shitposting rave 5: discount rejects from every genre

Stan picks up the bottle of Scotch. "Can't let this go to waste," he says, and pours himself a glass, then sits down next to Angeth. "Why do I feel like I know you from somewhere?"

 

Angeth shrugs. "Perhaps you've met some other Cereuti malcontents."

 

And I guess there was some sorta reason why... Kadiris... couldn't just go "fuck respectability!", right?

 

-she lifts her hands with a slightly helpless expression; it's clearly not something she wants to explicitly confirm as a matter of principle, but he's already figured it out and her unwillingness to say it is a kind of confirmation itself-

Tainell got around the 'not being able to lead a pride' thing by... not. He avoids any official ties to a pride to avoid that conflict of mentality. He can lead because he has no queen he should be following. There are a lot of people who make noise about his friendship with our Pines but it still manages to fit within the bounds he's set up so far.

-she's now sitting on a crate covered in various alien scripts to the effect of 'handle with care' and '<-this end up'- From what I've heard that's pretty common thought where people are making assassins from scratch. I suppose that's the part I lucked out on, but it's also how they got us. You're kind of an example of how that can backfire: once you've made a connection you realize what you were missing. With the clan that raised me, the Aerihman... everything was for home and the clan and family. We were fighting so that our clan could have a home instead of being... not even nomadic like the other clans. Most travel in pairs, sometimes very small groups if they're poly or there are children. You could almost make it sound noble with just that. Who wouldn't want a home? To know that their children wouldn't have to wander the megaverse constantly at odds with everything we've pissed off over the millennia? Even better our ancestral home, wrested from invaders. Said invaders who are universally reprehensible unless you bleed capitalism and don't mind the fact that you're a Lesser Species too. Except after the Aerihman tried the conquering thing, when we'd deliberately fucked off from our home because boy did we we ever screw the pooch on that one, and ended up with the only time the other clans have assembled en masse and threatened them with extinction if they pulled that shit again they decided they wanted Atlantis not just to return to Atlanteans, but to them specifically and the other clans can die in a ditch. Preferably one they dug specifically for that purpose.

So once you pull the narrative apart, it's fucked. But as a kid we're told everything we're doing is for the clan, for our families and for our home. Family is important, and even Sunaj are expected to settle down for a century and have kids, especially since we as a species aren't exactly numerous. And if you don't want to be frontlines then there's so much backstage bullshit going on that we have civilians. As kids my brother and I happened to be adept at getting into trouble, and as long as we weren't disturbing anything important it was encouraged because we could always use more assassins. My brother was a little over a year older and was getting looked at for training because both his talent and fondness for getting into ALL of the shit only increased with age, and then I got my Marks and handled that well so they went "yes good we'll take you both." They try to do that; one of your team is always family, though your trainer and your handler never are. Family might not push you the way they should, or hesitate sending you where you need to go. The other two were other trainees we bonded with; you don't have a team until you get your first tattoo as a Sunaj so you're just thrown in with all the others and they watch you, the friends and enemies you make, and they calculate.

And then you get that first tattoo together. It's exhilarating, the moment everything is real. And immensely painful. It doesn't so much get easier with later ones so much as you learn to block it out. You suffer together, and you handle the aftermath together, and after that you're never apart until your training's over. You live together in a tiny shoebox dorm, when you spar it's always againsts others, never your own team. Sometimes there are check-ins; a trainer will ask who your teammates are and if you hesitate or can't locate them fast enough you're punished. If one of you fucks up, you all get punished. You do good, everyone gets rewarded. You love them. You hate them. Some days you want to strangle them. By the time you're through the thought of living without them is alien.

As actual Sunaj we might have split into pairs doing seperate jobs in the same area, but where there's one there's always another. Even if it's just one actually doing the job there's someone to haul them out of the fire, or to finish it if they don't make it. It helps the "Sunaj are big scary monsters and definitely not Atlanteans" that a job always finishes even when they think they got the assassin, and bodies always vanish before they can be removed from the armor. And it helps when you're in the thick of it: you don't have to worry about "what if I fail" because someone will do it, or "what if my failure endangers us all?" because they'll make sure it won't. And that you're brought home.

 

It's not necessarily something you can simply do. High society can be war almost as much as crime fighting is, just with different weapons.
[Some time inbetween shoving the cheesesteak into his mouth and now he has figured out that he can manipulate this space into letting him wear different clothes, so he is now in a tight black T-Shirt with the words "Proud Parent Of A Great Kid That Is Sometimes An Asshole And That's OK" in light grey lettering, and a pair of soft dark grey sweatpants. Instead of the cowl he is wearing a domino mask and is running a hand through his unruly black hair (with no grey at the temples, thank you very much Jason). Instead of the boots he's wearing what looks a lot like ballet slippers. Despite his clothes he doesn't particularly look like he is any less on the job. ]

 

Well, yeah, true but... if I'm interpreting the stuff we're all not saying right, it was possible on my Pennarion.

 

Angeth shrugs. "I am not Talassani and neither is Ford. And Lissa was Beijaden. You would have to ask someone who knew them well. And most of those people are dead."

 

"I was on Pennarion for less than a year because Angeth and I had work there and Lissa's family would have had a hard time tracing us there." Ford sighs. "I can't honestly say I knew the place."

 

-noise of vicious agreement- Society is a battlefield with disappointingly little bloodshed. The cost, rather than your life (in most cases. I make exceptions), is the quality of your life. A sufficiently terrible blow can leave you just as dead, eventually.

 

Every alternate universe has a few key differences right? So some of those key differences probably contributed to making that more possible. Revolution, someone else getting elected, someone dying at an inopportune moment, a key player being born under different circumstances...

Oh for sure. That's why I leave the social battlefield to my boss, while I just keep the streets of Gotham as safe as possible.
[He grins.]

 

"If I were to wager, I'd guess that they put what they perceived to be the needs of their people above their own," Emre suggests. "That, or they did not have or were not aware of the options that Imperator Tainell evidently had, and used."

 

... so, I guess you guys ended up with the grimdark shitty knock-off version of Pennarion, that's what you're saying. The version where everything is awful and nothing can be done to make it any better. *sighs*

 

"That sounds about right to me," says Angeth. "One thing I do know is that a lot of the people ahead of Fontaine in the succession had been murdered, and they chose a Cereuti as their Sword. Ral Hargraeven. His Family and their Corpora disowned him. People said they were in love. After that, I don't know how much leeway they had with the Counsel."

 

"Ral Hargraeven, Ral Hargraeven... That name rings a bell. Something about an invention..." Emre remarks. "But a Cereuti Sword? That can't have gone over well with the Talassani..."

 

Alas, I have neither option. Fortunately, there are others; the mercenary of society suits me fine. How convenient, that the isolated heiress has neither major ties nor the desire to form them. -she smiles like a knife, lean and sharp- Do you play chess?

 

-wow her expression sure did get dark there for a second-

 

"Probably it was an attempt to unify the population. To bring our dissident emigres under their banner." Angeth shrugs. "Or maybe they loved each other."

 

Ford groans. "Ral Hargraeven, you say. I had a classmate by that name at the University of Dael, some years before. We were lovers, briefly." He shakes his head. "Can't possibly be the same person. We quarrelled all the time, but over math, not politics."

 

"Do you have any friends you haven't slept with?"

 

There are very, very few universes where nothing can be done to improve them. Sometimes it's very difficult, but there usually is something. [Vector is still knitting. It appears to be something round-ish? Maybe?]