Piper 90: Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goneawaymod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
goneawayworld2020-08-08 01:55 am
goneawaymod) wrote in goneawayworld2020-08-08 01:55 am
Entry tags:
- #memshare,
- #rig logs,
- adora,
- alloran semitur-corass,
- bunnymund,
- catra,
- dan sagittarius,
- guts,
- kevin armstrong,
- nora valkyrie,
- remy lebeau,
- rogue,
- ronald mcdonald,
- ronan lynch,
- sam winchester,
- saturday,
- setsuna higashi,
- stacia novik,
- tenten,
- ✘ aleifr bjornsson,
- ✘ remus lupin,
- ✘ sirius black,
- ✘ steven universe
Invasion!
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.]]
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.]]
Re: he must suffer being known
But no, the woman isn't her. Her face is rounder, softer, clearly human. Her ears aren't pointed. And she's actually got curves under her muscle.
Then the images fades. Only the grass remains.
"...who was she?" Saturday asks, totally distracted from her first question.
no subject
Guts looks forlorn.
"She is the last flame of the Band of the Hawk, the last one burning. She is the reason I swing my sword. Casca..."
Guts isn't usually one for flowery language, but he finds it spilling out of him before he can stop himself.
"I would have been long dead without her."
Either consumed by his own black flame, or killed some other way. Her absence hangs heavily on his heart, though the feeling is bittersweet. She is fine now, with people who can care for her better than he ever could. He'd mentioned a mercenary band in the past - this appears to be it.
no subject
She doesn't blame him. There's no normal or cool way to say "hey bee tee dubs you look exactly like the love of my life (apparently? something like that) from whom I am separated by cruel fate and circumstance." That's not a thing you can just come out and say.
"Is this that crew you mentioned?" She changes the subject instead. "'Cause this looks more like an army, cripes."
no subject
It's awkward, but what can he do? What was seen is seen. So after staring into the sky, figuring any explanation would just make it worse, he manages to look back at her. All he can do is be bare and honest.
"Yeah," he says. "It was a mercenary army I stuck around with for a few years. Life was pretty good, then."
He never really talked about his time as a soldier with anyone on the Rig, but for some reason it didn't seem so strange with Saturday. Maybe it was like Griffith told him once - after someone has seen your sinister side, it is easier to open up.
He sits down in the grass as the scene below them shifts from a black void to a sunny, grassy dirt trail. A few dead men and their horses lay circled around a fierce duel.
Guts and Casca's first meeting is... tumultuous. After shooting him in the arm with a crossbow, he'd taken out her horse with a skillful swing of his greatsword, knocking the other warrior to the ground. He remembers his surprise at seeing a woman leap at him from the grass.
"Bastard!"
With a battle cry, she attacks, and the two of them duel fiercely. They were ten years younger then, still kids, but they would have slit each other's throats without a second thought.
The memory jumps ahead to a fort illuminated by joyous bonfires. Guts sits curled up with his sword in the castle's crenelations, alone, ignoring the festivities of the other Hawks below. He was about a foot shorter and half the weight he would reach as an adult.
"Don't be shy."
Pippin's massive form reaches down to scoop him up like an indignant toddler.
"Don't touch me!" Guts screams, elbowing his captor in the mouth hard enough to make him bleed. But no avail - whether he liked it or not, Guts was going to get plopped into the middle of the celebrations and given a drink.
Slowly, that scowling and lonely kid eases up a bit. He takes a few drinks and settles in. The other soldiers were around his age - most of them were just kids, really - and he finds himself feeling strangely at home. Casca watches them from above, the only woman in the entire camp. At that age, it was easy to mistake her for any of the boys.
Not the most dignified time in his life, but Guts can't help but smile somberly watching the memory unroll on that grassy hill of his. These moments were treasures to him.
no subject
It takes her a moment to realize the younger Casca is fighting a younger Guts - from her height, "large" is his dominant adjective. Take that away and she almost didn't recognize him.
She covers her mouth to hide her giggle when the present-Guts-sized fellow deposits baby Guts in the middle of the party. A few leak out nonetheless when he eyes every offered drink like poison.
