"Hey! You've reached Cayde, but either I'm busy or I'm busy. Either way, go ahead and leave a message...or don't. Obviously I won't get back to you if it's the latter."
[Dustin takes advantage of Cayde's exposition to start scarfing down this next bowl of ramen. With the way he haphazardly twists and scoops noodles into his face, it's like he hasn't eaten in the past week, let alone five minutes ago. Then again, the boy is thin enough that Cayde wouldn't be remiss in thinking this is, in fact, the first decent meal he's had in several days.]
[Mumbled around a half-chewed mouthful of noodles: ] And? What did you get out of the boarding party? That you haven't already told me, anyway.
Well, Jon wanted to try talking to them. He could tell they were confused but then I think they panicked and spit at him- apparently their spit doesn't work the same on...people as it does to rocks, thankfully, but it makes them go loopy, so I hadda deal with a hallucinating Archivist on top of everything else.
[He sighs.]
Managed to get the rest of the team to stick to incapacitating rather than outright killing 'em.
Things calmed down for a bit after that, and Tony's team found the missing Agrii. ...and then of course suddenly we find out the other two ships out there have been set to self-destruct, so we gotta hustle to evacuate everyone from there.
[Dustin nods slowly. Getting spit on by a Graq was already something he'd made a mental note to avoid, but it's nice to know that this is still a priority even if the end result isn't immediately disfiguring or fatal.]
What kind of condition was Ga Re in? The rest of the Agrii?
[Tommy had made it sound like Ga Re was in rough shape, but had been unable or unwilling to provide more details. Details Dustin has determined are Important.]
The other Agrii, they were all unconscious, asleep or something. We had to wake 'em up and try getting some to help so we could get everyone out. It was really tight, moving a couple hundred Agrii out with only our shuttles available to do the ferrying.
I heard Ga Re was taken to get medical treatment soon as things started going down. Didn't really see her myself until everything was overwith and she was willing to send us all home, or at least let us 'He-Rows' have a look at the technology to figure it out and use the portals to go wherever, even home.
Of course, conveniently, whatever source was being used to power the thing was somehow missing and poor Ga Re was about to panic.
[Cayde holds up a hand.]
And cue the evil, mysterious voice over the PA system, basically thanking us for the entertainment and that as much as Ga Re wanted to, they couldn't let her send us home so they took whatever the Core thing was. Shooed us back to Agra Ten, but they were kind enough to give the Agrii ship a power core that could make the trip back. So thoughtful, right?
[Dustin has enough time while Cayde is explaining this next bit of the story to finish the rest of his soup, but this time, he doesn't. Part of it is the fact that he's actually getting a little full; more of it is that the events being detailed give him enough pause to slow down and think things through more thoroughly than before.]
[The Agrii gave them the option to go home.]
[Somehow, Dustin has gone this entire time assuming that, even if they fulfilled what they were abducted here to accomplish, the Agrii would be so reliant on their assistance that they would refuse to let them leave - and have the complete and utter mental authority to enforce their compliance on the matter. He'd been bitter about it. And now here's Cayde, telling him that Ga Re was ready to send them all home before they had ever "fixed" a single storm. It flies in the face of all the assumptions Dustin had built up about these people, and he's not quite sure how to puzzle through it all at the moment.]
[So he doesn't. Instead, Dustin focuses on something that definitely makes him mad, and he's pretty sure should make him mad.]
Fucking typical. [He snorts, derisive, and angrily mauls a clump of noodles wrapped around his chopsticks.] So it's all just for their entertainment, then? The Atroma? All of our suffering and the Agrii's tasks are some drama that they can watch on a Saturday night with a bowl of popcorn?
[Cayde thought personally that it was a real shame the newer people haven't gotten the opportunity to meet the Agrii face to face. He wonders if they've gotten around to a decision on that.
He watches Dustin out of the corner of his eye, even as he reaches out to invite Colonel closer for some petting.]
That's what it's been looking like, and from what's been said about them, they seem the most likely culprit. But if they are, then we at least know they'd been beaten before, from the Fleet veterans. Maybe that's why these ones are staying hidden. They know we'd whup 'em good if they ever showed their faces around here.
[Dustin doesn't seem so sure - or maybe he sees Colonel edging closer and that's making him a little nervous. Either way, he guards his bowl closer and starts eating it with a bit more gusto.]
[Colonel tilts her head in that jerky fashion that chickens tend to use, her eye fixating on Dustin for a moment as though she might actually be judging him before she's scooped up by Cayde.]
[Dustin sigs melodramatically through his nose. Sounds like he has a few more people he needs to contact for follow-up questions...annoying. Why does he have to go talk to people, all of a sudden? Why can't anyone just write shit down so he can consume it at his leisure? It's starting to feel like all of the worst parts of his recent journeys on Earth after he ran away from home - the parts where he had to follow up on vague leads from the internet by tracking people down and - ugh - communicating with them. The horror.]
