futurology | VIDEO. UN: LOKI

[ the sound of the wind storm hollows dully against the cave walls. Loki's squidge, Bacon, can half be seen crawling in the confines of his tacky green jacket and over his knee from where he sits, sometimes ducking and squeaking when a particularly large gust hits. to keep it from screaming, Loki offers his fingers absently, which the little squidge pulls on with its pudgy arms before ducking low again. ]

Hello there, it seems like we'll be waiting this out for some time considering the weather-type circumstances. While we're all rotting away, etcetera etcetera, I thought we could amuse ourselves with a game. A little bit of team bonding funtimes, so to say. [ he twists a dark nailed hand in the air, gesturing. ]

Soo—oo ... it's called Two Truths and a Lie. How do you play? Glad you asked, it's simple! Give two true statements about yourself and add a lie to the mix, shake it up then toss it out there and see if your team members know you well enough to spot the lie.

Usually this is done with copious amounts of alcohol, but we're lacking at the moment. [ pause. ] But—ah—you could always enjoy the satisfaction of being right. It's not like we're doing much else.

NOTE | Feel free to threadjack if that's your thing!! :****

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I suppose it does.

[If only he weren't so reluctant to share information about himself, just like that. Not that it matters in a place like this, but call it force of habit. That, and there's something about discussing his own life - even in starts and snatches like this - that strikes him as unpleasant. Still-- there's silence for a while as he thinks it over, and then he takes his turn.

His tone remains even and slick throughout all three offerings]

Whilst I can use most weapons adequately and am adept in hand to hand combat, I fight best using two Walther P38s - these are guns, pistols to be precise, in case you're unfamiliar - and have been using this model since childhood.

I have a scar running from the nape of my neck to my tailbone. It's the only scar I possess, and it predates any notions of consciousness I have.

I'm fluent in six languages. It was an essential part of my training. There are many situations where it's imperative to understand what you're enemy is saying, as I'm sure you can agree.

Your voice, which holds as even as the water of a pond undisturbed by fish or man, makes difficult my guess. I know not what a pistol might be, but it is true that all men have preference in the weapon they raise in battle. You may well have lied about which you prefer, just as I too may easily lie and claim that I prefer bow and arrow to spear - but this I shall take for the truth.

Next, a scar which has marked you since your mother's womb seems to me rather curious and ominous besides. But perhaps it is for this strangeness that you included such a tale, to distract me from which is the lie.

Thus, I shall choose the last, for I cannot imagine that a man could be so well versed in such several tongues.

[He should have played to his audience a little more, perhaps. Chosen something the other man would have more readily believed, though that's somewhat hard to do when he knows nothing about this person at all.

Unseen, though, he has to smile. Since your mother's womb. There'd been no womb involved in his creation, but there's no need to let that slip just now. Curious and ominous, indeed.]

Congratulations are in order, I suppose. That was indeed the lie-- there's little need to stop and chat in my line of work.

Thus my wit is proved the sharper! But now my curiosity stirs, stranger - what is this work that you do?

If you say so.

[He's not going to overtly concede that, though at the same time he's well aware that when it comes to people and social interaction his skills are abysmally lacking. It's not something he has much in experience with, being what he is.]

I suppose I chose the word work to sound more in keeping with the lie. Purpose would be more accurate. I'm a hound of war. A weapon, if you will.

And so your purpose lies in the endless bloodshed of war. Why say you a weapon, and not a warrior? For I too find my purpose in the bloody jaws of battle and the glory won therein by dint of spear and strength of fighting spirit, but this seems to me a curious way to speak of it.

Well, aren't you poetic.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suppose you chose your own path, though do correct me if I'm wrong. The difference therefore being that I was specifically created for mine. I was designed to be a weapon, if you see what I mean.

Indeed I chose my path, but it was one of two that was laid out for me by Fate, as I often heard from my mother Thetis the silver-footed goddess: I would win glory in war but live no longer, or I would live a life of peace and ebb away in old age with no glory to my name. But long ere I was begat it was foretold that the son born of my mother would surpass his father in strength and greatness. Then was it not Fate's design that I should be the best of warriors?

Fate, is it? I really wouldn't know anything about prophecies and the like-- as far as I'm aware such things are relegated to the realm of fiction and literature, where I'm from. But fate...I suppose there's an element of that in what I am, if you take it to mean that one's function is predetermined by something altogether bigger than oneself.

Still. It seems a little less straightforward for you than it does for me, but I won't claim to be any kind of expert on the subject. I only know what I was meant for.

[Faulty as he is. Broken as he is. But never mind that.]

[In his mind, Fate is as all-encompassing as the air which one breathes, and even here, flung so far from familiar lands, he cannot be sure that it does not thrum still as the heartbeat of all worlds. Thus he listens with curiosity to this man's steadily marching words, which make difficult to discern his heart.]

Are you displeased by such a fate as this? Would you have preferred a peaceful life instead?

[Now there's a question. There was time, a long long way back, when he wanted exactly that. But he'd been something else then, something small and worthless and weak and he hadn't fully understood what he was, what he'd been made for. There's no point in dwelling on that now. There never had been.]

It is what it is. Those kinds of questions don't come into it.

[This answer he turns over in his thoughts for a moment before he speaks.]

In this too it seems to me we are not so very different. Were I to choose again which path of my forked destiny to tread, I would choose no differently, even knowing what price I must pay.

[Is it similar? He's not sure. Choice doesn't come into it after all, not as far as he's concerned. Be the weapon he was created to be, or be killed off in favour of something more capable of fulfilling the role-- there's a choice in there somewhere perhaps, but it's not much of a choice at all. Still--]

I suppose the ending is the same regardless of the means, and so I take your point.

[They'd both be exactly where they are now, it seems, no matter what.]

All this we now know about one another, and yet I've not received your name, stranger. I am Achilles, son of Peleus of Aeacus' stock.

[The third, M.D.....]

[Well, that sure is a name]

Giovanni Rammsteiner.

[No need to explain that Rammsteiner is less a name and more of a model, the series he belongs to. It's an unnecessary complication and again, he's less than forthcoming unless pressed]

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