Above the VIP lounge, at the very top of the Overlook is cluster of penthouse suites. These provide a view of both the Pit and Abaddon's sky. The one-way transparency of the blister material allows for all-around panoramic views while maintaining privacy, and even sections of the floor are transparent to the lounge below, but appear as mirrors to those looking up.
Lying on a padded table, Tasha has a good view of the party going on downstairs, where people are dancing. The padded hole that her face sticks through doesn't let her see the next table over there, but she can hear Katie making happy noises. A long straw lets her sip on the very large mixed drink suspended below the table, which has multiple layers of colored booze, each layer different and kept separate by density. She's nearly finished the bottom layer of rum.
As for the rest of her body, strong Vartan talons are kneading and massaging it, somehow finding spots of tension the hybrid was never aware of. It's enough that she doesn't mind just having a towel draped over her tail section for modesty, even though the masseuses are all female Vartans.
Tasha has had other massages, but each and every time she's been amazed by just how relaxed they can make her. How they seem to know every little knot and tension. This time is different; before she'd received her massages for physical reasons -- as a add-on to a workout or tarining session. Technical. Today, it's all for pleasure, to let go for a while and appreciate.
Three days.
She has three days to take it all in, to try and take it all with her. A different sense of tension has been building in her ever since she founded the Magi Titan, Melchior, as if she had been circling a greta mountain, ever higher. Through clouds and rain, through fierce storms, through injury and terror, up and up. And now the peak looms bold, glimpsed behind the last cloud layer. Almost there; she can feel it, in her heart. Almost there. The end of one journey. What happens from there she suspects, but doesn't truly know. She just knows that she'll have arrived and there will be a kind of end.
Three day, to try and take it all in, to try and take it all with her. For now, however, she feels like so much puppy bird puddle. Groaning and wiggling, she finds herself half-surprised she hasn't oozed through the hole in the bed!
There a sound of hooves on carpet, and Tasha sees the legs of the room's butler.. or maid. Liza would know the proper term. But for now 'the room's Liza' is good enough. "Miss, there is a Mr. Shojo outside asking if he can make his report to you now?"
Really Shojo? Now? Her second and apprentice -- as Katherine calls him -- may be precise of movement and robotlike in manner from illness, but she can't help but wonder if some of that asthetic has seeped in to his behavior. Which, she considers, is a strange thing given how several robots she knows are capable of expressive personality, compassion, and internal emotion. 'Robotic,' she decides, is really a kind of culture -- having as much to do with actual biological forces as the celebrations that differ from town to town, village to village.
"Oh, fine. Let him in," Tasha allows after this moment of thought. She doesn't have to sound happy about it, she's supposed to be on vacation!
There's some commotion after the servant leaves Tasha's sight, and she can hear some hushed squawking about 'being presentable' - it's a few minutes before she sees another set of bare hooves. Then Shojo awkwardly lies on the floor and shuffles around until his face is below Tasha's, if upside down. Like Tasha and Katie, he's been forced to just wear a towel around his hips. "Hello.. Tasha," the man says with only the pause to indicate the awkwardness of never quite knowing how to address her. Otherwise he doesn't have any particular inflection. "I understand you have also met with the mages now. I do not know if you covered the toporgic subject in depth, however, only that you had some success with the Marker."
Tasha grins down at the man, unable to quite hide her amusement at his discomfort and effort to try and remain formal despite the circumstances -- all of which she finds endearing. That he doesn't know how to address her is an awkwardness they both share; even she doesn't know what title to apply to herself, what honors she should have, nor how to truly relate to underlings. "That's about the whole of it, Shojo, except the matter of Mr. K. and his problem with us has been resolved too. We spoke, it's handled. For now." She pauses to leans her head in and sip her drink, rainbow colors filtering up in to her head. "Now, I am comfortable and filled with rum, so pleased be quick and keep complexity to summaries."
Shojo's beak opens, then closes. After another moment, he says, "In summary, the Earth Mage Spring-Meadow, a Lapi, informed me that she could not perform gravity or electromagnetic magic, though they are both part of the Sphere of Earth. Apparently it is such a broad Sphere that Mages must specialize. She assured me that new developments in gravity magic had been made, and that the best available person to have examine and test the toporgic sample was on Caroban Island on Sinai."
