07. in a gadda da vida, honey

[anybodies]

CHARACTERS: Mystique, Harry Potter, William Tsang, & You
LOCATION: A JUNGLE ON A SEEMINGLY UNNAMED PLANET?????
WARNINGS: PG-13 for bad words, possibly hunting/animal death, more TBD
SUMMARY: Catch-all of the above 3 characters for September. The log area is empty! Threadstarters will be in comments, feel free to ask me for something!
NOTES:


EMPTY AS PROMISED, threadstarters to be in comments.

Comments

[corpse_soldier]

I was a warship, [ Etrepa clarifies. So not so much constructive as the precise opposite. She's not ashamed of this fact. She is, or was, supremely proud, felt herself to be basically better than the ponderous Justices or the meager Mercies. And she was, quite simply, more powerful, swifter, more dangerous. That was just a fact.

But Mystique is not wrong. Killing was only a small part, experientially speaking, of what she did. ]

I had a crew. Lieutenants for each decade. Humans. I tended to their every need. Witnessed every moment of their lives aboard me.

[ That this might be considered a horrendous affront to privacy isn't something that occurs to Etrepa; it was simply the state of affairs, one accepted by all Radchaai. Etrepa would have been deeply troubled has she not been able to see in every section of herself, as if a limb were to go unexpectedly numb.

It also implies that Mystique needn't apologize for revealing personal moments. If anything, the transmission is comforting, something closer to what she shared with her officers. ]

When we were in gatespace, cut off from the rest of the universe for months, I was the whole of their world.

[ And that was a simpler time. Her version of it, at least. The memory exchange is difficult, not because Etrepa Seven is holding back, but because they are fragments drawn from countless bodies, performing a thousand actions made rote and ritual over hundreds of years - serving tea, mending uniforms, correcting grammar, comforting broken hearts, providing sexual gratification - all united by a single attentive consciousness. Therein the simplicity- the sheer constancy of human needs and desires, emotions and injuries, and her never-ending task of tending to them.

The annexations, too, had a simplicity to them. Until the last one.

Her next question is not quite the non sequitur it seems; it pertains to the madness of their situation, both the tragedies of their amputation and their presence in this alien place. It also suggests a greater piety than it ought, coming from a being that has spent their existence immersed in Radchaai thought. ]

Do you believe that everything that happens is the will of God?

[anybodies]

[The question surprises Mystique, because she thought they were talking about the void of space and the mechanics of war, and for whatever reason, she'd come at the conversation from the assumption that God was too soft for all that. She ticks a short sideways look at the other woman, an expression of disconcertion that is probably the first face thing that she's done since the beginning of this conversation that didn't involve some amount of annoyance. Then she straightens her head out and looks at the mud again. Squish, stick.]

I don't think about God, [she says, but her tone isn't short.] And I've never taken care of-- anything. like that.

There were always people trying to take care of me. [Despite her current miserable state of affairs, there's no rancor in her voice. She doesn't resent those people or having failed. Not Charles, who she had left bleeding on the beach and then perplexed at a violently interrupted diplomatic meeting, now Erik, who was somewhat occupied with his subterranean incarceration, unlocking the secrets of the universe with his mind. She'd be bothered by the notion of being subject to constant supervision by a sentient ship because she had experienced just that, before, but those people aren't her. She wouldn't have agreed to it, and thus, it must mean something, that these Radchaai had.]

It's different if you aren't a spaceship. [Her prosthetic finally ticks down on something that seems nearly like stone. She flags Etrepa for a pause, unpeeling her hand from around the woman's elbow.] I mean-- you probably heard the-- Radchaai, [she fumbles with the word a little, but the final production is intelligible,] talk about friends and family. And how far away they were, sometimes. We feel-- far apart, a lot of the time. I dunno.

Is that why you're asking about God? [she eases her weight between her soiled boot and her false foot, and finds the ground stable enough, for the moment. There's a tangle of roots nearby, a few boulders. A generator spitting a few yards out. Mystique seems too distracted to think about the multiple levels on which that question might operate, but it's unlikely she feels particularly united with Etrepa on the God stuff front.] I don't usually hold Him... responsible.

