synopsychic | [Check-In] Your Enthusiasm is Appreciated

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[Check-In] Your Enthusiasm is Appreciated

[It isn't too long into the Jaunt before Ryo's excited voice comes through on the network.]

BEST JAUNT EVER!

[And Hajime's far more exhausted mental voice comes in afterwards.]

This is Hajime, we, ah, did that thing where we're both infiltrating and not infiltrating, and there's some kind of space base out here with a lot of aliens bent on conquering Earth to take care of some bioweapon? I just...don't really know what's going on beyond that.

[Ryo cuts in again.]

And we're mantises! Mantis people are normal here! Not many of them, but enough to be normal! IS AMAZING!

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..What kind of bioweapon?

[Minako has a bad feeling about this...]

Also, for anyone who was around for our first two trips to this place and remembers Dara, she's apparently a. very highly placed here, and b. missing. So that might be a thing we need to look into.

Oh man, yeah, my Infiltration is pretty annoyed about that. When she signed on, it was with the understanding that she'd be working with her Real Life Science Hero, not Dr Eskandar's dick of a replacement. But then, he is the boss man's darling, so it's probably not surprising that he got tapped to build the Core when she vanished. Like, I get the impression that a lot of it was his design from the start anyway.

Still. I bet Dr Eskandar would have been able to collaborate like a reasonable human being.

[Salty? Thorne? How could you guess?]

That probably depends on how much she's mellowed out. Based on what I remember of her, her main problem with S. Tech was how people tended to use it for 'silly' things like anime tropes like spontaneously blooming flowers and Moe Meters; designing more practical ways to use it would have been right up her alley, and other people with similar thoughts about it would have risen in her estimation.

I mean, as much as I love things like shoujo flowers and sparkles, the practical applications are just as cool. I guess my Infiltration just wants to believe that her Real Life Science Hero would be sensible enough to realize that you'll build a better mech if you let the engineer on the team see the AI's source code.

...Well, we didn't exactly see her at her best during our last two trips, but she probably would, yeah.

That is because she's a reasonable human being who knows how to interact with other people and not an insufferable narcissist.

Definitely not a narcissist. Extremely driven, at least in her high school days, and I don't see that aspect of her changing much.

[Which isn't a bad thing, necessarily, depending on how she'd treated the people around her - which, granted, hadn't been great at all during the school newspaper days at Dokis, but even during the few days she'd seen her at the Expo during the following walkabout, she'd seemed to be mellowing out. Changing schools had probably done her a world of good.]

Then I think Charlize and her would have done fine.

That's good.

I think getting away from Dokis probably made a huge difference either way, though. Dokis brought out the worst in her.

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thornsofmalkav - 2019-09-25 00:47 (UTC) - Expand

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seestheworld - 2019-09-25 00:49 (UTC) - Expand

Oh, we absofuckin'lutely need to find her, or whatever's left of her. Non-zero chance she's dead, but if people are talking about her disappearing that's a recentish thing.

Still, looks like she got her 'do more with this stuff than goofy teen drama' wish.

Looks like.

[Is it weird that Minako's happy for her about that?]

Edited 2019-09-21 20:38 (UTC)

[Not at all, since Claudia is too. Dara wasn't wrong, she just... picked an equally Teen Drama way to make her point. It just also... may or may not have blown up in her face.]

I'll keep everyone posted if I find anything useful.

I could try doing a Sift - god knows there's enough data to Sift through here - but I'd need to narrow down an angle to Sift for.

Yeah, 'where did she go' is awfully vague. Still, if we narrow the parameters I can toss you an Assist for it.

And if it turns out she didn't disappear by choice... well, I have 'kidnapping a high-level government official' experience, so I might pick up the trail eve then.

It'd probably help to know what she was working on when she disappeared.

Yeah, probably. I'll see what I can do.

Thanks.

You know that S-Tech stuff that people are going on about? I think it's that. And I only figured it out from listening to you guys; my overlay is completely convinced this is germ warfare.

...Greaaaat.

Never underestimate the power of the propaganda machine, even with aliens.

I mean, technically speaking it is a disease, so they're not necessarily wrong, but...

It doesn't sound fatal or anything though. Just annoying. And it sounds like you guys are using it over there without anything really fatal going on. Over here, they're making it sound like a death sentence.

It could be that their biology means it's hitting them differently. Or they're reacting out of fear - S. Tech does result in a lot of weird effects, and strong emotions can make those effects a lot stronger. And considering both sides are apparently at war, they're not necessarily going to trust what this side says about it.

Might be a self-reinforcing fear loop, then, given some of the ways Bz'zirp has heard it talked about.

I could definitely see that happening.

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chalicejoker - 2019-09-22 02:13 (UTC) - Expand

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seestheworld - 2019-09-22 02:32 (UTC) - Expand

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