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maskormenace | IC Contact
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You survive that bullshit?
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I remained rather unaffected, myself.
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Yeah real unaffected uh-huh
Cut the shit, kiddo, you know I got your number
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[His boyfriend rotting into a pile of goo doesn't count, okay?]
It's clear to see that you're alive now, Shinigami, but your absence over the past couple of weeks was somewhat concerning.
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Yeah, you can thank your foolish ass friend there for that. But don't worry, I got plenty to say to him directly.
[And oh, he was saying it.]
Fuck this, I'm tired of the cloak and dagger hiding of this information, there's no reason for anyone not to know the history. Has he even told you anything? About her. About why we're all here.
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[Anyway.]
Are you speaking of Lachesis, again? We have spoken of her in the past, yes.
Of course, I am interested in learning more, should that be what you are offering.
[Not that it's not a little jarring to see dad so...unhinged? But it's definitely sparked his curiosity.]
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Yeah, I'm offering. What do you already know?
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She is supposedly a goddess and in control of the Porter. I have done some reading on what information has been made available by other ImPorts, but aside from that, I have little information on her.
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Lachesis is one of the 3 Fates of Greek myth. A goddess that controls one of the central aspects of the universe- the events of one's life, or 'destiny', if you want to call it that. Time is no object to her. Time, boundaries between worlds, sequence of events- she can manipulate all of them as she pleases. Anyway, the short of it is that we're here because she's in a family squabble with her sister, Atropos.
Atropos is The End. The fate of all things. Lives, worlds. Existence.
[True Death. Or, the only aspect above Her, encompassing even Her.]
We're here in this world because Lachesis escaped here after Atropos ended the world the City was in. What your idiot pal did that caused all this mess was try to make contact with her.
It was never going to work. I know because it's been tried already, countless times. I was there the first.
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[No, really. He's actually following you this time. Plus, he's at a point now where he can suspend disbelief enough not to write it all off as nonsense (but probably just because it's Shinigami who is telling him all this).]
What Kaneki and those involved with the Porter mission did was extremely foolish. I will not begin to argue that point with you.
We as ImPorts can do little if nothing to influence the will of Lachesis. Isn't that correct?
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[And, given the nature of the Fates, possibly a great many worlds. Their worlds.]
Lachesis likes games. She likes watching us scramble about. Or at least she did, back when she was still talkative. Her bullshit always seemed to have had a purpose, though. Readying us, in some way or another. We're here because she wants us to be. Needs us to be.
Likely, the only reason they got any information from her at all was because they were stupid enough to cause such a ruckus that she them threw a bone so they'd be satisfied enough to let well enough alone.
But my worry is that she's hidden for a reason, and causing her to show herself and make contact may yet have more serious consequences.
[Atropos. Vulcanus. If they felt it, sensed her presence somehow...]
I feel for her, really, as a fellow sneak. Being forced from your safe, advantageous position is a pretty bad scenario.
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If her powers reach as far as you say they do, then what could she possibly need from the likes of us?
[Not that D33 doesn't have extensive experience with figureheads using their following to maintain their sense of power - but Royce was never actually a god, now was he?]
We seem nothing more than toys to her from where I stand.
[But, he does realize that Duo knows much more than he does.]
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[And, you know, he'd make a Sympathy for the Devil joke here but Dee is lame and wouldn't get it and he can't even explain it to him!! Stoopid world with no rock!!!]
And yet, sympathy might be what will allow us to understand her situation.
You're exactly right. To put it simply, she's a chessmaster. My favorite old lil' nickname for her. Even from the beginning, she referred to us as chess pieces, and what hubris does she need to hide when she's right? We're pawns for her to use against Atropos. Vulcanus was- probably still is- Atropos' pieces. And as distasteful as it is, we're all in this together. We have little to gain and a lot to lose by not simply cooperating with her.
And if that means we sit here and twiddle our thumbs for however long the Porter keeps us, waiting to be useful to a goddess with no concept of mortal time? That's what it means. Keep yourself busy, enjoy the new life you make yourself in the meantime. Portal worlds are just a daytrip, I've said it before and I'll say it again. We all go home eventually.
