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Just a friendly reminder that you idiots elected this team again. This was the choice the majority of you made.
Where's Grell? Or was this her idea?
Where's Grell? Or was this her idea?
DEPUTY RECAP:
Maribelle- both deputy (person who arrests people) and the public defender (how terrifying is it that the person who arrests you is who your life is dependent on? not fair to anyone who needs legal representation whether they're criminal or not, bias, horrifying)
Marco- about 90% sure he set that fire, threatened to do it again
Remilia- so egotistical she had to come try to rub it in my face after they won, then acted surprised when she got treated like shit for being an asshole. an immature bully who threatens anyone who questions her. definitely the kind of person you want in this position.
Don't know about Hikaru Takeda and Seth Rim yet, but I am sensing a pattern here lol
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..He's being metaphorical, there's no way he knows that. ]
Idk if you know this but I'm not great at metaphors and I don't know anything about rainbow mists. I do know that people can imagine a lot more than colors, but that's neither here nor there.
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Fine. Let me be as explicit as possible. [He still won't actually, because he doesn't trust Em not to use it against them of course. But even this is a little dangerous, even if he'll just say he was bluffing and/or suffer the consequences.]
Whoever is holding onto my wife is going to pay with a lot more precious commodities than just their life.
If you're withholding information, when I find out, I'm going to be a lot more angry, and believe me, I WILL FIND OUT.
If you don't have her, and this is the first you've heard of it? Spread the goddamn word in the underground that everyone better start talking. But my warning shot is the mildest anyone is going to get. Every day she's gone, the body count will jump.
And the prissy princesses Maribelle and Remilia aren't going to be able to do anything to stop me.
Look up some mythologies on Ares and Mars: the god of war, and then on phoenixes. Phoenixes don't usually have the luxury of having a mate, to say I'm a little pissed to have her sealed away from me, doesn't begin to grasp the scope of how much I'll raze to get her back.
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I don't even live in Everglade, I commute for my job, so I'd have to be pretty talented to remove her without being seen.
[ And while she can manipulate perception, it's on a limited number of people at the same time. She would've passed out trying to accomplish that without witnesses. She doesn't know anything about time pockets or whatever. ]
I can give you my deliveries list and timecard for my other job if you want to check where I was if you know enough to establish a timeline. I can tell your organized crime and some people on the black market to spread the word if you want, though they respond better to money than threats.
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500 redbills for any solid leads that give me her return. But if I find out slavery and kidnapping of children is involved, they're going to wish I was just murderous and merciful enough to let Grell deal with them. And I don't care if that makes them dig in deeper, I will find them, Emerald. And if I have to fight a war on all five fronts, it'll slow me down, but I'll still do it.
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Keep the anger inside then just do it.
Otherwise they're gonna pull back and try to hide.
It's harder to hunt someone who knows they're being hunted.
Though I guess it's a little late for that.
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It doesn't seem to be Everglade, but if you can check Attleton, it'd be a big help. Cassian is determined to do things the legal way, of course, but I doubt that will see results.
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You take your pick.
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I try to prove him right sometimes too, obviously. I think you can guess how that's gone so far.
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I have a friend though, and I have Cassian and Jaune. [ She doesn't know what the hell they are. Mercury is the only person she'd really call a friend, and even that they only recently agreed on. ] But if she asks, even if they don't like it, I'll do whatever she wants. That's what I promised to do, and I don't make promises I can't keep. Cassian doesn't like that much.
[ Jaune doesn't either, but they're talking about Cassian. ]
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Why doesn't Cassian like it, I mean.
In my world my father had 1600 sons close enough for me to call of them a brother. But I still had friends outside the family, that I'd all but fight my own crew for, if I had to.
I know Namur and Thatch will never let me betray Pops' values, and I know sometimes they worry my friends might exacerbate my violence, but that's why they keep me in check.
It's your choice who you give your loyalty to, isn't it? You're not just making yourself a slave, right?
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I'm not a slave, I chose to be loyal to her.
[ Not in the technical sense. Questioning decisions or stating a differing opinion has gotten her hit before and she agreed to do all of this because she was starving on the streets and had no other way out. She's killed people for trying to leave. But in the technical sense, if she wanted to leave she thinks she could. If anyone could, it would be her in terms of actual physical abilities that let you leave a person who's gone so far for power they quite literally let themselves become part monster. Psychologically is a whole other story. ]
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What kind of genocide?
And how do you feel about those things?
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It doesn't matter how I feel about it.
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You're not a tool, you're not a weapon, and you're not a pawn. If your life means so much you devote it to others, then they have to make that life worthwhile and meaningful as well.
