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Entry tags:
- !plot: send in the clones,
- daniel jackson,
- dr mcninja,
- dustin brooks,
- eleventh doctor,
- gaignun kukai jr./rubedo,
- hana asakura,
- hit girl,
- howard bassem,
- kang,
- kanoe zouichi,
- kon-el,
- lash,
- lex luthor,
- lord zedd,
- lord zetta,
- nightwing,
- querl dox,
- rory williams,
- ruffnut thorston,
- sakura haruno,
- tana moon,
- ter'thelas
"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.]
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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The fact lives were being lost on a world that could revive next to anyone indicated scale in a different way. Now, Sakura could only imagine how much of that life-loss could be clone related. How many 'actual' citizens had been lost? Was this more financial than anything else?
She wanted to talk with Rory, she wanted to speak with Henderson, check in with all those who had been taken off to be branded, listen to the people around her. She wasn't hungry, if she knew she needed to keep her energy levels up for whatever they'd have to discuss, and whatever they'd have to do tomorrow.
Walking neutral lines was difficult. Yet who was right? When had this become about being pulled into another world's civil war and told to stop out the leaders of one half of the war? Not to say it wasn't the kind of work a shinobi could find themselves in. She'd be lying if she thought otherwise.
But the trade off? Where was the justification in helping potentially escalate one skirmish, one war, in the face of the largest war she'd ever encountered? The technology that could be used to save their lives, the lives of everyone in the GIA, potentially -- if. If they could work with a morally reprehensible group, if they could find the trade-off, if they could keep parts of their own crew from defecting to fight with the people not content with their dictated lot in life.
It was so very hard to figure out how to walk that line.
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No comment on the brand yet; he figured that would come up eventually. It was kind of hard to miss.
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"Around fifty thousand," he said, promptly. "Probably more. Just at that one Central Processing Center."
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The numbers gave her mental pause. That was more than half the entire gathered force of shinobi in her world. In one facility, they made half the force she'd been fighting back home. Just one facility. "I want to know ratios between citizen population and bio-engineered population. How many of these facilities they have..." There was so much she wanted to know. Maybe even needed to know. "Did they mention any concerns about this one in particular? My group was taken by one of the sites of conflict, which was opposite what Councilor Asmin had been telling us. Most attacks supposedly happen against either government related facilities, or supply depots. I'd expect these centers would be one of them, but I haven't heard or read anything like that yet."
She paused. "They showed us one of the civilian attack sites. Details were minimal, but it's an interesting choice given the rest that's been said." And how much hadn't thus far.
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He paused. "The Central Processing Center has been the target of several attacks so far. However, I believe Kanner's main concern was the potential property damage and productivity. It sees a lot of 'volume', apparently. I was under the impression, however, that it was by no means the only such processing center that had been targeted."
"...Although it's possible he was playing up the severity of the attack attempts, at least somewhat. He was, after all, focused on getting us inside and branded."
Zouichi glanced back at Sakura. "An interesting choice? I'd be surprised if they didn't show you a civilian attack site. All that they've presented to us so far has been in the purpose of gleaning sympathy, of emphasizing how harmonious their side is while demonizing the opposition. Not an uncommon behavior at all. But not a particularly scrupulous one, either."
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Which showed to her they were aware to some degree that other cultures didn't find the idea to be easy to swallow. Institutionalized slavery was a fact of life in different parts of the world -- ah, but she was thinking too small. In different parts of the omniverse. This world created its own slaves. It was something they could have been entirely unapologetic for, yet they'd chosen to build sentiment before revealing a key fact about their situation.
So they weren't as self-righteous in the face of outside opinion as one might expect. It was something to keep in mind alongside the inexcusable treatment of their crew.
Something that helped make the anger a bit easier to swallow and stamp down, for now.
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Zouichi would probably argue that knowing what you were doing was wrong and doing it anyway was far worse than violating others' rights in ignorance.
"At any rate, I'd expect the source of the societal conflict isn't the only thing our hosts have chosen to skim over." He frowned. "The problem is figuring out other surprises they've been saving for us."
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"...Did you get the impression that the attack site you were shown was real?"
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"Here," he said, holding out a data pad. "I believe that this might be relevant to some of your interests."
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Decisions either way needed more information to be made, which meant she was honestly thankful for Lex's offer. She was already starting to look through the information when she chanced asking Lex a question. "What's stood out to you so far, from what we've been told?"
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So he was kind enough to answer her question.
"Aside from all the things we haven't been told?" Though that was a fairly obvious answer. "Though, if I'm being honest about it..." he glanced around to make sure there weren't any prying ears.
"I know the casual way this society functions would likely surprise and appall most people who consider themselves enlightened. But its not that surprising if you stop to think about it. They've gone five thousand years without a war, very little poverty, and virtually no mass pandemics. It's clearly been working for them.
"Up until now. Which only makes me wonder whether this is the first time a situation like this has developed." He would guess not, though he doubted there'd be much, if any, mention of it in the history books.
"What's your take, based on what you've seen so far?"
