unfinishednetwork | [Return] [Voice]

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[Return] [Voice]

[There's a vaguely British-sounding voice emitting from the journals, and those who recognize Nara'a will note it's not his usual calm tone.]

Would anyone, anyone like to explain what in the hells just happened? 'Oh, the town or the spaceship or the book closing sound?' All of it.

[He takes a breath, lets it out.]

Right. Everyone back here? All appendages accounted for?

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Alien species. Interlopers. The enemies of mankind.

[Which he absolutely had been but he is also absolutely NOT ready to admit it. That was the biggest reason of his discomfiture. How dare they make him a xenos!!! And Curze not?]

Myself? No. You are mistaken. [He's not going to outright lie but he's going to ride that line like a pro athlete. ]

Aw, most of the ones I've met weren't that bad.

[... Okay so technically dragons are aliens, but that one wasn't on them. Omega, sure, even as it was trying to learn. And then... well. That one wasn't her fault either. So on the whole not too bad.]

I'm sorry the ones you've met have been problems. ... And oh? I could have sworn your voice was... well. Maybe I was mistaken...

Your opinion is apparently in the minority. [He says, dryly. Because he has distinct memories of being nearly skinned, shot with arrows and threatened, by people he was trying to help.]

My voice was...?

Well, that's not a new thing.

Ah, I thought... your voice was familiar. Maybe that alien simply sounded like you.

W-what alien? [Oh no, was the jig, as they said on ancient Terra, up? Not that he knew what that meant, literally. ] I am no xenos.

[He pauses, and then -]

Aren't we all aliens to each other, technically?

[Normally, Sanguinius would try to ignore such sophistry. That was more Lorgar's realm. But that experience had unsettled him more than he cared to think about.]

Here, I suppose. But in that world--I thought it was some nightmare, but it was real, or at least some shared hallucination.

It's real enough to be influenced, so it's real on some level.

... Something unsettled you though, didn't it? Do you... ah... want to talk about it?

[Sanguinius doesn't want to concede the point, but, well, he's right. It felt real and he was still feeling the effects of it. It must be real, or real enough.]

No. I don't. [But he probably should.] I've never tried to help and been...rejected.

... It does happen sometimes.

[He's seen it happen, and it's always frustrating. If you have the best of intentions but can't manage to get someone to accept help... it can be gut-wrenching to watch people walk away.]

I'm... sorry that happened to you. It tends to feel pretty horrible...

I don't care for it. [A ghost of a smile, because he's aware, hearing it out loud, how absurd it sounds. ]

I also was...vulnerable. [REALLY didn't like that.]

I don't either.

[But such is life, unfortunately.]

I was vulnerable as well. I didn't have my claws or proper ears or my tail... I felt deaf and off-balance for a while. And I didn't have my job stones with me, though they were where they should be when I returned.

[He nods. Same. Well, different features.]

I did not remember them at the time, which was also unsettling. In retrospect. It was like I had always been this other...person. [XENOS! He was an alien and it was so distressing he can't even bring himself to say it.]

... Right.

[Probably him. A good chance, at least.]

You weren't the only one. There were a few other people who had the same... affliction? Condition? Whatever you might call it.

Experience. [That's the neutral term he's going with because it was absolutely nightmarish even before meeting Curze, but he's a Primarch and they don't show that things...get to them. Minus the red tear tattoo, that is. ]

Was yours...good?

Experience.

[That's fair. That's a good term.]

I mean... it was... awkward? Some of the conversations that I had were... uncomfortable.

[Laugh that's just a tiny bit nervous. N-not that he does 'nervous, of course.]

Me, as well. I met my brother. [It did not go well!] Only, of course, we did not know each other.

Of course. Because why would things here be convenient or helpful?

That is probably the better question than my own. [Someone's a little stuck in his own head and his own problems. ] My brother seemed almost exactly as he is, but I was changed. Have others seen this?

I saw others who had been changed, yes. I wasn't, and a few other people I encountered weren't. So I'm not quite sure what the criteria for 'changed' versus 'unchanged' would be, because we don't seem to have enough data.

We need to get this data. Somehow.

Could you, unchanged, recognize others? Because I could not. I was wholly, to my mind...the...xenos. [zero out of ten would NOT recommend.]

Only by voice or appearance. The things that most would be able to.

If I were unchanged, not being forced into a hyur form... I might be able to tell by scent, depending on who they were.

Curious. [Because Curze should have recognized him. But Curze hadn't recognized when Sanguinius had thrown direct lines from their conversation at him. ] What changes did you endure?

Ears on the side of my head rather than the top, no claws, no tail... deadened senses overall. It was quite... irritating.

But I did what I could with the resources available I suppose.

But only that. You knew who you were, what you were? That was unchanged?

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