recolle | [OPEN] i know you

Entry tags:

[OPEN] i know you

WHO: Alison (

shieldweaver) and OPEN
WHERE: Dreamscapes
WHEN: Throughout July
WHAT: We heard you liked AUs, so we put an AU in your AU
WARNINGS: Aloy's canonical memories may contain depictions of violence. Otherwise, there shouldn't be much.

dream i. DESIGNATION: STORMBIRD

[In the months that Alison only vaguely remembers, she'd fought one of these creatures, a massive, robotic bird crackling with electricity, in the overturned cityscape of her childhood. This dream is different from that memory. She is somewhere cold and snowcapped, and dark, and the bird's eyes glow a hateful coal red as it swoops in a purposeful circle above her head. The wind screams around them: this young woman dwarfed by a goliath. Alison's memories clash hard with her other self's in these moments: that Alison is not afraid. She is cool and purposeful, focused. She would bind the artificial monster and shoot it, and dodge out of the way, and use what scant cover she had to protect herself. Lob bombs that whistled through the air at it. Disable the core that spit lightning bolts and made her hair stand on end. She had done this before, so many times, and always alone.

The Alison of this world detests being alone, and moreover, she is afraid. But her other self's memories ground her: she takes aim with bow and arrow, and she shoots.]

dream ii. apocalypse, eventually

[This room is the sterile bright white of some sort of office lobby. There are words in smooth gunmetal on the wall across from you:

WE MUST USE OUR SKILLS TO SERVE LIFE, NOT DEATH.
- SOBECK TECHNOLOGIES

All around there are display models of advanced robotics, prosthetics, and other, curious things. Maybe you're here for an interview? Or watching one? What a weirdly boring dream. In any case, some smartly-dressed secretary gently taps your shoulder to get your attention.]

Dr. Sobeck is ready to see you now.

[Wait, what?

Who?]

dream iii. why not just make a park of herbivorous dinosaurs idgi

[This place is hot. Like, in the temperature way. Sweltering. There's a dense, heavy mugginess permeating the air, this place surrounded at all sides by trees and other foliage.

There is a flash of red. Alison — or at least someone that looks like her — hair cropped short and in a pair of cargo pants and a tan t-shirt, moves in a slow crouch over to you. Her expression is intense, her movement careful and cautious.

Without speaking, she brings a finger to her lips, right as the ground shudders. She's right. You should stay quiet.

There's something out there.]

dream iv. the blair witch project

[The blown out ruins of some old apartment complex seem to be a shift from the dream settings but, welp. There's Alison, again, hair tied back in a ponytail with a backpack, moving a handheld camera around her at all sides. You're far, far below ground, wherever you are. Cell phone reception's shot. Above there is the rumble of what must be a subway train.]

Shit, dude. Do you see this graffiti? I'm thinking, we can say it's runic. Some ancient... [A wave of her hand.] whatever. Kind of looks like it, right? People are going to eat it up.

dream v. tiny bird

[Some months ago, Alison had been in a forest (for some reason), trying not to drown under a torrent of rainwater, because she was about, say a few inches tall, again, for some reason. This dream is a recreation of this: she's made a makeshift boat out of a hollowed-out and especially small log, and has a little leaf sailboat, and she's traversing the seven seas of this puddle. It's adorable.

She's pissed. She looks like a drowned rat, and the rain is getting worse. If her boat capsizes, she's done for, but if she can just make it to what passes for land when you're not even a foot tall....]

(ooc: or any other tiny people scenario you can think of!)

dream vi. wildcard

[Have another idea? Want a thread of a dream of Alison's current AU? Or something else from her regains? Feel free to contact me on

godsibb or on discord: nibelung #7485. I'm happy to work with you/write a starter!]

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Boom.

Well, that definitely wasn't the power trying to come back on. Whoever this person is, Avery is sure she has the right idea. Nothing good made that big a noise. He nods and frowns, shifting his stance into a smaller crouch.

Boom.

The sweltering heat has made his hair curl up around his ears and fall into his face. He pushes it out of the way and crinkles his nose a bit before nodding toward a close copse of trees. That looks like a good place to hide from that

Boom.

