soul cages

[firstroar]

WHO: Soldier Blue, OTA
WHERE: anywhere local or global
WHEN: various
WHAT: psychic mindfuckery, involuntary memory/dream shares
WARNINGS: tag where necessary, but definitely mental illness, abuse, and violence warnings abound



Once upon a time, a long time ago in a world far, far away, there was a boy with pale hair and bright, blue eyes. He was seemingly no different from any other children around him: He had a mother and father assigned to him, he went to school, he played games, studied, dreamed...he did all the things a child was supposed to do. He even obediently went away as told when the time came for him to no longer be a child, saying farewell forever to his parents and school, and into the hands of the government workers assigned to evaluate his readiness for adulthood.

He waited his turn with all the other would-be adults and was soon led to the examination room. Placed upon the table, they calibrated their machine and set to work. The time had finally come to let go of childish things and integrate into society, but it wasn't a matter of will. Instead, the machine was designed to take those childhood memories by force, scrub them to their barest notions, sanitized to a satisfactory level to keep a mind content and compliant. In doing this, however, it woke a power that lay sleeping within the boy, one that crumpled the machine, shattered windows, and was unlike anything the people had ever seen before. He could hear their thoughts, feel their hearts, and it made them very afraid.

He was the first of his kind to exude such a power. Type-Blue, they named him, and kept him locked up as other children began to wake with powers of his like.


Years before this city began its hostile crackdown on the metahuman community, a man with pale hair and bright, red eyes appeared. Despite his youthful appearance, he was very old and very tired, and powers that had once crumpled steel and shattered windows was dampened by the toll taken on the frail body they were housed in. Yet even so, he could feel the thoughts and hearts of those around him, create and discern the bonds between them, and flourish in ways his homeland would never allow.

His body is still buried in one of the larger cemeteries within the City limits, marked by a humble gravestone.

Blue
Beloved friend
A soldier



Once upon a time, the City's porter brought a man with pale hair and bright, red eyes. He was young, still strong and powerful in ways the common man wasn't, and the vibrant society around him was like a dream come true -- a world where minds and hearts were free. Despite being so estranged from his home, he couldn't help but feel hope blossom inside him as he found kindness and camaraderie all around him.

He soon learned that he was both the first of his like and the second: That he, himself, had already been here. Lived and died, buried and marked by a humble gravestone.

He learned that man was himself, hundreds of years ahead of his time.

He learned a lot of other things besides, like how darkness in the hearts of men can twist them into doing terrible things, much like how they did in his homeland. Despite his strength, he was still frail of form, and it was not long after the crackdown that he was taken, locked away yet again as he had been as a boy. The experiments then were no longer about eradicating him, but in exploiting him -- using his abilities to find others he had forged those invisible ties to, the ones visible to him. For a long time, he was a compass of sorts, drugged into obedience and manipulated into daring to believe what he saw before him was still the truth.



It's been some time since he'd been freed -- by whom, he cannot be sure anymore. The faces change in the scene that dimly flickers in his memories. Sometimes the actors are filled with the faces of complete strangers, only familiar to those nearby whose memories and dreams bleed into his. Sometimes all it takes to be drawn to such strangers is the barest inkling of old kindnesses known and forgotten; he finds them in dreaming, drifting through the subconscious like a pale ghost with those bright, red eyes. In waking, he still shivers even under heavy layers of coats and scarves, his eyes sullen but searching as they stare, seeing more than just the bodies in front of him.

Dreaming, waking memories...they all have lures that pull his mind forward, searching and yearning for fragments of what he's lost. It doesn't always turn out so well, and oftentimes the demons of another's mind get pulled into the forefront, mutating into the monsters of his own memories, making it a helluva time for both minds.

Sometimes he himself is the lure; there are still special people in the world who can hear the melancholy call of psionic voices such as Blue's, reaching out into the dark for some comfort of connection.

And, of course...a withered, frail man like him is no stranger to the risks of being out in the world: Sometimes all it takes is a compassionate or harried soul reaching out to pull him away from dangers that he fails to perceive, and that contact is enough to open the doors to the heart.

