001 ☪ open } { it's robot flu season

[hackedhistory]

Who: Zari Tomaz + YOU
Where: The dorms.
When: Over the sickness event.
Rating PG
What: Zari's caught the robot flu and she dislikes it strongly.

[Starters in comments.]

Comments

[hackedhistory]

No. Because I didn't see him. I heard him.

[But it was his voice. It had to have been.]

He's taller than me but he's younger than me. Same hair and skin tone. He'll probably have a necklace like mine.

[She places her hand over her amulet, the one with the big giant red stone that she never takes off.]

[bleps]

[The stone is noted -- had been noted before -- and the crease of his brow doesn't leave him.]

...All right.

[Two considerations that he keeps to himself: 1) there are an influx of new members, and one might very well be her brother and 2) those with high fever are very prone to hallucinate, and shouldn't be wandering about at all to begin with.

A moment of silence, then.]

Five minutes to look. Then I'll have to insist that you return to your room.

[hackedhistory]

Sure.

[She's not going to adhere to those rules but she will take the leeway and run with it. She starts stumbling forward, and she feels like ... she should probably explain this determination:]

Behrad is dead, was dead when I left home. He died protecting me. If he's here, if this place fixed it somehow, I have to find him. I can't just leave him again.

[bleps]

I'm... sorry to hear that.

[And he is, the worry draining from is tone to make way for something harder to pin down.]

But you need to consider that your mind might be playing tricks on you, thanks to your high fever. Your realize that, don't you?

[hackedhistory]

I do. But I'd rather check the grounds and be wrong than ignore him possibly being here.

[Better too much work than no work at all.]

[bleps]

Then we'll check. Unless you become too tired to function properly, and then I'll have to insist that I carry you back.

[A frown.]

You said he wears a similar necklace to yours, correct? Is there a significance to that?

[hackedhistory]

[She pauses for a moment, because time shenanigans make this complicated, but ...]

This isn't normally just a ridiculous piece of ornate jewelry. It's a totem, from the Zambezi tribes in Africa. The person who wields it normally can manipulate the air around them to varying degrees. My brother was the first totem bearer, but when he died, I didn't want to let ARGUS keep it, and it ... chose me next.

[bleps]

Sorry, hold on—

[But he bites his tongue; knowing his automatic desire to question the viability of what he’s just heard is leftover from what he believed existed at home. It’s almost a constant reminder that the rules are different in other worlds, so Connor realigns his question accordingly, brow furrowed.]

What’s ARGUS?

[hackedhistory]

Advanced Research Group United Support. They're a black ops group that kind of ... took over the government. They're a bunch of dicks.

[bleps]

With a description like that, they do sound unpleasant. What were they attempting to achieve?

[hackedhistory]

Control.

[In it's simplest form, anyway.]

It's ... they claimed they were trying to protect us from the "threat" of metahumans, or people with abilities. We have a lot of those where I'm from. There was huge science advancement, it exploded, and there was fallout. Now, some of these people with abilities were not good people and deserved to be locked away, but a lot of them weren't. And ARGUS decided all of them needed to be rounded up and imprisoned anyway.

[She shifts her blanket around her shoulders more.]

After all, they can't justify experimenting on them if they're not prisoners and dangerous and therefore less than human.

[bleps]

[He walks with her, still cognizant of her balance, wanting to make sure that she doesn't fall over. But his brow cinches together and his lips pull down into a frown.]

Experimentation for the sake of knowledge, which will lead to power and control. Such as it seems to be.

[It sounds less than pleasant.]

I understand why you'd want to keep your pendant from them. You said it manipulates... air?

[hackedhistory]

[She nods.]

A long, long time ago, the Zambezi elders came together and created six totems of power to fight against a demonic threat. Air - [she gestures to her own] - fire, water, earth, the Anansi totem, which channels the spirits of animals, and death. When all of them come together, they can take down pretty much anything.

[bleps]

And who has ownership of the others?

[A powerful set of artifacts, indeed, if that’s true. ]

[hackedhistory]

My friend Amaya has the Anansi totem. As for the rest, we borrowed them to save the world once, but after we were finished, we sent them back to Zambezi. We figure they'll find the best people to bear them when the time came.

[bleps]

A very weighted set of decisions to make, undoubtedly.

Is… something like that normal in your world? Powers, I mean.

[hackedhistory]

[She nods.]

Not before 2014, but by the time 2042 comes around? Metas are everywhere.

[bleps]

And what’s significant about those dates specifically?

[Some kind of event?]

[hackedhistory]

Well, 2014 is when the particle accelerator exploded. That's when metahumans started showing up in the first place. But 2042 is when I'm from.

[So naturally the numbers have increased in those thirty years.]