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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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cw: violence, gore, sexual sadism, murder
No possessions. No attachments. That's absurd. How can anyone say that when their pupil (Padawan) is being raked over the coals? When injustice runs rampant, when all that you love can be lost in an instant?
Anakin hoists her high. Toko folds her lean legs around his middle, too lost in the tidal waves to fumble in shock or even question why. One shoe drops off as she hooks her feet at the base of his spine. His warmth consumes her. He's like fire. Like magma. She feels the phantom of a mask over her face and hears her breath drag through filters, warping through the vents like a worn cassette. Pain kisses her every nerve like the lick of a flame. She hears a voice unlike any other, knows the source to be small and wise and yet she despises its advice.
No attachments in life, no mourning in death. What's left then? A life of nothing? Years spent floating dead in the water, face to the heavens and ears muffled below, neglecting every oar and hand stretched out to save you? What makes that enlightened? What makes solitude so noble?
His grip tightens on her as if in answer. Nothing is. There's merit in the present, in flesh and blood. This body is worth something.
Until you try to run. The boy's head pops like a firecracker and Toko shudders, moans in the shelter of Anakin's neck. He shouldn't have tried at all. It was suicide. Just as doomed running on land as swimming in the sea. You still haven't told Asahina about it. Her little brother was safe in your grasp for all of five minutes before he blew apart.
They're only worth what they can do and how well they listen. Her skin crawls as she hears the boasting. Toko yearns to rip the wings off that seedy snickering fuck. It just wouldn't stop anything, he's only one slice of the pie. it takes a legion to sort and strip and subjugate a whole population.
While his nose teases at her hair, she takes in the seared scalp of her mother. His mother. The corpse is a desecration. Those were hands that gripped her shoulders once, that clothed and fed her. That mottled face used to smile at her prattling, such a precocious child.
They find the raiders and raise their sword. It cuts and cauterizes in the same blow, but that makes the damage no more humane. The shrieks of pain stab at her ears, they never satisfy, can't fill the hole they've dug where one brilliant woman used to be.
She's never satisfied. Oh god, she could listen to it all day. "STOP IT! FUKAWA PLEASE, STOP—PLEASE!!" That's not my name, you remind them so nicely, then they sing you the sweetest songs as you slip your blades between their tendons. They drip their devotion in ropes of red, spritzes, rivers, splatters, waterfalls as fine as any national park's. You could just swim in it. What number is this one then? Fifteen? Twenty-two? No, thirty-seven. You'll have to notch another tally on your thigh, to all the boys you've loved before. The heat pools between your quivering legs as they choke on their last words, strung up on walls as if mounted to crosses. It's fitting they give these final secrets to you. They denied you everything else, just like everyone else, everything everyone everything—]
A-ana...
[It won't end. She's swimming in the eddies of both their souls. The half of herself she's never seen cavorts with his endless revenge. Together they put cuts and corpses on parade, and it's more than she can bear.
They weren't meant to converge like this. Minds are meant to meet and never mix. Toko isn't a chosen one. She's just a miserable wretch with shit luck, and she can't fight the fervor of everything Anakin feels. He's sweeping through her and brushing up debris, painting the walls with his will, his past, his promises. He slips the locks loose, summoning Jill to the floor. Now Toko is smothered in the deeds her body's done while she was sleeping.
It can't go on like this.
Toko squirms. Her fingers crook at his back, scratching hot lines as she writhes in fits of repulsion and sorrow and love. She can't bear another second. She's trapped in his gravity. She'll be consumed by it.
Irony is the last thing on her mind, but some part of her must recall her fleeting fancy on the bridge between train cars. Why else would she choose to bite the cords of his throat?]
no subject
Her chest rises and falls against him, a rhythm he matches. And lives inside. It's good, it's so much better than being alone, and in the dark, and alone, and shut up in that place- and alone. His fingers promise a litany of tiny bruises on her small body, an act of possession? Or an attempt to find anchor?
Because like this it doesn't matter that men and women are hewn down around him. Slaves, refugees, Separatists. His own men, fellow Jedi. Tuskens. Friends. Stop it they scream, please!. But that's not my name, he reminds them. No... She reminds them. Blood slides around his feet, pooling around the place where he stands, where he keeps Toko out of reach.
Somewhere further off, outside of his body or on the other side of a dream, tiny fires race up his spine. Fingernails. He tastes copper. Thinks that he might hear his name. But there's a lean, pale thigh beneath his hand... where he'll find a tally. His grip opens, stretching like a maw, like a man searching for-
Fifteen? Twenty-two? No, thirty-seven. Anakin is aware of it like a current, twin currents. Side by side, but unique- separate. A crescent of short, blunt teeth bite into him and Anakin reaches out and grabs her. Yanks her to the surface with brutal efficiency.]
no subject
Toko was never a slave (she can hear their screams mixed with the Tusken raiders, other Jedi, common folks and uncommon creatures), but she was made a plaything for the public, a puppet under a psychotic master. She never loved her mothers, but she knew the discordant notes of revenge. She needs to peel away from his person, but every shared thought cinches her closer still. Into their combined rage, the toll they've taken on the world. Their wounds are made casualties on those who cross them.
He's grazing the evidence on her thigh.
He tastes of the earth. His skin is pliant beneath her teeth. It's the only anchor she has, and it lasts all of three seconds. There's a pull. Physical? Internal? She can't be sure.
