Mingle - Emergency Potluck

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WELCOME POTLUCK

Greetings, residents! Those more observant sorts among you may have noticed a large influx of very crowded ferries. In order to welcome our new residents en masse, Town Hall is holding a potluck in Town Square. Please bring a dish if you are able and make a new friend!

All of our newest arrivals need only bring themselves. We look forward to welcoming you all into our community, and may your lanterns always be lit.

This event is open to all! In light of our new influx of prospective players following the Great Sail Migration, we've decided to offer a small public event to tide everyone over until the TDM this weekend.

Comments

[yournewsidekick]

Nimona bursts out laughing. She topples backward onto the basket handle with the force of it, shifting into a bright pink toad as she goes -- the better to gulp in a breath and let out a gigantic croak in answer.

Okay, it's half-croak, half-belch. Loud burps are never not funny.

[maskedstarbunny]

A slow pause. "I saw the end of a thousand years of war. And the effects it had, on those who fought it. On those who kept fighting it. It lives on behind your eyes, and alone you suffer it, so others need not."

The smile she gives is both gentle and telling, of what she herself has seen. "The trouble is of course, you are not alone. Not really. Its immortality is a false mien, pulled tight 'cross your throat. I offer only what I know I can give."

I'm sticking to max's journal for ease

[maximumcake]

"I... I know," Max says spreading his hands helplessly. He can emote for both of them. "I'm sorry I..."

"It's true, Angel." That's Erik's voice. He's been listening to the conversation unfold and, despite his promise not to approach Max, this feels necessary. "Max speaks the truth."

Erik turns to look at Max in full for the first time, "I'm sorry for cutting in, but this felt appropriate."

"Oh..." Max answers with a bit of nervous tremor in his voice. "T-thanks." But now he's the one looking around, specifically to see if Erin's caught sight of this yet.

[maximumcake]

"Yeah, that sounds pretty much like what he said, too. He was in training to be a hero. It mattered a lot to him." Max using past tense has probably already clued Tarantulas in to the sad answer to his question.

"No. He... disappeared a while ago. Before everything went... bad."

[maximumcake]

"Huh. I wonder what that feels like for him..." Maybe a little like how Max felt being the only human in most places for so long. Maybe the perspective is good for him?

"Ugh, right? He says he doesn't do it on purpose but come on? He sleeps like a dead log, so he had to be awake to do it."

[crushed_pearls]

Pointing at her lack of eyes.

Pointing at Erik.

To the lack of eyes.

To the lack of pulse.

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"He must like how I look when I get flustered," Chris says, "otherwise, why would he do it so often?"

They lean in, nudging Max with their shoulder. "So. Is Erik ticklish in other places, or just his feet? Feet will be hard to 'accidentally' tickle, after all."

[graveling]

"Okay. So...what does that mean for everyone here? You're not...you can't...I..."

Words fail and Angel just gives Erik an uncertain, confused glare.

[lordoftheozarks]

Erik locks eyes with her, so to speak, and holds up a finger in the universal gesture for "Give me one minute." He doesn't need her coming over to punch him again when Angel is in such a fragile state.

[hadnoright]

When she looks back up at him and notices the meat back on his bones, she can't quite help the crooked, smirk-like smile. Well. There you go, then. At least he got a good top up out of it.

It slips away a little, when she actually gets back to addressing the massive elephants in the room. "...suppose at least it's this way around. Don't think a younger me would be so. Willing to accept it."

Better that she's stuck with a Jon that doesn't remember than Jon being stuck with a Daisy that would just as soon slit his throat as listen to a word he had to say. Her gaze flicks to the scar across his neck, and she swallows hard as she forces herself to look away again.

"This place does seem... better. From what I've heard. So far. Might be dying but it's still a lot more alive than the ship. Didn't realise how much I missed real trees." But now she's looking forward to heading into the woods, to hunting out there. Fresh air and real plant life, real animals. You take them for granted until you're stuck in a bubble without even microbial life going for it. "Have to see how everything goes. I guess. What happens after... it's not my biggest concern."

Going back to the ship isn't something she wants. And going home... it isn't an option. For reasons she's not sure how, or if, she's ever going to tell Jon. Even if she wasn't dead, what good would it be going back to a world forever changed into the image of the Fears?

[lordoftheozarks]

Erik meets eyes with Max again and says as neutrally as he possibly can, "Would you mind giving me and Angel a moment to talk?"

"Uh-uh. Yeah. Sorry. Erik, I'm really sorry." Max stutters. Fuck, he can see Erin giving death glares already.

"Angel um... if you still want some dessert later you can just... you can come find me. Okay?" That said, Max rushes away from them both before either can say another word.

Now it's just Erik and Angel. It seems dead hearts can still break if the pain in Erik's chest is anything to judge by.

"Angel, I'm sorry I did not tell you this before. But Max is free of me and will remain so. He is the only person I ever did that to. It happened for a reason. One I will tell you about in full detail somewhere that is less public. As for anyone else, I have no intention, at all, of ever repeating that crime. Certainly not to you."

[graveling]

"I'm not worried about that. I know you wouldn't do that to me." But Angel isn't looking at Erik, instead staring rather intently at a table off to one side.

[mister_morgan]

"Arthur Morgan," He introduces himself, with a little tip of his hat in return to the raised glass. "I ain't been here for all too long, but me n' the other folks around here are easy to get a hold of if you need anything."

A glance down the tables, and he lowers his voice, quiet and playful.

