sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] One-Man Show

Gaius had been awake since dawn, as was his habit, so he was at least dressed when he was suddenly transported. He's heard of this happening before, but it's never happened to him until now. One moment, he is finishing up his usual morning prayers, the next he is ... not, and he doesn't know where he is. He only has time to recognize that he's with someone else, the young woman called Sam, before he finds himself once again seemingly in Rome.

It's not the first time that's happened, but it is the first time he's been transported somewhere first. Before, he'd been walking through the village when the world changed around him. Here, it's like he's been brought here just to see Rome again. He recognizes the room; it's his home in Rome, the house he'd grown up in, the house his brother had lived in until his death. It's the atrium, a wide, high room with an opening in the ceiling and below it, a small pool in the floor.

Footsteps sound from one side, and a man comes in, wearing in a toga and the purple-edged tunic of the equestrian class. He's a few years younger now that Gaius is, but a family resemblance is clear in the jaw, in the proud carriage of the head and shoulders. It's Tiberius, his brother, as clear as he had been the last time Gaius saw him alive.

And he knows what this is. This is a dream that he's had before.

"Gaius!" he calls, across the room, then steps closer. "Gaius, why do you wait?" he asks, holding his hands out in supplication.

"You cannot escape. One life and one death is appointed for us both, to spend the one and meet the other in the service of the people."

His prophecy spoken, Tiberius fades from view, and the atrium is once again empty, before it disappears and the scene changes.

Sam had been awake. She'd been in her room, actually, standing on top of a chair, reaching up with her pencil to work on her dragon. It was all very Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. If Mikey had been doing the chapel in a bra and scrub bottoms.

She had no real frame of reference for teleportation, aside from sci-fi and fantasy, but if she'd been of a mind to analyze it, she would have found the whole thing disappointingly anticlimatic. There was no in-between world. No sparkles. No sound effects. Just a kind of wipe, like a movie switching scenes.

And then she was in some kind of sandals and swords epic?

She looked around and caught sight of a vaguely familiar face. Gaius? She was pretty sure that was his name.

He didn't look happy.

But who the fuck could blame him?

"What the hell is happening?" she asked, walking over to him. But all of a sudden, there was a second guy. And...she had no idea what he was talking about. Her eyes flitted back and forth between him and Gaius. "Uh...what?"

"This is a dream I had, years ago. More than a dream, a vision."

He was never as good as Tiberius had been at hiding his emotions, and Gaius was not doing well at it now. There was anguish in his face as he looked at his brother, not just looked but stared, because it had been so long since he'd seen Tiberius in anything but dreams. Except that this had been a dream, too, but far more vivid than most. It had looked real, and it still did now, impossible though it seemed for it to be replaying itself in front of them.

"That was my brother, Tiberius," he said, slowly, as the memory of the vision faded in front of them. "This vision was the reason I went into public life. I had been afraid, because he was killed by his enemies and I thought I would be too. But he told me that the same thing was meant to happen to me."

And she thought her relationship with her brother was fucked up. Of course, it was. But this was a new version of extra.

Then there was the question of what the fuck it had to do with her. But Sam supposed that that was probably out of their hands. "Well," she muttered, folding her arms across her chest, "unless you decided to drag me into your brain, which makes no damn sense, I'm guessing that the Overlords are messing with us."

She couldn't bring herself to say 'don't pay any attention,' though. From what she'd gleaned about this guy, he didn't exactly have home video or Polaroids to remind him what his dead brother looked like.

And she was pretty sure she'd studied this kind of architecture in her art history class. Definitely ancient, not alien.

"Bright side?" she said. "Those enemies of yours probably aren't hanging around our villages..."

"This was not my doing," he agreed. He had made no conscious decision that could have led them to this; but he also believed in the fate that had given him the vision the first time. Was there a reason for him to see it again? Perhaps, a reminder of some kind that there was so much more he could do with himself in this place. But what then would the point have been in bringing Sam here?

He still missed Tiberius. Would always miss him. The difference in their ages was not apparent in the vision, because it was Tiberius as he had been before Gaius left on campaign with their brother-in-law Aemilianus. As he had been more than ten years ago, before he'd been murdered. Tiberius had always been as much a father as a brother to Gaius, who had never known their father.

"No," he agreed. "There is nobody here shouting that I will destroy the village when it is their own failures that are the true threat."

Sam snorted softly. She didn't know him all that well, but no, he didn't seem like the type of person she'd be crying wolf about. On the list of people she thought capable of destroying the village...yeah, he was pretty fucking low.

Hell, she ranked herself higher there.

She watched Gaius a moment. Not for the first time, she wished she'd bothered to develop the abilities Avery had to read someone's aura, to know what they were feeling. She could probably guess. But given her more-than-a-little-crappy people skills, she didn't really trust that guess.

The Overlords were trying to fuck with them. She had to assume they were doing a decent job of it.

...and that she was probably next.

Sam sucked in air between her teeth, her mind racing into damage control. "Listen, dude," she said quickly, "this is your private life. I didn't want to see it and I certainly won't tell anyone about it."

