lifeaftr | October Event: Feeling Like a Ghost (Part I)

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October Event: Feeling Like a Ghost (Part I)

OCTOBER EVENT: FEELING LIKE A GHOST

Who: Anyone and everyone
What: Your past returns to haunt you
When: October 10th and onward
Where: All over!
Warnings: Character death, as well as potential for discussion of trauma and suicide ideation - please mark as you go!

Try and Hear Me, Then I'm Done

You can find most of the information you need in the OOC info post! In the meantime, feel free to use this log as a catch-all for the duration of the event. While this log will focus on the past portion, you're free to use it for the future portion. As always, you can also make your own logs if that's your preference! Come the 21st, however, we'll likely get an additional log up for those who want to play around with their future echoes as well. Remember also that the present portion will be played out in Mu, during this month's Storytelling.

Remember to let us know if your character dies during this event. Bear in mind, however: death penalties will NOT be reduced for this event.

Event Timeline

[ ♆ ] October 10th: The ghosts of the past appear.
[ ♆ ] October 20th: The warped Storytelling occurs, the Storyteller returns, and those who have died are revived.
[ ♆ ] October 21st: Future echoes replace the ghosts of the past.
[ ♆ ] October 25th: With equilibrium restored, all visions vanish, and life returns to how it was.

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

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You mean...that dream place they were talking about. Like it has a mind of its own?

[...disturbing.]

[Maine's helmet tilts in an inquisitive, dry way - and it's so natural, it's so normal, it's so easy. It's every instinct that had him effortlessly recalling what the Meta had to say, what they could communicate in a glance, interpreting and parsing apart something issued without words.]

[Which is how he knows what Maine's saying now: Missed you too.]

[He's not hurt, particularly, that his old friend is acting so aloof, so scattered. Maybe he should be. But Maine's not the sort to act hurt over anything.]

[...wasn't. Wasn't the sort.]

Yeah. ...could it be related? Or...I don't know, pulling up memories from our pasts.

[He's avoiding bringing up who he's seeing. There are some things he won't say unless asked. And he never sees things being great when he has to say, 'I'm seeing my dead father'. Not that he's ever had to say it.

He draws his Marmora knife and wills it into sword form.]

Did you...hear anyone call for you when you were waking up?

[The knife glows, swells into a longer blade. Adaptive tech. Sangheili technology is the closest anything in his world has to compare, and that's less adaptive and more selective. Swords, keys unique to certain genetic codes, dependent on sets of standards built in by their creators.]

[Wash's gaze drifts sideways. It's impossible to ignore him. It was always impossible to ignore him. That was part of the tactical advantage of Maine being what he was - he could tank heavy fire, soak up bullets, meatshield everyone on his team, take nine rounds to the throat so no one else would have to.]

Past is right. Mine's not from when I knew him last. [His throat unscarred by someone emptying a full mag into it on a highway on Spiral, his brain clean of Sigma's infernal glow.]

[It's Maine as he remembers him best. This shouldn't trouble him.]

[It does. Of course it does.]

Not particularly. Did you?

Yeah. I woke up to his call. [He knows what questions might bubble up to that. Two years ago he'd have shut his eyes and looked away from it. Delayed. Talked about anything else. But these days he does what needs to be done. Keith runs his hand along the flat of the blade. The metal is comforting. He'd traced the edges of the knife since he was just a child too young to understand what it meant.

Keith swallows once and says it.]

My father has been dead for a long time. But he sounds exactly like I remember. Moves the same. Voice has the same tones. If this is something messing with us. They're spending a lot of effort to do it.

Maybe they just got it from us.

[He's not surprised when it's memory. It's always memory, with him. It's memory, digging in the reaches of his skull, dragging out long, stuttering strands of things he's repressed. Maine is one of those things he deliberately tries to think of least. Of course, that's like trying not to think of pink elephants.]

He's exactly like you remember. We might be what's fueling them in the first place.

Maybe. Or it's something else. It's too early to tell. [He doesn't like it. It sets his teeth on edge. There's no wolf to sink his fingers into soft fur. No simulations to throw himself at to practice and improve his handling of the Black Lion. He turns his sword back into a knife and throws it up.

He catches it on the way down and tosses it back into the air.]

Either way...they're someone important. Might be a good idea to make sure everyone we know isn't seeing things too.

Most people I've talked to are. The thing isn't with how they look. It's what they're saying.

[Maine doesn't say things, really. He doesn't venture them aloud. But it's like a muscle becoming uncramped after years of disuse and atrophy, and he falls right into step like the time never passed. Like he never watched the body of his best friend go hurtling down the side of a cliff, and plunge into the water below.]

[Maine is focusing on him intently. Something of that unblinking stare reminds him of the Meta. He looks away, but it's like coals burned into the back of his neck.]

Does yours say anything strange? Anything that doesn't sound like them?

Yeah. He doesn't want me to leave his sight. That's not like him. [His father trusted him to do what he felt best. Until now. He glances at him and finds bits and pieces of himself in his father's face.]

We always did what we had to. Even if it meant being far from each other. [He trusted his father to come home at the end of the day. Until the day he didn't. Keith pushes away from the tree and turns to face the shade. He reaches out.

