes nowhere close.

Phos watches as the sword arcs back down to fall somewhere among the ice floes. The gold column beneath them shatters, and Phos falls as well.]


((ooc: This is the closest thing I can find to a clip but at least it's enough for you to suffer with me!))

cw: parental death

[stickypete]

It all blends together because of course it does. Because the important memory begs for context, because grief and acceptance of loss ties hand in hand with the love.

The boy is young, only 4 or 5, and crying in a guest bed with a faded comforter in a guest room. He can't seem to stop, but is so consigned to whatever's caused him suffering that he doesn't even go looking for comfort. The world is grim and gray and bad things happen in it like car accidents. He's sad and it feels like the sadness will never go away. He's alone because he knows that's what you are when your parents suddenly go away for no reason.

Or at least he thinks he is. A man comes into the room, sees a teddy bear on the floor that the boy hasn't even tried to grab to comfort himself. He picks it up and hands it to the boy, sitting on the edge of his bed. He stays there for a long time, resting a hand on the boy's shoulder, gently rubbing it with his thumb.

"I miss mommy," the boy sobs. "And daddy."

"I do, too," says the man gently. "Your dad was the best little brother in the whole wide world. And then he married your mom and she became the best little sister in the whole wide world, too."

Being alone in missing someone is painful and knowing you're not the only one is a comfort so the boy stops crying quite as hard.

"Where am I going to live now?" the boy asks fearfully. "Do I have to live in my house alone?"

"Of course not," says the man. "You can live here. With your Aunt May and I."

"Forever?"

"Well, we hope you'll want to have your own house someday -"

"That's not forever," the boy says stubbornly.

"Forever, then," the man promises, rightly guessing that the boy needs security, not truth. "Forever and a day."

And the boy stops crying, just a little, and reaches a small hand out to hold on to a larger, more weathered one.

"You can't have a day more than forever," the boy says pedantically.

"Can so."

And the boy doesn't sniffle quite as much because the idea is silly and his parents used to be silly, his dad especially.

-

The same boy, slightly older, in a slightly shabby but homey looking living room, eyes wide with excitement as he starts plugging in an absolutely ancient computer.

"Can you believe he was going to throw the darn thing away? Said it was outdated," said the man. "They've got them newfangled banana computers coming out."

"Apples, Uncle Ben!" the boy corrects with a laugh. "Macintoshes."

"Those Granny Smith computers. So I asked if I could bring it home and said my nephew'd love to get his hands on the thing."

The computer is positively ancient, dated even in the early 90s.

"Thank you thank you thank you!" says the boy, practically launching himself at his uncle in a hug.

"I'm sure it's cutting edge, but unfortunately it's cutting edge at 9 o' clock at night, which is a certain somebody's bedtime," says a smiling woman as she folds some laundry.

"Aw, Aunt May, can't I play with it for at least a little bit? Please please please please," the boy begs on his knees on the floor, clasping his hands together like he's aiming for a stay of execution.

The man also clasps his hands together to and imitates the child, comically, as if trying to help him out with a chorus. "Aw, May, please please please please?"

The woman laughs at the pair and holds up a finger.

"One. Hour. And then off to bed. Both of you."

"Both of us?" the man pouts.

"Do the crime, you do the time," she jokes, getting back to folding some laundry. "That's what you get for being an accomplice."

"An accessory at best!" he protests.

-

And now the boy is 15. This memory is the sharpest, clearest, with none of the dull haze that comes with age. Trauma is sometimes easier to have the clearest memory of.

It starts with a wrestling match of all things. Someone that is clearly a teenager in a home-made costume with a spider insignia is crawling around inside the cage of a cage match, dodging and jumping, parrying every hit like he sees it coming, kicking the guy he's wrestling repeatedly. The guy fighting the very-obviously-a-young-teen is huge in comparison and this is an underground ring where they're not even close to pretending to fight. At one point the adult wrestler guns for spider boy with a crow bar and tries to hit him like he means it.

Eventually the teenage boy bodily kicks the guy into the cage from the floor, knocking him out. He gets tapped out and the kid is the winner.

He takes off the mask after going into the back hallways of the arena.

15 is finally old enough that he's maybe a little more familiar. The baby fat is finally melting away just slightly. The long nose and stronger jaw are more well defined, the cheek bones are getting sharper. But he still looks terribly young. The frown is new and the teen bristles with hostility.

The fight promoter is a dick who doesn't hand the prize over, saying "I missed the part where that's my problem." So Peter lets the armed robber who steals the money go and smugly tells the promoter "I missed the part where that's my problem."

And the rest unfolds in the streets of New York as he leaves the arena. Peter makes his way home, street clothes over the wrestling outfit, mask in his backpack. Sirens echo from the distance, but keep getting closer. Somehow whoever is watching the memory gets the context that he's halfway between the arena and home, that he was always able to make the walk on foot even without swinging between buildings.

The sirens are too close now, enough his brow furrows, and he sees a crowd ahead, around someone on the ground, and his breathing starts to come faster. There are stopped cop cars, lights flashing. There's natural concern that knits over his face.

There are people saying things like "It's some old dude, man" and "looks like he was shot" and "someone's hurt!" and crowding around someone prone on the ground. Police are clustered around the fallen person and some are trying to control the concerned crowd, telling them to stay back.

There's a shoe that looks a little too familiar and there's blood splattered on the sidewalk. The teenager presses through the crowd to get a closer look, especially since this is just a few blocks from home, close to a bodega his uncle liked to go to.

The shoe is familiar, and then there's a glimpse of gray hair that's also familiar, a jacket that's familiar.

...And a face that's familiar. Too familiar. Ambulance sirens wail from the distance, getting closer, but not close enough. They're not close enough. The boy cries out, pushes through the crowd, frantic, as police try to hold him back.

