Event || In Your Worst Memory

[0301120113092025]

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?

Comments

[shinrasfinest]

Sephiroth's gaze could well have burned a hole in her, if mako-infusion gave him the power to do that, while he waited for her to answer. It seemed she were trying to stall him-

-and divert him, apparently, by only answering then one of his questions. Sephiroth took a careful breath to steel his calm, his anger wasn't an easy thing to keep a lid on considering it seems to be what his internal issues seem to have bubbled into. Not helped at all by the memories he's been a part of thus far-

"Who is the guardian? Or am I not allowed to know that, either?"

[0301120113092025]

Being slow to reply seemed to be one of the thing she was good at, but she did reply.

"You know him as a man named Garland."

[shinrasfinest]

No solider of Esdham worth his salt wouldn't know the name of the Emperor when he heard it and Sephiroth's expression darkens noticeably, still trying to figure out the small girl who was only giving him the briefest of answers.

"What has Garland got to do with all of this? You say he's a guardian...what is he protecting?"

Excepting his own interests within the Empire, that is.

[0301120113092025]

"Crystallis and Life."

It was all she replied to this.

[shinrasfinest]

Well that certainly earned a double-blink, followed by a delicate creasing up of the top of Sephiroth's nose as he continued to throw his gaze all over the girls face as if searching for something written there.

"Come again-?"

But that means-

"Who are you?"

[0301120113092025]

"I am an aspect of one made of many."

[shinrasfinest]

"One made of many." He repeated while thoughts raged like wildfire just on the other side of his eyes. That idea, of being a fragment of a whole, sung true to memories that weren't rightly his to have yet...

"Like fragments of a whole..." He didn't need to say it, what he suspected of the girl before him so instead Sephiroth changed tack.

"...are we- part of the same?"

[0301120113092025]

"We are part of the same but you are not an aspect."

[shinrasfinest]

"I'm not sure that I follow. How can we be a part of the same yet not of the same?"

[0301120113092025]

"Your arm and your heart are part of the same being, yet are they the same thing?"

[shinrasfinest]

"So, what is the whole? The cycle itself, perhaps?"

[0301120113092025]

She paused.

"You do not understand."

With that said, she extended a hand for Sephiroth to take.

[shinrasfinest]

The expressive part of Sephiroth's face, where lower forehead met eyebrows and nose crunched up even further at the girl.

No. But I want to understand.

He wasn't sure if he'd only thought it or said it out loud, but he found himself drawn to staring at her hand for a few moments all the same. Sephiroth didn't trust this girl, at all but here he was presented with an opportunity, at least.

"Will you show me?"

[0301120113092025]

"..."

She didn't say a word, but she kept the hand extended. Probably not for long though.

[shinrasfinest]

Within those weighted seconds he came to the conclusion that he really wasn't going to learn anything of this on his own, and for all that he'd been through already it seemed ridiculous that refusing to take this girls hand might keep something important from him.

A careful exhale of breath was blown out of his nose as Sephiroth took the girls hand.

[0301120113092025]

When he grasped the girl's hand, Sephiroth had a vision. But unlike Ashelia who had seen the destruction of Crystallis, Sephiroth saw nothing but darkness as far as the eye could see. He didn't see anything, but he could feel the madness that followed Ashelia's vision.

More than madness, the sensation was one of fear. This fear was born from a very simple fact-- The knowledge that he would die. Not the possibility of dying, but the realization that no matter what he did, no matter what any form of existence did, they would all die. Then the fear grew and became the fear to see everything dying, all of existence denied and returned to a void by the Calamity. The fear was inescapable-- If Sephiroth tried to accept it, the fear would still grow and if he tried to struggle against it or run away from it it, it would grow even faster.

But eventually; Sephiroth would come upon a realization: to overcome that fear, one would have to become the fear itself and then surpass it. After that, Sephiroth was kicked away from the vision and garden, only to be thrown into another memory. The fear and sensation would be all gone and he would remember it as if he had felt someone else's emotions-- But he would remember exactly how it had felt.