Scene #9433: Oh You're That Mutant

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	A strange confluence of many separate, small things, has resulted in today. Simple questions and short exchanges, with different people in different worlds. Arbitrary choices. Idle impulses. Burner phones, stupid movies, midnight matchmaker; divination, observation, abrogation; the unhurried orbit of two satellites on opposite sides, completely unaware. It's nothing so grand as their destined, fiery collision, perhaps yet to come, but the mathematics of something so coincidentally odd like this must be truly interesting to consider. As one of many rivers from the same source, Lilian has put in word to trusted out-of-Paladins parties about scraping intel from the ruins of NAZCA before the Letter Agency gets to it, so as to be ready for when her plans are ready in the near future, which inevitably goes through Nika and Sakura. Oreshnika has Rita's number, and more or less all future numbers she will ever have, and loves talking to her. She lives with Sakura, who has confessed to, at minimum, to being borderline all-seeing across the planet, so long as she knows where to look, and Sakura knows how to look where Nika is texting. And Lilian talks to Sakura semi-regularly, who talks to Nika regularly, and both of them know about Matilda Bouanich, which through a complicated sequence of causal links, is filtered into a single droplet of action: Nika using Rita's number to convey information from Sakura learned from Lilian given to her by Matilda which was given for the sole purpose of this anyways. As implied by the name 'Eastern Seaboard Urban Center', the former United Kingdom has a western one as well. It doesn't have Arthur's flying Bazaar nor Rita's increasingly well-entrenched quasi-anarchist pseudo-communist spirit burgeoning in it, being in Plymouth rather than Scarborough, close to Exeter, but it's close enough to know what to expect. What passes for a 'instructions' hadn't specified she even has to go in, anyways. <NIKA>: So basically I think it's going to be super helpful if before that you're going to go there first? <NIKA>: I mean I don't know what part I was supposed to say and what part everyone knows I'm not supposed to so maybe you're not going to be there but it'd be nice if you were because it's supposed to go smooth that way. <NIKA>: Because of the future or something but I haven't ever met the future so I'm just hearing about it. <NIKA>: It's not supposed to be dangerous or anything and I hear that you really like swimming and the beach and rivers and all that stuff so maybe it's fun? The walls and wards that surround these places hardly exist bordering the ocean; that much Rita already knows. They're built bordering the bay, where the Tamar empties into the ocean, but not across it. Showing up on just the right day is enough for Rita to understand that this is one of the relatively few places that still accepts ships, given the steady arrival of an entire convoy throughout the afternoon; many of which are G.D.F navy, seemingly responsible for the fact that the rest aren't. A decomissioned warship, a retrofitted cruise liner, a nearly unchanged old world freight liner, two genuinely modern all-purpose transports, and so on; an eclectic hodgepodge of whatever was available or sensible to make in the new reality once everyone realized travel was safer by ocean than by air. Each of them comes by, unloads cargo, fuel, and people brave enough to travel, and stays to be cleaned, refueled, rearmed, and have the claw marks buffed out. Each time one shows up, Rita gets another <NIKA>: Not that one! <NIKA>: Sorry! until it seems that the entire train has finally run dry. Having had hours 'on the town', technically to herself, the 'very seriously important proably it's okay if you don't want to' business finally culminates at the beach, with a rapidfire series of messages in the vein of <NIKA>: Sakura says five or ten minutes and maybe a hundred steps that way?
