ONE TWO CHA CHA CHA

[maskormods]

T E S T D R I V E M E M E

Considering apping into MASK OR MENACE? Want to dip your toes into the setting and get a feel of whether your character will fit into it? Or maybe you're just cruising and want to play around? Then you've come to the right place!

Pick any of the following scenarios below or feel free to make up your own, but don't be afraid to throw yourself at someone else's thread, either!

And remember there's only one rule in Test Drive Meme Club: HAVE FUN ON THE TEST DRIVE MEME!

01.The city of Heropa, Florida is what one might expect from a small, bright and cheery place, where locals are friendly enough and local shop owners might offer a free drink to welcome you to their fair city.

Unfortunately, tragedy has struck today. It seems like the entire Heropa PD is parked out of a local, popular grocery chain. A huge crowd is amassed in the parking lot despite the best efforts of officers to get them to leave. They whisper about excitement and shame, and you don't have to ask if you just listen in a bit...

"What do you think he'll do to the employees? He sounded so serious..." "He really wants that pussy, huh?" "If I left my man for cheating on me, I'd take the damn cat, too!" "How does he think taking her and her coworkers hostage is gonna make her change her mind about him being a bad boyfriend?" "My wife is pregnant, please - if I don't get her favorite deli sub I might as well not go home!"

Domestic disputes! Tragic. The police aren't too sure how to handle this hostage situation, claiming the man only has a box cutter and isn't actually waving it around at the moment, but...are you an imPort? They'd really appreciate the help, okay. Get in there and counsel the unhappy couple. Or not!


02. De Chima, Virginia, is a large city with a healthy economy, with large numbers of citizens waiting to be awed by your very presence. Look at you! Organic wonder! Those words have meaning here. Science and technology are the lifeblood of this city, so you're likely to come across a good many locals taking your picture with the newest of devices.

The imPort craze remains high here, and you may find yourself cornered by overzealous imPort fans, media wannabes and opportunists alike, shoving cameras in your face. If you let yourself get cornered, beware! Anything from personal questions about romantic chances to bedroom habits to dietary queries might be come up!


03. Maurtia Falls, Pennsylvania has had its ups and downs since imPorts started reappearing. Several imPort heroes have put focused efforts into cleaning up the streets of this somewhat infamous city, while others have swooped in to help the criminal industry thrive. More so here than the streets of any other imPort city, the battle between good and evil looks more like a war of escalation than a heroic tale.

As your character walks down the street, they may find themselves accosted by a large man in his mid-20s, dressed in an ill-fitting spandex suit of orange and yellow. As he thrusts his finger into an imPort's face, the spandex rides up, turning into more of a crop-top, which he duly tugs back down before shouting, "You're not the special ones anymore, imPorts! Feel the wrath of Heartburn!"

Stupid name aside, he does seem to have superpowers as he breathes a large plume of fire. His aim still isn't great, though; it could hit the imPort in question, or be sent in the direction of a nearby local, or even a particularly flammable building. What will you do, Hero?


04. Nonah, North Carolina, is the liveliest of all cities; loud, busy and there's always some kind of energy in the air that gets everyone buzzing with excitement. You may find yourself in the midst of a few closed-off streets for some occasion or another - whether it be a food cart festival, no-car day, or something else! - and surrounded by the hum of people, the waft of food being served on the street, and plenty of attention

Look there -- someone's demoing a VR roller coaster! Won't you give it a shot?

Outside the barricades closing off those streets, you're still likely to attract attention. Natives may gather around new arrivals and ask both personal and broad questions about life as an imPort, what they are looking forward to, if they're looking for a sidekick. A few restaurants will offer a free appetizer (with the purchase of an entree), and you may be offered product samples from local businesses! Just be sure to speak to an agent before signing any endorsement deals.


05. Jeopardy, Nevada by all rights shouldn't exist. A glowing neon city smack in the middle of the desert, the only reason it's still here is that the central nuclear power plant has tapped half a mile down into a subterranean lake for its water supply. So though the desert around it may be barren, the occupants of this small city are happily self sufficient. Those weird figures you see out of the corner of your eyes? Don't worry too much. Probably just weird radiation after effects. Jeopardy has a lot of those.