[He tucks that unenviable task away for now, backtracking to some of the other questions that Cayde might be more equipped to answer.]
The storms aren't a recent phenomena. If they started soon after the Atroma visited Agra 10, that would imply their "broadcast"-- [ said around a set of quotes made with his fingers, accompanied by a sharp tap-tap of his chopsticks ] --has been going on for...hundreds? Thousands of years, possibly. I find it hard to believe that that level of infrastructure could have been overturned by, you know. Us.
Now that, I have no idea. Actually...even the Agrii while aware of the Atroma, seem to be aware of the Atroma's demise, or at least they thought they were all gone too. So I don't know what timeframe we're even running, all this time business gets very confusing as it is.
[Dustin demolishes the remainder of his ramen by the time Cayde finishes answering. He carefully stacks the now empty second bowl into the first, frowning and furrowing his brow at them while he sets his chopsticks down across the rim.]
Do the Agrii think that the Atroma are responsible, if they assume that they're all dead?
Who's a good chicken? [Cayde coos at Colonel, stroking her brown feathers.]
The Agrii don't know who's responsible and I guess never considered the Atroma a potential culprit because of that point.
They might not have even figured someone might be behind it. I'm not even sure what generation of Agrii these are, but I don't think they've ever lived on Temba themselves.
[Dustin nods, looking marginally less anxious about Colonel's presence now that he's not guarding his food from her.]
Even for the, you know. [He arcs an eyebrow.] Really obviously staged kidnapping and ship battle? I guess they could assume that wasn't the Atroma either, but did anyone get an answer from the Agrii about who they thought set all of that shit up and hacked their ship afterwards?
[It's important that Dustin get a read on the Agrii's opinion about this - he's still trying to work out how he's supposed to feel about them, given everything else Cayde's revealed in this conversation.]
To be fair, it was pretty well-staged if you weren't reading between the script lines. The Atroma weren't even a potential culprit for them because so far as they figured, they no longer exist. I don't think they really gave it much thought as to who was at fault. They were all just super happy to be safe and meet their he-rows in person.
You know, they're all kinda like kids in a way. Least they've always seemed that way more or less, to me. Lot of 'em are naive. Look at it this way- they've been influenced by old episodes from a reality show that depicted outsiders drawn from other places as people who could help others. They really do believe in this hero thing. They've figured that this is what can help them, because otherwise, they don't know who else to turn to, and don't know that they're potentially being targeted, much less why.
[Dustin rolls his eyes, although he looks more disappointed than exasperated with the way his gaze flicks down to the countertop afterwards.]
Of course.
[That sounds more like the Agrii he's become accustomed to: Dangerously ignorant and optimistic, wholly reliant on the "Heroes" that they stole away to save them. The fact that this role was inspired by similarly exploitative media from the civilization that evidence suggests nearly wiped them out is deeply ironic.]
...You realize that, even if we do somehow fix... [Dustin gestures vaguely at the ceiling.] ...All of this shit. There's no way they'll be able to take care of themselves. They're just going to run into another crisis, probably something minor like "we've run out of crystals for the power plant" or whatever, and it'll either kill them or they'll kidnap another group of "heroes" to fix it again. We've not saving anyone by doing this except ourselves.
Doesn't mean they can't learn. Who says they haven't been? They watch us after all. Creepy, but they've been observing what we've been doing. They know things need to be fixed. They know when danger comes we need weapons. Naive, sure, but not dumb.
They've wanted to learn about us and they've helped in what ways they could. I think they're getting better at that. They do research. Application still needs work, but they aren't hopeless.
Understatement. That's like saying a toddler can fend for themselves because they retain a lot of information. From what I've seen of their "applications," and how they treat any corrections of them, they wouldn't last a season.
True. I wouldn't go giving them any knives any time soon. But you can't completely write them off as hopeless. Clearly they've had a civilization of some kind here, before. Unfortunately this generation has had everything provided for them on a ship and might only learn things from TV shows so can you blame them for being clueless about practical things?
I'm saying that it would be negligent to leave them alone here, even if we do something about the storms. Maybe they would let us go back, but...all of the work we did here for them would be pointless. They need oversight. At least until they've had a generation or two to figure out how to live on their own again, planet-side.
[Cayde offers a smile. It's pretty amazing, the range of expressions the Exo can manage when only so many of his face plates move. This smile goes from teasing to something softer as he nods then.]
You're probably right. But for now, that's not something we can do anything about until we can actually get the Agrii on the ground. But who knows, they might surprise us. And they've gotten by somehow on a ship for this long so that has to account for something.