"...you were so stubborn."
no subject
The memory becomes murky as it shifts back, back, back.
---
"He can't expect to keep on eating free meals forever. He's got to earn his own bread around here."
Another mercenary camp - though the faces of the men that inhabited it were blurry and nondescript. Unlike the kids, they were older, rougher, and sleazier. The kind of crowd one would expect from a mercenary army. They were gathered lazily around what appeared to be a sword-fighting lesson.
"Pig-headed little guy, isn't he?" remarks one man with amusement, the others cheering on the boy in the middle of the lesson.
Guts always found himself conflicted when he envisions himself as a child. There was something about how helpless and small he was that rubbed him the wrong way. He couldn't say what or why.
Nonetheless, his child self lifts that adult-sized arming sword with all the strength he had in his tiny body. Stubborn was something that he'd been born with. His opponent's face is clear as day - a haughty man scarred and grooved by his years of war. Gambino's grin was the most vivid thing in that entire memory.
The lesson proceeds, with his teacher barking at him to use his hips more. More projection. Gambino nicking him in the arm or leg or face whenever they were out of line. Guts ignores the scrapes and cuts, and in a burst of speed, manages to give his teacher a small cut to the cheek in return.
Something in Gambino changes as he is overcome with rage, hand clenching that sword.
"You runt!"
The boy is slashed across the face, instantly twisting his perception with shock and pain as blood begins to spill. He falls to the ground and blacks out as the other mercenaries rush to help him.
"Hey, careful - Careful with 'im!"
The memory jumps ahead to Guts retrieving water, his wounds closed but still raw and red. He was swinging his sword with a bit more confidence, learning the soothing way the weapon could clear his thoughts and physical pain.
Gambino appears again, scowling at him the way he always did. Guts looks surprised when he tosses a little pouch his way.
"Here. It's medicine. Rub it on your wounds."
The boy gives a meek thanks as the man turns away from him, growling at him to hurry up and get the food ready. As soon as he's alone again, Guts sheepishly opens the package to examine its contents, and applies the little dab of the stuff to his nose.
A few tears leak out of the boy's eyes from the sting of the salve, but this eventually fades as he keeps rubbing the medicine into the wound. As time passed, the pain lessens. For some reason, he held that little pouch of medicine like it meant the world to him.
--
Guts absently rubs the scar on his nose, smile gone. The old, faded cut was miniscule on his adult face. For whatever it was worth, he didn't seem angry or bothered by what happened. He was more contemplative than anything.
"Yeah. Long as I could remember. Casca really hated how stubborn I could get, sometimes. Can't really blame her."
no subject
But then he lands a solid blow, one that should make his teacher proud, and instead the man snarls and turns on him, hitting him with full force - like he was facing another grown warrior, not a kid, not his student -
She actually starts forward a moment, before she accepts that it's just a memory. The gift of medicine doesn't make her happier.
"...yeah," she agrees with him, instead. "Looks like you had t'be."
no subject
"Ah, sorry. I don't have too many happy memories here."
He closes his eyes, trying to focus on a better time. They are few and far between, but the nicer memories were made all the sweeter by comparison.
---
The sun rises over a field overlooked by a grey speck of a distant castle. Alpine forest hugged their flanks. The Band of the Hawk's camp sprawled with hundreds and hundreds of campfires. The same banners rustled proudly over its tents - a sword emblazoned with wings.
A group of Raiders sat around a row of archery targets. It was a different lesson. A knife throwing lesson.
"This ain't really my style," Guts grumbles. It was easy to tell he was older now, with the way he dwarfed his teacher. His target looked a bit pathetic compared to the work of an expert like Judeau.
"Keep trying, you'll pick it up," his comrade insists with a carefree grin. He balances the blade on his finger with ease.
The peanut gallery behind him - all Raiders eager to do a little brotherly ribbing along with encouragement - were putting their captain in a foul mood. Stubborn is as stubborn does, though, and he picks up the last two throwing knives.
