Memory Cave

[voidtreckermods]

After the passengers see a glimpse of a life that is not their own they appear in a cave. It is light, a strange moss glowing on the walls and ceiling illuminates the cave nicely and it is large enough for them to pace around in without trouble.

They are not alone. In the cave with them is another voidtrecker. Maybe someone they know well, maybe someone they have only seen in the aisles of the train. But they are together in this cave together.

The cave has no exit, at least not yet. They know that it will, eventually. When the time is right.

But for that time to come, they first must talk...

(OOC: For reference: memories!)

Comments

[hotheadwarmheart]

Since magic seems to work a bit differently in every world, Lea didn't know much about how it worked on this world either. But that was all the more reason to explore every possibility.

He gave a bit of a wry smile at how she mentions his rat. "I take it you're not a fan of rats," he said. And clearly the irony of that wasn't lost on him. "Anyway, that was Smoke, my familiar from back at Diatu. If it helps at all, I didn't pick him; they just kinda foisted him on me when I got there. I tried to give him away a couple times, but... eh, what can I say? The little guy kinda grew on me after awhile. Still would've rather had something cooler though."

That narrowed the time frame down a good bit at least. "The magic stuff... could've been homework, I guess. My grades there were barely passable most of the time when it came to magical theory; stuff was drier than the classroom chalk, at least to me. Though I had to knuckle down on it a bit before I got yanked here. Was trying to make a set of magical emergency beacons for my friends and I to use, which turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought..."

"Anyway, the first one I got, you were in a big grassy field, with sparkles floating around everywhere. You were there with a blonde girl; you called her Adora, and I... well, I got the feeling that she was someone really special to you. Someone you loved." As best friend? No... it had been different than that. More. It had reminded him a little of how he felt toward Isa, honestly... But now wasn't the time to ponder too deeply on that.

"You were both happy about somebody being gone. And you weren't the only ones; there were lots of other people celebrating further away. And then you and Adora got tackle-hugged by two other people. One of them I met here on the train- Glimmer- and the other one was a guy that I think she called Bow. And you said you were planing to go along on their trip to bring magic back to the universe."

"Honestly, it was really beautiful. In a lot of ways. Hope things turn out half that well for me and my friends back home..." He was less sure of that than he once had been, but he tried not to let himself dwell on that.

[morethanadistraction]

Her tail flicks with annoyance in response to his wry remark. His rat and all others can just stay well away from her.

But magical emergency beacons actually sound... really useful, she thinks. Lea might not be able to work it out on his own, but maybe between him and Glimmer and Della, they could figure out a way to--

--Her plotting is cut short, embarrassment searing through her as soon as he mentions the grassy field and the sparkles, because she knows. Straight away. What he's talking about. She can only hope that what he saw was her awkward exit from the Heart and the moment she'd stood, struck dumb with awe, staring at the healed world.

Buuuuut then of course he mentions Adora and Catra's ears flatten, her shoulders tensing and heat flaring in her face.

"--I get it!" She interrupts. Mortification has her heart pounding fast, and she would love to just. Ditch this topic completely. "I was there, you can spare me the details."

She does cast him one look, over her shoulder. Looking him up and down, just once, before turning her attention back to the walls.

"...What happened to your friends?" Not that she cares. (She doesn't. She's just got -- a little bit of a hangover from today's memory flash, it must be.)

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea couldn't help but smile a bit at her embarrassed reaction, but nodded. "Right," he said. "Moving on from that particular subject..."

"Anyway, a better question might be what hasn't happened to my friends and I at this point. If I tried to go through the whole story we'd be here all day, and even I'm not sure I understand it all. But the short version is we have to fight a guy named Master Xehanort and his Seekers of Darkness. He's this crazy powerful evil Keyblade Master who's out to gain control of Kingdom Hearts, the heart of all worlds and basically everything that's living where I'm from. We're not 100% sure what he plans to do with it, but he's made it abundantly clear that whatever it is, it'll be Very Bad News for basically everyone who's not him."