Lilian Rook	It seems increasingly absurd to be trotting back and forth along the beach, out of town, eventually outside of even the technical limits of the walls, in smaller and smaller ranges over time. Especially with no sign of another boat on the horizon. Still, as hard to keep track of as Nika's claims sometimes are, they've yet to ever be wrong, much less meaningless. It grows clearer over time that Sakura is definitely 'over the shoulder guidance' in the process (and simply doesn't have the ability to talk to space), and that this does involve Rita specifically because it has to do with 'the ocean' in a way that might mean someone else couldn't engage with it. Which only invites guessing and provides no real answers. There's not much that could particularly lead anyone to expect it anyways. A full minute after Nika has proudly announced <NIKA>: That's right! and send a double thumbs up with-swirls, extended silence but for the gentle waves and faint sounds of gulls is finally broken by the water's surface bubbling and sloshing mere meters away from the shoreline. Sand-muddied seawater surges up and spills off around the top of a diving helmet-- something that Rita couldn't ever fail to recognize-- and then the rest of a suit beneath, disturbed only for the presence of a latch-clasp 'wreck-retrievable' supply case. Away from the docks, just outside the Urban Center, someone trudges their way out of the surf on foot.
Rita Ma	Rita's unfortunately aware of her present position in a drop of mathematical water suspended in a spherical vacuum. She spends a while chewing her cheek on public transport while staring at the screen of her little flip-phone, thinking about how she's been having a bad week with people who can see the future. Iori cutting off Gebura's fingers was... Wait, wasn't the whole LobCorp thing partly the Purple Tear's fault too? She's been having a bad six months, she internally corrects herself, with people who can see the future. And so, even though she likes Nika quite a bit, and hasn't known any reason to mistrust Sakura, and is in fact even a little bit fond of Matilda Bouanich, it's hard not to be a tiny bit tensely reserved. Did Iori 'see' this far out when she visited me, too, and arrange whatever this is? People go crazy thinking that way, so Rita makes herself stop. The wind tousles her simple blue-white sundress, and she resists the urge to keep fidgeting and smoothing its wrinkles. Tappytyping while standing awkwardly on the beach is the easiest way for her to self-soothe. <R1#9>: I do really like swimming and the beach and rivers, Ms. Nika. <R1#9>: Rivers are really neat. I never got to see them much. <R1#9>: I don't know how the little fish in them don't just get blown away though. <R1#9>: It seems like they must have a hard life. Being 'viewed' by Sakura so intensively gives her goosebumps too. Normally it wouldn't, but in the context of being so rattled already, to not have privacy from someone who isn't even directly talking to you feels... ... All of that leads up to Rita, in her very most serious arms-crossed-behind-back posture, standing on the beach as if the helmeted figure were ascending the steps to her throne, bubbling over her tension into an inane... "You're not just Ms. Iori again, are you?" She'll be very cross if they are.
Lilian Rook	'You're not just Ms. Iori again, are you?' "What the fuck?" <NIKA>: Probably why people don't get blown away by the wind? Nika's delayed text message goes off after many cycles to think about it, and exactly when the figure in the diving suit stops and stares at Rita in what must be utter noncomprehension. It'd be easy to imagine 'shock, alarm, concern', if they had in any way tensed up. Being knee deep in surf and ankle deep in wet sand should probably make someone more cognizant of the backfoot position they're already on, talking to someone who's been patiently waiting for them on land, exactly at this place and time, but the air of cluelessness about them is like that of a galapagos tortoise encountering a sailor for the first time. The sound of the water around their ankles, waves slowly lapping the shore, almost drowns out the capacity for thought. "Oh! You're the mutant bitch aren't you!" It's a little hard to tell through a diving helmet with just-now released air bridge, but the word 'mutant' almost sounds . . . excited? Like meeting a ninja turtle in real life. "Damn. It was . . ." The figure tries to snap their fingers, and wet gloves squeak off themselves. "Ma. Something ma. With the attitude. Rena? Rita! Wow, what a surprise. I just got here and I find one of you." Ah. Okay. That's who it is.
