awakener | OK THEN

OK THEN

The Awakener had some acquaintance with being suddenly abducted from a planet's surface and whisked off into space by shady and probably illegal personages, so he would have considered himself relatively prepared for this, but last time it had been a lot more personal and he'd been told what was up pretty much as soon as he was conscious. This was just kind of worrying.

It seemed like they were rebels, which was pretty much a thing that he could get behind, but you could never really be sure with border-raiding rebel factions. These ones didn't seem particularly hostile – not now that they were done razing the hivestructures of the unjust oppressor, anyway – but in his experience people who didn't seem particularly hostile frequently tended to become pretty fucking hostile if, for example, his dark glasses got knocked off, even if they did oppose the cruel and unjust caste system that made that a problem in the first place.

He tugged his hood over his head a little more and did his best to make himself relatively inconspicuous amongst the little throng of similarly kidnapped trolls while he tried to take a few deep calming breaths and stock of the situation, but unfortunately he couldn't come up with much better than "Shit, shit, shit, I am trapped on a spaceship with no way off and I am probably going to die."

It wasn't a very confidence inspiring summation of events. He'd dealt with worse and got out okay, but, well, there was a first time for everything.

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It was a good few hours before anyone came to see him - only after the ship had made it out of the danger zone and out into the further reaches of unoccupied space. The subtle tingle of deceleration was the trigger to things actually beginning to happen. The stress of the raid apparently over, other trolls were free to start peeling away from their battle stations, the sounds of post-conflict celebratory life gradually beginning to fill the ship's halls.

Things in the holding cell were still quiet though, besides the tense mutterings of a few of its more intimidated inhabitants, or the occasional snore of a more elderly rust blood who didn't seem at all concerned with their present situation. The guards were polite but not especially helpful. All inquiries were casually brushed aside with the assurance that everything would be dealt with as soon as the crew could assure everyone's safety. Given the scale of the raid they'd just pulled, that was understandably taking a while.

Eventually, and seemingly without trigger, the guard standing duty looked up as if being spoken too, and after a brief nod departed through the doorway. Moments later, they reentered with another guard at their side. The first, an average sized female with blunt squarish horns, spoke up in an official but not especially professional tone.

"Alright, now that we've cleared the raid zone, we're going to be going through the process of clearing you for passage onto the spacecraft. If you've got nothing to hide, this will be easy. You'll be given a place to stay until you decide what you want to do. If you do...well, you better start thinking of a good lie."

The guard at her side nodded, scanned the room briefly, and then pointed to the Awakener as if the decision took very little thought.

"You first," they said, in a deeper, masculine voice. The door opened, and on the other side there were already other guards waiting to escort him. "Let's try to make this as painless as possible, everyone."

Edited 2012-07-05 19:04 (UTC)

Oh.

He'd been trying to think of a good lie for at least a sweep now, but 'I just want to keep from having other people form opinions and prejudices on me based on my blood colour' was still the best he could come up with, and it didn't really fly too well when it wasn't just a case of typing in grey text on the internet.

He sighed and got to his feet.

Time to either lay his printed game squares on the table or hope to hell nobody would ask.

He pushed his glasses up his nose a little as he looked between the new set of guards. "Hi," he said, managing a tired little smile, because he'd had a fairly long time to learn that under many circumstances being friendly got him further than the alternatives. "So are you the talkative guards yet, or is everyone on this ship like those other guys?"

It probably said something about the environment that one of the guard's first reactions was to snort at that, and not in a derisive way either. They put on a decent presentation, but there were a lot of little things missing when it came to actual aggressive formality. They could wear the ominous face masks and withhold information all they liked, but the way they held themselves looked more like trolls forced to dress up and play guard more than someone with any actual investment in the role.

Besides a few small side arms, along with some practical exoarmour, neither of them were carrying weapons.

"Procedure, procedure, procedure," the one who laughed commented with a sigh. "You know how it goes. Or maybe you don't. But either way you're going to have to deal with it for a bit, k? You're not exactly the least shifty looking person we've ever picked up."

He shrugged, smiling a little more easily having not just been straight up told to cram it. "I basically know jack shit about procedure, but I think I can deal. I'm guessing you don't have to return the favour if I promise not to ask any obnoxious probing questions, though, right."

The trip to the theoretical "interview" room wasn't far from the holding cell, and there was little dividing it except for some relatively featureless hallway, with a smattering of guards are various levels of attention. The speaking guard made some sort of gesture at one of the other ones standing outside a door at the end, and they were quick to move out of the way.

"'Fraid obnoxious probing questions are more or less what you're in for, around here," they said as they approached the door. "On the bright side, if you're cleared, you can ask as many as you like in return. So here's hoping for that." They knock on the door, and it starts to slide open. "Good luck."

They placed a polite but firm hand on the Awakener's shoulder and pushed him inside along with them. Ahead there was not much else but a table and three chairs. The closes one was unoccupied, presumably left for him, and two trolls filled the ones set on the other side. Another one loomed in the corner in the back, but didn't look like an active participant.

