asgardmeridiem | JUNE INTRO MINGLE

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JUNE INTRO MINGLE

Who: Newbies and anyone who wishes to greet them!
What: Getting used to the city
When: Days 274 and forward
Where: Anywhere in town!
Rating: PG-13 tops! If it gets worse, move to a private log please.

[Please include your location and the IC day (ex. Day 275) in your top-level comment or your subject line when starting a thread! It can be any welcome hall, major attraction, or just out an about in any district. For newbies making a top-level thread, you may include your character's name/canon/house in your subject line if you'd like, to make housemates easy to find! :) If a God is needed or wanted, please ping the mods and depending on availability we might be able to throw them in where asked.

Also, keep an eye on the event schedule for June! If you're ICly introing during an event, make sure you take that into account. Thank you!

Have fun!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Pretty damn big cause, too," he snorts. "They pretty much say it straight to our faces - we're not only here to save them, but to save ourselves. That's the big selling point for the ones who wouldn't do it just to save a city full of strangers. And there's more of that type around than you'd think."

Yeah, he's still bitter about how things went with the spy they discovered not long ago. And the vote to save Freya's life. As far as he's concerned, morals make people completely suicidal with their need to preserve the lives of others.

"And when it comes to how we're taken, I still haven't heard a good reason for that, given what I just told you. The world's - all the worlds must be full of wannabe heroes who'd jump at a chance like this. So why kidnap people who'll never agree, and who won't fight?"

"Perhaps reluctance too provides them with something they need. Perhaps they need as full a spectrum of emotion and motivation as possible. It would fit with the story they have constructed, though I can't guess at what an ulterior motive might be. At least not yet."

She hears his bitterness, and adds it to the other little things she has observed about him. Every little piece reshapes her image of him ever so slightly as she tries to understand him.

"You don't think very highly of idealists, do you?"

"That depends on the ideals," he points out a bit tartly. "If your only mission in life is to save every person who can be saved, or even help every person who can be helped, you'll never actually get anything done. Terms like collateral damage and acceptable losses started being used for a reason - because things didn't go perfectly. They never can."

He sighs and leans back against the bench, stretching out his legs. "That's barely an ideal. It's just being stuck in that mindset that most of us learn as kids and give up pretty fucking quick when we get older, the idea that everyone can be a winner."

"And sometimes even when you win, you lose."

Her voice isn't exactly bitter, it's more like a hard kind of resignation. Her brother had deemed his humanity an acceptable loss. She is not entirely sure that she agrees, which is probably why he took from her the opportunity to have any say in the matter.

He looks at her with real interest then, because he knows that tone; before he was offered a second chance with Magneto, it was very familiar to him. Trapped in Xavier's, forced into inaction by his headmaster's beliefs, surrounded by kids who worshipped him as something of a mutant god - and with nothing awaiting him if he left but the miserable streets of New York City again. Hard resignation was exactly it.

"It all depends on how much you're willing to do, how far you'll go. Would you save one stranger's life just to keep anyone from killing, if he could bring on the end of everything in existence? Is that even so goddamn heroic when you think about it?"

Have we gone too far? Have we forgotten?

Her brother's words echo in her mind, and her eyebrows twitch minutely in the barest hint of a frown before her features are once more smooth and calm.

"Are you asking me what I personally would do, or just being rhetorical?"

"Well, now I'm curious. What would you do?"

He was just ranting, really, but she's interesting. Why not hear her take on it?

"I think perhaps it would depend on the one with the potential to bring about the end of existence. I know that I can kill, but I'm not sure I could take the life of an innocent, even a potentially very dangerous one."

And again her twin comes to mind. It's just how her mind works. He sacrificed himself to save humanity. Would he sacrifice someone else?

He shakes his head.

"Okay, some context. It's a spy for the queen who wants to take this city down, which we've established either will or won't destroy all our worlds. At the very least, she could bring an army of giants in here and wipe out the gods, and since our souls are apparently tied to them -"

His shoulders rise, hands palm-out, in a shrug that says you can guess what happens next.

"- so if it's not your planet, it's at least your own skin. Plus everyone who lives in Asgard, the ones like us and the grey ones. One life for all them. Is it worth saving him now?"

"The life of a traitor is not worth risking an entire city for, no."

She comes from a very harsh place, where harsh laws rule. She doesn't always agree, but she did also hunt down a man and stab him to death when she thought he was responsible for the death of her brother.

"Good!" He throws out his arms, as if a miracle's happened. "Someone who actually gets war. You'll be really fucking welcomed by some of us, even some of the gods, and completely pissed off by the rest."

"I am familiar with war indeed."

She allows herself to let out a sad sigh, loosening her tight self-control ever so slightly to let some emotion shine through.

"And what these gods are doing... I know it doesn't work. Though I suppose they don't need it to. It just has to work for long enough."

He relaxes a little, interest once again creeping into his expression.

"You're familiar with big wars, by the sounds of it. Long ones. The kind that look like they've got no end in sight."

"In a sense."

She remembers wars like that, and while she has not fought in one herself, she was born out of one, and it has shaped her entire life.

"My father named me 'spoil of war' for a reason. Several reasons, probably."

Nothing is ever uncomplicated when it comes to Muad'dib, after all.

He arches his eyebrows, not sure what to make of that information.

"No matter how I look at it, that name sounds really insulting. Some cultural thing I'm not getting?"

"His choice was protested, it was said that it was an ill-omened name."

She shrugs a little, and that sudden grin of hers comes back.

"So no, it's not some cultural thing you're not getting. It's a my father thing."

Then the smile fades into a more thoughtful expression again.

"Perhaps he meant it as my birth being something good that came out of all the darkness surrounding it."

"Sounds pretty dramatic," he says in a tone that's edging toward boredom, but still engaged enough to continue the conversation. "Born right in the middle of a war - or at the tail end? If you're one of the spoils."

He grins a little in return, with that sharp, nasty curve that sometimes edges his smile. "Still a pretty shitty thing to call someone. If you've got to explain a name to keep it from being an insult, it's probably a bad choice."

"It was dramatic, yes."

Said with a hint of mischief in her voice since she knows that she's being irritatingly vague, making it a tease rather than a nuisance. At least that's the intention.

"As for my name, it is at least fitting." There might be the slightest touch of bitterness in her tone there, she hasn't quite resigned herself to her lot in life as much as she would like to claim. As much as she knows that she must.

She takes a breath, and decides to steer the conversation more towards him again.

"Much like yours, though I suspect you chose that one yourself. Am I right?"

Edited (blargh words) 2013-06-17 23:09 (UTC)

Yeah, he's getting the idea that she's far from an open book, and he's nothing if not impatient; still, he'll leave that one for now. Because the issue of his name is an important one.

"We all do. It's more important to some of us than others." There's clear disdain in his voice when he says that. "It's our break from humanity when our mutations manifest. Human names usually don't mean much after that."

The mix of emotions in that final statement could take hours to pick apart: there's anger, certainly, but also hurt, betrayal, resignation, and a good deal of pride. And then there's something so far beyond simple anger that, if plucked from the web and examined, most would find it deeply unsettling.

No, she most certainly is not an open book, though what is revealed once she does open up might not make much more sense than her cryptic and vague remarks.

"You don't consider yourself to be human, because of a mutation?"

It sounds rather strange to her. She is something quite removed from most people, but she still sees herself as human.

That complicated tangle of emotions does not go unnoticed, and it makes her curious. A mystery for her agile mind to unfold and perhaps solve. She will think of him after they have parted, that much is certain.

"It's not what we consider," he says, his voice tightening dangerously: "it's science. We're a related species, but we're not the same. It'd be like a wolf calling itself a chihuahua."

Not that she's entirely sure what either a wolf or a chihuahua is, but she follows his meaning well enough.

"So your parents were also mutants?"

Oh, Ghani, you're going from bad to worse.

"I don't have parents." His voice is pure anger now, and it's all that dark, dangerous anger which hints at a very dangerous side to him.

Oh, she's noticing, but she doesn't scare easily. Besides, she's pretty sure she has worse than him in her head.

"I see. I'm sorry if my question offended, you just made me curious."

She studies him thoughtfully, very calm and still now.

"The term 'mutant' leads me to believe that at least some of you were born by human parents, since it is a term used to describe a deviation from the norm and thus sounds more like a label put on your by others rather than something you would choose to call yourselves. That in turn makes me wonder how you separate your mutation from other variations of the human genetic material to define your species. Do all who are like you have the same mutation? Is a person born with a tail part of your species, or is it a human with a tail? Are the colorblind mutants like you, or do you look upon them with that same anger you are now directing towards me and I suspect the rest of mankind as well?

Though I suppose what I'm really asking is what humans did to make a whole group of people want to be seen as something separate from them."

Well, he just got utterly spanked. But it was done with enough consideration at every turn that there's not even anything to be angry about.

At this point, he doesn't know whether to despise or admire her.

"How much time have you got?" His tone is brusque, but nowhere near as furious as earlier. He'll give her all the history he knows from Xavier's, if she really wants it.

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SO SORRY this is so late ;;

don't worry about it <3 I will backtag with you foreverrrrr

d'awwww .////.

ilu and I love these two ok

it's all mutual!

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