It can be terrible, yes, but...it's better than being alone, right?



tl;dr, come get ya mindfucks, be it in dreams or in person

Comments

[imasupersandwich]

[ pops up behind him in a dream tryin to see what he's lookin' at. ]

Yo, this is kinda weird, huh.

[firstroar]

[it is weird, yes; connecting to the dreams of someone whose mind isn't human leaves Blue with a strange sense of unbalance -- as though whatever ground he may be standing upon is too light to hold him and might give way at any moment.

he's been looking up and out, skyward, trying to understand the sky in this place, and trying to understand what it is he had been meaning to be searching for. some pale, bright source of light...

but now, his attention is pulled toward the dreamer. he turns partway, staring without response for a moment, trying to understand who and what he sees. he seems vibrant enough to be alive and aware, but it could be another trick of the medicine.

that's why he asks:] ...Are you real?

[imasupersandwich]

[ he blinks, unsure, and begins patting and mumbling curiously to himself. ]

I think I'm real, ain't I?

[firstroar]

[he watches quietly, seeing some semblance of gears turning, so to speak. psionics are weird.]

I don't know. I can't always tell anymore...what's real and what's not.

[he closes his eyes, but finds that he can still "see" in the sense of dreaming.]

...It seems like a dream to me.

[imasupersandwich]

[ goku scratches his head. ]

Weird. I thought dreams always happened where you were sleepin'.

[firstroar]

That's where they belong. [no denying that.] But they don't stay that way anymore for me.

[he opens his eyes again, looking past the goofy-haired man.]

I can't really tell anymore...what's in the waking world...and when I'm dreaming.

lmk if im getting stuff wrong /mwah/

[hatejakku]

Finn had been confused ever since he arrived in New York, certain he wasn't on his Earth anymore. Everything was the same but different (so different) and he hated it. He couldn't find any of his loved ones, no familiar faces, and even after joining in the Resistance movement, he still felt far too alone.

But there was someone else out there who felt alone, too.

It felt like a pull. Not the Force, of course, but maybe something like it. Something at the front of his mind constantly nagging, constantly begging for his attention and wanting, something dark and scared and kind.

The closer Finn got to the source, the worse he felt. Things appearing on the edges of his visions, voices that shouldn't exist, things like that. This being was hurting him, but he was still driven by the need to help.

Finn stopped at the mouth of an alley in one of the worst yet most abandoned parts in the city. Barely, he could spy a bundle of coats and a person beneath them... Finn stepped forward. "Hello?"

it's perf i'm ready for a good time

[firstroar]

This is no place to take a rest, but Blue's body can't always endure the trek to safety, and sometimes safety is simply some place where fewer minds gather. Emptiness is lonely, so unbearably lonely, so he's never too far out of the city as to be estranged from all sense of thought, but being too close can overwhelm him just as easily now, too. The imbalance of his mind leaves him ever struggling for some peace, and very often those calls to the more compassionate souls in the world are involuntary.

So it is for the stranger drawing near, whose kind heart is quite a beacon in the gloom in spite of all the apprehension and worry weighing upon it. It reminds Blue of others he had known before, whose faces in memories flicker in and out as the haze in his mind shifts.

It's why, curled up against the wall, his head lifts and his eyes fix on Finn's shape, hopeful.

"You came to find me?" he asks, his voice hoarse from disuse. "Were you looking for me?"

[hatejakku]

Finn blinks and decides to answer as honestly as he can. "I think so." This had to be the being projecting himself.

For all Finn was brave, he was scared of all this. Mind tricks weren't unfamiliar territory for him anymore, but the feeling was still keeping him on edge. So, where he usually would have ran forward, Finn stood unmoving, locked in place by Blue's gaze.

At least focusing on his eyes seemed to cancel out almost all of the other... static. Static was a good word for it.

"Are you all right?"