"Hope you don't mind eccentricities none," He draws out the word for emphasis. "But folks here are a might strange. Nice enough, but there's never a dull moment, I'll tell ya that much."

[mister_morgan]

Arthur isn't keen to argue too much, but he gives a small shake of his head and a huff of a laugh that speaks volumes. You're odd, but not gonna complain.

"Naw, I got the rest of 'em, I think," He finishes his short little shuffle, and finally deposits plates, letting out a relieved sigh. And, now, with his hands free, he reaches over to give his new acquaintance a jovial pat to the shoulder. "Saved me from makin' a scene and ruinin' the mood, I owe ya one. What's your name, partner?"

[notinflictthem]

Hawkeye nods, both eyebrows raised in an expression of 'fair enough'.

"You're doing a great job of it. And hey, maybe it will be nice without all the demons."

...

More quietly, "like how it was in that dream."

[notinflictthem]

"Oh well that's no good, most days I can't even muster up the will to get out of bed."

Which is to say, he's sticking to what he knows works, thank you.

"What's a cell phone? We have cameras here, but they're the old fashioned kind you have to sit still for."

[astrogator]

A tree as a best friend sounds on the lonely side to Tayrey, but she's not about to start poking at that. Could be that Elsie is perfectly happy, or that she has very good reasons to avoid spending too much time in town. Something she can understand all too well.

'Sure, I'd like to be friends, Citizen Elsie!' she says brightly. 'It's a good thing, having friends in a new place like this. Maybe you could show me your tree, sometime?'

CW: touch starvation, struggling with depersonalization

[theydrewfirstblood]

For a second, John can't breathe around the way each word burrows into his chest and tears at the shoddy stitches he's used to sew himself back together over the last three years. He knows it's a cheap patch job, the way he's holding himself together these days, but it's worked so far. He's been okay.

(Except he's not. He's in constant fucking pain from a lack of human contact, he's barely holding on to the one relationship that's helped him deal with fucking any of it, he keeps watching people he cares for, who care about him, die and he can't take it--)

He swallows, head dropping forward as he tries to breathe around how much it all suddenly hurts, how it burns and aches and breaks.

He's dealt with this. He's accepted this. He can't go back now--it'll kill him if he tries.

John tries three times to answer her, but each time he has to clamp his jaw shut for fear of what will come out. Finally, he just lifts his head and meets her gaze, his own overbright with tears, and nods, trying to offer up a wobbly smile as he does.

[lordoftheozarks]

"Are you worried what will become of my reputation or... perhaps yours by proxy?"

[astrogator]

For her part, Tayrey took Ava's cynicism for damage. A spacer sees some of the worst of humanity. Warmongers, thugs, pirates - even ordinary people driven to do terrible things as their colony collapses around them. The difference is that people like Tayrey don't just accept that violence and corruption is inevitable. They stand against it. They demand better, and put their own lives at risk to stand against the evil done by others. They lead by example, living by their own values and expecting the same from those around them.

Tayrey tries, even after all she's been put through, to extend to every stranger the benefit of the doubt. To see the best in them and offer peaceable contract unless she's given a reason not to. That's how you create a better sector, you act as if it's within reach.

'I'd have hated it,' she confirms, 'but that doesn't matter, because you didn't ever have a free choice about it.' Which means Tayrey can't think badly of her for what she did.

What about those old Company values? It's hard to think back to being twelve. It seems unimaginably long ago. 'I adopted Tradeline code when I joined, but a lot of Company values were the same. People made a lot of the differences - ideas of loyalty don't match up, for one, and Tradeliners have a lot more restrictions on our own freedom and some of that grated, but the core values align. My father taught me life-and-liberty-and-property when I was very young. I guess I cared a lot more about voting rights back then, and colonists' Charters. Tradelines aren't democratic.' Tayrey shrugs. 'It seems absurd now that I got asked if a Company girl could ever adapt to the Tradelines. The two are more similar than... well, than anything I've seen from out-of-sector.'

She forgets the points where she'd struggled with adapting, because those difficulties were overcome long ago. She'd wanted to be a Tradeliner badly enough to make it work. Now she looks at Ava, curiously. 'So what would you call your own core values? Not the ones someone else gave you, unless you made a choice to keep them. The ones that matter to you now.'

[hereticofthewilds]

Elsie laughs too, bright and overly loud, as if she's never had to regulate her volume in polite society before. And then she pulls an actual toad out of the top of her dress and holds it out for Nimona to see.

"Same!"

[maximumcake]

"He does. Likes to tease and make people blush."

Max laughs to himself about a memory that's just surfaced. "I started a prank war with him one time that lasted an entire month. I won, but he threw my copy of Twilight into the lake after I put glitter in his sheets." So much for Erik's reputation as a prim and proper lord.

"Armpits," Max says, still grinning. And if you squeeze just the right spot above his left knee, too. Just the left."

[lovinglefthand]

"Y-yeah?" First Aid stares at her with growing excitement. "You know about Optimus Prime? Is he, are there Autobots on your version of Earth?"

She's...probably not from the version First Aid knows, with those big wings. Maybe. Who knows what all went down in that scary cruise ship dimension?

[lovinglefthand]

"I agree. I'm a little worried about what will happen as their immune systems meet our germs, but..." He sighs. "I also don't want to scare people. The best thing we can let them do is know that there are resources available; all they have to do is ask."

He looks up at Bart; for once his human friend is taller than him, so long as he's sitting down. "How are you holding? Talk to anyone nice?"

[crushed_pearls]

"Quick question doc, how good are you at tanking an existential crisis?"