Rita Ma	bi-yo-yi~! bi-yo-yi~! Rita's phone chirps. She smiles apologetically at the crass galapagos tortoise while checking its screen, just to make sure Nika isn't telling her this person isn't it. ... This person? He? She? Hm. Are they, you know, a friend of Sea Monkey's? "The 'mutant bitch'??" Rita nearly drops her phone and gets halfway to doubled over in hitstun, arm crossed over her stomach. "I'm-- not--!" Am I a mutant? a lucid part of her brain thinks while the world spins a little. That kind of means 'born different', right? Or something about radiation. This is 'a disease you get from monsters that makes you like them', though, so, "It's more like being a zombie really..." she burbles pathetically while trying to straighten back up from her wooble. "And what do you mean, 'with the attitude'. My attitude is normal." As soon as her poise meter has regenerated to full, though, she realizes she should be the one on the attack. Rita manages to be suddenly businesslike-firm, folding her hands in front of herself with the same recouped dignity as a cat that just fell. "I was told the future would go smoother if I met someone here. What are you here for? Who are you supposed to be?" Oh, so this is how it feels to do the vague 'for the future' thing to someone else. It's a little fun. Darn it.
Lilian Rook	'It's more like being a zombie really...' "Huh." That single, echoey-muffled word manages to convey an oceanic depth and breadth of pensive analysis all by itself. As if Rita had just uttered a koan, so abruptly that it demanded contemplation on the spot. "Crazy." They just resume walking as if that were the whole interaction. They're all but past Rita on the beach when she asks anything back, and that seems to catch them by surprise too; to a lesser degree, after 'the fact she was already there'. Somehow, through the posture of a diving helmet, they managed to convey 'Wait you actually had something to say?' 'What are you here for? Who are you supposed to be?' "Free country, so none of your damn business." seems to have been shot back on autopilot. "Wait, shit! This jolly ol' England! So it's kings and queens instead of freedom!" they say, in a way that is unmistakably meant to be stupid on purpose. "Like 'Begging your pardon, your majesty, Lady Ma' or something? I'd kneel but that's just grody." Rather than giving a better answer, they stop to remove their helmet first, interspersed with tinny muttering about "--tastes like fucking copper and bleach--" and "--fucking clown looking out of my little clown car on my head--" about it. The mystery file is once again re-opened, when the ambiguously styled and extremely wavy hair volume comes out: how do a handful of tchotke-studded cords get that above the shoulders, much less into a helmet? Followed by: Wait aren't those just necklaces and bracelet charms? "The fuck does 'supposed to be' even mean anyways? Who's anyone supposed to be? You're 'supposed' to be a rich girl living the good life with a hold full of galley slaves aren't you? Where do you get off?" Unfortunately, a face reveal doesn't help much. If anything, it makes pinning down a pronoun somewhat harder, and things get more awkward for them knowing who Rita is first. They look pretty tan for a diver, at least??? "Besides, where else should I be? The whole country is fucking boring and everywhere you go is exactly the same. I decided I'd just keep going east, so I'm going east; not much else to do." They turn around and drop the carry case on a blank stretch of sand, next, kicking the latch and muttering "The future my ass." while disengaging the neck buckle and stripping off the top of the diving suit right then and there. They must've fucked up putting it on the first time. A soaked t-shirt, clammy wet and white, is stuck to their skin almost up to the armpits, above which is mostly dry, save for sweat and humidity. Shaking off water from their fingers, pulled out of diving gloves one at a time, shakes a turquoise-onyx-bone-amethyst bracelet cluster on one wrist, and does nothing for the military-style wrist-watch on the other. Despite being taller than Rita, and with deceptively well-built arms, it's uncannily difficult to read anything into that distribution, in a way that real people just subtly aren't.
Lilian Rook	Under the translucent-clinging fabric one third down, has a partial window overlooking something that would feel comical to call a scar. The skin is deathly pale at the edges, like it healed up while actively wasting away, but the broad wedge that seems to go from one shoulder to nearly the opposite waist is made up of three ragged parallel lines that have perhaps 'mineralized' purple-grey where there should be scar tissue, striated with glaring ribbons of red, like streams of blood suspended in amber, and shot through with veins of the same chrome that seems to weld it to the flesh around it. The nearby veins are brighter rather than darker, subtly reflecting subdermal light back, rather than colourizing skin. "So, like, are you here to say 'fuck off we're full'? Like the classic line? Or are you just going to try and kill me? You made a pretty good effort that one time, so it's not like I'm totally against the idea."
