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.

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[Like most people, they'll be in the subthreads, with CW warnings in the header if needed!]

[You don’t want to be here.

You’re standing behind a truck, the hover function off as it idles in place. There’s nothing around you but miles and miles and miles of sand, sun, and cactus. At the very least, you’re not alone.

There’s a man with you, one you don’t know very well, one you’re trying not to get to know at all. There’s a tattoo on his arm - a winged skull gripping a padlock in its teeth - but it seems more like a brand. Pretty sure that might be the point of it. It’s a sign of your loyalties, everyone says, a sign you’re proven yourself worthy to the rest of ‘em.

It’s only a matter of time before they decide you’re ready for it. People are already saying this is your chance to prove yourself. If the deal goes well, you could get that tattoo as soon as tomorrow.

You’re only fifteen.

This isn’t your first rodeo, but it’s your first time where they’ve given you a gun. Where they’ve told you this was your chance, where you were sent off with a man who looks at you like a liability and where you feel dread sinking into the stomach. The cargo in the back is precious, you know. They’re worth a lot of money, worth more than your life, and what you also know? Is that the drop off being planned for here, miles and miles from the gorge and miles and miles from the border - it’s suspicious. It sets your teeth on edge.

The gun shoved into the back of your jeans is a heavy weight, but no heavier than the realization you’re going to have to use it.

The man you’re is just as suspicious as you are, has made that more than clear by the time the other crew rolls up. There’s five of them all told, all but one of them armed. The man that doesn’t carry a gun is the most suspicious of them all, a bundle of slime wrapped up in clean, crisp clothing that doesn’t quite fit the desert. It’s not a suit, ain’t nearly classy enough, but it’s clear this is a man who doesn’t think he’ll be getting his hands dirty.

You pull back as they talk - this everything?

Yeah, of course

- but you keep your eyes on the men with guns. They seem...nervous. Antsy. They’re waiting for something. A signal, a sign, a reason to put you down. One of them is twitchier than the rest, shifting the pulse rifle in his grip, fingers getting too close to the trigger. No discipline at all.

No subtlety at all.

The twitchy man twitches one time too many, and you reach for the gun you’ve tucked away out of sight.

(You’re only fifteen. You’ve never done this before. You’ve only ever taken pot shots at cans, back on the roof of the body shop.)

The bullet goes through the twitchy man’s right eye. The next goes through the palm of the man next to him, who yowls as he drops his gun. Your next shot misses, but by the time the clip is empty and the man you came with catches on those five men are dead.

Aw, hell, McCree/i>, he says, as you stare at where an eye used to be. He whistles.

Tomorrow you’ll be getting that tattoo.]

[This one is too familiar, too...comfortable. Gobbet feels right at home in this memory. It's a run. It's literally a shadowrun. Here he is with his team - the new blood who hasn't earned his stripes yet. There's a payday at the end, if he plays his cards right.]

[Here he is making decisions about who lives and who dies.]

[He will live, even if they have to die to make it happen.]

You're a good shot.

[She offers, settling beside McCree.]

Had to be good at somethin'.

[It's strange, seeing it all over again. It's not something he would have envisioned happening, and it's something that happened so, so long ago -

He's not sure if everyone can see it, feel it, makes it worse or not. There are so many people here who have experienced such fantastical, otherwordly, terrible things, and he was just a dumb kid who got in over his head.

Still.

No point in dwelling on it.

He shoots Gobbet a lopsided grin.]

Think back then it was more luck than anythin' else.

[Uh-huh. Luck.]

[Gobbet shakes her head with a breathy laugh.]

You're allergic to praise, huh, Cowboy? "Lucky" is getting a headshot when you're blind-firing into a crowd. "Skill" is shooting a man's eye out and - more importantly - knowing when to do so.

[Gobbet never practiced on cans. Her practice had all been on live targets who were charging her down in the heat of battle. Maybe that's why she was such a crappy shot.]

'Specially when it's your first real kill. I'm total trash with a gun. Never stopped me from using one, but still.

I wouldn't say I'm allergic to praise.

[Except he is. Praise is - it's not like he's never got any. It's just never been something he's been comfortable with.

What's there to praise when all you're good at is putting people in the ground? Anybody could do that. McCree's just...

He's just lucky. He's only ever been in the wrong places at the right time. There's nothing praiseworthy about that.]

It's just not like I was intendin' on takin' him out like that. 'Sides, shootin' at shit was the only thing there really was to do when you're weren't sellin' the guns off. Knowin' how a gun's gonna react is half the battle of aimin' it.