[ everything was dark and cold. the stones on both sides of her were sharp, yet didn't cut into her skin or damage her clothes. it took quite a bit of squirming, shimmying, and swearing to dislodge her from the crevice she had found herself in. finally! she made it to the source of light at the end of the near-literal tunnel.

though if one were to take a close enough look, this woman was dressed for clubbing more than climbing. the heavy boots helped ease her descent from the high stone to the ... was that snow? ]

Oh my god it is snow! What the heck?

[ wait. something whooshed loudly overhead and something — someone? — else, was shooting at it. Jen stood there, wide-eyed and slack-jawed a long moment. that's probably unsafe. ]

The treetops above them groan and snap. Colorful birds alight into the sky in a panicked flurry, and Alison thinks she can see the shadow of whatever it is coming toward them.

She follows Avery's lead, still quiet but hurried now, to duck into the thicket and wait to see what might stomp its way out of the dense and muggy rainforest.

"It got out," she whispers to Avery when she's sure they're properly hidden. "Took down all the barricades. I want to trap it but," and here her mouth thins some, expression sobering, "not looking good."

[Alison's first shot goes flying way off base, but the second hits with a dull and metal thud, and the third comes with a low-pitched hum that sends scrap metal flying off the bird into the distance. It shrieks in rage, an animalistic screech overlaid with a tinny, artificial backdrop, and comes swooping down for her. Alison remembers the other Alison, how to dodge and so she rolls out of range not a second too soon — the talons get so close that it takes strands of her hair with it.

So accustomed to being alone when these things happen, the sound of a human voice makes her turn midway, and her eyes go wide.]

Bowen! What the hell are you doing in —

[My dream, is the sentence left unfinished. The bird swoops down again and strikes true this time, slamming into her with the force of a speeding freight train. She flies, lands hard on her side, skidding into the frozen, snow-packed ground, and after a pained moment picks herself back up.

Her mouth is bleeding. She doesn't seem to notice.]

[ it's hard to tell, at first, what was going on or who it was that was that distance away. the voice, her name — her name? — sparks recognition in her and spurs her to move forward more. ] Alison? [ she grips the rocks on both sides of her in her gloved hands, feeling the freezing bite through her fingertips.

wait. her right arm isn't... gone?

loud sounds drag her attention from one confusing fact to another. Alison was there. she was fighting this thing! this huge armored bird. no. it wasn't just armored, it was the entire thing. huge, powerful, and surprisingly swift. so swift she barely gets one step before the first strike happens. ]

Ali! Watch o — [ oh! good, she dodged it. wow. she knew the other woman was fast on her feet (not as fast as her sometimes, but still) and yet that agility surprised her. life-or-death situations would be the place to surpass your limits, right?

except that adrenaline didn't seem to save Alison the second time. soon as she's hit, Jen was stomping through the snow as fast as she could, her breath forming big puffs of steam with every exhale. ] Ali, what are you doing!? Get up! We've got to run! It's too big it's too —

[ a gust of wind buffeted her, causing her to halt and cover her eyes. it wasn't a natural wind, but the giant mechanical flying monstrosity finally took notice of a second target and was likely assessing the threat level. ]

[Lillian was trying to piece together how she'd found herself standing in room looking over a giant display about some kind of war machine robot. She'd been...something. The details were all fuzzy, she'd been in class then she'd been on...the moon? No that...]

[She clearly had woken up on the wrong side of the everything today.]

Hm?

[She turned at the tap on her shoulder, offering the secretary a smile. Of course, the meeting.]

Oh thanks, I was gettin' a little restless waitin' around

[She made to follow the woman, though her appearance was a bit...indistinct. Sometimes her hands were hands and sometimes they looked almost like...gauntlets. But she hadn't noticed.]

[Oh no. Now she knows the reason she always does this alone in her memories. To have others around has made her distracted. She taps a glowing device on her ear and specs only she can see light up her periphery. The chest chassis was weak to tear then, and electricity, some part of her is coolly assessing. The other part, the more present and awake part, is wondering how she's supposed to get Jen out of here without the both of them dying. There's no cover out here, in this lonely place, so far from —

(from where?)