Despite the weird constant hum and the creepy cultish bingo, Jeopardy is usually a pretty calm place. A safe place. But not today. Today, someone has released a couple hundred tiny praying-mantis-like robots into the city, and the place is in chaos. Shops are closed up early because though these little destructive creatures don't have bullets, they do have some weird arm appendages that like to just crunch everything in existence. Like a locus swarm of cockatoos, anything made of wood or plastic is being crunched up and left for scrap. But at less than six inches high apiece, rounding them up is proving extremely difficult. Luckily, the mayor in her wisdom is giving out titanium nets to any imPort who wants to help round up the trouble makers. And, in the spirit of the city, she's offering the imPort that catches the most robots a free meal for two in the swanky Radiation Galley - Jeopardy's top tier, five star restaurant.

Get catchin', imPorts!

Comments

[deadlycurves]

It's a long, drawn out moment before the pieces click and Diego realizes that this choice, and this scene, wasn't Allison's at all. Something about the realization that this was, in fact, Luther's regret sinks like a stone in Diego's chest. He'd tried for years to make Luther see the light about their father, but nothing worked, no amount of facts laid out in front of him, no amount of yelling, nothing had ever made a difference or made him waver in his loyalty. A loyalty that ended up being Luther's biggest downfall, and this was the beginning piece that set everything else that would follow it into motion. He can only watch as Luther denies the opportunity-- was it even real? He doesn't know, he's not sure how Luther can be sure it isn't, either, but... the girl tuts and moves on, everything shifting and changing again. Allison's guilt-point is the one on center stage now. And she isn't even looking. Refuses. That look on her face now is even worse than the one seconds ago. More open and bleeding and raw than anything he thinks he's ever seen on Allison's face before. Diego feels ice draw down his spine and root him where he stands. "Allison...?" He knows she doesn't want to, but some way or another, she's going to have to face it even if only to give the little girl an answer. This whole thing seems unbelievably, unnecessarily cruel.

[numberthree]

Diego says her name, and unbidden, even fighting it, she has to look toward him, but she snags, like a train wreck on the girl staring at her imperiously. All yellow innocence, but such cold, distant eyes. Judge and jury in the countenance of a child, and she feels her stomach drop as the air and everything around them begins to shift, nausea rising in the back of her throat, as the world spins back like a Rolodex.

Maurtia Falls, a drab office of cubicles and computers, a bedroom in a house perpetually made of shadows and mess. Guest appearances, just for a second, here and there, of Klaus in her house, and her in Vanya's. Before the world explodes in reverse, a blue ring, sinking inward, and stage, picking up speed. The gun in her hand. Klaus looking at her in dawning embarrassed-horror in a bowling alley lit almost blue.

Opening her eyes on the medical bed flipping. Her on the floor, blood spreading. Her on her feet, fine. Sound shivers suddenly present like speakers snapped on. Howling wind. Shaking cabin interior. Vanya's hair flying back behind her. The candelier lights exploding. Her own voice, suddenly all around them, pleading, choked with almost-tears, "Please don't make me do this," and, then, "I heard a rumor -- " And a slash of white explodes towards her.

(June hmms impassionately, "Not your brightest moment, was it?")

She knows, she knows, she knows, this is the moment she could have changed it all. Vanya's all. Their all. But her heart is racing, and she knows it's not this either. She's already paying for this. Might never not be. But it's something she can, and that one, she can't. Maybe that's why it all starts going so much faster. Through the days of that week. Harold's file. The cop in the parking lot. Too many meetings in that living room. Their father's piss poor funeral.

Then, a small house, with half of everything still in boxes. Not as often there as the sets. Costumes. Cameras. Glitter. A smile that was bright as every picture flash, a rainbow of dresses, each as glamorous as the next, and last. With flickers of that empty house, with her head in her hands. On a couch. Curled up on a bed, sobbing. At a window, smoking, staring up. Rolling, faster and faster, and faster, until it stops, and Allison's heart with it.

It's a small room, all things considered. Sparse, and open, and empty. This courtroom.
The benches aren't filled, and though it's not apparent, the room is being taped. She is.

She could pay for an empty room, for no press, but not for empty, stupid people, not with the charges.


