[Enough people have expressed their doubts and second thoughts. Wing has his, too, but sharing his just seems like adding a burden to an already straining load.]

Friends, I have two questions for you. 

One, has anyone ever spoken to any of the UE soldiers, our 'enemies'?  

Two, we have lost some of our own.  What mourning rituals do we have?  We need a way to honor what has been lost if we hope to move on without hate.

[Kang is sitting at the desk in his sparsely-decorated room, carefully putting together what some may recognize as a handmade miniaturized catapult. The bowl is just big enough to easily fit the little worn minotaur doll also lying on the desk, next to an equally worn copper dragon twice its size. There are no instructions; he's building it entirely from scratch, and from memory. It's highly detailed, and the angle of the arm is adjustable.

He pauses after making a small adjustment to one of the pieces of wood with his dagger.]

I know these are considered to be outdated weapons by most here. They remind me of home, though. I made one a little bigger than this for my children last spring. In hindsight, it probably wasn't the best of ideas; they took to knocking things off of shelves from a distance. My mate was not very pleased with me.

[He smiles wryly.]

I'm sure we've all been thinking of home lately.

[The dagger, held in his right hand by only three of his fingers, is set down. It has a wicked wavy blade on it, clearly meant for battle rather than whittling.]

This isn't going to be some sort of speech about whether we should or shouldn't help the Initiative. There's been more than enough of that already.

It's simple curiosity about other people's homes. Do you live in the mountains, the forests, a city? What do you do for a living? Who do you have waiting for you?

[He shrugs.]

It wouldn't be fair to ask without talking about my own. Many of you are aware that I am the Lord-Governor of my kind's nation, Teyr. There are mountains to the west and south, and marshes to the east. Most of it is savannah, with the city proper near the middle. It was originally an old dwarven kingdom, abandoned long ago. We've nearly finished rebuilding it, and we have begun building a road from one of our smaller towns to the port city of Kalaman in the west.

[A pause, and he picks up the dagger again, nodding at the sword leaning against the wall.]

I would also like to remind everyone that I do offer training with blades, particularly swords, and hand-to-hand.

[And, private to Crucible:]

I would like to speak with you, in person.

[ Oh look! It's Drift, your neighborhood giant robot. He looks pretty banged up, plating scraped and paint chipped in spots. More over, he doesn't look like his usual aggressively serene self. He glowers at the screen, downright dour, optics glowing coldly from under his helm. ]

I'm back.

Sorry to anyone I've been tutoring on swordplay.

Lessons are cancelled until further notice.

I'll be working on my house if anyone needs me.

[ His mouth draw into a tight line before he switches the video off. ]

( At least this time Ellie isn't in some random, ramshackle building, but enjoying the warmth of the kitchen and a giant cup of coffee. At least she looks marginally better rested than she has on previous occasions. )

So, with that whole swap thing, I've been thinking. ( A pause, and there's a note of self mockery in her voice: ) Because I don't think enough when weird stuff isn't happening. Or less-weird stuff, at any rate. ( Has she really digressed already and wandered off with her thoughts? She shakes her head at herself. )

I was thinking about anger. Or any emotion, I guess, when they get that intense that you feel like all your insides are writhing about like snakes, but anger's the one that stuck out for me. We're all in this war, and some of us have been in wars before and some haven't, and everyone handles it in these different ways.

( She trails off; articulating this isn't going so smoothly as she'd expected, but sometimes you just have to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. Homer used to throw pasta at the wall, a lot, and a bloody lot of that stuck. The memory makes her smile a little. )

I mean, just before I got here, Kev-- uh, this guy in our group, he wasn't doing so well with everything. ( See, Fi, she at least tried not to name and shame. Belatedly. ) Everyone tried different things to get him going, and it was this weird insight-- I guess it just said a bit about the kind of people we are, depending what tactic we used. ( Fi: sympathy. Lee: abuse. Homer: encouragement. )
I was all logic and common sense. ( A beat, before she continues, speaking a little more slowly as she grapples with her pride and tries to think it out. ) Sometimes I don't think that really shows the full picture, but.

( She could say that it definitely doesn't, not when you got anger that just bubbles up and blows being reasonable right out of the water. She could, but does not. )

Anyway, I was talking to this guy here, before, about anger. How you can use it, and that, make it work for you, and I just... I didn't know if that really worked for anyone. If anger's a weapon, or if you got an on/off switch for it, or what? 'Cause there's this quote in uh, this Shakespeare play - “wrath makes him deaf,” I think the Queen in Henry VI. ( She squints, trying to remember. ) And then there's another bit, about not coming between “the dragon and his rage,” in King Lear. I think Lear was already going crazy, though, by then, though. ( Quietly: ) It's been a while since I studied them. Trying to read that stuff and figure out all the language is hard, without those special high school study editions.

( Where was she even going with this? )

So I guess I just wondered what you lot thought about it. Anger and controlling anger and using it and whether it screws you up, or what.

( A beat, and she smiles crookedly. ) Or we could talk about dragons. We don't have any back home, but some of you have to have dragons, right?

[He seems almost apologetic for clogging the network, but the cause is, he considers, rather serious enough.]

I'm looking for someone who looks like me.  Kind of like me.  

His name's Drift. I've heard he's here. 

[He's been looking, but he hasn't found him yet. And that only compounds Wing's worry.]

I fear he may need fuel. If so, I am hoping someone will help take some of mine.