[Hell with this, he's not sure if she's playing him, or serious, but it's serious enough to break his masks, and he switches into video.]
My father didn't just save my life. He gave me life worth living. He taught me what it means to be... alive. And if I didn't question him, even him, I'd be useless to him. He was the smartest man I've ever known, and I'm not just saying that because he's my Pops, but he was brilliant. And yet, he needed me to always be thinking. Over thinking. Mind racing ahead at the speed of light to try to corner every possible move. And the smarter I was the better he could be too.
My first mate is my brother, and one of the best people I've ever had the privilege of knowing. He'll never question me in public, and if I asked him to kill, torture, or maim someone, he'd do it. But only because I earned that, Emerald. I earned it by giving him respect too. By knowing and having to analyze the costs to him for every action. I'll never ask him to do something that hurts him in the long run, because it'd hurt me maybe even more than him! And because of that, he trusts me even if I have to hurt him a little in the short time. He can't keep up with me, he just can't. He's not a phoenix, he's not a captain, and he doesn't want to be either. So he has to trust me to think ahead of him, how to protect him and the others, and to trust and remind me I always have their best interests in mind.
If you have no autonomy of your own, you're not a good subordinate either. Any idiot soldier can take orders. The real men are the ones who try to see the war from every single angle, all the consequences, every life, and the cost of all of it.
So how you feel about it means everything. If I ordered Thatch to do things for me, and he didn't feel he could talk me out, or at least through them so I could try to explain my reasoning, if he started to distrust my motives, if my orders hurt him and he didn't tell me? I would never forgive him. [Blazing blue war god eyes here.] I don't want him to always agree with me. Sometimes I push him just to see how he'll do, because I can, because he can handle it, and it's important to remind him he's strong enough to hold his own even with the phoenix. He can't keep up with me, but he makes me stronger just by being at my side. And that's something my Pops taught me too. Both as my father, my captain, and the strongest man our world has ever known.
If you don't feel you can disobey, if you can't look at how you feel about it? That's on them, not you, but it's on you to stand up and start figuring it out, or you're doing them a disservice. Because even the best commander in the world will lead you to ruin if no one can tell them when they're about to fight the wrong battle.
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[ It's a beautiful story, but it's from someone who had someone to reach out to them. Someone who had someone care about them. It's from someone who had anything. She watches the video, all the way through. The words are nice, but it's... it's nothing she hasn't heard before. It's nothing she's going to switch to video for, because she knows it's just going to lead to him knowing how little she values herself.
Not that it'll change the content of her words, but it at least doesn't show the emotion, the pain, the desperation. He'll have to figure that on his own. ]
It's fine. I am a tool for her. It isn't as though I think she cares about me beyond my usefulness, whether I want that or not. But even the one person who ever has I only have because she forced me to accept him. Every ounce of happiness I've experienced in my life, the air I breathe, the food I eat, being able to talk to others, my combat skills past bare survival, not living on the streets like a worthless rat being spit on by people who think I'm the disgusting one, not being told the only ones who would miss me if I were gone were my fleas. Even beyond our world, Cassian never would've been interested in me if he didn't think the fact that we're both killers for a cause beyond ourselves. I never would've talked to Jaune. I wouldn't have tried to bother David.
Even without her here, everything good that's ever happened to me was caused by her actions. Everything I've ever done without her, good or bad, ends badly for me.
I owe her everything. You'll have to excuse me if some inspirational speech about how lucky you got and how you had someone who valued your input isn't going to change that.
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Then you're doing her a disservice.
If you only let yourself be a tool, she won't be strong enough to be the best. If you only attribute everything to her and nothing to yourself, she didn't do anything in the end. Anyone can use a tool. Saving a life means a lot more. Living is more than survival, never forget.
If you aren't thinking for yourself, if you're just letting yourself be a lazy pawn, you're actually hurting her, because she can't grow stronger from that, and she'll never be the best she could be either. It doesn't matter how you rationalize it, that's the truth.
I got lazy with Grell. She's so strong, so immortal, I didn't do anything but follow her orders and be her backup. And despite all her enemies, I didn't pay attention either, because I just knew she could handle them, or I'd deal with it when it came up. Look at where that got me now. She trusted me to think independently, to be more than her equal and I'm failing her.
It's never enough to take orders. That's just you being scared. Get stronger, or else you're hurting Cinders too.
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They aren't big on disobedience. Emerald gets away with more than some do, but she's not big on the murder risk. ]
You have no idea what you're talking about. Stop assuming your situation applies to everyone. It never does when people talk about things like that, it just makes you sound like a self-righteous ass.
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