ain't seen the light since we started this band ( open )

[willrevile]

Who: Jim Kirk (willrevile) & others
What: Plot + adjacent stuff. My plotting comment is over here if you'd like to do something specific, otherwise I have a general open starter.
When: March!
Where: Mostly Wyver, probably.
Warning(s): TBA.


that cut was a fakeout sry.

Comments

[motivation]

[ her tone might have been sarcastic, but the thing is - it does sound nice. the quad is, well. it's the quad. it's on the brink of civil war, there's an actual war with the hullen happening... it's nothing like what he's describing.

what he's describing sounds unlike anything dutch has ever known. ]

Place I'm from? I guess it's still in the "brink of extinction" phase of things. [ okay, things aren't quite that bad yet, but - if they don't win this war against the hullen, it's goodbye humanity. ]

[willrevile]

[ To be fair, it's unlike anything most people have known, even in the universe Jim's from. The Klingon and Romulan Empires, the worlds beyond, the Dark Market - they all operate with money, they all operate with fascism, or capitalism, or vicious tribalism. (He thinks of Eurydice giving him shit over being on a ship called Enterprise but not dealing in money. Dutch reminds him of Eurydice, a little bit.) ]

The only place to go from the end is to start again, [ he says, though his tone of voice isn't exactly optimistic. More like-- stubborn, determined. Because Jim isn't a blind optimist, he's just the most bullheaded incidental genius there ever was. ]

You're much more put together than any post-atomic horror blight I've heard of, though.

[ :) ??? ]

[motivation]

War's only just starting.

[ and isn't that the truth? aneela and her ships are in orbit and everything is going to shit. dutch just needs to kill aneela to end this war -- but killing aneela will end her, too. it's hullen 101. either way, dutch is going to die. was going to die, except now she's here.

she's not sure how she feels about this new lease on life, but she's not thinking about it very hard, either. ]

[willrevile]

Peace could be so easy.

[ People just have to let it.

And, welp.

Case in point: this fucking mess. Getting up to the Altar of Vwhatever is a bit of a hike, but Jim doesn't find it too taxing. It's getting dark by the time they arrive, torches and lamps lit up, anxious activity milling around outside the entrance. ]

[motivation]

You don't know shit.

[ how can peace be easy when aneela is insane and intent on killing them all or turning them into mindless parts of a hivemind?

but they're at the altar soon enough and dutch forces the surge of anger she feels down to look around instead, taking everything in. ]

[willrevile]

[ He doesn't argue, but not because he's offended or particularly shut up about it-- he didn't mean it in any other way but the plain mechanic of it. Sometimes, he's noticed, jaded people become defensive about their shitty situations, as if the lack of solution is a personal failure, and not just the way the universe has dealt a hand.

(Like he used to.)

Jim doesn't look offended. He just looks back at her, as if waiting for her to go on, maybe get something out of her system, but that's all.

And then the moment passes, and there's work to do. ]

[motivation]

[ in dutch's case, she's pretty sure it is personal failure. the hullen would have taken over the quad without her involvement, sure, but -- aneela never would have come if not for dutch. khlyen never would have died. johnny and d'avin and pree and alvis never would have joined a war.

but she won't linger on that. instead, she'll look around for any trouble, for any creatures, for anything. ]

Which way? [ she asks, after a moment. ]