"That's my uncle!" he cries out, completely frantic, throwing himself at his side, barely skirting the blood running out over the sidewalk. An officer puts pressure on the wound with some gauze and gloved hands but there's so much blood.

His Uncle reaches for his hand and says his name, once, twice. "Peter...Peter..." and Peter reassures him he's there. He's there.

And then he's gone. He fades fast.

And when the cops say which road the carjacker is escaping the pursuing police down and gives an intersection, the teen looks up, eyes wild with rage. Hate and rage are etched in every line of his face, and he climbs to his feet, bodily pushing through the crowd.

In an alley nearby he pulls the wrestling mask out of his bag and drops it, rips off the street clothes he was covering his wrestling uniform with. He shoots webbing from contraptions on his wrist and swings through the city, clumsily, but manages to move faster than he could on foot, fast enough to catch up to the chase.

He jumps on the car and starts punching through windows, trying to get his hands on the masked robber, barely dodging gun shots. The fight is vicious and brutal and Peter barely avoids getting slammed into a gate by the speeding car when it crashes through. He chases the robber to a warehouse and breaks one of the man's wrists wrenching the bag of money out of his hand.

The robber begs him to spare him, offers him some of the money to not kill him.

"What do you even care?!"

"That man you killed, that was somebody's uncle!" he says stringing him up with webbing, ripping the robber's mask away to look him in the eyes as he kills him -

And then Peter recoils violently, with a sharp gasp, like he's been shot himself, when the man's face comes into the light of the police cars outside the warehouse.

The memory shifts and Peter is stepping aside in the hallway at the wrestling arena again, looking the robber in the face as he escapes to the elevator with a 'thanks.' It's the same face. The same robber. Who needed an escape car to get away with his money, who saw Ben in his car a few blocks away from the wrestling match...

Peter's own words echo in his head. The promoter protested, pointed out he could've stopped him, could've flattened him.

And he'd said, smugly, throwing his words in his face:

"I missed the part where that's my problem."

He doesn't kill him. He staggers away, like he's injured himself, like he can barely stand on his feet. Narrowly avoids the police, swings and swings until he's far away, finally landing heavily on a roof and staggering a few steps until gravity wins and he drops to his knees. He rips the mask from his face, revealing an expression of pure agony, horror and pain and guilt knitted together into something huge and ugly.

And he cries out, a scream ripping out of him, his voice echoing between buildings, bowing over, mask grasped in a shaking white hand, and weeps.

Sirens echo in the distance.

Present-day Peter appears as a spectator in the end, crouched in his spider-man costume, mask off, on a nearby rooftop air conditioner box, chin in his hand.

"I forgot how short I was at that age," he says mildly, the way one might be nonchalant after confronting a moment like this many, many times. "I'm surprised I didn't try to just bite the carjacker's knees."

[gempathizing]

When it's not connecting to someone or something that can't communicate any other way, when it's not about grave necessity, things like this feel like he's perpetrating a huge invasion. Learning about people, communicating with them, helping them with problems is important to Steven, but just as important is how he goes about it.

Pushing something and forcing something are different. Of course, if this is up to his dumb dream powers again, it still doesn't change the fact that this is happening now. Tucking that worry and guilt away for later, that's the easy part. He'll figure it out. Genuine easiness sort of stops there.

The broad strokes of seeing something terrible or hearing about something terrible aren't new to Steven. There's familiarity in minding his own business and abruptly running headfirst into something painful, something genuinely horrifying. That's... just the way it happens sometimes. Not a typical Tuesday stroll, per se. More like a hiking trail he frequents.

Some part of him is already picking what he's seen up with cautious hands, turning it over to process it, finding points of new connection practically on autopilot. Because he's Steven Universe, and this is pretty much what he's made for.

(The crushing guilt, feeling responsible for something terrible, the understanding of making a choice and having it, directly or not, tie into something terrible happening to somebody else-- the worst kind of consequences of all.

He doesn't know the engulfing feeling of loss. Not really, not like this. If Steven Universe were a fish, someone else's old grief would be the salt in the ocean water he swims through, though.)

The other parts of Steven, when he finds himself standing next to present-day Ben-- Peter???-- are crying. Crying is also something that he's always been good at doing and may in fact have been made for. There's simply no getting around that part.

"Can I put a pin in that joke for a minute and ask if you're okay?" Nailing it. Absolutely. "I respect humor as maybe being part of your process, but you'd be doing me a huge favor if I could just check in really quick."

[garmr]

((For those canon-familiar, I am doing the Golden Age Arc and am splitting this up into parts. cw for violence, gore, animal death, some of his time as a child soldier(so violence/injury with children), and nudity. ))

The Band of the Hawk

a. Age 9-15
The years of early adolescence pass wandering from battle to battle. Where was he going? Why is he fighting? He doesn't know. Guts only knew to keep moving forward and surviving as long as he was able. Life was simple when all he had to do was kill enemies with his sword, sleep, and eat. The bleak emptiness of it all could be put aside for the fight of the next day. As long as he was alive, that was enough.

b. Age 15/16
This life ends for him the day he is attacked by one particular group of horsemen. The skirmish is going in his favor until he is confronted with a man that could have leapt right out of a fairy tale. Atop his horse, Griffith's eyes seemed unnaturally alert, like the piercing gaze of a falcon. His sword moved quickly - incredibly so. It was nothing like the other soldiers he cleaved apart. Before he knew it, Guts has inches of blade in his chest and blood spilling on the ground. One good strike is what it took.

Defeated and brought to the Band of the Hawk's camp, he hovers between life and death for two nights. The bloody ghosts of the past torment his mind. Glimmers of wakefulness peek in and out of the dark. At times he notices a warm body next to him. A woman with dark eyes.

On the third day, he finds himself awakening in a tent.

