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Priority Log - Part 2
Log 06 Priority (Part II)
Still the Big Screen Car
The last two weeks have been a busy time at FONY Records! Maybe you've been working diligently on your upcoming projects — or maybe you've been fighting the sense that something is wrong. That this life, whether it's better or worse than before, is not your own.
Either way, passengers will finally receive a new objective on their phones...
From here on out, characters can regain their real memories. They can do so randomly, but the most reliable way is to work with another passenger: they will know that by touching foreheads (yes, headbutting counts) for pairs, or huddling very closely for groups, they will unlock some memories for one or all of them — of course, it also allows the other person to see and feel everything play out, as though they lived it themselves.
It's memshare time!
As passengers regain their memories, their AU lives will start to fade. Production crews disappear, texts from your parents delete themselves, your favorite coffee shop is suddenly empty... Because you can't have both.
At least one character will need to reject the AU in order for everyone to progress; there is no minimum comment count. Characters may go both routes, but should ultimately prioritize one for the AC Poll.
Remembering
As characters regain the memories of their real lives, all semblance of their fake ones will rapidly disappear. And choosing to remember comes with side effects: passengers are overtaken by a fierce chill as the source of the cold finally presents itself. The shadows in the empty buildings around them start to stretch out. These shades collect in huge swathes — and shape themselves into sharp, spindly arms and fingers. They'll grab at whoever passes, leaving them cold and constricted, making it hard to remember what's happened and trying to drag them back into the illusions of the AU. However, when these shadows have manifested, they're also vulnerable: they can be dissolved by using a strong light, like a fire, flashlight, or stage light. Even sunlight will do the trick, but physically resisting the shadows will grow more and more difficult as they sap warmth from everything they touch.
For those less physically inclined, the shades have one more weakness: real, happy memories. By focusing on something that brought them past comfort, however small, characters can drive off the shades little by little.
This force controlling the AU clearly lives in shadows. Characters can weaken it by confronting these shades, in which case they will find themselves alone with their memories and a ghostly, empty city of Danaca.
Resisting
But maybe you don't want to remember—maybe your life in Danaca is too good to give up, and you'd rather have this even if it's not real. Unfortunately, once the illusion starts to shatter, there's no stopping the cracks from spreading.Characters that don't regain their memories through contact with other passengers (whether intentionally or unintentionally), will still find their fake identities starting to fade away, but their real identities won't be able to fill the gaps. Instead, they'll find themselves... hollow. Devoid of personality, hopes and dreams. Empty.
...And in that empty space, something else might slip in. The steady collapsing of Danaca has left plenty of strong emotions and ghosts hovering in the air, and passengers might find themselves embodying a powerful current of despair or anger. Or perhaps one of the false denizens might inhabit them (Chadsef, anyone?). Contact with another passenger might also ignite enough memory to return their personality, but it might also give them the wrong one; they might start acting like someone from their memories instead, such as a childhood friend (or enemy).
Regardless of the scenario, there is one common thread: an innate desire for contact with other passengers. Though they won't remember why, passengers will eventually be driven to reclaim their original selves through memshare with other characters. Whether they get everything back before they leave is up to you!
OOC Notes
AC Check is up! The deadline to submit AC is December 1st, 11:59 p.m. EST. Please note this is a day extended as we've pushed the log back a day, AC schedule overall will remain as normal.
Memshare: To add a little spice, memories do not need to be limited by your character's canon point. That is to say, sharing scenes from your character's future will also count as memshare.
Continuing Memloss: Characters may or may not regain all their memories prior to leaving the car, player's choice. The memshare mechanic will no longer be in effect, however players are free to naturally regain memories over time.
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Meanwhile, in an instant,
It's Imperial Year 1176 and the reign of King Lambert Egitte Blaiddyd, your father, comes to an abrupt end.
Because as it turns out—the finest knights of the land are still only human. Their blades don't even scrape free of their scabbards before the ambush hits. Some die in the first, shouting struggle. It's the unlucky ones that survive until fire catches through the camp, eating through canvas, carriages, carnage.