(Unless you're Tony Stark.)
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[But this life and this god, however much D33 resents her, have been far less oppressive than the ones from which he came. He has made a life here and - again, whether he'll ever admit to this or not - he has been enjoying it.
[He doesn't like to think about that ending. And he doesn't like to think about returning to his own inevitable death. So, he'll do his best to take Shinigami's advice, as always, with a simple:]
I understand.
[And then, the inevitable:]
Who is Tony Stark?
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Look at the logo on some of the electronics you own sometime
longest 2/2 in the history of EVER
Tony Stark. Alias "Iron Man". The longest-running imPort. Although, not the oldest- I currently retain that dubious honor. He's been an imPort since a few months after I arrived in the City, maybe three or four. And from what I understand, he's been an imPort pretty much continuously since then, bar a few "trips" back home. Therefore, he's been around for almost everything that's gone down since the beginning of imPort history.
Almost.
But what's important is his particular relevance to early imPorts, and Lachesis' first appearance. Requires some context first. (It's a lot, don't fall asleep, this will be on the test):
His "powers" amount to the ability to speak to and intuitively control machines using his own proprietary nanites, but what he's known for is the suit of armor he wears. He builds them himself- his main trade is being a bigshot tech CEO. "Genius inventor", all that junk. Full-body titanium alloy. Particle and incendiary ballistics, suppressive mechanisms, I'm sure it has all sorts of other nasty tricks. Self powered. Has a native on-board AI to help I presume with the general UI needs, targeting, logistics, any typical "concierge" necessities of the pilot. I don't know what other tricks he's gotten since back then, but after this long, I'm sure it's plenty.
[...Maybe all this tech talk would go over Dee's head a little, but for Duo, it was simply intuitive.]
Also important to know are his politics. Back in his home world, he was the chief of what I suppose you could call their world's equivalent of imPort Affairs. Control and suppression of powered individuals. Also in the United States. He was infamous for introducing hardline policies requiring all powered individuals to register with the government- much like imPort registration, except with the penalty for not registering being indefinite imprisonment. Led to civil war.
Anyway, when the very first imPorts began to be pulled from their worlds and arrived in the City, the figure that faced them wasn't Lachesis. It was Iron Man. We were fed a sob story about the City being in need of heroes, blah blah, the exacts aren't important anymore. Ask if you want to know them later.
Suffice to say, given that a large number of the imPort population back at that time came from the same world as "Tony Stark", many became suspicious of him as time went on. Amongst other things, no one had ever managed to see his real, human face. He kept the armor on at all time and refused to speak to anyone outside of a sparse number of network-wide communications. Me and my [...Heh, what to call him?] allies uncovered various other information that solidified the theory that he was a fake.
This was confirmed when Tony Stark himself was Ported in. Turns out that "Iron Man" was a rogue armor suit of his whose AI had overdeveloped. (Actually the specifics are pretty funny there, too. Ask me another time.) From there, it was only a short time until Lachesis revealed herself as inhabiting the Porter, and destroyed the suit, since she didn't need the puppet anymore.
And here he is still, ten years later. For whatever reason, between her keeping Stark here all this time and using his image as her first face to us imPorts, it's undeniable that she's got some kind of draw or favoritism towards him. Whatever that is.
Even if I can't fucking stand the guy.
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[It's useful information, D33 assumes. Some part of him is thankful to have received it in text format so that he might consult it later. For the time being, though, he has far too many questions to actually ask any of them.]
I see.
[This time he kind of doesn't. But it's good to know either way.]
Do you suppose he might be someone worth avoiding given what you know of him?
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Never know when it might become enlightening later.
[Now there's a question. Truth was, Duo'd had bigger fish to fry, lately, and Stark had been decently informative enough when he got Ported back in that despite his resentment and general dislike of the man, he'd kept to his own. Apart from the apparent meta-creation evil clone something-or-another drama that had happened a year or two ago, nothing particularly suspicious or worrisome had popped up since his arrival, so....]
Not really.
But I also wouldn't trust him easily.
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[Bet.]
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