frost_jewel | 20. [mostly action]

[Mia has been through a lot recently. The invasion wasn't so terrible, but its aftermath and the information surrounding it dealt a blow she still hasn't been able to face properly. Then, some of her dearest people went on a mission that continues to tear them apart inside - and may do a similar thing to all of them in due time, depending on what happens as a result. Then she became, briefly, herself but a few years younger, which might sound like a reprieve but was really just a way of delaying the inevitable backlash. Mia knows better than to think that that might be the 'punishment' coming to them after aiding in the implementation of a shift explosive.

In all that time, the way she interacts with people shifted, too. She is as friendly and welcoming as ever, but in some places more...distracted-seeming, perhaps, or carrying an air of professional civility instead of closeness. If anything, her tenure as pre-adventure Mia only reinforced her ability to stand at that distance.

Things haven't much calmed down, but she can't think of a time better than the present to take care of some things she's put off since the invasion happened. Shuffling them all around her work schedule means it happens at odd hours, but that's just how things have to be. She seeks out specific friends of hers, and stops by the plaza clinic to see who might be around. It isn't her usual routine, but she also goes to the cafe - though hardly a coffee drinker - for a change of pace. The gallery too.

Sometime in the afternoon, she finds a quiet corner to attempt to send a filtered message to Luceti's newest in-world resident, without knowing exactly how:]

Could we speak about a few things in person?

[It might work, it might not.

No matter how that turns out, as night falls she'll skip training, opting to visit the beach instead. To walk along the water with her bare feet in the sand and...hope that helps, somehow.]

[[ooc: Building walls with lego-bricks made of words, around here. Go nuts! Just not totally nuts.]]

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[Now that she's joined Carol on the bridge, Mia is torn between continued but wandering small talk and getting the real conversation over with. She looks around once, as though expecting a friend to walk by, curious about her meeting with this woman.

But nobody seems to know.]

How young?

I was ten, miss. Or nearly ten. Near enough as made no difference in anyone's eyes but my own.

Ten. [Said with some dismayed disbelief. There are long-stayed residents in Luceti too, but...that's quite a few years more. This isn't what Mia came to discuss, but she finds herself drawn to ask:] How long will this be for you, then? And how- many years have you been with the organization?

...I've been in this world for twenty years, but only thirteen of those have been spent in active service for the Malnosso.

[That's too many. Twenty years is Mia's entire life.]

Why would you choose them?

[Despite herself, there's something desperate in the question. What kind of horizon does someone have to reach in order to give up on leaving, as Mia feels one must be forced to do when they become the researcher instead of the subject?]

It's fine to be sceptical. I was, too, once. In many ways, I like to think that I still am. But when it became clear to me that I might spend more of my life here than back home, I decided I wanted to have some wholesome impact on this world. I don't just work with the Malnosso, I also like to think I work with people like you and your compatriots in this enclosure.

...I like cooperation.

In that case, this isn't why I wanted to talk. [Though they might revisit it. Mia is at once fascinated and terrified by phrases like "more of my life here than back home".] First, if you'll tell me, I want to know everything there is to know about what happened in Vaskoth.

[The one ache Mia cannot sweep under the rug of professionalism.]

Everything? I take it you mean the infection and the draft, and not everything on the enclosure since its inception. Or, rather, since I was first posted there prior to the disaster.

I was present for the draft related to the infection.

[It still casts a lot of shadows over her mind during the day.]

I want to know what happened recently. When- what happened during the invasion.

...That is a more difficult question to answer. You see, I was already reassigned to Luceti by that point. When a Liaison is reassigned as I was, she is...encouraged not to keep in too close of contact with her previous host enclosure. The reasons are all very academic, I assure you. All I have are second hand accounts, barely better detailed than what touches the public news forums on the outside. The invasion force came, they had tremendous success, and many have been press-ganged into the Count's forces.

But they're...they're not all dead? The people who lived there?

[The gravity of that kind of devastation drags at her even now.]

What does the Count want with them?

Dead? No. But they are rendered to a state that may as well be death, for how damning it is. It seems the Count has found a way to induce the same mania that before now drove those born here to join the Cultist forces. As for what he wants? Well -- there is strength, we are told, in numbers.

Can't we do anything to help them?

[She doesn't think twice about who might be included in that 'we'. Even if it was just Mia...]

Efforts are being made. Alternative...treatments are being researched. [ a pregnant pause. ] Would you like to help?

Yes.

[It's so easy to answer that fast, and with all of her conviction. Then she thinks about it.]

What would that help entail?

It could be within my power to recommend a task force to the Organization. A group from this enclosure well-equipped to add their expertise to the problem. A think-tank, if you will.

I don't know how many others would- would be interested in anything like that. Not without some of the interest being for their own gain, anyway.

I think a community's capacity for good works and good will, regardless of the reward, would surprise both of us.

A community's, yes. It would be a very pleasant surprise, I imagine.

[It is this community, here, with which she now struggles.]

Thank you for asking. I want to help them.

20. [mostly action]

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