(above link is 10 mins of Guts' introduction to the Hawks + a duel with Griffith for his freedom)

Hundred Years War

Three years later, the ragtag group of mercenaries known as the Band of the Hawk had risen in prominence, making themselves invaluable to their host country of Midland in the war with the Tudor Empire. Undefeated in battle, the Band's string of victories seem to be plucked right out of a dream.

a. Nosferatu Zodd
In the midst of an otherwise ordinary castle siege, something monstrous within the fortress is keeping the entire vanguard at bay.

(Guts gets clapped by the first apostle he ever meets. Get your 10 mins of gory monster fighting.)

b. Bonfire of Dreams (+ some ambience)
In order to buy time for Casca to bring reinforcements, Guts took on an entire band of Tudor mercenaries by himself, earning the moniker the Hundred-Man-Slayer. In the evening following, Guts and Casca contemplate their dreams and purpose.

Moment of Glory

The Hawks reach the apex of their success. Having ended the Hundred Years' War with the taking of a major fortress, the Hawks' commanders are granted knighthood by the King of Midland. It is a time of celebration, but Guts is still plagued by questions about his own lack of purpose, something exacerbated even further with a time of peace over the horizon.

(link is Guts being bad at parties with Casca. They do their best.)

Morning Departure

At the first rays of dawn, Guts gathers his belongings to leave the Hawks and go on his own journey, but gets caught by his companions in an unexpected farewell. It is one that will end in the way it began - with a duel for his freedom.

[fromfryingpantofire]

Hundred Years War - A

This...this is absolutely not what Sam's expecting. Though, really, maybe he should have been. The Rig had brought a lot of different kinds of people, after all. Others who have fought monsters? Yeah, it's not a stretch.

But he's getting the hang of the memory thing now and so he holds back during the fighting, though he does find himself running forward when the white haired guy ends up injured. The creature speaking gets him to look up, though, and he shakes himself as it flies away. "Well. That's not ominous at all, is it?"

Ronan

[somnioergosum]

The Dreamers Dream CW: Blood but no injuries

[somnioergosum]

This was a memory of a dream. A young boy with dark curly hair, unrecognizable as Ronan at this age, walked in an old wood amid blue flowers that could only be a product of a dream. Beside the small boy there was an older girl only her legs were those of a deer. Suddenly, there was something or someone among them. A presence that could be felt instead of seen. Both boy and girl looked around in terror. The girl gripped Ronan's hand. Ronan looked desperately at the flowers and grabbed a fistful.

He woke in his bedroom. It was a room full of carefully tucked away toys (not by him), some strange, some normal. Ronan's eyes were still closed and his fingers wrapped around the blue flowers he'd brought with him. After a minute, his eyelids twitched and after half a minute more he opened his eyes and sat up. He stared down at the flowers. He ran his fingers over the petals. In the real world, it became even clearer that there was no plant on this earth like it.

Ronan stared at them in wonder. He got out of bed and, still clutching them, walked to the door.

The memory merged with another. An older Ronan, now recognizable but still young, barely into his teens, entered a different bedroom. His parents lay sleeping in their beds. Aurora, lay curled next to her husband, her long blond hair covered most of her face. Niall Lynch lay on his back. His eyes were closed. He was unmistakably Ronan's father given how strikingly similar they were. Physically, possibly genetically too, there was little of Aurora in Ronan.

Ronan waited.

Blood and blue petals the shape of stars appeared on Niall’s forehead. Suddenly appearing in a moment the brain seemed to have blocked. They were just there.

Ronan didn't move. After a long moment, Niall opened his eyes. He smiled at his son.

"I was just dreaming of the day you were born, Ronan."

This young Ronan was not so good at hiding his emotions. He had yet to discover the comfort of basking in anger. His concern showed in his expression. Niall wiped his hand across his face, showing there was no wound.

The concern didn't entirely leave Ronan's face. "I know where the money comes from."

Niall's expression barely changed. "Don't tell anyone."

cw: physical/emotional abuse

[heterochrocatic]

1. You never protected me

[ Catra is young, very young. Maybe 11 or 12? She is in a room with a glimmering red stone hooked into wires and consoles. In her memory, she huddles behind the stone, watching with wide eyes as a woman dressed in red leans over a basin, a mask on the rim next to her. Next to her, a tiny Adora gasps and then the pair of them run as the woman's voice rises in wrath. ]

GET OUT!

[ Despite the instructions, a wall of shadow rises to block the exit, trapping the pair as they try to escape. Catra is frozen in place, her body surrounded by an eerie red glow that crackles with menace. She is forcibly turned in place to face the woman, now masked again, her arms stiff at her sides and her feet dangling as the magical force, whatever it is, lifts her from the floor. ]

Catra, you stay. What do you think you're doing in here?

[ Catra's voice trembles with fear as she replies. ]

We were just playing!

[ The voice is young, but echoed in the memory by her older voice. She's relieving it, unable to stop the images and thoughts as they pour through her mind, fresh and sharp as if it were yesterday. ]

Insolent child. I've come to expect such disgraceful behavior from you. But I will not allow you to drag Adora down as well.

[ Young Adora speaks, eyes wide and begging. ]

Shadow Weaver, it wasn't her fault, it was my idea, too.

[ The woman, Shadow Weaver, who in the memory looms larger and more menacing than she ever was in life, ignores Adora. Her gaze stays laser focused on Catra and her voice fills with menace. ]

You have never been anything more than a nuisance to me. I've kept you around this long because Adora was fond of you. But if you EVER do anything to jeopardize her future, I will dispose of you myself. Do you understand?

