logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

characters: everyone.
location: the path from downtown beacon to the harbor; all over town.
date/time: february 16-21.
content: the forest spirits send off their friends to join the aurora. memory opals drop from the eerie green lights above.
warnings: n/a.

i had all and then most of you, some and now none of you.

For most of the day on February 16, all of the town's forest spirits can be found along the stretch of road between downtown and the harbor, clearly setting up for, uh, something. They're piling snow onto the pathway, creating a miles long sled trail that starts outside the Landmark Inn and ends at the very end of the harbor's dock. Not only that, but the forest spirits are also not super willing to explain what they're up to! They're busy, you lantern-havers.

By the time evening rolls around, the spirits have set up wooden railings alongside the snowy path, as well as a warming tent, hot chocolate booth, and announcer stand outside of the Landmark. Oh, and a starting banner for the race! It's dogsled time!

Throughout the event, Beacon's downtown and harbor areas will be completely overrun with forest spirits, all there to bear witness to this holiday celebration—this holiday is for them, though, not you weirdos with your naked faces. Point is, none of the spirits will be hostile at this time! They're more interested in interacting with each other than with Beacon's residents, though if pressed, a kind spirit might be willing to explain what's going on:

The aurora arrives in Beacon for about a week each year, and the forest spirits believe it to be "friends in the sky". The lights are old friends of theirs, it seems! And each night while the aurora shines above the town, the forest spirits send off a handful of friends to join the aurora! The spirits ready to join the aurora build sleds of their own and assemble mighty sled teams, sometimes comprised of dog spirits and sometimes... other stuff. Then, when the aurora is at its peak in the wee hours of the night, the sled teams will ride off one by one, racing down the snow-covered path all the way down to the harbor, where they'll finally rocket off the dock and out over the lake, picking up more and more speed as each team gallops wildly over the water before arcing up into the sky. Once the spirits are barely a speck, they'll hit the aurora and burst into a shower of light. Beautiful stuff!

See, since the aurora is made of light, forest spirits launched into it are killed on impact! Isn't that wonderful! The forest spirits seem to think so! What is death to a dead thing!

All of this information can be learned through handwaved/played-led interactions with the forest spirits during the event. They'll all be focused on saying goodbye to their friends and cheering them on as they stream through the sky, but they're happy to welcome lantern-havers to join in the celebrations. The hot chocolate is free and only tastes a little bit like mud, so. Enjoy!

•••
For the entire duration of the event, the aurora will dance in beautiful silence overhead, lighting up the whole town with its eerie green glow. Every so often, handfuls of opals will rain down like meteorites from the lights above, and these opals each contain the memory of someone currently in Beacon! They can be found all over town, landing on paths and atop buildings and maybe even rocketing straight through your ceiling to crash into your living room. Perhaps a forest spirit decided to hide some shiny rocks in your cereal box or under your pillow... Better hope the Postmaster General doesn't find your opals before you do, though. That spirits sure does love their rocks. Point is, who knows where the opals might turn up?

On that note, if you signed up for a random event, we'll be RNGing characters to receive these random events throughout the event! The event may happen in response to a toplevel on this event log, or we might turn up in your IC inbox... 👀 These events will be entirely random, meaning we could dole out any number of them at any time, so it'll be a fun surprise for all of us.

If you missed signups and would still like to toss your name in the ring, go right ahead! Signups will remain open throughout the event, though we can't promise everyone who signs up will get something.

And finally... Each day, we'll post a list of the forest spirits joining the aurora! What, did you want to know in advance? The forest spirits have never been a particularly organized bunch, so they're winging this—which means more surprises for you. :)

Enjoy the races and the lights and the opals, residents of Beacon, and remember: WHAT IS DEATH TO A DEAD THING!

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It's not just having done bad things-- though they'd rather not share a bunch of murders with Naminé, either, to be honest-- but also the bad things done to them. Memories of being tortured, experimented on, programmed, and literally brain-fried are not something Soldat wants her to have to see and experience. No one should have to experience that.

They consider her offer for a minute, then finally decide more data is required. This memory might be relatively safe, but the ones surrounding it most likely are not. "How much detail do you see. When you search through memories for something. Do you see the memories around them? Or related memories? Do you." A pause. How best to phrase. "Is it like these, where you experience the memory, too?"

"Sort of. Memories can be fragmented and separated. What I do is link and chain them back together. So I will put this back in it's place. I will see the memories on either side of them but it isn't like the opals. it's like seeing something at the corner of your eyes. The beginning and end, with the memory that I am chaining at its focus or center." It was difficult for her to explain what she did. It was one of the few things that was natural to her and she only had a few things that she could equate it too.

