Fifth ☂ Voice

[thirdreturned]

Hadriel.

[His address begins in a straightforward tone. The issues of the past few months are behind them, and they've eked out survival for awhile longer. Sorrow isn't optimistic, but he's not inclined to give up, either. He makes plans, he executes them, he lets things fall into place.

Which is the reason for this.]

Now that most of you know the truth, and now that it has been shown that these creatures will truly follow us to the ends of creation, I have decided to send two of us to scout the location we left behind and intercept with the forces of the machines there. Their purpose would be to gather information- how these inorganics continue to find us, how we might be able to thwart their technology in an attempt to escape for good.

Of the eight of us, there are four pairs which work better together than others. Hope has asked me to let you decide who is to go, but I warn you to consider your options carefully. The gods who leave will not have any events until they return, so we'll throw a large one for their departure.

[Sorrow takes a deep breath. Onto the selection.]

Hope and myself could go. This would leave you without replenishing food and water, as well as limited methods of revival... Hope is valuable, and I would do everything in my power to protect him, and I can also ensure that we're not discovered.

Your second option would be Confusion and Tranquility. The two of them are our builders, and without them, the city will not be repaired and their various contributions will not be functional. Confusion would be adept at avoiding capture, though detection is another story.

Thirdly are Fear and Love. Fear... [He sighs.] Fear operates best in the shadows, though he's still weakened- however, if he leaves, it will mean that we'd be left vulnerable if attacked again, as none of the rest of us can move the city. Love themself is... well, perhaps they can be used as a distraction if Fear needs to escape.

[Sorry, Love.]

Finally, you have Delight and Rage. Since Delight is no longer maintaining the bar, your only significant losses with both of them would be the ongoing deals any of you may have with each of them. The two of them are our most accomplished fighters and would be able to wrestle themselves out of an unfavorable situation, given the power they'd take on from their final event.

[So that's that.]

I welcome any questions you may have.

Poll #18323

This poll is closed.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 53

View Respondents

Who should go?

View Answers

Sorrow and Hope
4 (7.5%)

Confusion and Tranquility
22 (41.5%)

Fear and Love
5 (9.4%)

Rage and Delight
22 (41.5%)

Comments

yay good because so do i

[unfollowing]

wow

are you like vying for sainthood when you die?

[rehashing]

I've never died from a caffeine deficiency. Or, an unhemmed costume. [ Look, Caroline wouldn't let her be caught dead in something unhemmed if he needed to be, but, Emily doesn't know this. ] Rationing or hunting won't mark us for death. We can gain favor from a god and purify the lake if need be, All I am saying is that there are options.

[unfollowing]

oh my god

all i did was remind people of what one of the gods provides, so they could have all the facts to make their vote with. will i be mad if delight gets sent off? yes. will i get over it and carry on? YES

everyone needs to stop assuming shit about me just because i felt the need to mention things that i'm sure some people may have forgotten even though they're used to them

chill

[rehashing]

It's easy to take what people say here at face value. And you're right about taking everything into consideration. Even coffee and cute clothes. I'm sorry if it sounded like I was trying to convince you of otherwise. I was trying to understand where you were coming from.

Texting also makes it easy for people to assume things about you. It's the lack of inflection. A friend of mine used sarcasm all the time in his texts. I got used to it, but sometimes it still took a moment to come through.

So, I'm sorry for misunderstanding.

[unfollowing]

[Damn, Emily wasn't expecting that. Usually people here just keep on fighting. It takes her a bit to process that and set aside her anger, but she does reply within a minute.]

apology accepted

i voted, so now i'm going to go make myself a coffee and enjoy the fuck out of it

[Because if Delight goes, and she probably will, she'll need all the power she can get.]

[rehashing]

:)

You do that. I voted, too. All we can do now is wait.

[ A second later, comes another text. ]

Could I join you for that coffee?

[unfollowing]

[Another unexpected response. Elena kind of reminds her of Jess. God, Emily misses Jess. She wishes she'd show up here again. Jess she'd try to fix things with, Mike not so much.

But Jess isn't here, so.]

sure. the coffee cart is in delight's temple, meet me there

[rehashing]

OK. I'll meet you there.

[ Good thing she has a map. Caroline's out, but she didn't take the moped so Elena shoots off a text letting Caroline know she's borrowing it before finding Delight's temple on the map. She rides over, keeping her eyes peeled for any monsters along the way. Considering she's zooming past houses and storefronts, she's not expecting any.

Parking her moped out front, she undoes her helmet, clipping it to the back.

As she approaches the entrance, she realizes ... she doesn't know what Emily looks like, just... that she has a name. Well, maybe there won't be many people that? ]

[unfollowing]

[Lucky for Elena, it's just going to be the two of them at the temple. Emily is at the coffee cart when Elena walks in, two mugs set out on the cart, coffee freshly brewed and smelling amazing as she pours it in the first mug.]

Hey. You're Elena? [A brief pause, but not long enough for Elena to answer.] I'm Emily. How do you take your coffee?

[rehashing]

[ Good. Never mind that there was a clear antagonism only moments ago, minutes really. Elena has changed her mind over more. And that's what she reminds herself as she smiles, joining Emily by the coffee cart. ] Hey. [ She half shrugs, her shoulders coming up. ] Any way. Black. Cream and sugar. [ She smirks. ] But, that probably doesn't answer anything today. Cream and a little sugar. [ Nothing wrong with that. ] Thanks. [ As she waits, she gives a look around the temple, taking her coffee gratefully when it's handed to her. ]

I didn't know this was Delight's temple. [ She'd passed it often. Elena waits for Emily to pour and fix her own before she knocks her mug into Emily's, a toast. Both hands around the base, she brings it to her lips. ]

[unfollowing]

Cheers. [And she takes her first drink of coffee. Perfect.

(Hey, you don't act like an asshole to someone who's being civil after admitting they were wrong and you were right. That's like, someone following Emily's rules.)]

You're pretty new here, aren't you? You can't really tell them apart unless you know where they are, until you walk inside them. Delight's is obviously the best to be in, but Hope's is good too, and Tranquility's.

[Needless to say that the others are meh at best. Who wants to go someplace that'll make them sad?]

We figured this is a good place to keep the coffee cart now because Delight can use all the power she can get.

[rehashing]

How'd you guess? [ She listens to Emily wax on about the temples, realizing it's what's inside that counts, a lesson many a Pixar movie has taught her. ]

Because she derives power form delight. Ours. [ Every time she thinks about the gods, she can't help but think about Klaus and his family. ] Is it magic? Do we know?

[unfollowing]

You can just tell, when you've been here as long as I have.

[And wouldn't you know it, being in Delight's temple helps Emily's mood a lot, so she doesn't feel as inclined to pick a fight at the slightest hint of provocation.]

Magic would make the most sense, right, but we don't know. I mean, they're glow clouds. How the hell are they even talking to us?

[rehashing]

How long is that?

[ The most she's heard is two years. It sounds like that was the beginning. Maybe it was one. She learned a lot her first month. Her second has given her a lot less information. ]

What do you mean, they're glow clouds?

[unfollowing]

[Emily pauses a moment, the answer still striking her as utterly bizarre. What the hell.] Over a year now.

[Y e a h.]

I mean they're literal glow clouds. They just take human forms so we're not freaked out by them.

[rehashing]

[ Let her - take a sip for a moment. ] And we're sure that's their true form? They're taking human forms?

[unfollowing]

Honestly, there's no way to be really sure. [She shrugs and takes a sip of coffee.] But when the city got split in two, Fear did a video post on the network, and he looked-- wrong. Like, pieces of him were missing, his voice didn't match his mouth, he wasn't breathing-- glow clouds makes more sense when you think about that disaster, but we just don't know.

[rehashing]

Glow clouds or, maybe, a DSL line? [ A joke! ] What was it like with the city split in half? When I woke up here there were bodies everywhere.

[unfollowing]

I mean... why not, right? [Who even uses DSL anymore though...]

It was a fucking disaster. I was on the side with Hope, Fear, Delight, and Rage, which meant we got revived if we died, but we were also the ones who had to deal with the things chasing the gods. They were trying to get into the caves, like drilling in here, so a bunch of us helped Delight and Rage cause cave-ins to slow them down.

[She pauses, half glaring at her coffee, half not seeing it at all.] It was fucking terrifying.

[rehashing]

It sounds like it. But, you survived. And so did they. [ Isn't that something? ] Someone in the vote called them 'inorganics." [ She lets that sit on her tongue. ] Do you know why they're chasing the gods?

[unfollowing]

[Emily shrugs, then nods. Yeah. Here they are, alive and waiting to see what it is the gods are gonna find when they go on the scouting mission, shitposting and having coffee and who even knows what else.]

No. I only know what they've told us. Apparently those things don't like to feel emotions, and the gods can make them do that, so they want to kill the gods. Can you imagine being so scared to fucking feel something that you'd kill someone to make it stop?

[Sounds like an entire species needs a lot of therapy.]

[rehashing]

[ If there's something that viscerally hits Elena Gilbert, it's this concept. It's what vampires do where she comes from when it becomes too much, or when they're told to.

She's still not sure how much she should share, what she shouldn't. She doesn't want Stefan and Damon here - not if it means all the uncertainty that comes with it. And selfishly, she doesn't want Stefan here when she knows he loves Caroline. (And selfishly, if she's honest with herself, she wants Stefan from when she remembers him. She doesn't want to want Damon to be here.

She doesn't mean to go somewhere else, but she does.

She hasn't been saying anything, has she. ] Sorry. Yeah, I can. Feeling something that deeply hurts, more than they can bear. They'd rather cut that off than acknowledge they feel anything. [ If she's speaking from experience, she is, though it's not personal.

Though, it may come off that way. ]

[unfollowing]

[That silence gets a weird look from Emily, but the rest of what Elena says is what really gets her.]

Then you seriously need therapy.

[rehashing]

[ That elicits a small, knowing smile. ]

I probably do. [ Dead parental figures, all of them, supernatural pawn, the center of a brotherly love triangle - and vampires. ] But, not because I can imagine what that's like. And not because I was talking about me. It's crazy, for an entire species to want to shut an entire side of themselves off, but it's not the first time I've heard that.

[ She looks to Emily, knowing she's going to receive some kind of reaction. Emily's a girl who reacts. ]

[unfollowing]

[Well at least she's not fighting Emily about it. Too many people here would take that comment as a personal attack. Too many people here are also in serious need of therapy.

Go figure.]

I mean, I know someone who would put close friends through fucking terrible mind games in revenge for causing them so much pain, but... that's not really the same thing. [No. They hadn't deserved what Josh put them through, but they weren't innocent here, except Chris and Sam.

She meets Elena's gaze over her coffee mug, and when she's done taking a drink, she says,] I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you know people who would do anything to stop whatever pain they're in.