driftfleet | dreams in digital

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dreams in digital

[ Calibration Rooms ]
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ROOMS BY CHARACTER

A - C

Connor

D - F

G - I

Haggar

J - M

Lup

(last updated: 1/21/19)

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[He'll say he was curious. He doesn't recognize where he is now, but this isn't his first time being pulled so rudely into a new world without warning, so of course he has to explore. That seems the first rule to this game, whatever it is.]

[He doesn't recognize this person or her... rather unique possessions. He hasn't yet been used to that he recognizes almost all of these things now, even though he hasn't ever seen anything like some of them before, but that only comes once he's close enough to be able to see anything at all - his vision is terrible, and not just because his hair is hanging in his face - but to see him, one would never know.]

Hmm... These are all very impressive, I'm sure. For what purpose?

[Should he be fighting? Is this show and tell? He just doesn't know.]

Starting the challenge gets you closer to the end of the challenge. [Challenge, task, game... Plenty of words for it. Some that fit this projection of her better. Some that fit the larger circumstances better. Or at least how she sees the calibrations. Of course it's a game of sorts. She's sure the Atroma are having great fun wherever they are.] Choose.

[Well then. If that's how things are, he'll lean a little closer and look at the selection again and lay fingers on the hilt of the broadsword. It's similar to what he's used to, and he can't imagine it would weigh more than an adult human, something he handled on a daily basis.]

Always with a challenge. Do I get a glimpse of the rules first, or just pick my poison and hope for the best?

No rules in a place like this.

(Warnings: Fighting, violence, death, themes of work camps/racism/genocide)

[And how true that is because she's barely done speaking when there's a flash of light and suddenly you're heading into chaos. It's a prison, but it's not the underwater one she spent time in before the fleet. No, this happened back home in the Seattle core. it's a work camp for human labor. They're pushed to their brink and then shoved right over the edge and there are a disturbing number of children in the mix, both under Kitty's command and the prisoners themselves. Hell, Kitty's only nineteen here and she's co-leading the charge.

It's one of her very last missions. How do you know that? It's a mystery. You just get some of the context and a lot of her feelings. You'll also feel like you're standing in the middle of the chaos, but don't worry if something takes a swing at you, they're really aiming beyond you. You can't be harmed and you can't changed the events that are playing out here. You'll just feel the danger and horrors.

She's running on adrenaline and instinct as she emerges from her husband's massive metal back and slashes at one of the mutant guards. Apocalypse didn't put his prettier minions to work here. The mutants they're fighting look more like monsters than men, but then they aren't all naturally mutants either. Or they were once but they still got dropped into some geneticist's stew to enhance them to what you see today. Some experiments are more successful than others.

Kitty stays forceful and on task as she tries to keep her team—her family—together. She's cared for these students. Taught them and tortured them. Not for fun but to keep them alive. To make sure they had what it takes to get through moments exactly like this one where the odds are overwhelming. She believes in herself and she believes in her team, but she's feeling a hell of a lot less sure about her husband. He stops her when she tries to save the others. She's shocked. Betrayed even. But there is the mission. If they don't come through with Illyana then everything else falls apart. They can't stop Apocalypse and he has to be stopped or there will be more deaths and destruction until it's all gone. She hates it, but she agrees.

Of course, the moment they're out she wants to fling herself right back into the thick of it. She can save them. She can get them out. Not all the prisoners, but at least the people she brought into this mess. At least them. But Piotr stops her again and she lets him, but it's harder each time. This is the man she's loved almost from the moment he rescued her from Sabertooth and brought her to the X-Men. This is the kind and gentle spirit who found his happiness and peace at the end of a paint brush and not in battle. This was a man who once tilled the dirt and planted seeds to grow and flourish as a child. He's her husband and the only man she's ever loved. She agrees to his plan. She can trust him. She's always trusted him.

And yet he hasn't been the same since that battle in South America where he was so gravely injured he can no longer turn his techno-organic flesh to metal or it would kill him. The warm was gone both figuratively and literally. They still lived as husband and wife but they functioned more as co-instructors. But she's stood by him. He's so much of what she has and she's loved him so much and so long and she didn't want to admit that maybe she'd already lost him in some ways.

Until she's there at the campfire and he returns alone. The worst part? She wasn't even surprised. Disappointed. Grieving. Angry. Not surprised. She wants to believe he did everything he could like he says, but she can't. Not fully. Maybe it's the pain of losing them. Maybe it's the beginning of clarity with her husband's current state of mind. All she knows as she stares into the flames to avoid looking over at him is that she shouldn't have listened to him. She should have gone back inside, but she didn't and now her students are never coming out. There are so many feelings swirling inside, but she pushes them down hard. The mission isn't over. Their sacrifice won't be in vain.

