aftr_stories | [MU] - DECEMBER STORYTELLING / MEMORY SHARE

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[MU] - DECEMBER STORYTELLING / MEMORY SHARE

Something is wrong.

This may not very well be obvious, at first. The Storyteller is not present to put forth yet another diatribe, informative or apologetic, and the backdrop of guttering flame and sandy campfire is as present as ever...albeit briefly.

Those who tell their stories will start to notice something...odd taking place. Indeed, no matter how they intend to begin their tale, the land of Mu will immediately start to warp to accommodate it, or something utterly unlike it, until storytellers and listeners alike may find themselves in an exact recreation of a seemingly random memory, in the most stark and painstaking of detail. There is no altering the memory, nor is there any preventing it once it's begun to play - you will simply have to witness memories that are not your own this go around.

Furthermore, stories that take place in worlds other than LifeAftr will be, frankly, inevitable. Those memories, too, will be recreated, to be relived by the teller and lived by the listener.

It is time, once more, for you to tell a story...with a slight twist! This is, in fact, our first player plot, as provided by Dragon! The initial setting will be familiar for oldcomers, and newcomers will recognize it from the introduction they received in their dreams.

Yet for this Storytelling only, people can imagine whatever stories they wish, from both their homes and their time on LifeAftr, as long as they don't mind the fact that others will be reliving those stories in the form of an impromptu memory share.

Even those who prefer not to voice their stories aloud are not safe this time around. If the memory is recalled in essence, Mu will shift to accommodate it in full.

There is, however, a benefit to this: those who venture memories to be relived will receive both a befuddled apology from the Storyteller, who will assert that this was most definitely not meant to happen (they're the Storyteller, not the Rememberer!), as well as a tired promise that the relived memories will be worth two offerings each, as if in compensation.

Not that it counts for much, probably.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

((content warnings for murder, alcohol, and general violence in these memories!! nothing too heavy, I think))

[This memory opens with the rattling sound of gunfire. The moon glows over this alien world, a veritable paradise if it weren’t for the invading mercenary force, pushing its way through alleyways and past homes. Fire burns in the distance as these aliens, grey with four eyes on the front of their heads, attempt to chase people through the streets. Security alarms wail in time with the sounds of distant screams throughout the night.

Bursting out of a dark corner is Shepard, dressed in cargo pants and a dark navy blue tank top. Silver dog tags bounce on her chest as she sprints towards the sounds of battle. Her hair is slightly longer than what those who know her on Enso are used to seeing. In fact, her face looks younger, almost an entire decade’s worth of stress and pain missing from her features as she waves around a shotgun. Following behind her are a gaggle of people, ranging from various ages and genders and each one carries a weapon of some kind. Some hold shovels, some small pistols, the occasional pitchfork and knife. All of them run to keep up with her, a few of them with more success than the others. A few other people dressed similarly to Shepard flank around them, carrying guns much like her. They look around, barking out information as they see it.
Shepard shouts orders back as they move. “We’ll move towards the westward side, see if we can try to reclaim the outer limits of Illyria and push back their forces. The other colonists are waiting for us to report in.”

Before any of her ragtag gang of people can respond, another person runs up. Their jeans are spattered with dirt and debris, their shirt slightly singed. Their eyes are wide with fear as they stop short, taking in a few breaths to steady themselves.
“Corporal! The batarians have breached the barricade over by the docks! They’re swarming in!”

Shepard swears, looking back to the group who is with her. The civilians look to her imploringly. One of her fellow soldiers steps up.

"Shep, we can split half our group here and send one of them towards the docks. The other half can stay behind and-"

Shepard cuts in, her voice hard and commanding.

"There’s no time for that. The civilians can’t move as fast as we do, we’d get overwhelmed by the sheer force of them by the time we got there."

She looks to them as some of them let out a protest. “No offense. But we’re trained for this.” She turns her attention back to the soldier in front of her.

"We’re not splitting up. Take Adrian, Cassandra, Randall and Morgan. Stick together and keep each other safe. I’ll go take care of the barricade."

The soldier in front of her lets out a cry of surprise. "What, alone? Are you fucking with me, Shep?"

Shepard reaches out a hand and places it on her fellow soldier’s shoulder.

“I got this, Alex. Don’t worry. I can hold it down until reinforcements arrive. If we lose the docks, they get control of who comes in and who comes out. We can’t afford the chance of them starving us out.”

The other woman gives her a hard look, eyes narrowed. Then she clasps a hand to Shepard’s that rests on her shoulder and nods. “You give those batarian fucks hell. And if your dumbass gets captured by them, don’t think for a moment that I won’t hunt you down in batarian space and kill you myself before they do it.”