Rita Ma	Rita pivots and follows behind them, at a distance of about ten feet. Her hands stay politely folded; eyes stay politely searching. She flows from: "It doesn't seem very 'jolly'. I don't think I like England much. Do they really still have a king...?" To: "I don't know. What face are you trying to wear right now?" (She takes the point about 'supposed to be' pretty well. "... Hey, I didn't have slaves!" And to: "'The future' sucks," commiseratingly. As a concept, you know. - - - - A sharp, tiny gasp draws in from Rita when the stranger bares their 'scar'. Then it continues, slower, as a long breath. Oh, that looks sort of like when Ms. Rook's face and leg got-- "You're Ash," she says, suddenly certain, a little bewildered, and mostly downbeat. "I don't think I'm here to kill you," Rita adds, shifting uncomfortably at the hips. She realizes she's about two percent unsure. If people wanted her dead, am I the one they'd send? Nika wouldn't do that if she knew, but she didn't seem to know much. "We're just supposed to talk to each other, Ms. Ash. For... some reason." Rita is going to wither away and die. Suddenly, Ash 'getting changed' feels like something she has to avert her eyes from. "I'm glad you're getting away from those people," she manages after a pause. "I'm not sure I heard all that's happened. Do you have a good place to be going?"
Lilian Rook	'It doesn't seem very 'jolly'. I don't think I like England much. Do they really still have a king...?' "Man, probably. But like, a new magic one or something." 'I don't know. What face are you trying to wear right now?' "One that isn't cold and gross from seawater." '... Hey, I didn't have slaves!' "Oh yeah just poor broke bastards working the engines, my mistake." 'The future' sucks' "Yeah. You get it. Better just to get it over with." 'You're Ash' That finally puts a dent in the flawless pace of ongoing prattle, spurred ahead by the simple physical activity that serves as its backdrop. Hesitating at the waist, Ash looks back over their shoulder and stares at Rita. "What? How'd it take that long? Either you know what I look like or you don't. The fuck?" It's sure something to say for someone who wore their flight suit and spoke through the double radio garbler even outside of this world. 'We're just supposed to talk to each other, Ms. Ash. For... some reason.' Ash curls their lip and narrows their eyes at something. They aren't great at restraining expressions; or perhaps they're used to not having to bother. "For some reason." they repeat out loud, a little too incredulous for the sentence chosen. It is, for a moment, coincidentally 'Lilioid'. "And 'supposed' to. Again. You're 'supposed' to talk to me. Keep 'we' out of your mouth." Ash returns to stripping off the diving suit with subtly greater haste and less delicacy. At least it's soggy ripped-up canvas pants below, ostensibly stained through and through with a mottled tapestry of dust, dirt, grass, oil, and old blood. Kicking open the long case, the foam-padded interior seems to contain the last, skeletal remains of that SERE kit from all the way in Nevada, oilcloth wrapped around what is almost definitely their spear, squeezed in diagonally, and: A brand new hiking backpack that already looks trailworn (mostly emptied to fit flat), an old flip phone, soap shampoo and conditioner bundle, several bags of chips and candy, a handgun with no bullets, a radio brick, boots and two folded sets of surprisingly flattering clothes, an elastic-wrapped stack of credit cards, a fake passport, four MREs bundled together, a gamebrick model from several years ago, a phone jammer, a bag of herbs, a cracked geode, an interestingly-shaped stick, a leatherbound notebook, plastic explosive and detonator sticks, battery chargers, a cats-and-dogs patterned umbrella, a walkman and headphones, a butterfly knife, a thermos of sweetened coffee, and a book of stickers. 'I'm glad you're getting away from those people. I'm not sure I heard all that's happened. Do you have a good place to be going?' "They're all dead anyways. Kind of hard to stay close, y'know?" Ash mutters, rumpling up the suit and just tossing it on the sand. The helmet thunks into the wet pile after. "I killed everyone your buddies didn't, by the way, so don't take a tone or anything." They ostensibly plan to just leave it there, considering their focus is entirely on re-filling the backpack with everything else. "It was all bullshit anyways. Knew it was. 'Paying back Damien' my ass; he's gonna be just fucking fine without me. Should have done this forever ago. Killed 'em all the first time I heard 'honey'. Shouldn't have ever started."
