keith keith, the liger man (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
secondnature) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
futurology2017-09-16 11:28 am
secondnature) wrote in futurology2017-09-16 11:28 am
text | un: redlion
[This message shows up about an hour after their arrival in the Mothership. Keith has had it made clear to him that if he doesn't handle this appropriately, then some of the people who have volunteered will take care of it themselves. If there's any better reason to step up (to be the leader his team back home believes he can be), this is it. It's text because they can't risk being overheard.]
Hey. Some of you don't know what the taraxa are, or what that has to do with our mission. I thought I'd begin there, and then make it clear what we're doing here with that.
A year ago, we had a mission on Perdition's Rest. That's when our team first learned about Zymandis and their goals. They utilize taraxa agents. These agents are slugs that take over someone's mind against their will. The person loses themselves, but ALASTAIR has developed a means to get most of them back. The problem is that they're a part of a hive mind led by the Mother. They can communicate with each other so long as she's active.
That should make our goal here clear.
1. We need to identify the location of the Mother and take her out. This is a necessary casualty to save as many of the hosts' lives as we can.
2. We need to identify taraxa agents. Kal and Rhys both have means to scan for taraxa-affected brains. Work with them if you need someone confirmed. Once they're confirmed and the Mother is down, we put them to sleep until we can rift them back to Oska. We'll need to find a safe place to gather the bodies.
3. Once the Mother is identified, we take her out, and then we head for the rest of the taraxa agents.
We need to work quickly.
And I KNOW some of you will think we're better off killing the hosts than risking Oska, but that's stupid. They never asked for this! Plus, we put down a Zymandis force before. We'll do it again. So don't even try it. I already remember all that from last year. Trust me. I've heard it all before.
So, let's do this the right way this time.
[It wouldn't be Keith without the little bit of abrasiveness at the end.]
Hey. Some of you don't know what the taraxa are, or what that has to do with our mission. I thought I'd begin there, and then make it clear what we're doing here with that.
A year ago, we had a mission on Perdition's Rest. That's when our team first learned about Zymandis and their goals. They utilize taraxa agents. These agents are slugs that take over someone's mind against their will. The person loses themselves, but ALASTAIR has developed a means to get most of them back. The problem is that they're a part of a hive mind led by the Mother. They can communicate with each other so long as she's active.
That should make our goal here clear.
1. We need to identify the location of the Mother and take her out. This is a necessary casualty to save as many of the hosts' lives as we can.
2. We need to identify taraxa agents. Kal and Rhys both have means to scan for taraxa-affected brains. Work with them if you need someone confirmed. Once they're confirmed and the Mother is down, we put them to sleep until we can rift them back to Oska. We'll need to find a safe place to gather the bodies.
3. Once the Mother is identified, we take her out, and then we head for the rest of the taraxa agents.
We need to work quickly.
And I KNOW some of you will think we're better off killing the hosts than risking Oska, but that's stupid. They never asked for this! Plus, we put down a Zymandis force before. We'll do it again. So don't even try it. I already remember all that from last year. Trust me. I've heard it all before.
So, let's do this the right way this time.
[It wouldn't be Keith without the little bit of abrasiveness at the end.]
no subject
[if it were audio, it would be spoken in the same tone someone would say "fuck you"]
i don't care how we knock them out and store them before we rift back
it's the oska part i'm talking about
and i'm not exactly a science guy, but i do know things like knockout gas wear off. we can talk all kinds of small details about how to fit the anesthetic to the species or whatever, but you're not gonna get precise enough to 100% guarantee they won't wake up before it's safe
you know what doesn't wear off? not being able to physically fucking get up
no subject
The first one is a possibility. The second one is an assumption, but one I know you're not willing to let slide.
So, I'll compromise and make sure their legs are chained together. Maybe at the knees.
Happy?
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you're also assuming they won't have powers that can just break or eat through the chains but whatever, i guess that's the best i'm gonna get here
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They didn't.