Shepard chuckles. “I’m holding you to that. Now get out of here.”

After another moment of short goodbyes, the group continues to make its way west and Shepard begins to push towards the docks. When she arrives flashes of light immediately break through the air, the hard crack of gunshots rattling in her ear drums as Shepard throws herself into the fray. The batarians lay down suppressive fire and Shepard takes a few bullets, cursing as blood blooms under her alliance blues. It’s only a few moments of return fire and quick biotic maneuvering (which, to those who know her, actually looks… less powerful than it has been here) before her enemies fall. She runs to the impromptu barrier of barrels and boxes, singed and with a gaping hole and looks to fill it. It’s as she slaps some medi-gel on her body that she catches sight of more batarians storming their way to her. She whips away from the hole, just dodging more gunfire. She raises her gun, aims, and begins to fight anew.

The memory shifts, Mu’s fog moving time along until once more Shepard can be seen, sitting with her back to a series of barrels and wooden pallets piled high. Now she looks exhausted, scratches and bruises dotting her face and arms. Her shirt is soaked with sweat and that long hair is tied back in a messy ponytail. The general area is littered with bodies around her and her face is pale. She’s been fighting for hours (12, she’ll learn later). But she looks to the skies, the sun rising over the horizon, and sees frigates shooting down the enemy forces. They bare the Alliance insignia and she breathes. They’re here. She’s no longer alone.

Her bones creak and pop as she pulls herself up. Her gun lays empty and useless on the ground a few feet from her body. Her breathing is ragged as she begins to walk away from what was her impromptu camp all night. She hasn’t slept. She hasn’t eaten. She marches on. She doesn’t hear it at first, as exhausted and injured as she is while she limps back towards the center of the colony. But when she turns the corner she finally hears a roar of voices. Startled she looks up as the first person slams into her body and she jumps a bit, just managing to stop herself from flipping them onto the ground as they wrap their arms around her.

“Shepard! You’re alive! You did it!”

More and more people swarm around her and slowly she realizes they’re her fellow soldiers she gathered together. A lot of the colonists are here too, burned and bruised but alive. Everyone wants to talk to her, to ask her questions, to yell to the sky about her heroics and Shepard stands there, surrounded by love, dumbfounded… but smiling.

Shepard watches this memory for awhile, shaking her head a little. That dumbfounded smile, weathered by another decade of life, sits on her face as she drinks it all in.]

[Watching this brings to mind a lot of memories of Roy's own. None that will play out on the tableau around them, as it happens. Which is probably for the best, considering his own variant of this memory ends with him dead, his party sundered, and Azure City conquered. Shepard's success is almost alien to him, and that's profoundly depressing.]

[But he's not going to think about that now; he's developed another line of questioning, one with a little more relevance.]

Were you actually expecting to survive that?

[Shepard blinks a bit, surprised at the voice but smiles when she sees who it is.]

To be totally honest? I thought it was a 50/50 shot.

[She shakes her head a bit, looking to the memory, drinking in the details of Elysium.]

I knew I had the training to withstand this sort of assault, the capability to hold my ground, and enough guts to try it... but I didn't know if I would actually survive. I still had to try though.

[A feeling she is pretty sure Roy understands.]

[He can't criticize. He'd taken a much longer shot in his time... But that had at least sparked some hard thought in him.]

[He rises from his own seat, moving over with a little gesture at the spot next to her and a quirk of one eyebrow to ask permission.] What was the context of that battle?

[Shepard knows what memory this is the moment Mu’s magic swirls into being, forming Chora’s Den and filling the air with the stench of sweat and alcohol. She tenses as she watches her younger self, this time only by three or so years, walk into the seedy bar with two humans flanking her sides. All three of them are wearing armor and armed to the teeth. They approach a tall alien, a turian, and Shepard speaks to him.

They speak for a few minutes, and it becomes clear what Shepard is trying to do- she is trying to see if she should free a man from imprisonment. The charges put against him are terrible. Terrorism and xenophobia, attempted mass murder.... It’s not surprising that Shepard rather quickly decides to leave the man in his cell. It’s then when another human appears, goading and impatient over her decision, that the rest of the situation comes to light.

“I knew you would rat us out, Shepard! Now it’s payback time! When we’re through telling our story, the aliens will all know what the first human Spectre really is!”

“My bio is public record. Everyone knows I ran with gangs as a kid.”

“They don’t know that the Reds target aliens specifically. We’ve got the backers to handle offworld missions. Your alien friends won’t like you so much when they hear what your gang did.”

Shepard’s eyes narrow, her hands clenched at her side. She and the man (Finch, as she calls him in conversation) continue to go back and forth. Her two human companions, one man and one woman, watch her silently, sending worried glances to the other as this goes on. Shepard glares, her voice hard and angry.