Lilian Rook	They're most of the way through when they finally give Rita a proper answer. Sort of. "No? Obviously. Everywhere is basically all the same shit. More poor dumb bastards greasing the wheels because they're too scared to walk, all spinning the rube goldberg machine of manufactured bullshit to keep everything the same so sigma brunchlords in sci-fi bunkers can wear sunglasses indoors and LARP about 'Craft'." The brief pause is only for a disgruntled sigh. "I guess here it's probably medieval castles and 'Chivalry' or some shit, but it's all the same whether they're like 'mission outline' or 'm'lady'. Either way, I'm not staying." Standing up, Ash throws the backpack over one shoulder, bundled length strapped directly to the side. The same triple-scar seems to run over their front, too. Like three of something went all the way through and only just barely not back out the other side. "There's only one place to go to. Wherever the fuck the girls are." A beat. "Like, the three of them. The special ones. I'm not looking for pussy." They make a face that clearly indicates they are aware that it's an extremely weird and stupid thing to clarify. "I'm just bored, and tired, and I'm ready for this whole world to be over already. And I guess I ran out of dust to collect in some silo waiting for an excuse to fire."
Rita Ma	"What? How'd it take that long? "You don't remember having had a helmet on?" Rita says, just as startled. Maybe it's like Lilian's face-thing in reverse? 'Poor broke bastards' gets another uncomfortable settling out of Rita, her gaze wandering up towards and past the city. But she doesn't object. 'Supposed to' is bullshit exactly because that's horrible. "I'm not going to take a tone, Ms. Ash," she says, taking only the slightest bit of a tone. "I'm happy for you. Lots of my friends... used to be involved, in bad things, and that's about the best it could've gone." Nonon, for one. The Apple Tree harpoonists who used to be with New York. Do the mermaids count? She steps forward, tries to peep into the carrying case, and seems transfixed by its contents for a few long moments while Ash talks about Craft. <R1#9>: She's here. Thanks Ms. Nika. Thanks Ms. Sakura. <R1#9>: What's a sigma brunchlord? "... I'm not looking for pussy." After a little startle, Rita murmurs "well, that's good," not in a sense of moral approval but like Ash shouldn't try getting blood from a stone. "... I never really liked the idea that it's just them that are special." She catches up, soft footsteps on the beach sand, and then matches pace alongside Ash just outside arm's reach. That means little for either of them, but it's symbolic. "Or that it takes something big and magic to fix the world. I mean, maybe only the Blooms can fix the big things with Antegent and all, but... the stuff you're sick of, it's all ordinary human things, right? Anything humans made, humans can take apart." Pause. Sand crunches with footfalls. The wind blows through Rita's hair, and she looks back at the water after it. "... Sorry. You didn't ask for the philosophy. Um, I'm talking to Oreshnika on the phone. Want me to say you're looking for her?"