"Then it'll have to wait. We'll relocate the samples and earmark them for future tests when an appropriate Mage has come to our world," the young woman decides, then pauses as the masseuse works a particularly tight spot. She squirms around her straw, the colored fluid stopping mid way, then she exhales and slumps down, her grin becoming lopsided and eyes half-lidded. "Mmpf. Where was-- Oh. Yes, it can wait. The material can be relocated to our usual processing associate for alternative testing and such. Uhm. Oh, you." She squints at Shojo, thinking, then says, "I'm off for three days, then I head back to base for prep work. Big operation. Want to be off for three days, too? Because if you're coming along, you should be and honestly I'm going to be 100% useless as a boss for those three days."
"I don't understand," Shojo says. "Off of what?"
"Uhhhhh." Tasha squints all the more, looking at the young man as if doubting his intelligence. "Off work? Shore leave? Vacation? Haitus, sabbatical, leisure time, break in the action, off duty? Shut down for maintenance? Cool your jets? Does any of this make sense? I need more to drink ... " The canine head bites on to the straw, purple reinforcement on its way.
"I see," Shojo says. "What should I be doing during this down time? I could finish my performance reviews of the other JEF candidates if you like."
"Ugh," goes Tasha, who waggles her hands back at her masseuse. "I think I'm getting tension again. In my brain." And then she sighs, head shaking as much as it can in the holder. "Shojo, Shojo. I know you have a disorder, that you seem a bit robotic. But I know robots that have more ideas about fun and relaxation than you do. Being stiff doesn't mean you have to be stiff. Don't let your condition dictate, to you, some kind of style you have to be. So no work. I want -- I am ordering -- you to do something fun. Go downstairs and dance, take a walk through the fields down below. Go buy a Kaboom record and listen to it. If you want, I could get you a msssage, but I'm not sure if that works for you."
"I've never had a massage," Shojo says. "I do not dance, however. I will try the massage." He then starts to roll out of the way so he can get up.
"Can someone handle Shojo's massage, please? Someone experienced; I think he has enough tension to break a person's hands," Tasha calls back behind her, waggling vaguely towards the man. "Escort him to the men's area, maybe? If he runs, beat him up!"
"I can bring him to a separate room," the room Liza says. A second drink is delivered soon after, with a longer straw. It's slushy and has some fruit in it.
"Thank you for saving me. He's really very nice if a bit dense," Tasha insists, helping to scoot the drink under her head. Once Shojo is gone the young woman drops back in to the bed as if every bone in her body had suddenly vanished. "Gods," she breathes, then sips her new drink.
"He has a rather taught butt too," Katie notes from the other table. "I can barely feel mine right now."
"He's a big pile of taught Vartan alright," the younger woman agrees, grinning around her straw as she takes another sip. Of course she noticed how handosme Shojo is, even if she can't do much with it other than look -- couldn't even if she felt inclined to cheat on Gabriel. She considers making a joke about feeling Katie's butt, but immediately resists knowing that is how rumors get started. She angles for something more subtly flirty, but overtly innocent. The rum helps. "So can you dance, Miss Katherine Katie Kaboomy?"
"Of course I can dance," Katie claims. "Ballroom, ballet, martial-arts ballet, synchronized gymnastics.. uh.. the Puppy Hop.. some others. I hear there are 'belly dancers' on Sinai too. And I think the Archon dances. You'd think all Silent Ones could dance.. they're built for it! But none of them do on Abaddon it seems.."
"Maybe the Star hates dancing," the Cadet suggests, finding it blasphemous but she's off duty, she can be blasphemous -- can't she? She's also filled with rum. And fruit. "Want to go dancing, later? I can kind of dance." Definitely 'kind of.'
"By 'kind of dance' do you mean I have to wear armored boots?" Katie asks.
"Maybe you should lead," Tasha insists, grinning a little around her straw as she has another sip. Safety instructions, yes, and manuvering.
"If I can walk after this," Katie says. "I suppose you'll want a private dance, since.. all I have are my riding leathers with me."
That's about when the masseuse removes the towel and digs into Tasha's hams. "You will be able to dance all night once I am done with you," the claims.
"I like the sound of that." Tasha had planned to dance on the floor, but 'private lessons' are too good to pass up. There's always tomorrow. She has three days, it's practically forever in the condensed blackhole-like action density of her new life. "I'm a fast learner, right?"