“What is this going to prove? I left that life a long time ago!”

Finch sneers, leaning forward to make his point. ”You never leave the life! If you won’t help us, we’ll drag your name through the dirt!”

Something in Shepard’s jaw sets. Finch continues talking. Her hand twitches towards her gun.

“Your alien friends will revoke your Spectre status! You’ll be nothing! Unless you’re willing to pay, say, 500 credits.”

In another second Shepard pulls up her gun, aiming it right between Finch’s eyes. The sounds of the nearby club goers diminish, as some people turn to watch, others continue to drink themselves into oblivion. The man flinches, throwing his hands up. His eyes are wide with fear.

“What I’m doing is too important to be derailed by someone like you, Finch.”

She doesn’t give him a moment. Not one last word before she’s pulled the trigger, the gunshot echoing through the club. There are a few gasps here and there but they are quickly hushed by other people as they turn around to not look. The music doesn’t stop. The dancers continue their routines. Finch’s body crumbles to the ground and the turian guard steps forth, nodding a little.

“Impressive. Perhaps the first human Spectre will not be a disappointment after all. Good bye, Spectre.”

He walks away, stepping over the body as he does. Shepard stands there, her face unreadable as she stares after where he left. Her companions look to her and the man speaks up.

“Commander… are you-“

She holsters her gun, still staring ahead. “I’m fine, Kaidan. We’re leaving.”

There’s only a brief pause before he nods and the three of them begin to move towards the exit. Shepard steps over the body and she doesn’t look back.

The present Shepard stares unblinkingly at the memory as it ends. There’s a tightness to her face as she stands there quietly.]

[So she made a few mistakes, then.

It's unsurprising. She is, after all, human- and the beings around her are not the monsters from home. It is unsurprising that a child with no education would run amok, do things that they would regret later on. Does Chara judge her for it?

A little. But she deals with the threat unblinkingly, and in her place, they would undoubtedly do the same.]

He had that coming to him. [A pause, as they consider their next words.] The entire conversation was a set up, wasn't it? A test.

[A few mistakes doesn't cover it. She's lucky Mu didn't show off the worst of her body counts. But she feels the greatest mistake currently is Kidwun seeing this. Her body language is cold and tight as she speaks.]

I don't know. He certainly was a prick but that doesn't mean he had to die.

[A thought she has wrestled with since then. Their question gives her pause as she decides how honest she should be.]

It was. He had approached me earlier. Asked me to do a favor for my "old friends." I didn't have any real intentions of doing it for him but I wanted to see what was going on. Maybe I shouldn't have investigated in the first place.

[Would he have leaked information on her if she had ignored him entirely? Would he have told him about where she was? There's no way he doesn't know, if he's still alive. Her hand clenches and she wishes fervently that it was holding a gun.]

I beg to differ. When one is found wanting in intent, they have made their choice. As he did.

[It was a blatant attempt at manipulation that ended poorly for him- how could he not deserve it? As she provides more detail into the situation as a whole, the more assured they are of their opinion, head held high.]

Curiosity is hardly the worst crime, ma'am. Extortion and blackmail, in my world, are.

[There's something to be said for the black and white reasoning of a child. The way they strip everything else away, down to good versus bad, darkness versus light. It would be comforting, in a way, to let herself slip into thinking they are 100% right. She's blameless. He was the aggressor.

She's still the one that pulled the trigger.]

He made his choice. And I made mine. And it resulted in his death. I could have walked away. I probably should have.

[She shakes her head.]

You're right. There's nothing wrong with curiosity. I should have been more careful, all the same. I was a symbol of something back home. I should have known that people would want to use that for their own ends, even then.

[She knows that now, of course. She knows this idea intimately, as intimately as she knows that half the bones in her body aren't her, as intimately as she knows those metal scars that glowed through her cheeks the first couple of weeks when she was revived were a constant reminder that she was no longer truly human.]

[A symbol for something, back home.

They twist their fingers into their sleeves, saying nothing for a long moment. Curbing their tongue and thoughts from the immediate, biting retort that swells in their throat. That maybe people shouldn't have pinned such a thing on her in the first place.]

...People will build expectations of you, when you are a symbol. Unrealistic assumptions of what you are. So you didn't lay down and take someone's blackmail.

I still fail to see how that could be your fault. If the symbol they wanted was not you, then they shouldn't have imposed it upon you.

Commander Shepard | OTA (will match formats!)

A. I may not live to see our glory, but I will gladly join the fight

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B. And when our children tell our story...

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C. They'll tell the story of tonight

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