Brand Saint John

[runes_brand]

●Brand Saint John
the fuck do you want
[video | audio | text]

Comments

[sent over locked network]

[wheyoftheadept]

Oh, I'da been caught in sandstorm hell. I was one of the first, then I got stabbed, then I got pulled straight outta medical for the world's worst escort mission. Which is why you haven't seen me before.

[She scratches her head a little, shifting her hair; if he hasn't seen her pointed elf ears before, he's seen them now.]

I haven't met your partner, yet. He came with you, then?

Re: [sent over locked network]

[runes_brand]

[Brand notes her ears, but is unfussed them. His recently-officially-adopted kid brother is nearly full-blooded fae, if she's looking for a reaction she'll have to try harder.]

He got here about a month before I did.

[And Brand is still not happy about it, that much is visible on his face.]

That's why I thought there was a chance you may have met him already

Re: [sent over locked network]

[wheyoftheadept]

[It was more like a test, which he passed. No need for magic-is-real-and-so-are-elves 101.]

Nah, I've been out two months, apparently. Felt like about a week while I was doing it.

Re: [sent over locked network]

[runes_brand]

[About that:]

Fuckin' pain in the ass time magic. [Brand rolls his eyes. It's a very impressive eyeroll, makes use of everything above his nose.] My favorite.

Re: [sent over locked network]

[wheyoftheadept]

It's not even technically possible where I'm from and still it keeps coming up!

[Saturday is always down for a bitch and moan]

Apparently "time magic is impossible" just means you can't hop back and forth, if you want stick something in a time bubble that's fine, that's not time magic. [she rolls her eyes] At least it was just dilation and not a loop. Small fucking mercies.

I dunno how much of an orientation you've gotten on the Stuff, but it's some kind of magic as far as I can tell. Some really fucked up reality-eating kind that this world used as a technology.

Re: [sent over locked network]

[runes_brand]

[Brand snorts.]

It's not impossible in my world, just illegal enough that a bunch of powerful assholes will put politics aside to annihilate everything you've fucking touched. Fucker had it coming for a lot of reasons, but those assholes shut the fuck up real fast when they found out he was using time magic.

I got the same orientation everyone else got. Fucking slideshow. Sounds like wild magic to me, but-- [he waves a hand dismissively] --not my field of expertise.

Re: [sent over locked network]

[wheyoftheadept]

Ha. Would you believe, when the apocalypse started showing up, ours just doubled down on the politics?

[She makes a so-so gesture, responding to his comment on the slideshow]

Slideshow elides a lot of Jorg's own responsibility for this mess. Apparently they found something that breaks reality down to its component proteins and their first thought was "how do we make this a weapon?"

At least, I'm pretty sure the folks running this shitshow are the same ones who made this mess. No solid proof, but I'd put money down.

Re: [sent over locked network]

[runes_brand]

We haven't had anything that could be called an 'apocalypse' by the most generous definition, so we've still got time. Or if we did, it was back in the sixties when the rest of the planet found out magic was real, and that was before my time.

[Brand shrugs.] I'd have tried to weaponize it too, but I guess that's why I don't get to fucking mess around with the component parts of reality. Wouldn't shock me if the people behind that shit show are the ones running Jorgmund now either. But unless that means they fucking know how to get us all back home, does it matter?

Re: [sent over locked network]

[wheyoftheadept]

It might. You never know what'll pop back up again when you least expect - an' knowin' how people fit into a problem is half of solvin' it, in my experience at least.

But I don't think they do. I don't think they even know what really made the bombs work in the first place, or if they did once, they don't remember. Whatever the fuck is wrong here goes deep, is all. To the fundamentals. Somethin' we outsiders should keep in mind. My two cents, anyhow.

[She wouldn't be surprised, at this point, if they were Stuff themselves - ghosts of a world endlessly repeating its last mistakes. It's the sort of thing she runs into]

When was the sixties for you? I'm from 2070, or thereabouts. We got magic back in about 2000.

Re: [sent over locked network]

[runes_brand]

Fair enough. But unless you've got some information sources outside Jorgmund -- "Jorgmund", fuck, that sure was a fucking choice they made -- we don't have enough information to speculate on who's responsible for what yet.

[Brand hates working from limited information sources.]

They broke their world badly enough that we ended up here, I'd say that tells us plenty about how phenomenally they fucked everything up.

[He frowns and does some quick mental math.]