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"Without casting judgement on their society, with what they've not said so far, I'm not sure how much I trust any of their actions even if we end up doing as they ask. We don't know enough right now to make an informed decision. They've violated general trust once, regardless of if it's customary for this place or not. And they don't see it as being out of place. It's not a problem for them, because it is casual, like you say. It's how they function." It sat poorly with her, if it wasn't impossible to understand. Madara's army was built on Zetsu clones, after all, and cloning had both positive and negative connotations on her world.
Violating members of their crew over foreign policy, no matter how standard it was claimed to be, gave her an idea of exactly how important they were as individuals. "Until the ship's back, I'm hesitant to hear us come to any final decision with the council."
She grimaced, looking up from the datapad. To be entirely honest, all of this made her angry. It was a minor blessing that she could push that anger off and try to concentrate on absorbing information for now. "I really wish this had stayed off comms."
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"I don't think negotiations will be ending soon. Which gives us more time to learn about this world."
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He had a feeling this was going to be one of them. The sheer complexity of the tech married with the giant issue of the clones. He knew he was too close. They worked well together and she could help him figure out his thoughts, could help him figure out what he was doing and what they should pass onto Nightwing.
"Sakura? Do you have a few minutes?" The hospital, the situation, the tech and invariably, his children.
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This was no way to run a mission. The kind of obstacles they were coming up against were preventable with adequate information. All of that, fact in her mind, bothered her to the core.
Now she had the chance to hear from and listen to Rory, and she was looking forward to it. No doubt there was much for them to discuss. Considering who had been targeted by Kanner, and who had been assigned a genetic Guardian... she waited for Rory to begin.
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He looked exhausted, the stress of the situation, the fact that they hadn't been given all the information they needed, or really any at all. They had gone into this situation completely blind, and some of their crew had paid the price.
It was like running an ambulance to a wreck expecting one car and finding twelve.
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"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.
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"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."
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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?
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He shook his head. "There were a few small things being used during the surgery that I would have liked a better look at. One isolated the bleeding, preventing it from pouring into the cavity and another seemed to stasis lock the patient while they removed organs, all were palm sized. The rest of the tech was too large to be easy to apply on the battle field, though still useful enough. What I'd really like a look at is one of their emergency response kits. Whatever they would take to a battle site, I think that would honestly be more useful to us than a big machine that takes up too much room but can regrow limbs."
He would like an update for the tech, it seemed that mostly it had been left to learning on the job. Something he had struggled with and spent quite a few extra hours learning. "The nanites they used for the brands are also interesting, if not in that application. I'd like to know if they use them in any other ways, it's very advanced tech. I just don't see how most of this could be of use to us. It's either too big, relies too much on optimum conditions, or relies on clones to work."
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Listening to Rory's recap, she nodded. Her sigh was largely internal as she made herself focus, pushing aside the emotions linked to what had happened. Everything that had happened. "Henderson-sama will be able to tell us more, I think, pending we ca get him in to speak with the doctors themselves. If we had some idea of what 'the full extent' of Galileean resources really meant... but for now, I want to see about getting a look at these mobile technologies. Larger equipment would be ship installations if the negotiations are both maintained and then successful."
Emphasis on the if, and dis-including the smaller technologies in that if. Kon had been right to mention they had ninja on this mission. Walking away with nothing didn't have to be an option unless they wanted it to be.
"The nanites are responding to each other coherently, and staying otherwise separate from the system's functions. It's remarkable, really. Working like that, there's so much they could do within a system that would leave a medic drained." The question of depending on clones for things to work left her contemplating. "Or we haven't seen what makes their technology heavy-hitting enough for the GIA to merit us being here in the first place. Speed? Yes, from what you've said, they have speed in plenty. What else is it they have that the GIA wants? The numbers? It's one hell of a shitty battle plan if that's it."
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Rory nodded, not commenting on the odd choice of wording. "I hope that Doctor Henderson can manage more than I was able. They offered the potential to meet with one of their doctors later, but it seemed strange that they were trying to sell us on this tech and our guide was a councilor. Not a doctor, not someone who dealt with the tech, but a councilor. A politician. Also interesting was that we were allowed to see some tech in operation through glass, they didn't let us near the inoperative tech. It made it feel more like a show or a trip to a museum. I understand another group actually went to a show of some sort. What are they doing, playing politics are preparing to propose?"
There was a tiny frown and he shook his head, looking at the data pad. "At the moment, I'll be happy if we manage to make a trip through the souvenir shop and yield something useful from that. I somehow doubt we will." He scowled, hands twitching against the table. He hated this, hated the situation they'd found themselves placed in. He was a nurse, not a warrior, this situation, this application of tech, made his skin crawl. He wanted a weapon, or at least something that would allow him to react. "The nanites are interesting, and not just because I want to remove them from their current application. If we could find a way to redirect their orders, who knows what they could be used for?"
He stared at her, shocked and aghast for a moment before his face hardened, hands clinching against the table. War was a dirty monster, a creature that consumed and consumed and left both sides with too many graves to fill, too many tears shed. They were at war, as often as it became easy to forget sometimes. As silly and impractical as the ship often was, they were at war. They were warriors. His voice was flat when he spoke again, lips pressed into a thin line. "Bodies, of course. To run a war, you need disposable soldiers. Soldiers you can program, can make in a lab and send off to war and not worry about morality or disobeying orders. If that's what they want, I think we should seriously reconsider all our alliances."
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