ataraxion | two. video. (hèn oîda hóti oudèn oîda)

[ Peter's decided to show his face on film again, despite everything that's gone on the past week or so. Mostly he looks tired, eyes blood shot, moderately banged up. And then there's the fact that he looks immensely annoyed. ]

So-- question for everyone. Everyone who isn't busy trying to get better in the medbay. [ a brief moment of silence for those folks. ]

Humor me.

[ he folds his arms, gets down to business. ]

How many of you guys deal with this sort of thing on a daily basis back home? And by this sort of thing, I mean the monsters and the... whatever else they might have been. And if i'm calling them the wrong thing, go ahead and fill me in, i'd rather be an informed idiot than just an asshole.

Because me, personally? [ aaand his arms go uncrossed. which is to say, prepare for some intense gesticulation. use your imagination. ] I'm sort of caught somewhere in-between. Doesn't matter how many weird things happen, I still happen to think they're pretty damn weird. I'm just gonna have to go ahead and put some of the things i've seen into a category of absolute absurdity, but that? It sort of ranked up there with the worst of it.

And maybe what I want to know is, for the people who had to get used to this - y'know, those of you who weren't born into vampires and dinosaurs and bears, oh my - what the hell do you do to cope? Not to protect yourself, i'm not looking to take a class on self defense and deep breathing, but how do you relearn how to sleep at night? No pun intended. I sure as hell wasn't prepared to find monsters deciding the engineering department held answers to the universe. But I wasn't prepared for a chimera either, and I got past that one.

Do you all just get used to it? Or do we get better at pretending it doesn't actually matter?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ ...... that better've been sarcasm there, casey. jerry was a+ comedic value. ]

Things. Plural. And most of them sort of defy explanation.

Don't tell me that! Things don't defy explanation. Everything has an explanation, alright? Even weird spitty monster things.

However you ever seen a thing that looks kind of like giant slug- a single celled organism created from the common cold, erupt from a man? Or maybe the after-affects of someone who's attempted teleportation?

Then there was the man that was sent to space and came back with something, some shadow entity attached to him, that floated around stealing people's natural accumulation of radiation? That didn't get its own spitty monster to deal with.

...

Seriously, this kind of shit happens around you and you're still walking around in one piece? I mean--mentally, that's gotta mess with you.

[ thus, the reason he asked this question in the first place. ]

And that's really just the tip of the iceberg. But i've still gone home in one piece at the end of the day. [ er. ] ... Most days.

It's the other days I'm worried about. [ A big huff. ] Why d'you think they were so determined to wreck everything, anyway? They don't seem to have touched the kitchens.

Seemed more interested in the technology-- looking for some kind of a power source.

So that was it, huh? What does a spitty eye demon even want with a power source?

I don't know. [ he gratuitously shrugs. ] Thing is, from what i've seen, it's never really the monsters that are in on it. They're just doing the dirty work. It's the people behind the scenes that're actually benefiting from whatever beast they've managed to create.

So there was some big bad behind all this, is that what you're saying?

Isn't there always? Chimera's don't just go around creating themselves.

I don't even know what a chimera is, short of a good name for a campaign.

[ SIGH. sometimes Peter thinks he should've just stayed a loner forever. ]

A chimera's a Greek mythological creature made of three animals- a lion, a snake, and a goat. Ever heard of Cereberus? Three-headed dog, guarded the gates of the Underworld? That was one of its siblings.

So you're saying people - scientists - made creatures out of parts of other creatures? That's messed up.

In a nutshell. Kind of like a genetic science fair project.

Is that right? You know, I'm starting to think I have a real problem with the shit scientists get up to.

You and me both. And I almost consider myself one of them.

two. video. (hèn oîda hóti oudèn oîda)

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