[firstroar]

I've been searching, he says, but his voice doesn't come from his throat. Instead, it's clearer coming from his mind, the pleading tone emphasized by the way Blue's eyes wince.

But I can't remember what for. Or who. You...

Is he who he was searching for? There's a familiar resonance in him, in his kindness...and his fear. It's not something he can fully discern even with him right there -- he needs to be able to glean more.

It's why he lifts his hand, reaching out.

"Please. Show me."

[hatejakku]

Finn freezes when the voice enters his mind. Is it the Force? How would he know what it felt like, really?

He clenches his hand, fighting the resolve to step away. Even if this person needed help, the risk to himself was probably too great. He shouldn't be here.

But Finn steps forward, anyway, creeping closer slowly. "Show you what?" His hand reaches out, but he's too wary to actually make contact. "Can you tell me your name? Are you hurt?"

[firstroar]

Blue's own hesitates in reaching; Finn's unease is practically palpable, like some kind of mesh barrier between them. Is he afraid of him? Does he know why to be afraid of him? Is that it?

Asking him for his name makes it clear he is no old friend, or if he is...then he only was, and those memories are scrubbed clean. They can do that now, right? The way they fogged up his own mind with the chemicals they put into him...it couldn't have been just him.

Did he escape, too? Blue has to know. Certain of that much, he sits up to grasp Finn's hand, his breath hitching the moment the contact flings open so many doors in the stranger's mind to him, a 'force' of sorts more powerful than his own willpower drawing him in.

Where...?!

It's disorienting, diving into the heart of another without meaning to, and his confusion resonates with Finn's fear, drawing him toward the source. Force? Mind tricks? Those sorts of things are tied to a past filled with an eerily familiar echo to Blue's own -- something he hasn't been able to see clearly for such a long time, yet now...now he's small again. Just a boy. And that stranger?

He's still hanging onto him, but he's changed, too, suited to the memory.

[hatejakku]

Finn's panic flares but immediately lessens, forgetting why he was afraid at all. But just because he forgot the reason doesn't mean the fear is just gone.

FN-2187 stares back at the other boy in confused horror. He's wearing only his blacks, standing in a dark, metal room with mirror-polished floors. Boots pace by in formation beyond the door, but 87 pays the sound no mind.

A voice calls to him and he turns to find someone there. They wear a long, white medical coat but he can't tell anything else about them, as if their face was blurred from memory. Even what they say can't be made out by him now, but it makes him more afraid.

He doesn't know why he's- why they are here. He did something wrong, something they didn't approve of. Something small that he and others used to do but were no longer allowed once they were moved into units. He couldn't remember what it was, though.

And now, 87 feels pinned, unsure who to be more afraid of or even why. In the end, it's the blurred being that wins out, and 87 puts himself between them and the other boy.

[khajidont]

Jaime doesn't hear the voice.

But Khaji does. It's not even that Khaji hears it - it's that he senses it, some great power dwelling in a quiet corner of the City, and Jaime is wandering it still, trying to get ahold of what's happened, what's happening. Magic, Khaji supplies, distaste clear in his tone, as impassive as it sounds to anyone else. Jaime breathes it in and can't help but come to the same accord. It smells like electricity lashing through a muddy puddle, a burning spark in the air, dangerous and uncontrollable.

So of course he walks towards the source, some hunched figure looking far more frail than he is.

"Hello? Are -- are you okay?"

[firstroar]

Being perceived is not unlike being grabbed roughly by the shoulder for attention; it causes Blue to stir with a start, breath catching. Fear casts him in a faint halo of blue, the knee-jerk reaction bred from many, many dreadful encounters. He lifts his head, eyes widening as they move immediately to fix on the young man radiating apprehension and concern.

Concern...lacking awareness. Is he a true stranger, not a bounty hunter or informant? If he is, just this outward gleaning of his character isn't enough to prove it, save for the distant echo of memories of the most recent of battles. Maybe that's enough to be wary.

"Why," he rasps, "why have you come here? What do you want of me?"

[khajidont]

"Um..."