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they got free, and people died, that's what we know
we could leave shit to chance this time, or we could take as many precautions as we possibly can
idek why you're resisting this except that you hate me tbh
i'm willing to bet even YOU don't feel sorry for those taraxa assholes that are gonna be the ones that feel the pain in this scenario
no subject
[To Keith, that is literally the exact opposite of resisting, because, well.
He hates compromise.]
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i don't get why we're exactly compromising here, unless you have some kind of moral objection to harming the taraxa that 1) enslaved all these people 2) literally tried to kill us
[But it's true that Keith is actually making somewhat of an effort to even try to listen to him this time, so he'll offer a slight concession.]
the chains are probably good enough
but what if they're not? stakes are especially fuckin high this time, dude, and if zymandis doesn't know we're coming they're sure as hell gonna by the time this is done
what if they get free and take the opportunity to turn tim into murdertim and shred our backups before we can stop them?
maybe it's a small chance but we have a hell of a lot to lose if it happens
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We have a plan for Tim. We have a plan for this Timeline. I'm giving Lloyd a call about the Mother. I'll check and make sure they have a plan for the hosts coming back. To get confirmation of what I've already assumed.
Everything you've ever had a problem with is just because you're afraid.
I get that you're afraid, but that's your problem, not ours.
Why don't you worry about that?
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hell, unless you guys just dumped the taraxa on lloyd without a pre-warning LAST time, i'm sure they thought they had it covered that time, too!
i don't know why you're always so deadset against being careful
we don't LOSE ANYTHING by not throwing our whole lot in with luck and faith
no subject
Yeah, I didn't think so. You're always quick to point out when we've messed up, but never when we've succeeded.
Probably because you don't help out either way. All you ever do is point out how something is going to go bad, and now you have the one time it did, so you're holding it over me. Me. Personally. Because I'm the one who asked that the taraxa get taken from the hosts, and I'm the one who pushed for it before.
So, maybe in all of this, the problem you have is with me. Maybe you're afraid because of me. I don't know.
But hey, don't start off something with saying what you did and expect me to receive what you have to say with open ears. EVERYONE here is trying to help. We're working together. As a team. We're even organizing. We're discussing. We're doing better.
If you don't trust me to pull it off, then fine. But go waste your time elsewhere like you always do because I don't need to hear it.
no subject
i'm just a standard fucking human without superpowers or some giant fuckoff weapon to blow shit up with from a world without superpowers or invasive alien species or magic or WHATEVER but i know a thing or two about keeping my ass alive
nobody ever fuckin listens to me though, because somehow, all of you ALWAYS know better, about everything, no matter what
[Even when it came to Asterion prison, the one type of environment he's known his entire life, he was the one who didn't know what he was talking about, somehow.]
if you could ever stop stewing in how goddamn righteous and great you are for five seconds, maybe you could see that there are more ways to help than tossing pompoms in the air and jumping onboard the first plan someone puts out there and that if i didn't want to fucking help i wouldn't even be here?
shit if i wanted to i could just ask lloyd for a transfer into one of those support roles and hang out in oska all day
but y'know, shockingly, i want to take zymandis down too
i just happen to care if we go down with them, and don't think the Power of Friendship is enough to save us if things go sideways
god forbid someone doesn't join in the self-congratulatory confetti-throwing we like to do, though, i guess
no subject
On the prison, you told us to sit and do NOTHING. Our plan was bad. I know it was. But you know what would have been worse? If we landed in that labyrinth without a single weapon in hand and were told to survive until we got to the end of it. Because that's how things would've gone.
You even said that all of this could be a trap. Look. We're here. If it was a trap, we'd be DEAD already.
I KNOW that things can go wrong. Do you think I'm stupid? But I also know that I can't walk into a mission assuming I'm gonna mess it all up because that isn't how it works. Unlike you, I don't sit and do nothing because it COULD go bad.
EVERYTHING you've ever come up with has been based on fear. Not cynicism or worry. I'M cynical. I worry. You're afraid the worst is going to happen, so you think we have to plan accordingly. But you can't lead people like that. You can't do stuff just because something COULD happen. Because we're not coming up with ideas like tyrants to ensure things work out.
