trans_9 | Sometimes research just doesn't help. [Open]

Patsy Walker was quickly discovering that the media library onboard Stacy had vast amounts of information on almost any subject that she wished to look up. After having been distracted by looking up the history of lipstick, reading about Marie Antoinette, and discovering a trashy beach read, she had gotten down to business and started researching Hell and Satan and all of that stuff. And boy, do I wish I hadn’t. All of this information couldn’t be more contradictory if it tried, she mused. I mean, okay, I want to understand Daimon, I do – why, I don’t know, but I’m drawn towards it just the same – but so much of this just refuses to make any coherent sense!

Clearly, if she was going to understand him, she’d have to approach this from a different route.

Whatever that route was. Talk to him some more?

She shook her head and went back to some light, fluffy reading. Not that Joan Collins was light and fluffy. Really, it was more hot and heavy.

And bad on you for imagining Daimon as your bodice-ripping stud!

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"So they gave him a promotion and made him the king of all evil," Patsy says, wondering if she's got the gist of it right. "Am I sort of close?"

"Well, yes, except there wasn't really a 'him' in the first place. It was used as a job title, not a particular figure."

Roxie's starting to look juuust a bit smug at having the chance to talk about all this pent-up information.

Oh, go ahead and look as smug as you like, sweetheart. Patsy appreciates this. She's a little disturbed that someone who's so young-looking knows all this...but she appreciates it just the same. "Kind of like a black smith is what a person did by trade, before Blacksmith became a last name?"

"Yes, actually," Roxie says with a little bit of a nod. "But the analogy would work better if you had a guy named Prosecutor who was actually a serial killer or something."

"..." Patsy wrinkled her nose. "That's disturbing."

"But it gives you an idea of how they changed the text," Roxie says, smiling just a little again. "Like I said, a lot of the most-known 'demons' were just local deities that got written into the role. Satan's the same kind of thing, just with a local name instead of a foreign one."

Patsy smiled back at Roxie this time. "That's...actually good to know," she says. "And it gives me something to sift through while I try to understand Daimon. Which is complicated enough as it is." She tilts her head. "Have you met anyone weird here from your home, someone who just...confused you?"

Roxie shakes her head. "I think I'm the only person here from where I'm from," she says. "But I'm not sure if I'd even recognize someone, unless they work for the same being I do." That's an interesting choice of words—'being', not 'person'.

It's one that Patsy picks up on as well. She tilts her head, obviously confused. Who is this girl? "Being?"

"My god, Shyama the Night-Time," Roxie says, as if this were someone it were possible to just go and visit on one's off-hours.

She said it so matter-of-factly, so casually that Patsy's jaw drops just a little bit. She composes herself quickly. "That's...quite the name."

"Not really," Roxie says, adjusting her glasses. "A lot of deities go for more ostentatious titles. Look at what Yahweh made of himself."

Yahweh! A name that Patsy has heard! She nods in agreement. "I see your point," she says. "So...what is...Shyama the Night-Time god of?"

"The night-time, obviously," Roxie says with a hinting smile. "He watches over dreams and mysteries, and he finds people like me to help guard against the things that don't belong that creep in through the night."

"Oh! So he's kind of like the Sandman. In theory." Please don't hate her for that generalization, Roxie.

"Not really," Roxie says. She doesn't hate, but she does grudge some. "Shyama crafts a lot of nightmares, and deaths in darkness fall under his domain. But he helps uphold the natural order of things most of the time. Gives structure for people to live in. People like me are exceptions to balance out the things that don't belong in the world."

"..." She listens to that, taking it in. It sounds interesting, if a little scary. Patsy wonders what purpose the ship has had in choosing Roxie. Whatever it is...the girl is certainly unique. "And what do people like you do exactly?"

"Hunt down the cho and kill them." She halfway adjusts her glasses again. "They infect other creatures and eat them from the inside out. A lot of the time they hide as normal-looking people."

Impressive. That's really impressive. Here, Patsy's starting out to be a hero, to do amazing things, and this girl standing in front of her...she already does amazing things. The awe on Patsy's face is clear as she asks, "What happens to the creatures who are eaten from inside-out? Can they be saved?"

"Not really," Roxie says. "Maybe if you get there quick enough and have a good surgeon, but there's a point where it's impossible to remove the cho without killing them anyway." She sounds remarkably cool and logical about the subject. Maybe it's a defensive reaction.

Maybe it is. Patsy would imagine that you'd need to be able to compartmentalize to deal with something like this on a regular basis.

But it did bring up a question.

"Do you like it? What you do?"

"It's okay." She shrugs. "And it's... well, I figure out where one of the cho is, and I hit it until it stops moving." Small girl, to do something like that. But her handshake... "On a good day, the first part is the hard one."

"That's a lot to have on your shoulders," Patsy says, trying to place herself in Roxie's shoes. "I want to be a hero myself, but I sometimes don't know if I'd have the moxie to do something like that."

"It's not really a hero thing," Roxie says. "It's a job."

A job she spends her time getting beaten halfway to death for, but a job.

"Some superheroes take what they do to be a job as well," Patsy says, nodding her head. "Not that I am one. Yet. But I hope to be someday."

"Superheroes?" Roxie asks. "So, what, there are people from comic books here now..." She looks a little weirded out as she processes this fact.

Sometimes research just doesn't help. [Open]

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