hadriel | [video]

[Prussia is usually fond of texting everyone, but today he's got too much on his mind today for that, most of it focusing on his dead beloved leader who had shown up last week to hang out. Having Frederick the Great here again has really lit the fire inside him again. At least for now, anyway. Who knows how long it'll last.]

So I guess I died, huh. I wasn't doing too hot a few days ago, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up at the temple and it's three days later, according to my phone. And Fri-- er, my ghost, he was gone. I know I wasn't the only one who had this ghost problem, but I don't know if anyone else had the problem go this far.

What a lame way to die! To just feel run down to the point where I flopped over and went belly-up? [He scoffs, with forced laughter.] C'mon, gods, you can do better than that, can't ya? You just proved to all of us you're not above some mental torture, for one thing.

[He leans into the camera. He doesn't know if the gods are listening, but he doesn't really care, either.]

And now we have these "Null" guys showing up on the network and threatening us? Telling me this isn't our place or our war? We got dragged here, so this is totally our place and our war. [He shakes his head, grinning smugly.] I don't know about anyone else, but I don't plan on just sitting here while a bunch of weirdo aliens plan to kill us. And I'm definitely not sitting around for the gods to fix this place or get us out of here. I'm tired of getting put through all this shit. Let's stand up for ourselves for a damn change and do something.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, they were never above mental torture before, for one thing.

You got a plan for standing up to either of these assholes, genius?

They expect us to believe they're working in our best interest, then pull shit like this. Yeah, okay, gods.

[He's so done with them. As far as the Null are concerned]

Not easy to face an enemy we know nothing about. But, at the very least, we're armed, and like half the people here can do stuff like throw fireballs or shoot lightning from their fingers, or whatever. Let 'em just try and make a move.

Think they've been pretty obvious that they're more focused on their own interests than ours. Most of them, anyway.

[She does believe that the rare few like Delight genuinely gives a shit about them.]

Am inclined to agree, though. After more than a year of dealing with this shit, it wears you down.

They go ahead and throw parties and shit for us and everyone falls for it, like it makes a difference.

[Says the guy who always acts like he's not going to fall for the nice things the gods do, and then does anyway.]

I've been around a long time. I've survived all kinds of stuff. But I never did it by just sitting around just riding stuff out.

Got to get that through to the gods -- parasites, whatever you want to call them -- and their thick, cloudy brains first. Their current methods are only going to get them so far before they either have people turning them over out of sheer spite or they have to change their game plans.

No, parasites is good. That's what we should call 'em. And that's all we're here for right, is to be used for their energy. Right now they're not giving me a whole lot of reason to not turn them over to those Null guys, other than I can't exactly trust them, either.

Looks like we're between a rock and a hard place no matter which team we bat for.

The only viable third option is to go independent, if it were possible.

[As in, fuck the gods and fuck the synthetics.]

I would in a heartbeat, but we don't have a choice but to rely on 'em at the moment. We can't get our own food and supplies without 'em. If we could do that on our own... Kinda impossible when you're trapped in a damn cave, though.

[There wasn't anyone else to negotiate with for that sort of thing than the Null, and it really wouldn't solve the problem anyway. They'd just be relying on someone else instead.]

Was trying to figure out if there was some way for us to leave the cave a while back. Though that was before we found out that we'd been hopping planets this whole time, so who knows what it's like on the surface of wherever we are, or if it's even habitable.

Anything would almost be a better alternative than this shit. If we didn't need them to support the lighting and growth, it might be possible to be self-sufficient with our own crops.

[Too bad the gods seem to be in control of the artificial light, too.]

The problem even there is, we'd need at least one season to get crops even going, hoping they don't fail in the meanwhile. [Guess who's been through enough famines in his life. He knows how this can go.] Um, not that we even have seasons in a cave.

That leaves only a few options. If we could figure out how the Door works, before the gods, I think that'd give us an upper hand for sure.

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