bakerstreet | The Attached Meme

The Attached Meme

The Attached Meme

Inspired by the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode of the same name.

Comment with your character, specifying name, canon, and gen/shipping/smut preferences, and/or tag someone else.
You and the other person now have two problems. One, you're aware of each other's surface thoughts regardless of either of your wishes, and two, if you try to distance yourselves from each other you're struck with nausea and vertigo until you manage to get close again.
Optionally, roll for or choose details:
1. You've been captured by some hostile force and had devices surgically implanted into the backs of your necks in order to facilitate interrogation. The mental link between you and dependency on proximity are just side-effects. Can you escape under these conditions?
2. You've been cursed by a spellcaster or supernatural being who wants you to "learn a lesson". Whether that's a real lesson about each other made possible by forced openness and time spent together or just the lesson of "don't mess with me" is an open question, and figuring it out may be key to having the curse broken...
3. One of you has suddenly awakened to latent paranormal powers, or your existing powers are suddenly misbehaving -- perhaps due to unforeseen interaction with the other person's abilities, if they have them. Maybe you could solve this, or at least the part about having to stay near each other, if you could only gain control over your power...
4. You were both willingly part of a scientific experiment, whether one of your own design or something you both volunteered for, and this... was not the result you signed up for. The mental link may or may not have been a known goal, but the involuntary aspect and the inability to separate aren't things either of you expected. Can science undo what it has done?
5. You both came into contact with an unknown substance, whether by accident or simply because of mutual curiosity, and this was the result. Now if you're going to be able to have privacy relative to each other again, you're going to have to figure out what it is and why it had the effect on you it did in order to find a way to counteract it.
6. Your choice, or something new!
Have fun!

We have a long-standing working relationship. (In which I've learned to trust his intentions and enthusiasm, if nothing else.)

I see.

[Seems like a private matter...]

[He can't fight the stray thought, it's not really directed at Edgeworth. That danger comes with the territory when their minds are linked. He slides his hands into his pockets then, waiting in somewhat awkward silence.]

[Already lost track of him anyway.]

To answer your broader question from earlier, I have the resources normally due a prosecutor.

[To prove this, he pulls a lapel pin out of his pocket.]

(Given how much we cannot see, do we necessarily know that to be the truth?)

A prosecutor!

[His eyes widen in surprise, but his voice is tinged with unironic awe. He feels a little sting of regret, but attempts to push that aside.]

Do you like it?

(Has the pursuit of such a career crossed his mind before?)

It... often proves to be a struggle -- [aggravating, humiliating, and occasionally even dangerous, he doesn't intentionally specify] -- but in the end, it's a deeply satisfying thing to play a key role in ensuring that the truth is clear to all.

(Even at those times when the truth is not, in fact, on my side.)

[A glimpse of a spiky-haired, blue-suited man passes through his mind along with that last thought.]

It appeared to me to be a really good, reliable job.

[He gives a little sigh and glances away for a moment.]

[Prior to my death I was intending on pursuing a law degree at Todai, I mean, once I finished high school. I spent a great deal of time on my studies because getting top marks was very important to me.]

[Edgeworth's mind reflexively recoils at "prior to my death", but the rest seems to take amicably, at least.]

And now, you consider it an impossibility.

[He nods a little bit.]

I do.

[If I had died a little older maybe, but it isn't like I'll be able to bluff my way through looking like a sixteen year old for very long, if at all.]

[Thoughts of a severe-looking girl at the beginning and the end of her teens cross his mind unbidden at Natsuno's concerns about his apparent age and presumed lack of aging.]

Is the practicality of the job your only concern? (It wouldn't do for more people to pursue it for the wrong reasons.)

What's wrong with a good, practical, well-paying job?

[He has his reasons, just like anyone else would. Two people flash into his mind, a woman and a man - his parents. Natsuno more closely resembles his mother than his father. They seem happy together. He is building a chair in a workshop room and she is sitting in the corner creating pottery. His mother trying to coax him away from school books when he's very young and children teasing him from the first day he set foot in a classroom. His feelings are conflicted. Resentment, to be certain, but also guilt and sadness seep in.]

When working in service to the law, one must take care to consider a broader picture than just one's own interests.

[As firmly as Edgeworth may have delivered these words outwardly, tinges of regret for old errors, a resolve to do better, and pride in recent accomplishments are detectable through the link.]

[He looks up at the sky, thinking about it.]

Yeah. Maybe.

[He can't honestly say he's selfless at all. It probably doesn't matter anymore.]

OBJECTION! Your effect on the world is what makes your existence matter, and the nature of that effect what makes it worthwhile or not!

Edited (Clarification) 2014-03-21 05:28 (UTC)

[...That shout prompts a few stares from passersby, which in turn prompts Edgeworth to recoil.]

(Blast! I have to be more careful concerning how I respond to his thoughts!)

(...Have I really accepted that aspect of this absurd, impossible situation enough to think in such terms?)

[To say he's startled would be putting it mildly. He didn't think an offhand thought like that would lead to such a profound reaction. It's rather sudden and loud and he opens his mouth a few times as he's trying to formulate a response.]

[People are staring and he can't fight the rush of colour to his cheeks.]

[It is hard to argue against such compelling evidence. I appreciate your enthusiasm on the matter, but I don't think there's much left for me to do.]

[Frustration and discomfort build further at Natsuno's altogether too accurate characterization of the evidence, but the continuation of his train of thought towards that note of doubt is what ultimately prompts a response:]

(For what reason?)

[Many reasons, actually, but the main one is the ultimate question. Would you want to be turned into a monster against your will?]

[Granted, he hasn't been a Jinrou very long.]

[Suppose my resolution is this: all of the vampires deserve to die. How could I be spared? What makes me more important than those I am hunting?]

[He feels sadness and frustration, but as far as he's concerned, he died a month prior when his friend killed him.]

[Well, that caused a significant drop in respect from Edgeworth. As for "monsters", he can certainly think of plenty of human ones, so the argument about being turned into one doesn't sway him.]

(I question any line of reasoning that leads to genocide!)

[Natsuno exhales a little, before meeting his eyes.]

[Who is performing genocide in this case? The vampires who came and killed a thousand people to take over and populate a small town, or the people who stood up, stopped them and took their town back?]

[He gives his head a small shake.]

[As you can see, they are not all dead. Two of them escaped and I wanted to find them, although honestly what I can do about them...I don't know.]

[He isn't afraid exactly, it's just that he is uncertain what he can do physically. He wasn't the one actually killing vampires at the time.]

(That seems to cross the line from mere serial killing into a small-scale war... In any event, neither side strikes me as being in the right. Was there nothing that could be done peacefully? Do you honestly believe it inevitable for such a thing to happen again, and on what basis if so? No one's mere existence is a crime, after all -- it is only criminals themselves who ought to taste the blade of justice, and it is crucial that we prove who that is!)

[Very much a stream of consciousness rather than his usual sort of coherent answer, but under the circumstances it can't be helped.]

[Unfortunately not, although I attempted to reason with Tohru, at least. He said they weren't interested in that. They wanted to make a vampire community and bring people in from the city to feed on. Fortune was smiling on the two who started this mess, the Jinrou Tatsumi and his master Sunako were the ones that escaped. They left the rest of them to the villagers.]

[He is confident it will happen again, regardless of what he does. He's just hoping he can do something to help.]

As much as a peaceful life would be nice, I'm not sure how one goes about doing that, when you're in a situation like mine.

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The Attached Meme

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...Best tag, right there. XD 1/2

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