When her head cants back and she opens her eyes, she sees the chilly glass of skycrapers and black birds circling the sky. Danaca.]
Anakin.
[She finishes his name this time. The hurricane dispels and casts her thoughts in every direction. Her hands fly up. To his shoulders. To his cheeks. He feels cold against her palms as she cups his face, drawing back to look into his storm-blue eyes.]
Anakin.
[Her lip is trembling. What the hell did she see?
What all did he see?]
no subject
[The words are immediate, part reassurance and part incantation- as if Anakin is summoning himself into being. And maybe he is. Maybe he can only do so because she's said his name so many times. Maybe he's only back inside his body because she reminded him where he belongs. In there, not half inside her. (Already? Again?) Anakin squeezes his eyes shut until he sees stars so that he doesn't give chase the moment she draws back. There's a damp, warm circle on his throat and her weight is shifting in his arms- but he isn't ready to let her go. So he doesn't.
Her delicate fingers land on his shoulders... and then they move up. The touch is so gentle, is threaded with warmth; so Anakin leans into it. He tips his face into her small palms and when his eyes finally open it's to find her there. Looking back at him. Maybe he's only here because he followed her. Because he urged her to the surface but refused to stay in the depths alone.
Anakin's eyes track a slow path across her face, mapping out each tiny detail- the dark fan of her lashes. The shivering bow of her mouth. The beauty mark near her jaw like the period at the end of a sentence. Is she afraid? His voice is a gravel whisper, scraped out of his throat.] -Are you a dream?
no subject
He looks at her. Stormy blue, as always. A biting shade gentled by intention. His voice rasps, and she worries for a second that she's made him sick.]
...No. [She looses a shaky breath, sagging in his arms. He hasn't put her down. Is he still reeling? He should put her down. She should let him go.
But she doesn't.]
It's th-this place that was the dream.
no subject
But Toko doesn't draw back or away. And Anakin, who keeps her here to satisfy some need he won't look at and refuses to name, who has half a thought that the moment his hands leave her she'll disappear into the dark- presses his face into her hair. Breathes her in.] We can't be sure of that. [Can't they? If he doesn't look. If she doesn't look-] I know you.
no subject
Like lovers in the afterglow.
Like things they never were.]
I kn-know you too. [It's all you, he says, hand held out as the wind whips past their ears and the wheels roar below. How could I do that? he begs to know, his palm hot between both of hers, fighting tears on the floor of an ancient apothecary. You are beautiful, he insists, contemplating the lock hair draped over his fingers, on his knees, in her trailer, in her reach at last.
Toko remembers enough now to see this isn't her place. Her legs aren't meant to twine around his waist and lock at his back. When she shifts the bruises he's made groan their laments, earnest marks meant to keep her close. He isn't hers to cling to, and she's not the woman he's meant to save.
Should she have given in? Spared them both the realization, curled up inside of his chest and minded that tender heart forever. It doesn't seem like such a bad fate now. He's seen the worst of the world and he never should have. He deserves so much better. Toko wants so much to be the one to give it to him.]
...We c-can't stay here. It's cold.
[It's fading, is what it is. And when she dares to opens her eyes, she thinks she sees a shadow move.]
no subject
It's cold. Anakin's aware of this in the same way he's aware that he casts a shadow. But it only seems important because she says it. Toko. He knows that too, like he knows what she looks like after she's been thoroughly kissed, the way he knows what her hair looks like fanned out across the pillows. He knows she's afraid of the dark, he knows two cruel mothers and the silent expanse of a shut door.
If a noble decision is supposed to be made, she'll have to be the one to make it. Anakin has a heart too willing to love- for a slave, for a Jedi, and perhaps even for a man. But a loving heart is not an unselfish one. He draws Toko further against him, renewing the seal around her and settling her weight on one arm.] Come home with me, [A request, not a command. Anakin would make whatever promises he needed just to see the other side, to hear a yes.] Let me-?
no subject
Toko's always been selfish. When you have so little, you scramble to keep whatever you can get your hands on. If this were the girl of a year ago, still in juvenile braids and bending backwards at Byakuya's behest, she wouldn't hesitate. The offer is too good to pass up. Anakin's world isn't perfect, but it has him. His body could become her home. His soul could become her purpose. She'd wind her will around his and evaporate from her own existence. So little mattered compared to what scraps of attention she could snatch with her vermin hands.
What's more is that he understands it. She finally sees it now. The pedastal she's put him on isn't destroyed by the revelations, it's bolstered. Anakin needs, with the same suffocating emphasis she does. From slave, to servant, to student, to soldier. Servile and solitary, suppressed at every turn.
And still—]
I need to make sure they live.
[She doesn't even stutter.
Komaru. Lost in Towa City, beseiged on all sides and standing alone. Naegi, Kirigiri, Asahina, trapped in a new killing game. Toko knows that time may not work the same in this place, but the months have crept by and her anxieties only compounded. She can't leave them in the hands of fate while chasing frail threads and wistful words. That's not the girl she is anymore.
Funny, that she thinks she can protect anyone. Anakin can hold her up one-handed. The hand in his hair runs a tender line to his neck, nails tracing his scalp. She lifts her head to face him, hefted high though she may be.
Her heart beats like it might crack in two.]
M-Maybe...when I know for sure. When I know they're safe, I can...I'll be yours.
[Even if it means standing in a better woman's shadow. It's a half-baked promise, but no better than his own.
There's no guarantee either of them could follow through.]