driftfleet | the white noise is deafening silence

[In the very early hours of January 20th, as the Marsiva and her captives drift nonchalantly through the depths of the universe, there is a call. Every single personal communicator and console springs to life, spitting out a stream of indecipherable static and showing only gray snow on screen. It continues like this for a few seconds longer, going black and then going staticky, and then the signal switches to the encrypted channel generally used for speaking to the Interceptors when something big goes down.

This is a little more successful. The voice may be familiar to some, at least through the static.]

Zhade here! I trust I ███ your attention? I'm having some ██▓▓ble ██tting through. Some of the ░▓██▓█ are missing. I can't ░▓▓▓ read on their loc█████ns. [A particularly long burst of static.] ███stening. I'll s█▓▓█ more inf██▓▓▓▓▓█ I get it.

Stay sharp! [There's the sound of someone actually doing the fingerguns wink noise, and then static.

Any messages sent back won't get through, and Zhade isn't there to answer.]

[ A blip of lost time passes right after those words, before every passenger mysteriously wakes alone in their own unfamiliar room. The style of decor resembles that of the Marsiva's Hospitality Deck, if any passengers should remember what that's like. It sounds and smells the same as the host ship as well, all clean and chrome.

Welcome back to the Marsiva, dear passengers. It's time for round three of calibrations. ]

[ This mingle will cover all non-calibration room interactions. Please continue to come back to it for the duration of the plot! You are, of course, free to post any other mingles/posts/etc. that you'd like. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Keith looked thoughtful about that.]

Yeah. I can see how that could happen. [It kind of already had. There was a reason for that scar on Keith's face, and for Shiro's replacement robotic arm.]

It made it hard for us to see when something was wrong not that long ago.

Ahh, so you've got some experience under your belt, then.

[She sips idly at her cocoa.]

Well, lesson learned, right? We fuck up so we can do better next time. I'm sure he'd appreciate you noticing that sort of thing in the future.

Yeah. [Lup had no idea. Shiro had feared that exact thing, and then had told Keith that he needed to be the one to stop him... to kill him... and Keith had found himself in that exact spot. Just like with the stepping up to lead the team thing. Shiro was really good at reading a situation, apparently.]

It's a heck of a mistake, though. We paid a huge price for it.

[Huh... that's more frank than she'd expected. She quirks a brow, her expression shifting, a bit more serious now.]

You wanna talk about it?

[Keith hesitated. He wasn't sure why that came out. Taking a deep breath, he shrugged a little.]

We didn't realize he had been replaced with a clone until it was too late. He was turned against us, and I had to fight him.

[That was the least complicated way of saying it, anyway. And, he wasn't sure who had made friends with a certain Altean alchemist witch, so he was a little reluctant to bring that part of it up.]

[...huh. That sure is a thing. Cloning isn't an especially familiar topic for her, but she gets the concept- she saw a cloned body of her lover the day before she was brought here, even. The turning bit, though... that's weird?]

By turned... you mean like mind-controlled? Or it wasn't him in his own body?

[Because that's very different.]

It's uh... a little of both, I think. The clone had been programmed, I think? But still had enough of Shiro's personality to try fighting against it. It was weird. He had his memories and everything. But it was like he snapped suddenly. Someone took control, and triggered the programming, and Shiro... he remembers it. He said it was like having someone in his head telling him what to do.

[Yes... the real Shiro had the clone's memories... interesting that, hm?]

Geez, it sure sounds weird. I've seen some weird shit over the years, and that's up there.

[Too bad Barry isn't around. She'd love to pick his brain on the logic of this story; necromancy is his jam way more than hers, and clones fall into that category.]

Not sure how you'd check for that in the future. Don't suppose you've got a cleric in your group?

Yeah. My life has been a lot of weird lately... and some of that weird was finding out that what I thought was normal wasn't exactly as normal as I originally thought.

[Finding out that his mom was a space alien had been pretty jarring.]

A cleric? [Keith looked confused.]

Well, you're in good company. This is a tent made for weirdos.

[Strange (platonic) bedfellows, so to speak.]

Clerics are like... magic healers. They pray to their god and your wounds close up, literally. They're good in a pinch, and they have spells for sensing evil intentions, too.

[Keith smiled a bit. Well, he could live with that... being a 'weirdo'. It was better than some other things he'd been called.

He looked thoughtful about the cleric thing, and then shook his head.]

Not exactly. I mean, Allura has some sort of alchemy thing going on with healing powers, but I think that's the closest we have. But, she was around Shiro through the whole thing, and she didn't realize it, either.

[He sighed.]

Like, after the fact, we were all able to pinpoint moments where we were worried about him, that he seemed off, but I think we all just were happy to have him back that none of us really thought about it.

Nah, that's legit. I mean, if I was suddenly reunited with somebody after worrying about them for a long time, and they started acting kinda twitchy, I wouldn't immediately think "it's a clone!" It's a pretty wild theory to jump on.

[That's basically what happened with her boys, when they found each other again- everyone was acting just a little bit off from how she remembered.]

Yeah... which makes it all the more crazy when it turns out to be true, I guess.

[He gave a small huff, smiling weakly in response.]

But, we did eventually resolve it... even if it was kind of a mess in the end.

[Keith rubbed slightly at the scar on his face, like it was bothering him. It wasn't, but the memory of it was.]

The resolution is what matters, though, in the end. The mess is just what you remember because it's easier to linger on the bad than good when you look back.

[That got a dark snort of a chuckle out of him.]

Yeah. It is.

[The countdown on the clock was getting close now.]

Almost time...

Yyyyyyep.

[She hadn't noticed until now. She watches it quietly with him for a long moment, her expression thoughtful, then taps her mug up against his.]

Well, here's to another shitty night of shitty dreams. See you in the morning... and thanks for hanging out.

[With a few quick gulps she downs the rest of her hot chocolate. Aaaand then she chucks the mug as hard as she can at the timer, letting out a loud "WHOO!" with her arms upraised as it shatters dramatically against the display. It'll all just fix itself overnight, so it hardly matters in the long run, but hey, it made her feel better.]

[He returned the toast and also chugged his, but then stared in momentary shock as she threw the mug. Her shout, though, made him laugh.]

Good one.

[And then... poof! Nighty night!]

the white noise is deafening silence

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