Tasha actually arches up a little when the woman digs in to her hams, grimmacing until she settles back down; then she smiles. "All night long," she agrees.
"When you're sober or when you're lubricated?" Katie asks with a chuckle.
Tasha barks a laugh. "You'll just have to find out! I have a lot of stamina, you better keep up. And I'm full oif rum. Did I mention that?" She wigglers the fingers of her closest hand Katie-wards.
The massage lasts another ten minutes, and then Tasha needs some help standing. Katie is a little more used to this sort of treatment though, so is up and about with less effort. The pair are provided with bathrobes made of something light and woven - it's not Zolk, but something wholly artificial that feels about the same. They're both black with the golden Vasterlion crest on the breast. "What sort of music would you like to have provided?" the room-Liza asks.
"Uh, wow, I really don't know. I'm just an upjumped backwater barbarian with metal in her head and a lot of words stuffed in her brain. Katie?" She smiles at the other woman, head tilting. "You're magical and musical, help me out? But nothing stressful. I have three days to relax."
"Have you got Big Band Bossanova 12, The Revenge of Sousa?" Katie asks, and the attendant nods while leading them to a lounge. The furniture has been moved to the walls to leave the center area clear.
Tasha follows along, looking around, hands swinging back and forth at her side. She realizes she feels young again. She is young -- she knows that of course -- but she hasn't felt young in ages, too busy trying to grow up too fast and stand toe-to-toe with her elders, some of whom are very elder indeed. The trials and the scars have made her feel somehow above and apart, greater even as she feels inadequate, but never did they make her feel young, and rarely happy. Today she feels young: Dopey, happy, at ease under the starlight that filters through the half-dome, and Katherien is no small part of that.
The attendant stands behind the small wet bar, and fiddles with something beneath the bar top. Speakers in the walls come to life, playing music that is best described as smooth. Katie steps into the center of the room, and holds out her hand to Tasha.
Tasha steps forward, putting her drink on a table before approaching. "Be careful," she tells the other woman, having to look up at her at a significant angle once they're close. "I'm very delicate." And then she grins.
Katie grins like a wolf, and pulls Tasha in closer before dipping her! Then the hybrid is then swept and swung about with surprising ease.
"Ahh!" Goes Tasha when dipped, even arcing her wings back towards the floor in anticipation of having to cushion a fall. She looks even more bewildered when she's carried off in anotehr set of movements. She's seen Abaddonian dancing beforem and danced with Gabriel, or on Sinai, but it was either basic and energetic or slow and muted. Katherine'e practiced moves make her feel like she's being processed in to a exciting roller coaster of movements she didn't think she could do without falling over!
"It's much easier when you don't have a large audience," Katie says, and shows Tasha a semi-complicated step to follow. "Remember.. not stomping on Katie-toes!"
Tasha can't even imagine trying to do this with a large audience. She gapes at the movement, looking more than a little uncertain with ears askew, but she tries to assure ehrself she's done more complicated things while flying and that could have resulted in much worse than stepping on Katie's toes. She thinks. Actually, the more she thinks about it the less sure she is about the danger, but soon she's pulled in to trying it and she has no choice but to give it a try!
Katie is good at recovering from any mistakes, and laughs as she dances. Thankfully the next track is a slow dance, where all Tasha has to do is hang on to Katie and step back and forth.
Hanging on Tasha can do. It feels like she's mostly 'hung on' since her trip to Amazonia started, trying not to fall on her butt. As the pace winds down, she shifts gear in to returning to a relaxed state, eventually laying her head on Katie's shoulder the same way she had with Gabriel and later with Captain Frane.
Katie has her arms around Tasha's hips to help her stay upright as well. "So, I'm guessing you're not taking me along this time?" she asks.
"Taking you along..?" Tasha asks with some bewilderment, having lost her sly edge when it flew out the window after the last spin. Survival and not crushing Katie-toes took over the controls.
"Your next mission, the one you mentioned to Shojo," Katie prompts.
"Oh." Tasha has the good grace to look embarassed, ears canting. katie might even see reddening if she looks hard enough. "Oh, um. About that." She bites her lip, not having expected to reveal the situation in this semi-public area, with others still nearby. "See." Biting becomes chewing. "Katie, it's ... It's ... It's different, this time."
