Man, you look just like I feel [Open]

[meat_mooks]

Despite the uproar that had taken place only a day earlier, it was all quiet at the Susono Inn. Well... mostly quiet, anyway. It was home to some of the most stubborn crew members on the ship, almost all of whom had gotten involved in the brawl with the Kessek.

Allenby's arm had been broken. Simon had taken a hard one directly to the ribs. Zouichi would probably take a week to get back to real fighting form.

And Howard... well, it would probably take Howard a while to recover from what had happened.

[Visitors welcome!]

Comments

[on_errantry]

With there already being cats in the room, one more might go unnoticed - if the person in the room wasn't Howard, who was more observant than anyone gave him credit for. Rhiow had to be excessively careful who saw her moving around the ship - if any of the Daligig saw her talking to the crew, her cover was undone.

She didn't knock like the rest of his visitors had, simply walked through the door. She had an explanation she was responsible for, about Zetta's actions during the almost-Punishment. She'd been there, of course, only sidled where the Daligig couldn't see her. "Howar'th?" she asked cautiously.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard's two cats investigate Rhiow, sniffing and fluffing up at the intruder. Howard, for his part, rolls over in bed to see the source of the noise. "Rhiow."

Were he a little more deferential to authority, and a little less shell-shocked, he might have sat up for the Councilor, but he can't quite find it in him to care right now.

"Don't worry, we found out this place is a blind zone. No one can listen in here."

[on_errantry]

"Good," she said. To the cats, she said, "Hunt's Luck, cousins. I won't be staying for long, and I am sorry about intruding on your den. I'm on the Queen's business." Unlike a lot of species, cats were open about their wizardry and didn't hide it from the rest of their species.

She jumped up onto the bed so that he wouldn't have to sit up. "I feel like I owe you an apology," she said, getting straight to the heart of the matter. "I meant to come speak to you before now, but things have moved extremely quickly in the past few days. I owe you an apology."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Sushi seems satisfied enough with that answer, but Emergency Rations still looks a bit miffed to have to share her space, even briefly. They both retreat to the hidey-holes in the scratching post in the corner.

"For what?" Sure, Howard's made a regular hobby of badmouthing the Council, but as far as he's concerned they haven't slighted him personally yet. "If it's just about the lack of communication, I hate to break it to you but you're going to need to make a lot more house calls than this one."

He resists to urge to scratch the Councilor behind the ears because he can't imagine that will go well.

[on_errantry]

"Not just that, although that's part of it. For Sshe-ta, actually. He went forward with a plan before we were able to speak to you and your... I'm not really sure what to call you. Fellow discontents? That makes it sound like you don't have anything to be discontent about, and we both know that's not the case. Anyway, with how the rest of your day was going, I'm sure his performance didn't help."

Rhiow came within arm's reach and settled down with her forepaws tucked under her chest, eyes half-closed. It was an extremely feline gesture, and a clear request to be scratched behind the ears. She could be dignified and still be petted.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I barely noticed, honestly. Kind of had other things on my mind than his shitfit with Space Racist."

He reaches out and, hesitating first as if letting Rhiow have a chance to object, starts to pet her.

"I'm not the ringleader or anything, if that's what you think. It's not like I'm trying to get a mutiny going or whatever."

[on_errantry]

"As I've recently been informed, mutiny is the wrong word for what you're doing," Rhiow said. "And while you may say you're not the ringleader - that title would go to Ilthrah'nith - you're still an important part of it."

Her voice took on an odd vibrating quality as she began to purr. There was a reason the People and ehhif had such a symbiotic relationship, and Rhiow had always been a housepet.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I'm the liaison with Command. Or what used to be Command before the Daligig gutted it. Showed up on the first day of work and whoops, so much for your boss."

A bit of a smile creeps across his face. He has a weakness for kitty purrs, Rhiow, don't tell anyone.

"Look, I go around and I talk. That's pretty much all I do. I shouldn't be important to this because everyone should be talking anyway."

[on_errantry]

Rhiow had a weakness for scritches. It was the worst-kept secret on the ship, but she wouldn't tell anyone about Howard's.

"You're more important than you think, because the Daligig tried to make an example of you and underestimated how many friends you have. I'm not sure we can stop those people on the crew who care about you from retaliating - but if we don't, we risk everyone's life, and now we know that we risk Stacy, too. I'd like to think that on our best day we're a match for the Kessek on board, but the Daligig have direct access to Stacy's brain. I'm afraid they'd reprogram her if she ever stood up for one of us again."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"There was going to be retaliation anyway. The holograph memories Sakura showed everyone in the Sensoriums were the tipping point. Punishment just accelerated it."

Howard bites the corner of his lip, trying to get his thoughts straight enough to think about anything big picture when his mind keeps getting sucked back to hanging up there, waiting for Punishment. "Has anyone tried talking to Stacy about it? I always just assumed she was our enemy, so..."

So it's still hard to believe she intervened.

[on_errantry]

"What's stopping them from doing to us what they did to the last crew?" Rhiow asked, looking up at him with her ears laid out to the side. "And what do we do if we overcome this small party and they come back with a fleet? They believe Sshe-ta's attitude. We can use that. If your friends aren't successful and get captured, we need to be able to stop them from inflicting Punishment. Maybe if they believe we're willing to lock up our own..."

It was a cautious introduction of a very risky plan. "We weren't sure if we could trust Stacy until now, and we need to find somewhere we can talk to her without worrying about being overheard."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"You want them to transfer all the governing power over to us." Howard squints a bit, staring at the wall. It rings a bell, something he was talking about with Tarrant. "It could work. Leon thought it could, and he was the one babysitting the Daligig the most."

