hadriel_logs | Event Log: Memories Past

Event Log: Memories Past

Who: Everyone
What: Memory Share Event!
Where: All around the city
When: November 14th-20th
Warnings: Please remember to tag all warnings for memory shares!

Have you ever looked through someone else's eyes? Heard through their ears, spoken with their tongue? The gods have tried to teach some of you empathy, but it's time you learned the hard way, exactly what the others here have been through. For a week, every time you brush skin to skin with someone, you'll experience a memory of theirs: happy, sad, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that it feels real to you.

The first touch may come as a surprise- it lasts only for a split second but may feel like an eternity, where you're trapped in someone else's memory. After that, it could be more expected, and some may even figure out how to control it and share specific scenes from their past with others. Or, you might wear gloves and long sleeve shirts for awhile, nobody's judging.

Maybe curtail the handholding for awhile- or go right ahead, if that's your thing. After all, you never really know somebody unless you've walked a mile in their shoes, right?

► This log covers November 14th-20th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you die in a memory, you don't die in real life, but if you do die in real life please let us know here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

As an active Guardsman, Drake can be found pretty much anywhere. He patrols all four islands at varying hours, and can be found at guard HQ training regularly -- sometimes alone, sometimes with a trainee, but he's always up for company.

The shops still have some unique items from their recent guests so Drake can be found hunting from time to time even when they don't need groceries, though he seems to be looking for something in particular as well. And the speakeasy is usually good for an evening out of the apartment, and while he waits on his own he'll approach anyone who looks like they need company. If he happens to have a stretch of time off during the day, you miiiiiight catch him at the orchard trying to help with the replanting -- he's good for manual labor, at least.

Early in the event he also can be encountered at Hope or Love's temples picking up certain necessary for life items, though he'll be very dodgy about what's in either package.

1. drake digging his own grave and getting shot twice, an attempt to put him in it
2. for something fluffy: a series of flashes of teenage drake bringing home a stray dog
3. drake is a little kid and his father is still around (cw: abuse)
4. questionable practices at shady plots funeral home (cw: drugs, gore)
5. drake confronting and fighting his mother's boyfriend, ultimately arrested for aggravated assault (cw: abuse, violence)
6. a two hour phone call with drake's overbearing mother
7. drake's death scene, which will likely out him as a zombie (cw: human experimentation)

Pick a memory and I'll reply with it! I can be reached on plurk @

cuddlebug or on discord @ Ana#1461 for plotting/questions or something custom! ]

Unfortunately for everyone, an event isn't a reason to avoid doing anything. It's not like having a cold, where it's best to stay at home and not give anyone your germs. They're all perfectly healthy (and if they're not, it actually isn't the gods' fault) and all that needs to be done is avoid touching anyone.

Kate would like to think that isn't a difficult task. Surely people don't touch that much, right? Even in a sparring session, skin to skin contact can easily be blocked by wearing the right clothes. It's just a question of waiting it all out.

She's going to regret thinking that as the week progresses. The smallest touch, the most accidental brush of fingers as two people dive for the same thing in a shop—

Well, that's all that's needed.

( OOC: and if you wanna do a mutual thing, I'm more than happy to write up a memory! )

This early in the week, Drake also thinks it's something he can avoid -- how many people does he possibly have direct skin contact with in a day? He'll just be careful, this will be fine.

It's really not turning out fine, and the next shop he goes to will be in search of gloves.

This one's mutual -- Hadriel fades out and their home worlds fade in, and Drake is entering a large house. No, not a house, exactly. I mean, it is, but it's also a funeral parlour. Obvious enough by the casket (currently closed) in a viewing room off to the left as soon as you enter. There doesn't seem to be a wake going on, though, and as the door closes behind him a shrimpy guy with a buzz cut wanders by, gesturing for Drake to follow him.

"Bossman's downstairs, chop chop."

"In the chop shop? Fun," Drake comments dryly, following the little guy. Down into the bowels of the morgue, where yes there is a sheet-covered body on one of the slabs... but more interestingly there's something of an assembly line going on. A man with an eyepatch cuts off a chunk of very fresh looking human brain and places it in a takeout container, then slides it down to a woman who seems to be placing garnishes on top, parsley and fancy-cut lemon wedges. She closes the container and pushes it into the shrimpy guy's spot, which he's taking back up now to put on a sticker and put the containers into yellow coolers. A ways behind them there's another guy with curly hair pulling little vials out of a casket packed full of them, slipping a few at a time into a dime bag, and packing the dime bags into blue coolers.

All of this is super questionable. But Drake just looks it over, sighs, and turns to a man sitting at a smaller table with a glass of wine and two books -- one a novel, one some kind of ledger.