"Different how?" Katie asks, with a bit of an edge to her voice.
The bit is exactly as much as Tasha's head shifts back, measured in worry. "Different," she repeats, and then there's more lip chewing. At length she has to look away, staring off in to the sky for several seconds before she speaks again. "Katie. Katherine. This time is different." Her voice has changed, far away, as if it had come from another Tasha, a serious, sad, professional woman that had been standing in the shadows until she needed to speak. "This time will be when all my work -- my personal project -- will come to fruitition. Or, um ... not." The 'not' comes with another heavy pause. "I don't know. I just feel like things will be different, whether I come back or ... Or I don't. Everything has been leading up to this. I can feel it in my heart. I planned to tell you, but I didn't want to ruin my las thr-- My three days with you, and with the Pit."
"Are you sure you aren't.. over-worrying?" Katie asks, swaying Tasha back and forth in time to the music. "You've taken on bigger risks."
Tasha eyes are a little wide whens she asks, "Would you worry, if you went to meet the Sifra? You know what I've told you about their history. Their power, what they could do."
"But they're gone," Katie says. "Maybe their machines keep going, but I don't think they do. A few days ago we were discussing ways to kill a mountain-sized alien god-monster. And now.. you're going to see the good god-monster, right?"
Tasha's face tightens, she looks pained at the mention of Katha-hem. "Katha and I came to an arrangement," she corrects, then her gaze shifts from the stars to the ground, searching. "I think it's the right one, but it reminded me how complicated interacting with these beings can be. And Katha is one kind. The Sifra are another. Adam is something else, maybe more. But I know now what He may want, and what He may need, and that I'm being weighed somehow. Judged. And that I'm a piece of their work, like a gear in a machine. Whetehr Adam is 'good' or not, I don't know. Good is ... It's very hard to figure out. Am I good, Katie? Because I don't know. I've hrut people, I've killed them, I've made hard decisions. And Adam will probably know that, see through me -- the big ones always can if they understand us at all. And then He'll either like what he sees or He won't. But I know too much, and it'd be easy to make me disappear. But even if He keeps me, I may not be the same. Or I may not come back. Wit
h the others we'd meet under circumstances, by chance. I am approaching Adam directly. And He may not be alone. And there are other participants. I can't know the result, all the details, every plan of men and gods -- but I do know this: This is a turning point. It's coming to a kind of head."
"So.. what happens if you do come back, but nothing changes?" Katie asks.
The younger woman wrinkles her face. "It seems unlikely," she admits. "But it's possible. And I mean nothing, maybe I won't eeven remember, maybe none of us will? But if anything happens, and i can remember, I'll still be different. How I don't know. Maybe not much, maybe a lot. Maybe I'll just be angry, or sad. Maybe different in some other way." Her shoulders roll. "I feel liek this has been building a long time, for nothing to happen seems anticlimactic and worringly easy for what might be at stake and how long things have been building. It's not just me, that has been planning this. Older beings than Humans and Karnor know what I'm going to do. I can't figure out their plans, only know they're up to something. Maybe they want this to be as smooth as possible, but I don't know. I can't know. I'm just a drover from a backwater world, Katie, and this is too big for me. It feels immense, immense. It is immense. So I think it must have to be, too, when it all comes down."
"That's why I'm asking you to stop thinking about what you can't plan for, and focus on what you can," Katie says in her soothing voice. "Why? Because that's something that's in your control. It's something you can focus on that isn't a mystery, or a scary unknown or something even weirder. You know what you have now. Assume you'll still have that after this meeting, regardless of what happens in the meeting. Because that's something you can plan for. Think about what you'll do next if you're the only one deciding what to do. Because that's how us little fleshy creatures think. Step by step. No matter what, you need to have a plan to fall back on, because gods are unreliable."
