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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"I get riled up because I like being the only me around. It doesn't have anything to do with moral outrage or any of that bullshit they're talking about. The only thing I have left from the world, from my parents, is me, and the sooner someone wants to use that for their own jollies is the moment they get a bullet in the fucking head. That's all there is to it."

Her issue was someone thinking she was a commodity: that shit just wouldn't fly.

"You are the only you around," Zetta said. "And barring some weird time-travel error or parallel universe thing, you always will be. You said it yourself. A copy of you won't have your training, skill, or experience. There's no reason it'd even think the way you do. It sure wouldn't have had your father to guide you down the paths you've taken, or an Overlord to make it his apprentice. Bodies don't mean a thing. It's the soul that counts."

After a moment, Zetta growled, "Assuming you HAVE a body in the first place!"

"Damn right I am,:" Hit girl said, which was pretty much her way of saying thank you Overlord Zetta, I appreciate the compliment. It was still Hit Girl after all, and saying it aloud like that would have been weird for the both of them, when it came down to it. "And they should still ask someone. Who just goes and clones someone without their say so?"

Hit Girl grinned. "I dunno if its like you to hold onto sour grapes, Overlord Somehow I don't think I'm miss the car driving, hitting on my partner version of you. The book version is MUCH more fun."

"Hmph, why am I not surprised she told you about that. Look, I was only 1700 years old at the time. And that car was sweet, I don't know what the hell you're complaining about it for."

Grumble grumble irritated irritated. "You try being a book for a day. You can't punch or kick or hold a gun or work out. You'd go crazy. I'm going to get my damn body back, and then I'll show you some fun."

He paused.

"That wasn't an innuendo. Seriously."

Hit Girl snickered. "Bet it was. Still kinda creepy when your trainer its on you though, especially since it was due to some magical crap, just like with Hiccup the last time. It's a good thing Ruffnut never pays it much thought."

She shrugged. "I probably WOULD hate it. But the whole point of stopping the Ohm and kicking a crater in their ass is so you CAN get your body back, right?"

At this, Hit Girl laughed. "I wasn't worried. Never had any creepy pedo vibes from you anyway."

"I'll admit that when I was a younger demon, I didn't exactly have the highest standards in my companions," the book said. He glanced back up at Hit Girl. "No offense to Ruffnut, she's great, but I'm in no damn hurry to hook up with an apprentice again. 1700-year-old me didn't exactly remember how that ended up the last time, after all."

Hit Girl, while trying to sound casual about this, was most decidedly not. "You could do worse than Ruff. She's rambunctious and all, but she's a good kid. Besides, its bad enough people only want to hook up with her when they're under a spell anyway. Glad she's not the type to mope about it. Just do yourself a favor and stay the hell away from spells, because next person that does that to Ruff is hanging up a flagpole in the city somewhere."

"Settle down," Zetta said, amused. Even the oblivious Overlord could read between the lines when the lines were this large and this broadly spaced. "Like I said, absolutely nothing against her except she's my disciple. She's a pretty good catch. And trust me, I don't plan to get deaged or deboned or defenestrated ANY time soon. I've had enough of that crap."

"Good," she said. "I get that she knows only a little about things and is simple minded, but while those friends of hers are doing their own thing, someone ought to be making sure she avoids these stupid ass situations. She needs to focus on something, it should be on kicking ass and taking names. I don't want her worrying about how she looks, that she won;t get anyone or whatever. She's a tough as nails bona-fide fucking viking, but she's still a girl."

"Ruffnut's smarter than anyone gives her credit for. You don't need book knowledge or -- heh, that's funny, I'm a book. Anyway, she's fine, but worries like that just come naturally to people. With a friend like you and a trainer like me, though, she'll figure out she's awesome in time."

He looked around the room, thinking about how much she'd wanted to go on a mission. Maybe now she'd figure out that missions weren't ANY judge of worth.

"Damn right she is, but its what she doesn't know that I get concerned about is all. So if I can keep an eye on her just so less bad shit can happen, I will. No point in having an eternal rival when she's not on equal par with you, right?"