— home, and she can't even call anything to help. The Stormbird has no time it seems, for her to deliberate. It arcs up into the sky again and swoops in a flurry of sharp metal wings to descend upon its new target. Alison moves quickly: she switches to another weapon, a crossbow-looking device that shoots reinforced cables rather than arrow bolts. One hits the Stormbird and it careens wildly downward with a heavy crash, sending dust and snow with it, screeching as it attempts to get its wing free from the binding.]

Stay behind me! Just stick close! [Alison calls this out as she shoots another cable, a third, a fourth.]

Edited 2018-07-07 04:23 (UTC)

[ Jen was already bracing herself to take a blow, knowing the snow was bogging her down too much to leap out of the way. actually. she isn't sure why blocking was the first instinct she had. thankfully it didn't come into play just yet as the enemy crashes loudly into the ground some distance away. ]

Okay! [ she doesn't waste any time in following that direction. independent nature aside, Jen can see that Alison is the one with the experience here. as she gets closer, she starts trotting sideways instead of linear, strafing around to the woman's side. ] Argh! Why is it always a robot?!

[ "we need to slow it down!" rang a voice in her head. high-pitched, commanding, familiar. Jen actually looked around her, confused. ] Did? Did you hear that?

Edited (oh dammit I lost part in the clipboard) 2018-07-07 04:53 (UTC)

It got out. Avery's face says very clearly that that particular detail was obvious. He sighs and shifts again--it's uncomfortable crouching like this--and shakes his head.

"And how do you suggest we do that? If it's smart enough to take out the barricades..."

The rest didn't need to be said.

"What are we dealing with?"

Right this way. [The secretary leads Lillian to a sleek looking office. There's a woman with her back turned at the desk, flicking idly through a holo-display projected on one of the glass walls. Her bright red hair is cropped in a neat, stylish bob. The jacket of her suit hangs carelessly over one of the unoccupied chairs.

She turns at the entrance and — it's Alison. Or at least someone that looks like her — a little older, perhaps, and dressed for a professional setting. The sleeves of her dress shirt are rolled up to her forearms; she's wearing an expensive watch and glasses, tailored, slate-gray slacks that match the discarded jacket.

She brightens up when she sees who it is.]

Lillian! Sweetheart. How's it been?

[Well Noah was pretty used to sitting in doctor's offices, though the nature of this one was perplexing to him. He can't recall ever getting a prosthetic and yet...there was some part of him that felt this was familiar.

Oh well, he was probably just imagining things. Don't think too much on it.

He gets tapped on the shoulder and told that the doctor can see him. He gets up, and looks at her.]

Oh, great. [uh..] What am I seeing him for again?

What? [The wind and the Stormbird are screaming. She can't hear anything but it, in this strange place at the end of the world.

She nocks an arrow back with the smooth ease of familiarity, and shoots. The low hum returns, and then a boom as another plate of metal is blown off. Alison manages this a few more times before the cables snap and the machine breaks free, arcing up into the sky again. The pushback from its ascent is such that she's pushed backward into Jen, and it's this brief moment wherein she is caught off guard that the bird volleys shot after shot of charged electricity at the two of them.]

[ when Alison collides with her, she was still moving to the side, and so the two of them go for a tumble through the snow. with the shots coming their way there's no time to get up and run, so she does the best thing she can think of. Jen puts her arms around Alison and kicks off with her foot, trying to roll as fast as possible to the side out of the way of the shots.

one of the first ones strikes the pair when Jen was closest to the bird, and the shock of it launches her clear off of Alison and to the side with a pained cry. for a long moment she lay still, energy crackling in the air and the smell of something singed hanging in the air. it's hard to gauge the level of damage when all one can really see is Jen's wild, golden hair covering most of her.

and it's glowing. ]

"I haven't gotten that far yet." Said begrudgingly, after a considerable pause. Like most things, it was easier said than done. But because of dream logic, she points somewhere far in the distance. "Some meters up is an electric barrier. There's a small enough gap for us to get through. We get the big guy to run into that and we're —"

Safe, is what she means to say, but at that moment the creature they'd been worried about chooses to burst out of the forest. It's a T-Rex, though it is either genetic engineering or the magic of dreams that makes it look even bigger. And it has feathers, because Alison is a nerd even in her dreams.

