Masks 2

Maria liked water. Yes please, thank you Theraea. She took this time to lean up against the dropship, try and... Mentally catch up. Oh god oh god maybe not. Nevermind. This sucked. You know what sounded good? Going into her hole in the woods and never coming out again.

"... Think we went a little above our league already." She piped in, quietly. Didn't seem eager to put in her two cents, but was concerned about Siren, among... many other things. "This got discovered... not very long after we all started mass-organizing. If there's someone out there that can do all that... They're not here. We are. And we just... Aren't enough for that. I'm sorry..."

Sam stepped out, big stupid grin on his face.

"Well we didn't die, and I say that calls for a bit of celebratin'! Sure, the city got nuked, but that's out of our control, as we established, so no blamin' yerselves for it, so I'm sayin' we do... Something. I'd start a bonfire but, uh, bad idea to make that much smoke... So, uhhh..."

He looked nervously around the desert canyon.

"I... can... go find us some grub while we wait! Yeah! Ya'll ever had roast prickly pear? Wouldn't think it came off a cactus. Be right back!"

He passed by Ken.

"Oh, if you got the," two obnoxious winks," good stuff in there, give me a puff when I get back, Pard."

Anyone who knew him well enough would be able to tell that grin and optimism was about as genuine as a plastic toy sheriff's badge.

"I dunno, man," Ken says, still lying there like a dead weight because all the world is dead to him. "I only got vape juice and a shitty e-cig."

He stares into nothing in particular.

"Is there weed, anywhere? Is there weed on the dropship?"

Theraea handed Ken some water, and heard his question as she did so! "Um, one sec, I think I might...?"

She ran back into her wrecked apartment, rummaged around a bunch, and eventually returned with a bag of... well, it was probably weed. Where did she even get that? Probably a funny story. She offered it to Ken, and also she supposed anyone else that wanted some?? Being helpful helped her take her mind off all the Bad Shit.

Ken gets a tab of rolling paper from a ratty pocket and rolls up a shitty joint. He puts it in his mouth and lights it up in an unflappable manner characteristic of those with PMC backgrounds.

"Yup, don't tell Kindness about this." He said, unhelpfully.

"Godblob above I'd kill for a PCPumpkin, but I guess this will do."

Sam took a bit of weed to roll a doobie (asking for a paper) and lit with whatever he could find.

"Weed's weak shit so I should be able to still forage us up some cactus fruit."

Siren's going to come out of the dropship last, as quietly as she can. She'll go sit on a rock, a few dozen meters from Esen, but she's not going to say anything - just watch the horizon and try to adjust to the deep silence in her mind. It was really quiet without an eldritch god scream-singing all the time.

"PCPumpkin?" Ken frowned. "What the fuck is wrong with Texas? You can't gene drugs in food. That's not safe."

"Either a pharmacorp or a well-connected drug dealer didn't care. See, I think the reason it got thrown out was that, get this, it's not addictive. It's not well known, I only found it thanks to the help of a cybernetic swamp-coot. I'll show you sometime."

Sam raised a finger.

"Don't touch weed frogs, though. They're bad news. Dangerous, too, they get big."

Maria felt like. Like an old person in a movie about how terrible drugs are. Like a caveman unfrozen in the sci fi future. Like a... I dunno dude, it was just weird and she was already dealing with the worst headache she thought was possible and the guilt of possibly directly fucking things up to the extent of ruining Texas again. Things sucked. She was probably going to spend a lot of the remainder of this crossover looking concerned at Siren and then pretending she wasn't when she looked back in that general direction.

"... Cadence, can I have that bottle back if you still have it?"

"Weed frogs, huh. I guess they got tired of the ol' hydroponics setup," Ken sputters into a coughing fit. "-God. I remember hearing about those dumbass weed frogs back in Albatross but they're mostly a hipster thing. Like they breed their own strains and everything. Heard they managed to make really tiny ones so they can, uh. What's the word. Microdose."

Theraea, seeing that Siren had emerged at last... decided to approach her. While still holding, like, half a bag of weed, but still.

"Um... hi," she said after a pause. "I'm, um. Theraea. I guess I never really... got to introduce myself? Um... Thanks for helping out back there." There was another long pause, because Theraea wasn't very good at conversation! "I... Okay, okay, um, I know that was a... lot of really bad stuff, um, is there anything I can do to help? I can get you some water, or maybe, uh... Weed, I guess?? People seem to like that around here."

"Shit, tiny ones? The ones they've tried making out near Megacity Houston were too weak. Did a job for one kingpin- mostly clean work, helped take down a skinhead gang- he tried that and gave up. Said bigger was better. Had a big one named Absolem. Big scary red toad with yellow stripes, the size of a boar. Think he fed people to it."

Sam shrugged, taking a puff.

"Haven't seen a strain that ain't addictive, though. I'd try Meth 2 before I lick a weed frog."

"There sure is a lot of exotic weird crap you can smoke in the Southwest," Ken sneered. "Wished Kindness moved to Texas. They'll go apeshit over the weird pharmacologically relevant bullshit that seems to populate the place."