"Can I ask... what are you scared of me seeing?" She paused and nervously bit her lower lip. "That is. I have seen horrible things." She'd been through so much. Naminé couldn't imagine anything in his past that she hasn't seen or experienced before. "I won't experience your memories. I only see them and I won't tell anyone, if that's what you are worried about."

"Don't mind people knowing. Just." Soldat transfers the the memory stone to the metal hand, then tucks it away with the others, running a metal thumb over the ridges of the sandstone to memorize the pattern. "I murdered a lot of people. Kids, at least once. And got experimented on. Programmed. Hurt in a lot of new an' exciting ways. It ain't something I want you experiencing. Or anyone, really." But her especially. They can't imagine her terrible things are as bad as what they went through, not if she's still this kind and innocent-seeming.

Her mouth fell into a gentle frown as she placed her palm over her heart. She felt the steady beat of her heart echoing through her chest and wondered if he knew what it felt like for that beat to be gone... to be empty. "I understand." Her voice was very soft but confident.

"And I won't make you do anything you don't want to do." Even if it meant that she couldn't help him.

"I have watched many people die. I have seen the heartless and the nobodies destroy... I-" Her voice caught and she finally faltered, her eyes dropping to her feet. "I programmed... you could call it. Another person. I had too or I thought I did and I hurt him." She didn't know that the Replica Riku had once been to Beacon. "I was alone and trapped in Castle Oblivion. I couldn't protect anyone. I had to do what the Organization told me." They had hurt her but that wasn't something Naminé talked about. Those were her memories and if no one else knew, it felt like they couldn't touch her.

"I know what it's like to not want to have others go through that. That is why I want to help. I want to make up for the things I had done." She hadn't really had a choice back then but Naminé didn't see it that way. She could have fought back, she could have left Sora alone but she hadn't.

They do know. Both in the sense of actually dying, and of being empty even if technically their heart still beat (since hearts work a little differently in the MCU universe, and all). Soldat look at her, really look at her for once, eye contact and everything. Seeing it is not the same as doing it, as feeling it, but.

But. They can kind of understand wanting to make up for things done in the past, even if they can't quite believe she's gone through anything like they have. It wouldn't be possible to be this nice and earnest if she had. (And if it is possible, they're gonna just... be really salty about how broken they are.) But maybe this will be safe enough, anyway, looking for the names of some children.

"There are Words," they find themselves saying. "In Russian. That's a language I speak sometimes." They say that in Russian, in fact, so she can recognize the sound-- though it auto-translates for her, thankfully. Yay magic translation world. "You'll recognize them if you hear them in a memory, because I'll recognize them if I hear them, and then there will be. Problems. If you start to hear them, I need you to stop immediately."

Naminé had been born in that castle without any memories or notions of how she should live. All she felt was the crushing weight of loneliness and cold emptiness around her. She'd reached out to Sora with her heart, calling him to the castle, and it had been then that the Organization had appeared and taken control.

Somehow, dying wasn't as painful as living in that endless existence of pain and loneliness. It wasn't that she was comfortable with her past or strong, only that this was better than what she had known and Sora was here. For the first time, she was happy and alive. It was poetic that in death she was finally able to live.

Maybe one day she'd be able to help him understand but Naminé didn't know how to accurately expression her thoughts. She was unfamiliar with her feelings, identifying them or attempting to explain them.

Naminé listened and inclined her head in an understanding nod. "Alright. I will stop if I hear it."

Sure, death is treating them both pretty nicely, here, horror world aside. Doesn't stop Soldat from being jumpy, hypervigilant, and afraid of pretty much everything. So it might be a little hard to stomach if it turns out a kid is handling similar trauma better than a grown not-person. That's the kind of thing that might make said grown not-person pretty angry at themselves for being kind of a fuck-up. Even if it's not deserved.

"Okay." Soldat takes a steadying breath, shakes out the metal hand with a rippling buzz of plates, and asks, "Okay, so what do I gotta do?"

Edited (icon) 2020-02-28 19:56 (UTC)

Naminé wasn't human in the strictest sense. She was a nobody, granted the husk of a body so that she could live apart from the person who had created her; born from a heart without darkness. She had been born with no memories of herself and the notion that she had no emotion despite the crushing loneliness that had rooted within her. The horrors she saw didn't touch her but it was only because she'd completely shatter if they did.

