[s72] mental link.

[whereabout]

you care for people so much it breaks your heart...and you're lying to yourself about it.	however much you may model your behavior after a normal, decent person, you are no such thing.
you have no place in the lives of normal people.	you aren't a broken wreck. that's how i see it, and i know i'm right.

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[erbier]

( I was able to get inside their compound, but not as close to Shee Naraxa as I wished. She has holed up in her mansion. It is a known that she was the last to see the girl. )

[whereabout]

[ Well. That's always suspicious. ]

( There's been nothing on this end. I think we're still under the radar, but that may change. )

[ If, for instance, someone in their group acts. He doesn't intend to stop and assume they're in the clear. ]

[erbier]

( Thus far no one has expressed overt suspicion of us. Though even Casiria expressed some intrigue into our behaviors. I don't know how much longer our group can manage to be prudent. )

[ She doesn't have a lot of faith in the others, that much is very very clear. ]

( The symbiote shields us somewhat from the Enemy's detection, but too much smoke from our camp will quickly change the matter, I think. )

[whereabout]

( We're nearing the point where if we want to act, we'll have to move or lose the chance to. I think most of our group is very aware of that. )

[ Or: yeah, he is completely expecting someone to jump the gun and try something any minute now. ]

[erbier]

( They are not careful, and they do not think about the fallout of their actions. I have witnessed more than once, their ideas of solution. I've no interest of dying here with them. )

[whereabout]

( Anyone in particular to watch out for? )

[erbier]

( Sam Wilson, and all those attached to him. They will lead you to folly. )

[whereabout]

( Duly noted. )

[ He's not passing any judgments ahead of time based on that, considering that the most important person in his world is definitely a hothead who jumps in without a plan and all. But he'll certainly be watching for poor decision-making. ]

[erbier]

[ She doesn't need him to believe her, that sect of their group was always all too quick to show off their recklessness. They'll make her point for her, all on their own. ]

( Shall I tell you my skills? I think you and I have a good chance to work well together. )

[ An offer, not a demand. More flies with honey. ]

[whereabout]

( Sure, fire away. )

[ One thing Joshua will never turn down when offered: information. ]

[erbier]

( I came to the Hive as little more than a gardener. But the symbiote has been a fine companion to me. )

[ All couched as though it was a gift, that she did not work and drive herself into hysterics at times, reaching after what might be unlocked from the symbiote. ]

( My foremost ability is fear. I am able to inflict it to varying degrees among individuals and groups. It is a useful skill, at times, and I find more so in concert with skills of stealth. )

[ Striking without being seen, or isolating someone with nowhere to run... Both were very good uses of fear and stealth. Is that what one calls terror? ]

[whereabout]

( It's a good combination, to be sure. )

[ Being able to get someone off your trail without killing them outright is invaluable, and he knew that even at the height of his career as the Black Fang, when he had no reservations about killing anyone who stood in his way. ]

[erbier]

( It has always behooved me to move carefully. )

[ Go unseen, or die, really. ]

( Where do you come from, Joshua? )

[ She does not mean in physical space, she means his skills. ]

[whereabout]

[ One of the advantages of this entire arrangement, as uncomfortable as he finds it, is that nuance is so much easier to discern. So it's not lost on him (and it makes sense, since nobody here has heard of Zemuria anyway). ]

( When I was a child, I was taught to break and enter, kill, and escape without being detected. )

[ He's not proud of it. There's always a certain amount of self-hatred that's just part of the feeling of his mind, as much as flowers and scorched earth are part of hers. But it's far more obvious, when they're on this subject, exactly where it comes from.

And yet it doesn't call much attention to itself. It's not a cry for help. It's just an accepted fact of his world - he's a monster, and normal people shouldn't be anywhere near him. The sky is blue, bears shit in the woods. ]

[erbier]

( Those are difficult skills, to be given as a child. They will make you quite unlike to many of our host. I have found it hard, to find empathy in them. I have interacted more intimately with death than most of them. They find it uncomfortable. )

[ A careful shaping to this answer. A kind of warning, without the same explicit naming as her objections to Sam but... of the same vein. They won't understand. And they will hurt you with that. ]

[whereabout]

[ That ought to sound more dire, maybe. But nobody hurts Joshua with what he is more than he does to himself. He was young when Weissmann started grooming him, yes. But he was still young when the Brights pulled him out of that life and tried to give him some kind of normalcy again, and the conclusion he came to - childish though the logic might be - never left him.

If killing was bad, and normal people didn't do it, then there could only be something deeply, irreversibly wrong with him. ]

( That's only natural, isn't it? )

[erbier]

[ She had never thought there was something wrong with her. She felt blameless in all the terrors that had occurred around her. Now, as the only survivor of her world, surrounded by people who did not understand it... They certainly had a way of making the rope of it feel tight around her neck. Making her feel resentful when they demanded she change: to conform to their morals, all the while bemoaning the changes the Nest demanded of them. Hypocrites.

The Nest accepted her as she was: bloodied and power-hungry and sharp and false. ]

( I suppose it is. But their fear doesn't mean that we are wrong. )

[whereabout]

[ Doesn't it, though?

It's not...normal. Not for his world, at least, but - ]

( It's...normal, where you come from, right? )

[ He'd probably feel differently, in a case like that. Instead of just feeling...broken. ]

[erbier]

[ Normal. There's something inadequate in that word. It did not at all seem to describe the thing. ]

( Shall I show you? )

[whereabout]

[ Right. They can do that, can't they? ]

( Okay. )