There were many differences between the people here and the people in Rome, and one of them was their concept of privacy. Not that the Romans lacked one, but a prominent family lived much of its life in the public view. Friendship and patronage were publicly known, and so were enmities. And there had been a benefit to the vision Fate had given him. It provided an explanation for his change in attitude towards politics, and it highlighted his pious devotion to his family. He'd inherited his brother's enemies, and the reminder of what they'd done to Tiberius had earned Gaius some public sympathy at the start of his career, when he'd needed it to recover from the Senate's interference with his quaestorship in Sardinia.

He had, in fact, been fairly capable of destroying Rome, had he really tried. But despite what the consul said, it had never been his intention to harm his city, only to help it.

"It was not a secret," he said. "Until now I was the only person who had seen it, but it was widely known that I entered public life after my brother appeared to me in a dream."

He looked back at her and shook his head. "I do not know why you also were brought here to see that."

There was a wonderful, snarky, awful comment on the tip of Sam's tongue. But it never came to be. The room around them was shimmering. Sort of like the way sunrise would play against your eyes while they were still closed. A faint scent seeped in from nowhere. Chloroform.

There was a bright pop of light, followed by color, fading into reality. It began to separate, taking the shape of other people in the room. The conversation was low, accompanied by the soft shuffling of papers and scratching of pens. Like a class waiting for the lesson to begin. Finally, real shapes emerged. Feet. A whole forest of feet arrayed around them, belonging to both people and a long, rectangular table.
They were both looking at the floor. A cool, tiled floor. Marble. And fine marble at that. A couple of fingers appeared--wearing black, fingerless gloves, with chipped, black nail polish. They traced the brown ribbon rippling through the white surface, like hot fudge in a sundae.

"Oh, shit," Sam said. She knew that hand. It was her fucking hand. Projected out in front of them like she was the camera guy on a cheap knock-off of the Blair Witch Project.

"All rise for Prince Kane." That voice belonged to the memory. Booming and fierce.

Chairs scuffed against the marble and legs straightened. Painfully, the image of the floor raised up, through a sea of unfamiliar faces. A woman had entered. She was thin-lipped and sharp-eyed, probably in her late thirties. She had red hair, pulled back into a severe bun. There were dark seams running up the back of her calves from silk stockings. The woman took a seat at the head of the table. And when she gave the other people a curt nod, they all took their seats, some along the sides of the table, others along the sides of the room. Only two remained standing, a matching pair of brutes in leather jackets, one male, one female. They loomed on either side of the woman's chair, just slightly behind her, like bodyguards.

Now he thought that he could see the pattern. He did not recognize this scene that appeared in front of them, but it was clear that Sam did. Nor did he recognize the scent: a little sweet but a little sharp somehow as well. It was unlike anything he'd ever smelled before. It was hard to get any clarity from the scene, to tell what was going on except that it seemed like some sort of meeting. He hadn't seen this scene before, but he'd seen scenes like it, people gathered and waiting, in meetings or gatherings he'd attended. The woman, Prince Kane, was clearly in charge.

"We are being shown each other's memories."

He hadn't recognized Sam's hand, but that she had indicated that this was from her perspective, just as Gaius' vision had been.

It was intimate, unsettlingly so, even for a man used to living a public life.

Sam squeezed her eyes shut. Memory theatre. Fantastic. Like a fucking sub-par episode of Charmed or something. Only slightly less 1990s because it was her damn memory. "This isn't going to be pretty," she muttered to Gaius.

Not that it mattered.

Pretty or not. Sam's eyes open or closed. The memory continued to play.

"Let's keep this short today," Prince Kane said. She had a slight accent. English, maybe. "Are there any new arrivals to the city?" Silence. "Very well. Let's take look at our agenda. The first item would be the dispute between..." And she let out a long-suffering sigh. "Mister Hiler and Mister Frye?"

On either side of the scene, two men stood up. Larry Hiler was tall and lanky, wearing a leather jacket. His right ear was only pierced about a million times. Richard Frye was wearing a suit, his beard evenly clipped and elegant. Neither man was looking at Sam (or Gaius). Both of them had their eyes fixed forward.

"Prince Kane," Richard said, bowing his head.

A second later, Larry one-upped him, bowing from the waist when he said, "Prince Kane."

Prince Kane pinched the bridge of her nose. "I understand that you're still disputing who has the right to Embrace this mortal girl? One..." she glanced at a legal pad in front of her "...Samantha Halper?"

"Yes, my Prince," Larry said.

"I still maintain, my Prince," Richard said tightly, "that I have the superior claim. I saw her first."

"But I was the first to make contact," Larry replied.

"Contact is hardly relevant," Richard replied, sneering a little bit.

Prince Kane held up a hand. "Gentlemen," she said. "We've already had this argument. Let's not have a repeat performance."

If Gaius had been unsettled, upset by the reminder of the vision that had led him along the path that brought him to the possible outcomes of death or the exile this place, Sam seemed even more so. Gaius had little understanding of life under autocracy, the way these people were groveling before Prince Kane. It was against everything that Romans believed in since they'd overthrown their kings hundreds of years ago. But he could see the dynamic at play. They were fighting, over the right to Samantha.

