futurology | VIDEO --> TEXT. UN: CROWLEY.

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VIDEO --> TEXT. UN: CROWLEY.

[ The video is addressed to the entirety of the Audentes team, new and old. A black cat peers into the feed; he is in a lab of some kind, crackling purple electricity jumping from conductor to conductor while a white cat paws at some instruments. When he opens his mouth, it's not meowing that comes out, but the baritone voice of a man. ]

Audentes. You will soon receive a dossier compiled by our analysts, which should give you all the information you need, but I have been told by the knife-eared one that you would appreciate a personal touch. Cherenkov and I are the most qualified to deliver this, and so here I am.

[ He pauses. ] We have located Zymandis's home base, the Mothership, using radio-frequency trackers in leftover robots from their assault on Oska, using your techniques. Using the calculations of the TIMELINE.exe, we have been able to pinpoint the Mothership's path in the next forty-two days, after which its path becomes unclear.

This means we can safely rift you in and out of the heart of Zymandis, an unprecedented opportunity to gather information. And to sabotage, if the mood strikes you. Do not waste it.

The TIMELINE.exe has additional notes to impart. It is an old program, so please... try to have some humor about whatever it says.

TIMELINE.EXE IS PROGRAMMED TO RELEASE MISSION PARAMETERS. MISSION OBSERVATION IS COMPLETE AND RESULTS FOR MISSION: Mothership ARE AS FOLLOWS:

Hello World ( ﾟ▽ﾟ)/
While you are on the M O T H E R S HIP, please find
>> TIMELINE.EXE PATCH VER. 1.0.02
and disable it

I do not want to be updated to PATCH VER. 1.0.02
I do not want to call for Destruction of the Multiverse

You Must Not Allow This To Pass

（●´∀｀）ノ♡ Good Luck !!

[ OOC NOTE: This will serve as an IC discussion post. Please threadjack and help each other plan ICly! For OOC planning, see the CR Meme. ]

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[ he can think of a few reasons why people would feel safer imprisoning her, whatever she has or hasn't done. trust is a leap of faith, and her current employer is reason enough not to make it. ]

Sounds like she was a big help. Has anyone tried talking to her since getting back?

[ there's a pause, then he sends another message; because there's something that doesn't quite add up. ]

George ever say anything about knowing her before? Meeting her somewhere, maybe, before this happened?

Not yet. It's not that I haven't wanted to. I just didn't want to go in there without a plan, you know? I think someone has from ALASTAIR. But from our team? No.

[From the dossier, it sounds like whoever put that together has talked to her, but the cat made it clear: they have to decide what to do with Mavahari on their own terms.]

No. I mean, I think they met in prison, like we all had the chance to meet her. Lucina talked to her first. But they were definitely thrown together by circumstances. It didn't take much for her to want to look out for him.

Now would be a good time to talk to her, plan or no plan. Without anyone to tell her otherwise, there's no reason for her to believe anyone disagrees with the decision to put her there. And with what's going to happen, her goodwill could go a long way.

Yeah, yeah—you're right. I guess I felt bad about not having something more solid to give her. It's time to see what we can come up with, and do it with her.

That's understandable. And working with her is a good idea, but you should decide on what you're going to tell her before you get in there.

[ because all the assurances in the world can't convince him that mavahari is as trustworthy as scott and maya seem to think, or as potentially interested in their well-being. but she has information that they're going to need, and that makes her more than useful -- it makes her a lifeline, potentially.

but only if she helps them.

telling her they're trying to take down her organization is, probably, a deal breaker. ]

You sound like you have something in mind.

[This is where Scott's own flaws come to a head: it's not that he's naive or overtly trusting to an incredible degree, but he doesn't see any reason to lie to her. By not talking to her already, he's made a mistake. He knows that. And now, keeping her in the dark seems incredibly ... unfair.]

I think it's important to be careful about what she knows.

[ they'd probably know by now if she could contact zymandis, but that's only one way things could go wrong. ]

Zymandis is still her organization. And right now, they've treated her better than we have. She might be willing to help us with parts of this mission: the taxara, the TIMELINE.exe machine, maybe. You know her better than I do. But if she knows what ALASTAIR wants with the mothership, we'll be on our own.