Well, that's a loaded question, isn't it? Do people usually want something with him? Jaime looks nervously from the man's face to the rest of him. He looks fragile despite the power emanating from him. Maybe even scared, as though Jaime's someone to be scared of. Of course he is - more people should be scared of him if they knew what was what - but this is different, isn't it? This guy just seems wary of the world around him.

He holds his hands up in surrender. "Well. I'm here 'cause the Porter brought me here. And then I went for a walk, and then you were here. And I guess I want you to tell me if you're okay or not? No offense, but you look a little rough."

[firstroar]

There's been a lot to fear of late, and some of it seemingly needless. What understanding he lacks now, the things that were taken from him during his time in captivity, has stripped him from the simplest of securities in even knowing a man's heart to be honest. It could all be another hallucination, after all.

The expression Blue wears wavers in its hardness as he watches Jaime speak. The listening is secondary to what he can perceive without ears, and a lie may come in a different way.

He may be truthful in what he says, though: There's no outward sign on his person that he's in league with the facility he'd been held in, and inwardly...

Blue's eyes squint.

...Why are so many of this man's thoughts and questions directed inward? Who are they directed to like that?

He'd never met the man with the scarab of this time, nor crossed his path long enough to sense that sort of interaction. But he's known minds split within themselves, tormented or otherwise addled, and it wasn't like this. This one is unique.

"...Who are you...?"

Again, the question of his own well-being goes unanswered in favor of bigger concerns. A little rough seems the obvious fit, anyway.

[khajidont]

Everything about Blue's demeanor makes Jaime nervous, as though he's seeing something else. Not through him. Maybe a little past him, something that Jaime can't see at all. He's come into contact with people like that before. Sometimes they helped him. Sometimes they hurt him. But all of them were difficult to get a handle on, and here especially, he knows that that's a dangerous thing. He's out of his element here. For once, he's actually in danger.

It seems smarter to answer his questions. Try to put him at ease a little, maybe, and then he can move on and figure out where to go from here, or if this guy needs any help. It's not that Jaime's swimming in resources here like he would be at home, but he gets the impression that he's better off than this guy.

"Um, my name's Jaime. Who are you?"

[firstroar]

Jaime.

Uncertainty swirls around the name as much as the person who spoke it -- well, perhaps not as much, considering how uneasy he's becoming the longer this goes on. Blue hopes that some clarity comes to him quickly, but that just isn't the case these days. His expression still looks troubled as he shakes his head, unable to trace any thread of familiarity from a glance or a sound. It feels almost a betrayal to the hazy shadows in his head; can he be truly certain of knowing or not knowing?

"Blue," he says, bringing a hand to his face, curling his fingers against his temple. "That's...the only name I can remember. The subject...that's no name. It's just what I was called."

Finally, his eyes focus on Jaime the shape in front of him, acknowledging the concern and discomfort on his features.

"You're...not here to collect me. Are you."

[dragony]

It isn't wise to venture off into this world, alone. It is a dangerous place with dangerous people. Coming here so suddenly has only unsettled the ones who live here — like an injured beast falling upon the mound of an anthill. She feels injured, and pursued, and nettled at all sides by the dissonance between what's familiar and what isn't. This isn't the same world she saw be destroyed, but it is the one where she grew up. It's home, but it hasn't been home for a long time. She doesn't belong here.

But she did, once.

It's not safe to treat it like a world that isn't real, like a trip into memory, but she can't help herself. She's curious and foolish and her heart won't stop aching, longing to see what befell the world she knew. The bookstore has traded hands enough times that she passed by it twice without recognizing it. The old high rise where she and Miles used to live is secure-access now. The old Metahuman Apartment Complex... the government would have seized it again, so there's no way she could even get close without tripping suspicion. There are other places to go, other landmarks to see, but it all feels like traversing through a graveyard.

