[MU] - DECEMBER STORYTELLING / MEMORY SHARE

[lifeaftr_mods]

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.

Comments

[want_to_belong]

So you've gone around different universes?

[Kind of hard to believe, even after being pulled here. It was the sort of radical concept that only happened in movies and video games.

He went silent for a moment, thinking about it. She was making an assumption that there were two, so there was only one or two of them. That meant they had to be made for some specific purpose. And they were more... unique.]

Do you know why you were made?

[attheclocktower]

I don't know if I'd really call it "going." It was mostly just the Tower.

[There'd been that bit at the end, where Zo had linked them to everyone's universes, to find the people who Ruana had sent away. But there hadn't been much to see. They'd all been destroyed.

As for his other question.... the grimace on her face and the hesitation are already pretty good indicators on their own that it's nothing good.]

... yeah, I do.

There's a group on the worlds I came from, called The Organization. I still don't... really understand what they were all trying to do, but it wasn't good. And I know, for their plans, they needed a special weapon called the Keyblade. It can only be held by certain people.

[Briefly, she holds her arm out, summoning Kingdom Key in a flash of light to show him - it probably doesn't look too unlike Noctis summoning one of his weapons; not identical, but similar. After a few seconds, she dismisses it again.]

I was one of the ways they were trying to be able to control it.

[want_to_belong]

Ah. A weapon then.

[Again, there's a definite lack of energy there, but it's not aimed at her. It was a little too close to home. Why couldn't anyone ever make a clone because they wanted to cuddle and love them? At least then maybe he could feel like a person.

Instead he constantly remembered how close he came to being and empty shell. If that was even true. He had to wonder if there was anything left of a person under the MT armor.

...But he wasn't alone here. Whatever his own issues were, he didn't hold any resentment towards Xion, and he didn't want her to hurt. He wasn't even sure how he felt about himself or what he even was, but after being lost in his own thoughts for a bit he tried to scrape together some words for her. It wasn't easy. It was like one person in quicksand trying to lift the other up.]

Well, it doesn't matter what they made you for. You're still... you.

[attheclocktower]

Yeah.

[She's starting to wonder. At least, she's pretty sure by now that... some of what she's saying is hitting some personal buttons. And it's for that reason that she wants... to say something more. Some little light of hope in there.]

It's funny because... for a long time I didn't really have to think about it like this. The Tower... it wasn't a nice place. And all of us were trapped there, trying to find a way out. It didn't matter who we were, replica or normal person or god or... anything. So there, I didn't have to think about where I came from or what I was or what kind of future I'd have back home. I was just Xion.

And when the people who matter find out... they don't care. It doesn't change how they feel about you, at least in any way that's bad. [She reaches around her neck, pulling off a small embroidered pendant, and as she offers it for him to see, she shakes her sleeve back a bit, to show a bracelet.] My... my dad and mom, they gave me these for my birthday.

[Her actual mom and dad, not the person who made her. The people who care for her more than anything else in the world.

The bracelet is made of tiny seashells, and the pendant has some kind of logo embroidered on the front, while on the back are the words, "For my darling girl. All my love, E."]

[want_to_belong]

Your parents?

[He sounded surprised. Maybe he shouldn't have. He had parents, after all. Or did. Who knew if they were alive anymore, but it was best not to dwell on that.]

[With a sigh] Yeah. There's a lot of good people in the world.

[He wasn't going to elaborate about himself. That was a pickle jar he planned on keeping closed. The people who needed to know knew, and that was all that mattered.

Until Gladio showed up.

Still, there were things about this he didn't understand. He furrowed his brows.]

You were stuck in a tower?

[Was it like Gralea?]

[attheclocktower]

Yeah. Like I said, it was a lot like this place. People would be pulled from their worlds, their lives, to it by the people in charge. I can try to tell the whole story, but...

[She waves a vague hand at the island around them. The story might not come out how she wants it, right now. If it came out at all.]

It was called the Tower of Animus, and it... it wasn't as nice as here, honestly.

[Monsun would have fit right in as an Animus floor, but all these other islands were much more peaceful.]

It was really tall though. Like... over a hundred floors, and that was just the part we could reach easily. The admin floors were below us, but there were even more of them. And it had this technology called a glamour, which... let it make a lot of impossible things look and feel possible.

[A volcano indoors, with a glacier one floor up, the outdoors indoors, and that was just for starters.]

[want_to_belong]

Oh, I thought you meant back at home.

[Still, these others worlds people were getting taken to...

His voice slowly returned to normal as he talked more and got away from the subject of replicas.]

That sounds kind of ominous. Do you think it could be related to this place? People being taken from home and dropped somewhere, it's kind of alike.

[attheclocktower]

[Xion frowns thoughtfully.]

I guess it could, depending on what you mean. If you mean that what happened at Animus... like caused this, or the admins there are working with the Storyteller or something, then no. It shouldn't be.

[She's not going to say the idea had never occurred to her. The amount of mental manipulation in the Tower could be intense, but it was out of power, and if Zo had managed to succeed... then he and Ruana should finally be at peace. The pieces didn't fit.]

But I know there are other places like them too. A city called Hinoto-Ri. This place called... the Facility, I think? Universes that decide to pull lots of people from other ones for different reasons.