But even as humiliation spreads like ink into every cell in her body, Allison's eyes can only go to one place. Claire. Not at the table where she's sitting with her lawyer, or the table where Patrick is sitting with his, but Claire. Claire. Claire, in the arms of Patrick's mother sitting behind him. Claire, the last time she saw her. Claire, and only Claire, as the gavel slaps the top of a desk, and she knows what will come next.

[obediences]

At first it's a curious kind of relief, having the spotlight drawn away from him and redirected onto someone else -- Luther used to relish being the center of attention once, but that's gone to rot over the past twelve years, as with so many other things -- but as the courtroom scene starts unfolding, he rapidly regrets that initial instinct. Allison's gaze is riveted to her daughter and Luther's gaze follows. And he finally sees Claire in the flesh (so to speak), for the first time ever, for the first time when it isn't her photograph pressed into magazines like a butterfly pinned to the page. He finds himself scanning the little girl's face, noting where he can see the shape of her mother's eyes, the familiar and willful set of her shoulders. An actual person. Allison's person.

And here, this moment when she was yanked away from her.

(You could always do your, uh, you know. Rumour thing.) It still seems like the simplest, most expedient solution to this problem -- rewrite reality, spin it into something you'd prefer -- to the carpenter, every problem looks like a nail -- but even he can tell that that isn't an option anymore. Even this point is too far forward. Too many hungry eyes are on Allison, and on this case, and waiting to see how it all topples.

He glances at the stands. The younger Allison, seated beside her lawyer, looks so very alone. No one in her corner, no family flocking the stands to support her. Trapped in a bed of her own making, painted herself into this corner until there's no neat way out of it.

Luther's hand flutters; he's afraid she's going to shatter, or explode, if he touches her, but in the end he catches her shoulder. Fingers splayed against her shoulderblades. He couldn't be there for her back then, but at least he'll be here, now.

[deadlycurves]

The rewind of scenes is almost dizzying with the number of things that are seen in such a compact manner of seconds. Seeing, for the briefest split of a second, Vanya and Allison in that cabin, makes something crawl up and stick in his throat, his eyes suddenly brighter for the sharp sting of stubbornly unshed tears. But there was no preparation for what it would all finally land on. The courtroom, bland and basic and the same as any other. Except it wasn't, was it? Because this was the one Allison had been in when she lost her whole world. Diego's attention draws to the tiny, spitting image of his sister sitting, almost prim, and something in his chest cracks at it. She's so small and can't possibly fully grasp the gravity of this, can she? Then again-- none of the Hargreeves were so clueless, even at Claire's age, so maybe he isn't giving her enough credit. Still. Either way. She either barely understands the truth of this moment in this room, or she understands so much deeper than she should-- and both options are heartbreaking. Maybe almost as much as the realization that he'd never... met her. And now... never would. Could. She wasn't. Any more than the whole rest of the world wasn't. And... But Allison and her face and the way she can't stop staring at her daughter, ties so many things in Diego's chest and stomach in knots just to see. To look at. It's so much more shattered and raw and bleeding than the one on her younger self's face in Luther's moment earlier. He thought it couldn't get worse, but this is living proof that it could. Did. Was. So much harder, so much worse, so much more broken than he really knew a person could be. He can't move, rooted to the spot. He can't speak, too certain he couldn't get any of it out properly if he tried. He just watches-- Claire. Patrick. The laywers. Claire. The baliff and the judge. Claire. Luther, reaching, trying to help in the way no one really can, but still making the attempt to somehow ease the blow. Claire. Allison, watching, unmoving, unblinking, unable to stop staring at her world being ripped away from her. Claire.

[numberthree]

She's beautiful. Perfect. More perfect than perfect, than anything, and if it feels like Allison can feel the breath she takes in for the first time in months, it's breathing glass shards all the same. But she's beautiful, and Allison would walk on any amount of broken glass just to see Claire, swallow it and let it rip every inch of muscle left in her throat to know she was safe ( a l i v e ) and it's Allison's only thought when her lips start to tremble.

Before she goes suddenly very still -- as a hand settles on her back. Not as heavy as it had been.
(She doesn't want him to see this. She doesn't want him to see this. She never wanted him to see this.)

