video ↪ un: crowe (cw for mention of policework/real world current events)

[pridecroweth]

（ the image opens on sam, obviously pretty comfortable with being on camera. zoom calls will do that to a guy, even the one who'd prefer by far to be an absolute luddite. ）

Whoever got to bring their Jaeger, text it, I'm mad jealous. Do you do ride-alongs?

（ the gundam. he's talking about the gundam.

of course, he wouldn't have wanted his car here — poor old blue isn't built for offroading, and it's not like this place has a gas station just around the bend. ）

I'm new. Trying to get the lay of the land. Was wondering if anyone's done a headcount yet? The better we're looking after each other, the less likely anyone will slip through the cracks. Somebody goes off and falls down a well, no Lassie to warn us, could be a bad time. This goes double for anyone who doesn't know how to use the comm devices.

I understand not everyone's going to be on board with announcing themselves or handing over their name — that's fine. I don't need anyone to tell their life story or even their real name, just basic identifiers so we have a rough idea of how many people should be here. You also don't have to tell me, but — if there's someone here you think you can trust, let them know if you're going out on your own. Call it a personal favor.

（ sam's spent years working with at-risk kids, he knows how to gentle himself. his tone is mild, his body language is open. not a threat. ）

Name's Sam. I'm from Earth, for the familiar, year 2021. I'm a detective with the Chicago PD, which I know isn't going to make me the most popular guy around — ACAB, trust me when I say I get it. I also served with the 75^th Ranger Regiment, 2002-2009. I know a thing or two about a thing or two, but alien planets are a little out of my wheelhouse.

（ a bit of a crooked smile. magic and the like? werewolves? vampires? sure. all that, he can handle (which he wouldn't announce anyway) but the rest? yeah. ）

That said, if anyone needs a second pair of eyes on patrol or someone who can lift heavy shit and doesn't care if I bitch about old football injuries, I'm your man. Peace.

Comments

[pridecroweth]

（ well that's the cutest fucking thing he's seen all week, thank you, nina. sam is actually grinning when he opens up the video back — it's not a common expression on him. ）

Hi, Nina. Nice to meet you. Your hair's fine, by the way.

[neversmall]

[ Yes, her hair is fine, but it's the sort of statement that's a good safety valve. It also serves as a measure, though she hadn't meant to employ it in that sense - it's a kind response that she's receiving, with the sort of laughter that draws a circle around both people, not exclusive, not cruel. She knows the difference. And she laughs too. ]

Saints, you heard all that? It seems like every week I'm learning something new about this place. Not that it's been very long - about two months. But no official - or unofficial - headcount yet, as far as I know. It's a good idea.

[pridecroweth]

Your audio was on. Sorry.

（ he's still smiling, though. ）

Well, you can be the first person on my list. Got anything official you'd like to have recorded?

[neversmall]

[ Entirely truthfully: ] I've been quite enjoying not being official. [ A quick smile, teasingly truthful: ] But I can't resist being first. So I suppose saying that I've been working in the Aid Station since I came is a good thing to put on record. I have abilities that can help heal wounds more quickly, and take away pain.

[ Nina's on a Mission: Normalize Grisha being Normal and Helpful. ]

[pridecroweth]

（ the fact that this is the second of five people he's spoken to directly that doesn't seem to mind discussing some power or ability beyond the pale is giving him a bit of pause. shifters are cagey for a reason — their blood and bones can amplify magic in ways that more than a few people would love to get their hands on.

sam's not there yet. but he's not ruling it out, either. at least here the risk would only be on him, and not a decision he was making for the whole of the shifter community. ）

Oh yeah? I can think of a few times in my life that would've been useful.

（ he says it playfully, the way one would talk about papercuts or stubbed toes. but he's thinking about the desert. ）

I've got some medical skills myself. Nothing fancy, just basic first aid, but if you ever need another set of hands I'm not squeamish about injuries.

（ not his strongest point, but he'll do what he has to when it needs doing. then, as if making a tally: ）

So, Nina, has magical healing, works at the Aid Station? Am I missing anything?

[neversmall]

[ A quick grin: ] Saints, I hope so. It'd be a pretty poor life, otherwise.

[ She's also specifically gone out of her way to integrate the fact healing is very much a secondary use of her abilities. She's a decent Tailor, and can stitch people back together; hold back blood... but she can't do what someone whose spent years training to put people back together can do. Not when she's spent the same amount of years training how to tear someone apart.

So she has no interest in hiding the more dangerous aspect of her nature as much as she wants to incorporate it into part of a whole; people will tolerate what is useful, and none of the people here have the prejudices against Grisha she's faced her whole life. But. She still can't. Bring herself to just say it. Giving a laundry list of what she can do seems so much more self-disclosing than just wearing a red and black kefta. And that sort of self-disclosure is so anti-survival, it's a hard thing to do, even if she's determined to do it. ]

I wouldn't call it magic, for one thing. Grisha don't make things; we manipulate what's already there.

