03 ▒ EVENT: STRELA OUTPOST ▒ ASSIMILATION

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Ensemble production!
LOCATION: Strela Outpost.
WARNINGS: Mind horror, hivemindery, etc.
SUMMARY: Communal brainwashing.
NOTES: Divided by locations; players are free to indicate which day/stage, and to begin new subthreads wherever they'd like!

Looks like the authorities have apprehended you and have brought you in for processing. After being forced to wait in the waiting room, you're brought to the assimilation room - a terrible white cell, where you're trapped for hours, sentenced to be slowly stripped of your individuality.

Comments

[unsoldiered]

"I know. It's okay, to be scared." He looks up, sees a guard shifting to move, looks back down at her. "You wouldn't be human if you weren't scared; you'd be like the rest of these bastards. Hang onto that, okay? Even if they try to change that, remember everything you're telling me. Don't let them change that."

Someone's walking up behind him, and he hugs her closer, heartbeat rapid despite the calmness he's trying to mask his face with.

"I'm not a good person, either. I'll remember that. We'll both remember, right? Remember your family and what you like doing--all the stuff that makes you you. All the stuff that connects you to other people, like your sister, or Finnick."

They're going to take him soon. Possibly her next, after him, like a series of cruel gun spray. He can tell--knows. One of them is already crossing the room in a beeline, his cold blank eyes locked on him.

[maredementis]

Annie didn't survive on luck. She hears what she hears in his voice, trying to tie hope to her spine, but she remembers Peeta and what they can do to your memories--to all that you're supposed to be, all that makes you you, and suddenly Annie is calm.

"I'm a shapeshifter," she says, "No one ever understood that."

"Let go of me." Annie doesn't wait for him to answer, because she can suddenly see clearly where to strike with her elbows, and she drives them hard into Alex's pressure points and snaps out of his embrace like a switchblade. She stands on her sprained ankle, it's only sprained, and curls her hands into fists. Wearing Alex's rough bandages, at her tiny height, she looks insubstantial.

Stares at the guard, who stares back, not seeing.

"But I remember." She looks over her shoulder at Alex. "I remember everything."

The guard puts a hand on her to move her aside. Annie whips around and all by rips his arm out of its socket, forcing him towards the ground, and hisses: "I'm a fucking dolphin."

[unsoldiered]

Nothing like seeing stars again, and he crumples over at the blaring pain her elbows deliver. She really is good at fighting--but that's not going to do shit for her right now, and he knows it. What are you doing? You idiot, what are you doing? He looks up, eyes squinting against the lights above, vision spiking in and out for a moment.

"Ann..." Breathe. He drags himself to his knees and elbows. "Stop... W-wait..."

It's pointless. All that'll happen is she'll get herself hurt even worse. More guards will come, she'll be shoved to the floor, and then it'll happen anyway. He just. Needs to collect himself, ignore the ache in his limbs and sides, and he can do something-

[maredementis]

Annie snaps the guard's neck with two hands and snaps a kick into the solar plexus of the next, and she really is beautiful like this in the most monstrous of ways. This is what people wanted to see in her Games, another beautiful and deadly District 4, but she'd disappointed. Now it's wasted on these eyes as an aesthetic, but as a weapon she's almost peerless. She has trained harder and longer than Finnick in the past five years, if only because she had more time, and she tears a cattle prod from the kicked guard and slams it with lethal force into his eye socket.

They take her down after that, a cattle prod, then another, another, in the small of her back, and Annie crumples like a broken doll, slumping to the floor and cracking her head. She's out instantly, sprawled with half-curled hands. Good night, Alex.

[unsoldiered]

At the sight of her crumpling he drops his forehead into the ground, a wave of pain clawing its fingers into his skull. All he can do his repeat no, verbally, mentally, as they leave Annie there on the floor and start toward him, all the while unresponsive to the corpses that litter the area around them. Alex panics. He moves his arms backward, crawls backward, the burns and marks on his legs and body gnawed with pain.

"Get away from me..."

At least Annie's alive still. Maybe there's hope for her. A rescue. Anything.

"Stay away from me--!"

He shoves but it's weak and heavy, slow like a dying animal; not anything that bothers the guards, because they latch onto his arms with full curling fingers, sliding him against his will across the smooth floor. His head hangs low. He's so fucking tired... He can't...

"I'm sorry... couldn't help..."

He glances blindly, blankly, toward the body resting nearby, before they yank him out of the room by the elbows and wrists, leaving just a few sad smears of blood.

Goodnight.