It was the 1960s, so we're coming up on sixty years now. The magic was always there, humanity as a whole just didn't know about it. Shat a brick when they found out everything they'd dismissed as imaginary was real. Sounds like it went differently for you.

Re: [sent over locked network]

[wheyoftheadept]

There's a post went up way back when we first arrived, I can send you the link. Someone got to talk to a sympathetic party among the leash-holders, an' learned some things. Been drawing mostly from that.

[She nods understandingly at "shat a brick"]

I mean, reaction was about the same. Didn't happen all at once for us - we're on like a cycle? Periods of more or less magic. Not a short one, they're like thousands of years at a go. When the magic started leaking back in this time, it'd been so long everyone had forgotten, except for the people who had reasons not tell anyone, apparently.

[Not over it! Never getting over it! Brand can see this clearly in her expression.]

The dragons woke up first, which was alarming. Then people started turning into trolls and orcs and elves overnight. That was pretty weird, too. Spirits started getting chatty about the same time, an' Awakened - people who use magic, shamans an' mages an' adepts, like me - starting showing up in the general population. An' a bunch of other shit on top of that - plague, war, genocide, capitalism - the millenium woke up in a tearing goddamned hurry an' it hasn't slowed down, according my pops.

Re: [sent over locked network]

[runes_brand]

Sure, I'll take whatever information you've got to share.

[Her description earns raised eyebrows, which is more than her ears got.]

Nobody turned into anything for us. No cycles, just secrets. Rune could tell you more about it, the whys and hows of Atlantis staying hidden are more his fucking area than mine. But as soon as humans found out about magic and monsters, they kicked off a fucking world war. Calmed down after a few years and a few places are still fucking uninhabitable due to plague or magic backlash, but the political landscape settled out by the time we were born.

Re: [sent over locked network]

[wheyoftheadept]

[this link lands in his secure inbox]

Oh, hey, we had an Atlantis too. 'Cept it called itself Thera, an' it disappeared when the magic levels dropped below sustainable. Turns it it shoved itself into an astral bubble that went fucky an' its just been doing its last three thousand years or so on repeat... ask how I know. I'll tell you, it's 'cause I got fucking stuck there.

[She makes a broad, exhausted gesture]

Things are basically sort of stably unstable, I'd say. No major wars just now, or any interesting new plagues. It turns out you can get used to anything, 'cept maybe Rig cooking.

action; after valentines, before 50s

[ownperson]

It's been a while since South's been seen on the sparring mats. She reappeared on the training level recently, but even then anyone who saw her would realise she was sticking to activities she could do one or no-handed.

But not today. Today, the splint is off, and she's following up on a decision she made after the Babadon't: she's sparring with her brother.

Even if the Dakotas hadn't shared their status as twins with the rest of the New Hires twice, now, it's obvious when you look at them—and not just because they look alike, or because they're both so tall. It's there in the way they fight, the way they seem so completely in sync even as they try to take the other out.

A single round of a sparring match can drag on seemingly forever, neither quite getting the upper hand and yet always keeping the other on their toes. The way they fight is different, but their styles somehow match up perfectly anyway. Sometimes, it's almost like they can see what the other is going to do before they do it.

Today, however, South has the upper hand, if only by a margin. North's a little more out of practice than she is, and she doesn't hold back. Their match finally ends when she sweeps his legs from under him and he taps out, worn out and soon after leaving to go elsewhere.

South's not done, however. She waves him off, grinning all the while, then she sits down at the edge of the sparring area and chugs water as she scans the room until her eyes land on a familiar fighter a couple of mats over.

Re: action; after valentines, before 50s

[runes_brand]

Brand's been training with Rune rather than sparring with him: as much as Rune needs it, Brand doesn't like kicking his ass in front of other people. Demonstrating how much Rune needs a body guard in front of people who aren't family is a dumb fucking idea. It's not that Rune doesn't know how to fight, or that he's out of shape. It's just that Rune does other stuff back home, like taking naps and studying magic and going on dates where Brand is explicitly disinvited from taking up a sniper position outside. Brand trains. Brand works out. It's Brand's job -- his life purpose -- to protect Rune from anyone or anything that wants to do him harm, and he's really fucking good at it. All of this means that Rune needs more breaks than Brand does, so Rune is long gone by the time South wraps up her match. When Brand catches her looking, he raises his eyebrows, and then his hand in a wave.

[ownperson]

South gives a lazy wave in return and pulls herself back up to her feet, calling over, "Hey, been... well, a while. You down to go a few rounds?"