Sora. Riku. Soldier. Her friends were her light.

Her friends kept her strong.

She only wished that she could be Soldier's strength in return. "It's easier if you sleep but meditation will also work. Sit and close your eyes. Clear your mind. It will allow me to go in and reconnect the chains. If you begin to think of something, I will see it." It was easier in sleep; she could make it dreamless but she didn't think that Soldier would be comfortable sleeping given their current placement and situation.

Yeah nope, Soldat does not feel comfortable sleeping with someone right there doing shit to their brain. Especially not outside, in the middle of nowhere. But at least it's on a relatively safe path. So after a moment they sigh and find the stump of a tree someone cut down for lumber a couple months back, the nearest thing remotely like a seat, and settle onto it.

"You oughta know. My brain is pretty. Weird. There's gonna be shit in here besides just me. Not sure if that's gonna get in your way." A pause. "I'll be able to stop you if there's a problem. Right? Or if trouble comes out of the trees?"

Naminé steps closer, so that she's standing directly in front of him. "It's alright. I have done this a few times and, well, everyone is a little different. I promise if something goes wrong I will stop or if something happens. I'll be out here keeping watch."

She smiled at him and tried to exude confidence. "Are you ready?"

Not really. They're nervy and uncertain and more than a little embarrassed, knowing Naminé is about to hear the Sergeant and the Asset, most likely. Knowing it's easier for Aziraphale if they're calmer, though, they settle on the easiest thing to calm themselves down: folding paper. They nod, and imagine the colored square, the folds to start a crane. The angle exactly so, the fold here, and back out again. Another fold this direction. It helps, though it might be distracting for Naminé once she gets in.

Neither the Sergeant nor the Asset were directly focused on the goings on a moment ago, but as soon as there's an actual touch to their shared mind, both get summoned pretty quickly. (Whoah shit what who's in our head, buddy--) That's the Sergeant, a younger and more expressive version of Soldat's voice, also thickly Brooklyn and somehow more bitter. (New technician?) That's loud, steady, and nearly monotone-- the Asset, violent but also terrified, and a lot smarter than it sounds.

Soldat can't risk answering. Just. Folding paper. Stay calm, pal, you can do this.

Naminé lightly brushes her fingers against his forehead as she focuses. She doesn't need to touch him but she thinks that it'll help him if they have a physical connection while the process is taking place.

She smiles at the folding paper but quickly moves past it to the memory she'd seen in the opal. It's easy to find because she knows exactly what she's looking for. Then she just has to chain it back in order. This was harder for her because she wanted to respect his wishes.

She feels the voice more than she actually hears it and sends one soft sweet thought out in return. 'I am here to help.'

The touch makes them twitch, and force their brain stubbornly back on track with origami after a momentary frisson of alarm. They're not great with touch in general, and around the head in particular when dealing with brain shit. It's okay. It's Namine, she's not gonna hurt them. They're pretty sure.

(New technician..) The Asset doesn't really do inflection, but the repetition suggests firmness. The Sergeant, on the other hand, sounds exasperated. (Ah fuck, Asset, we don't need that, reign it in, pal.)

The memory with the children is solid, but finding what it connects to will be tricky. The Chair literally worked by frying the connections between memories. Worse, there are so many repetions of the same experience that finding the one that goes with this one will take some work. She'll find at least four groups of little girls Soldat had a hand in training, dozens of moments of leaving a room with a strange Chair and a metal halo, endless children and adults in sparring matches. She'll have to focus hard on the right set of girls.

It's alright. I'll be a technician. If that's what you'd like.

She didn't care what he called it because she was able to help him.

It did take time and there were a few moments where she stopped and looked around to make sure that there wasn't anyone or anything approaching them from the sides. Her focus didn't waver but it was careful and slow. It took nearly a half hour of shorting through his mind to pick out the memories that needed to be appropriately chained together without accidentally stumbling upon something else.

When she's finished, she's a little tired but she tries not to show it.

"There. I think... it's done. Do you remember?"

There's a few dicey moments, as the introduction of the children in most cases comes directly after the Words Soldat asked her specifically to avoid, and they could feel them coming and edged a little into panic. It's a strange sensation, overall, feeling her rifle through memories they don't quite remember, getting only impressions, often slightly nightmarish ones. But then one swims up into focus, one not connected to the Chair or the Words.

"Turn your body more when you step, Mitrushka."

"Anya," the little brunette girl corrects. "I'm Anya. Remember? That's Mitra."