[ Catra is held helpless, unable to do anything but stare up at Shadow Weaver with wide, frightened eyes. Someone... Anyone... Adora! She just wants to go hide in her bunk, please, please, please! She's sorry, it will never happen again she promises--! ]

2. With tears in my eyes, I begged you to stay, you said, "Hey man, I love you, but no fucking way!

[ Catra, a younger looking Catra with gray tufts in her mane of hair and a uniform stands next to the wreck of a tank. In front of her is Adora--also younger, softer. Different. Adora holds Catra by the wrist, her expression and voice, pleading. ]

"Come with me. You don't have to go back there! We can fix this!"

[ Catra's expression wavers, then twists into a scowl, betrayal and anger permeating the tone of her reply. ]

"Are you kidding? You've known these people for what? A couple of hours? And now you're going to throw everything away for them?""

1

[onlyordinary]

[Vanya does not want to watch this. She knows what's happening as soon as the woman grabs just one child and not the other. She knows this feeling in her bones.

But she doesn't know how to leave the memory. She's stuck bearing witness to another person's trauma that feels so much like her own.

But this isn't her own. This strange woman with a mask isn't her father, and she doesn't have the kind of hold over Vanya that Reginald Hargreeves has. Vanya purses her lips, then she walks forward.

As the woman is menacing the child, Vanya just... stands between them. She's small, only five feet tall, but it's still a barrier. A barrier between the memory and the person who she thinks is reliving it. Vanya can't count the number of times she wished that someone would just stand between her and her father.]

This... [Vanya doesn't know what to say. She's never known what to say, even though she's lived it herself. But she tries to keep her eyes focused on the frightened child before her.] This isn't actually happening. She's not really here.

[71lines]

[Look, it's Tenten's memories. She packs a ton of stuff into her flashbacks, so either enjoy the whole show or click a random point in the episode and give it a bit.]

Karkat: Remember how you learned you weren't safe.

[pasthole]

"Just what do you think you're doing?!"

Karkat is smaller in this memory, much smaller. He's standing with arms crossed in his living room. Or at least, it sure looks like a living room? That big, vaguely fleshy piece of furniture seems to be some kind of troll analogue to a sofa. A dark screen on the opposite wall looms over assorted mysterious, purple-carapaced devices of some kind, their fronts studded with little green and yellow lights. There's even an oddly shaped plant sitting in one corner. It appears to be night time, but the sky is lightening just a little outside the house's oddly tinted windows, past the dark and jumbled silhouettes of the neighboring houses.

The most important thing going on in the room, though, is what Karkat's glaring at: large, white, vaguely crustacean, and heavily armored, the animal can only be described as a monster. Whatever this is, it has shoved the room's rug into a corner and torn up several floor boards. It seems to be ignoring Karkat, and busily digging a hole down into the foundations of the house with its big (and apparently very strong) front claws.

"You know I'm the one who laid this hive out, right?!" Young Karkat continues yelling. He squeaks on his high notes and makes big gestures with his arms. "I programmed the build drones and everything! Guess what happened? They didn't put any big, stupid holes in my floor! You know why that is? Cause I didn't ask for any!"

The creature makes a distracted chittering noise, but doesn't slow. Karkat yanks his hair, growls in frustration, and stomps over to start kicking the rubble back where it came from.

"This is gonna be our first day in this hive and I'm not letting you mess it up!"

Then he's pinned to the floor under one big claw. It happens too fast to react. The monster peers down at him with its many eyes, leans in, and hisses directly into his face.

Karkat lays very, very still. He stays there as the monster continues digging, and is just starting to cautiously sit back up again when it stops. Its head snaps up and it goes rigid, listening. The sound the monster's reacting to takes a few seconds to become audible: a strange whirring noise from outside.

"What are you- agh!"

The creature shoves Karkat into the fresh hole and climbs over him. There's a great deal of indignant squirming and loud protest (though Karkat hasn't picked up his toothiest swears yet) before it seems satisfied that he's covered and manages to shush him with more hissing. The whir has gotten louder and louder.

Somewhere, a door opens. Something's footsteps thud heavily on the floor of Karkat's home, growing nearer, until a massive black figure trudges into the room. The mechanical whir comes from somewhere under the thing's wickedly-spiked armor as it gives the room a long, slow, searching look. Karkat's crab monster hunkers down and hisses at it like a disturbed cat. Several tense seconds pass, long enough to consider that it's not clear which would win if a fight broke out.

The drone seems satisfied. It continues on its sweep through the other rooms of the house, and then the back door opens and closes.

Silence.

The crab monster carefully climbs off the hole. When Karkat fails to come out on his own, it picks him up by the back of his shirt and places him gently on the floor, making concerned little rattling noises in its chest.

Karkat just leans against the monster's white-shelled side, visibly shaking. For once, he has nothing to say.

The Dog Lives

[likeits1999]

[ CW: Hurt sad dog, mild self harm/blood, everyone is okay at the end. ]

A dog lies by the side of a road, ribs rising and falling in shallow little gasps. Mostly white with some big black patches, the animal's crumpled form and twisted back leg are easy to make out in the dark. An unwanted pit mix of dubious provenance has been hit and left by a car, nothing to see here. Move along.

But Kevin sees, and Kevin doesn't. He's been walking an anywhere-but-here walk with a bag on one shoulder and a skateboard over the other for a good while now, feeling about as dead as a vampire probably should feel. Any brain he doesn't need to keep himself going and avoid trouble has been almost entirely checked out of his head for its own good, until the dog.

This memory is perfectly clear, a lighthouse in a deep fog. The whole world has snapped back into focus around this single point, all at once.

"Hey there, little dude. Having a bad night?" Kevin sinks down onto the concrete beside the wounded animal. He sounds a little rough, like he hasn't spoken much in a while. The dog just watches him, eyes dulled by pain, and doesn't move.

"...Me too," Kevin says. "A lot of 'em, I guess. You... probably feel me, I bet."

