All right, everyone needs to listen to this! Especially if you were one of the casualties the other day!

I'm as pissed off as anyone about what happened, but the overall attitude here isn't going to help anything! Maybe you got hurt! Maybe you died! But if you just sit around and mope, that's not going to help anything! You're alive now and it's up to you to decide what to do with that opportunity!

You choose how you keep moving forward! Do you really think you can make a difference for those people if you just stay where you are?! Or if you try to pretend like it never happened?! NO! I'm not saying it shouldn't have an effect on you, but the sooner you get past it, the sooner you can do something about it!

[The last few minutes of the fighting on Elmer's world involved someone literally dragging a semi-conscious Barney out of a crashed UE tank and back through the portal, after a piece of rubble from an explosion clipped him on the side of the head and knocked him half unconscious. It's a mystery why he chose video for this, as the left half of his face is basically one big mess of bruise and scab, his eyes are blood-shot, and he generally looks like hell.]

Hey, uh, I don't exactly remember who it was, but thanks for dragging me back through the portal back there. Just because they can bring us back from the dead doesn't mean I'm wild about throwing my life away.

[He winces, reaches off screen and gingerly plants a giant ice pack on the injured side of his face.]

Sort of related to that, important thought:

UE pretty clearly just followed us to that world. Almost like they did it just to spite us. They KNOW what we're doing here. Seems to me it's only a matter of time before they just show up here and smash us into raspberry jam. Do we have some sort of secret weapon no one told me about that'll stop them?

[Saori's rubbing her temples as the feed starts. She's sitting down on one of her bar stools in the Uji tea shop. No one else is in at the moment, given how early in the morning it was.]

[Video, possibly accidental]

... So that's what mortality feels like...

[Action]

*Pidonus, to be direct, is being exceptionally depressed right now. If she's not moping around her apartment (or, for those who know of it, the extradimensional space she uses), she's walking aimlessly all over Exsilium - mostly urban areas - trying to get in a better mood.

It doesn't help that lately, she's been thinking a lot about not just her mortality, but her morality - something she hadn't really considered in several years. What was Chaotic Evil, really? What was right, as far as such a word even applied to someone - something - like her?

She didn't even know anymore. And that left her walking around, not sure what to think.

It's very likely that in her funk, she'll bump into people quite a bit. Bother her?*

[ See Vriska Serket. See Vriska Serket furious. ]

What the hell was that?! Aren't we supposed to be the heroes here? Heroes don't just retreat when shit hits the whirling device! We could have taken those guys! Who cares if you died a couple times? That's what semi-immortality is for! They didn't create a way to bring us back because they were eight-hundred percent sure we would never die!

[ She'd had her own fair share of deaths thanks to her weapon being on the fritz, but you don't get any stronger from winning a fight with a weak foe. It still hurt her pride, sure, but she's positive she gained a lot more from her losses than she, well, lost. ]

Total bullshit. Buuuuuuuullshit. I bet they planned this all along to make us think that we're all weak! Too bad, because it didn't work on me! I know we had those other assholes backed into a corner! We could have taken them, easy.

If you ran right on back here with your tail between your legs at the first call of retreat, I hope the Initiative kicks you out for being a sorry excuse for a hero! We could have won, definitely. Nobody's ever won a war in a night! They threw in the towel way too early. What a pathetic excuse for a fight!

Juvia doesn't even know what she just read. Miss Lucy....how could you do this to me?!

[And just on cue the water mage holds up a certain book to the screen. She's also blushing a deep red and covering her face with her free hand.

Hint: Lucy had nothing to do with this, blaming her was just easier.

.......

BUT now that she got that out of way, it takes her a couple of seconds to regain her composure and she finally manages to do so. Still blushing, Juvia lowers both her hands out of view and takes a somewhat more serious demeanor]

Juvia heard about what happened. Is it really true no one can die here? Or stay dead in a manner of speaking?

[Unusually for this network user, the transmission is purely Audio. A great deal of transports will of course recognize the voice as belonging to Kanaya Maryam. Strangers will hear a fifteen-year-old female, naturally rather mature and composed, doing her best to sound even more so. She speaks crisply and briskly with no mercy, like the distinctions between American and British English are to be stalked into a dark alley and shot in the back of the skull.]

The armageddon that occurred in the world of Elmer C. Albatross isn't the only one that's ever occurred in paradox space, you know. Just ask Asuka Langley Soryu or Rei Ayanami or Shinji Ikari. Any of them can tell you that the end of a world is always at least as ugly a thing as what happened on May Twenty-First. Anyone who escaped the planet Alternia before the meteors struck can reiterate the sentiments that Exsilium is a far better alternative to no planet at all. For many of us, Exsilium is our home now and we'll fight literally to the ends of an Earth for its sake.

I know not all of you feel that sort of debt to the Initiative. You do want to go home, this isn't your war, it's their fault. That's really too bad. Because if we let the United Earth have their way and don't develop Initiative in both senses of the word, we're all going to be post-apocalyptic refugees before long. We come from dozens of worlds. Would you like to take arms with the Initiative to fight against the reckoning, or watch each one meet the same fate Elmer's world did?

[An open question, Exsilium.]

_{( For once, Remy might actually be in his apartment. He's sitting on his bed, not in coat or costume but a simple cotton shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He's got a roll of cloth bandages, and is wrapping his hands methodologically. )}

Y'all really know how ta discuss, you know that? I'm very impressed.

_{( He's not, actually. He thinks the talking around such matters is a waste of time, and also a way to show the Initiative their hand. But he doesn't say so. )}

But I have ta say, all this bleak talk ain't really for me. Can't keep at it for very long. Désolé.

So, for those of you who care ta lighten the mood, here's a game. First player--that'd be me, I like ta deal--gives you a word. You say the first thing that comes ta your mind, after that. An' y'keep goin', over an' over, until someone cracks an' has ta ask the reasonin' behind your answer.

Whether y'tell 'em is up ta you.

_{( He laughs, to himself. )}

It's an option, anyways. If you don't wantta keep talkin' 'bout how unhappy y'all are.

_{( ooc / idk if this'll come up but if you want to threadjack and play with each other, i'm totally cool with that. )}

 [Kenjirou is hardly the helpful sort of guy. He'll lend a hand once in a while, but only if it's challenging enough to keep his mind busy. This isn't due to past experiences or anything like that. He's always just gotten in enough of an effort to save his own skin. He recognizes that, and has been fine with it until now.]

[Still, the fact that one of his students arrived... humanizes the rest of Exsilium's transports. All of them have left their lives behind, he now realizes. Though Kenjirou doesn't feel his life is wasted by not doing something meaningful, he does see to the needs of the people his job (which he still considers himself to have) demands him to take care of. In truth, he's also affected by recent events. If this place is to serve as a potential permanent residence for people, something as vital as education needs to be present.]

[And, well, if he's going to be teaching one person, might as well try to spread it around, right?]

Will be giving out classes.

[Brief. Blunt. Mostly as a way to force himself to commit to the idea.]

Could be online. I don't know. I can't do everyday, or all subjects, but I can at least help anyone who left unfinished math and biology courses at home. Free of charge. I'll inform you of the hours later, but I would at least like to take a rough count of how many people would be interested.

[Filtered to Momo; hackable (didn't really put in much of an effort)]

Getting you to attend is my priority, of course. I assume your schedule isn't as intensive here?