maskormenacelogs | weep not for the memories

Entry tags:

weep not for the memories

WHO: Everybody!
WHERE: all cities
WHEN: March 4 - March 6
WHAT: it's a catch-all log, sucka! Tag here and thread around for the Dorian Ruins Everything Guilt Extravaganza part of the overall March plot. Please check out this ooc post for details!
WARNINGS: Traumatic memories. Possible talk of murder, death, blood, other nasty things. I'll try to update if the warnings needed but please use content warnings if it gets super nasty!

It starts off on March 4th, the early morning before the sun's even risen. You know those weird mirages that were hanging around the day before? Well now it's getting a little personal.

These mirages come and go seemingly for no reason. They might stay for a minute, they might stay for an hour. The images vary between person but the unifying factor is that the mirages consist of people the player characters have hurt, whether people in-game or from their homes. Whether they murdered them, slandered them, or even had a petty little argument, the unifying factor is the guilt each character feels towards or about this mirage. After all, you know you hurt them somehow. You know their existence somehow makes you feel guilty.

Another unifying factor? The creepy way these mirages just seem to stick to you. They'll follow you if you try to leave, staring you down with their creepy unblinking mirage eyes. And whoops: everybody can see said mirages. Hopefully you're not being stalked by someone you and somebody else both know, wouldn't that be awkward?

Have fun confronting your traumatizing past and/or wondering why your buddy's got some creepy ghost guy following him, imPorts!

( ooc: this is a catch-all log! Make starters of your characters getting haunted by their creepy mirages, have other people react to said creepy mirages, ???, profit. Hit me up on the ooc post if you have any questions! )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Kidou's left foot darts out to the side, neatly catching the ball on the inside curve. He gives a little shove just before transferring his weight, repeating the maneuver a few steps later with his right. With this tight precision he moves forward in a zigzag pattern, keeping every turn sharp and ensuring the ball never strays from easy reach at any second. He has no obstacles to dart around, but at this point he really doesn't need them. Something like this is second nature.

As he spins on his heel he notices Riku's entering his field of vision. This time, he doesn't keep going, but plants his foot firmly on the ball before it escapes. He means the pause to likely be temporary. But, as figure after figure follow him, Kidou ends up staring after them. A few look impossibly familiar. He can't take it anymore when what looks like Mickey Mouse appears. He hooks the ball under his foot, kicks it upwards into his hands, and starts heading across the field on a path that he figures will intersect them.

Here he waits, ball tucked under one arm. It's not long before Riku wanders closer, exactly as predicted.]

That's quite the procession you have there.

[As mildly put as possible. What.]

[Normally when there's someone around that Riku knows, he picks up on them pretty quickly. Today, it's after he starts, wings standing straight out behind him, that he realizes he's known Kidou was here the whole time. He looks up at him, makes a face.]

It's something, isn't it? They've been following me all day.

[There's a pause as Kidou filters this information through multiple levels of 'what even' before he finally manages to come to a suitable reply to that.]

All of them?

[His stare leaves Riku again, tilting to center directly back on Mickey Mouse. That's Mickey Mouse. Albeit Mickey Mouse in a weird outfit, but Mickey Mouse probably wore weird outfits every day.

... that was a thought he just had. Speaking to himself as if Mickey Mouse was something real.

Kidou can already feel the headache threatening to form. His day had started out so normally. Why this...]

... Yeah. It wasn't like this yesterday -- I mean, they were there off and on, but not... all at once.

[Riku hovers kind of awkwardly, frowning, but then he realizes who it is that Kidou's looking at and he reaches to run one hand through his hair, letting out a sigh.]

You know him, huh? Seems like he's pretty popular in other worlds.

Yeah, that's -

["He's an American cartoon" dies before Kidou gets more than two words out. He's usually so good at thinking before he opens his mouth in the first place, but when confronted with this, part of his brain simply gave up and quit working for the time being in a last ditch attempt at self-preservation.

He's never heard of drugs before he came to America, really. Some kids apparently were on them, and there were occasional campaigns to remind kids to avoid them. In Maurtia Falls, it was hard to escape the fact they existed, walking to work sometimes. He's seen many things he desperately wishes he could regain ignorance of.

But he can't help but wonder for one fleeting, horrible second: is this what they're like?

He can't help but feel a surge of relief when Riku acknowledges the ~~elephant~~ mouse in the room. So he's not gone crazy. It's just life that has. That's nothing too new, then. It's not just him. That's something.

That is sure something.]

...you could say that I've seen him before.

[Riku waves one hand, dismissive. He circles to stand in front of the little king, and crouches. Mickey's eyes never leave him.]

He's a real person, in the universe I came from. He's a friend of mine.

[He reaches forward -- and his hand passes directly through the apparition. The others have circled around to stand behind him again, like a row of creepy, staring ducklings.]

But, as you can see, he's not here. It's just some kind of...

[He squints, drops his hand.]

... I don't know if 'haunting' is the right word.

[Kidou finally breaks his stare away from Mickey Mouse at 'he's a friend of mine', tilting to watch both Riku and the mouse. Just in time for Riku to reach his hand right through-

Ah. Of course.]

An illusion.

[This would be easier to explain away if Riku hadn't just said that, in some universe, Mickey Mouse was real and thus Kidou knew someone who was a friend of Mickey Mouse. If it wasn't for the illusion in front of him, he wouldn't even give that sentence any consideration at all. It's impossible. It just can't be true.

He has to drop this line of thinking. It's going to drive him nuts. So, instead, he focuses on the fact that this whole creepy parade has the exact same set of actions: follow, and gather.]