The troll sitting on the left, a swirly horned woman with a missing eye not quite covered with wild long hair, didn't miss a beat before speaking.

"Hey again, Bullseye," she said with a fang filled, smirking grin. "Good to hear you made it through."

Her physical features were probably quite foreign, but her voice he would remember. It was the same one that had been heard commanding the ship that had picked him up over the intercoms. Thin, veiny, yellowish scars lined her arms and face, with very little effort put into hiding them.

The Awakener raised his eyebrows. It was fairly clear even behind the sunglasses that he was staring a little, but he took a seat without commenting. His eyebrows, however, remained raised.

"Bullseye," he repeated. He'd never actually been one to reject eight-letter appellations foist upon him by people who had recently abducted him, but 'Awakener' was at least vaguely meaningful, even if the emphasis was on the 'vaguely', whereas this was... less so, as far as he could gather.

He was not always super quick on the uptake.

Her grin only deepened, brightening with amusement.

"Yeah, like that sign you've got on your back. Walk around in public some places with that and pshooo," she made a gun-like motion with her hand, pointing at his chest, "plasma bolt straight through the middle. Bullseye."

Edited 2012-07-05 21:27 (UTC)

"Oh. Oh, yeah." He snorted, but the resulting smile was genuine enough. It had at least been recognised, and even if that didn't by any accounts mean that he could assume he was in safe hands, it allowed for a little bit of optimism. "Well, you know, I wouldn't wear it some places, I'm not actually a total moron. I mean, mostly you just count on the people who'd give you the most shit not being the ones who're going to know what it is, right." He hesitated a second, and then added, "Unless you're not – sorry, I didn't mean to, like, make asshole assumptions about your personal life philosophies or anything."

"Well, it's what made me pick you up-" she started, but it was about then that the troll next to her lost his patience and became active. He was a taller, more rigid looking brown blood with a pair of square glasses and a set of lips that didn't seem prone to bending in the upwards direction.

"We can get to that later," he said, very briskly, organizing some papers in front of them. Then he turned to the Awakener, very seriously. "I am going to ask you some questions. Please answer them honestly and to the point. Neither of us have time for rambling."

He checked his list, straightened up his shoulders, and said in an official tone:

"Do you have any psionic capabilities? If so, describe their effects and levels of strength."

He stared for a moment, pretty evidently taken by surprise by the interruption. He considered shooting the troll who'd spoken first a wow how about this guy sort of look, but he thought better of it, especially since his choice of eyewear kind of got in the way of shooting people any kind of look at all.

He also seemed kind of bewildered by the question, too, but after a moment or two he shook his head and spread out his hands as if demonstrating they were empty would somehow also demonstrate that he couldn't do anything like, say, levitate stuff with them. "No," he said, "none."

It turned out that no look was required, because the swirly horned woman was quick to make a face behind the brownblood's back as soon as he was focused on interrogating. After that she just let him go on, as if it was a routine she was accustomed to.

The questioner stared at the Awakener contemplatively for a moment, before looking down to his papers.

"What was your purpose on Yasidra Six?"

Edited 2012-07-05 22:26 (UTC)

The Awakener frowned. He wasn't finding this degree of formality reassuring in the slightest; if it wasn't for the fact that the woman had already confirmed a Sufferist presence he'd have been getting pretty worried right about now.

"I'm a traveller. I'm trying to get to Sector Seventeen, but ... you know. My ship broke down when I stopped for supplies a couple weeks ago and I was trying to sort out some repairs so I could get off-planet again, but I guess you guys took care of that for me."

There was a pause, and the brownblood looked up at him.

"What's in Sector Seventeen?"

He hesitated. He was used to either being able to answer, or not being asked, because normally the only people who cared were the ones he could trust.

After a moment he sighed, and shrugged, and said, "It's kind of a long story. I'm supposed to be taking some stuff to some trolls over there as a favour to somebody else."

The woman was looking between the two other trolls now, increasingly invested in the conversation. The brownblood narrowed his eyes, hesitated thoughtfully for a long few moments, and seemed to backtrack.

"Captain Starfall said that you were wearing those insignia unconcealed when she found you. What do you know about the meaning of that mark?"

"... A lot." He leaned back in his chair, frowning. "What about you?"

"You're not the one asking the questions," the brownblood began stiffly, but before he could even finish the sentence the woman who was ostensibly Starfall was whistling and tugging two small pendants out of her tank top. One was a circle with two bull-like horns coming off of it. The other was the same swooping rings as on the back of the Awakener's jacket.

The interrogator seemed to be extremely annoyed with this turn of events.

"Starfall!" he snapped, and she rolled her eye.

"What? He's going to know, either way! It's not like keeping it a secret is really doing our information gathering strategies any favours here!"

"Look, I don't want to tell anything to the wrong people any more than you do," he said. "But I don't have any secrets from other followers."

That wasn't strictly true, but he liked to think it was.

He sat forward again, leaning across the table a little to look at Starfall's pendants. "I don't know that one, though," he said, indicating the first one. "What is it?"

