trans_9 | "Listening to others, considering well what they say" (Part 3: Maingate Hotel)

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"Listening to others, considering well what they say" (Part 3: Maingate Hotel)

The Maingate Hotel was pretty extravagant, and an entire section of it had been eked out for the crew's use during their stay. They had several suites, three communal areas, a conference room, their own kitchen with a chef on call if they required her.

They were all teleported from the main teleport pad of the hotel into the conference room, which was a large enough room to be able to hold a group their size and had plenty of chairs arranged in a circular pattern so they could mostly all face each other or whoever was in the middle of the room.

Everyone had to settle down so they were all able to talk, and the meeting itself would have to be carefully controlled so they wouldn't all talk over each other. But they were up for the task, right?

[ooc: Guardian Setup, General Mingling, Clone Checkup, Newbie Briefing, General Briefing, More Mingling, Back to the Meeting, and The Idea Guy sections are open. Backup characters introduced to the plot can join in the mingling subthreads if they want. The opening of new subthreads will be announced here and the ooc. Please read the linked OOC post for a plot timeline.]

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Wow, it had been a while since he had to explain this one, hadn't it?

"The Sacred Tome contains everything that ever was or is for my Netherworld, written in it. If it gets destroyed, so does everything else. I bound my soul to the book to save my life."

"Well, some evil is stupid. Zedd." He didn't even try to hide that namedrop in a cough or mutter. "Sure, we should care if our CREW is in danger, but that's just because it's our freaking crew. The rest of it? How are we doing ANYthing if we get ourselves in trouble and maybe lose some people just to play social justice crusaders?"

The book fell silent, then, for a moment.

"Don't see a damn way to talk 'em out of it, though."

"Oh, them." Anything that keeps him from having to deal with it any further. He'd really had enough. "Don't expect them to see your point of view. You might as well complain that you had to buy an adapter to make your toaster work with their outlets."

"Yeah, that actually would be," Zetta said thoughtfully. Unfortunately, he hadn't exactly taken this the way Lash had hoped. "But all the clones on board would have whined and complained if they'd just asked, or even ordered. This way they got what they wanted and it's too late for them to stop it. That's actually pretty clever!"

"Hell yeah it sucks," Hit Girl said, taking a piece of what looked like chicklen and biting off a hunk. "These government types gave us a bait and switch, and failed to mention that they were throwing some of our members of the team under their special rules. If this is supposed to be a relatively peaceful mission, they screwed us and it made it a damn DEBATE. In case you haven't noticed, Zetta is getting heat for it."

She shook her head. "But if I were you, I'd stay out of the particulars. If they have to argue about rescuing strangers or getting what we came here for, let them. We only have to make a decision when they make us. Until then, keep an eye out: chances are, you're gonna be bashing some heads in soon."

"Too many people on their side right now. All they have to do is slap 'slavery' on anyone who says differently to them and they've got it sold."

Which left the Overlord pondering his options. He felt confident that working with the government would be written off by the command staff. What, then, was he going to do?

"Makes sense to me." Ruff shrugged and took a drink sipping it cautiously, "I'm no leader, I'm not even very good at being a diplomat or whatever. I'll just stick to hittin' stuff."

"The city was something else. I'm not much for architecture, if I get the feeling everything's designed after someone's model of a beautiful metropolis." Given the name of the city itself? "We took an unplanned detour up an anti-grav fountain. Past that, a few places of note, a little information on the attack sites, and then a brief tour of one of the more recent attack sites." She breathed in, then exhaled slowly.

"Civilian." She looked to his data pad, focusing on what it could tell her that Lex's released information couldn't. "I'd love to see the specifications. What did you see?" Her tone carried additional inflection on the see, placing more weight on that word than it strictly deserved.

Glad to know they were on the same page.

"I'll talk to you later, okay? Once we've figured something out." She gave him a tiny wave before walking away.

Hit girl rolled her eyes. "Look, they can say that until they're blue in the face, and I can tell you exactly what your answer to that is: Prime Directive. In other words, if we agreed to certain things we would do with this planet, we're sorta oblilgated. I don't like it, but guess what? I don't have to, and the bottom line is we have planets to save. I mean, our strength after awhile IS exhaustible."

Then again, there was one other option. "What's our captain think anyway?"

Hit Girl took Ruffnut's drink and took a long sip herself. "Well, don'tbe hard on yourself. That's a skill we need to learn anyway, being diplomats, until we become demons. THEN we can decide shit with our 'powers of persuasion.'"

"Up a fountain?" He arched an eyebrow, quietly questioning as he grabbed one of the tables to show her what he had. "So they are attacking civilian targets then? Did they give you any information or were they vague and reticent with your group as well? I got a distinct feeling that they wanted us to be as afraid as they were and were trying to make it more frightening by telling us nothing. Or maybe they just wanted to keep us in the dark until they were done marking our friends." He scowled briefly at the Data-pad, shaking his head and directing his focus to the information.

"We didn't learn as much as I would have liked, though we did see a surgery and a regeneration, for the most part they pointed at shiny metal boxes with lots of lights and attachments and told us what they did, which sounds amazing, but rather difficult to apply practically. The woman guiding us was evasive and reserved and wouldn't let us speak to any of the doctors at the facility. So as far as seeing goes, we saw very little. We heard more. It was very well planned out, they knew exactly what they wanted to show us and tell us, I think."