She has time to make up for and as much as she genuinely enjoys sparring with her brother, as much as him knowing her so well keeps her on her toes, it's still not the same as sparring with someone else. She knows North just as well as he knows her, after all, and she doesn't want to risk getting sloppy.

[runes_brand]

Brand approaches as she waves back and climbs to her feet.

"I could go a few rounds," he agreed. "What did you do, break something?"

Clearly she'd fixed something too, judging by how close her last match had been, and how much like her the other guy had looked.

[ownperson]

South snorts, rolling her shoulders. "Heh, yeah, actually. Broke my damn hand. Had it in a splint for a couple weeks, only got it off the other day. Hence..."

She gestures vaguely at the sparring mat where she and her very obvious twin had been sparring, then waves the previously broken hand. It's her dominant.

"I kinda maybe punched a bulkhead. Uh, twice. In a row." She coughs. "First time didn't break anything but yeah, second time was apparently pushing my luck and..."

She makes a bad cracking sound effect and shrugs. It was not her best moment, not at all. A very emotionally charged, stupid moment.

[runes_brand]

Brand raises an eyebrow.

"So you broke your hand...and didn't see it as a reason to focus on your leg work for a couple weeks?" Tisk tisk, South. "Must be your thinkin' hand."

He's mostly just giving her shit, since she'd gone off and worked on repairing her relationship with her brother. But he's still giving her shit.

[ownperson]

South snorts something like an actual laugh. She rolls her eyes, gives him a Look and bounces back with an uncreative, "Oh fuck you," without losing the air of a laugh.

"I mean, yeah, you're fuckin' right, but fuck you anyway. Worst thing? Came down here with a spotter not long before I got it off and even did some one-arm pull-ups, I had shit I coulda done the whole time, I just..."

She waves vaguely. She just didn't. Thinking hand indeed.

"So now I have loads of time to make up for. Because yeah, I'm a fuckin' idiot." She can own it. Mostly. "Still got the edge on my brother though."

A casual aside, unlike the utterly stupid and awkward 'sibling' moment. Things are okay, now, and she knows Brand's not an idiot. He could put the pieces together, they're just not talking about the finished picture.

[runes_brand]

Brand's resting bitch face cracks temporarily into a grin.

"Well," he says dryly. "That's what's important. Being able to kick your brother's ass. I suppose that you slacking off is all right in that case."

He shakes his head. "So am I supposed to play nice with you, or is your hand back up to par?"

[ownperson]

"See, you get it," she retorts, flashing a grin of her own.

She flexes her dominant hand.

"You think I'd want you 'playing nice' even if it wasn't?" she says, brow raised, then just shakes her head. What do you take her for, huh Brand? "But nah, it's fine now. Woulda been fine sooner and probably healed even better if their medical tech wasn't a fuckin' mockery, but whatever."

She's back to full functionality now and that's what matters. Won't stop her grumbling, but at least it wasn't even longer.

"Point is, I can still hit just as hard as before, no problem."

[runes_brand]

"I'd have made fun of you even more if you did," Brand retorts. He rolls his eyes in agreement of Jorgmund's shoddy medical care.

"If they'd just let Rune have his sigils, he could have had it fixed in a couple hours, max."

[ownperson]

She snickers a little, "Wouldn't expect less. The day I ask someone to go fuckin' easy on me? Someone needs to get my head checked."

She cocks her head slightly, tightening her wraps and falling into an easy stance.

"Magic stuff, right?" She's been here long enough now, seen and heard enough, to get from a word like 'sigil' to 'universe with supernatural bullshit'. "You're telling me that partner of yours has healing magic and they won't let him have the shit he needs for it? God their bullshit makes less sense every day."

She knows Rune's face by now, vaguely at least; from the network the night the babadon't shit went down, to catching sight of him around the training floor today, between rounds with North. The guy Brand's been protecting his whole life.

If he has magic, she almost wonders why he needs protecting so fiercely, but she knows that someone's ability to defend themself doesn't make a difference when someone cares that deeply. God knows it's never stopped North taking bullets for her.

[runes_brand]

"Yep," Brand says, popping the 'P' sound, rolling his shoulders and falling into his own stance. "He can light stuff on fire without 'em, but everything else needs a sigil to hold it. And they can't possibly fucking have that."

He doesn't know if they know about Rune's Exodus spell. That would be a good reason to keep Rune's sigils from him, except they're supposedly giving them back when Rune goes on a mission, and Rune could stash Exodus then and use it when he came back -- if he were suicidal, which he isn't.