Memoria Gloria

[consider8]

Who: Agent 8 and OPEN
Where: Quiet Coach the Large One that was Formerly a Lab
When: Horseshoe 23
What: Agent 8 reveals the project that she has been making: a working mural piece that needs people to share their home.
Warnings: Possibly painful nostalgia?

On the early morning of the 23, people would wake up to find a small flyer glued onto the door. It reads:

Paths are made from a start

Our legs they stride, swept in a tide

Memories fade in this void apart

Come share a memory

The Large Quiet Room

🐙

Those curious enough to enter the room that was formerly a lab would see that that half of the room's contents have been shifted to one side. The half that is closest to the middle has its walls completely cleaned and covered with white sheets of paper. Only two things stand out from it: one is a sign hanging from the center of the wall that simply reads. "Where is Home?" As though to answer that, a drawing of a metropolitan square with large industrial-sized domes underneath. To further entice people into drawing, there's a cabinet filled with multi-colored thermoses of ink.

As for the hostess of all this? Well, she's nowhere to be found -- but if one was attentive they may notice that one corner of the cabinet seems to have a rather large of a spill of paint that is blending into the colors of the ground. An even more astute person may hear the soft sound of air bubbles rising to the surface even if the paint's surface appears perfectly still...

((OOC: Yeah, Eight is feeling a little self-conscious of the big display and is hiding in her ink. Also, a small note about the ink itself! It's very pretty! And she has a lot of choices set up, but it's also... weird. The ink doesn't blend or add at all, it only replaces. If your character tries to mix two ink colors together, it would just replace what was there with what was used last. Likewise, a paint stroke on the canvas will replace any color that was previously there as soon as the new one is applied.))

Comments

[consider8]

Beneath the ink a pair of eyes were looking at Little One for a while. She was excited and hopeful that her inks would be used, but was a little disappointed with the look they received. Ah, well, perhaps not everyone would want to...

...oh. Oh dear, the girl is now looking right at her puddle. Uh... as soon as she reached out to the ink she'd find a push back like she had just poked a sleeping dog. The bubbling sound gets worse and there's a rather distressed "Vooweeooo Weeoo..."

Nope, nothing to see here. Carry on passenger!!

[knifewithnoname]

She skitters backwards, a dagger appearing in her hand. "Who do be being there?"

She looks around. Was this some kind of trick? Someone hiding? Someone looking to see what she would do.

The voice had sounded close... Was someone in the cabinet? She held her knife tightly in her hand to look inside.

[consider8]

Eight takes a moment to consider her options. She had been found, and so hiding further would only cause further suspicion.

In a swift motion she popped up out of the ink. Her hands raises in front of her, showing that she was unarmed and meant no threat. Her wide eyes looked worried into Little One's unsure what to expect that she had been found.

She says nothing, waiting to see what the girl's response will be.

[knifewithnoname]

She spins around from her investigation of the cabinet. Her eyes widen as she brings her knife up, it's a defensive position though rather than an attack.

The girl in front of her has her arms up, she's unarmed. Also she is on the roster, there are far too many people for her to memorise them all any more but this girl looked so different than most that she had stuck out. Mami? No. Mim? Mimi? Something like that.

"How did you be doing that?"

[consider8]

She blinks. How did she do what...? Hide? How could she explain...

Reasoning that she couldn't, she decides to show her instead. Her physical form collapses and hides back into the ink. After taking a moment to let the moment sink in, she reforms back out of the ink, lightly shaking herself off to show her full human form.

It was just something she could do. Nothing more, nothing less.

[knifewithnoname]

She'd like to think that nothing surprises her any more. She lives on a train, it travels a void, she goes to different worlds and fights monsters. But still. She's never seen anyone turn into ink before.

"Wow." She hadn't expected that. "That must be being useful."

It was a perfect disguise, no one expected someone to be an ink blob.

[consider8]

Eight nods slightly, giving the girl an curious tilt. She was smart, that much was for sure. Eight hadn't shown that trick to anyone, so the fact that she was able to find her was very impressive indeed.

Not wanting to bring any more attention to herself, she instead drew her attention to the flaps of paper hanging against the wall. Her one lone drawing showing itself as a representative of what she would like the mural to be.

"I was hoping to see people paint their homes. And I wanted to give them their privacy." Or sense of privacy, in this case.

[knifewithnoname]

Privacy that wasn't privacy. So she wanted to spy. That was fair enough, she was new and staying hidden while she watched the train and those on it was smart.

"You do be wanting us to be painting our homes?"

She's never painted before, she's not sure even where to start.

[consider8]

"Mmm." Eight nodded in confirmation.

"After what happened a few days ago, I thought it would be good to have people remember. And to share those memories with others." She took a few steps towards her own painting. She tried her best, but knew that what was there was amateurish.

"This is my home."

[knifewithnoname]

"Remembering do be being stupid." She said, though she also followed the girl over to look at the painting.

"That do be being where you do be coming from?" There is interest in her voice as she looks at the picture. She's seen quite a few different worlds, but they all fascinate her.

[consider8]

Eight shakes her head. "Remembering is sometimes all that we have." She smiles, raising a hand to metropolis. "You don't know where you are now if you can't remember where you came from."

