Malik Greatly Dissaproves: Open

[loyalrebel]

[It's a few hours after everyone's been dumped in to liminal space that Malik speaks up over the network and he is about as disgruntled as anyone without a special skill to get it across better can sound.]

For those of you who were not privy to the fiasco some of the rest of us created on ourselves, let me recap and give some advice that I pray to god you all listen to this time.

I am going to be blunt here; we, as Travellers, were compromised by a number of people in a variety of different ways with rather unfortunate repercussions. We are lucky this did not get us hunted down in the streets and captured. They know we do not stay dead, they know we have powers beyond that of average humans.

Whatever you lot did before? People remembered.

They hate us, are afraid of us, and people who are afraid of other people do unspeakable things to whomever they can get their hands on. Especially when we do things like help blow up their city and go on thievery sprees or are terrible at lying while gathering information from people.

The safest way to not get caught is to not draw attention to yourself to begin with.

This would have been difficult enough to deal with had other people not also gone and both knowingly and unknowingly spread information about us as individuals as well. They have names, they have information about us and what we can do.

By doing so people were put in direct personal danger as a result. Not some vague menace of the displeasure of those who dragged us here but actual physical danger of permanent injury. Difficult decisions had to be made in that instance and it was a small part luck and a degree of experience that kept it from turning in to a bloodbath.

If you are unfortunate enough to get caught do not compromise the Travellers. We have this network, there will be others who can help you get out as safely as possible. So long as I am myself, I am one of them.

We are a team despite an apparent inability to function cohesively, and we are only effective when we do not go gallivanting off on our own individual nonsense and drag others along for the ride.

Comments

[claudiometer]

Oh, like the part where I got straight-up told about the psychic network? Y'all are lucky I had bigger things on my mind than pursuing that thread. This isn't the kind of work where you can tell everyone what you're doing, guys. Even if it's someone you'd usually call a friend.

Infiltration makes people do all kinds of things they wouldn't normally do. Whoever your friend thinks they are might use that information to fuck everything sideways.

It sounds like we're really damn lucky we can call this a win.

[loyalrebel]

Exactly, I know as two of my other selves I would have gladly imprisoned any and all of you to either sell to the highest bidder or lock up for disregard of the arrangement of society.

And that would be after taking pieces of you for myself, at least as Asfour.

[whydoyoushine]

Man, who made you the fun police?

[loyalrebel]

I stayed out of jail, so maybe I know something about not being a moron.

[wholeheaded]

...okay, I missed all of this because of Infiltrating but how is endangering everyone in any way fun?

[bypartisan]

Malik's right. That's speaking as someone who had, ah, a few information-gathering screw-ups of his own. I won't deny that I brought some of what happened to me on myself, but it got quite out of hand thanks to the intelligence failures of certain other people and if it hadn't been for a pair of double agents within my kidnappers, things might have gotten very much out of hand.

In essence, if you don't want to end up naked, tied to a chair, and drugged, it would do well to practice discretion. It's nowhere as fun as it sounds.

Private

[shantiprayer]

...Is one of those people me? If so I'm glad I was able to help. Someone else got mad at me for it and I was starting to think I'd messed that up completely.

But... why would anyone think that sounds fun at all?

[seventhbullet]

I meant to ask, what ended up happening with that? You come out okay?

[nicotinized]

Pretty sure the Trumps have decided to get rid of anyone with more than two braincells to rub together.

[Which, if he were thinking straight, would imply some unkind things about himself, though he's not feeling particularly useful and is most decidedly not thinking straight right now]

No mobs with pitchforks this time, though.

[loyalrebel]

It was a near thing, actually.

[willyousee]

If other events had not intervened, there would have been at least one attempt to collect Travelers for a less than friendly discussion. One had been partially planned before being discarded.

[shantiprayer]

You shouldn't make promise you can't be sure you can keep. It's one thing to tell people to never compromise the other Travelers, but another to promise assistance if they're cornered. Once caught there likely won't be the time to reach them before they're killed or drugged or something even worse because they refused to cooperate.

[loyalrebel]

Something can always be done, even if it is only damage control or making sure there is someone waiting for them with comfort in Liminal space.

Which is why you strive not to get caught in the first place.

[inexecution]

[Mentally, Souji is facepalming, but anger isn't his thing, and maybe... he can be a little bit helpful here instead]

I don't want to make light of the mistakes that were made, but Investigators were at a disadvantage here from the start. This wasn't the first mission to this world, and there were those of us who remembered it from last time. The person I thought I was [which was something he wasn't going to think on too much, thanks] already had suspicions. In fact, a group of us had been keeping in touch about those suspicions for a year. Even if everyone had shown more... restraint, things might not have gone smoothly.

Given that none of us even remembered this world beforehand, despite obviously having been there, I think we're going to have to exercise a lot of caution from here on. It's obvious we don't know everything we thought we did.

[loyalrebel]

Caution should have been exercized from the very beginning, no matter what world we find ourselves thrown in to.

Paranoia keeps people alive.

[laceandcarnage]

I know you.

The assistance you provided was inadequate.

[loyalrebel]

And you nearly killed me.

Unless our mutual friend believes differently I say we call it even and move on. I did what I could to salvage a terrible situation without slaughter.

[thornsofmalkav]

Infiltrating this Jaunt was like coming back with a pizza and the room is on fire.

[loyalrebel]

...what is pizza?

[willyousee]

Perhaps it might be useful if those with any skill at covertcy were to offer lessons to those who have not had that opportunity. I know there were some attempts at that being made within Nova Venezia, and the idea has merit. Some would do better if they were simply given the chance to learn.

[shiroganeheir]

[Naoto's mental voice is confident, but a bit shaky and tired.]

I would also be very willing to offer detective lessons to those who would wish to learn.

Knowing how to find what we are looking for might be of benefit. Especially if others are more effective than I seem to be lately.

[darkhourdear]

Um... if anyone would be ok with teaching me, I'd like to learn. [He knows Uncle Aleksi Alcuin was a spy in the Jaunt, but he doesn't know if he could teach it. ...Though if what he's heard about the Jaunt is any indication maybe he should trust a lot of these people to teach him, either.]

[loyalrebel]

If people are willing to listen I am willing to teach some basics.

[inexecution]

That might be helpful, and I can offer what I know. Although in this case, I think a basic lesson in what not to say on a Jaunt is more urgent than teaching of actual stealth skills, and those of us who have been here for awhile need to be better at passing that information on.

[permastubble]

I apologize, sir. It won’t happen again; I’ve learned my lesson about writing things down.

About everything else… Hell, I need all the help I can get. I want to get better, though.

[loyalrebel]

It is not so much the writing down as it is writing it in a way anyone can read if they find it, I write notes about events as much as I can. Using a code that is more than bad handwriting or shorthand is, however, essential.

One I personally use is writing in one language with the alphabet of another and symbols I associate with the person instead of their name.