Lilian Rook	'You don't remember having had a helmet on?' Ash stares at Rita so intensely and yet so blankly that the answer is clearly 'how would I remember that?', probably with 'dipshit' added to the end. They say "Okay but you either don't recognize me at all or you know what to recognize ahead of time." as if explaining that a week has seven days and thus every three days is sometimes not twice a week instead. <NIKA>: I can ask Sakura. <NIKA:> One second. <NIKA:> Going now. <NIKA>: Back now. <NIKA>: Sakura says it's like a guy who thinks he's so cool so he doesn't have to think about being really unpopular and alone and he's rich and goes to a lot of "frivolous" meetings and things to feel productive. <NIKA>: I hope that helps! 'well, that's good' "Hey. What does that mean?" Ash seems to realize they weren't supposed to hear that a few seconds later, and then realizes that Rita is the only other person there after about twice as long. They let down their guard shortly thereafter, though they still wear a tensely disturbed expression. A ghost of somethng familiar. "I don't really care whether you think it was bad or not. I mean, it was fucking stupid. And kinda racist from the start? Like, naming your org after the Nazca lines because of a space signal? Like, really? Ancient aliens? I thought you grifters were supposed to be in on the 'real truth' and shit. God." They slam the case shut as an exasperated punctuation mark, then, despite closing it, also leave it abandoned on the beach. "No, hold on, if I get started I'm never gonna stop. Great soldiers, decent agent, and--" Rita learns a new slur. "--everything else. Like, amazing tech; big breakthroughs, and I should know, since I helped, but delusional program. Billions wasted. You can't throw enough money at guys to stop them being guys. Eventually someone's just already being paid enough to do their best already, and like, that's just it. That's their best. That's the best way they can act." '... I never really liked the idea that it's just them that are special.' "Yeah, everyone's special in their own way. Okay." Ash drones, and after putting on the dry boots, starts to move up the beach; not straight past Rita, onto dry land, but along the coast. Whether or not they intend Rita to follow or intend to ditch her on the spot is impossible to divine, and perhaps even totally immaterial anyways. "But I'm not special in any of those special little special boy and special girl ways, so I wanna see the people who're supposed to be this kind." they say. "So good thing I don't want to fix the world then, huh. It'd really suck a year from now if I did." "'the stuff you're sick of, it's all ordinary human things, right? Anything humans made, humans can take apart.'" "See that's where you're wrong, actually." Ash says, hoofing it unnecessarily close to the tide line. "Humans came up with the stupid prizes, but the stupid games came installed. Call it evolution or human nature or god's plan or whatever, but we all have the same shitty little switches and cranks you can flip and yank in our dumbass monkey brains and completely distort our already low-rez crayon disaster perception of reality into one of a million pre-set acid trip nightmare versions."
Lilian Rook	'... Sorry. You didn't ask for the philosophy.' "Well, you did, so here's the philosophy." They go on talking whilst clutching their backpack straps as if trying to keep their hands occupied and still. "Everyone subscribes to an alternate reality, and they're all completely consistent and totally predictable, because they're all induced by the stupid little brainhack of owning something. You own too much property and you're in the landlordverse. You own too much bitcoin and you're in the cryptoverse. You own too much dogma and you're in the churchverse. And now you own too much magic and you're in the enlightenedverse, or you own too much debt-cope and you're in the extraverse. Even since time forever, you own too many women and slaves, which is one by the way, and you're in the manverse and whiteyverse respectively, too." "You get it? That's not 'made by humans'. Humans roll off the assembly line like little grey blobs and they turn into whatever you feed them. You only get exceptions when they're damaged. Something takes a sledge to their brain and they die or get worse or the backdoor hack finally breaks and they wake up like they're on another planet and have to keep it to themselves for the rest of their life. Or every so often someone's just born with broken cranks so they can be the clown bastard of the earth until they die." 'Um, I'm talking to Oreshnika on the phone. Want me to say you're looking for her?' That registers so late that it's passed its expiration date to be comical when Ash blinks, stops, turns around, and says "Seriously? You just talk? On the phone." They repeat it in disbelief, then laugh one dry syllable. "Oh my god your infosec has to be dogshit. Our intel guys are so stupid!" seems to amuse them for a while. Then they stare at Rita, expectantly. "So?" They leave a pause without clarifying, anticipating Rita is going to say something. "What's it gonna be?" This is somehow relevant to Rita offering to do them a favour.