For your prosthetic, sir?

[The secretary seems amused, though if it is at Noah's forgetfulness or something else, it's hard to say.] Please, follow me.

[The hallway they go down seems very long. Vast almost, a great white space with vaguely defined, blurry shapes behind the glass doors to each office. The only one that seems to have definition is the door at the very end, embossed with the words:

DR. SOBECK

There are other words, but they're hard to make out, fuzzy, lacking detail. Either the door opens on its own or the secretary knocks, because there's barely any transition between noticing this and the door opening.

Dr. Sobeck is in the office, at her desk. It's warmly lit in this room, though the light seems to shift in some unusual way the closer to the desk one gets. Dimmer, almost.

She smiles when she sees Noah. She's smartly dressed, about mid-thirties or so, her red hair cropped into a stylish bob. There are glasses hooked on her shirt. She looks friendly. Kind, even. Maybe a little distracted: she glances down after a moment, flipping through some papers.]

Noah, right? Go ahead, sit down. [She motions to the chair across from her desk.] Just gimme a sec to look through this paperwork...ah! [She brightens.] The prosthetic right? Great. Well, I don't like to toot my own horn, but you're in good hands. Some of the best, actually.

[Alison has about enough time to register she's being shielded, and is about to yell at Jen to get out of the way, find somewhere safe, that she's fine, she's done this before, when the blast knocks the other woman off of her. Alison catches some residual damage from the impact: a tremor along her nerves that takes a moment to recover from. She's quick to scramble to her feet, the sight of Jen lying prone in the snow-caked ground spurring her into movement.]

Bowen! What —

[The glowing though, makes her freeze in place. Dangerous to do in the midst of a battle, but...what was going on?]

[ it's a good thing that she established early on that all this was fake or else her life might have really flashed before her eyes just then. well, more than the bits and pieces that already had. which is how Jen thought she knew what she had to do next.

Jen pushed herself up onto her knees. wobbly, she sat there for a few moments while the bits of white fluff on her clothes turned to vapor.

I guess one could say she's... steaming mad. ]

Hold — ack. [ she turned and spit and got to her feet. ] Hold it down! I've ... I've got a present for it!

[But he doesn't have a.... welp. This person doesn't seem to mind as they lead him to the doctor office. What a strange dream.

When he steps into the office, he'll come in quietly, taking in the sight of everything...though it's so hard to make out the details. And the doctor herself, it isn't someone he quite recognizes. then again, he's always had a bad memory.

Besides, this is a dream isn't it? Maybe he shouldn't worry so much.

With that in mind, he slides into the chair across from her desk.]

Er...yeah. Something like that. [He looks at her] What...kind of prosthetics do you design again?

[Lillian smiled brightly as the woman turned around.]

Hey! It's been good, so far. Ain't got nothin' to complain about, anyway. [Even in business settings that rough accent of hers never seemed to get any better. She looked around after she spoke.]

I am always so jealous of your office...

[She added as she looked back at the other woman.]

So, what's up? Not that I mind havin' a meeting or anything, just wasn't sure what you needed.

[Okay, that's...totally new. Alison isn't sure if it's dream logic or something else, but she's pretty sure snow is literally vaporizing off the other woman.

Had to be dream logic. After all, she's never held whatever this wire-shooting weapon is supposed to be in her life (at the least, this life), and yet she knows exactly what to do here. Muscle memory makes her heft the weapon up again, and take aim.]

Got it!

[One shot of wire whistles through the air before hitting the edge of a wing with a dull thunk. Then another, and another, and it isn't long before the Stormbird is landed again, kicking up snow and dirt and shrieking in an animalistic staccato.]

[ dream logic is more than fine with Jen. without it, she'd be a bloody smear in the snow right now. or worse.

foreign instincts guided Jen as she trudged forward, arms out. with a movement she had never practiced in her life she jerked her arms forward and back, activating the mechanism that brought those large bracelets on her wrist to life in all their mechanical glory. another pull back and Jen loaded the shells into their chambers.

then she started running forward, shouting. ]

Hey, big ugly! Let me give you something you can really chew on!