[He tilts his head, considering Gobbet. It's a blatant attempt to shift the conversation, but - ]

Y'got one with you here, or did you show up empty handed?

Nah, I came empty handed.

[Gobbet shakes her head sadly. If only she'd been lucky enough to show up with a gun. It would have made several encounters - namely a lot of monkey business - way, way easier to handle.]

Like I said, though, I was a trash shot anyway. I rely on spells and summoning more than bullets as a rule. Gun Show and Ace took care of the firepower on my team. We also had a decker, a rigger, and a ghoul with a sword. A real motley crew, come to think of it.

[She chuckles, remembering her last team fondly. They had their issues from time to time, but they were solid. Admittedly she misses running with a crew. McCree would make a good street sam, she notes, not for the first time. Maybe he would consider running the shadows of Enso and the surrounding isles with her. Maybe she should get on the whole "forming a shadowrunning team" thing.]

[McCree whistles - he couldn't imagine showing up in this place unarmed, not considering the absolute shitshow it was at the monkey's camp.]

Y'got magic where you're from, too? [Unless spells and summoning are more unfamiliar slang like decker and rigger. Magic seems much more common than he'd ever considered, and it almost feels like there's so much he's missing out on.]

Seems like almost everyone here's got somethin' like that, but there wasn't...really nothin' like that back home.

[There were dragons. Sort of. McCree doesn't understand the dragons, doesn't know what they are or where they came from, but he knows that glittering green isn't the same as what he's seen people here do already.]

Well, my world didn't always have magic. Something happened that kind of dumped it on modern society all at once. Was kind of a shock, I bet. I wasn't alive when it first happened.

[Gobbet tilts her head, considering the Awakening and what she knew of it. It's not like she went to school or anything, but she knew as much as the average sixth world inhabitant. Just, not the scholarly intricacies of the history. After all, she was an ork. Orks weren't around before the Awakening. No metahumans existed until they very suddenly did.]

Magic is pretty cool though. It can get you out of a pinch and doesn't require as much precision or fussing as guns. Except for here - it's super fussy here. I can't do a lot of what I used to be able to, and what I can do I have to limit and recharge. So maybe a gun would be a little more useful, if you're willing to blow favors on ammo all the time.

[Gobbet holds up a hand to show McCree as she speaks. In her palm, a sickly green mist swirls, weaving between her fingers but never spilling out past her hand. It's not a full cast, so it doesn't cost her any energy. But she does have to concentrate to control it. Her grip on magic has been...slipping.]

[Dumped on modern society all at once. That's not unheard of - weren't most things that shook it all up unexpected? Nobody expected the Crisis, nobody was expecting the defunct Omnica factories to start churning out machines built for war.

It's a tale as old as time. Nobody expects it to happen, so nobody knows how to internalize it and history fumbles to explain it.]

Well, if my experience is any indication, I reckon most people were more'n a little confused.

[Or they were scared. People were always scared of what they didn't understand.]

Not like favors are much of a limited resource. Whatever it is about tellin' 'em stories seems to mean they ain't goin' to be topped out, ever.

[He tilts his head, looking at the green mist. He wonders what it does. He also wonder why it's always green.

Green is so basic. So simple. A staple of the world - so why is it always so otherwordly?]

But maybe I'm just biased because I'd be useless without a gun.

Well yeah, stories are definitely not a limited resource. But I'd rather have the favors for food and equipment. I guess when I've got all that I want on those fronts, I'll be a little less stingy with them, though.

[Gobbet shrugs. If she had a gun, she'd be more willing to use favors on ammo. She'd consider it a necessary expense. So she doesn't pursue the subject any further. Instead, she zeroes in on the last thing he says.]

You don't have any skills that aren't "shoot"? I find that hard to believe.

[Aren't cowboys like. Jacks of all trades? Don't the know how to ranch and farm and survive while they wander down a lonely road on horseback into a picturesque sunset while a single tumbleweed trails across the screen for dramatic effect?]

[He's only fifteen.]

[Gabe was only eighteen...months. He was eighteen months and he looks on the cusp of eighteen years as he stalks around the edges of the memory, watching the scene play out. He won't pretend he understands half of what transpires. Some sort of...exchange? Something important. Something mutual. Like a deal. The specifics escape him, but the kid catches his eye. Most kids do.]

[Normal. Normal. Normal.]

[What about this is normal?]

[He jumps at the crack of a gunshot, despite himself, flinching just enough to make it obvious that he's never seen something like this shake out before. And despite the way his gut pinches when he looks at the cratered, cherry-pit red incident where an eye used to be, he can't seem to look away.]

[Fifteen. Fifteen, and he was shooting people.]