But she doesn't have to guess whose and the guilt feels like a fist around her throat, heavier than silence when the words start — the ones on the other side of the room. Bland and weighted, as sanctimonious as it was sure, and she still can't keep from flinching, just barely, discordant in her bones, in a way that no blow in a fight has ever earned from Number Three, at 'child abuse' and 'all rights and properties' and 'full custody, with no visitation, is awarded until this court deems fit to allow'.

It's underwater. Through glass. Allison almost holds her breath
when her own voice cracks, "What?" and she has to look. For the first time.

At herself. The same face in her mirror, the same year, the same hairstyle. But. She can see it now.

That level of bafflement on her own features that gave new definition to arrogance, as she pushed up from her chair. She could remember it too clearly, sick with it. She'd never thought she'd lose. Never truly worried about it. She was Allison Hargreeves. World Famous. Umbrella Academy. Hollywood Star. Sought after. Adored. She always won. Always. Except that one time. She can watch it go. The realization. Truly dawning. The way she looks to the judge. Her lawyer. Patrick. His. To Claire, just as Patrick's mom shifted more behind the two men standing in front of her.

It sinks like a stone, like a punch to the face not blocked fast enough.
She was a child. Vainglorious and unrepentant and arrogant and blind.

So, so, so blind. Until just at that exact second. When everything focused in at one.
"Claire?" It tears out of her, terrified, and she and the room around

and the people in it freeze finally.


And June is still there. Still there, still there, still. Imperious and sunshine-yellow, with that chalice in her hands. Waiting. As Allison's gaze slid back to the little girl who she'd never been able to see had been straining to find her at her name called. Frozen and confused. In a movement trying to twist from the arms that held her. Afraid. Who never should have had to look like that. She did that. That, too. Even with the weight of the hand on her back, Allison does before she can think about it. She steps forward, toward June. Toward the chalice in her hands.

[obediences]

Luther isn't even sure what the chalice's offer is this time, what possible action could rewind and undo this looming trainwreck at this exact moment in time -- but perhaps that doesn't even matter. It's like any tangled irrational dream logic, like a dream (it's a dream) -- and even as he thinks that, that reminder suddenly starts pounding in his ears like thunder. He reminds himself. Reminds himself, like a catechism looping over and over through his head. He stares at Claire, frozen mid-squirm and her whole body bending towards her mother like a sapling twisting in a violent breeze. It's a figment of Allison's imagination. It can't honestly, actually be her.

(Because she's dead.)

That thing none of them have wanted to broach, that even Luther's been too scared to name out loud or ask about. Because it's unfixable until they all manage to go back. It's a yawning empty pit of grief that he doesn't know how to fill -- because you can't.

"Allison," he says, his voice ragged, as his hand tightens on the fabric of her shirt and he catches her. Pulls and starts to reel her back.

[numberthree]

Luther's voice makes her name something terrible, and there's a part of her that wonders how much of everything blends and blurs in this place. Once upon a time in a land far, far away, where there were no valiant knights and pretty princesses, except with masks and uniforms, they'd felt like mirror reflections. For a second. Just a second. It almost feels like that.

She said nothing, and so instead he did,

and somehow she can hear her own agony in his voice.

But it's too late already, and no one cared before this moment, and so Allison does the only thing she can even think to do about the fingers digging into her shirt and her shoulder, she pushes back, with a deft twist of her upper body, to wrench herself from that grasp. Reaching a hand over her own shoulder to push his hand away at the same second. He doesn't get to care now. Didn't get to decide for her. "Don't."

No one had before this moment. No one cared why she didn't want to be here, why she couldn't just settle.
Why everything good and bad seemed just as equally offensive to her, no matter how it came at them.

[obediences]

Even hearing her voice at all, instead of silent words blooming across his vision, is still such a raw fresh wound. Even when she's snapping at him, Luther finds himself savouring that one sharp word; nursing that abject impossibility of her voice, just like his human-sized body. Just like this shade of their brother, standing a few feet off. He almost glances back over his shoulder to check on what it's doing -- even now, the urge to gut-check with Number Two runs strong, but Luther ignores it. It's not actually Diego. It can't help him, here.

Allison's shrugged off his hand, and he's becoming depressingly accustomed to that sensation, too, but he stands there and just. Waits. And watches what happens.