This is where he is in life now. Unlife? Unlife. The place he's at in unlife tonight is talking to a dying dog because there are no people he could possibly talk to about anything right now. He rests a careful hand in the thin fur on the dog's shoulder.

"I mean. Probably it's like a million times better than how things were a little bit ago for me. I had to... get away from some stuff." He winces. Shit, he can't even tell a dog about that. "But dude, I'm still out here on a road in the dark. And I still don't know where I'm going. Or what I'm doing. Which isn't much good for anybody."

He surveys the wreck of an animal again, quiet and thoughtful. It hurts to look at and feel powerless to do anything about yet another fucking awful thing this world has gone and done to somebody.

Well. Maybe he's not totally powerless.

"...But I guess there's something I could do for you?"

The decision snaps into place for Kevin in a way they don't often do anymore. He'll argue with himself about whether it was a good choice to make for years in the future, but now? It's all very clear and simple. He strokes the dog soothingly while using one fang to cut a line along his other wrist. It's not very deep, but more than a scratch. Blood wells up in it right on schedule, and he holds it out in front of the dog.

"Here, man. Lemme help you out."

The dog's dry nose twitches, and a pink tongue reaches out to swipe. Then again. Kevin feeds the dog blood from his wrist for a little while and it seems to be gaining strength. Scrapes begin to heal up. The bent leg contorts with disturbing certainty back into its proper shape, and Kevin pulls away.

"There. How's it feel?"

The dog gets up and stretches. He looks at Kevin. Then he darts forward and starts licking the vampire's face.

"Hey! Hey! Cut it out, dude!"

But he's laughing, and Kevin can't remember the last time he had something he wanted to laugh about. He fends the dog off and gets back to his feet with an excited bundle of black and white still rearing up and leaning his whole weight on him.

"You don't gotta stick around, you know. Go back to doing dog stuff. I got places to go," Kevin says, as if he has any more of an idea of where his unlife is going now. The dog, front legs still braced on Kevin's arm, tilts his head.

"Go on. I'm not good to hang out with long term or nothing, man."

Kevin pushes the dog off, four feet back on the ground where they belong, and starts walking. The dog follows. Kevin stops. Kevin tries to convince the dog to go again. He starts walking. The dog still follows.

"...You're just gonna keep doing this, aren't you?"

Bright brown dog eyes look up at him, full of trust. Kevin sighs.

"Alright. Okay, fine. You can come with. I'm not like, naming you though."

The dog just wags as they keep walking.

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan's not sure where he is. It doesn't seem to be the rig anymore, but he's wearing the starchy, ugly uniform still. He feels night air brushing up against him and it's as if he's being gently stroked with the electricity of the great outdoors again after so long cooped up in the labyrinthine, fluorescent metal city of Piper 90. For a moment he just takes some time to breathe and look up at the stars. It's better than the roof of the rig, which is so high up that it feels like the air is diluted out. This is just outside.

He stops when he hears someone talking, not loudly but crisp against how quiet the night is, and smiles when he sees it's Kevin; it takes him less than a second to see the dog, to process Kevin's words, which is good, because he was about to call out.

His intuition tells him not to interrupt, to have the scene play out - something about it seems sacred. It's an act of compassion. Those are always something you should just sit back and witness and honor, because you can't always trust them to come around and you can draw on them later when you can't tell which way is up. So he quietly watches as Kevin heals the dog and draws the dog into the vampire lineage, cheating his way out of the glare of a streelight, up until it looks like the dog's firmly decided on Kevin as his new bestie.

"Kevin?" He walks towards the kid and his dog, gently tapping a pack of cigarettes against his palm - he's not supposed to have them, but the commissary employee he met the other night found him just adorable and so polite. "Who's your friend?"

He wants to pet the dog, too.

tw: for imminent animal death and fantasy genocide

[bringinghopewithme]

[The memory is underground. Not even in a cave - it's a huge, vast cavern with the air of a cathedral, a holiness and beauty that bypasses any expectation of what a cave is supposed to be. Soft green moss covers every stone. Flowers bloom from the floor to the ceiling. Whole forests of evergreens grow in the underground world, through which a river runs with a rainbow of colors. There's a waterfall somewhere in the distance.

There is no darkness here. Instead, the warmest, kindest light shines, like sunlight through the leaves of a great green tree, on the most whimsical little world that was never seen by mortals.

There are rabbits everywhere. None is larger than a hare. Most, in fact, are smaller and daintier, cuter than wild rabbits with their big jewel-toned eyes and ornamentations of flowers and carved gems.

Despite their size, it's undeniable that they're people. Walking and talking in groups and pairs, carving stone and leaning on farming tools, painting with tiny brushes, clustered around flat stones cleared of moss with chalk in paw to share (and argue about) architectural designs, magical sigilry, mathematical formulas, lyrics of half-written songs, and on, and on.

The cavern, winding on into the earth in tunnels all illuminated with the light of dawn, is a society. There's nothing less than a city of prosperous, creative, happy little rabbits flourishing somewhere beneath the surface of the Earth.

The Easter Bunny towers over them all at his full 6 feet of height as he observes the memory from the outside, calm with the detachment of amnesia,.]

Huh. I don't remember this.

[He crouches down as a knee-high brown rabbit hops by, reaching into a messenger bag to pull out a working pocket watch.] 'Course I don't remember anything past 1920. Cute though, innit?

[fromfryingpantofire]

[Sam's standing nearby, managing to tower just a little more than Bunny. But he does have a couple inches on him, too.]

[He looks around, intensely careful of where his feet are. It might be a memory, but he already feels cumbersome in the space. Probably just all the small, cute things around them.] I'm not sure what I expected of one of your memories, but this...isn't it.

Vanya Hargreeves

[onlyordinary]

Nannies (TW: implied death)

[onlyordinary]

The first memory is hazy.

