maskormenace | 001

Entry tags:

001 | Video

[The camera clicks to show a close-up of a nice shot of leather crotch, which quickly whips upwards to show a white crescent insignia on top of a gray upside down triangle. Look, he hasn't exactly needed to frame himself for a glorified skype conversation before, all right? The Authority would usually just headmail each other.

After a moment more of fidgeting, showing off some various shots of the strangers black trench coat, the camera finally makes its way up to his cowled face--a very, very unhappy cowled face.]

Look, you can all just skip the multiverse pep talk. Until yesterday I lived in the goddamn Bleed between realities, and me and four alternate versions of myself play poker every other Thursday. I'm familiar with the concept.

What I want is how exactly they brought us here. An Earth alternate too stupid to get itself out of the cold war shouldn't have the technology to snatch people from other dimensions.

[Especially without the Authority knowing about it. But he decides to keep that little piece of information to himself, because it's none of their fucking business.]

I tried asking the woman that brought me here, but she was too busy trying to explain to me what a gee golly great place America was. Give me answers and maybe I won't find trying this thing a major waste of my time.

[Goes to hang up, but stops at the last second, and adds:] Speaking of, don't tell me any of you actually bought that bullshit. There's no such thing as a free lunch, kids.

[And with that, he turns the feed off.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Hey, he thought he had to point the other camera at his face.]

And what exactly do you mean by that?

I mean that the Porter minds herself. The people of this world, and their government? They are just as forced and inconvenienced by the situation as we are. They had no say in this anymore than we did.

Are we talking about Lachesis? Because if so you seem to be the only person who knows a damn thing about her.

And they might not have had a say in you people showing up here, but they certainly were more than happy to take advantage of you.

Because many of them haven't been here longer than sixteen months, when the first new arrivals came to this world. I was from the previous set, when she brought us from the last world she did this on, after it ended. They speak in conjecture about stories they've heard, but I'm the one who tells the stories. They've never even heard her voice.

[ mitchell being the biggest exception, he had two or three years on her. but she rarely gives him the credit he's due. ]

You, for instance, have been here all of five minutes. Are you already such an expert on this world that you can say definitively that we're being taken advantage of, or do you merely assume we are because something about the situation sounds less than ideal to you?

Go on then, tell me a story. I'd love to hear it. [Then, as almost an afterthought, he adds with barely-contained sarcasm:] Please.

If there's one constant above all else, it's that government's like this one lost sight of what exactly their damn job is a long time ago. Sure, they may have started out protecting the people, but by now they're only looking out for themselves and the people that pay them to turn a blind eye to everything else. I'd love to be wrong for once and see that they're looking out for the people that actually elected them, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

[Granted, he doesn't need to breath, but the point still stands.]

Respectfully, that isn't a comment about governments "like this one", but governments in general. I doubt you've seen enough of this one to make any truly educated summation, rather than a kneejerk reaction. [ she can see where jenny gets it. ] Personally, I don't begrudge them if they're more concerned for their actual citizens than the superpowered disasters that have trespassed on their world. We're a burden, and a trying one at that. Too many of ours don't want to acknowledge the damage we've caused.

[ she takes a deep breath, coming down off the miniature rant. sometimes, she feels so tired with these conversations. not only with the new arrivals, but the longtime residents too, always touting their persecution complexes and trying to get people to look at them.

her guilt complex is obviously so much better. ]

But you wanted a story. There may be older imPorts who know what it was like at the start, but Lachesis was already active when I first arrived. They say there was an armor that predated her, but I know nothing of it. She's never been especially talkative, and when she was it's only ever been to gloat and needle, ashamed of her heroes for not catching on to what she wanted them to.

She treated us as though pieces in her game, but what that game is or ever was, she never cared to tell.

[He laughs at that.] If they were concerned about their actual citizens, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Sorry to break it to you, they don't. They want an army of complicit fodder that can shoot lasers out of their hands that they can throw at the Russians. Or force the Russians into admitting United States superiority. Either way, it's money in their pockets while the people they claim to be protecting, the citizens you're claiming they're protecting us from, get nothing. And that's the best case scenario.

