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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"When people think of EVIL, they're naturally going to do that, whether you like it or not. You're the one that keep calling yourself evil, right? Well just so you know, that's what people are going to think of you whether they know how you work or not."

Of course she knew that those idiots were nowhere near as good as the Overlord, but even she felt a little annoyed with the Overlord's assumption that heroes all acted as stupid as the pro-clone guys.

"I'm not gonna lie about who or what I am," the book said with absolute conviction. "I'm proud of it, and I have every damn right to be. You know better than to lump me in with those other idiots, and so do some other damn people on this ship. If people get so hung up on the fact that I'm a freaking demon, that's not my damn fault. I don't take any responsibility for their misconceptions, misperceptions, or general stupidity!"

She'd really gotten the Overlord worked up. He was in danger of falling off the table just from the vehemence of his ranting, though he seemed completely unaware of his danger.

"And it's not MY fault they see one tree and start chopping it down, either. But it IS my job to point out that they're wasting time and effort on problems that freaking aren't ours, and endangering the entire cosmos in the process!"

"Well duh, of course you're not," Hit Girl said, "and no one, least of all me, would expect you to. You think I wouldn't know exactly what you'd say once you got wind of it? I knew you'd have the balls to say it. But yeah, its the demon stuff, but mostly? It's the evil thing. These guys ARE heroes, and evil in its forms is what they usually fight."

And she knew she had him worked up, exactly what, secretly, she had wanted anyway. Yes, she agreed with him, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to get on his case for that crack about heroes.

"You know you're preaching to the choir on that, Overlord. The hard thing is getting them to agree without them thinking we're abandoning the clones to the government assholes."

"We're way past good and evil here," the Overlord said. It galled him. Galled and irritated him to be constantly surrounded by all these heroes and good guys and nice people! Give him back his Netherworld, damn it!

"I suppose it's completely impossible to hope they'll see reason."

"I know," Hit girl said, "because right now, what we need is some goddamn efficiency. I mean I get the whole wanting to save the clones and all, but we have no idea when those Ohm are coming for us. We need every advantage we can grab, since as far as I know, we turned tail every time."

She shrugged "If they need to see reason, someone or something has to teach it to them."

"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?

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?"

"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."

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!"

"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."

"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."

"Except we have no control over the ship," Zetta said. "You'd think that'd be the first priority. It's sure handicapping us here. Even if we razed the planet to the ground and stole every last ounce of their tech, we still have to deal with the damn people who DO control the ship."

"Well I don't know how we're going to do that, do we?" Hit Girl said. "I mean, its not like the people still onboard were twiddling their thumbs for two years, they must have tried. Do we even know how DOES control the ship?"

"If I recall right, when the GIA guys showed up and passed out weapons, we ended up getting some codes that made things a little better for us," the book mused. He'd only been paying half attention at best to that mess. "And the Neuropathy department is working on getting the happy nice personality of Stacy in total charge, that's why we're not getting violations for brawling any more."

"So where does that leave us then?" Hit Girl asked, who had similarly not been paying much attention to what people were doing when it came to controlling the ship. "Are we one step closer to getting Stacy to play nice and let us do what we want, or are we still shit outta luck most of the time?"

"One step, sure, but it's a pretty long haul, and this has a good chance of setting it all back," Zetta said. "Of course, you saw how that went. People are fine with the crew getting hosed so long as the random clone jerks are free and happy."

Hit Girl shrugged. "Welcome to the truth: humans can be sentimental idiots." She knew she had her guilty points there too, but right now the only thing she was pissed off about by the government in this situation was being manipulated and lied to.

"Which leaves us where?"

"At the mercy of the Do-Good Group and hoping I'm wrong about the backlash." Though the book new better than to hope for something other than the worst.

"Well even if you're right, its not like you'll be alone," Hit Girl said, playing with her butterfly knife. "Like we'd let you deal with those assholes by yourself."

"That's been my plan from the beginning. Win over enough people so that when the battle lines are finally drawn, I've got people on my side willing to stand up."

It probably said something about Zetta that he believed the battle lines would, someday, be drawn. Even after months and a lot of mellowing, he took for granted the notion that someday, his evil and outspoken nature would meet with efforts to silence him.

"You've been planning this since the beginning I bet," Hit Girl said, saying it matter of fact, as if it were a plan that obviously anyone paying attention would have realized.

"You know, I'm going to take back what I said earlier, even if it was just shits and giggles. Azula and Lord Zedd are too busy being petty and idiotic to sit and wait for the minions to come to them while making your own. But its probably no big surprise if I'm aligning myself with anyone, it'll be someone bad ass enough to go through this shit until the end."

"It's like I said, we're so past good and evil all that crap doesn't matter. This isn't heroes and villains and glorious fights to the end. This is about freaking saving the cosmos so we all have a PLACE to do that crap.

"And I'm gonna make sure that happens." The book stared straight ahead, as if seeing ahead to the final conflict.

"Yeah, exactly. In my world I was a hero, chaotic neutral if you wanna be technical, but as far as I'm concerned, common sense about saving the universe and all."

She nodded. "Yeah, is it sad that the only person I'm sure that can put our best interests at heart is a demon overlord?"

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