It's like a knife in his stomach. The grief hits him like a wave as overwhelming as it had been the last time. The world feels like its shattering all around him. He jerks his hand back and breathes in sharply.]

...and it never felt like that when I reached out to him. [He ignores the way his own voice had shaken slightly. Not enough to disclose how rattled he is. But enough that he'd been shaken.]

Like what?

[He asks it, but he already knows. It feels like being raked over the coals. It feels like every freshly weeping wound, like flakes of scabs peeled off and bleeding anew. Watching the Meta go over the cliff. Watching Maine grip his head and roar in absolute pain. Watching Sigma watching Maine.]

[Memory. Memory. It's always memory, drawing a noose tighter and tighter and tighter, until he can't goddamn breathe.]

...like you've just lost them all over again. Right?

Yeah, exactly like that. [His mind is racing. If he's seeing his father...anger starts to simmer in his blood. Pidge might see her family. Shiro might see...

Keith's shock melts away replaced with a thousand yard stare of a warrior locking sights on a target.]

We need to find the others. If this is affecting everyone... Some people might be falling for this.

I know. That's the problem with these - whatever these are. [He's been calling her on and off since it started, and she's been answering some of the time but it's only a matter of time before it starts to escalate, and if he can't find her soon - ]

I don't think they have our best interests in mind for the future.

Who are you worried about?

Everyone. I'm starting with the most vulnerable and working my way down. Pidge is from before we found out what happened to her father and brother. I told her but that's not the same as seeing them alive.

[He pushes away from the tree and whistles sharp and urgent in a two whistle burst. Something shoots towards them from the sky above. He thrusts his arm up and Ember drops onto it. He strokes the bird's feathered head and says quietly.]

Find Pidge, you know where she usually goes. [The bird takes off leaping up and rapidly climbing into the sky.]

Anyone who showed up after Umui's outbreak... That includes Shiro. He doesn't remember anything of his last stays.

So he really is back.

[Again. He doesn't envy Keith's position; that can't be an easy place to live in, that haze of uncertainty if he'll continue to be present or not. He showed up before all this, at least. He's real.]

I was wondering about that.

From the same point he first showed up. [Every time Shiro shows up it feels like the sun came back out. He isn't an idiot. He knows what that means. It's exactly why he has to keep the door on that.]

...No idea how long that will last. [For a second he looks worn and tired, a soldier that had to see things through to the end. The war he faced was seeking to break him and he was resigned to the fight to come. It's gone as he shakes his head and steps further away from the tree. He has people that need him to step between them and the dangers.]

Anyway, anyone new needs some kind of warning or briefing. I know the haunts of a few of them. I can track them down.

[For that, he really can't blame him. A moment of introspection, to let that vulnerability creep in, and that's about all he allows himself before he's all business again. Wash doesn't maintain even that much. Not yet.]

[He's choosing not to worry just yet.]

I see them, I'll keep an eye out for them. You wouldn't happen to know C.T., would you?

No. Give me a description and I can keep an eye out for them. [He turns to face Wash with his calm back in place. He’s back to being the leader of his team with the desire to keep them safe first in his mind. His team and anyone else that needs help.]

...if you see Lance, let me know. He hasn’t shown back up yet. [He pauses, adding quietly.] And if he remembers nothing just tell him to contact me. I have his stuff.

She's got armor kind of like mine, but it's a demo config, E.O.D. [...right, no one here would have any idea what that means. He revises almost immediately:] It's brown with visible rebreathers, and two eyepieces instead of one visor. Out of it...brown hair with a side-cut, and she's on the shorter side.

I haven't seen her since this all started. I think she's trying to avoid everybody.

[He doesn't voice the...worrisome implications of that.]

You think Lance might be in trouble?

He keeps appearing and disappearing. Last time he came back he remembered more about the future. I’m ahead of him now but he might come back ahead of me.

[There’s no telling what his state will be. It drives him crazy there’s nothing he can do about that. He can’t save any of them for the future ahead of them.]

So far he hasn’t forgotten this place when he comes back. But who knows. That could run out. Why might C.T be avoiding everyone?

Because she wants it to be real.

[Whatever she's seeing, whoever she's seeing - oh, but as if he doesn't know. As if he isn't fully, bitterly aware of who she's seeing, who she must be seeing.]

I'll...keep an eye out. Let you know if I see him.

...thank you.

[His father’s shade laughs without any humor. ‘I’m not surprised you’re a capable young man. You’ve always been a little bit like your mother.’ He physically winces and spins to face him.]

Dad. Don’t go there.

[He turns away with a breath in through his nose.] This is going to suck. Let’s make sure we remind ourselves this isn’t real. I’ll try to urge her to come see other people if I see her.

I've got plenty of practice.

[Hallucinations? Memories playing tripwire with his senses? Nothing new. Can't shrug it off like a trio of bullets to the spine, but he can ignore it, at least somewhat successfully. Maine is a wall of white and gold in his periphery, and he can grit his teeth and pretend he isn't watching him, implacable as ever.]

[He's lived with his best friend's shell watching him before. He can do it again.]

I'm not sure how likely that is to work, but...you can give me a call if you find her.

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October Event: Feeling Like a Ghost (Part I)

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