The stench of blood is sickly on its own, and it smells worse once it's burning. Smoke has a flavor. As you watch Glenn die, the scent reminds you of leather treated over a flame. It hits your nose, coats your throat; acrid and eerie-sweet. Coppery. Human. Glenn, who was quicker, stronger, nobler than them all, the gleaming future of Faerghus, has an expression so ugly with misery as he goes.
You watch your friend finally fall slack, but there is no racing instinct to survive—no crying or anguished farewells. Your thoughts hit distantly through the shock. Glenn's eyes are glassy now, but his face is agony, his body mangled. You see more overtaken by the flames: friends, tutors, family. Your mother's carriage is swallowed whole in the smoke. A knight who used to sneak you sugared fruits scrapes near your feet, begging for his life, but you cannot even offer him comfort and just stand there frozen through the last of his convulsions.
You stand there through it all, watching.
You take in every rotten face. All the blood, cracked and dry from the heat. You listen to each wretched, pleading word from everyone that falls, because even the bravest man doesn't really want to die for anyone, and they all have so much to say about it, and you're the only one left to listen.
Your father, at least, has the decency not to beg. The king of Faerghus's last words to you, his only son, are not a noble creed, but a scream for vengeance before his head is lopped clean off his neck, a rushed and bloody execution. It isn't as hard to watch as you expect—it doesn't seem real. It's incomprehensible that the strongest man you've ever known could be brought to kneel so easily. It does not make sense that the things you loved and that loved you back could simply cease to be.
You look at the men setting the flames, and dutifully learn those faces too.
"Avenge us! Those who killed us... Tear them apart! Destroy them all!"
It's your father's version of a goodbye, a promise made, and it should give you strength. But a father's words are not a shield. Oaths won't stop a sword. And with no family or friends or knights left to die for you, the blade bears down on you next, and cuts just as easily. ]
Happy Birthday to a man who murders women. Not kills, murders.
She knows death and she knows betrayal.
That doesn't prepare her for the fire. The blitz. The way fright freezes this too small body as she watches a tutor lose his head. A tent consumed by flames, the shrieks of horses as their manes and coats follow suit. Glenn, the one-man salvation, the pride and joy, now spilling blood and screaming, his flesh crackling into leathery scabs.
They save her father for last.
His father.
He calls for vengeance. It's on her shoulders now. She has to claim the price every cutthroat present must pay. She's only a child.
The sword swings, and her Father is in two parts. One rolls over the sour ground and blinks still. The other slumps and bleeds.
The blade comes for her next—]
Hhhsh!
[Toko seizes in Dimitri's arms. She almost falls loose of him, but snags his silly leather jacket and stamps her feet wider, determined not to bowl over.
Instead, she wheezes. Clings to him. Folds her face into the crook of his shoulder and attempts to stem the flow of tears. It wasn't her family. It wasn't real.
No no no. It had been real. Just far away and long ago.]
...D-dimitri... [Deep breath. A sniffle. Her fingers twist tighter in the unyielding fabric. There's only one thing to say, and it hardly means anything at all.]
I'm...I'm s-sorry...
fun fact i didn't get this notif until after his birthday
But the memory he experiences is so far from that—besides the jittery bit, anyway. There's his—her—friend Komaru, the first, real and true friend that she has to protect, even if it means throwing her thin body on top of a stupid game controller while a grown man threatens her, his voice loud with anger and panic.
(Dimitri—his own feelings, not Toko's—wishes he could break his other arm. That would shut him up.)
In a world that's dying... no, one that's practically dead, Toko decides that she cannot lose any more. That she won't make that choice. (In the end, she may lose one or the other anyway, but what does it make her if she gives up before she even tries?) She raises her voice and demands both her Master (?) and her friend, because it isn't acceptable to resign herself to either.
It is selfish, and brave, and the mark of someone much stronger than he is. It's the strength to save the people you love, with deep, irrational ferocity—her determination and trembling fear swells in him just before—
The window shatters, concrete spraying through the air and crashing against the floor, and he's suddenly gasping, back in the present, snapping his head to where Komaru should be. ]
—Wait!
[ But she's not there, of course. It's the set of Twin Creeks again, and Toko is holding onto him with startling closeness. Another vague swathe of memory returns to him now, his blank acceptance of the circumstances slowly filling back in with his own personality and soul. Toko's crying jerks him back to reality, blinking down at her as she clings close.
