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

[hostage]

Jesse's expression doesn't change when that attempt fails. Disappointment is beyond him now. He's not capable of it anymore. He goes slack for a moment when she traps his body with her mind, registering this new state and weighing the benefits of waiting versus fighting. He decides that she's likely bluffing when she says she doesn't care if he hurts himself. His head tips slowly to the side while he looks at her, considering.

"It's over," he tells her. "There is nowhere to run, Libby."

His head gives a violent jerk back as his muscles seize. He's fighting her grip with all of his strength. His fingers contort. His arms pull as his body twists to dislocate them from their sockets. His spine arches dangerously as he struggles to break his own neck. He stops sounding calm, finally, but it's replaced with a wet choking sound - and the worst is the lack of actual cries, like he's dying but it all makes no difference to him. It's only the body that's dying.

[amethysts]

Libby only lets him move so much. Her control shivers and twitches but doesn't break--he needs more slack to kill himself, but hurting? Oh, hurting he can do, and she was lying but that doesn't make her let him go. He can decide whether or not to forgive her later. She won't forgive herself--her fault, her fault, because she's stupid and can't find a better way. A smart person could save him without this.

She's a coward, so she puts him at her right, where her dead ear muffles his warped pain, and starts walking. As she does, she reaches for the wall and tears, with a shriek of metal that drowns out even Jesse. That's good, so she keeps ripping it, into smaller and smaller shreds like paper until they're surrounded by torn metal shards. She's never hated anything like this. They killed Larkspur but they didn't take her mind, she died herself, but now Jesse talks like a stranger because they ripped the lyrical bounce out of his voice and the gleam from his eyes and everything that she likes about him, everything that made her feel like she could trust him, and how is she ever going to look at him again and not remember him leaning down?

"It's not over," she says, flatly, for her own benefit because really, does she think he's in there to hear her? (She does, he has to be in there, he has to be as horrified as she is and after they'll be able to remember it wasn't his fault what they made him do because sometimes you have to do things with your body you don't want. Please, Jesse.) "Not until I'm fucking finished."