etraya | audio | un: dailyplanet

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audio | un: dailyplanet

Hello, Etraya. My name is Lois Lane, and for anyone who met a younger me before, yes, still a reporter, and no, that wasn't past me.

( A pause. People get alternate worlds here, right? )

I'm interested in talking with people about the most recent mission before our next one hits, especially in regards to the anomaly itself and any resolution or lack there-of there was. I want to write-up what we as Etrayans believe happened and get it out there for everyone since there's no real mission debriefing process.

If there are other missions you'd like to go over from your perspective, I'd be glad to do the same. If you're concerned about being named, tell me and you'll remain anonymous.

( Another pause. She sighs, very, very quietly. )

I'll be spending a good part of the later mornings over at the unnamed Diner. If anyone has anything else they'd like to comment on about Etraya and see distributed, you can reach out to me by text or call or stop by. If you're all going to end up asking for gossip columns or restaurant reviews, I'm drafting help.

( ooc: "Interview" Questions here as a form to fill out OOCly; happy to also thread anything out, just is easier if I have info to work with sooner for writing up. And no I have no idea what I'm doing we're living in Wild Times. )

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[Accelerator, meanwhile, sits back and folds his arms. He barely spares the bot a glance while it pours the coffee, looking distinctly unimpressed by this information.]

Is he sure he got punched by someone with the anomaly and not just a regular guy?

[When the bot finishes he finally looks over, taking the mug without any hesitation. His tone is slightly less prickly than normal.]

Thanks.

That's his claim, taken at face value. He seemed to have a certainty that was the case, but couldn't articulate why it was.

( Lois taps her pen on the notebook open in front of her, watching the bot practically light up at the thanks, before hurrying off after a You're welcome in an almost sing-song voice. )

Not unusual for Dwayne. So far as my interactions with him so far, he hasn't been prone to wild claims... but he does have trouble with details.

( At least ones not about certain necromancy related topics. )

[Accelerator doesn't acknowledge the boy at all after that thanks. It was already thoroughly uncool to do that to begin with, and he doesn't want to push that kind of image of himself.]

That isn't helpful.

[If the guy can't articulate why, what evidence is there he was right? He could be lying or mistaken. Accelerator sighs, reaching up to rub the bridge of his nose.]

He didn't give you any proof?

Nope.

( Hence it's anecdotal and about the extent of anything it could be, worth wise. Lois still welcomes it as showing up, because she can't really trust its veracity, but she can encourage people to show up at all.

It's more anecdotal takes than she had before. It's also nowhere near enough. )

Though to varying degrees it becomes hard to have proof of most anything from the mission, since it's all first-hand accounts. On that level, it's an account of what he believed happened.

( Yeah. She knows. )

Hm.

[She isn't wrong, it's all just people's word. Accelerator takes another sip of his coffee, thinking that as a journalist it must drive Lois up the wall.]

Does anyone have any concrete proof they were affected by the anomaly? I don't, that's why I don't fucking believe it.

[He had acknowledged it was a possibility given what he had done in San Francisco, but he's still incredibly skeptical about that being the answer. It's too easy, it takes too much responsibility off of his shoulders.]

Can you demonstrably prove you weren't?

( She says, a calm and pointed question. The problem here is people need outside confirmation to believe themselves; and unless they were being observed or take into account what normal reactions were, it's hard to say. )

[He scowls at little at her question, wishing he could say 'yes.']

No. But in my case, I can still confirm based on past experiences that my behaviour wasn't out of the blue.

But it was not on an instinct you'd usually act on, correct? The problem with the anomaly was how subtle the effects were for most people. It took time to get over the top in reverse to your usual inclinations.

( She tips the screen of her laptop down, looking at him over the top. )

Chances are no one started doing things out of the blue. We all ignore impulses in our day to day lives. Some for good, some for less. Villains acting on good impulses, heroes not acting on their best impulses? People watching them would notice more being off than they would themselves. That's how slippage works. You can always find ways to explain it to yourself, but it's not your normal, and that's important to remember.