Perhaps it is that sense that leads her here. The press of ghosts at her periphery. Of so many old wounds pulled open again. Certain she'll find at least one thing that hasn't changed — uncertain what to think if this, too, is different. And so — trim grass, stiff for the frost, and large old trees laying blankets of shadow across the pathways, the dreary sight of old bouquets, rain-damaged cards not yet collected by the groundskeepers.

There is a girl looking for his gravestone.

[firstroar]

A step too close and the grass no longer crunches, but ripples, and the ambient sounds of the city around blot out quickly, as though hands were clapped over her ears. The space loses the natural chill of the air as the coldness comes from a place inward being pulled out, invisible fingers prying and probing out of reflex to survey the interloper.

A grave?

Why?

Pulling the barest threads of intent doesn't give the whole picture, but it may be all he can get without imposing his presence further and revealing himself at rest nearby. A dangerous prospect, given past encounters.

Memories aren't kept in the ground. I looked. They aren't there.

[dragony]

The world around her remains as it was, but it changes. There's a shift in texture, a shift in temperature; her feet don't feel like they bear all the weight they're supposed to, and the wind doesn't carry enough noise. She's away from people, but even her heart feels coddled, swathed in fabric and dipped in water, like the rest of the world is moving far, far away. It is not the same as exPorting, but it feels familiar — and for some reason, the familiarity doesn't bring fear.

She stops in her tracks, and takes a breath. It's not the strangest thing in the world, to hear a voice that makes no sound. It was something she was born for.

Mine are. It takes no effort to respond in kind, even if she doesn't have the power to send it out like others do. If someone is strong enough to place their voice in her heart, then they're keen enough to find her response. She looks towards the trees of the grounds, evergreen, those bare of leaves. A place of death, and loss, and shelter. This whole world is memory to me.

Who are you, to intrude on my heart?

[firstroar]

Very rarely is there ever a reply that comes straight from the heart; very few know how to do it, and most only react outwardly anyway. It gives Blue pause, but more than that, it gives him a little spark of hope.

I've been calling all of this time...did you finally come to find me?

He can't even remember who he was waiting for anymore; there's a list of names, some flickering memories of faces that don't line up with it, but none of it a proper road map to understanding. It's left him despondent and frustrated with himself and most anyone who draws too near and lacks familiarity.

Was I waiting for you? I don't remember.

Or is this another trap? He's not going to go back there; there's nothing more they can take or use him for.

[dragony]

Her heart trembles in her chest, but Ruka knows it's not just her feelings that leave her shaken. There is someone here — beside her, within her, far beyond where she stands now. It's a familiar kind of dialogue, but the years have been long, and her graveyard is full.

There's no one in this world that would have waited for me. Even if they did remember.

She knows it shouldn't, but a thought like that still stings — she's always been too skilled at self-damage. It's the truth, though; she would have felt if Rua were here, and anyone else... who could possibly have thought of Ruka enough to miss her? To wish for her to come here? Would her absence have meant much to anyone, this many years later?

Does she not still miss the ones she's lost?

It's hard to move, but she takes a few steps closer to the stone she seeks — but her attention is not on the muted grounds of winter.

I wasn't close enough to hear you before. I was somewhere else. How long have you been calling? How long have you been alone?

[firstroar]

Stop.

With the command, there's a growing feeling of weight in the air, the press of a psychic barrier that bubbles up when her steps take her too close to a certain marker in the ground.

He's resting against the tree next to it on the side opposite, nestled in the coats and scarves collected to try and keep his frail frame warm to some degree. He's not in a state to fight with this body of his, but there's still life in him that he can send out of himself if he must.

It's not something he wants to do. He's been spectator to many of the conflicts that bubble up in this city, even in his efforts to steer clear. A younger man would've dove in and fought with them, but he's been where those soldiers take the ones they catch -- he doesn't want to go there again.

More's the reason to be wary. From this short distance, she seems to wear her miseries like a thick cloak, and it may very well be something that can hide a fell purpose for being here. It shames him to mistrust, but he must, but even the way she poses those questions makes him waver.

...

This one... Why this one? Do you know the one buried here?