✘ no i don't remember

[circumitus]

Rey will have a variety of memories to share for the EMPATHY PLOT below. Since I wanted to avoid too much tl;dr, I compiled a list of helpful excerpts and such.

Physical, Mental, Emotional

→ Anyone connected with Rey might experience certain CRAVINGS: Namely spring rolls and beer. She is particularly fond of German lager.
→ Even for those who don’t smoke might feel the urge to, but not as a result to any particular addiction or anything.
→ In spite of Rey’s stoic nature, a lot of what she feels are internal. Feelings of random inexplicable anger and guilt are likely to rise. Contrary to her exterior, Rey is constantly at war with her emotions.
→ Also, random bursts of over-protectiveness and a need to stalk may happen. There is also a great deal of abandonment and loss, both from her own timeline and on the Tranquility as well. She has issues with getting close to people now, feeling like those she tries to connect with will wind up disappearing, anyway.
→ Due to the memories of eight different people stored in her head, characters connected to Rey may find themselves thinking in different languages. Whether they know them or not (and they might), some might recognize them as English, Spanish, Zulu, Dutch, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic, as well as Hebrew.
→ You might get opera stuck in your head a lot. More specifically Andrea Chenier and Dido and Aeneas.
→ As far as her headspace goes, Rey is a soldier. You may be thinking of your situation in terms of military tactics, with her century’s worth of fighting battles in her head. Being connected to her may leave you feeling paranoid. If you don’t already, you’ll be wanting to sit in the corner of rooms with your back turned to the wall, just in the likely event that some crazy will come storming in with an AK-47 and tear up the place. If it sounds like a gun or explosion, you’ll be quick to jump to your defenses, ready to be on the offense.

(BIA) PLOT UPDATE
→ As a result of Rey’s “recon syndrome”, she experiences extreme discomfort that borders on panic when alone. When connected to her, one may feel and understand this better than she ever would due to their empathic bond. Your character may be feeling a need to be connected with another person.
→ Strong familial attachments towards the remaining recon team (namely Firo Prochainezo and William Tsang).

Memories

Once the memories start zapping through, characters will begin to experience what Rey has experienced:

→ Being “born” -- the creation kills its twin. {AM}
→ Sentenced to confinement called Glass House, it is visited by a man who claims he is in love.
→ He wooed her with wicked words. The death of Jonathan, the man who loved a machine {NETHERLANDS, AM}
→ Boot camp: Rey’s memory of being a soldier before she became Sergeant Stone. {NETHERLANDS, LYDIA SHEPHERD}
→ The memory of Sergeant Schmidt, a German soldier.
→ The memory of Sergeant Sheridan, a soldier from the Defense Forces of Ireland. {LYDIA SHEPHERD}
→ A night at the opera with Orion Gideon. Rey cries. {L}
→ Rey opens a body bag which reveals one of her previous vessels. {HIKARU SULU}
→ “Goodnight, Sleepyhead.” (Death and sabotage of Stone.)
→ The memory of Safronov, a Russian sniper. {HIKARU SULU}
→ After her memories come back, Rey has a meltdown and her father is at the receiving end of it.
→ Bird Song: One of many of Rey’s episodes of mental instability during her recovery from insanity. {ANNE MARIE CUNNINGHAM}
→ Don’t worry, it’s only skin: Rey cuts her face up. (tw: self harm) {NETHERLANDS}
→ tl;dr Rey sneaks out and eats at a Chinese restaurant with her brother. (Read as: Pretty much the one pleasant memory of hers I have to offer.
→ General good memories of her time spent with her brother during the four years she had spent living together: Arm wrestling. Racing each other down the streets of future!Chicago, towards a restaurant. Hitting each other (playfully). Getting drunk, which requires a lot of booze.
→ The memories of Sergeant Schuyler, a Dutch woman from Korps Mariniers, the Marine Corps section of the Royal Netherlands Navy. {NETHERLANDS}

(BIA) PLOT UPDATE
Tranquility Memories:
→ Sending the DUPRR pilot, Russe Neson, into the The White Room.

If anyone wants to share any of these memories from Rey (or if they have a personal preference), hit me up in the plotting thread over here!

Update: Pretty much anything from my Eight Lives page is fair game.
New and improved plotting thread can be found over yonder.