They're all like that, aren't they?

Edited 2017-03-07 04:27 (UTC)

[Kidou's staring directly at him now and Riku blinks -- this is the first time he's felt like he's actually making eye contact with him, even despite those goggles. He shrugs, turns to look at the figure of Kairi, standing next to him. It's Kairi as she was at fourteen, and she looks up at him in return, her eyes blank and unblinking. She reminds him of the way she looked when her heart was gone, and that's hard.]

Yeah, they are. They just stare.

[How do you know Mickey Mouse? There's really a universe where Mickey Mouse is real? Questions like this cloud out more useful questions Kidou could be weighing instead. He thinks along these lines for a second or two before he finally finds a question that isn't either redundant, or stupid.]

Why? Why are they following you?

[Wait til you find out Santa is real there, Kidou.]

I wondered at first, actually. But I realized why.

[He wanders down the line of them, looking at them each in turn. Wordlessly they turn to watch him move. He stops at Xion, who's at the end of the line.]

They deserved better than what I gave them. The only thing I can come up with that they all have in common is that I should have done better by each of them. Those three -- [he nods toward the three princesses, who are standing together] -- made it pretty obvious.

[Kidou's gaze goes to them. He frowns even more, thinking.

They really are illusions, but ones distinctly tied to things that should have happened, somehow. He gets the uneasy feeling that he's intruding somewhere he's not really got a right to be, though it's the world that did that, not any action on his part.]

They look familiar to me. I can't place why.

[But he's not shaking that off as coincidence anymore now that Mickey Mouse is a friend of Riku's. Seriously - what.]

[Riku's still standing there looking at Xion, but he sees where his gaze is and he nods.]

Well, you know who Mickey is. They're not from his world, but a friend of mine tells me that they've got movies based on their stories. That being said --

[He makes a little grumble in the back of his throat.]

I was hired to kidnap them when I was fifteen.

[Kidou continues staring at the two as Riku talks. Movies based on their stories - aha. That would be where he's seen them! He knew they looked familiar-

But all that seems less important with that last sentence. Kidou turns his attention back to Riku now, watching him carefully. He couldn't say that he trusted the guy. It would be more accurate to say that he's been withholding from making a decision whether or not he would.

That sentence has a lot to it. Someone wanted him to kidnap movie prince- no, that's stupid. Someone wanted him to kidnap those two women? Why? Did he do it? He mentioned that there was ways he failed them...

Kidou stays very carefully neutral as he asks for clarification. There are so many questions he's got, but only one at a time that he can ask. If he asks in the right order, he won't have to go through that many.]

Hired?

I had a friend who needed my help, but the only person I could turn to was someone who wanted my power for her own ends. She told me she'd help save Kairi if I brought her the princesses.

[He doesn't have to see Kidou's eyes to know the way they must look right now. Curious, and a little cautious. Wary. But always curious. Riku doesn't move -- he just lets the apparitions step around him, their eyes hard on him.]

I suppose seeing them now isn't a mystery, with that in mind.

[Riku's guess isn't inaccurate; behind the goggles that's exactly what his full expression amounts to. He hazards another question, prying just a little more.]

Did she?

[Riku's been looking down at Xion this whole time, but at this question he looks up, directly at Kidou. His eyebrows are lifted, a little incredulous.]

As if. Maleficent wanted the princesses for their hearts, and with my additions she had six out of seven. No one knew this, but Kairi had the seventh. So she got exactly what she'd been after. What I got out of that was just enough power to let something [not someone, he doesn't want to think of Ansem as a someone] take my body over.

[Why am I telling you this? he wonders suddenly, but then -- he'd seen Kidou's dream. He knows he saw things he wasn't supposed to. Maybe it's only fair.]

[Wanted the princesses for their hearts?

The more Kidou asks, the less he understands. He should have stopped asking a while ago now, especially since every time he continues he risks having the same done to him. And yet, if he stops, he'll be left to wonder about this.

Kidou already looks a bit confused, and Riku's not done with this story. Folding his arms, he forces himself to stop asking 'what' and take this as the base premise, breaking down what facts he can gather.

Riku's friend needed help. In exchange for helping Riku's friend, someone named Maleficent hired Riku to kidnap those two women. Maleficent is collecting a set of seven specific hearts. (Is this heart in the literal sense, or are these objects?) Riku's friend had one of those hearts as well. Something took over Riku's body - possessed? - after Maleficent got what she wanted.

Even running that through his head again, there's too many pieces to this missing for him to really get what happened, but... Kidou's head tilts down as he keeps running this over, torn between reasoning this out and being confused about it.

The gist he's getting is that Riku was tricked into doing something bad and betrayed for it. Right now, Kidou has a choice: he can either push to clarify 'heart', push for more of the story, or drop the topic.

As much as he wants to ask about more of this... he'll let the possession bit slide. That doesn't really pertain to these illusions, so he doesn't have any excuse.]

What do you mean by 'heart'?

[Kidou's silent, and Riku can almost see him turning all of this over in his brain. Honestly, he's pretty sure he should quit while they're ahead -- he just seems to be confusing him more. But he might as well keep going. It doesn't really matter to him how much Kidou knows about this -- at this point, he doesn't really have anything to hide on the subject.

Riku makes a noise of consideration in the back of his throat, folding his arms and looking thoughtful. How does he explain?]

The -- not the organ, but the thing that makes you you. You know how people say to listen to your heart? That's what I mean.

[Which, saying it that way... sounds a lot more final than it turned out to be.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

weep not for the memories

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject