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identityformationsNotable Negative - Getting jumped by thugs in the caravanserai and nearly killing a guy (MD 493-498)
Regained - Game #72, Narcissus, uniform redesign loser game (in bondage pants)
So upon reviewing this memory, I decided to break out some of the fallout into a different memory and list that separately, because this was a big memory as is and part of that scene concerns entirely separate matters. And man, this is going to be a really fucking interesting memory for Mark to get this early in his development, because it hints at some of the screwier stuff about him that he has no clue about as of yet. Also one of the very few memories involving his hand-to-hand combat skills. Just a whole batch of stuff here is a huge surprise.
He's an adult, fatter than he was in the previous memory, but not as much so as he is now. Just to place it in his mental chronology-by-weight. (There will probably come a point when I stop adding these notes, but given that his body has been different in every memory he's received so far...)
So I am hanging out with this guy in a city. The guy is tall, good looking, in a military uniform, kind of radiating charming dumb cockiness. The city is clearly planetside, quaint and warren-like, full of little shops and shabby alleys. He's going on about having been born in that building, right there, during a war; it's currently an antiques store. Then we eat lunch; this is all a pleasantly neutral sort of blur. He decides we should go visit the place where his father was killed, presumably during the same war. There's a plaque and everything, I can only guess that his father was someone important. Then he takes me to a bakery for dessert, and as he's flirting with the girl behind the counter, I decide to step outside, to check out something from my own past...
Wait. What. I have a background in espionage? Well I...suppose that explains the impersonation business...though not why I was apparently hanging out with that Miles guy and chatting with him fondly later.
Moooving on, or rather out, back to the bakery to meet up with Officer Boy, I get turned around with a shortcut and wind up in a cul-de-sac. A cul-de-sac containing a raggedly old woman and a skinny youth hovering near her. She hisses that I'm a mutie. Mutant? And prods the kid into slouching over to cut me off. "Oh, God. Natives. In all their surly glory."
I trade insults with the kid, changing my accent to let him know that I'm not, in fact, from this planet. Hackles are rising. Two of the kid's friends come in behind me...
...oh, wonderful, I'm a masochistic spy. No wonder I have a nice Betan therapist. And I...win the first few blows easily. What?
...a masochistic spy assassin. Fuck. What the fuck. And seeing a shock-stick flips me into instinctive killing mode.
Welp, I guess Naruto wasn't so wrong about my potential as a ninja.
But I really didn't want to kill this guy. Shit. Officer Boy comes around the corner and breaks it up, and there's a whole blur of cleanup and shouting, and the combat nerves are starting to kick in a little and I'm shaking and making sure none of my teeth are wriggling and really hoping that I didn't actually murder that kid. Once the municipal guard gets there and I'm sure the guy is going to be taken care of properly, I just kind of...shut down and let Officer Boy handle it. Eventually he packs me off in a groundcar, and we snipe at each other. I think he was supposed to be guarding me, and is rather unhappy that he failed at such.
"...did Miles have to deal with this kind of crap?" I ask him. Miles, coming up yet again. Of course, he looks like me. And if that means people in this godsforsaken place beat you up for being a mutant...(seeing that Sergeant Taura here might have been fun)...we devolve into sniping at each other after he explains that Miles would've been smart enough to avoid this shit entirely, with all the implied insults towards me. And I wonder to myself if I'd been secretly seeking punishment. Punishment for what? And then I sit there feeling sick about how I might've killed all three of those dumb kids, FML.
+ Appearance of Ivan Vorpatril.
+ I was apparently trained as an assassin, completely with deadly hand-to-hand combat.
+ I was apparently supposed to be a Komarran spy working on Barrayar, but I remember identifying as Jacksonian, WTF.
+ Also I can change my accent at will, but that's really secondary to the spy and assassin training.
+ Shock-sticks make me kill people reflexively, maybe it's a good thing Aather doesn't have advanced technology.
+5 masochism.
+20 who the fuck is Miles exactly and why is he entwined in nearly all my memories?
+20 fighting is kinda fun until I nearly killed a guy.
+30 FML I nearly killed a guy.
+30 desire to not actually kill random people.
+50 NO REALLY WHAT THE FREAKING GODS MY LIFE.
Regained - Game #72, Narcissus, uniform redesign loser game (in bondage pants)
So upon reviewing this memory, I decided to break out some of the fallout into a different memory and list that separately, because this was a big memory as is and part of that scene concerns entirely separate matters. And man, this is going to be a really fucking interesting memory for Mark to get this early in his development, because it hints at some of the screwier stuff about him that he has no clue about as of yet. Also one of the very few memories involving his hand-to-hand combat skills. Just a whole batch of stuff here is a huge surprise.
He's an adult, fatter than he was in the previous memory, but not as much so as he is now. Just to place it in his mental chronology-by-weight. (There will probably come a point when I stop adding these notes, but given that his body has been different in every memory he's received so far...)
So I am hanging out with this guy in a city. The guy is tall, good looking, in a military uniform, kind of radiating charming dumb cockiness. The city is clearly planetside, quaint and warren-like, full of little shops and shabby alleys. He's going on about having been born in that building, right there, during a war; it's currently an antiques store. Then we eat lunch; this is all a pleasantly neutral sort of blur. He decides we should go visit the place where his father was killed, presumably during the same war. There's a plaque and everything, I can only guess that his father was someone important. Then he takes me to a bakery for dessert, and as he's flirting with the girl behind the counter, I decide to step outside, to check out something from my own past...
Galen had placed a couple of Komarran underground spy contacts in this area once, Mark remembered. Doubtless picked up two years ago in th post-plot sweep by Barrayaran Imperial Security. [...] He found the address in a couple of minutes, to his sufficient satisfaction; he decided he didn't need to check inside.
Wait. What. I have a background in espionage? Well I...suppose that explains the impersonation business...though not why I was apparently hanging out with that Miles guy and chatting with him fondly later.
Moooving on, or rather out, back to the bakery to meet up with Officer Boy, I get turned around with a shortcut and wind up in a cul-de-sac. A cul-de-sac containing a raggedly old woman and a skinny youth hovering near her. She hisses that I'm a mutie. Mutant? And prods the kid into slouching over to cut me off. "Oh, God. Natives. In all their surly glory."
I trade insults with the kid, changing my accent to let him know that I'm not, in fact, from this planet. Hackles are rising. Two of the kid's friends come in behind me...
The attack was sudden, and almost took Mark by surprise; he thought etiquette demanded they exchange a few more insults first, and he was just working up some good ones. Exhilaration mixed strangely with the anticipation of pain. Or maybe it was the anticipation of pain that was exhilarating.
...oh, wonderful, I'm a masochistic spy. No wonder I have a nice Betan therapist. And I...win the first few blows easily. What?
His reflexes were two years stale, and he was already getting winded. Yet the extra weight made him harder to knock off his feet. Three to one on a crippled-looking fat little lost stranger, eh? You like those odds? Come to me, baby cannibals. The bakery bag was still clutched absurdly in his fist as he grinned and opened his arms in invitation.
They jumped him both together, telegraphing every move. The purely defensive katas continued to work charmingly; they flowed into, and out of, his momentum-gate to end up both on the ground, shaking their heads dizzily, victims of their own aggression. Mark wriggled his jaw, which had taken a clumsy blow, hard enough to sting and wake him up. [...] It might have ended there, a good time having been had by all, if one of the idiot punks, crouching, hadn't pulled out a battered old shock-stick and jabbed it toward him.
Mark almost killed him instantly with a kick to the neck; he pulled his punch barely in time, and the blow landed slightly off-center. Even through his boot he could feel the tissues crush, a sickening sensation richocheting up through his body. Mark recoiled in horror as the kid lay gurgling on the ground. No, I wasn't trained to fight. I was trained to kill. Oh, shit.
...a masochistic spy assassin. Fuck. What the fuck. And seeing a shock-stick flips me into instinctive killing mode.
Welp, I guess Naruto wasn't so wrong about my potential as a ninja.
But I really didn't want to kill this guy. Shit. Officer Boy comes around the corner and breaks it up, and there's a whole blur of cleanup and shouting, and the combat nerves are starting to kick in a little and I'm shaking and making sure none of my teeth are wriggling and really hoping that I didn't actually murder that kid. Once the municipal guard gets there and I'm sure the guy is going to be taken care of properly, I just kind of...shut down and let Officer Boy handle it. Eventually he packs me off in a groundcar, and we snipe at each other. I think he was supposed to be guarding me, and is rather unhappy that he failed at such.
"...did Miles have to deal with this kind of crap?" I ask him. Miles, coming up yet again. Of course, he looks like me. And if that means people in this godsforsaken place beat you up for being a mutant...(seeing that Sergeant Taura here might have been fun)...we devolve into sniping at each other after he explains that Miles would've been smart enough to avoid this shit entirely, with all the implied insults towards me. And I wonder to myself if I'd been secretly seeking punishment. Punishment for what? And then I sit there feeling sick about how I might've killed all three of those dumb kids, FML.
+ Appearance of Ivan Vorpatril.
+ I was apparently trained as an assassin, completely with deadly hand-to-hand combat.
+ I was apparently supposed to be a Komarran spy working on Barrayar, but I remember identifying as Jacksonian, WTF.
+ Also I can change my accent at will, but that's really secondary to the spy and assassin training.
+ Shock-sticks make me kill people reflexively, maybe it's a good thing Aather doesn't have advanced technology.
+5 masochism.
+20 who the fuck is Miles exactly and why is he entwined in nearly all my memories?
+20 fighting is kinda fun until I nearly killed a guy.
+30 FML I nearly killed a guy.
+30 desire to not actually kill random people.
+50 NO REALLY WHAT THE FREAKING GODS MY LIFE.