[numberthree]

Allison doesn't look back, but Luther doesn't try again, and she can't tell if it's that good, because he listened, or cold. Like whatever his reason was it wasn't one stronger than one warning. (Reminder? Request? Reprimand?) She can't focus on that now. Worry. Pull it apart, like a chess game, in one word and one move. The way they always are. Always do. A mountain of dangerous, disastrous, unwelcome, untouchable, unsaid things for every single one that was. It's not important right now.

Not when she's walking toward the little girl and her sunshine yellow dress, and the chalice in her hands.

She looked down at the little girl, and the chalice in her hands, the question clear. "How does it work?"

June's empty, imperious gaze fixes on hers. "If you take the chalice, there are three rules that you have to follow. The first is that you cannot walk the path that you walked in this timeline. The further you stay away from creating a paradox, the easier your new timeline is gonna be to maintain."

"The second rule is that you forfeit your place in this timeline completely. There is no comin’ back if you take the chalice and cross over. And the third rule is the hardest rule: I’m gonna create a new timeline for you, but you have to sustain it. Every single thing that happens in this new world we create, you have to want it to happen. Or else the timeline won’t hold and you’ll be lost."

[deadlycurves]

Diego keeps still and frozen the entire time as Luther tries to stop her. The way he says her name, it's the kind of thing that would instantly still him, make him stop and think and reconsider what he was doing, and he knows it. But not Allison. Allison shoves him away and demands him to stop. And who could blame her, when this is her chance to fix everything she broke with the one person that matters more than any other one? But then the rules are laid at their feet, so concise and specific, and a panic bubbles up in the center of his chest. 'You cannot walk the path that you walked in this timeline.' How much of it changes without Allison in the center of it? If she chooses this, will she come back for Dad's funeral? Stay, when all she wanted the entire time she was there, was to go back home to her daughter? Would she be there when Vanya went on stage? "You can't--" the words practically rip out of him with the force of that panic as he spins through everything that might change. "It's a lie, no different than if you rumored it yourself."

[numberthree]

All of the Hargreeves were trained to think on their feet. To do many things at once. Take in all the data they might need to make decisions if they found themselves stranded alone in a fight or had to divide. Allison hears it as it's said. She can't miss it. You can't make any choice that you did this time. You can't come back here, even if you change your mind. You have to believe 100% in everything that you make happen after it.

She's not dumb. She's done a lot in her life that proves that. But even still she can feel the anger that rises at the immediate need for Dream!Diego to shout that, and she has to wonder if it's their imagination or if it's Luther. Or if it's her. But staring at the chalice, that's not the thing that sticks because it's Claire.

It's Claire. It's Claire. It's Claire.

All she has to do -- and Allison does raise her hands, faintly cupped, around the edge, only about an inch between her skin touching the sides of the gleaming relic object -- is take the chalice and all of this will never have happened. Everything bad. The planet in flames. Her daughter dead. This stupid, stupid place they're locked in wouldn't exist. She'd be home. They'd be home. Together.

Except. It wiggles right at the edge. Would they? Or would they just be dead together? She remembers. She hasn't forgotten. Luther, then Five, saying they were all dead in the rubble. Except they weren't dead in the rubble. Because they were here. Because they stopped Vanya. She stopped Vanya.

Who would've been there to stop Vanya? Who would've saved her brothers from dying? Who would've chosen Vanya's side when everyone else wouldn't? Didn't. Hadn't. If she wasn't there, but how is that her responsibility either? She could change it. Maybe she could warn them if she couldn't ever go back. Perhaps she could fix that, too, even without going back.

(Without ever seeing Luther, again? Ever? Now?

Or Vanya?

Mom and Pogo,
before they were gone?

Five returned? Ben alive?)

No.

No. No. No. Allison doesn't want to think about any of this. None of this matters. Like Diego telling her. She couldn't run away. She couldn't go to her daughter when she should have the first time. When it was all she'd ever wanted to do. To get back home. To Claire. Even if it was getting back to that empty house and her appointments to prove she could be a fit parent. All she had to do was take the Chalice, and Claire would be hers again.

The thought of which made her look over toward Claire. Caught in that same frozen lean, that same confused and scared struggle to find her. In the arms of someone who thought they were protecting her. From the person capable of hurting her most. And it's that thought that makes Allison's gaze shift to the most unlikely spot -- herself. Caught in that expression of outlandish insult and anger and only beginning fear.