[corpse_soldier]

[ Etrepa is certainly no stranger to human homesickness. The sheer volume of baby lieutenant tears her uniforms have absorbed... And she read each and every one of the messages her officers sent and received, was privy to the fears and doubts of them and their relatives, patrons and clients, their longings and ambitions, and their frequently awful poetry. But it was never her pain, never her loneliness. She understood, as one would understand any phenomenon one had borne witness to time and time again over the course of a millennium, but was never in a position to empathize.

She does not now know if what she feels is anything like that. She still stands apart from them, separated by a gulf of Being. ]

It is not a question of responsibility. There is nothing God is not responsible for. God is the shape of the universe [ or so the Radchaai would say, and as the only representative of that culture, Etrepa has become its mouthpiece. ] Nothing transpires that is not an expression of her will, a product of her eight emanations.

[ The female pronoun is not a correction on Etrepa's part, not the kind of late 60's era earth-mother claptrap that proliferated in Mystique's world. The peculiarities of the translation protocols turn every word Etrepa hears into Radchaai, and in that language there are no gender markers, so there is nothing to correct. But when Etrepa speaks, and her words are translated into an insistently gendered language like, say, English, the result is the word 'she'. ]

It is impossible that any of me should remain. My last memory is of my heat shield being breached- of being vaporized by my own reactor. I should be gone. All of me. [ She says she 'remembers' this, but there is no real memory. The event was so immediate, it could leave no impression. What she has is an awareness, a certainty of the fact. ]

I did everything I should have. I warned my fellow ships, saved all of my crew- saved my Captain. [ This does come with a memory, taken from a Nathas segment- its strong hands pushing a confused Seivarden Vendaai - handsome, dark-skinned, aristocratic - into a suspension pod. And with this, the satisfaction in knowing she was fulfilling her purpose even in the midst of unprecedented disaster. ]

Yet here I am. Such a coincidence is undeniably a message from God. [ The more improbable the coincidence, the theological reasoning goes, the more wildly coincidental, the more direct that message. ] But what is it she could possible want from me?

[ Now that they are on firmer ground, and Mystique has eased off of her arm, Etrepa ought to feel relief that she's not longer serving as a barbarian's walker. Instead, she feels a little sad. Even for just the space of this assisted stroll, she had something she has lacked since awaking in the belly of the Tranquility. ]

What is my purpose in this place, amongst these people? What am I, now? [ She is looking directly at Mystique as she asks these questions, as if the mutant might be able to answer. And might she not? This encounter is yet another coincidence. And for all that she is not pure, her existence, as an expression of Vahn, is but one more means by which Amaat communicates her will. ]

Have you not asked yourself these questions? Have you not found some answer?

[ And this- this is the heart of the matter for Etrepa Seven, something she had not found words for until she sought to explain it to someone else. ]

Why continue to exist, if you are lost and broken?

[anybodies]

[Mystique winds up with her hands on the waist of her muddy jeans, bending backward slightly. She looks back the way they came, her blond eyebrows knotted in consternation, and she winds her neck to the left, then the right. She is not actually sore from this meager exertion but jarred byyyyy

this shit-talking robot?] Etrepa, you really need to learn to shut the Hell up, [she snaps, glancing at the cyborg woman sharply. Why continue to exist?

Mystique doesn't have the comfortable scaffolding of a deeply-internalized religion to fall back on. Mrs. Xavier had corralled them off to church for the big days. Mass for Christmas, Easter, the occasional social, as the institution that they attended was inevitably populated by plenty of tidy men and women who were of their social par. No one had been terribly impressed by Mystique's stint in waitressing, and she had not been very interested in lying. Allowing oneself to be taken care of had been the general expectation for her.

