Zombie's clear enough, though: Audentes only has one person who'd qualify as 'scary zombie guy'.]
You mean Koltira?
[Jin's brows knit together, thinking. Way to scare everyone to death as usual, Koltira.]
Well... we are fighting Zymandis, Maya. It's not exactly a traditional war, and the threats that we fight as agents aren't quite like soldiers fighting battles. But if you were going to call it a war, you wouldn't really be wrong.
Jin exhales slowly. This isn't exactly a talk he's had with anybody before, but it's a subject he'd had to work out on his own, months ago. It totally didn't involve yelling at an ALASTAIR agent from another team over the magitek, except. it did. he knows the frustration all too well.]
Listen, they tell you this at the beginning, when you're first recruited into the team. [or they usually do. He, and the people who'd fallen in when the translators had been broken, were anomalies.] But they don't make it entirely crystal. Each and every individual team is one small piece of the larger organization. We're all equal, but we play different roles in following whatever the timeline interpreting program spits out.
[he huffs.] I was pretty confused when they told me there wasn't really any kind of authority too. Believe me.
[Now she's getting the Talk (no, not that one) from Jin...)]
[She listens to everything he has to say quietly, but as soon as he's done she's firing off more questions:]
So what was that whole deal about us being brought here accidentally that Lloyd tell me? A lie? It's always been about fighting Zymandis? How many missions have we had to kill people to "fix" things?
We've been told that we're brought here through the rifts accidentally, but you can always tell ALASTAIR that, no, you don't want to join up. But that means you're stranded in another dimension without anything to do, really.
I don't know how true that is. [He was more suspicious before, when he was new and frustrated and skeptical, but... even if he really, really wants to believe ALASTAIR HR, he can't deny how sketchy it all sounds.] ALASTAIR does take care of us at least: they make sure we've all got enough money to get by and a place to stay in Oska.
[Murder, however, is a different story.]
How much about the other missions Audentes has been on have people told you about, Maya?
[He's only been on one before this, but all of the talk of Nalawi he's heard whispered amongst older members isn't going to be reassuring At All once he relays it to Maya.]
...Even if you do that, you're still stuck here. You'll never get to get home. So... it's just a sneaky way to get us to cooperate, isn't it?
[Yeah, well, she won't argue that bit. Clothes and shelter and even money, it's provided. She's grateful for it. But for Maya, that isn't enough to justify being drafted to fight someone else's battles. Saving people and timelines is one thing, a war is another]
Um... a little bit. Zymandis was involved the last time, right? And... the taraxa were there... possessing some poor guys.
...All I'm saying is, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong.
[It may be an especially comfortable means of getting conscripted, but none of them wanted to be here in the first place, in the end.]
Yeah. The Taraxa, as Zymandis' agents, had taken over the bodies of a race of people called the Qorral... they'd completely wiped the minds of those they'd taken over. Even our best healers could only bring a couple of them back from a vegetative state, and even then, they didn't have any of their memories. [He frowns deeply.] We lost a lot of people. I won't sugarcoat that. But we did what we could for the people who were left.
Perdition's Rest was my first mission, though. That's all I can tell you firsthand. People talk about another mission in a place called Nalawi, where the team took matters into their own hands and killed two gods. I don't really know how it went down, but from what it sounds like, it wasn't something that much of the team is looking to repeat.
listen it's about time she got a non-Koltira exposition thread
I heard a little about that. [this Animorphs bullshit!! Maya can only imagine how awful it must be to have a parasite inside you, destroying you from the inside, little by little...] I want to see them.... maybe there's something we can do to jog their memories.
[She goes quiet for a little, taking in his tl;dr...]
Do you think it's true? Is it... even possible to kill a god? [She doesn't really think the Loki(s) are actual gods, so she's having a hard time with this one]
The Qorral left the planet when we did: its core was unstable. I'm not saying it's completely impossible, but even if we could find them again, the damage to their brains was physical, right? I'm no doctor, but I know that a little amnesia and an injury like that are totally different. It'd... it'd be difficult.
[Jin nods solemnly.]
Yeah. Loki-- the younger one-- told me. He could've lied, but there was no good reason to do it even for him. And I've seen a god nearly die before. [Sometimes he wonders if Raiden's doing ok back home...] It's not impossible.
Well-- we're all about timelines and stuff, right? Let's make it a mission to give them their lives back!
[That's not how it works, Maya, but her heart's in the right place]
Oh, you mean the my fake daduncle? The one who makes out with snakes? [they both do, apparently, but hey] I didn't realize he'd been around for so long.... was he serious about the whole being a god thing? I thought he was just exaggerating.
Frankly, I'm not sure I can believe anything that Loki says. He is Loki, and that's not just a nickname, either-- he's actual Norse god Loki.
[a beat.]
Which.
Means he might actually be into snake chicks.
[why.]
Y'know what, I'm moving on from snake women. Loki wouldn't have had a reason to lie to me about this, and it checks out with what other people have told me about that mission.
Not just snakes. They're into really weird stuff! [okay but more seriously:] But... how is that possible? Could a god really just fall into a time hole and end up here with us?