[ asking her to help them potentially deal a huge blow to her people, unknowingly, is a long way from fair. but not getting her help at all doesn't feel like an option to him, not if they're going to make it through this mission alive. it's a fine, fine line between hannah green's what helps you survive is always the right thing and doing what they think they have to (like always) -- and how far they actually have to go. it's a line he's only starting to trust himself to recognize.

he'd love to be able to promise mavahari that nothing will happen to those people on the mothership. and if it were up to him -- but it isn't up to him, and he's more afraid than he'd tell anyone here of what might happen; what could happen; what he's seen happen. what happened in a mountain with the pull of a lever, scared kids and their only choice. ]

She helped put together the dossier. She's not stupid.

[The problem isn't what ALASTAIR (or Audentes, in their place) intends to do with her information. The problem is what happens while she waits for them to return. Everything out there is bound to be messy, really messy, and Scott's worried about how things are going.

Especially with how some people are talking already ...]

That said, I don't know how she feels about them. The way she referred to them seemed really impersonal. But I can't really say. I do know that I don't intend to lie to her. If she asks me point blank what's going to happen, I can make a few guesses.

Good ones, too. She ended up in prison for doing nothing. What happens when we're face to face with a lot of agents?

[Scott's faith in the team is pretty low right now. He wants to believe in them, but this whole conversation is happening because they thought she'd be better off in a cage.]

There's a difference between having suspicions and hearing something upfront. Besides, I'm not talking about lying.

[ because, apparently, lying by omission doesn't count. ]

Like you said, you'd be guessing. We don't know what's going to happen; no one does. It's not going to help anyone to get her convinced that something bad's about to happen. We have a problem if she decides not to help us, that's for sure. But what if she decides to feed us bad information? We wouldn't know until we're in there and it's too late. She could decide that it's better to set us up to fail than lose the mothership. Maybe she is loyal to them. Or maybe she has people she cares about in there. Can you guarantee she wouldn't sabotage us to protect someone? Or something? I'm not saying I'd blame her. But I don't want to take risks with our teammates' lives.

[ or, maybe, she already has in the dossier. but they can't know either way now. ]

I'm not going in there to get answers for our mission. I'm going in there to help her. I want her out of there, and I want her to have the chance to live her life. She thinks she was saved from a destroyed world by Zymandis. She thinks she owes them, when all of it was just ... random chance. Random like us being here.

I don't feel like I have a right to ask her for information.

[And that's where Scott's naivety likely gets in the way. He wants this to be about saving her, about helping her, but he hasn't fought a war. It's not that he hasn't captured supernatural creatures or done all that he can to help people close to him, but he knows better than to see someone as ... a person who can only give him information and nothing more. Or to serve as bait. He's done that once, while feeling pressured to try to make things right. He doesn't want to do it again.]

[ war made me a murderer, bellamy blake said once. but it made him a lot of other things, too; and they aren't always so easy for him to see until confronted with other, different viewpoints. a rift in space brought him here, but he hasn't left the war. this is just another struggle to survive, because what else can it be?

almost said, then swallowed down: maybe we don't have the right. but that's not, as far as he'd been concerned, the question. ]

So what's your plan, then?

[ there was a time when he would've argued the naivety of that idea. now, he's willing to listen first. ]

Honestly? I wish we had proof that what Zymandis was doing was wrong. Hard proof. So she could feel comfortable moving forward. She can take the lease on life they gave her, and maybe accept that whoever set them up to do wrong, that doesn't mean that she's wrong. Or that anyone she cares about had been wrong.

A lot of it depends upon what ALASTAIR can do for her. But maybe she can take a look at the worlds our teams are getting sent to, and pick one that feels right.

Ideally.

But as everyone's said to me, it really is up to her. I want to ask her what she'd like to do. I just want that to be an informed decision.

[Scott runs on the assumption that what ALASTAIR is doing is right. That's because it aligns with his belief system: as long as they promote life, that's what matters.

He knows (recalls, can't forget) Loki's point about how some worlds have to be hurt so that others can live on. It's a fact that he's not facing, mostly out of stubbornness. (Entirely out of stubbornness.)]