"Holloway! And what does my favorite rat have for me today? Perhaps I can rustle up some cheese."

"...screw you, Blaine, I'm not a rat."

"I believe Mr Boss would beg to differ." When Drake says nothing in response, presumably doing that pressed-lip glare he's so good at, Blaine continues. He sets down his novel and opens the ledger, clicking a pen to signal he's ready. "We're getting ready for a push. I want to know his importers, you've gotten those names by now, right?"

"Are you insane? If you keep feeding this much to the DA, you're gonna get me killed. There's like three of us that know those names."

"And only one of you that works for me. Too bad so sad, give them to me anyway."

"I can figure a way out from under your boot, you know. One way or another you won't have me over this barrel much longer, but I'm no good to anybody if I'm dead."

Blaine just smiles, everything about him screaming smug superiority. Drake's voice is low and furious as he spits out the names. Blaine writes them down, unclicks his pen. "Was that so hard? Get yourself a snack, rat. Not the good stuff."

"No thanks. I'm not hungry." Except he is. He just doesn't want to take shit from Blaine, who quirks an eyebrow.

"I insist."

Drake shakes his head, stubborn. "Fuck you, Blaine." And turns away, heading back up the stairs and out of the house, with an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach and a sense of creeping dread that maybe he's made a terrible mistake...

What does he see?

The building — definitely intended as a home, once upon a time, but the sign outside showing that it's long since lost that designation — looks nothing like any of the ones in Hadriel, if the sudden shift of the world from inside a shop to outdoors wasn't enough of a sign that the gods' tricks are flaring up again. She has no say in where she goes, the footsteps not her own, everything around her wholly new and yet... and yet. And yet, it's as though she knows them. Or the person whose eyes she borrows does. He knows the building, and everyone from the guy who greets him to the ones down in the brightly lit morgue.

She wants to turn her head, to look back and away from the production line all at the same time, fascinated and repulsed. Is that... And it is. A million questions raised but none of which is what's being concentrated on, as though the owner of this memory has seen it all before, like it's something normal.

(And doesn't that just raise a whole other mess of questions Kate doesn't have the answer to yet.)

The man he speaks to — Mr. Novels For Show And Profit, quickly renamed as Blaine — is all easy confidence tipping into smugness. The picture of someone who has everything in the palm of his pale hand, enough to make Kate's hair stand on end. There's something all too familiar in that certainty. She feels each word — the protests, the anger, the refusal — in her (or his? What the fuck does it even count as, really?) chest, bubbling in her stomach.

Saying fuck you doesn't feel like quite enough. It never does, but they're up and out of the place before anything else could happen, and the shop shudders back into focus as her eyelids flutter open.

"The fuck—" was that? But her question dies in the air before it finishes, because it's quickly apparent that she isn't the only one who's felt the world shift under her feet, found herself flung into someone else's past, and the dread from the end of her trip down his memory lane flares sharply to life as a million possible scenarios flash through her mind.

Ones of a woman who carried that same unflappable, smug assurance as the smarmy insufferable snake in the morgue.

“Dismissed.”

Chairs screech against tiles and the group stands up in unison, scrambling to figure out which order to file out of the too cold office, autumn air fluttering papers on a steel table. Kate’s boot scuffs the edge of the door and she tastes the overly-sterile promise of freedom in the corridor’s air, out and away from a piercing one-eyed stare, still burning into her back. Idle conversation hums at the front of the group, starting as soon as the others escape, bits about how they’re going to get to the part of the city in question and if they can get a drink after it’s all done. The same routine that’s been done a million times — work, and drink until they forget the things that happened.

“Not you, Galloway.”

… Fuck’s sake. Her tongue brushes over her teeth, eyes rolling up towards the popcorn ceiling before she turns around, arms folding.

“What?” It’s growled, head tipping up to look her boss in her one good eye, the quiet buzz of her brother’s presence sparking in the back of her mind. What’s going on?

—No idea. But there’s an inkling. There’s always an inkling when Rosenberg stops her. It means ideas and reasons to separate her from her group, from her brother.

“You’re still on probation, aren’t you?” That one word far too pointed, not at all a question and they both know it. Just like they both know that probation ended two days ago, or she wouldn’t be in this room right now.

“No.” Rosenberg’s eye narrows, scarred head tilting to one side at the answer, the window rattling through the silence.

(Kate, don’t start anything.)

“You have other things to be doing.” No comment about her being wrong, nothing but the unaffected tone of someone who knows she cannot be denied her orders as Rosenberg pushes past her and strides down the corridor. “R&D.”

...Fuck’s sake.