.........................................................

[He can see the logic in her reasoning, and how it would apply to most people. It's normal to have thoughts that you don't act upon. They happen, and then they get filtered out as being wrong or inappropriate, and they stay harmless thoughts.

That wasn't always the case with him, and he takes a sip of his coffee, expression growing gloomy.]

It was my normal. That's my problem. Maybe other people that got hit by the anomaly can explain their actions away using your reasoning, but I can't.

[He huffs.]

I guess it'd be too much to ask if anyone got any brain scans done while they were on the mission?

[Alterations in brain activity would certainly lend credence to being influenced by an outside force.]

'Was?'

( Yes, welcome to the simple prompt version of questions. )

Don't think it was big on anyone's list. Also American healthcare doesn't make those kinds of scans so easy to get without the money up front or a reason to look when you walk into an Emergency Department.

( It'd been close enough to home that she's making her educated guess, shrugging her shoulders a touch. )

Might be an 'is.' I don't know.

[He's trying to be better, but clearly that isn't going so well.]

Ugh, that's bullshit. I'm glad I was assigned to Finch and Reese.

[Harold made sure they were wealthy like, five minutes into the mission. It meant he never had to worry about his stay in the hospital after he was ambushed.]

Which only leans into the anomaly having undue influence in pushing people towards worse, or better, instincts. Kind of depends.

( So far people talk more about the worse than the better. Then again, maybe more people here are trying to be better, and worse is the backslide. Accelerator makes it pretty apparent that's how he feels, one way or another. )

Harold Finch being one, I'm not familiar with Reese. ( Eyebrow quirk. He doesn't need to give names, but she keeps track, just part of how she is. ) I take it they were well off in context?

( Assigned. Aurora does that? What kind of influence does she or Echo have to give people identities within a given mission world? )

That doesn't mean it applies to me.

[Just everyone else, obviously. A perfectly reasonable to have.]

Yeah. The two of them are partners, and they were assigned to be my guardians, so they handled all the money stuff.

[Harold hacked a bunch of offshore bank accounts, or something. He doesn't know the details, and he knows Harold wouldn't want him blabbing his computer skills to random people (especially a journalist) so he keeps it vague. Not only that, but he's going to leave the definition of 'partners' up to Lois to figure out. Harold and John's relationship is ambiguous on a good day, he has no idea where they're at after being fake married with a child for a month.]

Doesn't meant it doesn't either.

( Because one singular exception makes no more sense than everyone else being singularly weak to the possibility. )

Mm, sounds like you had a good set of people looking after you. Kind of thing I wouldn't be surprised if it was still happening.

( As a note, not as anything else. Lois isn't particularly finding it stranger than the whole set-up that Earth-A, as she refers to it, has going for it anyway. And as someone who's had a kid dropped into her lap in a far more "very likely your genetic offspring in some universe" manner, kids of all stripes are worthy of empathy. Just... it's strange, too, because it's not how her expectations of adults went at his age. Or any age. )

No, it doesn't. But I'm sure it doesn't.

[Is he going to be stubborn about this? Absolutely.]

... It is, because they're both pain in the asses and insistent about being kind to me.

[Even though he isn't worth it. Accelerator shifts a little bit, taking another sip of his coffee. From the discomfort on his face it's clear that Harold and John being kind isn't something he's used to. Adults are always scared or hate him, and it's been rare he's ever gotten anything more than that.]

Why?

( Genuine, rather than the same question posed by a child's endless demands. Why, why, why. )

I think that's one of those genuinely fond of someone things. Sounds like both of them care about you.

( Look at how topics have shifted, just as he does. New experiences for all sorts of people, and she hopes for Accelerator's sake that he continues to allow them in. For as long as they're all around.

Lois knows it matters, just as in a lesser extent, maybe she'd have once been the kid it would have mattered to. These days its less of a question and more of an acceptance: caring for people as a choice, being cared for in return. Opening up to other vulnerabilities, and stumbling as she accepts them too.

