exsilium | Fifth Blood

[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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Kanaya pauses not for a long time but notably. The network ID and voice, both, of a stranger... who is Jules? We just don't know. Maybe she's friends with Collette. That girl is everywhere.]

That's a good point. I don't expect any of us to be jumping back into the fray immediately. However, after hearing complaints about how this had happened at all, entirely ignoring why and in what context... I felt strongly compelled to provide a counterpoint.

Definitely. We... ( A pause, for breath, which is the only break in what seems like an otherwise entirely chipper appearance. ) Everything has its contexts, doesn't it? It's so dangerous to ignore that.

( For example, if someone happened to eat people but only because they have to in order to keep from turning into a terrible monster that would kill more people. That is certainly important, in terms of context. Imagine hearing that versus hearing someone just ate people for fun.

Perhaps it is best that she managed to filter that thought out before it became words. )

It might be good if people had... I don't know, something to try and take their minds off it. Something to refresh them a bit, you know? Remind them Exsilium doesn't give us only horrible things, but that we're really a community, here. We have our home worlds, or some at least, but this is also-- it might not be home, but we're all here for a reason.

( She's just blathering, and sometimes it means she makes little to no sense. What is coherence. )

Like a community barbecue, or something.

( Seriously, Jules. Her head just dropped into her hands because why, self. )

[Not all of us eat food or feel safe around fire, she doesn't say. She didn't make this post video for a reason - she's tired of people asking if she's a cosplayer or a roleplayer or a goddamn monster (though the last, her own species would tell her, is true).]

Are you sure we want to let off smoke signals? That could get us caught by the United Earth again.

[There. Humor. She was totally nailing this interspecies interaction thing, as she did on a regular basis and had needed to for going on two years.]

Mm. Quite right. ( Said so seriously, and yet there is still a note of humour playing through her words. )

Yes, I imagine there are probably better plans than a barbecue, per se. But, you know, if there were something that might just lift the spirits a bit. Perhaps not with actual spirits, though, I think alcohol on a city wide scale and with so many younger individuals would not be so completely wise.

( To put it lightly.

Oh! ) I'm Jules, by the way. Lovely to meet you.

"Younger individuals" are going to get alcohol no matter what in this anarchic city, [It's not video, so "Jules" can't see Kanaya's eye twitch. How much more can she say without revealing herself as an overly gutsy seven-sweep-old? Fifteen-year-old, she almost thinks more often now.] but I see your point.

I'm Kanaya. The sentiment is shared. [It's not really. What is Jules but one of those adults who comes along, thinking children are inherently some different and lower class of being and not to be trusted with horrors many grown humans never experience like combat? She's on edge. She should be more sympathetic to her (i n f e r i o r) culture.]

Oh, I know. But getting an entire city drunk at once with so many of us having weapons and powers and then having everyone be hungover the next day, that'd almost be a cruel set up for anyone who hasn't been that drunk before. To be honest, "younger individuals" is a bit of a euphemism, really it should include my big brother. Never let the man drink more than a couple of cosmopolitans, or it's a total disaster.

( She's teasing, because how to deal with anything when she isn't trying to make jokes is ridiculous. And because she misses her brother so much. Jules doesn't underestimate children, she'd just rather everyone had to be spared the grisly things. It's not really an easy to ease into conversation, however.

A quiet sigh. ) Kanaya. ( And she repeats it again, under her breath, to commit it to memory. )

What's... [A cosmopolitan? No, Kanaya can't expose her ignorance.] An alternative, then? Anyone who's been here long enough will admonish the dangers of a virtual reality party. [She's never actually experienced these horrors. Just heard about them enough times to be reluctantly wary.]

Gosh, I'm not really certain. I'm still a bit new, myself. I've only been here a couple of months. Do you think people would enjoy something a bit formal? Or just some sort of big party for the transports? A fancy dress, something like that. Fun, a chance to get a bit dressed up, or just silly.

( Jules just enjoys parties, it's true. )

A virtual reality party seems like it would be potentially massively disappointing.

Ah, you're describing a do-over of the masquerade in Versailles. December Three Thousand Three Hundred Twelve. It was pleasant enough, and I can see the appeal of, for example, a biannual repetition, but I'm not sure the Initiative will want to take that kind of transportation risk in light of what just happened.

Oh, there was a masquerade? That sounds amazing.

( She pauses, idly inspecting her nails as she speaks, thinking it all over. )

Would you really have to go to another world or anything like that? I mean, we could just have something here, surely.

( Not that she has any idea how to organise that. ) To be fair, I'm not sure the transports would be all that eager to go hopping about somewhere en masse, either.

Well, we could, but resources for such a thing aren't so easy to come by. You can blame the United Earth for that. Nobody seems interested in committng to the effort it would take to create a suitable venue, either. Abandned buildings aren't in short supply but they take a fair bit to remodel.

Fifth Blood

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