"But that's what I'm /doing,/ don't you see? I came here to relax, I /handled/ that 'bad god' -- I spoke to it /myself!/ I planned for war, I managed /peace./ I have done everything I have set out to do and now what I'm /doing/ -- or supposed to /do/ -- is relax. I am /not overreacting,/ I don't /need to be told to handle things in pieces./ I /know./ But you /asked,/ and I thought you should know /why,/ because I have been dealin with godlike beings for a while now and I /know/ the results can't be predicted easily, maybe /at all./ And so I am trying to be prepared in case the worst happens./" Tasha slips her hold on katie, moving to her shoulders and meeting her gaze as she talks. Her head angles down, meekness lost, the side she keeps down so that she can enjoy her mortal life when home again pushed aside for the other. "I am /concerned/ but not for /me./ I was crying outside Mr. V.'s place because I thought I might never see it again. Maybe never see it as I see it /now./ I lost my chance to go home
home, once, when I was forced to see the reality of our worlds. I may lose it again. I don't need to be little and I don't fear my insignificance anymore. I don't even feel special, I'm just a part, a gear. And I've accepted that. So please just let me cry over losing my mortality and fear losing you and all of you and what might change me because I have lost it before and I am wise enought to fear what may come again."
Then Tasha lets go, head up, ears high. Her hands drop back to Katherine's hips, where they had been. "I was chosen for a reason, after all," she says, more quietly now, but also with a stern undertone Katherine's neverheard before. "Have some faith in my worries. In me."
Katie puts her hands on Tasha's shoulders, and says, "Then get them out now, before you go. Because you do not want to be taking them with you, making you second-guess every step. Yes, you can't know what you're going to face, so the only way to do it is with your eyes wide open and a sense of wonder. Does that make sense, Tasha? None of that worry should be with you. Be light."
"But I should. Gods aren't filled with only wonder, Katie. If all you see in them is wonder, maybe you won't see what they are -- see what you want to see, or forget they can be horrible too. Some of them are cruel, some are alien. Like people. If you think everyone's wonderful, you'll miss how awful they can be. And that would be a mistake, because then you won't see them for what they are, either." Tasha untwines a hand long enough to duck her head and rub her nose, still itchy after all this time, never having gotten used to the dryness. "Maybe Adam's the best thing in the universe -- but maybe He isn't. Maybe He shouldn't be, and I definitely shouldn't be if He expected em to understand His children at all. Because I think maybe Ahriman might be a bit of an ass, and maybe Horus is naive -- for a god -- and Mafdet is probably tricky and sly. If I look at them with wonder, maybe it's all I'll see. That's why I've always chosen to talk to them like they're people. Because they are.
"
"I'm just saying not to bring any biases," Katie says. "You talk about your impressions of beings you've never met, based on.. what? The people they supposedly raised up? Did you turn out exactly as your mother raised you to be? I know that I didn't. Sure, maybe if you had a thousand years to try and fine tune things.. but you can't fine tune people, really. Not in large numbers anyway. Try not to judge the parent based on how their kids turned out. And sure, maybe these gods are people.. but they aren't like people you know. Just like AIs aren't like people you know. That's a common thing, you realize. We all do it. Because we want to understand things on our familiar terms. But you have to remember that it's you doing it, not them."
"I know, Katie. That's part of why I treta them that way -- because back when I first started talking to them I didn't know what to say, or do. No one handed me a book, and they definitely didn't prepare me or give me backrgound. So I talked to them like I talked to anyone, because I didn't know what else to do. And it worked. Because that's the thing, Katie, you'll never be ready. You'll never be able to understand them entirely, but you still have to interact with them -- if you second guess it or try to be light or any other strategy or plan you'll just be assuming as much as if you came as yourself with bias. They're big gods, Katie, they'll dictate how we see everything and handle setting up dialogue. Better to just be honest, because lies, plots and strategies probably won't do anything to them." Tasha then eyes Katie a moment, pursing her muzzle, then she shakes her head. "Look at you, Miss Kaboom. Telling me not to worry and then telling me how to do my job too! See if I don't
make show of telling you what's what next song and dance. How many gods have you spoken to?"
"I don't really believe in gods," Katie says, seriously. "Or fate or destiny. If something happens in my life, I want to think that it was because of the consequences my free-will choices. I don't want to feel like a puppet, or 'surrender' my fate to some ambiguous higher power. And don't care if the gods think otherwise. If they have a problem with it, then they can take it up with me, because I'm not going to them to ask permission. And I don't like it when you start talking about destiny and grand conspiracies. You're in this spot now because you found a Titan and claimed it. No ghost led you to it, not strange supernatural urge. If I remember correctly, you found it because you got into a fight with Nora. In no possible universe is that the plan of the gods."