She nods, giving Little One a smile. "It is my second home. The one I left where I was born to go to. I would not know how special it was if I was born there, and I wouldn't have the same motivation here if I didn't think about going back." Her voice is gentle and calm, softly urging the importance instead of demanding it.

[knifewithnoname]

They all barely knew where they were now, if they knew where they came from or not. But she nodded and continued studying the picture.

"Why did you be leaving your first home?" She asked, tilting her head up to look at her. This second home looked interesting and she could tell from her tone that it really had been a special place.

[consider8]

Vee... That was a tough question, and revealed more than she would want to talk about. She suspected that the worry of revealing personal sides of themselves would to practical strangers.

Which is why it was important for her to lead by example. "Because..." Her gaze drifts to the caverns below. "...they gave me a home. They gave me a purpose. They told me how the world was. And it wasn't. What they saw and felt was only a small part. I saw more of what was beyond our walls and I knew. I love everyone there, and I wish them happiness. But I could not stay. The world was bigger than what they could see."

[knifewithnoname]

The world was bigger than what they could see? So she had gone out to see it.

She nodded, "And then you did be finding all of this." She waved her hand at the painting. "Did you be finding another purpose though, once you did be leaving them?"

Because having a purpose was important.

[consider8]

Eight kneaded her fingers together, smiling in a bit of embarassment. "Somewhat. I'm working a part time job now. And I am sharing an apartment. And enjoying the music, and the food, and the games..."

Sure it wasn't the most purposeful or hard-working life, but it was something that she had always dreamed of having. "I'm not making it sound that exciting, but it's been a dream come true to live an Inkling kind of life."

[knifewithnoname]

She knows apartment as well, Peter really was useful for vocabulary lessons! So she tilts her head, "So you do be having half a job and half a house?"

Yet music and games and food. So that was something at least. Better than nothing, even though it sounded that she did indeed lack a purpose.

She's not even sure how half a job is meant to work. Either you had a job or you didn't have a job. One or the other.

[consider8]

That got a laugh out of Eight. Half a job, she liked that. "Mmm!" She nodded. "I was told that if things worked out, I could maybe half a full-time job working in the Crust Bucket! After I learn a few more things." Gainful employment and spending money were two things she never thought she'd wanted or needed. When she was working for the military she was getting three squares and a roof over her head, but it none of it was hers. Hell, even her own self was bought and paid for by the Octarian higher command.

She had lived both lives and between the two, she'd much prefer the "purposeless" one which offered the freedom to choose.

[knifewithnoname]

"So soon you would be having a full job?"

Still no idea how that worked but she understands having to learn to get better at a job.

"But you do be liking that? More than you did be liking your life before?"

In many ways she liked the train better than her life before but in other ways she really wanted to go home, to go back to where things made sense and she wasn't on this weird train where people acted so strange and nothing was like how she had always believed it to be.

[consider8]

Eight gave a nervous laugh, thinking the question carried a bit of accusation. "Yeah." She nodded. "It may not sound like much, and it may sound like I'm wasting my time." Her voice drifts. "But I'm choosing to do it. It is my choice. To go to the beach when I want. To follow a work schedule. To hang out with my friends. To play turf war. To go home to my roommate. To fight with her when she leaves her clothes lying around. To go to sleep knowing that everything I do is my choice. It is the life that I want."

"And no one else will choose it for me."

[knifewithnoname]

She wrinkled her nose, because all of that... It sounded... She doesn't know what it sounded like. Boring? Nice? She liked the idea of being able to do whatever she wanted. Like on the train, outside of missions. But to do that forever... To have no one telling her what to do?

She's not sure if that sounds perfect or terrifying.

Clearly it was something that this girl liked. "It do be sounding like you did be... finding the way to be living like you do be wanting to be."

That sounds diplomatic right? She is trying not to just dismiss the idea, because it fascinates her. Even if she it seems weird.

[consider8]

That sounded exactly like what it is. Freedom. Choice. Peace. To an octopus that lived underground and with constant fear that one day the lights will go out on her entire dome, nothing sound better than living on the surface. "It is. Until that day two years ago, I didn't even have a dream to call my own."

And so! She raises up the painting she made of Inkopolis Plaza. "That's why I want to remember. That's what I wanted to share. To remember where I came from. To hold close to my dream."

As mundane and quiet as that dream was.

[knifewithnoname]

A dream to call her own?

What a strange concept, but she looked at the painting and smiled. It was good, it looked different than anywhere she had seen before, but all worlds were different so she was used to that.

"I do no be thinking it would be being easy for you to be forgetting. You do be caring about it a lot."

[consider8]

The smile droops a little at that. "I hope so. I've heard some of the people here have been on this train for months. Sometimes it's good to remember. And sometimes you want to see it and feel it again."

But that was another topic for another time. "So! I've talked too much, heh. What about you? Where are you from? What is it that is important to you?"

[knifewithnoname]

"Yes some of us did be being here almost eight months now." She wrinkled her nose, "It has been being a long time."

She blinked at her, "I do be being from a place that do be being called Gauig. Both the city and the country, they do be being called the same thing. It do be being next to the sea and it do be being very hot. We do no never be having stupid cold snow or anything."

[consider8]

Oh oh! She reaches for one of the pieces of paper pasted on the wall and extends it to Little One. "Can you paint it? I would like to see."