hadriel | 002 [video]

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002 [video]

[Maketh doesn't look well, but she's putting forth a solid effort. She's got her hair up and a coat slung over her shoulder, half buttoned, to cover the mess of bandages. But her face is pale and strained. She's been injured and hasn't yet recovered.]

Hello, Hadriel. I hope you're all well, or at least -- recovering.

Recent events have made two things clear to me. First, that the gods will attempt to turn us against each other. And secondly, that they can influence our minds in ways far more direct that I had anticipated. A protocol must be created so this will not happen again.

[She takes a deep breath and winces.]

However, I don't have the proper training to make such a thing. So I am reaching out to everyone here. If you have ideas, I would like to hear them.

Thank you.

[There's a pause.]

I am sorry, to the man I hurt. I'm afraid don't know your name.

That is all.

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[It helps, a little, that they're not having this conversation in person. Nick is hardly the first person who's tried to kill Maketh, but that doesn't change the fact that she nearly succeeded.]

That is was.

I hesitate to ask, but...your powers. Is there anything you'd suggest to help me recover faster?

[It takes Nick a second too long to piece together what Maketh's saying here, and when she does ... ]

Goddammit - Chris said you were OK. You got hit? Shit.

[However bad she felt about the incident, Nick now feels exponentially worse. This wasn't so near a miss.]

No, sorry, I - I don't really know a whole lot about this. It's all pretty new to me, and that - that thing I did, it's only ever happened one other time before, when I got attacked by a wendigo.

[Maketh winces.]

I'll live. I think you were aiming for my head. Got my shoulder instead.

These powers...are they genetic? I've never seen anything quite like them.

[And despite the situation, Maketh is curious.]

[Dammit dammit dammit. Not hitting her intended target doesn't feel any better. Nick sighs. She hates this, hates talking about what she is, hates being what she is, but - well, she nearly killed this woman. The least she can do is answer her questions. And it's not exactly like she can keep it a secret anymore, can she.]

Might be, I dunno. I'm adopted, apparently - all Nightbane are. That's what I am, what it's called. I just found out a couple months before I showed up here. Graham - he's the guy who found me, told me all this - he said I'd probably develop some abilities, but he didn't say what they'd be. Apparently Nightbane all look different, all do different things. There's really no way to predict it, he said.

[Maketh nods slowly.]

We had such things, back home. Not -- Nightbane, but...similar. The few that I met didn't have such drastic physical changes, though.

Yeah, I sure didn't pick that out. I would've gone with something a lot less noticeable.

[She sucks in a hard breath, and her voice is duller with her next words:]

Guess there's monsters everywhere, huh.

[So it's not conscious choice, then. Perhaps a whim of whatever her power is. Like with the Sith. Maketh shakes her head slowly. She's known monsters. Some more literal than others. At the moment, she doesn't count Nick among them.] I would say there are people with power everywhere. Having it doesn't --

[She hesitates.]

May I tell you something?

Sure, if you want.

[She's committed to listening to what Maketh has to say for the duration of this conversation.]

There are individuals with power, in my home. Laypeople know only as much as we are told and of course that is not very much, but...I knew a few of them. One in particular.

[The Inquisitor. Maketh is quiet for a while. She thought him an ally once, if not quite a friend.]

He told me that this power had no meaning in itself - that it was archaic to call it good or evil, or even think in such sentimental terms. An action matters only in what it serves. And I think in some ways he was right. Power isn't -- anything, inherently. But there are people who do cruel things with their power and maybe -- maybe that could be called evil.

I don't think you're a monster, Nick. I think something with power manipulated you.

[She's silent, listening to what Maketh says, silent for a bit after, too, taking it all in, rolling it around in her head and seeing if anything sticks. It's a nice thing to say, that she's not a monster, that something with power manipulated her - and Nick doesn't want to trust it. Why is she being so nice? Nick almost killed her, and even though she hadn't, she'd still injured her. She doesn't trust anyone who's nice, because she doesn't tend to trust anyone. Because she's been burned too many times by people she's trusted who turned out to not be worth her trust.

She's felt like a monster for a long time, well before she ever Became a Nightbane. She's been a monster for most of her life, and mostly, she was fine with that. Acted to fit the part that people saw her as, because why not? Why shouldn't she be a monster, if everyone was going to assume that she was anyway. Maketh doesn't know her, and in some ways, that makes her niceness that much worse.

But there's no real point in vocalizing these thoughts; it will sound stupid and self-pitying, and Maketh doesn't need to hear that. She barely knows Nick. Let her think what she wants.]

Thanks, Maketh. That's real nice of you to say. And - I guess that makes sense. I mean, it's not like I go around attacking people like that for fun, usually. Mostly I'm just fighting off something else that's attacking me.

[So maybe that power isn't bad, inherently.]

Anyway, I'm real sorry about it. And I really hope these asshole gods don't try pulling this shit again.

[Maketh decides not to mention that the Inquisitor ended up turning against her. It wasn't a betrayal. There would have had to be alliance in the first place for that to matter and there was no. But in the end, he killed her men. It's the sort of thing that sticks.

Nick tried to kill her. Maketh tried to kill a stranger. Both of them almost succeed.]

These are...strange times. And powerful enemies. If we don't work together, we won't win.

[It's that simple. Maketh might have nightmares about Nick's face for years to come - she's had three already - but that doesn't matter. Hadriel needs to be united.]

Right. [She half-laughs under her breath.] "Live together, die alone" - that's how it goes, right?

[A line from a TV show she only halfway paid attention to, but who knows if Maketh will get the reference - most people don't understand what Nick means when she talks about pop culture here. The sentiment, though - it strikes her as overly optimistic. People, in her opinion, are terrible, and asking them to work together sounds just short of impossible.]

Something like that. [Maketh nods slowly. She doesn't recognize the phrase, but understands the sentiment just fine.]

Yeah ... I guess we'll have to see how well that goes.

[She's not holding her breath.]

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002 [video]

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voice.

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she's just gonna stick with permavoice

permavideo for Maketh

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