[pridecroweth]

I always assumed the rules of physics would still apply to magic — no creation, just manipulating energy into different forms.

（ things taken, things given, things called into being. he's never thought too closely about shifters and their mass displacement issue. how does a man his size turn into a bird that weighs three pounds? something something alternative dimension, something. but he knows the mass doesn't disappear into nothing or, in the case of his grandfather turning into a grizzly, coming out of nowhere. ）

But I'm totally open to being wrong. Magic in my world is a little more 'sleight of hand for an audience'.

[neversmall]

It's what people assume about magic that has them gathering up torches and pitchforks. [ It's not said lightly, or sharply - there's no offense, no heaviness in her tone either; this isn't meant to be a jab or a shock. It's matter-of-fact, a little sober, stated the way someone might say, "Yes, when I broke my leg it was painful," but who clearly does not want to dwell on the cause of the break.

Ideas are dangerous, and she won't put out on the open network that Grisha were hunted, considered unnatural. But she can't let some things go, and she can continue to come against the sort of assumptions and blind, seething hatred that's made it so her people have never found a place to be safe, only a place to be useful.

She continues, more lightly: ] So I suppose it's just a matter of matching definitions. But then, how we define ourselves is something important to clarify, don't you agree?

[pridecroweth]

I get it.

（ it's said gently. not asking her to elaborate, not fishing for more. she doesn't need to explain anything — 'burn the witch' is a common refrain. it's not like he doesn't have very real, very first hand experience about being an other in a place that doesn't really like others. she's talking carefully, but it's a tone he recognizes. it's the same way he talks about iraq.

if you refuse to talk about something, people assume trauma. the trick is to talk about it, but so drably that it doesn't register as interesting. ）

What someone chooses to call themselves says a lot about who they are, yeah.

（ 'cop', 'army ranger', 'youth worker'. sam knows how to spin up an image. in highschool it'd been football player, photographer, straight a student. after al-hajarah, he had nothing. no way to explain who he was to others. he couldn't say soldier anymore. american was like lighting a match to a fuse in some of the places he'd been. everything he is now, he had to build. he hasn't forgotten that. ）

[neversmall]

[ He gets it.

So. She gives him a small smile and shifts with the topic. ]

So - I know what a detective is, although I'm not accustomed to them being part of an organization, and the way you list off "Rangers" makes me think of some kind of army unit, but -- football?

[ It's clearly a game you play with your feet, right? ]

[pridecroweth]

Yeah, army unit.

（ special operations, not forces, but most people don't know the difference so he tends not to volunteer it. ）

Football's a game. Uh... two teams, eleven people on each, across a wide field. There's a ball with a kind of oblong shape, you carry it. The goal in to carry it to the opponent's side of the field, that's how you score points. You can tackle people, or get tackled along the way, some of those tackles can get pretty nasty. I played it in highschool. It's a good time, but hard on the body. Don't think I'd recommend anyone play it these days.

（ he doesn't even like watching it now, with all the information coming out about concussions and the like. every tackle makes him grimace. ）

[neversmall]

[ Wait... ]

You... carry the football?

[ Is the translator in her head breaking down? ]

[pridecroweth]

（ the groan he makes is purely theatrical. ）

Yeah, yeah. I know. You carry it. Sometimes you kick it. It's complicated.

[neversmall]

[ Nina laughs a little. ] Ah - yeah. It sounds like it. Thank you for explaining - I wasn't sure if the translator had broken.

[pridecroweth]

（ frankly, he's not a big fan of this whole 'universal translation' nonsense. understanding everyone is nice, but it's oddly homogenizing. ）

Nah, you're good. We argue about it on Earth, too. We also have a sport in my country we call 'soccer', and just about everybody else calls 'football'. You've struck a particularly robust cultural nuance.

[neversmall]

[ Yeah, she hates it. Language is such a key into thought and culture and she did NOT spend years of her life becoming fluent in six different languages so that suddenly none of that could matter, thank you. ]

...so every country in your world plays one of these games? We share some things like that, but nothing so... with teams.

[pridecroweth]

Not every country, but a lot of them, yeah. Sports brings people together — but I've also seen my fair of fist fights break out when someone's team loses, too.

（ honestly, it's just modern gladiator battles played on a pitch, usually with a little less blood and guts. canadian hockey fanatics, though, are terrifying, and he'll live by that. ）

[neversmall]

[ ...ah. ]

That sounds like a very different world than mine. [ Heh. ] Although the people sound about the same.

[pridecroweth]

I'm starting to think that's the theme anywhere you go, alien world or not.

（ he's been all over the world, it's held true there. why not an alien planet? why not people from other worlds, universes? ）