"You really think that'll stick?" Zetta chuckled at Hit Girl's perceived naivete. "They'll do what they want, when they want. If they feel an agreement isn't working out, they'll break it. That one guy made it perfectly clear that he doesn't care about anything else that we're supposed to do, because fixing this is the most important thing. And I bet you anything that what's-his-name who's in charge for the command staff agrees with him. The captain doesn't matter, just that guy."

Hey, the smile was a start. At least Jr. had taken it in the manner it was meant. "Yeah, I don't think any of us were in direct danger. Though I doubt Councilor Allin is terribly impressed with me." But, then, being demanding could have that effect. "There's still a lot I get the feeling we aren't being told here."

"It's not interacting with your system on anything more than a superficial level. I'm guessing that what's causing the projection is also keeping the pieces in formation and broadcasting some signal to the body so your system doesn't try fighting it off. They're not registering as foreign bodies."

Thinking over what she'd felt, reasoning through it, Sakura had a feeling there was something she could do about the brand. Given enough time. "I believe I can remove the brand itself, if it's not something I want to test right now. Not without knowing more behind how this particular technology works."

She did what she could to keep the edge of frustration out of her voice.

Urrgh, this was getting so frustrating! Lash groaned before speaking again, unsure how to answer this properly.

"I don't want to be cloned. I don't want any of us cloned." Which, she realized, was pretty surprising to herself. "Worst clones not being the original or whatever. Point is, we've all been had and I don't like being had at all." She pouted back to her chair again. "This mission really sucks. At this point I feel like it's more feasible stealing the technology than playing in their camp."

Hit girl's eyes darkened a little. she definitely did not like getting chuckled at. "Well then, I guess some of us are going to cry about it, aren't we? You and Superfuck and whoever else. The bottom line is YES, we're going to do whatever we want. Technically, aren't you Councilers the ones that are supposed to care about that? You knew this shit was going to go down, that people were going to show themselves to have a hard on for doing the right thing. So what if those morons don't listen to you because you're evil? You're covering yoiur own ass by doing exactly what we were told to do, so we have a fighting chance against the Ohm. So now you have people bitching. Call them out on the fact they care more about stupid shit in the present than actual threats that are going to happen later, when people die because of them!"

"Lash gets hands on," was her only comment on the fountain. "Councilor Asmin refused to get into specifics. I asked if there was a high occurrence of twins on Galilee." She'd noticed, eventually, but hadn't thought more of it at the time. "Asmin supposed so. She didn't want to discuss specifics on the 'terrorists' outside of pointing out the places they had attacked, and that attacks had gradually increased in death rates."

Sakura paused, frowning. "Now I'm not even sure if she's counting clones in her numbers of casualties." Just as likely they were part of the property damage figures that had been loosely verbalized.

She looked over what he had to share. "They've been avoiding letting us see much anything directly. With Henderson-sama here, they might be slightly more willing to open up access to actual medical professionals." It would be necessary. "Did you see anything along lines of more practical application?" The regeneration was amazing, presumably at speeds that would be next to impossible for her to imagine for anyone without an advanced regenerative system as it was. But if it was hard installs, it was practical after the fact. Not on the battlefield, and not in handling people in spaceships.

Accounting for that was another kind of headache altogether. Where were the space medic training courses?

"Actually, in this case, it's the Command staff that has the decision." The Overlord was in a better mood now that he'd succeeded in irritating his apprentice. Turnabout was fair play, after all. "I don't know how much of that whole conversation on the comms you read, but I did that in about as many words. Gonna keep doing it, too, for all the good it'll do. You know that."

"Yeah, it's a mess no matter how you slice it," Zetta said. Amazingly, he was actually attempting to show some shreds of empathy for Lash. Don't read too much into it, damn it! "Even a demon has his limits, but frankly, the thought of that medical technology pretty much wins the day. That's gonna keep people on the ship alive and fighting."

As soon as Fate heard that familiar voice, she stopped trying to readjust her hair. And as soon as Nanoha was close enough, she got up, pulling the other girl into a tight hug.

She already vented, so she didn't need to say anything. What she needed the most right now was the comfort only her family and close friends could provide right now.

"Well then they ought to keep in perspective everything that could happen if we act on impulse rather than actual, you know, brains. By the way, you're an ass."

The urge to kick the book abated, she shook her head. "I was keeping an eye, of course. It's kinda funny seeing YOU trying to talk sense into people. I'm just looking forward to the time where we can finally kick some ass. All of this talking is starting to piss me off."

"I spend most of my damn time on this ship trying to talk sense into people." Not one second of which he would've wasted if he had his damn body back. "It's amazing how it only seems to work on adolescent girls. More of you all should be in charge."

Come to think of it... WERE any of them in charge in any way, shape, or form? He couldn't think of any!

"If we were in charge, they would probably still try to tie our hands behind our backs," Hit girl replied. "Kids in charge make the captain nervous, remember? That probably goes double for the type of adolescent girls you hang around with. Lash the evil scientist, Ruffnut the crazed viking and me, the certifiable hero."

She grinned. "Though I dunno, if we were running on YOUR orders, we probably would have won this war by now. Fucking diplomacy."

The wunderkind put her head between her hands thinking about everything so far. It just felt like whichever direction she looked, they were running into four different walls. "Yeaaah. Now we've got the possibility of clones and invaluable healing technology on the line. Wish I had been taken to the hospital instead of being given a tour of the place, I could have tried to decipher something instead of sticking my hand inside upside-down fountains."

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"Listening to others, considering well what they say" (Part 3: Maingate Hotel)

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