Second Blood

[speakveryclearly]

[Today you have something different: Rather than a face peering into the camera, you have a full body view of a young woman standing to the left of the shot, with her right hand on her hip. Said hand glows bright white, like the rest of her body. If you haven't seen her before, she's probably a pretty surprising sort of freak to see when you turn on the communicator.

The center and right part of the shot are occupied by the wall, to which she's attached an off-white poster, landscape orientation, with the following written on it in large letters of bright green marker.

* As Your Potential Leader A Complete Stranger In All Senses
* Proposal To Further Factionalize Already Fractured Population
* Plans Will Only Be Revealed When Or Rather If Any Group Is Gathered
* Initiative Is Our First Enemy Rather Than The United Earth
* Conflict With Other Armies Also A Welcome Possibility

It's attached to the wall with a piece of clear tape on each corners and one in the middle of each long side as well. Close examination will note that it appears there is a second identically-sized piece of paper hidden under it.]

Hello, Transports. I'm Kanaya Maryam. Apart from those who saw my arbitrary self-introduction, you probably don't recognize me as anything but an alien interloper of an age you judge as inappropriate. Even though you have absolutely no reason to trust me, I'm going to ask you to do exactly that, because Exsilium has a terrible leadership problem.

[She's pointing to the second bullet now.] Lots of Transports have been trying to create an army out of members of Exsilium's already perfectly fine existing army. This hasn't worked up until now, but I am somehow absolutely certain that when I do this it's going to be totally different.

[Third bullet:] My plans are so fantastic that they have to be kept confidential and will only be revealed to members of the army once it forms - whom, by the way, I will accept and reject at my discretion even though my goal is to unite Exsilium.

Oh, and did I mention - [fourth bullet] - that I want to overthrow the Initiative first, even though we're fighting the United Earth. Because that's my intention, to fight the people who brought us together and control whether we even stay or leave, let alone go back in time.

And by the way, all the other armies that have already been forming - they're getting in the way of my plan, so we're also going to fight you if you go against us.

[Both her hands return to her hips as she stares at with her head cocked and her lips stretched thin.] Tell me, Exsilium, do you think that sounds like a good plan for anyone to execute? Especially if she's an alien, an undead, a "teenager" [finger quotes], or the like? Or would you advise me to stick with the perfectly good hundreds-strong army that we already have, and take it up with the administrators of the Initiative if I really insisted upon doing something. Perhaps would you go so far as to say that I sound... stupid? If so, that's good, because I have some appalling news for you, which I've just delivered wrapped in your planet's particularly loathsome form of verbal irony.

[In a sudden, too-quick motion, she reaches up with both hands to rip off the poster and reveal the paper underneath it, filled up entirely with these four words:

This Is Stupid
Stop

She neatly folds the old poster three times and throws it away in a waste receptacle off screen, and then stands up straight to address the camera again.]

It does sound stupid, because it is, and so do you. Stop.

[The video ends.]

Comments

[welp OK Scáthach]

[speakveryclearly]

[That's... sure something she just saw happen - the privating, though she's not sure why.]

Thanks. They're a normal feature of my species, but I do put effort into their care. Plenty of fangpaste.

she is just new and paranoid

[symmachy]

Your species. [interest piqued] Are there many of you here?

[speakveryclearly]

[Eyes track back as she thinks a moment.]

A few. Nine of us. Trolls.

[symmachy]

You don't look like any trolls I've ever seen.

[speakveryclearly]

[oh fangs lady no]

We do not live under bridges.

[symmachy]

[raises
eyebrow]

Did I say the ones I'd seen did?

[speakveryclearly]

No, but that tends to be an assumption coupled with us not having horns or monochrome skin, or whatever else you may have been expecting.

[symmachy]

[she smiles a little]

I've been around long enough to not make assumptions about other species. First of all, it's rude. Second, they're usually wrong.

[speakveryclearly]

Well, you'd be right in that you're probably wrong. The other trolls generally resemble me, except for not glowing and being grey. Now you know.

[symmachy]

Thank you for telling me.

Why do you glow?

[speakveryclearly]

A friend did me the favor of killing me once so I'm a rainbow drinker now. Heinous undead. Like a vampire.

[symmachy]

I see. And you have all the perks and problems?

[speakveryclearly]

Approximately. I'd prefer this not devolve into a xenobiological lecture.

[symmachy]

I didn't plan on giving one.

[speakveryclearly]

You're acquainted with Earth vampirism, then?

[symmachy]

Very well acquainted. There may be more types of it on my Earth than others, though.

[speakveryclearly]

Types? That's... rather novel.

[symmachy]

Technically, we're different species of the same genus.

[speakveryclearly]

Species... [Half-murmured. She's not sure what to make of this.]

[symmachy]

It's all very complicated and confusing, and has a lot to do with magic.

[speakveryclearly]

Magic...

[Her eyes narrow skeptically.]

[symmachy]

It exists in my world.

[can you tell she's had this conversation 4873 times before]

[speakveryclearly]

I've been trying to figure out whether it did in mine. The results have been inconclusive.

[symmachy]

How so?

[speakveryclearly]

It's... a little hard to explain.