[that's how it happened, right]
.... This all sounds so crazy. It's hard to believe it's all really true, even for me.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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... Yeah. That, um, scary zombie prosecutor guy. [Formerly known as Koltira]
He said we're really here to fight Zymandis and that we're at war... It's not true, right? He's just saying that cause he's really intense.... Right?
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Zombie's clear enough, though: Audentes only has one person who'd qualify as 'scary zombie guy'.]
You mean Koltira?
[Jin's brows knit together, thinking. Way to scare everyone to death as usual, Koltira.]
Well... we are fighting Zymandis, Maya. It's not exactly a traditional war, and the threats that we fight as agents aren't quite like soldiers fighting battles. But if you were going to call it a war, you wouldn't really be wrong.
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But why? Aren't we supposed to be fixing things? Are we just fighting ALASTAIR's battles for them...? Is there really even an ALASTAIR?
[Since Sunshine and Roses also told her that the intro post was a load of crap and they were the ALASTAIR all along...]
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[Giggles the Elf was super right, sorry Maya...
Jin exhales slowly. This isn't exactly a talk he's had with anybody before, but it's a subject he'd had to work out on his own, months ago. It totally didn't involve yelling at an ALASTAIR agent from another team over the magitek, except. it did. he knows the frustration all too well.]
Listen, they tell you this at the beginning, when you're first recruited into the team. [or they usually do. He, and the people who'd fallen in when the translators had been broken, were anomalies.] But they don't make it entirely crystal. Each and every individual team is one small piece of the larger organization. We're all equal, but we play different roles in following whatever the timeline interpreting program spits out.
[he huffs.] I was pretty confused when they told me there wasn't really any kind of authority too. Believe me.
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[Now she's getting the Talk (no, not that one) from Jin...)]
[She listens to everything he has to say quietly, but as soon as he's done she's firing off more questions:]
So what was that whole deal about us being brought here accidentally that Lloyd tell me? A lie? It's always been about fighting Zymandis? How many missions have we had to kill people to "fix" things?
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I don't know how true that is. [He was more suspicious before, when he was new and frustrated and skeptical, but... even if he really, really wants to believe ALASTAIR HR, he can't deny how sketchy it all sounds.] ALASTAIR does take care of us at least: they make sure we've all got enough money to get by and a place to stay in Oska.
[Murder, however, is a different story.]
How much about the other missions Audentes has been on have people told you about, Maya?
[He's only been on one before this, but all of the talk of Nalawi he's heard whispered amongst older members isn't going to be reassuring At All once he relays it to Maya.]
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[Yeah, well, she won't argue that bit. Clothes and shelter and even money, it's provided. She's grateful for it. But for Maya, that isn't enough to justify being drafted to fight someone else's battles. Saving people and timelines is one thing, a war is another]
Um... a little bit. Zymandis was involved the last time, right? And... the taraxa were there... possessing some poor guys.
he's infodumping her i'm so sorry
[It may be an especially comfortable means of getting conscripted, but none of them wanted to be here in the first place, in the end.]
Yeah. The Taraxa, as Zymandis' agents, had taken over the bodies of a race of people called the Qorral... they'd completely wiped the minds of those they'd taken over. Even our best healers could only bring a couple of them back from a vegetative state, and even then, they didn't have any of their memories. [He frowns deeply.] We lost a lot of people. I won't sugarcoat that. But we did what we could for the people who were left.
Perdition's Rest was my first mission, though. That's all I can tell you firsthand. People talk about another mission in a place called Nalawi, where the team took matters into their own hands and killed two gods. I don't really know how it went down, but from what it sounds like, it wasn't something that much of the team is looking to repeat.
listen it's about time she got a non-Koltira exposition thread
[She goes quiet for a little, taking in his tl;dr...]
Do you think it's true? Is it... even possible to kill a god? [She doesn't really think the Loki(s) are actual gods, so she's having a hard time with this one]
this time with 50% less trauma
[Jin nods solemnly.]
Yeah. Loki-- the younger one-- told me. He could've lied, but there was no good reason to do it even for him. And I've seen a god nearly die before. [Sometimes he wonders if Raiden's doing ok back home...] It's not impossible.
and 200% gagtags
[That's not how it works, Maya, but her heart's in the right place]
Oh, you mean the my fake daduncle? The one who makes out with snakes? [they both do, apparently, but hey] I didn't realize he'd been around for so long.... was he serious about the whole being a god thing? I thought he was just exaggerating.
JESUS 1/2
2/2
I'm gonna need you to back up a little bit on the second half of what you just said.
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I think anybody having a thing for snake ladies qualifies as just a little bit weird.
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Exactly. Are you sure you can believe everything this guy says?
[and kinkshaming Loki(s) with Maya]
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[a beat.]
Which.
Means he might actually be into snake chicks.
[why.]
Y'know what, I'm moving on from snake women. Loki wouldn't have had a reason to lie to me about this, and it checks out with what other people have told me about that mission.
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[that's how it happened, right]
.... This all sounds so crazy. It's hard to believe it's all really true, even for me.