You killed him. [It's a whisper: half-stunned, half-admiring.] You killed him in one shot.

[It's been 12 years since then - but it doesn't feel like it. It's the oldest memory that's been dragged back up to the surface, but it's always been one of his clearest.

Taking a life is hard to forget, least up until you get used to it. But that's - that's not something you should be getting used to. But here he is, and here they are, in the vaguely shaped memory of a desert.]

I did.

[He rolls his shoulders, tapping his fingers against his wrist.

He wasn't supposed to have killed anyone, that day. But he did, and the boss was proud of him.]

Better for him that he didn't survive, as I don't reckon he could've afforded to replace that eye.

[The admiration sticks to him funny, pushes him off balance. That sort of awe...

It's not really typical, is it? It's abnormal.]

[He doesn't even sound sorry. He doesn't even sound - he just sounds like sure, yeah, I killed him. No big, right? He's older now. Maybe he's had time to process it. Maybe he's had time to live with it. But he doesn't sound like it tears him up inside, not like it might have torn up the kid who'd only ever shot cans prior to then.]

In the eye. Without even thinking.

[He sounds a bit too much like a little kid enthusing about the latest John Wayne movie, more than anything.]

Just - bang. Crack shot.

[The time to be sorry was a long, long time ago. Twelve years ago, really, and he...

He was tore up about it for a while. A long, long while and he couldn't rightly say when he stopped feeling sorry about it. Not sure if it was before or after Gabriel Reyes dragged him off of Route 66, when killing became something the UN let him get away with, or if it was when he was still just a boy in New Mexico who had gotten in over his head.

In the end, it didn't matter much, and now here he is in a recreation of the first time he saw a man die by his hands.]

Weren't much time for thinkin', in case you didn't notice.

[The reaction is - well. It's odd. Doesn't seem like the kid has exactly grasped the gravity of it all - or if they do realize it, they don't care.

Neither one is really worse than the other, is it?]

Take it you haven't met a lotta marksmen in your life, huh?

[Or seen a lot of people die.]

[Gabe laughs, at that. In your life. No. None, in fact. He's only seen one person die, and that's the night he'd always remember, the night he would never let anyone else forget. No matter how eager they were to forget in earnest, he would never allow them to. Never.]

[But that - that was a slow death. A pained death. There was no bombast, no fanfare.]

[Maybe he would have minded a little less, if it was something as fantastic as that.]

You could say that, I guess.

[He jerks his chin in McCree's direction, still grinning.]

But neither had you before then, it looks like.

[At this point, McCree would rather a slow death. Something...peaceful. Calm. It wouldn't be the death he deserves, but that means it's what he wants.

He's thought about his end too much, probably. But he knows it's coming. He can't avoid it forever.]

I could, you guess.

[It's said with a snort and a roll of his eyes, a forced sort of nonchalance.]

Nah, but I knew it was comin'. Weren't any way I was gettin' out without having some bullets spent.

[Not just that deal, no. Deadlock was for life - that sort of festering disease growing unchecked while the world was caught up in the Crisis never let anyone go if it could help it.

McCree got lucky on his first deal and he got lucky when Gabriel Reyes stormed the Gorge. Eventually, that luck'll run dry, but he's old enough now to accept that.

For the most part.]

You sure didn't look like someone who knew.

[He looked shocked. Startled. Younger than Gabe looks now, but older than he was, by far, when he breathed his last.]

You looked like someone afraid. Like someone who didn't know what was gonna happen. You looked like you weren't ready for any of it.

Y'can know something's comin' and still not be ready for it.

[He's not- not really sure why he wants to defend himself. It's not going to make anything better, not going to change anything about why his solution to things being less than ideal was to run away and kill people for a living instead of doing the "normal" thing.]

I'd been Deadlock for years already by that point. Wasn't much reason for me to believe things weren't gonna go anyway else even if I hoped for otherwise.

If you were hoping, why’d you still go for the kill? You could have shot him anywhere. Couldn’t you? Shot like that, I bet you could’ve.

[Now that there’s even a vague inclination that Jesse might want to defend his choice, Gabe has a target. Maybe he’s jot as good a shot, but he sure as hell is going to try.]

[hust because he can.]

[In this world, it's kill or be killed.]

Could have, but what would've that gotten me? I'd've been the one lyin' dead in the desert an' I wasn't too keen on that at the time.

[Now, though, he thinks it'd be easier to just let himself go.]

You know that for sure? You didn’t even try to spare the bastard.

[Kill or be killed, indeed. Maybe Gabe lacks the insight of someone who’s ever been in that situation for real, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to be a petulant shit about it. It’s what he’s best at.]