Tasha frowns at the defiance of the gods. Not because she doesn't believe in it, no, she's done it before and heatedly at that. No, what bothers her is the feeling Katherine either believes she can stop them or else she can overcome them, and while the Cadet also knows they can be overcome she is equally aware of how vast in power they are. It strikes her this si why she worries so much, because it gives her perspective, helps her reflect, makes her aware of details and emotions and many other things that might have slipped past her. More so, it gives her emapthy, and empathy is what she needs to explain other people.
As she continues to listen she reflects more, coming next to definace and telling the gods they can take it up with her. This was something Shojo was immediately afraid of, or at least in dire insistence it be avoided, and she decides that it's for good reason. Telling Adam off could be a supremely bad idea, even though telling Katha-hem off had no consequences. It's all in the moment, in the nuance. You have to feel it. All the plans and details and books and philosophy is just there to help you broaden your preperations, but knowing what piece or what word ... That's on you.
But then things come to fate. Now Tasha speaks, and in calm that surprises even herself. "Who said anythung about fate? Even Old Yama doesn't believe in fate, Katherine. I'm going because I know me. Just because I feel the immensity doesn't mean I think it had to be, but I also thinks it's a lot mroe complicated than that. if I drop my glass it'll hit the floor. Was it destiny? No, it's just how things work. Gods are like that, they can weave plans across centuries and outside time. It's not all mystical, it's just their plans. They dropped the glass and they know it's going down." She shrugs a little; it is what it is. "You're right I'm a weird coincidence. Some of the mission elements make it sound predestined, but maybe it was just prefabricated. Old Yama set me up, I'm just not sure what his game really is yet. He doesn't believe in destiny, but he put me in an ages old plan. It's, um, what do you call it ... Semantics."
"Well, you claimed that you were chosen for this," Katie reminds. "You were the one that chose you though, not the gods. The whole Magi thing was set up long after the gods went silent, and was set in motion by people no less mortal than us."
Tasha's face scrunches up, but she has to laugh. "Katie," she begins, head shaking, "I was chosen. Old Yama looked at me and said, Tasha, you'll do. If he didn't he'd have just fried my brain and killed my whole team. Before that, you're right, I chose to look in to things. There probably isn't a lot of difference between me chosing to wear my jacket, a million year old godlike being chosing me for their plans, and timeless entities looking out across who-knows-how-many dimenions and chosing one world over another. Fate's just how things are, destiny is how you wind up. They're mystical and they're not, and free will and destiny are probably the same thing." And then she shrugs. "I made the chocies because I'm me, Yama chose me because I'm me. Old gods maybe set this up because I'm me, and maybe they made me me. But if they made me, me, and I do what I do, is that destiny or choice? I think it's the same thing, for the same reason the cup hits the floor. It probably chose to, and gravity chos
e to, and gravity chose to, because it's what they are as I'm me. They're just not as wordy." And then she smiles.
"No, Yama didn't choose you, he passed you," Katie corrects. "It's not like there were any other candidates. Choice implies more than one option."
Tasha leans back a little. "Um, Katie, he ruined the Expedition Fleet. he can definitely decide to kill me, or all of us, if he was really not happy with his choice. I don't think he's as passive as his sitting in a swamp for six thousand years makes him seem. If he didn't like things, he'd act. I'm sure he'd have destroyed Warloq if he half-suspected that man might have made an attempt. He has his plans. Maybe he didn't hand-pick me, but he made a choice. Whethr you call it passed or chosen, I don't think it matters except that he made a decision and could have acted in another way." The younger woman then lifts a hand and taps the side of her muzzle. "Besides I think he likes me. I'm charming."
"You may ascribe him too much power," Katie counters. "You weren't the only one to approach him in all that time - he'd killed a lot of adventurers, according to your hunter guide, didn't he? You had his key, and before you used it he was out to kill you too, wasn't he? So you're the only one to earn the chance to talk to him. And happened to be collecting the Markers, instead of just someone who had the key. He gave you his blessing, or whatever - but how do you really know that he could have refused at that point? You're trusting that he wasn't lying about his involvement just add gravitas to the mission after the fact. You can't just trust these beings because they say they're powerful. Have you actually witnessed any of them do anything?"