And then there's another flash and you're back in the room—safe and sound and this Kitty is looking at you curiously.]

Not to your taste?

(OOC: The narration on those comic panels is from Illyana, not Kitty. And you can assume the panels cut off after she says "So am I, Peter. So am I." Also, just for reference there are more panels between the 3rd and the 4th, but Kitty wasn't there for them so I skipped them.)

[The Quarantine had introduced him in a trial by fire to a new world of possibility outside of his dreary old London and its surrounding countries. Back in his day and age, electricity was still an up and coming thing, people from India and China were exotic and strange and interesting. Upon being torn into Riverview, he met with people - some human, some not, but mostly human - who came from times so far in the future they couldn't remember what it was like to write on paper with ink and quill, and neither could their grandparents.]

[But this. What he sees in this vision? This is far beyond what even he has been exposed to in his long, long, long life. And yet, he isn't truly surprised. Not by the violence around him, not by the strange creatures he sees, speaking in languages he understands, using words he doesn't. What mission? What skin? Are these names or things? As a caretaker of the dead in his time, he has seen the results of horrors and tragedy in many of its terrible forms. Disease. Torture. Old age. Abuse. He knows it can happen to anyone at any time, and he has seen it.]

[What does surprise him is that, even with his vision as it is, he can see it all in startling clarity like he hasn't been able to in nearly a century. When he's back, he blinks at Kitty, intrigued in his own way at having glimpsed a piece of her past.]

Well, I don't fancy it myself, if that's what you mean. But there's not much doing to change that now. Your world has its own frightful times, same as mine, but those times surely have turned a bit more toward the odd and unusual.

[She's mostly impassive as she regards him. Not even holding the annoyance or urgency from before.] Unusual. You could say that. [Which is good because he did say it. It just happened a moment ago.] A different weapon then?

[He turns his gaze, what it is, back to the weapons before him and considers each of them that he hasn't already touched. If memories are what he'll expect here, he could choose any of them and not know what he's getting into. Not that it bothers him.]

These are your memories, milady. But, if you're really so comfortable letting little ol' me bear witness to them at my leisure, why not make a suggestion?

Edited 2019-03-09 16:59 (UTC)

Mm, are you more into death or love stories? [It doesn't matter much to her. Not this version of Kitty that isn't quite whole but only here to serve as guide and a reminder of a specific sort of time in her past.]

[He still hasn't fully understood that this isn't her that he's seeing, not the real her. His own field day with the calibrations are unknown to him, and he doesn't know her at all to know what to expect. Perhaps he'll discover this at a later time.]

Given what I once did, I would expect death, but no. There's no humor in it. Love stories aren't much better. Still, let's go with the romance.

[It's always fun when you meet someone for the first time in calibrations or while someone is glitched for that reason. You just never know!] Then you want the bow and arrow. [She nods to it instead of just running the memory for him. Jump through those hoops!]

[And jump, he does. One hand reaches for the bow and arrow, a grin already spreading over his features before he has the weapon in hand and the memory in his mind.]

A bow and arrow. How fitting.

Schott through the heart.

[Not that the word sounds any different, but there is a terrible pun he's missing since the memory that begins is about Winn Schott. Technically it's about Kitty recording a message to a man she loves who has been gone for a long time even at the point of this memory. Longer now. It takes place in her room on the Twin Roses where she's talking to just her communicator. He'll get a sense for even her thoughts and feelings instead of just what he sees play out.]

[She sits a funnel cake down in front of the video with a single lit candle propped up in it.]

Happy anniversary to us. Happy anniversary to us. Happy anniversary to uuuuuuUUuuusss. Happy anniversary to us. [She finishes singing and leans in to blow out the candle.]

Do you think the Atroma have to pay for the rights to that song even though I changed it? Kind of hoping yes. Also, I realize this isn't standard anniversary fare, but this isn't really a standard anniversary, is it? [After all, those celebrate how long people have been together and they've been apart a lot more than they've been together this year. At leas physically. He's still very much in her heart which is why she's doing this. That and she needs it for her own catharsis.

She's also thought about admitting some of the things that have happened with Sam while he was glitched. With Vash which maybe can't be written off as easily as one drunk kiss even though there hasn't been more either. But those feel like conversations to have in person. Things she'd love nothing more than to be able to work out with him or not even be able to think about because he was there. And they really aren't good anniversary talk. "Hi, Winn, my life feels messy and confusing and lacking without you" is true, but not exactly celebratory.]