But Mystique isn't being as harsh as she sounds. Part of the tension stuttering painfully in her spine, too, is the secondhand recollection of the handsome captain, the panicking crew. Homesickness and explosions, fiberoptics and energy reserves failing. Mystique's lips thin, and she stops pretending to look at the bustle of camp, people moving crates and starting meal fires. She twists her head around to look at Etrepa again. Her own life feels like a continuous line, through the traumas, multiple that she survived: her tiny body yanked up on the stove-top, hands pressed against the hot coils to force her back to fair skin and blonde hair. Headaches spreading under her scalp as she tried to keep her scales under, and then the long journey along the East Coast after that. In retrospect, the Cuban Missile Crisis had merely been one more necessary wound to break free.

Of course, she'd never wanted to break free of any segment of her own body. That's the trouble, of course. Her mutation was enough to give up her family over, to wage a war for, and her mutation had been about being strong and fast and beautiful and resilient. A cripple is none of those things. Presently, she remembers to blink.]

I'm gonna figure something out and fix it, [she says. The statement sounds thin, even in her own ears, but she adds,] A week ago, I couldn't stand. [And a month before that, she'd helped to rally a ship full of tinkers and soldiers to arm and train for war. She gives Etrepa a brittle, automatic smile that makes her face hurt, and fails to look like anything but despair.]

[corpse_soldier]

[ The uncouthness of Mystique's comment does not surprise Etrepa Seven, not in its uncouthness at least. She has grown to expect a certain lack of beauty in the mutant's thought and actions. The content, however, takes her aback. For all that Mystique was not raised with a strong sense of religious ethics, it is quite possible that the distinctly Christian taboo against suicide informs her reaction; the same does not go for the culture that built Sword of Nathtas. A sincere desire for self-annihilation is not at all unacceptable in the Radch. One need simply go to a Medic and register one's intention. The process is painless, the procedure trivial for even the most amateur of Medics.

However, the refusal to buckle under the strains that would drive an average citizen to socially-sanctioned suicide is a sign of what the Radchaai would call 'steadiness', a word laden with a martial import that is challenging to properly translate, save perhaps in contrast with what its opposite implies: weak, cowardly, incapable of command, unfit to conquer.

And while Sword of Nathtas, One Etrepa Seven is not in fact Radchaai, but rather a piece of Radchaai military equipment, what does it say that she should be so seriously contemplating deactivation, while this crippled mutant refuses even to accept that her amputation should mean she should steer clear of muddy ruts?

To figure something out and fix it. The simplicity of this motivation puts all of Etrepa Seven's theological wool-gathering, one that is necessarily in poor faith considering her non-personhood and thus exemption from all things properly sacred, to shame. It gives her pause, and stifles her pride. She breaks eye contact with Mystique, for the moment unable to meet that admixture of despair and perseverance, and sets her dark gaze to sweeping across the ad hoc ramshackle of the crash-survivors' settlement. ]

This camp's present arrangement is not defensible, [ Etrepa Seven notes, before turning back to Mystique. ]

Has anyone taken charge of security here?

[anybodies]

[Mystique is generally very good at reading people. However, her circumstances and mental balance are, currently, as such that she finds herself deeply in doubt of whether Etrepa is experiencing secondhand embarrassment about her bullshit 'plan' or feeling a robot feeling about her human problem. Also, Etrepa is a weird robot. Who emotes as one imagines a weird robot would: not well. Mystique stares at her for a moment, the smile fading from her face.

Mystique is generally very good at being annoyed, these days. And that seems like a safe haven, psychologically speaking.]

I don't think anyone's taken charge of jack shit. [She finally moves over to sit on a log that is rosetted with lichens, moving carelessly now that she is on solid ground. Her prosthetic barely shifts on this terrain, as stable as the boot she's forged onto her other foot. Settled, she starts to pick at the mud clotting on her arms, frowning slightly. What she probably needs, really, is a shower.] There used to be some chick-- uh. Her name's Tyke. She was Head of Security when we were on the ship. You'll know her if you see fifty dogs wandering after a white girl with black hair.

And then there's Jax. Blond guy, buff, probably packing a weapon. Natasha's a redhead with a pretty nice ass. They were running Gunnery. [She looks up.] Wash was head of Flight Crew. Redhead guy, kinda-- triangular chin. You want someone to fall in behind for paramilitary shit, those people have the skills. I dunno about the terrain, though. [She swats a handful of moist, greying dust off her outer-arm, but her eyes are still fixed on Etrepa, curious.]