Tasha cocks her head to the side and thinks on that, then she arches ehr brows and says, "Well, he's the one made the Seraph Titan in to a monster. Through me." She then holds up a finger. "And I am mad about that, but I'm tired of fighting these things. I didn't kill Old K. because I was just tired of killing, and tired of wanting to. Poor old monster, just a slave in the end. Maybe Yama's the same way. And I deal with this sort of thing all the time, Katie. I hate them then I feeel sorry for them and then they use me and they hurt me and I hurt them."
"As for power, I just trust my feelings. I grew up in a rough place, measurign who I could beat and who would beat me -- and who I should avoid at all costs. I wasn't always right, but I'm still here. And I'm still here among these powers, too," the hybrid answers after a moment.
"It seems like all of them have been slaves so far," Katie notes, and rests her chin atop Tasha's muzzle for a moment. "Intimidating, tricky.. but I'm not so sure about powerful. One is stuck in a hole, another in a swamp. The one you found out there was also just stuck, and would have probably sat stuck there forever. Big-K is sitting in a crater. Really, Adam is the first one you're looking to talk to that isn't a slave.. probably. Strength and power don't mean much if the will to use them isn't your own."
The younger woman lowers her head, stepping forward to hug Katherine to her and closing her eyes. In a whisper, she says, "Resentment is a kind of power, too, Katie. Katha-hem's resentment is why we have daikaikju. He wants us to work together, to grow, because he never could. I think he likes us, maybe he loves us. So I let him live and send his monsters. Good luck, Katha-hem. I'll save your brother, too."
Tasha draws in a breath, then shifts to be closer, not caring who might be watching. Katherine can just barely hear her words nows. "I think maybe I symapthize with them. What Nora became, created me, for her desires. Even though I'm free, I was made. Like Karnors. Like Titans. Do you know why I'm going, do you really know? Because in my heart I know I want to. Not really why I want to, but I want to, and it's been tugging at me. I go because I know I'd go, no matter what. Even if I left everyone behind. Maybe I'm just punishing myself for that. For knowing I would."
"Alright, so long as you aren't doing it out of some sense of obligation or inertia," Katie says, and rubs the back of Tasha's head, brushing over the contacts a few times. "Otherwise I'd really urge to consider.. just not doing it."
"I'd probably still go." Tasha drops her head to rest under Katie's, against her chest. "I'm sorry. I'm really not much of a hero at all."
"Just so long as you aren't a slave," Katie says, rocking Tasha back and forth. "And I bet you've never ridden a horse."
Tasha nods a little. "I hate slavers, Katie. And maybe I'll end up one in the end. I'm sorry for that, too. But it wasn't what I'd have wanted." And then her head shakes. "I could never get around how they look like us, but bent over."
"Then I think you need to overcome that and ride one with me tomorrow," Katie challenges. "And afterwards, motorcycles, which were made because people missed riding horses. I'm pretty sure a few ancient peoples had religions based on riding horseback."
"Sounds too mystical for me. Probably full of prophecy and sermons." Despite herself Tasha finds herself chuckling. Knee deep in the plots of gods, she can still find a joke in it all. She wonders if the Progenitors appreciate jokes. If Adam does. "Well," she says after a moment of swithcing to the oddity of horses, which feel like another sort of joke even though she knows the history behind Rhians, "what's a week in my life without trying something weird and disturbing? All this relaxing and being appreciative is probably bad for me anyway. I might stop worrying, then what will I do with my free moments?"
"Well, I'll just have to keep all of your free moments occupied, won't I?" Katie whispers, and nips Tasha's ear.
This causes Tasha to duck in to Katie and then she giggles. "You'd better," she whispers back, " ... who knows what I'll get up to if you don't?" And then she kisses the side of Katherine's neck, having found some absoluton after all.
In admitting what she had feared about herself all this time, Tasha had found something she didn't know she craved: That she would leave her family behind because something called to her, however vague, however dangerous, and might never be able to explain why. To appreciate the good in someone is one thing, and easiest, to appreciate the ill is a far harder challenge. Murders and thieves, genocides and rapists, healers and guardians, sinners and saints. All people in the end. Is love reality or fantasy if we don't love what is real, then all we love is what we create for ourselves in another's image -- or create for another to love. Gods of a different sort; the mask Tasha has worn.