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[ Rachel's in the feed, looking a mixture of angry and upset and honestly, kind of grossed out. For once, she looks like she might lose her cool. Or might have lost it already. Either way, she's holding a grease-stained takeout box in her hand, her lip pulled back in disgust. ]

You know, it's bad enough that both of my roommates just up and disappeared. It's bad enough that I'm stuck in this crummy apartment all by myself, when the blue bitch in charge has just locked us into the neighborhood. But when my food starts talking to me? I'm so done, okay?

[ She opens the top of the takeout box to show to the omni-tool feed -- the indistinguishable heap of food in the box looks perfectly innocuous at first, until it starts...wriggling. And then a couple of black bean mameshiba pop their heads above the surface with a little whoosh of air. They stare at the camera with wet, quivering eyes for a long moment before one of them starts to speak in a tiny voice and heavily affected English. ]

Do you know? Most lipstick contains fish scales --

[ Rachel snaps the top of the box shut, and the mameshiba inside let out muffled cries of dismay. Never has a teenaged girl looked this angry over bad takeout. Seriously, if looks can kill... Well, at least Rachel's grizzly morph can.

Her nostrils flare, her jaw set tight, and oh yeah, she looks pissed. Pissed to cover up being scared and upset because she's alone, and the food is infested with weird little Japanimation beans, and she doesn't like it when the rug gets pulled out from under her. ]

It's been crap like that, nonstop. Creepy, disgusting trivia every time I open the stupid box. And it's all so weird! Who even knows this stuff?

[ Nerds, Rachel. Nerds know this stuff. And right now, that makes her so angry.

She leans forward, eyes narrowed, and pronounces with total, seething conviction: ]

This. Is. So. Gross.

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Clearly! [gods, this is going to turn into a confusing conversation very fast. faster if Rachel keeps snorting.]

If this food is so unsafe to begin with, why do you continue to eat it?

Uh, 'cause there isn't exactly a Subway in the Zeta markets. It's either this or starve. I'm not exactly making big bucks here.

I mean at home. Gods, do you think I know nothing about survival?

Huh? Oh. [ Man if Marco were here she's sure he'd spout a few interesting conspiracy theories. ] It's not like I eat that much of it. But it's cheap, so if you don't have a lot of money, I guess you don't really have a lot o options, either.

Why do you need money for your food to begin with? Has hunting died out with the rest of what you're calling your culture?

[ Rachel hurriedly clears her throat to keep from laughing. She really likes Severa, okay, as much as they butt heads sometimes, she's trying not to just laugh in her face. But...hunting. If only Cassie were here, she'd sure have a few things to say about that. ]

For most of us, yeah. I mean...look around here. Do these people look like they do much hunting to you?

This is all magic and technology. I assumed your culture was closer to mine than to this.

But the krogan are probably fantastic hunters, now that you mention it.

It wouldn't surprise me. [ okay yeah Rachel thinks the krogan are kind of awesome shut up ] But uh, no offense, I don't think our worlds are anything alike. I mean, this is all pretty weird, but...I've seen some things like it. Kind of.

I'm beginning to get the feeling that I come from the least technologically advanced world of all of us. [she's not sure how to feel about that.] At least you aren't acting insufferably superior about it. Small favors, I guess.

Don't worry about it. I mean, yeah, compared to you we're pretty advanced, but all of the crazy hi-tech stuff I've seen before was all alien technology. And trust me, they've got the insufferably superior act down pat. [ She rolls her eyes, because Ax. Because Andalites. Rachel likes Ax well enough, but Christ could he be smug. ]

What exactly do you think this is to me, then? Simply calling technology alien has no meaning anymore. Turian? Asari? Gods, vorcha? I dread what their technology might look like.

Look, I'm from a totally different world. We don't even have krogans and turians where I'm from. Look, until a year ago, I was just a normal kid, until suddenly you find out aliens are real and they're already invading. I don't understand how most of this stuff works any better than you do.

[ That's probably not true, but hey, ask Rachel to explain Z-space or how morphing works and see what kind of answer you get. ]

...Do you mean to tell me that there are other aliens? Ones that aren't these? [just when she thought she'd been getting a handle on things.] How enormous is this universe, anyway?

No, no -- not this universe. My universe. Back home, everything was all normal, until we found out there were aliens, and they were invading. But it was never anything like this.

Gods, Rachel, has every universe experienced something like this except mine? Stepping backwards into the flow of time to avoid the destruction of the world by the avatar of a fell god among dragons is one thing, but alien invasions?

[there is zero sense of self-awareness in her words.]

[ Rachel just gives Severa a look. The only appropriate look for a bomb like that dropped into a conversation. The what the fuck look. And you have to try hard to get the what the fuck look out of Rachel, Severa. ]

[and Severa's face beams with the smuggest look she can possibly manage.]

Did you think I was joking, all those times I said I'd killed a god?

[ Rachel looks a little like she's just bitten into a lemon. Tartly, she says: ]

I guess I didn't really think about it.

Look, I don't know anyone from any other universe who's had an alien invasion like ours happen. And trust me, it's weird. But you think time travel is normal?

Of course I do. I was brought backwards in time through the power of one of the Gods. That's perfectly explainable. [again, no shred of insincerity.] I can think of no God who would... outsource an invasion like the one that befell you.

The Yeerk invasion doesn't have anything to do with God, I can tell you that much.

[ A little bitter, maybe, but Rachel's still more fixated on Severa's weird matter-of-factness about...gods. ]

Besides, I think your world has a different idea of gods than mine does.

Our world's differences are becoming clearer by the sentence. These... Yeerks, then, they discovered your planet and decided that they wanted to have it? I suppose that part isn't quite so different. You would be one of the warriors in this invasion that you were so semantically pushy about?

[ god severa don't remind her of that that conversation is so embarrassing in retrospect ]

It's more complicated than that, but...that's the gist of it. We weren't the first planet they'd come to conquer, either. There were others they enslaved first.

I didn't think these invaders capable of more complicated motivations than "ooh, shiny", but I suppose you would know better. Did you plan to liberate the other races? Would you have even been able to?

[this is tactics, mostly, or perhaps justice—either way, it's got Severa's attention, so she's pretty curious about the particulars. she looks rapt.]

Trust me, they're just as intelligent as humans. Most of them more advanced than us, too. And in the case of the Yeerks, they're evil.

[ There's conviction in her voice, bitter and angry just at the thought of them. The audacity of those parasites, that they thought they could just take Earth for theirs. It didn't belong to them.

She swallows some of it, though, her expression softening a little at the question, sombering a little too. ]

I mean -- we'd like to, yeah. We've freed a few Hork-Bajir -- one of the aliens the Yeerks enslaved. But...there are only a few of us fighting them, Severa. And most of the time, we don't do so hot. Of course we want to free the Hork-Bajir, but we have to free our own people before we can do that.

Edited 2013-08-18 01:25 (UTC)

Gods.

[the word sounds hollow. even against the seemingly insurmountable forces of Emperor Walhart, Severa had never felt as hopeless as Rachel's fight in this war may seem. she exhales slowly.]

The Fell Dragon is vanquished and Ylisse is rising into another age of peace. If we ever find a way off of this floating rock, I will gladly lend my sword to your cause.

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