But Hit Girl would have argued with him about how the missions judged worth. It was less about that, and more about what she was able to do once she had the chance. Ruffnut needed to shine, and when it got down to it? So did she.

"Hmph," Zetta said at the mention of 'eternal rivals.' The closest he'd come at this point to admitting that maybe they were better as a team than separate.

"What?" Hit Girl asked. "Weren't you all fixated on us being enemies and everything?"

"That'd make the most SENSE." Overlords working in teams, ludicrous! Even if he and Salome had had more than their fair share of fun together. That wasn't the same! Right?

...Right?

"What do you mean?" Hit Girl asked. "Wouldn't it make sense for two Overlord's to work together for the same goal? It hasn't ever been done before?"

"Most of the time, when two Overlords get anywhere near each other, either one is so much stronger that the other that the second one feels super-inferior and gets dominated, or they start fighting in small ways or big to see which one of them really is the strongest. In the Netherworlds, strength's a big part of power, after all."

Even at this stage of their training, the two girls ought to be more vicious in their competition. Maybe he'd coddled them too much. Maybe he hadn't trained them right. But they both had such incredibly different strengths...

"So there's no instance at all where two Overlords are just friends. They're just fated to go after each other in order to prove who's the biggest and the baddest? Well: that's something to think about then."

Hit Girl and Ruffnut were different, that much was true: Ruffnut had a way of charging into something headfirst, with such genuine dedication and strength you could practically see the viking and demon in her oozing out. Hit Girl, and even Mindy Macready, knew that if there was a way to take something down easily, to find the vital points, you sat and you waited and eventually you stored up enough strength that topping the dominoes would be easy.

You never, in her opinion, showed your hand all the way just in case.

"I think I hear what you're saying, somewhat."

"Well, Salome and I got along for a while, but that was a special case. She knew I was stronger, so she supported my goal of becoming the strongest Overlord. Plus we were having some other fun on the side." Uh, to put it lightly.

"Don't you wonder which one of you is the stronger one?"

Hit Girl snickered. "She's got the stuff, that much is true: she's brazen and strong, and has lightning powers to boot. But I can take her now, as she is. I have the training, the skill, and she hasn't seen my magic aimed at her ass yet. I'm not facing her down head to head until she has the skills to plan against me, and she WILL have that skill even if I have to teach it to her myself. I won't accept anything less than a knock down drag down bleeding everywhere fight from her."

"And now you understand exactly why Overlord almost never get along," he said smugly. The absolute attitude of assured superiority.

Of course, the Overlord was selling a doctrine he believed in but didn't practice, as he usually did.

"Aw, come on. There's always room for addendum, you know that. I don't plan to be one of those following rule type demons: I make my own rules, and I fudge them as needed. If I have superiority issues, its that: even I have a problem with authority."

Hence why she barely paid attention to officers and captains and the like if she could help it.

"Hey, they aren't rules so much as it just happens that way. But I do admit that you guys make a good team, balancing each other out, all that crap, blah blah." The Overlord trailed off into dark mutterings that probably actually didn't mean anything.

"Hey, we can work on competing against each other when we get really good. We're friends after all: what kind of friend don't get to engage is some nice, healthy rivalry? I mean, what's a little bit of blood spilled between friends, right?"

"What are you asking me for!? You know I don't have any friends. A demon as powerful as I am only has potential rivals and people beneath consideration!"

He paused.

"And disciples."

Another pause.

"And other people I only tolerate because I'm a freaking book and can't just go stomp the Ohm into the ground myself!"

One more pause.

"But no friends!"

Hit Girl snickered. "Well, can't argue with that. Well actually, I can, but that would probably just piss you off, but ya know, I've seen you deal with people who aren't just stepping stones. What do you call them?"

Hey, he can deny it all he wants, even Hit girl understood WHY. He had a rep to maintain, didn't he? If most people on the ship were too stupid to get past the whole "demon" part, let them think he was nothing but evil. It only proved to her that most people were fucking morons, and probably NEEDED an Overlord to make them do what was necessary to begin with!

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