to: all; a warning

[princessvegas]

Hey, so I'm assuming at least some of y'all found that sparkler thing in your domain? If you haven't already, maybe..... don't touch it? Like at all. Except to bury it or throw it in a trash compactor or something.

Also probably do a quick sweep around your domains and check for anything else weird or out of place or creepy. Or with the Fool arcana. Just a thought.






Selfies might be a bad idea right now too.

Comments

[earthborn]

Something specific?

[princessvegas]

I'm not gonna fucking explain myself to you, Shepard. You asked me a question, I answered, and you can either believe me or not. Your choice.

I've been here longer than you, and not to toot my own horn or nothing but I'm pretty sure I understand the Horizon a lot better than most of the rest of y'all. Which is saying something, cause there's so fucking much I don't understand about it, but my point is that I feel like if there's anyone's word you should just take on this, mine is probably a pretty good one.

Or maybe I just wanna keep you from playing with the pretty sparkler. Who knows, right?

[earthborn]

You're experienced, and you know what you're talking about; granted. I'm not arguing with that; hell I've leaned on your expertise in the past. Something I didn't invite appeared on my ship, and that's obviously suspicious. I'm also not arguing with that.

But that doesn't make you my superior, and it doesn't mean I need to accept being spoken to like a child. You want respect from me? You have to respect me in turn. That isn't negotiable.

So if you don't know, just say it the first time I ask? I'm not looking for miracles, I'm asking for whatever you've got. The only reason I'm even pushing you for more information in the first place is because I think that if anyone knows more, it's you. Because I do take your word for it, bitchy as it is.

[princessvegas]

If you take my word, then my word is enough. You don't need to know how I know, just that I do.

And I do.

Shit's no bueno. Touch it at your own risk. Be careful. That's literally all I said.

[earthborn]

Don't touch the party favor. Got it.

Look, I don't care about how; if you're the Horizon expert, "how" is your job. But you don't know what happens if somebody does mess with it, do I have that right?

[princessvegas]

Kind of. I don't know that the sparkler itself does anything — it actually probably doesn't. It's more about where it came from.

That sparkler's not one of those "obvious metaphorical expression of subconscious trauma" bullshit things.

That sparkler's a message.

[earthborn]

Yeah, alright. I'll bite.

[Is Julie...enjoying this, the big reveal? The show of it? She seems to be.]

Who from, and what's the message? Because so far, the only thing I get from this is that the shared hallucinations we're all building for one another aren't actually all that secure.

[princessvegas]

[ She is actually very much not, and would prefer to not be questioned at all. In fact, she is beginning to entirely regret bothering to say anything. When will she learn to stop using this ability to help people? ]

What the fuck are you talking about? The Horizon isn't a hallucination.

[earthborn]

Really, that's what you took from that? Look, genuinely, I don't care what it is or isn't, I'll call it whatever I want.

I've got to cope with this insanity somehow.

[princessvegas]

What I took from it is that you think you're entitled to more than I want to tell you, Shepard. You asked if the sparkler itself does anything, I said no, it's a message. That doesn't mean I have to tell you who it's from, what it means, or how I know. The important part is that someone is coming at us as a group, in our most private space, the place that's linked directly to our minds.

Haven't you been here for like a year? Grow up. It's not insanity, it's your life now. Pretending it's all a bad dream you'll get to wake up from is weak af.

[ Julie doesn't even dislike Shepard, but she has never responded well to authority. And Julie has suffered through more insanity than any one person ever should, all without the luxury of pretending it wasn't real, and at a far younger age than Shepard. To hear the very real places she's been and interacted with and lived in called a hallucination and insanity ... well, it rankles a bit. ]

[earthborn]

What th—

[Shepard actually does like Julie; when it's drinks and casual conversation and jokes about stripper names she feels an earth-borne camaraderie with her that's hard to come by these days. That's valuable, precious even, completely outside of anything else Julie brings to the table— a not insignificant amount, all on its own. But it's working with Julie that Shepard dislikes; she doesn't want to spend half the conversation soothing anyone's ego, not even her own. Shepard just wants to work on the problem at hand... even if that sometimes means bulling through personal issues like they're the proverbial china-shop.]

What is the problem, here? Why are you acting so hostile?

A few seconds ago you were pissed off that I wasn't taking you seriously enough, and now you're mad because I am taking you seriously. You issued a warning about something that you obviously consider to be important. What in the hell is wrong with wanting more information? That's intel that I might like to have if I'm going do what little I can to keep the people I care about safe. Why hold back on me? Is it really just because I'm not dealing with Abraxas as gracefully as you are?

I just want to figure out what the hell is going on here, but you're making it like pulling teeth. I am not your enemy, Julie, what the hell?

[princessvegas]

[ While she's literally never been a good team player, the truth is that Julie flat out does not know how to navigate this conversation in a way that will both satisfy Shepard and also not make herself feel unsafe. Julie has been in Abraxas since nearly the beginning; she vividly remembers how they were treated back then, the horror with which they'd learned of the Queen's experimentation. The feeling of constantly waiting to be snatched up by the castle guards and hauled back. And, before that, even, she remembers the feeling of always looking over her shoulder — there was no such thing as safe after Captain Trips ravaged her world.

She'd been hoping for people to simply accept the warning at face value, perhaps predicated on the common sense advice that it's deeply suspicious to find shit where it shouldn't be immediately following the appearance of a scary clown. And, in Julie's defense, Shepard is the only one to really dig into it, so she wasn't wrong. ]

I'm not gonna have an answer that makes you happy. This isn't about you. It really isn't.

Think of it as a sign warning you not to press the big red button, no other words. You can press the button or you can not, but the sign won't change itself. It's just a warning.

[earthborn]

[She's been in prison, been hunted, been shot and stabbed and burned and starved. She's lived as a marginalized class, and as a minority, a political underdog and as food for the machine— she's died, and been used as a science experiment, and woken up mid-surgery. All that, the pain, the dehumanization, the years-long tension of being shoved to the side... She can cope with that. Those agonies are old friends. But seeing the wave of a tsunami crest, and knowing what's coming, of watching while it tips and begins to fall, and not being listened to, not being able to know, and act...

Shepard has never been good at minding her own business, and not asking questions even when no one else cares to do so.]

Fine.

[If there's information to know, Shepard has no doubt that she'll find it out, eventually. The only question is, how much it'll cost.]