etraya | video | un: plushiesidequest (in which she talks about an NPC visitor)

( Oh look! It's that same person who melted a radio tower about two weeks ago? Alex waves to the camera, flashes a smile, then sits down on a plush chair in her apartment and leans forward, planting her elbows on her knees. )

Hey, everyone. I know more of you look at stuff here than comment, but think about doing some commenting this time, you know?

( She breathes in, then out in a sigh. )

So I sent out that signal a few weeks ago. I heard back this morning from a guy outside the barrier that goes by Scylla. He confirmed the multiverse is unraveling. He wasn't happy about it.

( Her hands lay over each other, one holding the other at her wrist. )

He also confirmed this pocket dimension of Echo's we're in has a lot of bubble cities trying to solve the problem through point based reality television style game-show setups. But Echo isn't the only one working to try and save the concept of existence. There are other people out there with other ideas. Scylla didn't know if any of them show any more promise than Echo's way, because no one's had confirmed results or failures based on attempts.

( She opens her hands, staring at the camera. )

He said he'll help us figure out how to close the tear after it's open, because that's when he can get in here. Shout out to Aurora for her work keeping us safe until Echo demands otherwise.

( Sitting back, she frowns at the camera. )

I can sum up what else we talked about if people ask, but this seemed important to get out first. He said I probably won't see him for a bit when he arrives, but anyone who does run into him, he's a guy... fairly handsome? Taller than I am, shorter than Gorgug. Paler than me too. Reddish-brown hair with waves that he wears neatly cut but not close shaven. He was scruffy. Had one of those friendly faces you know likes to tease people until he was getting more serious. I don't know, ( she sighs ) it's been a surreal morning.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Really hate to be agreeing with Barnabas here, of all people...

We're going to be defenseless when this guy comes in, you know.

You're forewarned. It's a lot more than being surprised when a stranger is around operating on his own rules, and not under Aurora's constraints, you know?

( She sighs, rubbing at her forehead unseen. She matches audio to audio, so at least he's not staring at anything in particular. )

Look, you know how radio signals work, right? The fact he picked up on mine meant he was either close enough to already do that, or he was in the improbably correct place to get it, 'cause it's not exactly multidirectional once in space. The fact he told me he's looking for information on the kind of bubble city we're in means there's a good chance he didn't 'just' get my signal, either, when we're not the only bubble city around here. We did probably 'just' become the most 'interesting' one, but we're also getting irradiated on orders. No one does well with weird space rays. And the tear, the vent vulnerability was going to start existing on Echo's orders on the eighteenth no matter what.

Now we know he's coming. Seems a bit better than the surprise if it'd happened even without any one of us knowing first.

That's what makes is suspicious. He happened to be in the right place and right time to receive your message, he's looking into information on the exact kind of place we're in, and there's a chance for him to come inside? It's like noticing a there's a burglar looking around your windows and asking if he'd like to come inside to have some tea and cookies.

If your point is that he was going to come in anyway regardless of warning us, doesn't that paint him in a better light than if he showed up unannounced? Especially during a time when we're all going to be exposed to something that causes hallucinations?

No such thing as a coincidence when it comes to dealing with an opportunist.

And? We do nothing, we get nothing. It's not like I expect Scylla's going to be a bonfire of illumination for anything we do, but one lit tea candle is more than what we've had for everything beyond this bubble and what little has crashed into it.

We're going to be thrown to hell either way. Maybe this way we also get something out of it other than silence from Echo and Aurora and our own bonding trauma.

You wanted comments. I'm letting you know you took a risk on everyone's behalf. I hope for all our sakes you made the right choice.

I know. Kind of why I'm making it really obvious what happened. There's no way any of it goes smoothly, the factors are all screwy, but the moment we stop trying because we'd rather sit ignorant is when we're accepting that's all we deserve.

[He... can't argue with that. His own comfort here aside.]

Just... be careful. No rash decisions when dealing with him. If he's really our only way to get something more out of this against Echo's wishes, we're playing a dangerous game.

( She ultimately sighs again. She's been sighing a lot this morning. )

We have been since we got here, just by taking what Aurora says Echo says about our home universes into consideration at all. But I'm not trying to be rash. I don't know if you read it earlier, but that's why I didn't agree when he said we could try to stop Aurora from performing her function. We don't know what the cost of that would be.

...You know how that sounds, right? If he can just "stop Aurora from performing her functions" and some of those functions are "keeping us alive?"

Yeah. Less him thinking he could do it on his own. More him suggesting he might be able to guide someone else to. Same problem, though. Aurora's function as our administrator for mission testing nonsense? Not anything I want to test.

But I don't think it's to his advantage to get us all killed either. And he seemed weirdly sure that Echo wouldn't want to outright kill any of us either, at least not for pushing back against our missions. Rebelling? Another version of what happened in Solmara. It wasn't Echo who changed that situation, was it?

Did he say why he was so sure about there being no consequence for rebelling?

I'm not the right person to ask about Solmara. I wasn't involved in it.

No. Only looked like he was trying to say something else but couldn't, which was... he evaded at other times. That one didn't look like an evasion.

Yeah, but did you hear anything about it? 'Cause I feel like that's another problem here. We don't know enough about what anyone else has heard, and so we're just... flailing.

I see.

What I know of what happened is we had new arrivals- same as we always do. Some of them seemed a little odd, but again, same as we always do. At some point, one of them got shot, and Sevika- someone from my world- informed the network that we had spies from another bubble city here. She didn't name who at the time. Shortly after that, a few people stepped forward to announce who they were, and the situation of why they were sent here. Their own bubble city was having internal troubles with someone taking control over the resources around, along with their caretaker AI deciding to hide instead of holding onto their control. We sent a group of our people over to Solmara to reassert control to the AI and from that point on, we haven't heard from them since.

That's all I know.

Oh. Wow, thank you, that's a pretty good summary of what happened. Also kind of explains... dangers in how we handle our relationship with Aurora.

We're at her whims, and we're lucky she's nice to us. But that kindness is conditional, and so our existence here is just as conditional. That's not even taking the factor of Echo into account. As far as we know, once he decides he's done with us- we're done too. And if someone's dead where they're from, then that's condemning them to another death as well.

The people here aren't just playing nice for the sake of it. There's survival hanging in the balance. But I think you understand that, now.

... ( she laughs, lightly. ) Hey, I understood that a long time before now. That's how society works. Survival has always, always been in the balance.

Yeah. That's true. Still feels a little more life or death here than I'm used to.

[Outside of a major attack or accident, people don't just die at the whims of fate in Piltover. In Zaun, though... He's getting the parallel more in relation to that.]

video | un: plushiesidequest (in which she talks about an NPC visitor)

@jaycetalis | audio

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