The brownblood seemed too irritated by the fact that Starfall's technique was doing anything close to working to speak for the moment, so it allowed her to smile a little and shift the pendants so the circular one was in front.

"Sign of the Summoner," she said. "Another lowblood who basically turned Alternia upside down in his day. He was a Sufferist, too. Big inspiration, that kind of thing." She gave the Awakener one last good look at it before lowering the pendants. "How did you find out about him? The Sufferer, I mean."

He raised his eyebrows appreciatively. The name was familiar – it had been mentioned in some of the forbidden seditious writings around the base he'd left behind a sweep ago, but he'd never read anything that had gone into much detail.

"I've heard of the Summoner," he said, "but not a lot. Maybe you can fill me in -" he glanced at the brownblood, and smiled slightly, "some time when I am the one asking the questions, I guess."

He paused at that question, though. "That's kind of a long story too, to be honest."

And that was true, but... he'd just said he didn't have any secrets. The idea of giving too much away in an interrogation room to people with military titles was inherently offputting, but it didn't actually seem like he was about to drop himself in any shit here with the more complete truth. And putting it off for too long would only make people suspicious.

"I'm his descendant, I guess you could say," he said, after a brief, contemplative silence, and braced himself. People didn't often believe him straight away, and when they did it usually wasn't without pointedly mentioning that they'd thought he'd be taller.

There was a moment of confused silence after that, like a baffled fog in the air, that seemed to pause all movement while everyone who hear the Awakener's comment tried to sort out there it fit with reality. The brownblood's eyebrow furrowed, in a mixture of alarm and disbelief. The guards at the door, and the wordless troll in the back corner looked up with sudden attention, where they have been passively idle before.

Starfall boggled for a long few moments, and then started laughing uproariously. The brownblood growled in his throat.

"Oh my god," she wheezed. "Oh my god, Derjun, you're such a stupid prick."

He withdrew from where he'd been leaning across the table with a noise of irritation. He was used to people expressing doubt, but usually it wasn't quite this derisive.

His own exasperated sigh was closer to a growl than he would have liked.

Timing dictated, he supposed, that now would be a good time to remove the shades – except that his ears twitched angrily at the same time as he yanked them off, jarring one arm of the glasses and making the entire gesture sort of clumsy and awkward rather than actually dramatic. Oh well. Hopefully nobody would notice.

"Right, okay, except I'm not actually joking," he said, raising his voice slightly, because that made him feel slightly better about not allowing himself to call anybody in the room a jackass out loud. He did permit himself a little bit of crimson glaring. "I'm called the Awakener," he added, in case anybody had missed the memo.

And yet the actual sight of his eyes didn't stop Starfall from laughing. Instead, upon catching a glance, her first reaction was to smack her hand over her own eyes with another chortle of laughing, convulsing slightly and recoiling away as if the sight was too much for her to handle. The brownblood seemed just as annoyed as the Awakener, though he evidently wasn't afraid to wear it plainly on his face, even as he stared at those crimson eyes with a hint of something resembling awe.

"No, look," Starfall tried, managing to calm herself down enough to speak. "I'm not...Derjun, he's legit, right? Your expression is telling me he's legit. Holy fuck what kind of mindreader are you?"

"You've made your point, Starfall," Derjun snarled. Starfall let out one last satisfied sigh and then looked back to the Awakener, grinning radiantly.

"You're really the guy, aren't you? How does shit like this even happen, seriously!" She reached out to offer him a scarred hand to shake. "Like you've probably already heard, I'm Starfall. This dumbass is Derjun - he doesn't have a title yet. Let me be the first one to officially welcome you to the Aerolith."

"Yeah," the Awakener said, "I am, actually, really the guy. It is basically my only area of expertise whatsoever, being really the guy, but – wait. Mindreader." He was obviously rather less than pleased to have been sat across from someone who could potentially have been rummaging through his head this entire time, for all he knew, but, argh, okay, what had he said, no secrets; he stopped himself from leaning away too much, as if that would even make a difference, and said, grudgingly, "I guess I shouldn't be surprised, you've got a lot of trolls to get through here, haven't you."

He pushed a hand over his face. Then he took a deep breath, let it out, and, having apparently dismissed some of his irritation, although not all of it, shook the hand Starfall was offering him.

"Thanks." He glanced around the room, as though that might let him look at the rest of the ship. Predictably it did not. "Aerolith," he repeated. "Huh. So are we on board that ridiculous battleship you guys were ripping the fuck out of Yasidra Six with, now? None of you exactly let me stop to take a look."

Derjun didn't look like he wanted to give any more confirmations about his abilities than had already been done, though he did offer an affirmative nod to the accusations of being a mindreader. It was possible he was still too ruffled to take the lead in the conversation. Starfall had no such qualms, regardless of how irritated the Awakener may have just looked.

"Yup," she said, taking back her hand, and looking very pleased with herself. "Biggest ship in our fleet. Not that it really belongs to us." She spoke with the confidence of someone who thought they knew a lot about the subject. "It was ripped straight from the Empress's personal escort swarm. Extremely expensive. Could probably blow up a few moons."

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