video; un: white_lotus

[pummelling]

[With only vague recollections of his child self and even vaguer ones of his teenage self leftover from that last unfortunate week, Kung Jin's stopped being so concerned about what might've happened then. He can't control it, after all, and what (unsalvageable) damage could he have even done to anybody as a teen punk? It's fine. It's totally fine. Yup.

Onto now. He's trained alone as much as he can stand, nearly as much as he'd done during those years at the Wu Shi Academy, even; hung around the library longer than he could stand, and without falling off any bookshelves this time, too; loitered his way across as much of the castle and grounds that he could get to and then some. With all of that done, then, Jin has settled into something much more dangerous: boredom.

He talks a lot, when he's bored. For an opinionated jerk with a tendency to run his mouth, this is never a good sign.]

Let me get this straight.

[The magitek's feed'll treat viewers to the sight of a dark-haired young man seated on the foot of the bed in his quarters, clad in ALASTAIR's uniform and idly polishing an ornate staff with a cloth as he complains speaks.]

ALASTAIR picks up a whole crop of new recruits. Out of the multiverse, as you do. They're supposed to give us the rundown on this timeline stabilizing thing, except their translators are busted-- so they make their old recruits run the welcome wagon. Then we get a big ol' bug infestation, and, what d'you know! All of us recruits are the ones playing exterminator, while some of us are reliving the total joys of puberty for days at a time. And we still haven't seen anywhere else except this castle.

Anybody else beginning to see a pattern here? [He tosses the dropcloth aside so he can focus on rolling his eyes for the camera.] Yeah. Some saving worlds we're handling: all we're doing for them is the chores they're too lazy to do themselves. How much you bet all our rocket ships break down when we're about to fly off to that Q-65 dustball? And that we have to wash and wax all their hulls, too? I swear, I'm gonna quit.

[you cant tho jin... but okay.]

I mean, I've had a lot of bad gigs in my life, but... yikes. This is just embarrassing.

Comments

[cachemoney]

[She smiles a little, teasing.] Just saying, it's always important to have all the facts straight before you start bitching.

Anyway -- maybe this is boring for you, but I'm kind of enjoying things not trying to kill me every twelve seconds. The last mission was no walk in the park. And I hear the ones before that were even worse.

[pummelling]

You know what they say about squeaky wheels. And about monsters trying to eat you left and right. That'd at least make me feel like my time here was worthwhile.

[cachemoney]

I -- [Wait.] Do you have an idiom about being eaten by monsters?

[pummelling]

[... let him think about that]

I can't remember one off the top of my head, but I'd put money on it.

Earthrrealm's gotten a little nuts in the last 20 years.

[cachemoney]

Is that your planet?

[pummelling]

Close: my realm.

[If anything can get Jin to quit whining, it's changing the subject to something he knows a hell of a lot about.]

There's hundreds, possibly thousands of dimensions, or realms, where I'm from: Earthrrealm's the one I'm from, and the two after it that're the most politically important right now are Outworld and the Netherrealm. It's all very complicated-- you wouldn't believe how rough interrealm diplomacy can get.

[yeah cause you picked a fight with the emperor of outworld you punk ass nerd]

[cachemoney]

[YEAH..... COMPLICATED... she can believe that. She makes a little bit of a blank expression, nodding in that way you do when someone is speaking to you in a totally foreign language.]

So, you're... used to the whole dimension thing, at least. Gives you a leg up on, well, me.

[pummelling]

[you gave him an opening fi you brought the geek upon yourself

Jin doesn't take notice-- or pretends not to notice, who knows-- that she's humoring him, and breathes out in an affected sort of impassiveness.]

I've seen a lot of crazy stuff in my day. Missions like this are no problem for me.

[cachemoney]

Well. In that case, I'd relax and take advantage of the downtime. If I were you.

[pummelling]

Not my fault I'm getting restless. That's all on ALASTAIR.

I just want to get to do something actually productive for the timeline, you know? What they really hired us for.

[cachemoney]

Well, "hired" isn't exactly the word I'd use. Opportunistic employment, maybe. If you want to play workaholic, there's probably things you can do.

[pummelling]

Like getting pressed into service, huh? [he sounds delighted about this.]

You seem like you've been here longer. What does ALASTAIR actually make us do when they're not falling down on themselves, here?

[cachemoney]

A few months. I've only been on one mission so far; we had to keep a species from going extinct. So it wasn't, uh, action-packed, if that's what you're hoping for.

[pummelling]

What, you mean the glorified babysitting?

[yes. he's heard about the jello babies.]

[cachemoney]

Oh, sorry, were you there? [Ignore that she has called it glorified babysitting herself, she's allowed.]