There are seven children. They can't be more than three or four. They're all in little school uniforms, and they sit in clumps on the floor of a grand living room belonging to a mansion.

There are only two girls--one with a pale complexion and one with a dark complexion. The girl with the pale complexion is the most vivid. She lies on the floor with her ear pressed against the chest of a little boy with blue-green eyes and a pale face that looks a bit full of himself even at this young age. The boy with the blue-green eyes plays with a Rubik's Cube, even as his arm stays around the pale girl. A misty figure in white rolls a gurney past the children. There's a body hastily covered by a blanket on the gurney. The body has an unnaturally contorted neck.

"Seven broke another nanny," a pale boy with floppy dark hair whines. "She's really mad. She's using bad words."

"You can tell her to go away, Four. I didn't like that nanny anyway," the boy with the blue-green eyes says, resting his chin on the pale girl's head. "She was mean about the oatmeal, wasn't she, Seven?"

The pale girl nods, keeping her ear up against the boy's chest. His heartbeat thuds through the room like a drum.

cw: memory 2; body horror, death, ritual sacrifice, the works.

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday’s memories are a maze of battered concrete and polished wood. Sounds echo - you can’t quite tell if they’re shrieks of laughter, or fear, or rage. You stand in a dead end; the door you entered vanished behind you. To your left is a sliding paper screen. Sunlight beams warmly through it. At the end of the hall, where it veers sharply to the left, in shadow, a steel fire door, barred shut. And to your right, an opening in the concrete, looking out on the roof of a building at night. Airships float overhead; the skyline glimmers with light.

Let's go with 2. Just for fun.

[kingofneworleans]

While the rooftop held interest for Remy (he did like being up high), it was the fire door that he chose in the end. He could see something about the other two, after all. The fire door was a mystery.

On the other hand, once he's through, Remy definitely wished he'd gone through one of the others. There was a taste in the air of...anguish. Of not being able to do something. Maybe he felt that from outside. Maybe that was why he chose this one. Because it felt familiar.

He turns when Saturday speaks up, raising an eyebrow. "Not 'sactly your best day, 'M guessin'?"

Rogue

[just_rogue]

a) Best friends, brews and basketball

[just_rogue]

"Don't flatter yerself Jubilee! Ah don' need mah powers to- HEY!" Rogue lurched when the basketball was knocked out of her hands and across the court with Jubilee hollering encouragement to the Cajun to get the ball.

Rogue was spitting mad and charged to get the ball back after a layup by Remy. But her efforts were thwarted by a light show courtesy of Jubilation Lee the X-men's little firecracker. Remy got the ball again for another shot and only missed when Logan sliced the hoop's support pole, it bent at an awkward angle.

"Guess ya missed that one huh Swamp Rat?" But Rogue's bragging was poorly timed because once they were all using powers he decided to use his too. Remy charged the basketball and tossed it rogue for Rogue. On instinct, the southern girl snagged it out of the air before she noticed the glow, and before she could drop it the ball exploded knocking her to the ground. "Dammit Remy!" She cursed and muttered as the others snickered and everyone agreed the game was over.

[passifloraincarnata]

Setsuna's memories bounce between a state of fracture, timeframes and events collapsing into each other like they happened simultaneously, and a state of perfect lockstep precision, every event sharply clear and pristinely recorded, not a moment out of its proper place. It's hard to get one's bearings. The mind struggles to make sense of the delivery mechanisms, as at odds as they clearly are with each other.

Eventually some manner of comprehension dawns, turning the incoherence into allegorical interpretation instead. A four leaf clover spins in the gloom, faintly luminous at its edges; its brightness illuminates, but doesn't dissipate, the murk. Pathways linger where it casts shadows.

One tunnel throbs, a thicket of thorny vines crawling over cracked stone and the faint stains of what might be dried blood; it's hard to look at closely, like the exact and painful opposite of a bright light.
[cw potential depictions of suicidal ideation, self harm, abuse, cult indoctrination-induced alienation, down this path]

Another seems to be reflecting the light of the clover back from further in, with faint, tinny dance music that tinkles, like the echo of a bright sunny day at the beach, in the distance.
[no cw, only good memories here]

And yet another has almost no sensory echo whatsoever, only faint static and the actinic sensation of electricity on the tongue. The color fades out the closer you might come to it, a dull ache in the soul. Faint lines cut themselves into the pathway beneath it, looking almost like circuit scoring.
[cw cult indoctrination-induced alienation, technofuture dystopia topics]

Each pathway seems to exert a pull; which pulls at who the most seems to be a negotiation between each person and each path on an individual and likely subconscious level. But everyone who walks through Setsuna's memories today will be pulled down one or another path.

[tarnishedavenger]

"I'm at the foot of the ladder. The LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about 1 or 2 inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained, as you get close to it. It's almost like a powder. Ground mass is very fine."

A family huddles around a large, boxy television, watching the grainy footage. One man could almost be Kevin Armstrong, but the line of his jaw is wrong. His hair's the wrong length, wrong color. And he has a mustache. The woman with the toddler in her lap, however, shares the same sandy blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. She leans in, whispering to the child, who couldn't be more than three or four at the most. The furniture they're sitting on is brand new, yet ancient at the same time, circa 1960s. There are guests crowded around, the room hushed. All of the faces are clear, if a bit muddled, lost to memory. The grainy television continues.

"Okay. I'm going to step off the LM now," the flickering TV says. The man leans in, slaps it once, and it seems to clear up. A desolate grey wasteland greets them, with some sort of shadowed machinery. A bulky figure is hanging off of it.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

And all that's left is the cheering. The woman picks up the toddler and twirls him about, adding his delighted laughter to the overall noise.
---
More cheering.