Then again, he also got repodded. Howard glances over at the bruises on his wrist from being suspended by tentacles.

"Could you send Programming and Neuropathy to talk to her directly?"

[on_errantry]

"I think they're worried about a shipwide rebellion. I think they also believe there are only a handful of ringleaders, and that if those are removed the rest of us will fall in line. They're arrogant and the believe they know the best course of action for us. If we show them that we agree, by putting the 'troublemakers' in the brig and then requesting an assignment as opposed to demanding control..." Rhiow shrugged her tail. "They'll repod all of you, or worse, if we don't do something to protect you first."

She licked her whiskers, thinking. "It could work. It would have to be some time when the Daligig weren't working on repairs, since that part of the ship was very damaged."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I didn't ask for this." An obvious statement, if a whiny one. The idea that he's in need of special protection because someone, at some point, decided he's important rankles. "So you want to put on a show of brigging some of us to get favor with the Daligig. You're going to need a bigger show than that riot at Punishment, because they already feel like they've dealt with that."

He frowns. "I wouldn't know. I'm no good with computers."

[on_errantry]

"None of us asked for this," Rhiow said gently, butting her head against his hand. "We're trying to make sure we all come out the other side alive and together." She put her whiskers forward. "I'm sure we'll have something bigger than that little skirmish soon enough. There are a lot of angry people on board right now."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He keeps petting her head. Emergency Rations, as if jealous, curls up by his feet.

"You think it'll work? Nobody trusts the Council as is. You're going to have to run a campaign of information to get everyone to go along and not just fire back at you."

[on_errantry]

"We can't keep using the omnicomms until they're secure," Rhiow said. "I have a very important cover to maintain, and so does Sshe-ta. We'd need to meet in person and in a true blind spot to present this to everyone. Tell the Farseer the same - no more communication over the network until we have a way to lock the comms down."

Rhiow twitched one of her ears, mulling over the problem of trust and transparency with the Daligig on board. "I want to make sure that when this boils over, nobody dies and nobody gets Punishment."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"You can talk to Space Racist yourself. It's not like I've got special privileges telling her what to do just because she's dating my friend. And that's literally the stuff we communicate about. I'm not organizing a revolution behind your back or anything, and I've already told you that." Regardless of how cranky he is, he continues to pet Rhiow.

[on_errantry]

"I only ask you to tell her because it's more likely you'll see her first," Rhiow said dryly, with an expression Howard would recognize from his own cats. "I missed the meeting on the planet because I was sure I was about to make a breakthrough following the Daligig - I have no idea when and where you're meeting next."

Discussions were no reason to stop good scritches. Rhiow was thankful Howard realized that.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I don't know her. I didn't go to any meetings on the planet because I thought I'd be out of here. I'm not organizing anything, and if you think I have any insider knowledge as to when we're meeting next, if there even is a 'we', I don't have it." He turns his head so he's facedown in the pillow.

[on_errantry]

Rhiow took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh, suddenly reminded very much of Arhu. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I forget that not everyone here volunteered their lives to this sort of thing. The People are somewhat used to being uprooted suddenly at the will of others."

She valued the partnership between cats and humans, but sometimes the humans were terrible. Sometimes cats were terrible, but they generally weren't big enough to do the humans any harm. "I think this must be what it would be like if the People one day decided you ehhif needed to go. Something like that wouldn't last long."

You saw...NOTHING.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He turns his head. "I'm not a revolutionary. I'm just a kid who's going to lay hella low when everyone else decides to do this thing." Then it's back to sucking on the pillow.

Well, that's just fitting. In his more self-pitying moments Howard gets all worked up about how just wanted to be normal, live a normal life, go to and skip school and get a stupid job when he grew up. He's far too used to being uprooted suddenly by now, but that doesn't mean he wants to play along.

"Hff fgg ff ehfff?" Howard says into the pillow, before turning his head to reiterate, "the fuck is ehhif?"

Right. Nothing at all.

[on_errantry]

"Our word for you," Rhiow said. She tucked her head down onto her paws and simply laid next to him, not demanding any more attention. "I know what your word for us is, I just can't pronounce it. The consonants are impossible."

She sighed a little, closing her eyes. "All my life I've been very supportive of the symbiotic relationship between our two species. Even if we're good for each other though, ehhif take... liberties with the People that I can't really explain. I can imagine how you feel - completely powerless to make your own decisions about your own life. I know how that is very intimately."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Must be the teeth and the scratchy tongue." Howard sighs and contorts his mouth into a contemplative expression. He hasn't considered how Rhiow might know about such things, but then again, being sensitive to others has never been a strength of his and he's not about to start now. Not when there's selfish teen angst to get in.

"Sorry. But you've got the same rights as everyone else here."

[on_errantry]

"I know, and I'm very grateful for that. I want to see that continue for everyone on board. You included. You want to leave - what you want is to go home, I know, but I'm not even sure I believe what they told us about restoring our universes anymore. That would be a very large timeslide and getting it to take would need a lot more energy than this ship can provide."

She shook herself - now was not the time to get into a theoretical discussion about how it might be done. "Anyway, what I'm saying is that once we're successful, if you want to be dropped off on the nearest friendly planet I will do my best to make that happen for you. But you are useful to us, whether you like it or not, and we would appreciate what help you can give in the meantime. After you've rested a while, of course."