I'm putting my memory share prompts here

[onequartershark]

because it feels more civilized than making you all scroll past them.

(Please reply in the memshare thread tho not here)

>> 1. In which Carolina tries to bring back a traitor alive, but her rival kills her instead and it's all a very bad scene.

"CT, you have something that belongs to project Freelancer, and you know how the Director hates to share."

Two on two is even numbers, but Texas and Carolina have the drop on CT and her contact. They have pistols trained. The leader of the insurrectionists has his hands in the air while CT doesn't, but Carolina has already dismissed the possibility that CT could present a problem. Texas is the best of them. Carolina was the best of them. CT? CT is a nobody.

CT's talking fast, she knows she doesn't have much time: "You two are fools. The Director is playing you. Don't you see it?!"

"CT, stop it!" Carolina cuts her off. This is already fraught for her. She's tried to steel herself about bringing in a member of her own team as a traitor, and having to listen to her beg is going to make it all the harder. "We know you've been feeding intel to the resistance for months."

The man beside CT laughs, but is careful not to move too much. "Ha, ha, is that who he told you we are?"

"They aren't the enemy, Carolina! We're the ones working outside the rules, not them. You don't know what the Director has done! He's broken major laws. When this war ends, we're all going to have to pay for his crimes. Maybe some of us are already paying for them." Lies. It has to be lies. Carolina's jaw clenches in her helmet, a detail only the fact it's her memory lets bleed through. An observer knows it like it's their own teeth.

Tex raises her gun. "You need to stop talking, CT."

"No, I know what you are Tex; and I won't take orders from a shadow."

"What did you just call me?!"

Carolina steps forward. "You're coming with us, CT. This is your last chance." She needs to try to regain the reins from Tex and stop this from turning into her argument. She needs to try to solve this without letting Tex just kill CT.

She needs to prove that she didn't need Tex in the first place.

"No," CT doesn't budge. "I'm not going anywhere with you."

"...Actually, we don't need you," says Tex. The flash of anger is already gone. All that's left is a dangerous hint of amusement. "We just need your armor."

Tex fires. "No!" shouts the insurrectionist leader. CT just flickers. Her armor is equipped with a holographic projector that creates visual decoys, and this was one. The real CT lunges at Tex with a knife, and everything goes directly to hell. It's a very acrobatic fight, but Carolina and Tex are too much for their opposites. CT goes down hard, but before Tex can put in a killing blow, Carolina grabs her arm.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

"Completing our objective!" Tex snaps back, shoving her off.

"By killing a teammate?!"

"She's not a teammate. She's a traitor!"

It's just long enough for the terrorist and the wounded CT to escape, the door hissing shut and locking behind them. CT's odds aren't good with those blade wounds. Carolina's memory knows that she doesn't survive this.

"Dammit!" Tex snarls. She rounds on Carolina. "That's on you! I guess you can explain how we lost a whole suit of armor and failed to capture the leader of the resistance!"

She doesn't let Carolina respond, doesn't give a damn, she's already opening a comm channel and stalking back out of the room. "Command, we need an extraction. Now!"

The response crackles through: "I've got them, Command. Read you loud and clear, Texas. Clear me an LZ and get ready for pickup."

Carolina has failed. She knows she's failed, the feeling sits in her belly like hot lead. She follows Tex, and one of her fists clenches bitterly as she says: "I don't know what's gotten into you, Texas, but you'd better figure out the difference between your enemies and your friends."

>>> 2. In which Carolina is a burned out disaster of a human being who nearly shoots this guy you might know and has to be threatened by this other guy you might know in order to get her to back down.

A smattering of people in variously colored suits of space armor are standing in a large concrete chamber, featureless except for a grid of blue lines lighting the floor. It's a holochamber. This context flows easily through the memory, it seems natural to know that. Just as it's natural to know that one of the people here, in white, is just the hologram of an artificial intelligence. It's just as natural to somehow sense the undercurrent of anger saturating this memory.

This would all be easier to focus on and be weirded out by if people weren't talking.

"Don't get me wrong. Busting into a military base on a rescue mission is a lot of fun. But I'm not getting turned into Swiss cheese just so the two of you can finish some personal vendetta. This ain't our fight."

"Took the words out of my mouth, sir."

Carolina is having a bad day. Hell, Carolina cannot remember the last time she had a good day, and the whole memory is laced with her frustration. "Both of you, be quiet!" she snaps at the troopers. These guys are chaff, rejects that manned simulations meant to train much better soldiers, and she's losing her already sorely atrophied patience with them.

"Dude, this is bullshit!" Tucker protests too. Fucking-

"Tucker!"

At least she's not alone. Epsilon's on her side. The AI is... Epsilon represents a lot of very complicated pieces of Carolina's life, but in this moment they are unified. There's a revenge quest they have in mind. Everybody else was wronged by the same dude. Why are people not falling in line and going along with the fucking gameplan?

"Be quiet. That's an order," Carolina says, taking several steps toward Tucker to enhance the menace levels. Tucker however, is not having it.

"Well guess what, psycho? I don't take orders from you anymore!"

It's brave. Too brave.

"Well, what about now?" Carolina says. Her rifle rises to her shoulder in an all-too-easy motion.

She's not the only one who raised a weapon.

"Don't. Do that."

Washington has come up beside her and has a pistol pointed at her head. People who have seen Wash in armor will notice the color's off, blue where it should be black, but the voice is right.

"Wash, what are you doing?" She's at gunpoint, but her tone still drips warning. Carolina is tired, pissed off, and a trigger pull away from no longer caring whether she's actually fast enough to kill him first. Imagine if she'd been able to find somebody useful from the old days, but no. She's out here with fucking Washington and he is choosing these clown college rejects over her.

"Protecting my friends. Now lower the weapon."

Carolina can't kill her father and finally put this all to bed if she dies or gets critically injured in a fit of rage. It's a very fast and incredibly fucked up bit of calculus. The rifle sinks back down.

"You're siding with them?"

Epsilon endears himself to Carolina further as Wash lowers his own weapon: "Wash, I don't understand. We found the Director! We can make him pay! This is what we wanted!"

"All I want is for you to leave. I've already been responsible for enough of their problems in the past, and I'll be damned before I let you cause any more."

Her memory of the rest of this argument, of Epsilon shouting at the troopers and them all turning their backs and walking away one by one until she and Epsilon are alone with Wash, is numb.

"Forget it, Church," she says to Epsilon. "We don't need them."

"I don't know what's gotten into you, Carolina, but you'd better figure out the difference between your enemies and your friends."

Wash says the words he knows she once said to Tex. He knows because she told him that story, and it's a slap in the face. He leaves, and she doesn't stop him.

They're on their own, then.

Fuck it. Fine.

She should be used to this by now. It's never going to be different again.