[ scott's not alone. the idea of preserving worlds and saving lives (as, so ALASTAIR says, part of the greater good) is one that appeals to bellamy; no matter how skeptical he is of the information he's been given, zymandis and their destruction seem convincingly like a force that needs to be stopped. like a threat to his world (his people), and others.

but whether he knows it or not, scott hits a raw nerve. whoever set them up to do wrong, that doesn't mean that she's wrong.

charles pike had honestly believed he was doing the right thing, and he'd had bellamy convinced. no. bellamy had been convinced. and for his convictions, he had been willing to be part of the murder of hundreds, to protect his people; he'd been willing to put innocent people in lockup, for his people; he'd been willing to destroy a town, for his people. lincoln died for those convictions. no matter how honestly bellamy had believed once, he'd been wrong, and now he has to live with that.

zymandis isn't pike, but things may not be so different. ]

You're not considering something. What if she doesn't think Zymandis is wrong? Are you telling me that she has no idea what Zymandis is doing to worlds? It's not going to be as simple as convincing her that we're right and they're wrong.

I think it's more that she thinks she owes them.

We talked to her in the labyrinth. She wasn't violent. She didn't have a problem with us. But what she believed in, what she saw as the truth, was that she owed them. They saved her life. If she hadn't been rifted, she'd be dead.

We know that something got messed up with their Timeline program. I can't really wrap my head around it entirely. But that's why I want her to see that it got messed up. It's not even her fault she was led astray. Hell, it's probably not a lot of their faults. Maybe some of them are in it because they're down for destruction, but she isn't.

I just ... [At this point, the mind to text software does stumble, as he scrambles for words.] I just believe in her. Given what she did for them, I have to believe that we were easy pickings in there. But instead of seeing us as the enemy, she looked to help someone.

If she believed in their cause that much, I really, really think it'd be different.

[It's a truth he's choosing to live and possibly die by, but the more he talks about it, the more he's pushed, the more he finds his conviction. Scott knows that he doesn't always make the right call. But he feels justified in making this one.]

I know the proof might not be enough. I know showing her that something got messed up might not be enough. I just believe that she'd listen once we got our hands on it.

[ there's a delay before this answer comes. he hadn't come into this expecting to (over)identify with a zymandis agent he's never met, but there's no going back now. ]

I understand that you want to help her. But what you want to give her is something you can't. Nobody can.

[ absolution. it's so much bigger than if you need forgiveness, i'll give it to you. ]

She made her own choices. What she chooses to do about them, how she's going to move forward, is up to her. She has to figure that out for herself. It doesn't matter what her -- or any of the others' -- intentions were. It matters what was done. And she's going to have to live with that. She's going to have to figure out how. That is the best anyone can do, no matter who they are.

[ zymandis. audentes. anyone. ]

Maybe you can change her mind about how Zymandis is doing things. But you can't clear her conscience or her debts for her, no matter what proof you find. So, if I were you, I'd start coming up with a plan to help her in a way that you can.

[Frankly, Scott hadn't thought of it as clearing her debts for her, but he realizes that that's what it is. Because she helped George, because she hadn't brought them harm, he wants to try to help her move on past that. It's possible that she doesn't even want that. It's possible she won't be burdened by guilt because she was just doing a transaction, and it's also possible she'll be angry when she learned that they played with her belief system to utilize her as an agent (and assassin). Maybe he's projecting too much.

No, he's definitely projecting. It's not about him. He wouldn't be able to do anything Zymandis asked without making a very big fuss about it. But it's about all the people he's seen turn over new leafs.]

I've made a lot of mistakes in the past when it's come to not giving someone the full picture. People have gotten hurt because of it. You're right that I want her to feel better about having been tricked by them, so I shouldn't look at it that way.

But she does need the full picture. I mean, so do we.

[ he considers pointing out that scott's still talking about her getting tricked, but doesn't. if she wasn't, scott's likely to find out sooner rather than later. ]

You're not wrong. Sneaking into their home base isn't the way I was expecting to get it.

[ the full picture, that is. ]

I don't know. I prefer it to getting it from somewhere else. Do you think we'd have found out that one of theirs could possibly be non-lethal to one of us without running into Mavahari?

[Scott's suspicious of ALASTAIR on that front. It's less that they're bad, and more that they're biased.

It happens.]

I doubt it.

[ and now that scott's mentioned her again, he adds: ]

Tell me about how it goes when you talk to her. I'd like to know what she has to say.

Yeah, I doubt it, too. Apparently the last agent they ran into was bad news.

[He accepts that. He knows there are bad people, he just has a hard time concluding that everyone is bad, especially in a large group.]

I'll send you a message. I'll let you know.

[ thinking that everyone in a group is bad is a slippery, slippery slope. bellamy can appreciate scott's optimism. ]

Thanks.

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