open to all | questions and apologies

[tresemme]

[ if you’re lucky, you’ve never heard this voice before. if you have, you’ll probably notice that he seems considerably less grouchy than he did making his greeting rounds in springstar and highstorm. tony has had time to settle in, and more importantly, he’s made some big decisions about what side he wants to support here.

…for now, at least, which is the quiet motivation behind his demanding communion. he seems utterly at home invading people’s minds, and there’s the sense of him stretching out like he’s been here the whole time and was just waiting for you to get home. ]

People here are from all different worlds, right?

[ rhetorical question, and he continues. ]

I want to hear from whoever’s been to Terra. The third planet in the Sol System. I know some of you call it Earth—the fact that you have a name for it means that you know about it. [ a pause. ] I’ll torture the knowledge out of you if I have to, but it’s easier for everyone if you just cough it up.

[ that seems to be the end of that, unless you’re a zenite, to which he then narrows his focus. ]

…sorry if you heard me say I want all the humans to die. I know we have to work together.

Comments

[tresemme]

[ well, good news for ryoma, ]

Yeah, we have a ship. It’s called the Shangri-la.

[ they did have a planet, but it’s been reduced to space dust—and he’s a little bit tired of mentioning that. he never thought he would feel so exhausted, reliving the memory of the death of his people over and over. ]

Does Terra use ships, too?

[kaientai]

What an interesting name for a ship!

[ he doesn't get the reference, but he's fascinated anyway. ]

Eventually! In the future, they have space shuttles, and people land on the moon and they have things called satellites that let you talk to people on the other side of the planet.

[ unfortunately, tony will be getting all of this from the perspective of a guy from the 1860s who showed up in the 2010s at some point. ]

[tresemme]

[ something doesn’t seem quite right about the way he describes it, but maybe this is tony’s future perspective looking back on the primitive past. he doesn’t know exactly how far terra got before humanity expanded into the wider realm of space. ]

Uh… that’s your future?

[kaientai]

Yup! Steamships were still new to my country when I was coming up, so no one could imagine flying through the air, let alone travelling in space back then.

But it was only a hundred years later that humans got to the moon!

[ he can't contain his glowing adoration for humanity even though he's seen the worst of it in his time. ]

I think that's pretty incredible stuff.

[tresemme]

[ of course, since he’s from the future, the idea of anyone being impressed by going to the moon, let alone taking a hundred years to do so, draws an incredulous noise from tony. ]

I can just go there. It’s no big deal.

[ well, he can’t go to the moon, but he can get to a moon, probably. ]

[kaientai]

I bet you can if you have a whole spaceship!

[ why else would anyone have a spaceship? you go places! ]

It was the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after all. It hadn't been invented yet. I'm sure it's a very different place in the future.

[tresemme]

No, I mean—ugh.

[ tony meant himself, physically, but he’s the impatient sort and it doesn’t feel as good as he anticipated to explain why he’s bragging. instead, he lets ryouma have this little victory. ]

All I know about “Earth” is that people were able to leave it. I dunno when they do, or why… but I guess that’s still in your future.

[kaientai]

[ tony there's no need to brag if someone already thinks you're cool!! ]

Well, why do humans do anything? They're curious, and they can explore. Or, more likely, because there are resources out there and somebody saw an opportunity. In that way, leaving Earth was probably no different than when people decided to find out what was on the other side of the ocean.

[ ryouma thinks humans are pretty neat, but he's also well aware of their nature. ]

Does that mean there's nobody in your world that remembers why everybody left?

[tresemme]

Not among my people.

[ this is the sort of thing he would get defensive about, but ryouma has proven himself amenable to listening. tony is a bit more willing to explain his circumstances, with this in mind. ]

We don’t have a home planet. We want it to be Terra, but everything about it… its history, its location, even what it looks like has been kept a secret from us. It seems selfish to me.

[kaientai]

You don't? I'm sure I can't imagine what that's like, but I think it must be hard. Everyone deserves to have a home.

[ Maybe some complex social or political issue prevents that information from being shared, but Ryouma doesn't need to know all the details to know how he feels about it. ]

If it were up to me, I'd tell you where it is.