Sam? Samantha Halper was not the name she'd been introduced by, but she recognized this, she knew what was happening, and she said that it would not be pretty. He knew that English idiom. This was going to get bad, and it was not his memory to see.

"I am sorry."

Sorry for the thing he cannot control: for being brought here for this, for the memory that was obviously painful for her, or the broadcast of what was clearly personal.

He looked away from the scene in front of them, but there was nowhere to look that didn't seem to be part of the memory.

She looked at Gaius in surprise. She didn't get that a lot. Apologies. Sympathies. And she didn't really know how to react. Not that it mattered. Regardless of his kindness, the story kept unfolding, as it had to:

"For the past few months," Prince Kane drawled dully, "the two of you have been fighting over this girl. While there's nothing objectionable about her, I certainly see nothing impressive either. Your argument is a waste of the Court's time. And, frankly, I'm tired of hearing about it. So. We're going to settle this matter once and for all." She turned to look at the hulking man on her right. "Pedro. Toss a coin."

Larry got bug-eyed. "What?"

"My Prince!" Richard stepped forward.

Prince Kane held up a perfectly manicured hand to stop him. "We're going to toss a coin. The winner may have her."

Beside her, Pedro had produced a coin. "Someone call it," he said, flicking it up into the air.

"Heads," Richard declared bitterly.

The coin dropped into Pedro's hand and he slapped it down on the table, keeping it hidden under his fingers. "This is no good way to decide," Larry said.

"But it is a fast way," Prince Kane replied. She turned to look at her brute. "What is it, Pedro?"

Pedro picked up his hand. "Tails."

Pedro barely even finished the word 'tails' before Richard threw himself headlong into Larry. No human being could possibly move that fast. And yet, suddenly, the two of them were careening into a wall and Sam in the memory was being half dragged behind them. What stopped her was the table. Her forehead smashed into the corner, forcing Larry to let go of her. She dropped to the floor as the room seemed to explode around in a million impossible colors. There was incomprehensible shouting in at least three languages, and then an eruption of gunfire.

Whatever was happening, though, it was completely hidden from sight as blood--Sam's blood-obscured the scene.

There were things in the scene in front of them that he could understand. They were fighting over Samantha like she was some prize or slave girl, and Prince Kane was adjudicating. It was an uncomfortable situation to watch, even to someone who'd seen violence and fighting in the forum. It was even more uncomfortable because he'd been a magistrate, because back in Rome he'd been the head of the family, the one making decisions for the household when it was necessary.

Once the blood started flowing, Gaius looked away, reminded too much of another fight he'd seen, that had ruined his future.

"Why are they making us watch this?"

Sam refused to look away. Maybe just to prove her own macho. Or maybe because she was hoping to see some small detail she'd missed the first time around, when she'd been living (and dying) it. But, of course, there was nothing more. The scene slowly dissolved, like spun sugar, leaving them back in the fucking village where they could do nothing but remember.

She turned to look at Gaius, surprised that he was suddenly shy. And also kind of grateful.

"Torture, I guess," she said, shrugging. "Or just to prove that they can. I'm not sure they need much more of a reason."

He'd been a soldier, once, but he hadn't been the hero his brother was. He had no mural crown from the fall of Carthage, and he had little taste for violence. It was a weakness, in a Roman, but he knew what he was good at: inspiring people, bringing them along with his ideas, seeing things that needed to be fixed and getting that done.

Not this, watching someone he knew get attacked like that.

"I hate being played with like this."

As the scene disappeared, the light came back, and it was the two of them in an unfamiliar building.

"They seem to have finished. For now."

"Or they're just getting started," Sam replied, with a grim cheerfulness in her voice. It was an unending cycle, really. When they got bored with one kind of torment, they just switched to another.

She looked around and let out a tiny groan.

She knew this place.

"Fuuuuuuuuck," she said, letting her head drop back. Her synthetic curls dangled in the air behind her. "We're in the shrine. We must be half a week out from the south village."

"Half a week?"

He'd been aware that people had been moved around from the village before, just as he'd had visions before. But he'd never been transported before now, and as he looked around, it became clear that this was not anywhere he'd seen before, or any building in the village.

"You have been here before? Where are we?"

He had no food with him, and he was not dressed for the outside, and neither was Sam. Now that he was no longer seeing memories, he could feel the temperature in the air was significantly cold.

This was bad.

Sam nodded grimly. "I was up here about a year ago with Jean-Luc," she said, "when we found this place. It's a replica of a Shinto shrine." She paused, glancing over at Gaius and considering his vision for a moment, before she added, "So, there's this country way, way, way to the east, called Japan. Also known as the Land of the Rising Sun. And in one of their religions, they worship a deity called Inari. This is what a temple to Inari looks like."

Thank the fuck for her Intro to Art History class. She'd thought it was such a waste of time, back in the day. When was she ever going to use that shit? Well, it turned out that when she got trapped in a multiversal hub, it came in handy.

Go fucking figure.

"The area is crawling with foxes. They're fucking annoying as hell. Can teleport you, if you get too close."

[MINGLE] One-Man Show

Closed to group: Sam and Gaius

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