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[competing]

[ greetings, audentes, tonight's broadcast is brought to you by the letter Y

as in Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy tf does this place suck so much huh? huh!! ]

What's a guy gotta do to get some coconut oil around here, huh? Heck, I'll even settle for some shea butter at this point.

[ here lance is, sprawled across a bed he is definitely meant to be sharing (but TOO BAD KEITH you snooze you lose, except not literally, because if you were literally snoozing you'd probably already be on the bed). he's looking rather put out, but anyone who's seen him during the time bug incident knows this is 99% more petulance than actual unhappiness. he's got his arms folded behind his head, and a certain chubby space mouse flopped over the top of his head, snoozing.

this particular bad mood may or may not be provoked by any combination of stress, healing orb withdrawal, the perpetual possible threat of a teammate that may one day grow up to stab you in the face after he stabs you in the back, and a not-so-successful run-in with the local fare down in the desert saloon's cozy little bordello. (he doesn't want to talk about it.)

but also the skincare products. that is actually very important to him.

or maybe he's just feeling a little stir-crazy, and someone thought it'd be a good idea to hand the kid who can't keep his own mouth shut a device that can activate and send out messages from a single thought. ]

So who's holding out on the rest of us? [ him. he means him. he's noticed some of your skins, okay! that softness and tautness ain't natural! ]

Is it that thing they're mining? That argecite, or whatever? They all have pretty good skin and they're just inhaling that stuff... Maybe that's why they want it so bad.

[ now he's just late-night musing. but seriously, do you think it's easy to be this beautiful? ]

I wonder if we can get some of that stuff ourselves and grind it down. I bet it'd make a pretty good exfoliant.

[ science side of audentes, show me your argecite beauty hacks. ]

Comments

[competing]

...fair enough. [ regular cancer is scary enough. putting "alien" in front of it just makes it horrifying. ]

For your face?

[webdesigned]

Right, whoops, that doesn't go on your face...

( probably? ? ? )

[competing]

[ ... ]

You're starting to make me real sad here, man...

[webdesigned]

I keep a simple routine, I'm a busy guy.

( no time for moisturizer or pomade when you are a superhero. also, mask. nobody is gonna know anyway. )

That's not sad, it's practical.

[competing]

Too busy to even know the difference between a face wash and conditioner...?

[ he is Dubious, man. ]

[webdesigned]

Conditioner, lotion, they're kind of the same only used different places.

( PETER YOU ARE MAKING IT WORSE. )

Anyway, you can probably make it without until we get back to Oska, right?

[competing]

[ this actually hurts him. maybe it's best to just... ignore it... ]

Dude, do we even know how long we're here for?

[webdesigned]

Can't be more than a few months. That seems to be the top of these things.

( he says, as if this should be reassuring. )

[competing]

I mean I figured we had a deadline... what with the fate of the planet and all.

[ still. ]

A few months seems doable, though.

[webdesigned]

Hopefully the planet isn't two months away from capsizing... it seems like it'd be too late to really fix things.

( hard to say, though, when they knew so little so far. )

[competing]

You really think they'd send us here to fail...?

[ he didn't get it. weren't most of them new? if it was really that dire, would alastair really risk sending a bunch of amateurs to do the heavy lifting? ]

[webdesigned]

No. Or at least, I hope not.

( sending them to an already doomed planet would be a bit depressing. )

[competing]

For an organization that really wants us to save planets, they're not really giving us much to go with, are they?

[webdesigned]

I think they don't have a lot to give, is all. When we get on the ground, we always figure out more about the mission.

( that's the painfully positive perspective on things, though. )

[competing]

[ he can appreciate that. lance is usually the painfully positive on in the group, so it's a bit odd to find himself on the other side of the spectrum.

eventually, he relents, preferring to defer to the trust that these people know what they're doing... and wouldn't put them all out like that. ]

Yeah, I guess you're right. It's still early, right? Could just be a slow start, that's all.

[webdesigned]

I mean, they've got a machine that can detect weaknesses in a timeline. That's pretty spectacular as it is, if it were as easy as a detailed agenda with how to fix it, they probably wouldn't need all of us.

( peter isn't without his own misgivings on ALASTAIR, of course, but at least in that he doesn't have too many doubts. if they could have their goals achieved easier, why wouldn't they? they could only give as much information as they had.

at least, it was easier to face a mission without the idea important information was being withheld. )

[competing]

Yeah, fair enough. It'd be a little weird if saving the universes were that easy, anyway.

[webdesigned]

Right? Nobody would tell that story, "something was wrong and we immediately fixed it, the end."

[competing]

I'm mostly just hoping our story gets a happy ending...

[webdesigned]

( not what he was expecting, from the start of this conversation, but Peter manages a smile. )

Me too. Those can be rare, but we can hope for them anyway.

[competing]

[ what a wild ride amirite ]

What we're doing's pretty rare, I think... maybe we'll get a special prioritization for that.

[webdesigned]

Is that how happy endings work?

( he's half teasing, half serious. it's up to them whether the story has a happy ending, right? they've just got to find out how to get there. )

[competing]

Dunno... guess we'll find out soon enough.

[webdesigned]

Yeah, we will.

And for what it's worth, I'll do whatever I can to make sure we get a happy ending.

( you're not alone in this, surprisingly wellmeaning bro. )

[competing]

[ that's always really good to know. ]

You and me both, brother. We got this.