Armstrong's more recognizable now. Young, cleanshaven, with close-cropped hair, in a grey and white military uniform. He stands in formation with dozens of other young men and women, raising their right hands. In unison, they speak, with his voice ringing out over the others. "I, Kevin Armstrong, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully execute the duties of the office on which I am about to enter, so help me God."

An uproar again. More words are spoken, a prayer is said. A sea of white hats fly into the air. And it's now almost a blur as people break up and split apart.

Kevin pushes some people aside, gently, swiftly finding his parents and delivering a crushing hug to both. He smiles at both of them. It's an odd look and anyone who spends a lot of time around him might be surprised. This is probably the first real, happy smile they'll have seen from him, with any on the Rig being mere flashes of humor or there simply for politeness.
---
Something really hurts.
---
The same scene. His parents frown and, watching the shift in their expressions, he turns, locking eyes with a man with an odd, aggressively patriotic costume. "Son," he starts with a grin that could be printed from 1950s-era recruitment posters. "Being in the military's a great thing, and a noble path to take in serving your country. But how would you like to take it to another level?"

Kevin frowns, glancing at his parents, then locks eyes with the man again. "I don't think I know what you mean, Mr..."

"Kaufman. Robert Kaufman. I'm the Golden Avenger, and we're putting together an organization to help protect our America from out of control metahumans. We could use a man like you on our side." He clasps Kevin's shoulder with a hand. "Here. There's a great place to eat right nearby, why don't I treat you and your family to a meal while we talk this over?"

Kevin hesitates a moment longer, then nods, still frowning.
---
Pain. Agony, really.

How much of it is these memories, flowing by as swiftly as mercury? How much is real?

Kevin's strapped to a table, chemicals pumping into him as a machine above pours some kind of energy field over him. The tanks next to him say 'Cyberline'.

He twists during this torture and the metal restraints creak dangerously as they begin to twist.
---
It's Kevin again. A rapid series of events, really. In a brand new uniform he's chatting with school kids, fighting against people in costumes performing impossible feats, fighting alongside others, shaking President Reagan's hand, standing in a moving car during a parade, beaming and waving at the crowds there to see Kevin Armstrong, the All American Boy, the Silver Avenger, and thank him for dismantling the nuke/capturing a monster/saving hospital patients from a fire/dismantling a plot to conquer the world. New York, Houston, Chicago, talk shows, Saturday Night Live, Sesame Street, he seems to be everywhere.
---
Okay, no, this is going to hurt. He leaps off of a building and braces himself, wincing just as the speeding bus slams into his back. The Silver Avenger utters a quiet prayer, hoping no one was hurt in the impact, even as the force of the bus continues to drive him forward, his feet carving furrows in the ground as he's forced towards a group of panicked onlookers.

Straining to the utmost, he screams, stiffening his legs and driving them further into the ground to try to slow it down before they hit the building, hit the crowd, why in God's name aren't they moving, and... Silence. It takes ten seconds for him to open his eyes. He's panting harder than he did after his last marathon, sweating buckets, and every muscle burns with his overexertion, but... He's stopped, only two or three feet from the brick wall, with a gorgeous redhead between him and it.

She pauses, then smiles and pulls out a handkerchief. "Here, Tiger. The big hero can't look like some sweaty pig right after saving the day, right?" She leans in, swiping the sweat from his face, and pulls back just as the crowd starts to rush in.
---
Months later, he's standing at the altar with Mary-Jane Armstrong. There are people in uniforms, in costumes, in suits all throughout the crowd behind him. President George H.W. Bush is speaking, praising Mary-Jane's intelligence, her charm, her beauty, and complimenting Kevin on finding such a wonderful woman to share his life with.
---
"Ah, Director Kaufman?" The Golden Avenger snaps his eyes up, tearing them away from after action reports with a grunt.

"Armstrong. What do you need? If this is about-"

Kevin silences him with a shake of his head. "We've argued about that enough for this paycheck, I think. We don't agree, but... No, that's not it. Ah. I just, well. I wanted to say that we got the first ultrasounds done." He grins, a little nervously. "It's a boy. And it doesn't look like the Cyberline treatments caused any complications."

All of the stress seems to leave Kaufman's face and he leans back in his chair, shaking his head. "Boy... Armstrong. I can't tell you how happy I am for you. You know how dangerous this was?"

Kevin nods, seriously, then stuffs his hands in his pockets. "Yeah, I'd been worried ever since we got permission, but now. Well. Ah. Look, we've had our differences lately, but you've always been there when I needed you. You're like a second father. So, I was wondering if, you know. If it would be okay if we named him Robert?"

Robert Kaufman gapes for a moment, then stands, eyes glittering as he walks around the desk and claps his hand to Kevin's shoulder, beaming as if he were the man's only father.
---
Kevin holds Mary-Jane, beaming. She's covering her mouth, practically in tears. "I told you," he gently reminds her.

"You said you were meeting a friend for lunch," she objects quietly, speaking in a stage whisper. "I wouldn't have brought Robert if-"

"Don't worry. And I am! He just wanted to wrap something up first." He looks down at her, then across the room, through the camera crew, and waves at his son, practically a newborn infant.

The baby doesn't pay him any mind. He's spellbound by the man holding him, an soft-spoken gentleman in a bright red cardigan. The man holds him gently, but is speaking into the camera in soothing tones.

It's probably the longest Robert's ever gone without screaming his displeasure at the world.
---
Masked, wearing some truly short shorts and a tank top, Armstrong leads a group of hard-looking men in a brutally-paced run. They're soaked in sweat, he seems like he's on a casual jog.
---
Wearing green uniforms, the masked Armstrong slams someone through a table as the men around them cheer. Banners with viper heads hang from the walls as men with clubs wade in, breaking up the fight. One of them breaks his club over Armstrong's face, to little effect. There's a hushed quiet as he stands, looking down at the panicking man, then holds both wrists out.

