ORB - RD9, Mid-Morning.

[shadow_sage]

[A new face, feminine, blue, and topped by, well, tentacles, appears in the Orb. She looks rather frustrated, and as she speaks, her voice carries a note of the same thing.]

My name is Dr. Liara T’Soni. My kidnapper insisted that this...device...would allow me to speak with others taken from their worlds. Like it was a gift, to help me play his little game. Of course, I’m probably just standing here talking to a rock. Goddess, I haven’t done that for a while.

[Shaking her head, she puts a hand up, covering most of her face.]

There isn’t much I can do without information, and what I’ve been given isn’t very helpful. I don’t suppose that anyone else had more luck getting answers than I did, but it can’t hurt to ask. Do you know anything?

[She drops the hand and sighs.]

We can’t possibly have much time left, so does anyone have a way to get a signal off of this planet? I don’t even know what cluster this is, so I have no idea how far away the front is, but I am certain that it is moving closer. They have hit just about everything else already. I must speak to someone in the allied fleet as soon as possible.

Comments

[shadow_sage]

We all were. I'm not sure you can be prepared for this. Not truly.

[Swallows audibly, and then is silent for a moment.]

We simply do what we can.

[shorterinperson]

We do. [ Of course she can only really relate this to pirates attacking her home. The idea of a global scale alien invasion is... beyond anything in her experience, and she doesn't quite get it. ]

In the mean time, there is the matter of the thorns to take care of.

[shadow_sage]

You do not seriously think that I intend to aid these people? I was kidnapped. I am a prisoner; I will not cooperate with my jailors.

[shorterinperson]

If I may ask then, how exactly do you intend to return home?

[shadow_sage]

Someone was capable of bringing us here. Whatever technology this person used is likely to be capable of the reverse. So I intend to find it.

[shorterinperson]

The spells that brought us here are sloppy at best, and utterly imprecise. I suspect you'll find that rather difficult.

[shadow_sage]

And yet you expect them to send us home once we've completed our task.

[shorterinperson]

I doubt they're even capable of such a thing. I do however suspect that there are grander powers at play that may be convinced to help us if we do cooperate.

[shadow_sage]

I am nobody's puppet.

[shorterinperson]

Everyone is a puppet to the Gods when they are chosen.

[shadow_sage]

[Liara just found out that her people's gods were really aliens who intervened in the history of her world to protect them; it wasn't an easy revelation.]

I am nobody's puppet.

[shorterinperson]

Then you are lucky.

[ Alanna's Gods can be jerks too... but at least they're actual gods :| ]

[shadow_sage]

Luck has nothing to do with it.

[She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose.]

My people are dying. Driven into extinction. I have more pressing issues than fighting thorns.

I will find a way back. That is the fate I chose.

[shorterinperson]

The dangers you face in your home world are irrelevant here.

If you will not help us, then stay out of our way.

[shadow_sage]

Irrelevant? I cannot see how the end of dozens of species is in any way irrelevant.

[shorterinperson]

They are happening in another world. You cannot reach them, however far you travel, and you cannot help them.

[shadow_sage]

And I was there a few hours ago. Where I belong.

Instead, I was kidnapped, and now I should be happy to do whatever they ask me to, since it might send me home, eventually?

I think not.

[shorterinperson]

Do whatever you like. As I said, just don't get in my way.