Post-Event Blues

[lucetimods]

Who: Everybody, everybody!
What: The battle is won. Now what?
When: The eleventh, twelfth, and onward
Where: Luceti
Summary: With Zompano dead and the cultists routed, Luceti is restored. Kind of.
Rating: F for Feels

On the eleventh, things were slowly breaking down. Memories of their true lives were breaking through. The village, scarred by the battle with the cultists, began to rebuild itself. Community buildings that had vanished were returned to their rightful places. The battle dome was uncovered from the earth that had covered it. Hundreds and hundreds of fake homes slowly faded away. Paved roads gave way to trees and grass. It was an incredible sight for anyone who was willing to sit aroun and watch it happen.

Things wouldn't be easy for the villagers, though. The memories perpetuated by the last ten days would not be easily removed. The feelings and hatreds it had created would take time to conquer and remove. Perhaps, in a way, that was Zompano's nastiest trick of all. The village itself may heal from his invasion, but it would take far more than a few Shifts to fix the people left behind.

Towards the end of the day, their wings returned. Much like some of the buildings, they seemed to just reappear, as if they had never been gone. Their barcodes became visible again as a singular reminder that they were, ultimately, just the property of another entity who as a whole were not much better than Count Zompano.

By the twelfth, the village looked as though nothing had ever happened. Sure, the contents of buildings might have been messed up or destroyed during the battles, but things were otherwise as they were supposed to be. The night before, people would have had to find their old beds to go sleep in, as they no longer possessed the old ones granted to them in another life.

The village was peaceful.

Modly Note: That wraps up the event. As noted in the prose above, you have the option to play up the after effects of the event more than in other ones. While it won't have the same impact universally, the Shift was constructed in such a way that people may have difficulty shaking off the emotions they developed during the event. In effect, it was a cruel send off to Luceti so they would have to deal with the loathing and hatred that came with the less desirable parts of it. Of course, that means the feelings of familial bonds will also persist for awhile as well. It's up to you, as players, to decide how much or little to play with it!

Comments

11th

[windandrain]

Saori lay there, head tilting slightly to follow Daisy's movements. The giant girl was always a welcome sight, as welcome as any of the healers. She knew her, trusted her, and had been helped by her in the past. Whenever she'd been ill or laid up from Shift related maladies, Daisy had been there.

"Hello Daisy," she finally said after a long, silent moment. "Are you...alright?"

Better to ask after someone than focus on her own aches and worries.

[daisy023]

She is silent for a moment. But strangest of all, she nods.

"I've been through this before. I was here when it was the Malnosso who tried this two years ago."

Daisy moves a little forward, elevating her own hands to let Nala advance a little with Saori's healing, but to also let her soothe a little of her pain.

"It's old hat for me... but seeing things from different perspectives." The girl that lived a lonely life, and the woman that sought for a life at all. "It's a curious feeling. After everything that's happened... I feel well."

It's difficult to describe it, after having so long wanted a life like that, and realizing it was not all she thought it could be.

[windandrain]

"I...heard about that." Saori smiled gratefully for the healing. "I'm glad...I missed it. I couldn't do this twice. It's beyond me."

Really, waking up in the clinic the day before had been a hammerblow, cracking a lot of the resolve she'd built up already. If Yuuna wasn't here, she'd probably have already pulled out all the memories of the event.

"but I'm glad you feel alright. I was worried, I know how different it was from your real life."

[daisy023]

The reminder of what her real life was like before Luceti, especially before she was allowed to graduate as a Spartan, gives her perspective between the may Daisys that came to be inside of this enclosure.

It's a strange conclusion she came to. That the life she made in here, for all the grief and for all the sadness that broke her, became much better than any false identity anyone would ever carve out for her, and that she accomplished it from something that should have made her forget even her name by all rights.

"My life in my universe was hard." She speaks, reminiscing. Like a battle of years ago. It was surreal to think of all of the changes of her life. "I was a much different person back then. Nothing prepared me for Luceti."

Nothing before Luceti prepared her for a life where she got everything she had always wanted for more than fifteen years. She puts a hand over Saori's head, focusing Nala's energy to clear headaches.

"But it made me realize something that had always confused me for my entire life." She looks at Saori, smiling, almost sadly. "About what I had always wanted."

[windandrain]

Saori listens quietly, noting the curious tone of sadness in Daisy's voice. What sort of life had she lived, to be so obviously and unnaturally tall and strong? And with her training? She'd assumed some sort of soldier, at least.

Gratefully, she sighs and accepts the healing, letting the magic soothe away that minor irritation.

"And what was it you wanted, dear?"

[daisy023]

Daisy Mizuno, SPARTAN-023 in the life Halsey assigned to her, Clark in what she had always wanted, Daisy at her core and the arbiter of the many parts of her self, last name or number marking her as a person or as an object, all come to a single conclusion, many thoughts coming to an agreement after all the grief and loss they had suffered from many loved ones. Ones all but forgotten with everything that happened in her life, others from whom their loss inflicted grief she comes to think even now.

In all of those lives, there was the fear that she would not have any of that again.

"I always wanted a life to call my own."

She lifts her head, looking at Saori, still with a forlorn smile.

"These shifts hurt me the most because I thought it was impossible for me to ever get it. A mom, a dad, a home, a family, a loved one. After everything that happened in my world," after seeing the worst sentient beings can do to each other, "I thought it had no solution. That it was something I could only watch from afar, but now..."

Her hands hold Saori's.

"I've realized after so many years, I made that life, Saori. I made something much more beautiful than anything the Malnosso or the cultists had ever put up. For so long I thought impossible, but I just learned thanks to you... to Keimi... to Adell... to Valvalis..."

She tries to smile. She struggles, but does so.

"So please... don't feel sad, Saori. With all we've gone through in Luceti... it is possible to take control of our lives. It is possible to make something more amazing than anything they could offer to us."

Once her time in Luceti ends, and her life comes at an end on the fields of Harvest, she will have been able to tell herself that she got to live.

[windandrain]

A life to call her own. Saori can relate to that, in her own way. She'd been given a choice in her life, a choice that'd led her down a road to power and immortality, but it hadn't been entirely her own. The choice of Tesshin to change her, the choice to live or die, that was what she'd been given. Accept or perish. But unlike her, Daisy wouldn't lead a life of quiet contemplation and responsibility, rather one of violence and denial.

"Daisy," she nods, "I'm glad to have met you. And that we've forged a family together."

She pauses, squeezing Daisy's hand back.

"It's hard to say what will happen in the end, if we find a way to get home, or...wherever we want to go. But among my kind we have a saying. 'Love your family, love your friends as family.' No god has a real...blood family. We forge bonds with other gods, mortals, heroes and priests, champions and apostles...and they become our family. I'm grateful that you feel that way, that you recognize how...deep...the bonds can become. So don't you be sad. No matter what happens, we'll always be family."

[daisy023]

Love your family, love your friends as family.

She comes to understand. After being taken from her original family, she grew to think of Ralph, Joseph, John, Samuel, Kelly, and the rest like family. In the time she felt betrayed by the one she thought of as her mother for all those years, she felt lost, and thought only her first family would be her chance to return; but even when that monster tried reminding her that such a life would be impossible to get back, her Spartans were her second family.

It is possible to rebuild.

Slowly, Daisy leans down to Saori, focusing her hold on Nala even more, to whisper something to her.

"Thank you, Saori. For having given me a new family. For everything."

[windandrain]

As the spartan leans down, Saori stretches up, wrapping her arms around Daisy's neck. She presses her lips against the big woman's cheek in a gentle, familial kiss.

"Thank you too, Daisy."