text, un: hawkeye

[westcoasts]

so is pass and fail just a judgment on our performance, or do we reckon it's gonna come back and bite us in the ass in the future?

aurora said she missed us, by the way. ( those are not the words she used. ) she also said that she and eos are free to run their cities in whatever way works for the people under her care, as long as we're well-taken care of.

but, thing is, she gets to define that. says she gets to learn from her actions and inactions in relation to us.

which is something to keep in mind when we're acting as a group or not acting as a group and trying to get answers, or choosing which rules are okay to break and which rules are okay to stretch.

because between here and moorecroft, right now i'd say we've got the better end of the deal.

Comments

[decohere]

no, actually. without any particular attempt. seems like one you had to really actively blunder about.

[westcoasts]

oh, so you're just really tetchy. good to know.

[decohere]

exactly. keeps people from getting the wrong idea.

[westcoasts]

you know there's not been a mission yet where we haven't had to buddy up with at least one other person, right?

[decohere]

oh, i have to? or what? some entity rates my performance as a failure and...?

call it a mission all they want, i have no interest in complying. i'm nobody's little play puppet.

[westcoasts]

well, how much choice did you have in the "family" you ended up in?

i'm just saying you can choose to make your own life easier, or you can choose to make your own life harder for the duration of time we're here. it's not about playing along.

[decohere]

the assignment meant nothing beyond where i slept.

this is the easier way. one where i'm not foolishly reliant upon or accountable for the actions of anyone else. it's how i've always operated, and i get by just fine without the peer pressure.

[westcoasts]

is peer pressure just what we're calling company now, because i don't think that's the commonly accepted definition.

also, they say 'no man's an island' for a reason.

[decohere]

tends to be the source of it.

do i seem like the sort that cares what 'they' say? there's only one man whose opinion i respect, and he's not here.

[westcoasts]

yeah, yeah, you're very self-sufficient and neither deflecting nor over-compensating for anything. i get it.

[decohere]

and you're exactly why i prefer being alone.

[westcoasts]

i grow on people.

[decohere]

so do warts.

[westcoasts]

that was almost funny.

[decohere]

thanks. usually i save all my best insults for pym.

[westcoasts]

( ... )

you know hank?

[decohere]

[... oh wait, no, she very much doesn't like this.]

unfortunately.

[westcoasts]

the guy's made mistakes, but haven't we all? although if we're talking a different hank pym, i'm gonna claim ignorance on the nature of what those mistakes are.

how do you know him?

[decohere]

it's distressing to know there's more than one floating around out there, bothering those poor ants.

my father was a colleague of his at shield, but pym couldn't stand to be disagreed with and had him fired. set off a chain reaction that ruined my life. but we're fine now because his wife is actually quite lovely.

[and boy that's an oversimplification of the events.]

[westcoasts]

he's dead.

( or is he. )

and i have so many questions about shield in other universes.

( anyway.

skipping past the fact that there's no 'ex-' in front of that wife—. )

janet's amazing, you're not wrong.

[decohere]

[it's not quite guilt that has her backspacing out of 'good' as a response, she'll just leave that bit hanging.]

shield's dead. exposed as being infiltrated and run by hydra. global terrorists either way.

and janet's the only reason pym's not being scraped off the bottom of my boot

[as if she wasn't hours away from being atomically shredded out of existence, but whatever.]

[westcoasts]

no, it's just there's a whole lot of avengers who seem to have worked for shield. it's weird.

yeah, here's a tip i try and live by: don't trust anything, especially organizations, that's an acronym.

metaphorically or literally?

[decohere]

is it weird? mutually beneficial reinforcement of the american-centric power structure disguised as maintaining world safety, complete with merchandising deals. etc etc. but i never had any interest in being an avenger.

well maybe that advice would have been useful to me at age 6. but no i don't make a habit of trusting anything, especially not this entire set up.

yes.

[westcoasts]

little bit, yeah. never really been all that keen on their operating processes. kind of sits counter to what the avengers are supposed to be about.

and come on, most of the merchandise is cap and we all know that'd exist with or without the avengers.

great answer.

[decohere]

everyone was happy enough to surrender their privacy for a false sense of security, as long as they didn't have to know how the sausage was actually made.

and what are the avengers 'supposed' to be about, if not causing destruction resolving the problems that they caused in the first place? and lunch boxes.

bill always talked about what an irritatingly superior bastard pym was, but it didn't quite prepare me for finally meeting him.