...His own memory. She must have seen it too, just as he'd viewed hers. His voice returns slowly. ]
No, it's— [ He's not certain anyone has ever cried for his sake; it leaves him scrambling for words. ] You don't need to apologize.
[ She's not the one who wiped his family out. And he's intimately aware that it's... an unpleasant thing to live through. His brow furrows, not well-versed in how to comfort another; he decides on resting a hand against her back, gentle, his tone dropping into something softer. ]
...I'm sorry you had to see that.
perhaps reliving the death of his family was not an ideal birthday present
[Absurd. It's insane anyone should weather a thing like that and live. She only got the echoes and they cut her deep enough to fester.
Toko peels free of his chest. Wipes at the running tears with one palm, jostling her glasses out of place.]
I can't...I m-mean, I knew what life must be like in those conditions. [She almost says "the olden days", but that isn't her history, no such country as Fodlin or Elmyra or whatever the hell it was. None of this magic crest buffoonery, either.] But I just...Why? Wh-what for? The throne? A grudge?
[Toko makes no effort to hide her disgust. Regardless of the reason, it was pure evil. Is it any better than the workings of Despair?]
How did you survive?
merry christmas!
She is kinder than he expected. A better friend than most.
His memories return to him in a jumbled soup where he has to pick out the relevant pieces, but after a few seconds of thought the picture does become clear to him again. ]
It was... one of my father's knights. He was out some distance during the attack, and managed to return in time to save me.
[ He nearly wasn't—it was sheer chance that he hadn't died of his injuries before Gustave had rescued him, and overall his voice is dry of any gratitude. It would have been better to die than to live on as a sole survivor. Better dead than infinitely despairing.
But the sentiment is unbefitting a knight or a prince, which he finally remembers that he is. His grief hardens into something else, an angry furrow of his brow and tense, heated tenor in his voice. ]
...And there is no reason for any such brutality. [ He still doesn't know why it happened, and it doesn't matter. No excuse would ever sate him. It would never appease the dead, their anguished souls. ] There are people who care nothing for the suffering of others, or the lives of good men and women. People who take for their own agendas, with little regard for how many are trampled along the way.
[ At the very least, he survived so he could kill anyone whoever did this, and anyone else who acted along the same, cruel vein. His father's demands have never rung any less clearly in his ears. ]
Happy new year's!!!
[Toko is terrible at reading people. You have to spend time with them to do that, and she's spent most of her life scuttling into corners for peace. But this sudden reticence, the flat affect reserved for fearsome acts: this one tell, she knows.
Princes and knights may run higher risks than most of bloodshed. It's an expectation that should be abolished. Pluck away the armor and peel off the robes, and all that's left is a person, as soft-skinned as the rest. Dimitri was only a child then.
Her grip slackens. Her hands down pry free. Rather, they smooth the fabric back into shape. Her eyes can't quite meet his as she works. It's probably unwelcome contact, but she can't think what else to do. She can't hug him. That would be weird, and perhaps insulting for a man.
See? She's just no good at this stuff. But she has to say something.]
It's...hard. Not to look at th-the people who've passed and feel like...but the life you still have can be a gift.
[Her hands retreat to her own chest and work at the knuckles, pulling each taught in antsy succession. Her eyes dart to his, even as her throat threatens to close again. It's hard to shake the image of his father back against the flames.
Senseless. And evil. He's not wrong about the perpetrators. Still, his condemnation just now doesn't sit quite right.]
There's always going to be some sh-shithead trying to prove the world is as bad as they think it is. You can't stop them all from existing. You'd n-never be done killing them. And you won't always see them for what they are, until it's too l-late.
But then, it's even more important to prove there's still something good in this world. N-no matter how idiotic everyone else is determined to be. D-don't stoop to their level. And don't let them t-take the rest of you, too. It doesn't have to define you.
[Her mouth thins. Threads of herself weave back together, and she becomes all the more sure of it.]
If you waste all your time on h-hating people who hurt you, you might miss out on someone who won't.
[Komaru.
The knot in her throat tightens. How on Earth could she have forgotten Komaru?]