video / oo1

[demideific]

WHO Itzal Noah / you
BROADCAST Video all over fleet-wide
ACTION On the Wonderduck!
WHEN Shuffle-ish (July 19th)

[ There's a young man on the camera. The video looks impromptu but not accidental where he's found himself in the Wonderduck's bridge. He does not look happy, nor does he seem very confused. Just angry. Indulgently angry in the way only a teenager can be. ]

Hey, chuckleshits! Whoever is running this show should send me back right now before I get ready to pull the whole thing apart. Bygones and bygones and all that shit, as long as you reverse your damn polarity and get me back to Terminus!

Which, what the fuck? You pull me, but Argent gets a fucking pass? How do you guys even decide this? This is not karmic, no way, not if that motherfucker isn't here with me.

[ There's a pause, like he isn't sure what to say next. ]

You're space is all fucked up, too. Not enough stars. You taking us to the ends of the universe or something? Fuck.

Comments

[feathery]

The one outside, obviously.

[He flops down in the nearest chair, automatically tucking his wings out of the way.]

Lotta water. Lotta rain. Supposed to rain pretty soon actually, which is why I'm in here. Inhabitants are a bunch of humans and bug folk; watch out for the zombies, the doctors are trying to cure those. Oh, and there's algae fucking everywhere.

[demideific]

[ He's watching those wings. Curiosity but it isn't anything weirder than what he's seen before. ]

Cure zombies?

[ That actually gets his attention and he's back to obvious irritation and some weird amount of guardedness now. ]

[feathery]

[Davesprite is pretty used to being a curiosity at this point, even if he doesn't enjoy it.

At the guardedness, his first impulse is to think, oh, another zombie apocalypse survivor.]

Yeah. It's some kind of fungus, sort of like that cordyceps shit, I guess. It infected an entire shipload of the bugs—Nunnilis, if you've got to know—and neurologically obliterated them. There's a cure, but it was too late to save any of the crew, so. They got put down and some people gave them last rites.

[He delivers all of that in a matter-of-fact, emotionless tone, before he looks away.] So, yeah. Turns out the fungus popped up here and they don't got a cure, so the doctors are forking over the one they found.

[demideific]

What kind of a fucking cure fixes that shit?

[ Neurologically obliterating them doesn't seem like there's much hope for survival. It thankfully doesn't quite sound like the plague that Noah knows, but he hates the sound of anything that needs a cure manufactured anyway. ]

Is that whole planet infected?

[feathery]

Nah, just areas where the fungus started growing. It doesn't affect anyone besides the nun-bugs, so all of us are fine. [He adds that as an afterthought, when he remembers everyone's initial "welp, we're fucked" reactions.]

As for cure specifics, I dunno. I guess it's like weed killer for shrooms, but you'd have to talk to someone who works lab support for more than that. Jennifer Keller's our resident doc.

[demideific]

So far. [ He has a bit of a vested interest in shit going down due to terminal illnesses, so it isn't really a surprise when he is more than the usual amounts of pessimistic about this. ]

Jennifer Keller? We got some kind of actual doctor here?

[feathery]

Yeah, that's what I said. But seeing how Atroma claims they've got a vested interest in their kidnappees and a cast of zombies isn't gonna bring home the bacon, our continued survival is probably imminent.

[It comes with a general tone of "whatcha gonna do".]

And yeah. She's like. Actually certified.

[demideific]

You think they've got that much control over everything? That doesn't make sense.

Shit, that's gotta be the jackpot. An actual doctor on this fuck-farce of a show.

[feathery]

Pretty much. Other ships have got more.

[Quite possibly the most useful people in the Fleet, Davesprite thinks.]

And depends. Who knows what they fucking did to us with the impromptu brain surgery. [Said with a motion towards his own implant. God, does he hate that thing.]

[demideific]

More doctors? And you still think you're guaranteed to survive?

[ He scowls at the reminder. ] What, like make us their goddamn puppets?

[feathery]

Isn't that usually how doctors work. The more medical professionals you got on hand, the more likely it is they know what they're doing in life-threatening situations. [He's not seeing the issue here. Is there an issue here? Maybe he's misunderstanding.] Not that anyone would know what to do with me. I don't know what to do with me.