Rita Ma	Rita switches sides with Ash at some point, so she can walk in the shallow surf herself. It's nice. The foam of the waves makes a shifting line between them, just like that. She doesn't much care that her shoes are getting wet. Her head tilts, and a smile spreads, while Ash rants about NAZCA. Yeah. It was stupid, wasn't it. The smile fades, on the other big topic. 'Philosophy'. Rita's lips squish as she sizes up Ash sideways, and she aimlessly kicks the water. "That's a pretty unhappy way to see the world," she says. And, swallowing her first impulse, she matches their cadence: "Then nothing's really anyone's fault. I think people are worse than that. I think they do choose the world they want to be in. I did," she says, standing on the shoreline, in her cheap-looking dress. "And so I get... really angry at them, when they choose wrong." "You're right, though. The ways most people choose to be, when they own stuff... it's awful. It's the people who own the least who always change the world. If you give them time." One year, though. That's not much. Rita looks off towards a city that isn't London, but might as well be to her; and thinks about raindrops falling up. Her stomach turns. . . . <R1#9>: Ms. Ash wants to talk to you. That's okay, right? She's stopping her march to poke at her phone and wipe other chatlogs, and grumbling something about how her infosec is fine actually and her girlfriend's so good at it and taught her lots, when she realizes that Ash is staring at her. "'What's it gonna be'?" she repeats dumbly, having the phone halfway extended. It visibly takes her brain a second to catch up with the idea of trading favors at all. Then she wants to wave off a price, but something in Ash's demeanor tells her they'd respect the barter more. ". . . Don't just live in the 'Bloomverse'," she finally says, and then extends the phone all the way. "That's the favor."
Rita Ma	It's cute, for a burner. Old clamshell design, with a sticker of a mouse and one of the planet Neptune. A star charm and a letter S friendship bead hang off a string at its corner. The hinge is a little grindy, the buttons are a little mushy, and it's got the kind of antenna you can tug out, slightly bent.
Lilian Rook	'That's a pretty unhappy way to see the world' "Yeah, well. It's a pretty unhapy world." Ash grunts, then jerks their thumb over their shoulder. "How happy do the people in there look? Am I supposed to be rosy about the slums being a little nicer than in the old States?" 'Then nothing's really anyone's fault.' "That's right." Ash says it with a surprising lack of emphasis. Like it's a truism. A resingned matter-of-fact. "Nobody chose it, nobody can avoid it, nobody can help it, and nobody can change it. It'll all be like this ten thousand years from now, repeating in the same shitty wash cycle of the same fuckups and the same never-agains, and the same small minority of people will be trying to bail out the sinking ship with teaspoons, and they'll die coping that one day the future will be brighter the same way." "Humanity doesn't really change. Not on the timescale we'll still be around at least." 'And so I get... really angry at them, when they choose wrong.' "So what?" Ash says, ever so nihilistically, whilst walking faster and more agitatedly at the same time. "The choices aren't going away. We're not gonna get any better at learning not to make them. We already have all the data to know that they're stupid, evil, pointless, and fuck us over in the end, and we already have the tools for everyone to find it too. Didn't change shit." Then, the next sequence of words are potentially be the most baffling things Rita will ever hear from an 'intelligence agent' working for the government for the rest of her long life. "You think there won't be another imperial superpower suppressing democracy and socialism worldwide two centuries from now? You think there won't be coups and war criminals, no trillionaires and minimum wage coal rollers? America isn't special. The forces that contrived its existence will shape a replacement just as easily." "No matter how hard you try to teach people better, how much you show them a brighter path, their kids will take it all for granted and get brainhacked by the same old shit that the ancient fucking Romans were. It's all so . . ." 'It's the people who own the least who always change the world. If you give them time.' "Completely pointless." Ash sighs, slowing to a stop. Their head turns towards the ocean, and their stare unfocuses somewhere around the horizon. "I don't know how you can still believe that. Did a couple of little victories go to your head? Or do you just have to think it'll all be okay to keep going on?" '. . . Don't just live in the 'Bloomverse'' Rita definitely just passed a check. Ash is so easy to read without a helmet that one must wonder if anyone ever cared to try. There was that increasingly suspicious look the longer it took Rita to cotton on, then the mild shock that she'd settle for something so little, then the synapse formed of 'oh, a sucker', and then the tumultuous expression of indecision, followed by a look of secondhand concern even while scoffing derisively.