You just think that by not listening to you we think we're better than you.
Or maybe your ideas are just bad. We've succeeded in spite of you. That's not self-congratulatory. That's just the TRUTH.
orz i'm sorry this tag is so long
[Snapped irritably. He'd almost forgotten how much like pulling teeth talking to Keith is.]
in woodhurst, you put a bunch of people with a disease that turns them into uncontrollable cannibals in the same tiny space, and then refused to isolate them from each other because they were going to be ~lonely~
by some kind of miracle, none of you ate each other, but let's not act like we weren't ridiculously lucky
if the cure had taken much longer, you probably would've
and we don't even know who might've gotten infected and DIDN'T go to the quarantine before the cure happened, and if they ate anyone or not
as for the prison, like everyone else who plugged their ears at the thought of not being a fuckin hero, you missed the entire point aka DONT DO ANYTHING FUCKING STUPID IN THE MIDDLE OF OUTER SPACE
i said!! multiple times!!! to wait until they STOPPED SOMEWHERE and THEN make a move if we got an opening
i said DON'T ATTRACT ATTENTION because if you mark yourself as a troublemaker it makes things that much harder for everyone else
i said don't hold out for ALASTAIR and be prepared to stick it out, and gave people advice on how to survive in the sort of environment i spent MY ENTIRE LIFE IN
you get to say NOW that everything worked out fine, but i'm almost positive that that crash was a failsafe designed SPECIFICALLY for something like the plan you guys made. we were probably ALL supposed to die in that crash, a bunch of people DID, and frankly it's fuckin bizarre that didn't include a single one of us, idek what those odds are
luck wasn't on our side was the time with the taraxa
i'm not gonna waste time arguing about whether or not trying to save them was worth it, but the point is that things AREN'T always going to work out, and when that happens i'd rather have known we'd done everything we could to protect ourselves. that's different from saying let's bury our heads in the sand and do nothing.
even when i said i thought THIS was a trap i never said LET'S NOT GO. i specifically said let's find a way we can ABORT MISSION if shit goes south, instead of getting in a position AGAIN where we're cut off from communication with oska and have no escape route because ALASTAIR is the only one that can rift us back. i even said to send a couple of us ahead to see and report back if it IS a trap or not, because they'd probably be talking about it if it was!
this isn't about my ideas vs your ideas, it's never been
it's about the fact that you don't like it when people aren't 100% gung-ho about everything ALASTAIR
you don't like ME so you assume anything i have to say is automatically bullshit without even actually listening to it
no subject
The prison barge was only going to STOP at the labyrinth. Did you forget that part? We were teleported there by that bright light! I can't believe you forgot that. But you did. Because it conveniently needs to be left out.
I can keep going, but I won't.
If you're not going to help us, sit somewhere and talk to yourself about how we're all idiots and how we're going to mess it up.
And save the "I told you so" when we do. Because somehow you're going to KNOW we were going to mess it up.
Thanks, but no thanks. I don't need your help. I never did.
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again, i'm TRYING to help, but like you just said, you've already determined that nothing i have to say is ever going to be useful to you, so you're gonna ignore it
and then you wonder why i started this off the way i did
(p.s. we all passed out from that bright light, so that teleportation story could be bullshit for all we know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ sure is interesting we didn't find the option while we had control of the ship, isn't it)
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It's just you.
[From where Keith stands, Kagari is the only person he talks to these days and can't help but have it devolve into an intense, long-lasting argument.]
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i'm flattered i'm so special to you, but i just don't think it's going to work out between us
no kinkshaming of course but i'm not really into hateboning
[when all else fails ... a return to trolling .....at least they were al.most. civil for a while there...]
no subject
[Besides, Keith already has one rivalmance. He's too socially stunted to have another.]
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i know it seems bad right now, but you'll hate again, i promise ♥
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It's what he almost said, but instead he just ... stops.]