That her, she wouldn't have hesitated. That her wouldn't hesitate now. That her, wouldn't have told Luther it was so much harder than she ever knew, and that her... didn't understand at all how broken she was. How wrong. And her gaze flips right back, and she feels it slipping. Slipping away from her hands -- still poised an inch or two away -- as she looks at Claire, and the first tear falls down her cheek before she even knows it's coming. It falls.

And she wants to scream no. No. Because she's this close. No. Because there's shouldn't be anything else. No. Because Claire is the only thing that matters. No. Because she'd die herself, in a heartbeat, on this very spot, for Claire to be alive in her place instead. No. Because it won't change anything. No. Because. Because. Because.

It is a lie. It is cheating. (Another tear rolls down her cheek.)
And she isn't supposed do that anymore. (And another.)

She's supposed to prove she's better For Claire. (Another.)

And her fingers curl into her palms even as the chalice is a blur in her vision.

"I can't." It chokes out of her, with a shaking breath.

Because it won't save her. (It won't save the world.) It won't give her a life, a future, nd she doesn't want just a few days for Claire. (She wants a whole life for her.) And she doesn't want this look on her daughter's face. (She doesn't want Claire to be afraid.) And she doesn't want to be the girl she is, over there. (The girl her father trained to be okay with everything she's done.)

Her hands raise, pulling toward her shoulders, more like fists, even as it feels like dying -- not picking Claire, not bringing her back right this second, choosing her, it feels more like dying than being on this planet without her, ever had before, and it sounds so dumb, when she's looking at that girl and her soulless eyes, and she shakes her head. "I have to do it right this time."

[obediences]

Luther lets out the longest breath that he hadn't even realised he'd been holding; something tight and vise-like in his chest, clenched hard, a fist around his heart. His shoulders sag, releasing the tension that had wound tighter and tighter as they'd watched Allison's hands flutter around the chalice.

He could have simply tried harder -- walked forward, grabbed her again, physically yanked her back and pulled her away from the temptation. Held her back with all his strength, as easily as batting a kitten aside.

But Allison has to do it right this time, and so does he.

So he lets her make the choice and when she makes this one -- he can't even say that it's the right one, because it's impossible to say, impossible to measure that cascading domino-butterfly effect of one massive thing changed -- Luther breathes out. And finds himself watching Claire, that frozen dream-Claire caught mid-motion. She's not real but she is. She's dead but she isn't. Schroedinger's niece. Maybe they can still save her, someday.

But not like this.

They have a brother who can turn the clock. They'll find another way.

He's stepped forward, down the narrow aisle of the courtroom until he retakes his position by Allison's side, Diego trailing after.

Claire is still the thing he hasn't touched with a ten-foot pole in their weeks here; unsure if planting hope is worse than grim broken acceptance, but he tries it anyway. Voice soft: "We'll find a way," Luther says, because stubborn faith has been his watchword for thirty years. Sometimes, it's all he had. "There's the Commission. There have to be ways to roll it back that isn't... this. And we'll find one."

[deadlycurves]