What kind of kid did that make you?

[McCree huffs - not quite a laugh, but he can't believe this kid is serious right now. Either it's willful ignorance or complete naivety, and... He's not sure which would be worse.

Perhaps naivety. It's probably...good that there are some kids out here who haven't learned the harsher lessons in life.]

Shit, kid, what do you want me to say? Yeah, I killed him. I've got a lot of blood on my hands and I don't got the luxury of a re-do.

[He shakes his head.]

Guess that would've made me a pretty bad kid.

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ungrieved - 2018-01-11 14:51 (UTC) - Expand

[The statue is an eyesore.

Not, necessarily, because the man it’s modeled after is one or anything. Jack Morrison is about as close to the de facto idealized man as you could get. But - but there’s something about it that seems off. Unsettling.

You think it’s because that man is very much alive, and you think he doesn’t like you very much. He certainly hasn’t made much effort to get to know you, but you don’t know if that’s because he’s busy, he’s mad at Reyes for bringing you on, or because there’s something about you that he sees and doesn’t like.

You’re banking on the third one. He seems to make sure he always has some free time, and you couldn’t blame him. You don’t like yourself very much, either.

You’re sitting in front of that godforsaken statue, in fuckin’ Switzerland, with a cigarette between your lips. There’s a tablet in your lap but it’s ignored for now as you just…Try to relax. As you take a breather. Life has been nothing but nonstop going and going and going since Gabriel Reyes turned up like a summer storm and ripped apart everything you had grown to know. (You’re not sure if you appreciate that yet or not. It’s only been a few months.)

You let out a breath, feeling a bit like a dragon, and before you know it Jack Morrison is there.

Well.

He’s always there.

But this time he’s not just pushing through the courtyard, talking to anyone else, or holding a tablet or a mug looking like death warmed over. This time he sees you, and he actually makes an effort to walk towards you.

He looks tired.

Aren’t you a bit young to be smoking? isn’t the question you were expecting, least not sounding so - so genuinely concerned, like smoking isn’t the least of your worries right now.

Those are the first words Jack Morrison, the man people say saved humanity, has said to you one one one.

You laugh, and you don’t even know what’s funny.]

[All in all this has been one of your easiest missions yet, but a lot of that is thanks to Genji. The man, angry and standoffish as he may be, is a good agent. Efficient. Silent.

All things that make it easy to clear out a base with nobody calling for backup. Working with him is a treat, even if he doesn’t seem to appreciate you’re charm. (Nobody appreciates your charm. Everyone in Blackwatch and Overwatch take all of this so seriously. The job’s going to be done regardless of how you handle it, so why do you have to be so miserable on missions? Doesn’t make any sense.)

Still, all that aside, everything is going smoothly up until you finally get your hands on what you were sent in after. Some suspicious weaponry had been showing up in Russia and South Korea, all tracing back to some little operation out of Japan. There were speculations the Shimada were involved - or at least that’s what they told you to tell Genji to get the man to cooperate, which you is what you told him instead - and now you’re here.

And now you know that little operation ain’t as little as you thought, fake Shimada associations or no. You might have never seen any of the action in purpose, but you’re more than familiar with the omnics from the war. You know what a Bastion unit looks like. You’ve seen the recordings of OR units. You know what their guns look like, and that’s what you see when you finally get into their warehouse-slash-workshop. Piles and piles of mangled omnic guts and guns they’ve been in the middle of repurposing.

It explains a lot, but the worst part of it all is - you can tell by the way some of the parts have been mangled and bent and ruined? Not all of these bodies came from omnics that were killed anywhere near Japan. Or South Korea. Or Russia. That’s not the work of Volskaya’s mechs - the destruction would be more absolute, the guns would be impossible to salvage - which means all of the crushed metal? Signs of Crusader work.

These omnics are from Germany.]

Well, shit.

[You run a hand over your face, already knowing Genji is behind you even though his appearance is silent.]

Reyes ain’t gonna like this.

[Genji - mostly metal, all of his skin scarred, with his mouth and nose covered - seems to agree with you, though he keeps himself quiet. You’re used to it, by now.

All he does is look at you - with his stupid eyes that are glowing red, why was that necessary, before he turns. His eyebrows draw in tighter than usual, and you wonder what he sees in this room.

How much of himself does he see in those omnics?

You could ask. You want to ask.

But you also don’t fancy being stabbed.

So, instead, you let out a gusty sigh. ]

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[MU] - DECEMBER STORYTELLING / MEMORY SHARE

Jesse McCree | OTA

1; the good [death, eye & hand trauma/gore]

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2; the bad

3; the ugly