Government should exist to help the people--regular people--and until I find one that actually does you'll catch me helping one over my dead body. I couldn't give a rats ass about the other imPorts, if they're anything like the assholes back home, they probably are walking disasters.

[He makes a mental note to ask someone else about this armor thing later.]

The more you talk about her, the more I want to punch her in the face.

You should definitely try that! Though you should also be able to swim first. If we're lucky, maybe someone will be recording.

[ jenny's dad being the very opposite of a joiner is nothing she can be shocked about, and misguided actions committed for principles is really just like her. it really is remarkable. ]

You can say what you like about what a government should be, but I've seen plenty of governments in my life, and this is among the the least tyrannical. I don't know that the governments you're talking about exist, except in the minds of the idealistic. They may want a superpowered army, I'm sure anyone who has an army would probably like one that's superpowered, provided they can actually control them.

That they've done such a shitty job controlling us thus far is probably why they haven't conscripted this army you're taking for granted. You can talk generalities as much as you like, but you're on this world for the foreseeable future. Try learning the specifics before you pretend to already know what they are.

[He just rolls his eyes at that. He's not that impulsive. Jesus wept.]

Really? "This is clearly the lesser of two evils, so we should just be happy with it?" Bullshit.

I plan on it.

What I'm saying is that people like you tend to overstate how evil this government is on an uninformed initial impression because it isn't completely perfect. You don't know anything about this government, but because it you've decided that it doesn't meet your arbitrary standards, it must be tyrannical and monstrous!

You're not talking about reality, but some fantasy you've constructed in your head, and anything that doesn't match it you stringently proclaim that an enemy. That, respectfully, is the very definition of delusion.

This isn't a matter of good versus evil, it's a matter of the government doing the damn job it's supposed to, rather than serving in their own self interests.

Try running a government, and then get back to me on whether or not I'm delusional.

I'm not the one who tried to turn it into a matter of good and evil, so you should probably take that one to heart yourself. And it isn't about the government not doing the job it's supposed to, it isn't necessarily even about it not doing the job you think it's supposed to. It's you deciding without any kind of grasp on the situation that they aren't doing the job you think they're supposed to be doing. And if that is the case, I'd like to see a government you think is doing that job, because I honestly don't believe it exists.

The whole "try running a government" defense is generally more effective when directed towards someone who actually believes they can do the job better, and entirely non sequitur in the discussion we're having now. I don't think I'd be surprised to hear you've strongarmed your own way into one before. She obviously got it from someone.

[Opens his mouth to go into a heated rebuttal, but loses it all the second he hears "she."]

Hang on, back up. You know Jenny? [Because there's only one "she" in his life that would fit into that sentence.]

[ It's breaking a rule to tell him, but he may likely stumble across it eventually. No one else left was as close to Jenny as she was, so she doesn't suppose it does any harm. ]

She was here before. For rather a while, in fact. We were friends. [ Well, friends is one way to put it. A way that doesn't begin to acknowledge a lot of unresolved sexual tension that they'd done their best to put behind them for the sake of getting along better. ]

[Midnighter finds himself smiling at that. Even if it's probably not his Jenny, it's nice to know that some Jenny out there finally found some friends (that weren't also in the Authority).]

Was that back when the other me was here?

[ That surprises her, at first, but it makes sense. If she already knows who he is, and what his relationship was with Jenny, it logically follows that Kanaya must have encountered him before, in some fashion. He's deductive, if nothing else. ]

Only for a portion of it. Her time preceded yours, and lasted well beyond when it ended. She even came through to this world. You can find some of her memos on the Network, still.

[Yeah well, he may have fucked up things with Jenny thanks to his three year disappearing act, they still tried. It would have been harder to believe they didn't talk if they were both there at the same time.

He makes a mental note to check when this conversation's over.]

...When did she leave?

It was sometime last September. Toward the middle of the month, if I recall.

[ He might see an announcement, if he goes looking. Complete with other messages from months later when they were trying to sneak around her disabled private function in prison, because that just happened to be the post where they did it. ]

I'll have to take a look.

...Thanks.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

001 | Video

voice.

voice.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject