melodiesoflife | Event || In Your Worst Memory

Event || In Your Worst Memory

Characters: All Heroes of Light. Only those who signed-up can start a memory.
Where: Interdimensional Rift
When: May 27th - May 30th
Summary: The Heroes of Light relive some of their worst memories, with a twist. All characters participating in this will be physically missing from Crystallis for the duration of the event.
Warning: It depends on the memory.

Where you were or what you were doing— It does not really matter. Not any more. Everything around you freezes, nearly as if time itself stopped, as if the world was frozen in time. And before you have a chance to understand what is happening, you can hear a voice right behind you.

"Kali Shashidhwaja."

Should you turn around, you may see a child who seems to be the only one aside from you unaffected by what is happening. And as she stares right at you, it makes no doubt these strange words are aimed at you. But before you can reply to her, the world around you collapses. Reality twists and shatters... Or maybe you are the one who is collapsing and shattering away from reality as you know it. No matter what the answer is, it will only take a few seconds for you to find yourself sinking into a void, Crystallis vanishing into the distance. There is nothing but darkness as far as the eye can see.

And once again you feel different: all the powers from your Jobs are fading. Not only that, but you might find that your Crystal is gone and your clothes back to what they were before you woke up in Crystallis. It is silent, cold and before long it feels as though life itself is slipping out of you... And yet, slowly the world reforms around you. The darkness fades away and a new world appears, yet at the same time this is not a world.

This is a memory. The question is, is it yours or that of someone else?

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Olivier walks down a set of stairs, her right arm in a sling and fresh cuts on her face. She doesn't even have her sword at her side, but she doesn't look defeated. She looks just as in charge as ever with a group of loyal subordinates around her along with a couple who looks even more out of place among the soldiers than the older soldier who is restrained by ropes.

As they approach the landing, the woman in white looks around. "I'm getting a bad feeling."

"Hm, is that so?" Olivier asks.

"I think it's time for me to go," the woman says. The group pauses in their descent, just steps before the landing, and Olivier offers her uninjured hand to the woman. "Then farewell. It has been a pleasure fighting by your side."

The woman nods. "Hmm, I guess I'll just dig a hole like I did on my way here and..."

Her words are drowned out as a strange crackling fills the air. Blue and purple light flickers around the area the women stand in. An eye appears to blink into existence under the woman in white. Black hands grad at her, and she disintegrates despite Olivier's grip on her.

"Izumi!" Olivier shouts, as if shouting can stop her from being taken.

The eye closes, the hands disappear, the crackling stops, and everything looks normal again. Except the woman called Izumi is gone.

The big man who had been standing behind her is now shouting. "Izumi! Where are you Izumi?"

Everyone is on high alert, weapons ready to fire on the next thing that moves.

"Izumi Curtis..." Olivier trails off, staring at the hand she had been grasping the woman with.

"She just vanished," a muscular man says, knowing his words are just pointing out the obvious.

Olivier snaps out of her momentary shock and turns to her subordinates. "Call the command center and find out how things are going upstairs."

As they call, she turns to the man who stated the obvious. "Any ideas, Alex?"

He rubs his chin in thought. "The Elric brothers once told me that when they attempted human transmutation, they were dragged into the portal of truth by black hands."

"What is the portal of truth?" Olivier demands.

"Only those who have seen it know the answer."

Before any more questions can be asked, Olivier's attention is grabbed by the communications team.

"Major General, the situation hasn't changed at the command center, but I have some bad news to report from the main gate. Captain Buccaneer and his subordinates died in combat against King Bradley. With the help of several warriors from Xing, our men were able to deliver a fatal blow to Bradley and threw him in the moat."

The report is interrupted by the man in ropes screaming in denial. "There's no way King Bradley could have been killed so easily. He's not human!" he protests, only to be struck down by Olivier's fist.

The man writhes on the floor as Olivier ignores him. "What's the status of the main gates?"

"It's still being held, Sir! A homunculus named Greed joined our side and single-handedly brought down the Central City soldiers who were trying to take the gate."

"No, no, no, a homunculus would never side with the fools," the prisoner moans from the floor.

The report continues over his moans. "The gate remains closed, as you ordered! They say Captain Buccaneer was smiling when he passed."

Olivier is downcast for a moment. That moment is all she allows before she raises her head back up. "I see. If he died smiling, then we can't allow ourselves to cry." The look in her eyes is strong and determined. Enough to convince everyone she was through mourning. "We keep up the fight! Let's go Mr. Curtis, we need to find your wife."

But she doesn't head down the stairs. The events start over. This time, another Olivier is standing on the landing everyone is approaching. This Olivier isn't injured, but she leans back against the wall. "What is the purpose of this?" she shouts, mostly to gauge whether or not they can hear her. They don't react, and she approaches them, looking to see if anything seems different from what she remembers. It isn't.

"Get out of here while you can," Olivier hisses at Izumi, but they keep talking about parting ways and not actually doing it.

"Why didn't you just let them leave?" She asks the Olivier in the memory. "No, you had to say farewell. You got attached. Soldiers don't get attached." She shakes her head, watching as everything takes place just as she remembers. Izumi disappears. This time she actually sees the look of Mr. Curtis' face as he realizes he can't stop what has been set in motion. His pain is her fault. She should have told them to leave as soon as Sloth had been defeated.

She looks at herself in disgust as the information about the main gates is relayed. She listens to her own speech about not crying because Buccaneer died with a smile. "Even if he didn't die with a smile, you shouldn't cry, he knew what he signed up for. Maybe you should have given him more troops," she mumbles as the memory starts over again.