[corpse_soldier]

[ Etrepa Seven is just about as sloppy herself, her uniform - usually maintained with crisp military care - now half-caked in mud. It does not bother her in the here and now, not with large issues pressing upon her sadly singular mind, but it will upset her very soon, an affront to the tidiness and propriety that is a priority for any ship with any pride. And, as has been established, Etrepa is a fragment of a Sword.

For now, however, the big picture prevails. She nods, a deliberate expression that still falls short of conveying anything like emotion. It is, however, a clear piece of physical communication. ]

If these people you mention have not yet organized into a disciplined defense force, it is unlikely they will do so spontaneously; not until after a threat has already made itself apparent. [ Which is to say: too late. ] We require lookouts, and regular patrols. As it is, we are vulnerable even to wild animals. [ And while it is at least a little difficult for her to invest a truly deep concern in the wellbeing of non-citizens, this is the problem she feels most capable of fixing.

Though she possesses some lingering doubts as to her total competence. ]

My coordination has suffered since my reduction. I can only assume the same applies to you. [ Not that she wasn't impressed by what Mystique was able to manage, even with a truncated limb. ] I think we could both benefit from sparring, in a controlled setting.

[ And, in truth, she rather enjoyed some singular moments of their fight - before the interruption of shared memories and the détente that followed. ]

Would this interest you?

[anybodies]

[Mystique thinks about being exasperated by the robot's insincerity for all of two seconds, but the two seconds before that, she is peculiarly moved. Of course, throughout all four seconds, she is well-aware that the Sword is just really unaccustomed to thinking such terms as interpersonal appropriateness. Even Etrepa's attitude toward other classes of ships seemed to lack for humility, sensitivity, and good manners as human beings understand them.

I'm a fucking gimp, she considers saying. Instead, when she opens her mouth, what comes out instead is:]

Yeah, it would.

[By then, her picking at mud scabs has slowed enough that she decides to give up pretending that she cares about that, of all things. She drapes her arms back over her knees, and gives her amputated leg an experimental wiggle, absent-minded, checking for the relative grip and friction of aluminium on substrate; the former-lizard-ninja version of jiggling her leg. Despite her restlessness, she looks at Etrepa quite steadily, solemnly.]

We should find out who's a better shot, too, [she adds. There is nothing especially mirthful about the corner of her mouth curling upward, but it doesn't seem to be just for show, either. The upside of talking to a cybernetic weirdo who lacks an understanding of basic propriety is that one need not worry about feelings! Or at least, this is the story that Mystique tells herself, in absence of Charles and Erik's variously fragile sensibilities.] Are you gonna nominate yourself for patrol-- captain?

Or, [she doesn't know what the words for Radchaai rank and file were,] prom court— whatever.

[corpse_soldier]

[ The idea that it is Etrepa that lacks propriety - that second of the Radchaai's triune values - would strike her as either amusing or offensive- likely both at once. That the elitism which results from a belief that one embodies those values but need not express them to those who fall outside the protective embrace of citizenship might constitute a form of impropriety unto itself does not occur to Etrepa Seven.

By the same stroke, that Etrepa might be deeply sensitive and carefully courteous when it comes to the humans she is called upon to serve and care for does not appear to occur to Mystique. But, for lack of any evidence to the contrary, this assumption is understandable. ]

I will broach the subject of a security force to the camp, [ is all Etrepa will say for now, and this is not any sort of compensatory humility, which would anyway be too little too late. The idea of being any sort of captain, of commanding rather than obeying, is utterly outside her experience. Yet following orders given by someone who is not Radchaai is, if anything, more unthinkable.

She also has no idea what 'prom court' is, but doesn't ask for clarification. Something extremely uncivilized, doubtless. ]

Target practice will be helpful.

[ The smile that appears on her face is unsettling, as if her body were suddenly possessed by a foreign spirit. It emerges out of nothing, without precedent of any kind, and while it is visually accurate it looks all wrong after long minutes of expressionlessness. ]

When I am properly recalibrated, it will be no contest.