He only follows Luther for lack of an idea of what else to do at this point. If only for how quickly these things have come around, he knows they can't possibly be staying here for much longer. Any minute now-- "Your turn." The girl gives Diego a pointed look. As the attention is drawn toward Diego, he feels his heart sink to his stomach. He doesn't want it. He doesn't want this. He wants off this ride and demands a refund, thanks. "Hmm," June hums as his own memories are flipped through like a book. "you're a tough one. Don't regret very much, do you? But there's always that one thing..." The scenes flip in reverse, arriving here in this place, a flash of blue light, quickly followed by a blinding white one, one thing bleeding directly into the next until there's a rush of things that's barely visible. For a moment, it seems like it might pause on-- A shabby motel room. A woman on the floor-- very obviously dead. The door busts open and Diego rushes in and instantly crumbles, his face, his actions, everything shaky and unsteady with bone-deep grief. Whispered apologies and that heart-ripped-out broken face and-- June tuts and shakes her head, "No, no, not that." she speeds her rewind of moments up, spinning faster until nothing is in focus and-- "Ah, there it is." SLAM! First, it's Mom in the room with all the paintings. Humming quietly to herself, seeming fine. Everything is fine. Like it's always fine. Diego wanders into the scene, edging slow and careful as he does. "We need to talk." It tries to be a demand, though much softer than it would have ever been with anyone else. He can't ever be anything else with her. "Okay, but only for a minute. I need to finish this cross-stitch." She's so.... somehow more plastic in the moment than he remembers her ever being. Was she always that way and he'd ignored it? Or was that Vanya's words getting in his head? "Everything you did for us when we were kids- for me- why'd you do it?" "Because being your mother is the greatest gift of my life." She's bright, her answer equally gleaming. Smiling that sunshine smile like she means it, but... Diego looks skeptical as he shifts closer to where she's siting, leaning up and around like he has to look just a little harder to see if she's telling the truth. "Is that you saying that?" Mom looks... confused as she turns toward him more, staring up, eyes nearly owlish as she tries to process. "I'm not sure what you mean, Diego." "I mean, our father, he... made you." It feels wrong to say it, as much as he's always known she is, technically, technology, computer systems put together in feminine robot form, she's always seemed to much more human. "When you think something, is it like he's telling you what to say?" He wants to understand, he wants to prove he was right and that what he saw is what he saw and not just in his head. It's her. It's her because she feels, on her own, not just as a set of programming. "Your father isn't here, silly." She shakes her head and looks at him, suddenly stricken. "Did I do something wrong?" "No," is said so fast it's practically ripped out of his mouth, desperate to not let her think that's what it is. "it... it's not... Look..." he finally kneels in front of her, choosing his words as carefully as he can manage. "It's okay... if you hated him. He was terrible to you. To all of us." "Don't say that." It's a mother scolding a child for saying a naughty word, more than anything else at all. "Why not?" Incredulity at the idea that he shouldn't just bare that awful truth in a shining spotlight for all that it's worth. "We were just tools in an experiment to him, nothing more. So, I'm saying, I would understand if... you know, if- if you wanted to hurt him." "Now, now. Mr. Hargreeves was a great man. Industrialist, inventor, Olympic gold medalist." She pushes to her feet and moves a little closer to the paintings she was looking at. "He made the world a better place." Diego follows her to his feet and grabs her arm, spins her around to face him, "Stop it!" He shouts in a way he's probably never done, not with Mom. He has a hand on either side of her as he shakes her, wants so badly for her to understand it's okay. "Look, he treated you worse than anyone. You worked for him for thirty years. He didn't even give you a room to sleep in!" She smiles that plastic-perfect smile. "But I've got such beautiful views here." "Mom, those are just paintings." He hates this, he hates every second of it because it's proving something to him more and more, something he's not ready to accept yet. Grace laughs softly, "Of course they are." She turns out of his grip and looks back at her wall of paintings, honing in on one in particular, a singular portrait of a woman. "What a wonderful world she lives in. Sometimes, I wonder if she's lonely." Diego stands frozen for a moment before stalking out of the room. There's a sharp, sudden SNAP! and it shifts to something else. Pieces of a brutal attack, guns and punches and daggers, a whirl of action and motion, a house in half-ruin, a huge chandelier laid broken and-- Diego's wandering back into the room with all the paintings again. Mom's still in the same place she was before, still working on her cross-stitch. "Mom. You okay?" She doesn't look up as she answers, that too-perfect tone taking over, "Of course I am." "You didn't hear the noises?" He asks, cautious and careful as he moves closer to her. "The guys in the masks, the ones that just shot up the house?" "What are you talking about, silly?" A brilliant, if confused, smile rests on her face as she looks at her son. Diego sits next to her and looks down to find Mom has cross-stitched her work right into her hand. She doesn't seem to notice as she keeps humming and working. He knows what he has to do, but he doesn't want to. He doesn't want this. He'd only just been screaming at the others earlier about how they couldn't and she deserved better and she feels things and-- He shifts to kneel in front of her, his face as shattered as his heart feels, suddenly. He slides one hand over, slowly moving the piece on her wrist that hides her power-source out of the way. Finally, Mom looks at him, more confused than ever. "Diego, what are you doing?" But even as she watches him begin to power her down, she doesn't fight him. "It's gonna be o--" Suddenly, he's too stricken to even make his mouth work, he tries, but no sound comes out. "Remember what we worked on. Just picture the word in your mind." She assures him, like he isn't doing the worst imaginable thing he could ever do to her right now. Like he isn't absolutely betraying every single thing she's ever done for him in his life. His words are slow, tight and hard to get out. "It's gonna be...okay...Mom." "Di..e...go....re....mem...ber..." Her words drawl down into a soft whir as the last remaining light flickers right out of her as she finally powers completely off. Diego doesn't look any better standing outside of that moment than he did when it happened. His face is no more than a shattered version of what it should be, hairline fractures cracked across every inch of it. Tears make dark eyes shine brighter than they should be, but this time he can't stop them from making hot tracks down his face as one hand comes up to cover his mouth, which is making no sound but the word it tries for it clear-- "Mom". It's only a fraction of a second before his other hand clamps over the first and it's all he can do to not absolutely crumble on the ground.