"Right. Sorry." He feels confused, but apologetic. He shouldn't be mixing them up like this. But he feels like he's done it before, feels resigned that he'll do it again. He's always confused when he comes back from the Chair.

At least the girls don't seem more than a little sad about it. "It's okay."

He shakes the confusion away. It's normal. He doesn't remember why, but he knows it is. And if the girls aren't going to get worked up about it, neither is he. They got work to do. "Try again, Anyeshka. Mitrushka, Lenushka, watch and try yourselves when she's got it."

"I. Yes. Anya, Mitra, and Yelena. I. Gave them pet names." That leaves Soldat feeling somewhere between baffled and bereft. How many little girls did he give nicknames to, over the decades?

Naminé waited, taking a small step away as the memories settled into place. She had seen this process before and knew that it might take time for Solider to orient himself. This wasn't a perfect place but she'd give him whatever time he needed.

When he finally spoke, Naminé smiled in return. "I know how much you like nicknames. They must have been special to you. I'm glad that you can remember them."

"Kept mixing them up. Every time I. Came from the Chair." Soldat rubs at their forehead with the flesh hand, as if trying to scrub away the strange feeling. "Got their names wrong. Poor kids. They deserved a hell of a lot better than I could give 'em."

They pull out their tablet finally to check the time. Damn, they lost... more than they'd hoped, doing that. "Naminé. Thanks. For the stone, and the memory. I, uh. Sorry you had to hear... all that." Meaning the Asset and the Sergeant. Who are both quiet again, thank goodness.

The chair. It sounded incredibly ominous and brought to mind the chair that she often sat at. It wasn't a happy place and while she had no idea what Soldier had really been through, she could imagine that it had been painful for him.

"They deserved to be remembered." She smiled confidently at him. "And you gave them that. I know it doesn't seem like much but it is."

She shook her head, attempting to quell any uncertainty. "It's alright. I promise. I want to be here for you. Whatever you need, okay?"

She would have gotten glimpses of the Chair when rifling through their memories: reclining, metal restraints for the arms, the round halo overhead and metal headpieces that would come down around the face. Always regarded with a sense of horror and dread.

(Technician. Asshole. She's just a kid. Leave her alone. No. Technician. We'll worry about it later, Sergeant.)

"Thanks." They give her a wan little smile. "They're. We think they're pieces of me, from the past. The Sergeant, from the war. The Asset, from HYDRA. If you hear my accent go funny, might be the Sergeant. If I stop, uh. Using complete sentences, it's probably the Asset." The smile fades into something more serious. If the Asset is going to insist she have technician status, that puts her at risk. "Naminé. If that happens. If I go very emotionless and talk about orders or mission. Or I call you a technician, out loud. I need you to run away. Okay?"

Naminé blinked, her expression earnest and surprised at Soldiers serious manner. "Alright. I will run. I promise." That didn't mean she had the skill or the ability to get away from him but she'd keep herself safe, for her own sake and for those she cared about. She didn't want to hurt him or cause him any trouble.

"I don't mind them though. That is, hearing them. They care about you too."

"Sarge, maybe. The Asset is just anger and fear, not sure it knows how to care about anything but staying alive. And while it might respect a technician, it's thrown them into walls, too. Don't want that to happen to you." And it probably won't chase after a technician clearly running away from it. They're like 90% sure.

(No. I hope that means you're agreeing with me.)

Soldat picks themselves up from the tree stump. "I gotta finish my patrol. Want me to walk ya back to the hotel, or you got somewhere you're headed?" Since the patrol is heading that way, now.

Naminé nodded her head, her expression solemn. "I understand. I won't let you hurt me." She smiled then. "I'll be safe and if you need me again, I'm here, okay?" She hadn't know the soldier long but he was Sora's friend and... she did feel safe with him.

He was her friend.

"I'm going back to the inn but it isn't far. I can make it alone so you can finish your patrol."

Soldat considers the virtues of walking her back, anyway, and just doing part of their patrol at a trot instead of a walk, so she won't have to walk it alone. They're already halfway back to downtown, though, and running means being less likely to spot opals if there are any around.

And the spirits are all being friendly, right now. She'll be safe. "If you're sure."

"Yeah. If something happens I'll call you first." She smiled confidently. "I know that you're nearby."

Naminé turned and headed off towards the Landmark before Soldier could argue or insist to come with her. She didn't want to be a bother and they were close enough that all she needed to do was get to the lit path and follow it back to the Landmark. It was an area she's walked countless times before now.

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EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

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cw for abuse/mind control talk

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