Not so much an anomaly related incident as natural flow to conversation, but it is what it is. )

Because I'm not a good person. The anomaly didn't change that about me.

[He was a monster long before even going to Earth-2, simple as that.]

That's why Finch and Reese being nice to me is nonsense. I'm sure I've already stressed them out. Being nice to a monster only gets you hurt.

[That's a scary thought and something he would honestly rather not consider, but it's also the reality of the situation. They dealt with him ending up in the hospital, which had to have taken a psychological toll on the two of them. It's inevitable that he's going to end up hurting them again in the future, probably in a worse way than the incident with that Etrayan monster ambushing him.]

... I'm going to agree to not agree with you on this one, because the logic isn't did it drastically change personalities. Though in some cases, it seems like enough of a slip did, if people are defined only by their actions. It's not about being a good or bad person. It's about recognizing if the anomaly was manipulating people into being better or worse than they would have otherwise been inclined.

( She glances at him with her eyebrows raised. The more he argues against this, the more he invalidates any possible information about the anomaly, because of his own dislike of himself. Far be it from her business, but it's not hard to tell the pattern, even only having met and spoken with him a handful of times.

Monsters don't think of themselves as monsters. That's part of what makes them monstrous. The ones who do, who delight in knowing that? Are a different class of horrible, and it has nothing to do with acknowledging your own worst tendencies. )

[Accelerator's mouth is a flat line, and he takes a long, long sip of coffee before tackling this. Was he manipulated? He still isn't sure. It's like there's a huge wall in his brain preventing him doing any more than accepting the slightest possibility, and that he's only doing that because the anomaly means it's a nonzero chance of it having happened. He, personally, does not subscribe to that conclusion and he thinks anyone who does is going too easy on him.

But how to best explain that logic? He's already said he isn't a good person, that torturing and killing people were things he did back home. He scowls down at his mug, annoyed with himself and Lois for being stubborn.]

... If the anomaly hadn't existed at all and we were there to complete some other task that required us getting information, there's a chance I would have done the exact same thing.

[Because Grimnir was privy to information he himself didn't have, and he had been assigned Harold and John as a 'family,' and so it was perfectly reasonable in his mind to want to help them by any means necessary.]

And it's the most likely course of events for you, regardless?

( It's sad, because she's not trying to make him believe anything more or less than: no one's that special. That's the point of the anomaly. But she sighs, regardless. )

I'm not telling you not to take accountability. You should. Everyone should, because an influence doesn't change the fact those were the actions taken. The anomaly encouraged certain shifts in how people make decisions, it didn't rewrite them into people they could never be.

[Accelerator falls silent, unable to answer that question. He'd like to say that no, it wasn't the most likely course of events. He thought that ever since that fight in the train yard he had grown, become a less terrible person. There had been times when he backslid, but for the most part he thought he was doing a lot better.

And then Earth-2 threw a big wrench into those hopes.

Glaring down at his coffee, he scratches at the mug handle with a fingernail.]

That's what I want to do. [Take responsibility.] It's the only fucking thing I can do, now. I don't want any excuses for what I did.

( She nods to that, to not wanting excuses. It's an admirable way to live. )

Which is good. Just might be worth considering, are explanations and excuses the same thing?

( Not said in anything but a neutral tone. Her opinion on it is they aren't: explanations are explanations, not excuses for actions, but understanding for a course of events. But she's had to deal with plenty of explanations for horrible things in her life and in her reporting, which excuse nothing. Just make it traceable.

People choose to do better. Situations can, and do, enable them to do worse. )

[He understands what she's getting at, and he scowls darkly.]

........ No. They aren't.

[It would be so nice to be able to say yes, they are, but they aren't. So it's completely fine for him to say he doesn't want any excuses, because the anomaly wasn't necessarily an excuse. It could be an explanation.

He hates that.]

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