[ punching the air in front of her sent several shots darting forward. they looked as relatively harmless as roman candles spraying forth until they exploded in fiery blossoms against the metal hull of the beast. the shots were not very effective at causing damage to such a surface, but between them and Alison's work, the mecha-bird sure seemed MAD.

and then, Jen blasted the ground under her feet and behind her, catapulting herself into the air in a high arc, aiming to land on the back of their enemy. it's... one hell of a risky move, and actually looked like it ought to have hurt. but as she streaked through the air like some kind of golden comet, trailing fire behind her, she was grinning like she was having the time of her life. ] Yahooo!!!

[The question makes her brighten right away, excited, it seemed, for a chance to show off.]

Glad you asked. Sobeck Technologies is a "jack of all trades," so to speak. We specialize in robotic prosthetics, typically after medical trauma, but with the world moving toward this whole cyberpunk thing... [She waves a hand a little.] There's been development toward prosthetic enhancements. Cool cyborg stuff, for lack of a better term.

[The screen behinds her lights up, as if on cue, showing a slideshow of said prosthetic enhancements. Some of it is pretty standard stuff — arms replaced after medical disaster, metal kneecaps and hip replacements, but gradually the scenes shift to images of attractive people with glowing body modifications, sleek drones and a flashy closeup of a bionic eye.]

The better question would be: is there anything you'd want to change about yourself?

[ He watches the presentation. Wow, this is way more advanced than the usual presentations about prosthetic he's seen.

... Wait. When did he see presentations about those? That's weird. he shakes his head, trying to dismiss the nagging feeling in his mind that something's off.

As for that question...he can think of one thing, but he's not sure how a prosthetic would help. ]

Uh..there's something, but it tends to make me stand out. Wouldn't getting one of these do the same...?

Avery takes a moment and just soaks this in, feeling time almost slow in the comical dream-like way that it does when something very important just happened. It almost feels like he's in a movie.

Crouched there, he stares and runs through everything he knows about the Tyrannosaurus rex. Huge, check. Fast, debatable. Feathers, well that's new. Vision based on movement, wasn't that disproved? Stinky predator, check and yuck.

He wrinkles his nose and glances toward Alison, frowning, then points the same direction she was. It wasn't like they had a flare to throw, after all.

"Run, dodge, get somewhere small. Use its size against it," he spits out quickly. "Go."

[Holy shit.

Alison watches this with nothing short of impressed fascination. What kind of weapons were those? How did they work? Even factoring in propulsion, She briefly lowers her weapon to simply watch this literal fireworks display, in part because she's completely flabbergasted, and in part because she doesn't want to hit Jen on accident.

The Stormbird has no such reservations. Unused to passengers, and programmed to behave within certain protocols, there's a millisecond of delay as it adjusts to this new and unwanted intrusion. Once a plan is set in the whirring confines of its mind, it begins to, naturally, try to get the unwanted hanger-on off of it by moving in swift loops, turning itself upside down, swooping low enough to the ground for its claws to scrap frozen earth up. It would be almost comical if it wasn't terrifying.]

[ the giant bird getting up off the ground was not part of her plan. Jen hangs on for the ride of her life as the raging mechanical beast tries all kinds of tricks to shake her off. the armor plating on its back made for an excellent hand-hold but it wouldn't last forever.

after one of the swoops, while it recovers and tries to go for another attempt, she finally sees an opening through the biting wind and crackling of energy over its surface. beside her on each flank of what would be its shoulders were these huge, glowing canisters of... well, who knows what. they could be batteries. they could be hydraulic fluid. it could be anti-freeze for all she knows.

Jen cocked her arm back and loosed a few shots right at it. if she can knock it loose, or blow it up, maybe it'll knock this thing off balance.

...or, you know, the whole thing will go up and she'll plummet to the ground like a screaming metal pinata meteor. only one way to find out! ]

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[OPEN] i know you

III - Did you say dinosaurs?

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i sure did

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Dream II

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Re: i sure did

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II

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so sorry, work ate me!

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