Private to the Admiral THEN PUBLIC HEY JERKS HE NEEDS YOUR ATTENTION.

[lacksconviction]

[This is a tentative post, and Loki's voice has the faltering quality of a man who suspects he may be talking to himself:]

Admiral? There are questions I have which I do not believe anyone else here is qualified to answer.

First among which may be the most futile of them:

Are you listening?

[EDITED IN LATER: Public]

[Hey Barge, Loki is just going to make this conversation with the Admiral, fully public.]

I must indeed be becoming tiresome with my questioning today, because I have one more. This one for the wardens, for those of you serving this man willingly:

Why?

Yes, I have asked before, and yes I've heard answers. For your deal, for your inmate, for the sake of doing some good in the universe, but I wonder how you justify it to yourselves. To serve an entity who not only is little known, but actively refuses to surrender his intentions, the masters which he serves, or even the reward which he will reap for his work in controlling all of us.

I have been told by many among you that he is not a God, but what other beings deal in secrecy and souls?

Why are you content with this?

Prey tell me, that I might lay to rest my fears about what more this place is, than just a prison.

Comments

[timesbureaucrat]

'What other beings deal in secrecy and souls?'

Well, there are Eternals, Chronovores, the Great Old Ones, the Guardians, Timewyrm, Fenric, and the occasional Time Lord president. And those are just the ones I know off-hand. Dealing in secrecy as they do, I imagine there are more in the universe who have managed to keep a low profile. But being a powerful entity doesn't make one a god.

[umgekehrt]

I've already illuminated myself to you. I'm for sale for miracles. And no, I don't care. Less and less by the day.

[persuadeyou]

It's Reese. It's not exactly a hard name to remember. You know, like the candy?

[Private]

No.

[Especially not after that flood. She pauses, like she isn't going to bother adding more, but.]

I don't believe there isn't something you'd be willing to do anything for.

[lacksconviction]

Another honestly self interested. Still my preference over a righteous liar.

[ourlastbesthope]

There's no point to lying, honestly. What's wrong with a little self interest?

[paradoxlol]

My deal's worth it.

[lacksconviction]

And which among those beasts and brethren would you trust with your own?

I fear my words have lacked clarity, I know that there are things other than gods that would consume the light and consciousness from the heart and mind of a being. I merely would not walk towards any one of those things blindly, with arms outstretched.

Audio:

[lacksconviction]

Mmhmm. I see there is a wealth of benefits in it for a warden.

And the question was rhetorical but thank you anyway.

[timesbureaucrat]

I'm not walking towards the Admiral, nor are my arms outstretched. I don't have to like him or trust him to have a contract with him. In fact, working for a superior I approved of would be quite a novelty. Really, of all the things I've done in my life that might require some moral justification, living on the Barge playing guardian and guide isn't one of them.

Furthermore, there's no evidence whatsoever that he plans to tear apart space-time as we know it, or something equally nefarious. I deal with facts, not speculation.

[video/private]

[aggravating]

[The first thing you're getting, Loki, is a round of slow applause. Not sarcastic applause, but pretty damn impressed applause]

Honestly, if I could go back and do it again, I think I'd rather take my chances with being dead that ending up here as some sort of cheap-ass, self-help psychology experiment.

That said, the Wardens are idiotic assholes. Nothing in the whole Goddamn world is worth having your identity played with.

Private

[lacksconviction]

It's very easy to promise to do anything when you have no way of knowing how far the limit of that word extends.

It's possible that there are things no named price would deter me from, but I will tell you now that there is nothing that could be offered to me that would make me work for a thing so obviously my enemy.

Private

[persuadeyou]

Why is he an enemy, and not just a nuisance? Maybe it's just a joke to him. A prank.

[lacksconviction]

I thought you mercenary, perhaps. Admired even, the willingness you held to state yourself as such, but you come here to mock my question and then to tell me of the pleasure you take in my weakness?

That illuminates a nature quite different. Chief.

[lacksconviction]

The chorus continues. I was told that certain wardens were idealists, and find myself wondering if I shall ever hope to hear from one.

[umgekehrt]

Come shine a light on me all you like. But I'm tired of this place to the bone and I've got one more miracle to wring out of the bastard, so as long as you're dictating terms to me I'll take amusement from you as I like.

[paradoxlol]

You'll find one eventually.

Even if we're here for cynical reasons, it doesn't mean that none of us think this place can do something good. I've seen it work out for inmates in the past.

[video/private]

[lacksconviction]

They are laughable! To come preaching at us for our crimes and calling upon us for reformation, and then... this. No excuses, no defense, just endless greed!

[Loki looks and sounds stressed. Angry and wrung out and worked up over something that he went into specifically to create this response. Three cheers for him, he correctly predicted that everyone on the barge was a huge dick.

Everyone apart from Tony. Who agreed and applauded him and who he is privately venting at now.

There is a brief pause where Loki weighs up the pro's and con's of continuing down this path. Then he quickly shifts, and turns to point the communicator around. There's a flash of the glass walls of his cell, before the image settles upon an unruly stack of around thirty magazines of various kinds (including a couple of mod confirmed rubbish porn mags).]

He put these in my room while I was talking to him. Do you want any of them?

[lacksconviction]

But it is not your soul that hangs in the balance, now is it? You can hang back, arms planted firmly at your sides, while urging another on.

Let me ask this then, having clearly worked for evil men before: What do you glean from an employer who tells you nothing of his intentions? Who is bluntly evasive in every aspect of his motives, and who torments you while asking you to twist the minds of others to his liking?

Hypothesize, Warden. Take what we know of him and give me alternatives to my own ugly theories, instead of throwing your hands up and accepting ignorance.

[lacksconviction]

Nothing at all, to the interested party. To the rest of us, only he can say.

[lacksconviction]

Oh yes, of course, the multitude of terms I have dictated to you! Like how I forced you to reside here, have decided how and what you ate and where you slept, how I decided you should surrender your strength and weapons and informed you that your life would be steered now by a force I had not even bothered to question?

And you say I am dictating terms to you?

Come take your amusement from me then, Chief Stildyne, who cares so little. I can guess what would amuse you so come on and try!

[TRANSLATION: FIGHT ME YOU ASSHOLE >C]

[19centconstable]

I've never felt it was terribly important who the Admiral is, or why he is an Admiral at all.

Only that he receive a driving tutorial.

[timesbureaucrat]

I never said the people I've worked for were evil, simply that I didn't approve of them.

Most of them weren't men, either.

Private

[lacksconviction]

If a man goes picking through your mind like a hawk, rearranging the pieces as he sees fit with neither explanation or apology, does he cease to be your enemy because he thought it a game?

-> Spam?

[umgekehrt]

[There's a very long silence. Stildyne is corrosively angry and he has been before and now he's being cruel to inmates who haven't done anything to deserve it. Yes the gentleman wants a fight obviously but that doesn't mean Stildyne's obligated to give it to him.

Is he that ashamed of his own motivations for staying and his own inability to make anything of the admiral's design.

Well, yes. But.]


Fair enough, you'll find me in the gym.

Private

[persuadeyou]

[She's keeping as neutral as can be, but she has to wonder if that's the kind of brainwashing he used on Clint.]

Has he hurt you? Have you been harmed since you came here?