I found funnel cake which is probably the best thing about this planet you would be happy to miss. There's a whole fair set up even if it's not nearly as nice as the hand-holding planet. [Still one of her favorite stops even if they did fight there. Even if he did fall into a coma. It was a beautiful place and she felt so close to him and it was scary and messy in it's own way, but it probably helped them in the long run.]

And yes, I got you another present, but I'm not telling you what it is unless you show up, so you know, incentive. [She gives the camera a little smile and then looks away, feeling strange doing this to an audience of...well, probably just the Atroma and their viewers if they exist.]

I'm hoping it's not too morose to spend today telling you what I miss most about you. I mean other than everything and everything times infinity times another infinity to the infinity power.

I miss your hands. I miss how I could tell what you were feeling just by the way you'd touch the small of my back or hold my hand or brush back my hair. They were very communicative, those hands. And warm and gentle. And they were talented and I don't just mean the dirty stuff, mister! That stuff too though. Definitely. [Little smile.] But all the things you created with them—the tech, the origami, the clothes. Your mind and heart led the charge on all of it, but your hands did a lot of the heavy lifting and they aren't the kind of hands you get to hold every day. [Nope, nope, no crying.]

You know, I needed Kurt to help sew up some clothes for me recently, because I was a cat person for a few days so there was a tail and clothes plus tail are awkward. [She laughs a little.] How often can you just drop being a cat person briefly into conversation and the other person will totally get that it was real? It was strange. Not as strange as being in a guy's body though. I'm not sure what that says. But as expert as Kurt is when it comes to modifying clothes for tails it did feel really wrong not to have you there for it. I mean, not to help me with chores but just the sharing of everything I guess.

I miss your eyes too. Every time I looked at them I couldn't help but to see all this enormous love you had not just for me—although that was huge and it meant everything to me—but for life and other people and the things you enjoyed and felt passionate about. I feel like you'd be a terrible poker player with those eyes. Even if you could probably count cards and make up for it. They were also so attentive. It always felt like you really saw me and still wanted to see more. Even through the mistakes and the dark parts and even when you looked at me with hurt and anger I still felt the love somehow.

I miss your arms and the way they'd hold me. They weren't the biggest, bulkiest, or strongest arms in the galaxy, but they were the most powerful. They were the safest ones to be in. The ones that made me happiest.

I couldn't... [Her words slip as emotion tries to take over again. She lets out a breath and thinks through what she wants to say so she can get it out.] I couldn't miss you this much if I hadn't been that happy with you.

[There's more. There's always more. But she can't keep it together, so the wrap up.]

I should probably eat this funnel cake before it gets stale. You wouldn't want me committing crime against funnel cake. [She smiles with all the love and longing and probably some of the hurting she can't hide.]

I love you, Winn.

[She blows him a kiss which seems silly, but it felt so necessary in the moment before she turns it off. And then she just curls in on herself, head down on the bed as she starts to cry before returning him to the present. Or at least what passes for the present in calibrations in that simple training room with a much less emotionally vulnerable Kitty.]

[There are a few moments of silence from him following that vision. It touches a place in him he'd almost thought long dead until it happened again, and then left again. These are the words of silly romance novels he'd never been fond of, never read more than one of because they were silly and unbecoming. But they are real, in a way.]

[It doesn't move him so to see her suffer for a lost or absent love. He has been dealing with the dead and for the dead far too long anymore, and she is still little better than a stranger to him. She's just another human with a soul and feelings far deeper than anyone not close enough to her to deserve those words will ever know. But he does respect it. He can acknowledge her.]

[He nods finally.]

It never gets any easier. They tell you time will heal all wounds, but it only pushes them to one side for a while, doesn't it?

[She returns the nod.] It just gets more common. [The body count gets higher. The losses more plentiful. Winn's not dead as far as she knows. He's just gone from this place and that's something at least. She's lost many in more gruesome ways.]

Practice doesn't always make perfect. Anything else you want to see?

[He could lend a confession of his own or two that might offer her some hope for the future, but he won't venture to those grounds. Not here, and perhaps not even outside of this dream state. But given time...?]

Indeed. That's awful generous of you, but I think I had best not overstay my welcome here. You've been kind to let me see this much, I'd wager.

There's a door waiting for you now. [She gestures to it. The door does like to wait until a few memories have been shared after all.]

[He follows her gesture and eyes his exit, then turns to her and offers a short bow. If he had a hat to tip, he'd do so.]

Well, it's been grand. I do hope to see you again in the future. Until then.

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dreams in digital

peeks in here

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I feel so bad, you're writing me small novels ;3;

haha, I copied and pasted you a small novel and updated the start and ending. Don't feel bad.

XDD awww that makes me feel a little better

Good good!

8DDD