Tazendra was a bit confused by the events, but she forced herself to stop and listen. The woman in while was obviously a friend of Olivier's and this Captain was also one of her men, and known to her. While Tazendra could imagine dying with a smile, especially if one could slay an enemy who sounded to be formidable, a good death did not mean one wouldn't be missed.

"How, soldiers do not get attached?"

Tazendra hadn't stayed a solider for long, though she still served the Empire, but her friend Khaavren had. And Khaavren was even more led by his heart than Tazendra herself was.

Olivier hadn't realized someone else was there, she spins around to face Tazandra. She had been to focused on the events starting to repeat that she missed anyone joining her. She look around to see if anyone else has joined before she answers the question.

"The only thing a soldier should feel attached to is their weapon. Other attachments get in the way, and can be used against you in the heat of battle. My troops are important to me, but I can't stop just to mourn them while there are still things to do. Especially being a leader. I can't let some loss of life and the disappearance of another shake me."

"How, there are things to do now?" Tazendra looked around, as if expecting a fight. "And I find that the sort of enemy who would use my friendships against me is exactly the sort of enemy I would desire most to remove their head from their shoulders, so I could celebrate with my friends later."

"Oddly enough, this group doesn't encounter much of a fight from here on out. Yes, there is the battle that takes place with the homunculus who is trying to surpass what he calls God, but the alchemists take care of most of the fight. He's not something I can stab to death easily, though we do throw fire power at him to dwindle down the number of souls he is carrying with him. Here though, there is no fight."

She sighs, she almost wishes there had been. No, instead she is watching this loop of loss, and she doesn't want to deal with it.

She heads up to the top of the stairs. "If I recall, there are more of the carnivorous beasts roaming around up stairs," she says, but when she reaches the top of the stairs and goes through the door she is deposited back on the landing where she had first arrived in the dream.

Tazendra didn't understand the word 'homunculus', but there were enough things that required sorcery to deal with properly in her own world, and most of them could be mistaken for deities (if they were not deities themselves_. The word did sound familiar, but she couldn't recall where she'd heard it before.

"Well. It seems we are not permitted to leave," Tazendra said. "How puzzling." In the past year, she had kept adding to the list of things she had wished she'd learned more about. Here was another.

Olivier leans back against the wall again. "This doesn't make any sense. I can't change anything, so why am I here?"

The question isn't directed at anyone, but she can't help watching the memory. Seeing the look on Mr. Curtis' face as his wife disintegrates before his eyes. The look on her face as the hand she was shaking vanishes in the blast of lights. Then the news of Buccaneer and his men. She laughs at her own words.

"Can you believe I said that? 'If he died smiling we can't allow ourselves to cry.' Whether or not he was smiling or pleading for his life, this is not the place to cry over it anyway."

"it does not seem that we have else to do," Tazendra pointed out. "What manner of man was he?"

She sits down on the landing, if they're stuck here and can't do anything, she might as well get comfortable.

"Big, brawny, but unlike my brother, he actually had some brains. I did have to beat the lesson that letting me win in sparring matches would only end poorly for him into him though. He was always the first to volunteer for the important missions, no matter how dangerous. Not to mention, the first to point out when I was wrong. If I were to say I like things black and white, he would be the first to tell me how beautiful the blue sky was against the black and white mountains after a light snowfall, but most of my other men would just agree with me. I planned on leaving him and Miles in charge of Briggs once I get promoted."

"He sounds like a person I would have liked to met," Tazendra said. "I'm certain he would have been a fine commander, as it seems you have learned a great deal from one another."

"He was a good right hand man. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to find someone to fill his shoes. Losing him and the others in his troop is a great blow for Briggs. The fool even wants his body buried in the icy tundras of Northern. I do no look forward to telling his mother of his passing."

She doesn't say it, but she know that when the time does come to tell his mother, there will be tears, probably from both of them.

"It is natural for a parent to grieve for a child, as a child to grieve for a parent, or a friend for a friend. Even when one dies well, that does not stop you from missing them."

"He's here though. That dream people were talking about. Some people saw themselves, some people saw someone else from their home world. I saw him here in a previous cycle. He was brought here after he died, and now a copy of him walks this world. A copy of everything but the memories, so really, a shell of him. It's disgusting."

She doesn't want to watch this whole thing play out again, so she turns her back to it. She can't help but wince at the words though.

Tazendra nodded. "I saw such a thing as well, though the person in my dream was not known to me. Does your world allow for reincarnation? I am told some can recall the memories of their previous lives, though I have not attempted it."

"I have heard people mention reincarnation, but I can't say that it is a thing. Those who mention it are usually part of one strange religion or another. Though, I do believe the country East of mine has some views on reincarnation that are different from what have heard growing up. I never put much stock into it. I suppose it might be something to look into."

"If it exists, one does not expect memories to be preserved. They can be recovered, I am told, but is far too close to mysticism for my own tastes," Tazendra said. "But something of the self persists. Whatever is tied to the soul."

"Bah, I cannot imagine that it is a comfort, save that your friend's soul exists still, and was not destroyed."

"Thinking like that brings up the question of whether or not we have really been pulled here. I'm no scholar, and it is probably best not to think too much about it. He is here, was here, at some point in these cycles here. Who knows, he might even be sent here again at some point in time."

She pauses and looks back at the group descending the stairs, then shakes her head.

"For now, I'll do something to honor his memory when we get back," she turns to look at Tazendra to thnk her, but the space aroung them is going white and they are both thrown into other dreams.

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Event || In Your Worst Memory

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