Lilian Rook	"Sure. Okay. But there's no Bloomverse." Ash says. "Sparks, Blooms, whatever; we're just the greyest grey blobs that failed the hardest to ever be something else that anyone ever did. No matter how much we consume, and how desperately we try to be something, someone, anything, we always puke it back up in the end eventually." Ash laughs, joylessly, right in the middle. "Do I just seem that cool? Like I'm doing it on purpose? Let me tell you, we might choke enough down for just long enough to think we believe it, for a little while, but it's always gonna be that our featureless grey slime oozes right out the bottom of every last 'verse there is, until we're back where we fucking started: so completely adrift from every version of reality that the only thing to eat out there is shit that real human beings can't even conceive exists." <NIKA>: ! <NIKA>: Yes! <NIKA>: Absolutely! <NIKA>: Please! Ash rubs their hand across their face, grimacing at the film of cold seawater still on it, but not bothering to remove it from their temple before sighing. "At least, that's how it definitely is for me. And I can see all the signs in Fenrir. So it bugs me. That I'm like, the first and only drop-out. So I've been thinking about how to get some answers in a way that doesn't turn into a two week subjective time loop of videogame total wipeout bullshit. You know?" As if Rita would know. They eyeball the phone warily, but take it in the end; only after speaking first. "Fine. That's the price you ask, that's what you get. Don't say I didn't warn you though. You're not gonna get much out of it." They don't quite mutter 'cute?' quietly enough at the phone, turning it over a few times with surprising gentleness. "Seeya mutant." Ash says, turning to keep walking and waving over their shoulder; the clearest indicator of intent they've given all day. "Man, why do all the vigilante amphibians kinda get it? Like, almost. There's probably a Buddhist explanation for that reemerging pattern I bet." Huh??? "Do whatever with the suit. I just stole it anyways. Right before I got off the boat. Bye"
Rita Ma	"You think there won't be another imperial superpower... two centuries from now?" Rita is baffled, even if maybe she shouldn't be. She lingers and chews on that for a long moment; about the year 2000 that she saw through National Geographics and then visited, about the 2100 of this world, and the 2200 of her own; about the line from America to NAZCA to Floating City New York, and Clark Miller's brains blown out. "Yeah. I do think so," she says only after handing over the phone, looking off towards land again. "If there's not a king there--" 'there' being Scarborough, inanely-- "then there probably aren't any kings left in the whole world, right? And if there is, maybe I could just go kill him, and then there'd be none again. It just took a while. That's all." There's not, and she won't, but the little gesture she makes with her hand implies a vestigial fragility. Like an appendectomy. She of course keeps her mouth shut on the subject of eating things real humans wouldn't look at. "You do sort of seem that cool," she says, smiling sadly. "Miss Rook too. I'll try not to forget it. But, I mean... I think you could find other Ashes if you looked. Who were hurt like you, but don't get to be 'special' like you. Or if you can't find them, it's because they're dead." "Be good to them if you find them, alright?" Rita slows, and Ash trudges away from her, and she waves, with mixed feeling. This conversation was 'important', right? Hopefully in a good way. What was it Iori said, about how Rita touches people's trajectories...? She wince-smiles at 'mutant'- "See you...", she starts, and fails to find any nickname that fits- and then trudges back to grab the diving suit before she goes. Sea Monkey could use a second outfit, she thinks.