[Why does he talk so much.]

But maybe. It's not like this shit comes with a manual. More like they are the manual, actually. Could be that's how they get all their video footage; they're linked the hell up to the visual cortex of our brains.

[demideific]

More doctors you got, more dangerous shit they can throw at you. Stuff like this, doubt they'd ever overprepare. Who'd do that? [ He pauses, head tilts. ] Because of the wing stuff?

Ah, fuck. You said it. Anybody rips theirs out and get a look yet? Can't be too complicated since it's gotta be so small.

[feathery]

[Davesprite's head tilts right back, though more in a way that telegraphs, eh, point. He sighs a little at the wing inquiry.] Yeah, the wing stuff. I'm kind of a freaky fuckin' zoological impossibility.

As for the implant, I dunno about any haphazard ripping, 'cause I'd like to keep my intellectual facilities intact as little as I may use them. But I had a friend try to teleport it out and that didn't work.

[demideific]

Or an alien. Or both. Sucks to be you, doesn't it?

Teleport it how? There's got to be other ways. Might be protected from that kind of thing.

[feathery]

Depends. But your face looks like it could feature on the newest issue of Alien Magazine, so I guess that's one mystery solved that no one cares about.

And I don't know; time was my thing, not space. You're better off asking Jade how it feels being able to teleport wherever she wants whenever she wants.

[demideific]

Haha, fuck you. [ He is actually entertained, though. ]

Time and space? What the fuck does that mean? Wait, no, don't—I know what it means. Just like that?

[feathery]

[They speak the same language. :|b]

Just like that. She's a witch of the stuff. Nigh omnipotent. Or, well, she was. I guess there are different rules here. Or maybe it's this shit again. [He flicks the implant embedded behind his ear.]

[demideific]

Omnipotent?

[ That gets him to perk up, and he's not sure how to feel about that. Sure, he's a demigod but he's never met a power legitimately higher than that. Of course, people claim that kind of shit all the time, but... other dimensions, other rules, other-other-other. It doesn't matter unless it's local. Still, he's curious. ]

Doubt it. You really think they could fuck with someone that strong?

[feathery]

If they're fucking up our brain waves or something, [and he can't quite hide a flicker of dark displeasure] sure. I mean you control your powers with your brain, right. Impede that and there's no telling what grody terroristic shit you might do.

[Great. Now he's gone and freaked himself out. He rubs the bridge of his nose.]

Jade might be a god where we're from, but there's always someone better.

[demideific]

Yeah, but how would you ever get the drop on someone who's omnipotent? That's unreal bullshit.

[ Noah shakes his head, doesn't look too pleased. ]

This whole thing is just fucked. Fucking... foreigners, even those pricks didn't shove things in their heads.

[feathery]

[Davesprite tilts his head, arching an eyebrow. That's a kinda weird thing to say, but ok.]

You're preaching to the choir, dude. This is my second runaround with this horseshit and I still don't got answers. [Pause.] Actually, they might've grabbed Jade that way. 'Cause it was just a thing you lost all your powers in the last trash heap that snatched us up.

[demideific]

[ It is extremely weird and Noah doesn't bat an eye at the eyebrow. He isn't going to explain anything he doesn't want to. ]

You know, I heard the saying "nothing's new under the sun" before but this is just getting idiotic. How many people in the universe can possibly think it's a good idea to pull random as fuck people out of random as fuck dimensions and hope it fixes shit?

[feathery]

Right.

[SERIOUSLY.]

What the fuck are we gonna fix that they can't, when they've got the technological or magical prowess to filch us from totally separate dimensions. Like I guess we were successful where I was last, but that is the opposite of what I've heard about elsewhere.

[demideific]

Depends on who you ask where I'm from. [ Beat. ] Guess everyone's not dead, so that's a win. The fuck kind of place were you in?

[feathery]

Asgard. Trying to stave off the collapse of the multiverse. It was hella steeped in Norse mythology and involved way more fighting than I ever wanted to sign up for.

[He's still not really sure if it was an improvement over his own reality.]

How about you. What kind of bullshit did you get dealt besides a standard end of the world scenario.