If they need some help getting their landlegs, then I'm sure some of us won't mind sticking around a little longer to give them pointers and watch out for them.
[Cayde had been half-joking, but he's not entirely surprised when Dustin actually admits that he's willing to stick around and help in that. Standoffish as the teen's been, he obviously cares about things. He's a good kid.]
Won't be the only one at least. And hey, maybe the ships won't be on lockdown once the main mission's over.
[Dustin rolls his eyes to try and recover from his rather embarrassing show of compassion, although his contemptuous gaze ends up settling on Colonel rather than Cayde.]
If the ships were provided by the Atroma? Doubtful. Unless they put them on autopilot to wherever their next set is, anyway.
[That being said, Dustin does sound noticeably less disappointed by this outcome than he probably should be. Mandated travel to other planets is marginally better than being forced to live an anonymous life bound to Earth, at least from his perspective.]
[The chicken jerks her head in Dustin's direction then, her eyes swiveling towards him almost in challenge.
Cayde's either oblivious to this or doing very well to pretend that he is.]
Maybe they'll let us kitbash something. Or they've got more parts lying around on the big ship. I'll make a Dawning wishlist and maybe they'll give me my Jumpship and Sparrow next time.
[Dustin unconsciously flinches away from Colonel's critical chicken stare. He can't help it - she's just so intense. Her challenge goes unmet, as the boy's gaze flicks sheepishly back to Cayde.]
Your...? [No, not going to fixate on those, they're probably just names for ship models or something. Dustin shakes his head to clear it.] --Maybe. Given enough time and resources, I could probably cobble something together.
[Not a trivial thing to assume, building a spaceship, but they have templates and access to tech well beyond what Dustin could have dreamed of back home, even just in the ruins. He's still trying to figure out what his limits are, given this new influx of material to work with.]
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deal_me_in) wrote2017-05-31 09:52 pm
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[Mumbled around a half-chewed mouthful of noodles: ] And? What did you get out of the boarding party? That you haven't already told me, anyway.
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[He sighs.]
Managed to get the rest of the team to stick to incapacitating rather than outright killing 'em.
Things calmed down for a bit after that, and Tony's team found the missing Agrii. ...and then of course suddenly we find out the other two ships out there have been set to self-destruct, so we gotta hustle to evacuate everyone from there.
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What kind of condition was Ga Re in? The rest of the Agrii?
[Tommy had made it sound like Ga Re was in rough shape, but had been unable or unwilling to provide more details. Details Dustin has determined are Important.]
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I heard Ga Re was taken to get medical treatment soon as things started going down. Didn't really see her myself until everything was overwith and she was willing to send us all home, or at least let us 'He-Rows' have a look at the technology to figure it out and use the portals to go wherever, even home.
Of course, conveniently, whatever source was being used to power the thing was somehow missing and poor Ga Re was about to panic.
[Cayde holds up a hand.]
And cue the evil, mysterious voice over the PA system, basically thanking us for the entertainment and that as much as Ga Re wanted to, they couldn't let her send us home so they took whatever the Core thing was. Shooed us back to Agra Ten, but they were kind enough to give the Agrii ship a power core that could make the trip back. So thoughtful, right?
[The sarcasm, it is dripping.]
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[The Agrii gave them the option to go home.]
[Somehow, Dustin has gone this entire time assuming that, even if they fulfilled what they were abducted here to accomplish, the Agrii would be so reliant on their assistance that they would refuse to let them leave - and have the complete and utter mental authority to enforce their compliance on the matter. He'd been bitter about it. And now here's Cayde, telling him that Ga Re was ready to send them all home before they had ever "fixed" a single storm. It flies in the face of all the assumptions Dustin had built up about these people, and he's not quite sure how to puzzle through it all at the moment.]
[So he doesn't. Instead, Dustin focuses on something that definitely makes him mad, and he's pretty sure should make him mad.]
Fucking typical. [He snorts, derisive, and angrily mauls a clump of noodles wrapped around his chopsticks.] So it's all just for their entertainment, then? The Atroma? All of our suffering and the Agrii's tasks are some drama that they can watch on a Saturday night with a bowl of popcorn?
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He watches Dustin out of the corner of his eye, even as he reaches out to invite Colonel closer for some petting.]
That's what it's been looking like, and from what's been said about them, they seem the most likely culprit. But if they are, then we at least know they'd been beaten before, from the Fleet veterans. Maybe that's why these ones are staying hidden. They know we'd whup 'em good if they ever showed their faces around here.
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How were they defeated last time, exactly?
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Don't know, never got those details.
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[He tucks that unenviable task away for now, backtracking to some of the other questions that Cayde might be more equipped to answer.]