>:3c
She studies the people he's sitting with, and especially the one he's talking to. A wiry man, with yellow hair. "Who's this guy? Is he Griffith? I heard you talking about him with Casca."
uh oh
--
There's a minor ruckus between them as the memory proceeds - Guts could barely remember what it was that made him threaten to use one loudmouth Raider for target practice instead. The threat is toothless, of course, but damn if he wasn't tempted to throw a knife in his direction to make his point.
"Judeau. Guts."
The noise is interrupted by a female voice. Casca is at the top of the hill behind them in full armor. She sounds serious. The stern look in her dark eyes might have well have shot knives into all of them.
The Raiders all freeze up, immediately attempting to look less caught in the middle of their fooling around.
"C-Casca."
"Commander Casca!"
"Morning," Judeau waves, awfully chipper for the admonishment that was likely coming for them. Well - one of them, at least.
The younger Guts is silent. When he looks at her, there is something about the first rays of dawn catching on her armor that is particularly bright and vivid in this memory. Even if she was angry with him, the image made its impression.
"I hope the Captain hasn't forgotten the joint drills we were going to do," she says firmly, dangerously,"Unless he was planning to be late."
Guts knows better than to argue with that tone. After a thanks to Judeau for the lesson, he tells the Raiders to get ready before he walks up to join her.
"Griffith wants to see you," she says curtly.
--
"Griffith was..." Guts pauses at Saturday's question. For so long, he'd been trying to rid himself of his obsession with Griffith. Perhaps the fact that he was able to say his name without diving into catatonic rage is an achievement in itself.
--
He arrives at Griffith's tent, where the silver-haired man stands waiting for him, a map and its markers sprawled over the table. He doesn't seem to mind Guts' lateness at all, looking at him warmly as he enters.
The way Griffith smiles at him leaks into another memory. The inside of that tent becomes the yawning green of grassy hills and countryside. Guts and Griffith, three years before, standing together on a knoll. The day their lives would change forever.
"I want you, Guts." he says.
The teenaged Guts squirms at the attention, his scowl broken into a sheepish squint. No one's ever said this to him before.
"You swing that way?" he spits out awkwardly, in a way that makes Griffith laugh in kind.
Re: uh oh
"Your boss?"
no subject
Guts finds himself quiet as he sees that memory fully meld into the earlier one - from a command tent between friends to the open, grassy knoll where he would duel Griffith for his freedom, and lose.
“He is a man who looks to soar higher and higher, no matter what the cost,” he says, weary and knowing.
The two boys in the memory exchange more banter. Their contention is a thing to be resolved with violence. The younger Guts is haughty and full of anger the way a typical teenager would be, but with the drive to kill now driven deep into him.
He loudly proclaims his terms - if he wins, he carves open Griffith’s chest to return the favor of stabbing him.
Griffith is calm, enigmatic, oddly charming in return. He simply asks: “What if I win?”
“Take whatever you want - my sword or my ass,” sneers Guts, ready to fight.
He attacks Griffith wildly, and their duel begins. It all proceeds as it happened - Griffith deflecting his every blow, Guts biting his sword to catch him off guard. Knocking Griffith into the ground and taking the opportunity to beat the shit out of him until his face bled.
”This the first time that pretty face’s ever been hit?”
The duel ends when one cocky punch gets Guts’ shoulder trapped in an arm lock and thrown on the ground. He doesn’t give in until Griffith yanks his shoulder out of joint, his opponent as vicious as he was charismatic.
Then, in an odd gesture, he reaches to clasp Guts’ face in his hands.
”You’re mine, now.”
For some reason, staring at Griffith in this moment is the most vivid image in this memory. Even in pain, it was hard to ignore his beauty and the intensity in his eyes.
“That is Griffith the Hawk,” Guts adds, something melancholy weighing down his voice.
no subject
But. The look on Guts' face...
"Sounds like you two had a complicated relationship, huh?"
Saturday can't really think of anyone in her life who makes her look that way. Caim still feels like a knife in the heart, but it doesn't even come close. That's just loss, and loss, she knows, does fade in time. This is... well. Maybe when she'd thought Solomon had done it on purpose, and that Pops had died not knowing she'd survived. That might come close. Love turned to loathing, all the sharper because it remembers being love.