[want_to_belong]

Could it really just be a coincidence that a bunch of places are doing the exact same thing? I mean, there has to be some sort of reason behind it all. And...

[He paused, shaking his head.]

Back home, it's not like we ever met 'travelers from another dimension'. But now that we're here, it's not just other people from other worlds that have been brought here, but people who have been brought to other places, too. It's... all gotta be connected somehow.

[He pursed his lips, thinking.]

Maybe it's gods playing some sort of game. ...Wouldn't be the first time we've been yanked around by gods.

[attheclocktower]

It's not all exactly the same thing. They have different reasons, at least. Unless the Storyteller was part of experiments to create immortality and brought us all here because they're lonely.

[It doesn't seem so implausible to her. If there are really innumerable universes out there. But then again, with the Kingdom Hearts universe already being comprised of multiple worlds, she'd had her foot in that kind of idea since she was "born."]

Well, if what we've heard is true, it sounds like that's the case here, at least.

[want_to_belong]

Wait, do you know how and why you were dragged to the other place? Are you sure?

[Could be important to learn. Even if it wasn't true, it was still something to take into account.]

cw:discussion of child experimentation, attempted suicide, slight emetophobia

[attheclocktower]

Yeah. I'm sure.

[It was the last thing they really found out before they left. She's still nervous, but maybe if she doesn't try to frame it as a story, it won't get... twisted? She hopes.]

The world that we were on... all of the people there had these abilities called psionics. They were different for each person, but... at the Tower of Animus, they were... using kids. For experiments.

[In the end... Xion's hopes are proved both false and true. He'll be able to see the Tower, a huge, hyperfuturistic structure in the middle of a city. Of children, so many children, all with different abilities - making fire, astral projection, healing... Children kept in rooms and used in experiments. To what end? Well...]

They wanted to find out how to create immortality, by separating the soul from the body. And Ruana was their favorite, because she could absorb the abilities and... and memories of others.

[God, she hadn't realized it until she said it aloud, but it sounds so horribly, horribly familiar.]

They... they managed to use this machine, to get the experiment to work, but something went wrong. Her soul was separated from her body but the souls of everything else, all life... they were pulled into her at the same time. So she was the only thing left.

[He'll get a vague impression here, of a huge machine taking up a whole room. Of a scared little girl and boy, of her soul being ripped out of her, pulled up and out through her mouth, of the same process (though much more violent) taking place all around the room, around the world-

Then nothing.]

For a long time, she was alone. She tried to kill herself at least once, but no matter what, she couldn't.

I don't know when things changed, or how. But... when she slept she was able to project herself, and went to all different universes, where she saw people like us. So I guess... in the end, she was lonely.

She split off parts of herself to make different people, to help run the tower. An admin [Dax], a scientist [Jason], someone to repair things [Riki] and the person she'd cared about most [Zo, or as he'd once been known, Zachary].

Once she did that... she brought her favorites to the Tower... by repeating the same experiment that made her. We were immortal, at least back on our home universes, but those universes were destroyed. Zo's psionics let him manipulate barriers, so I guess he was able to reach the ones in our worlds, and bring us to the Tower.

[He'll only get bits and flashes here, the three years of the Tower's operation under Ruana condensed down to a few seconds. Of hundreds of different people. Of "games" and experiments. Of Dax's failed coup, Jason's treachery, of the glamour failure, of the residents - those hundreds of people - organizing and fighting and-]

It took us a long time to find out, to figure out what what had really happened. But we did, and... Ruana wasn't happy. She didn't want to be alone again, even if it meant killing us all. Zo, he... he stopped her. He sent us home. Only I ended up here instead.

[The memory dissolves. Xion pauses, sighs.]

Figures that one would work.

[want_to_belong]

I...

[What does one even say to all of that? Some things he didn't have enough details to know what they meant. Others sounded implausible: how could someone split themselves up? Unless they were a god.

It was a crazy story but he wouldn't call her a liar. He frowned.]

That all sounds... [Pursing his lips, he shook his head and glanced down.] pretty awful.

People...

[Though what he wanted to say wouldn't exactly be controversial, it struck close to home and stuck in his throat for a moment.]

People should make kids just to use them for experiments.

[attheclocktower]

[It hits close to home for the both of them. Xion stares down at her hands in her lap, fingers interlocking tightly.]

Nobody should be made just to be used.

[She takes a deep breath.]

Sorry. I know it's... it wasn't easy to see, so... I know it probably wasn't easy to hear either.

[want_to_belong]

Woulda been harder to live it.

[No reason to apologize to him. He kept his sights on the ground.]

Sorry you had to go through it. I, don't think anything like that is going on here.

[Not as far as he'd seen, if that was any consolation.]

[attheclocktower]

That's... good to hear, really.

[She looks back up at him, smiling a bit.]

I was getting that feeling, from what I saw. There's not as much... happening here. It feels like we're being left alone more, on the whole.

[Still, it's nice to get the confirmation.]

[want_to_belong]

I don't know what's going on, but if we can just find a safe place to be, I think everything will be all right. Just need food and water and shelter...

[He continued, working on listing the positives about the place and how it'd be okay.]

It's not so bad here. Sometimes it's downright peaceful.