"Man, I'm not much of a weed person. Or drug person, really," he said to no one in particular, meditating on the joint. "I used to smoke but like, I got an intervention and I eased off to vaping, the so-called lesser of two evils."

"Careful, you'll get swamplung. There's a reason that shit got banned up until 2026."

Sam shrugged.

"But naw, used to vape, too. Don't like smokin'. I, like, observe different folks doing a drug for a while before I try it. I tend to stick to alcohol nowadays, unless something fun, safe, and non addictive comes my way. And that's rare, thanks to the drug lords and the Omnicorp."

Ken laughed like a hyena. "It really just comes down back to Omnicorp, huh?"

Esen takes the water and downs it in one gulp, then wipes her mouth with her glove. She walks back to the dropship to leave the glass and notices Finn.

"I almost died a lot more times than I like today. Put me down for two fucking drinks. With a chaser."

Siren jumps and scrabbles a little to stay steady on the rock when Theraea speaks. She was pretty zoned out and hadn’t even notice the giant moth lady two feet away. The moth lady she was absolutely trying to kill like, an hour ago.

Siren sweats.

“I- Well- I’m not-“ She gulps. “You’re- You’re that Weaver, ain’t ya? Thiotz’ama told me about you. Or maybe he thought and I felt it, I’m not really sure. He called you something different?” She tried to remember the word but it was totally gone – and a human probably wouldn’t have been able to speak the language of the Citadel anyways.

“He really was going to end the world, you know?” If anyone was gonna know it’d be Theraea, right? “He was going to take over everyone.”

Theraea sat down on the rock if there was space for her. Which... maybe a pretty big if, what with being 9 feet tall and all. "He... yeah, he probably would have. We kind of... got there right in time, I guess. Any longer and... I probably wouldn't have been able to get that thing closed."

She idly looked over the new markings on her arms. It wasn't a bad look, she supposed. Abyssal Goth or some shit. "He, um... I guess he knew about the Citadel, or something. I wonder if there's some history I don't know about there. Um... No hard feelings about... all that fighting and stuff, by the way. I feel like I should... throw that out there? I'm just glad you're you again."

"Yup! Fuck the Omnicorps! Say, wanna help me chop fruit off cactus? Ya might see me stick myself with a thorn!"

Empty resistance dropships began to show up as time went on. People could use them to go home if they so wished, whenever they wanted to leave.

Finn chuckles at Essen's comment. "Th'death ain't the part that bothers me. It's the lingerin' sense of failure. But aye."

She sits up.

"...So uh. Nice workin' with all ye. Fer real. Sorry I couldn't do more."

"Yeah." She's herself again. The hero of Rainwalk is back!

Just too late for Rainwalk.

"I guess I'm not really sure who me is anymore." Siren knows she shouldn't spill her guts to this poor moth, who's probably a famous hero or something, and she had definitely just tried to run through with a spear, and was probably tired and hurt and oh God it was happening anyways. "I was me. I mean, I really believed that thing was going to save the world. I really believed you guys had been bought off by evil corporations. I seriously, really believed that becoming FISH was the route to self-actualization and happiness!" That wouldn't even fly as a self-help book! "But I was still me, a little? I remembered things, in. little bits, and I still talked like me - or like, the superhero version of me I could never quite get right when there was actually crime that needed fighting but sounded super good to my bedroom mirror? I still cared about my home."

Then she'd destroyed it.

"So... what happens now? Are you taking me to dimensional jail?" Siren's honestly okay with it if so. It kind of sounded like a relief.

Finn stands up VERY suddenly and inserts herself into this conversation.

"Fuck nae, we ain't puttin' ye in space jail. Hi, Nimue, good tae be meetin' ye - big fan o' yer work, fer real, sort o' just gettin' my start here - but no. 'Fore anyone gets ideas 'bout how this goes, I've got tae say - the idea that a lass gets mind-jacked for gods know how long, gets put through the worst sort o' hell, an' then gets sent tae jail fer what her body did ain't hardly better 'n anything the Omnicorps would pull. Does nae matter if it puppeted ye around, or put such horrible delusions in yer mind that ye found yerself doin' it 'voluntarily' - your choices were nae yers."

She looks to Therea, arms crossed. "I dinnae know if that's even what yer plannin, but... if it happens tae be the case, I'm against it. If we're tryin' tae get the world back tae justice, I'd like it tae be a decent sort of justice. Not this 'blood fer blood' shite."

Theraea had to take a moment just to catch up with what Finn was saying. "Wha- no, no, there, um... There isn't a dimensional jail in the first place, that I know of?? But if there is, I mean, that's not what I do here. It's- I mean, whether you were 'you' or not, it's the, um, it's what... Nimue said, the fault of the big psionic... thing that used you for all this. Um... No, I'd rather help you with this whole... aftermath thing? If there's anything I can do for you I mean."

Why did people keep thinking she was a cop???