"Trouble is, that by going to fight him, we're doing exactly what he wants. He needs his Thirteen Seekers of Darkness to fight our Seven Guardians of Light to create the thing that unlocks Kingdom Hearts. If we don't fight him though, he'll just kidnap seven innocent people who's hearts are full of light and use them to forge it instead, which would basically force our hand anyway."

"He's been planning this for over a decade, setting things up so that no matter what we do, he gets what he wants, and he's hurt a lot of people, wrecked whole worlds, to do it. And lot of those people he hurt are friends of mine. So as much as I wanna save the world and everything, I'm in it just as much to get my friends back and get some payback in."

"Until recently, I thought I knew for sure how that fight was going to turn out, thanks to some timeline screwiness in the last world I got dragged to," he said. "But since I've been on the train I found out that it's possible for there to be more than one version of the same universe with the same people and everything in it, but with some events turning out differently. So now I'm back to worrying about everything again and just hoping we can find a way to beat this guy."

[morethanadistraction]

Doesn't that all sound familiar.

"It was Horde Prime." Catra's contribution comes after a long pause, wherein she sort of just. Soaks in the information, and debates with herself whether or not she should tell him anything. In the end, that urge to talk wins out. "The guy we were glad to get rid of. He was... pretty much the same as your one, that Xehanort or whatever. It happened not long before we had to get on that stupid train."

She's trying to pretend like she hadn't been actively listening, but Catra does finally turn around to face him; wiping the moss from her claws off on the leg of her pants. Gross stuff, that.

"I hope you get your guy too," she says. She's serious about it, no trace of a lie - but she can only hold his gaze for a second before looking away, ears flicking uncomfortably. She's not good with being earnest, so it's time to move on quickly before things can get any more awkward in here.

"The one I saw today, just now -- you were heading to a castle with..." his best friend, but those two words are still something of a sore point for Catra. So she skims around them at the last moment. She doesn't need to describe the others anyway, she tells herself. It's Lea's memory, he'll know who she's talking about just fine. "...Isa. But you got distracted losing a fight to some Ventus kid on the street."

Who he'd decided to be friends with, just like that. As if it were that easy to make happen. The quirk of Catra's eyebrow is absolutely judging Lea, and there's so much more to go through in his memory - why were their weapons so weird, what's a Cinna-bomb candy anyway, is that really what a sun feels like? - but what she sticks with, after a moment of hesitation, is simply: "You were... pretty happy. Seemed like things were going your way."

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea nodded, both in understanding of her explanation and in thanks for the well wish. "Glad you got your guy out of the picture at least," he said. "Hopefully with less damage along the way than Xehanort managed to inflict." Having been part of that damage and seen what one guy's ambitions had done on a large scale, he was firmly convinced that no one and no world deserved that sort of fate.

He smiled a bit remembering what she'd described though. "Wow, that's a blast from the past. And at the same time, weirdly relevant to the present back home. The reason Ventus kicked my butt that day is that he was a real, trained Keyblade wielder, not just a kid messing around. We're actually searching for him to be one of our Seven Guardians of Light, along with his friends, Aqua and Terra. They apparently fought Master Xehanort decade or so ago, and managed to foil his immediate plans, but well... let's just say they all came off the worse for it in one way or another, and nobody's really seen them since."

"But yeah, Radiant Garden- the city you saw- was every bit as great a place to live back then as its name implies," he said. "And Isa and I had it pretty good. Just spending our days dodging schoolwork, getting into trouble, and eating ice cream. Guess at the time we kinda took it for granted..." He sighed. No point in getting into that right then.

"Anyway, the one of yours I saw today was where you were inside this big mechanical hulk. Some kind of crashed ship or something, I think. Adora was there again, plus a bunch of other people- some the same ones as before, some not-, but it was a lot different than the first memory. There was a fight; a lot of rough-looking people shot a bunch of darts at her but they were blocked by a big, burly lady with purple skin. Then you used a whip to steal Adora's sword, which was apparently more than just a weapon, before a lady with scorpion claws and a tail stung Adora and knocked her out. Then you tied her up somewhere in the ship and had a party to celebrate."

"You... seemed like you were having a pretty great time." Which didn't at all seem to fit with the first memory, but given that he was only seeing bits and pieces, maybe there was more to it?