He's flogged later, in front of a hushed formation of men in green. Try as they might, they can't even raise a welt on his skin. The red marks fade almost as fast as they're left on his back.
---
Surrounded by men in green and yellow uniforms, they cheer his name as he puts on a uniform identical to theirs, save for the blue and white coloration. The patch on his shoulder advertises his membership in Dragon Branch, with a silver viper's head insignia on his chest and the side of his helmet.

He holds out his hands, quieting the men. "To the Class of '93!" he cries, to their delight. No, he thinks. Whatever else, wherever Dragon Branch might take him, these are his people. The soldiers, the grunts, the backbone of VIPER. They were the ones who would set America right and show PRIMUS how worthless they really were.
---
Armstrong is shirtless, on a table, surrounded by men in various levels of undress. Several of them have viper's head tattoos.

A woman stands next to him, smearing a gel of some kind across his chest.

"I don't know what you expect, men," Armstrong comments lazily, confidently. "I've had torture resistance training. And I was a Silver Avenger."

"Yeah, Captain, you talk big. But you lost the bet, now you can't get out of this." One of them nudges him.

Armstrong shakes his head, resting it against a pillow. "I'm telling you," he starts again as the woman places paper against the gel, smooths it out. "She probably won't ev-"

Rip.

"MMMARTHA WASHINGTON!"
---
Armstrong's older. No longer wearing that fancy uniform. He looks as if he hasn't slept in days, which probably means 'weeks' for him. But he's plastering on the familiar false smile he offers the Rig management when he's chatting with them, his dirty combat uniform, indistinguishable from any normal pair of desert cammies, and they hand over a briefcase. He takes it, opens it, then nods at the neat stacks of bills, some sort of foreign currency, and shakes their hands, a serious expression crossing his face as he leaves. Exiting the door, a crack of gunfire sounds, but he's already moving, leaping to the roof of the building. The man who'd fired, wearing an identical desert uniform, is still in the process of twisting his head to figure out where Armstrong had moved when the now long-haired man gets his hands on him.

One on his shoulder, the other on his opposite hip. Armstrong flexes and both halves go flying in opposite directions. He glances around, scanning his surroundings for any other glints of polished sniper scopes or clumsy gun placement. Finding none, he leaps off of the building and picks up the briefcase.

His path takes him to a hospital, where he has a whispered conversation with the doctor, then hands over the briefcase before making his way to a series of rooms where he meets with various men who look like they've seen hard combat. The words are vague, hushed, but the clenched hands, the shoulder touches, the way they smile in relief as he tells him that everything's taken care of, that they'll get the best of care, that the mission was accomplished, tell the story. Some he talks to in English. One in Greek. Several of them are African men, with each addressed in a slightly different language.
---
A redheaded woman with an Irish accent bites his shoulder. This isn't lovemaking, not at all, more of a desperate release. The state of the room, the knife in her hand, the gun in his, point to the fact that this wasn't exactly a romantic tryst. This isn't Mary-Jane.

But that doesn't change the sound of a bottle of wine settling in a bucket of ice.
---
"How long have you been in Sierra Leone, eh, Armstrong?" The words are Swahili, but Armstrong's knowledge of the language allows his 'guests' to understand. "Silver Avenger for PRIMUS, big old VIPER man, and here you go now, bleeding out in the dust like every other white man who wants to get involved in our civil war."

Ah. There's the pain that's been underlying so many memories. Everything else has been... What, a flashback? Memories within memories? His life, flashing before his eyes.

Armstrong is... Definitely in rough shape. He's been shot, repeatedly, with his bulletproof vest unable to stop so much firepower. Six men surround him. No, not all of them are men. Two of them look like they can't even be fifteen yet.

The one talking presses the barrel of his rifle against a bleeding wound in Armstrong's gut, then fires again, grinning viciously at the man's scream. "How many of our friends have you killed, eh? And now yours are dead. And you can't even come after us now. Not even the great Captain Armstrong can walk off a land mine, they said. Maybe they lie a little, but a land mine and some bullets, those put you down, yes?"

He leans in, patting Armstrong's cheek. "No rescue for you, American. No burial. Just more mercenary trash, marking the end of our war." They all stand, shouldering weapons, and offer a mocking salute. One spits on his chest and they leave. Armstrong stares at the baking sun, watching the vultures circle overhead, and groans, then bites off a scream as he tries to move a shattered leg, to crawl. But he can't do that.

This is it. It's where he dies. He closes his eyes, whispering an apology, when...

A shadow falls over his head.

"Kevin Armstrong." The voice is... Everywhere. Vibrating through him, echoing in his mind, pulsing in his chest.

God?

"A god. Your god. Rise."

Despite the pain, he rolls to his hands and knees, then stands, raising his head. Facing him is a Serpent. Massive, more than thirty feet tall, endlessly long. Armstrong stands very still, breathing heavily.

"Follow." It turns, slithering into... No, that jungle hadn't been there before, had it?

Armstrong shakes his head and follows. With every step he takes, his injuries heal. Faster than normal. Faster than they should. He should be dead, and he knows it. But he's not asking questions. The Serpent, though, answers the burning question he leaves unasked.

"I am Nama. I gathered the pitiful mortals of the Council of Thirty and ordered the formation of VIPER to prevent this world from falling into Chaos." Armstrong nods, following along. "Essoc, your Supreme Serpent, is mine. Go to him and tell him that I say you have a Destiny."

Before the sentence is done, the snake is gone. Armstrong enters a cave, one that gradually shifts into... a metallic hallway. Then a door. He pushes it open and suddenly he's in an office, one that shouldn't have a door there. Looking behind him, the door is gone. Looking in front, a cruel-eyed young man gapes at him in shock.

Armstrong stiffens, then salutes.