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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Hit Girl shrugged. "Look, there has to be a voice that says we have WORLDS to save. We could go and save these guys and it won't make a shit of a difference if the Ohm popped up and decided to total the place soon after. They act like not fighting NOW, at THIS MINUTE, means that we're going to leave them like that forever. Come on, really? Do they think you're that heartless?"

"You know... I'm not surprised that there's not much agreement," Zetta said, oddly thoughtful. "I made that exact argument to what's-his-name and he just brushed it off, said that wasn't important. I asked if it was more important to right the social wrongs of one world, or save the cosmos, and he said they were equally important."

Zetta looked back up at Hit Girl -- not that it was easy to tell, given his eyes, but the feeling of regard was there. "It's too big for most people's minds. They can't GET what it means to have a world or a universe destroyed. It's not real. They see this crap, so it's real to them."

"I'm not surprised," Hit girl said, "You gotta figure that the people on this mission, clones included, might have seen a bunch of intolerance in one form or another. And look at how we live on the ship: the one actual racist bitch we had was hated and earned herself that punishment for starting too many fights! You don't rock the boat, however strange people on this ship look: chances are, you will have people at your throats for even suggesting somebody gets more right than someone else."

Not that kids were usually on the winning end of that since they needed to be PROTECTED, but she wasn't going to grouse about that when she still had her freedoms.

"Exactly. It's short term injustice NOW, not long term catastrophe later. ow many of the people on this ship have even fought an Ohm, let alone seen one in the flesh, Sensorium not in the picture? They want to fight what they see, what they know to be wrong. For a lot of them, that's just how things have always been in their world. It's what makes them heroes."

And despite everything, the way she fought and killed? Hit girl knew exactly the way heroes thought. Her dad hadn't raised her on comics for nothing.

"How does asking a few people to just accept that life is going to suck for a few days, to save lives later, equal slavery anyway?" Zetta asked rhetorically. "Things are different than home worlds, damn it. This is the cosmos at stake."

"It's the people on the planet that they're concerned with," Hit Girl said, shaking her head. "I mean, I know you're evil, but think about it: if you're a hero, are you really going to let a bunch of government strong hands subjugate people on your watch? Why do you think everyone else NOT on the mission has jumped in with their fucking opinions?"

"That's exactly why heroes shouldn't be in charge of any of this crap," Zetta growled. "No concept of the big picture. Gotta stop and save every cat in every damn tree they see, even if it means they're too tired and too late to stop the real villain from blowing up the city. And no one but me has the guts to say that hey, maybe we should be worrying about the Ohm and not one planet that for all its troubles still freaking exists, unlike all the ones everyone on the damn ship CAME FROM!"

"Oh right, like we could trust you BAD GUYS to do the right thing!" Hit Girl snickered. "You guys are just as bad! I mean, just look at Lord Zedd, or that Azula chick! If it were up to them they'd be singled out whoever annoyed them! Nah, just expect this to happen and don't whine about it: seriously, you'll sound as annoying as them. Just stay to what you said. I mean, you ARE following the mission, right?"

The Overlord drew himself up to his full, not terribly impressive height as a book. Despite that, the table gave him enough of a boost so that he could look down at Hit Girl.

"Did you. Honestly. Just lump me. Zetta. The most badass freaking Overlord in the cosmos. Your master. Me. In the same category with Azula and Zedd?"

The Overlord had very few lines, when it came to his disciples, but this may have just crossed one of them.

"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?"

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