[numberthree]

She knows what the steps behind her betoken, and Allison is torn between wanting to wipe her face clean and wanting not to move, to close her eyes like she could find faith and desperation enough to wish this whole dream away now if she just reached for it. Brutually ripped herself from this travesty of her greatest shame. Which makes it worse, catches, unexpected under her breast bone and jerks as though her ribs aren't attached when Luther's voice says those first four words.

More tears wrenching themselves out of her, but even as she opens her eyes, half to reaching up for her face, June's voice sounds next and the world rips the world away, and the "No!" that comes out of Alison's mouth is as sudden, as desperate as the way she suddenly reaches for Luther's hand, clutching it hard, sharp nails and strong fingers, even as she's using him partially as a fulcrum for looking past him.

To where Claire is already gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.
The world around them changing. Flipping. Skittering.
She thinks she's going to be sick.

Everything in her chest, all the way to her spine pulled straight out of her with that emptiness. Swallowed mirage. Forsaken miracle. Refused grace. The whole world dropping, even as it spins, all her weight in that hand holding onto Luther. Like it might be the only thing keeping her attached to the ground. Insider her own skin. What this could even be. Why it's continuing this hellish heartbreaking game by dragging the dream phantom with them into it. She's not interested in the dream of a dream.

At least she isn't until there's a confusion of the body on the ground, and her brother is rushing to her and cradling her face in his hands. All but crying. That shifts swifts as a second from it -- to the house. Suddenly, the house. Grand and standing again, all rich dark wood and ambient light. The imagine confusing for the clearness of the memory-building pulled from their minds. There's a complicated sourness that fills her at its existence, confused, sideways, still unbalanced as it settles on Mom and Diego.

Her brow knitting as she follows it. Until her heart, not torn into enough shreds freezes when Diego in the memory is cutting down Mom's arm and driving his fingers into the blue wires of her arm. And it's not possible. It's not real. No one in the world matters more to Diego than Mom. There had never been. He'd been her first thought when she found him that morning. She'd seen him when he dropped in the rubble unable to even stay standing.

But she still has to look back to Diego with them, like a shaving pulled toward a magnet.

The disfigurement of grief-struck horror that tore his expression open, under shining cheeks and gagging hands.

[obediences]

She reaches out for comfort and it's unthinking, automatic, like the way they'd reached for each other when Five's vortex first opened up. His hand tightens on Allison's. One-and-Three gravitating together as they've always done, and fittingly, Two still with them as the last corner of their tripod.

And then their surroundings shift again and it's... Mom, and Diego, and a scene that neither of them experienced. This isn't their memory. How can it be? There's Diego's face crumpling and that stutter building up behind his teeth before he presses it back down, and... why would they imagine something like this? Murder, or euthanasia, or something painfully in-between. Luther recognises it as that night, that night they'd fought off the attackers and then the chandelier—

When Luther looks down at that delicate cross-stitch in their mother's cool hands, he sees that she was meticulously depicting the moon breaking apart, a chunk of it falling away.

Which speaks to this being just another nightmare.

But it has the taste of bitter gouging truth to it, and Luther's gaze swings sharply to that third in their midst, his own expression clouding over with confusion as he considers, as something feels off about the whole thing——

"Diego?"

But before Number Two can respond, whatever synchronicity there was is severed. The connection drops as suddenly as it arrived, the dream is gone, and Luther opens his eyes to an empty room in De Chima, no longer clutching Allison's hand, and their brother gone, and the house and their mother dissolved like just another haunting.