The storms aren't a recent phenomena. If they started soon after the Atroma visited Agra 10, that would imply their "broadcast"-- [ said around a set of quotes made with his fingers, accompanied by a sharp tap-tap of his chopsticks ] --has been going on for...hundreds? Thousands of years, possibly. I find it hard to believe that that level of infrastructure could have been overturned by, you know. Us.
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Do the Agrii think that the Atroma are responsible, if they assume that they're all dead?
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The Agrii don't know who's responsible and I guess never considered the Atroma a potential culprit because of that point.
They might not have even figured someone might be behind it. I'm not even sure what generation of Agrii these are, but I don't think they've ever lived on Temba themselves.
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Even for the, you know. [He arcs an eyebrow.] Really obviously staged kidnapping and ship battle? I guess they could assume that wasn't the Atroma either, but did anyone get an answer from the Agrii about who they thought set all of that shit up and hacked their ship afterwards?
[It's important that Dustin get a read on the Agrii's opinion about this - he's still trying to work out how he's supposed to feel about them, given everything else Cayde's revealed in this conversation.]
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You know, they're all kinda like kids in a way. Least they've always seemed that way more or less, to me. Lot of 'em are naive. Look at it this way- they've been influenced by old episodes from a reality show that depicted outsiders drawn from other places as people who could help others. They really do believe in this hero thing. They've figured that this is what can help them, because otherwise, they don't know who else to turn to, and don't know that they're potentially being targeted, much less why.
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Of course.
[That sounds more like the Agrii he's become accustomed to: Dangerously ignorant and optimistic, wholly reliant on the "Heroes" that they stole away to save them. The fact that this role was inspired by similarly exploitative media from the civilization that evidence suggests nearly wiped them out is deeply ironic.]
...You realize that, even if we do somehow fix... [Dustin gestures vaguely at the ceiling.] ...All of this shit. There's no way they'll be able to take care of themselves. They're just going to run into another crisis, probably something minor like "we've run out of crystals for the power plant" or whatever, and it'll either kill them or they'll kidnap another group of "heroes" to fix it again. We've not saving anyone by doing this except ourselves.
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They've wanted to learn about us and they've helped in what ways they could. I think they're getting better at that. They do research. Application still needs work, but they aren't hopeless.
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Understatement. That's like saying a toddler can fend for themselves because they retain a lot of information. From what I've seen of their "applications," and how they treat any corrections of them, they wouldn't last a season.
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True. I wouldn't go giving them any knives any time soon. But you can't completely write them off as hopeless. Clearly they've had a civilization of some kind here, before. Unfortunately this generation has had everything provided for them on a ship and might only learn things from TV shows so can you blame them for being clueless about practical things?
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[Dustin glances up, his brows raised.]
I'm saying that it would be negligent to leave them alone here, even if we do something about the storms. Maybe they would let us go back, but...all of the work we did here for them would be pointless. They need oversight. At least until they've had a generation or two to figure out how to live on their own again, planet-side.
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[Cayde offers a smile. It's pretty amazing, the range of expressions the Exo can manage when only so many of his face plates move. This smile goes from teasing to something softer as he nods then.]
You're probably right. But for now, that's not something we can do anything about until we can actually get the Agrii on the ground. But who knows, they might surprise us. And they've gotten by somehow on a ship for this long so that has to account for something.
If they need some help getting their landlegs, then I'm sure some of us won't mind sticking around a little longer to give them pointers and watch out for them.
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I...guess I'm on that list. I can't let all the work I've put in go to waste like that.
[There's a couple of dull thumps as Dustin agitatedly kicks his feet under the counter.]
Besides, what the fuck else am I gonna do? Go home? [ scoff ] Not a chance in hell.
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Won't be the only one at least. And hey, maybe the ships won't be on lockdown once the main mission's over.
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If the ships were provided by the Atroma? Doubtful. Unless they put them on autopilot to wherever their next set is, anyway.
[That being said, Dustin does sound noticeably less disappointed by this outcome than he probably should be. Mandated travel to other planets is marginally better than being forced to live an anonymous life bound to Earth, at least from his perspective.]
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Cayde's either oblivious to this or doing very well to pretend that he is.]
Maybe they'll let us kitbash something. Or they've got more parts lying around on the big ship. I'll make a Dawning wishlist and maybe they'll give me my Jumpship and Sparrow next time.
[He doubts it but hey, he can dream.]
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Your...? [No, not going to fixate on those, they're probably just names for ship models or something. Dustin shakes his head to clear it.] --Maybe. Given enough time and resources, I could probably cobble something together.
[Not a trivial thing to assume, building a spaceship, but they have templates and access to tech well beyond what Dustin could have dreamed of back home, even just in the ruins. He's still trying to figure out what his limits are, given this new influx of material to work with.]
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