[anybodies]

[Mystique is happy to rampage about imposing her values and preferences on things, especially considering she's here, and has been, and the Raadchai obviously are not and very likely will never be.

:)

Really, Mystique is being a Goddamn saint for refraining from pointing this out aloud. She watches Etrepa buzz around with her busy, busy tactical plans and her obscenely perfect posture (not that lizard ninjas should really be one to talk) and her big talk about murder competence. The mutant would find it extraordinarily difficult to imagine the woman performing any kind of subservience, never mind hugging the very homesick or fucking the very horny, if she hadn't glimpsed it in Etrepa's mind before.

She studies Etrepa's smile in silence for a few long seconds, her own brow slightly wrinkled. How did anyone let that anywhere near their dick or vagina? Really?

Maybe, she supposes, the Radchaai were fucking weirdos too, in some way that did not come through in Etrepa's peculiarly affectionate recollections. There was the distinct sense that she looked on the crew with rose-tinted lenses. Mystique has never worked with any group of people that she didn't want to murder for at least a few minutes, here or there, and that was certainly absent from Etrepa's thoughts. Mystique slouches, somewhat more out of the subconscious urge to highlight the contrast between herself and the robit than because she's genuinely exhausted.]

...We're gonna have to work on that too, [she says. But she makes a shooing motion at Etrepa with a smudgy hand. It has a marginally more humorous quality than disdain or dismissal or anything like that, if an onlooker happens to be perceptive of wry speaking tones and that Mystique is smiling too. Ask most people; Erik has a creepy smile too.]

[corpse_soldier]

[ A penchant for rampaging about and imposing values is probably one of the things with which Etrepa could most relate- that and shooting people. Perhaps they can make a contest of that too, some day. Etrepa will very likely try to do a little bit of that with whatever security-force volunteers are unfortunate enough to fall under her exacting tutelage. She's definitely going to try and make them all wear gloves.

As to sex- while not a wildly popular practice by any means, especially not with fraternization regs aboard Ships being as loose as they were, an officer's occasional interest in ancillaries and sex - even to uncomfortable and occasionally unhealthy degrees - should be no more surprising or unexpected than might, say, an erotic preoccupation with nipple-less, yellow-eyed naked blue ninjas. Which is just to say: all humans are weirdos, at least when it comes to fucking.

That hand motion reads cross-culturally but without shades of subtlety, and Etrepa's instinct to process the laconic language of gesture is as deeply-set as her habit of shooting troublesome people in the head; both are professional necessities. In any case, she has work to do, not just when it comes to her very poor imitation of genuine humanity. And for all appearances her presence is no longer required, not now that they have found firm footing.

Etrepa suppresses an urge to bow, and to address Mystique as 'honored' again. Politeness might be always proper and always beneficial, but her courtesies have seemed to achieve opposite effect with the mutant. Instead she inclines her head and gives a parting piece of advice- ]

Try and stay away from muddy ground.

[ -before moving away with perfectly measured strides; something she would swear with a perfectly straight face isn't meant as a mockery of the one-footed. ]

[anybodies]

[Lying is rude in most universes. Even if you're only doing it with a wooden face. It's just as well that Etrepa keeps her disclaimers to herself. That particular nicety would go over even worse than the numerous others that Mystique insists on taking offense to. Probably.

Mystique stopped smiling when Etrepa casts her that last look, as quick about it as a child might smother their tears in absence of a sympathetic adult. But the cyborg woman turns about and walks away, her shins rosetted in mud and hairs stuck all funny from humidity, trooping off to be responsible, and the corner of Mystique's mouth flattens, curls upward again.]

Try not to manhandle anybody you're trying to make friends with.

[She looks down at the dull reflection of trees in the mud. Her experience doesn't feel transformative, or not in the way that she is accustomed to transformation at least. But she's sitting on something other than mud. And realizes, rather abruptly, that she's hungry. Her next thought is a cantankerous jab in Charles' direction, shitty if not hostile, not much better to observe than her tantrum earlier, but after he brings her some vegetables and stewed lizard, squaring away the pangs in her gut, maybe then

maybe]