What’s going on? murmurs Marc’s voice in her head, and Kate takes a left down the corridor, away from the promise of the city and fieldwork, towards the depths of the building. To R&D, every step making her shoulders tighter still, making the nerves in her stomach flit and build like the beginning of a storm.

Research, comes her answer, and he says nothing more, knowing well enough that explanations aren’t a thing that come freely in The Agency — the mission she should be on, with all of them, nothing more than an address and the mention that “sources” reported “disturbances”. The maze of corridors and floors leading down, windows replaced by nothing but solid, fluorescent light and doors which creak when she opens them. Stuck down here, again, and nothing but the buzz of telepathy to remind her that Marc’s okay. Don’t be a dumbass.

Don’t get hurt.

There’s been one broken light in this corridor since the first day she was forced down here, flickering and buzzing, as though the barred windows to rooms at the end of the passage and the stench of unknown chemicals didn’t make this place unappealing enough, or like enough of a horror movie staple. Her hands curl into fists, her shoulders straighten, the nervous fluttering in her stomach is pushed down by deep breaths.

Whatever this job is, she’ll do it. The faster it’s done, the faster she can be back with Marc, where she’s meant to be. The faster she can take care of him again.

“...Dammit!” Whether it’s the voice of one of the researchers or the crash and crack of a door which happens first, Kate doesn’t know, they both fill the floor and bounce off the walls at the same time, and her feet are in action before anything else, gun pulled from her belt and held in front of her. “Stop it!” commands another voice, and the charcoal blur of limbs and claws skids around the corner, giving her barely enough time to try to swing a punch.

It jumps, hissing and unhinging a jaw in a way that looks profoundly unnatural on the almost chimp-like face, all serpent’s tongue and gleaming fangs. Creatures are ugly little bastards, Kate finds, with too many arms and a hideous mixture of the worst parts of nature, as though evolution couldn’t decide just what would be the most unpleasant thing to grant unstable powers to. She can only breathe a sigh of relief that this one’s had its powers neutralised, leaving it incapable of shaking the building to nothing or possessing anyone here. Which means all she has to deal with are… claws and jaws and fangs and a ridiculous amount of speed and strength.

Easy, right?

The first clashes are even matches, the researchers shrinking back, scurrying into offices to dial requests for backup, and her gun does a decent job of bludgeoning the thing in its neck, the screech of pain it lets out a dizzying, hair-raising thing. A quick kick follows up, foot slamming into the abdomen and sending it sprawling against the wall. Too easy by far, but it is drugged up, she supposes as she leans her weight into it, pinning it against the wall.

“Got it, hurry up—”

But they are strong, even with drugs in their system and their powers bound, strong enough to force her off in the split second of calling out to the researchers, to become a flurry of claws and limbs tearing through material, through skin, ripping apart her forearm and filling the corridor with the scent of blood, sticky and coppery, invading her every breath. Her chest, her lungs and heart all lock and tighten, and her limbs scream when it charges her into the floor, flailing wildly, blind to anything but the need to get out.

Uncontrolled, gnarled claws find her ribcage, shredding apart cotton which dissolves into weak, pointless material in the face of pure, panic-driven strength. They catch metal, a piercing barely a couple of months old, and rip until agony plunges her field of vision into blackness, the familiar fizzing of Marc’s now distant presence humming over the rush of footsteps.

Kate came back first, apparently, Drake is still lost in her memory, but it's only for a few seconds longer. He steps away and takes a deep shuddering breath in, clutching at his chest, eyes wide more from the fear he felt of Kate's than of his own at seeing something horrible.

"What was that thing?" he asks the pink-haired woman before him, because they both know full well what's going on at this point, right? He recognizes her, though no name comes to mind, just that her power is to see other people's powers and she's been here way longer than him -- well, sort of -- and knows how this shit works.

He straightens up, shaking off the lingering effects of her agony. Drake's a pretty tough cookie, but that was... very painful. Probably worse than anything he's felt himself besides when Delight beat him to a pulp that no human would have survived. But he did. Because he's-- ohhhhh shit.

It's a good thing that he's got an excellent poker face, and he mostly manages to sound curious rather than worried when he asks his next question. "And what did you see?"

Drake Holloway | OTA

i feel like i'm asking for 4 a lot but /shrugs

memswap memswap agency stuff please!

this is so long and i'm so sorry

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7,

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1!

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gimme that 7 boy

/chants deathswap deathswap

DEATHSWAP!!!

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Uh.....5? Also cw: mutilation, self-mutilation

cw: extreme violence, domestic abuse

cw: extreme violence, domestic abuse, cw: self-mutilation

cw: extreme violence, domestic abuse, cw: self-mutilation

1

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