STAGE TWO
→ Lydia Shepherd
→ Hikaru Sulu

STAGE THREE
→ Netherlands

(unsorted)
→ L
→ Anastasia Romanov
→ Rose Lalonde
→ Tony Stark (616)

Comments

eight lives, eight women

[circumitus]

“The Archiver is not a friend,” she said. “Don’t have friends.”

Though the Salamander regarded Tejinder with a matter-of-fact nature, there did linger a certain fondness for the man. A fondness that drew her to save his life without Tremond’s say-so. For some reason, she did not wish to see him die. In fact, she found herself grateful that he still lived.

“Surely you wouldn’t have been so swift to step forward if you felt nothing for the man,” Tremond urged.

“Not to sound disrespectful, sir, but you have never understood my feelings.”

Gregory Tremond’s eyes rose. This was clearly not the answer that he was expecting. “Really? Your feelings? And what is it you’re supposedly feeling?”

“Confused.” She looked over to the body bags. The bloodied one remained stationary, unlike David’s bag. Red soaked through the open holes.

“You want to see what’s in there, don’t you?” Tremond beckoned her to the body bags.

The Salamander didn’t respond. She strode to it without prompt, as casual as anyone could to a corpse. She knelt beside the body bag and held out her arm. The pulsating had stopped, as did the rush of heat flowing to the ends of her fingertips.

“What are you feeling now, Salamander?” Tremond’s inquired coolly, like a silken trickle of false security.

“Afraid,” the Salamander whispered.

“Why are you afraid?”

“Because.” She placed her hands over the bag. One held onto the zipper, the other over the side. She leaned over the bag, already smelling the stench of rotting flesh. “We know what is in here.”

“Then what’re you waiting for? Open it.”

So she did.




The Salamander stood up.

Her own face was looking back up at her from the body bag. It could have very well been her spitting image, if not for the meat well beyond rigor mortis. Threads of brown hair had already fallen out. Worms weaved in and out of her shrunken eyes and mouth, her ears secreting some kind of off-colored fluid. Jagged jaw hung agape, ready to snap off after years in decomposition.

She flashed back to the morgue.

Long after it had shut down, the Renaissance Sanitarium still housed several bodies of the dead. But only the morgue itself. Though the rest of the hospital reeked of must after a few forgotten years, she remembered that crematorium. That smell, and all those bodies...

They were all her. Corpses of the former Salamanders. Each of them given similar records that Tremond had fabricated: A twenty-nine-year-old veteran of eleven years in whatever armed force she was a part of. Always at the rank of sergeant or something similar:

Rey Stone, the American or Canadian marine and a child of drug addicts.

Sheridan of the Defense Forces of Ireland, who hailed from a family of alcoholics and had no desire to drink a drop of hooch herself.

Silva of the Argentine Navy, raised by deadbeats with no drive in life.

Steyn, the daughter of a man who worked in human trafficking, and threatened to send her to a brothel for any insolent behavior until she ran away to the South African Army.

Sarfati, a girl who knew of war at a young age when her family were killed. She then joined the Islamic Republic of Iran Army.

Schuyler, a Dutch woman who watched her mama murder her papa while having a drunken argument, and enlisted for the Korps Mariniers to escape her maniacal mother.

Schmidt came home from school one day to find her parents dead on drug overdoses, which led into her joining the German military.

Then there was Safronov. Rey Safronov, the Salamander. A psycho who became a sniper during the Kristiv Resurgence in Russia...

For many years, she had dreams of Ashwater. Red skies dawned from the Battle-Brave, rent from the city below. These moments were trapped in time, doomed to repeat for many long and agonizing years.

With the image of herself still fresh in mind, the Salamander moved over to the other body bags. She knew what waited inside, but she unzipped them all anyway.

When she did, the face was far less decayed than her other corpse, but still withered away with golden peach-colored skin. Her eyes had turned to mush. Some of her teeth had been knocked out. It remained in a present state of disintegration, with a fly making its journey to and from her left nostril. The Salamander turned, finally, to the last body bag, and revealed it to herself as well.

This one, strangely enough, was not much different from the rest, except for a significant detail. Her hair wasn’t short and brown or black or dark red, but replaced by long, gold-colored tresses. The decay had not yet affected her. Though dead, the golden-haired vessel somehow appeared as though she were only sleeping.

The Salamander stumbled back, staring at the three corpses. The stench of her own rotten, bloody body filled her senses, while the golden one did not seem afflicted by the hindrance of time.