ᴠɪᴅᴇᴏ | rats are people too

[sylphystia]

Who: Dezel and you
Broadcast: Yes
Action: The Golden
When: Now

[video]

[A group of ship vermin are all sitting in a circle, waiting patiently for... something. A bowl full of scraps appears and seems to float in the air before it sits down in front of them. The rats make cute happy little noises as they dig into the food.

... And then, the greatest evil comes.

The roomba.

One of the tiny maintenance robots comes screaming around the corner at high speed. DIRT DETECTED. [...] PESTS DETECTED. It heads straight for the the poor rats. They all scatter save for one really fat one, who's too focused on the food to notice what's coming.

But what's this-- the droid is scooped up by someone invisible! Dezel's voice might be familiar to some; it's the "don't sleep in my room" guy.]

Leave. The animals. Alone.

[A thin wire appears. With a hard jerk, he shreds the cleaning droid into pieces. Imagine if that had been someone's neck.]

It's all right. You can come out now. [And then the rats come scurrying out of their little holes again. A couple of them crawl over Dezel's invisible shoes, then go back for the food.]

Comments

[privatizes]

[ . . . . ]

Hey. Invisible rat lover.

[ totally unbothered by that prospect ]

You gonna use those parts?

[ TONY STARK: OPPORTUNIST ]

[notzubats]

[A not so invisible kid responds]

Hey! That's my droid! Not his!

[privatizes]

Was your droid. Now it's in pieces.

[ tough shit kid ]

[notzubats]

Well maybe he can be fixed!

[privatizes]

Uh, yeah. That's what I want to do.

[ and keep him ]

You obviously can't be trusted to be a decent robot parent, better leave this up to the professionals, kid. He'll go to a good home, promise.

[notzubats]

What?! You can't just steal Zurg!

[privatizes]

Pretty sure Zurg is resting in pieces kid.

[ just saying ]

He's no longer Zurg. He's going to be resurrected and named Not Zurg, and I'll add a laser beam to his face. It'll be great.

[notzubats]

[You know what? Gonna try what Vision suggested to do-]

No.

1/2

[privatizes]

[ . . . ]

[privatizes]

So I'm thinking blue and yellow for the outer layer.

[ nOPE ]

1/2

[notzubats]

[ VISION YOU LIAR ]

[notzubats]

Why do you even want one so bad anyway?!

[privatizes]

Battlebots.

[ obvi ]

[notzubats]

Battlebots?

[sylphystia]

[Who is this chump, his voice isn't familiar.]

Is there even anything usable?

[He has no idea, he's not an engineer and he's also blind.]

[privatizes]

Won't know until I tear it apart and build something cooler. Rat-friendly, even.

[ pause ]

So I'm just going to get this part over with and ask what kind of radioactive spider bit you?

[sylphystia]

I should really return it to the kid. He's throwing a fit. Practically crying. It's pathetic.

[Oh my god Tony you can't just ask people why they're invisible????]

What? Spiders only bite if they feel threatened.

[privatizes]

Life's not fair. He'll get over it.

[ hE WANTS THAT ROBOT GODDAMMIT ]

And thanks for the pro-tip, Spiderman 2.0, but being invisible isn't exactly a cheap parlor trick. How are you doing it?

[sylphystia]

You don't have to live with him.

[He snorts.]

I'm not human to start with. Seraphim are invisible to pretty much everyone. If you really want, I could probably manifest in a mirror or something. But not over these things.

[privatizes]

[ . . . huh. ]

Seraphim -- like what, angels?

[ he sounds curious, anyway. enough to let go of the robot war and focus on something else. ]

[sylphystia]

No. [God damn it not this shit again.] Like a nature spirit. I'm a wind seraph, but there are other kinds.

[privatizes]

Oh.

[ pause ]

So, wind angel, why the rats?

[sylphystia]

[DAMN IT TONY. He could argue this, but he knows when someone is being pedantic. Besides, he's been called an angel of death by Symonne. He'd rather not go down that path again. He doesn't want to think about it at all.

Animals, think about animals.]

I like animals better than people. Humans are noisy, messy, and hate others for no reason. But the rats clean up after the crew and eat the dangerous things that sneak in, and they always like seeing people and playing with them if allowed.

[privatizes]

[ okay. weird rat guy who talks to rats. okay. sure. whatever.

fucking let's roll with it. ]

And your captain's got her pants in a bunch because she's anti-rat?

[sylphystia]

She thinks they're a danger to the crew. Like we're not twenty times their size and blessed with powers.

[It's pretty clear what he thinks of her at this point.]

She just wants to feel like she's in control of something.