dualisnet | video | un: Barton

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video | un: Barton

This is gonna piss off Ross and I'm all for that, but even after all the shit that's gone down in the last six years I don't know how I'll explain this.

[The video had opened on what there is to be seen of a partially overcast sky between two of the taller buildings of Dualis before tilting down; obviously whoever's broadcasting is walking along the road, because the picture continues to move at a steady pace down what looks to be a slightly less metropolitan-city-ish shopping district. Part of the hand holding the phone is visible, but nothing else about the person speaking can be seen yet.]

And my limit of pissing him off got blown by about the time I woke up in cyberpunk Egypt, so I've got two questions for anyone with any kind of answer - how in the hell do we get home, and does anyone have some tools I can borrow so I can break some sensitive electronics?

[...yeah, that's all he's volunteering for now. Sorry about that.]

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Check on both items.

You're going to tell me your world doesn't have dragons either, right?

[Dammit, he's going to lose a point there. Silly inter-dimensional dragon spotting. Oh well, he will move on.]

So what are you trying to break?

Only in myths. [What kind of place was this kid from? Clint's not sure he wants to know, really.]

This. [Tilting the phone-thing down, he stops moving in order to get a good shot of the ankle monitor still strapped to him. It's currently beeping quietly and flashing a red light, as it still has power but is undoubtedly outside the programmed limits of the farm's perimeter, the end of his tether. Clint stoops to move the phone closer to the device and the beeping gets louder, and more annoying.] I doubt the feds are gonna show up and try and take me down here, and the noise'll drive me crazy in another five minutes.

[Nida's own view changes over to the young man who evaluates the thing with a thoughtful hum. Now that isn't something he much knows what to do with. Of course the tools will do something. But what is it?]

Few questions. What is that? Who are 'the feds?' and I mean, we could cut your foot off.

[It's kind of amazing, to Clint, how much he's willing to share now when he spent the vast majority of his adult life hiding so much about himself. But the Accords and Leipzig had blown the lid completely open on his cover, identity compromised so blatantly his neighbors had been driving by the farm to try and get a glimpse of him. But it was strangely liberating to not have to hide one half of his life in the shadows anymore, and so he answers Nida without hesitation.]

It's a GPS tracker - I got put on house arrest, and this tells them if I go outside the perimeter of my property, and if I do that without their direct supervision they bust my door down, search the premises, and maybe arrest me and drag me to prison.

[Or. You know. Try.]

The feds are the ones who'd do all that - federal agents, FBI or CIA, or a few other alphabet soup organizations. Some of them are fine, some of them are dicks on a power trip. But this isn't my property, it's trying to signal them, and it can't. I'm not cutting my foot off.

Oh dear. I hope whatever you got up to wasn't too bad. Also, need things like that back home.

[His life would be so much better if he could slip means to tack people as electronics amid their things. Interesting.]

You're right. You should ask Tommy for help if these tools I have aren't useful. He can break things with vibrations I think. Or Billy. Magic is useful.

Bad enough in their eyes, but the guy running the program at the moment might be the biggest dick I've ever met. The kind of guy who likes to control everything and if you don't follow his orders 100%, even the ones he doesn't give you...

[Clint trails off, shaking his head and clearly frustrated. He really hates Ross, obviously. But he has good reason to, and a history of doing so for much longer than most of his teammates.]

Magic's pretty useful, yeah. [Half a second's worth of pause, then he goes on.] Not something in my set though.

Huh, really? How sad. Does your world have dragons?

[What? Nida's got a thing about dragons.]

Honestly, magic doesn't seem to be as naturally available to a lot of humans on a lot of worlds.

You already asked that, I already said no. Maybe some other planet, I'm not an expert in that kind of thing.

It's just started cropping up at home. I know someone... point is, it's rare, but it's powerful. I just do the physical stuff.

Damn, I was hoping you'd change your mind.

Hey, there is nothing wrong with just doing the physical stuff. I'm a trained... Well, I do a lot of getting to places I'm not supposed to be, or that would be difficult to be at, and I use a polearm. So, I get you. I have friends who were less physical stuff, but you've got to respect the value of a good old fashioned person beating another person up.

Metaphorically sometimes.

With all the other shit that's turned up in the last few years, dragons might be one of 'em. We've already had giant air-swimming cockroach slugs.

[No, he's not explaining that.]

[And he has a guess what that meandering wording really means.]

You like to perch, don't you. A lot easier to see things, ain't it.

[No, that's not a question.]

Definitely metaphorical. Always metaphorical. Just a lot of talk about theory and all that shit when it comes down to it.

Okay, speaking as a person from a world filled with monsters? Giant air-swimming cockroach slugs both sound terrifying, and like something I'd want to tame to go air surfing on or something.

[Don't explain. The real deal will never compare to the amazing image in Nida's head. Which of course is obvious because you can actually hear the grin in his voice. The almost joy. What doesn't have joy is his tone as he continues.]

They gave me a first floor room. I'm damn offended. It's so low! But the views. Hyne, if I'd ever had an eye or arm for throwing, I'd have gone into archery or some thrown weapon. But I'm just a guy with a heavy stick.

[No, he won't explain, because he's not going to kill the joy in that young voice. This kid's clearly some sort of soldier, but he isn't sounding young enough to ping his what the fuck sensor. After all, eighteen is the age to sign up for the US army, and it's when Clint began his own training. But he's still young, and there's no reason to tell him they were flying war barges full of alien soldiers determined to destroy a city of millions of people. Instead, he'll focus on the second bit.]

D'you wanna try again? I've taught people before, if there's a place to shoot I wouldn't mind giving a lesson or two. A heavy stick can be damn useful, but having some distance is good.

[Should have heard him a few months ago, when he was clearly younger. But Clint doesn't know that Nida's been at this for years. And aliens, that might just make him interested. Especially a city nearly that big.]

Hey, the heavy stick is about six feet long. That is some distance. And the winds magic I have is useful. But... Well, if you're willing to try, I don't see a reason not to try.

Archery wasn't as big at Garden. But some kids did pick it up instead of swords.

[That resigned horror will come up soon enough. For the moment, it's all staying beneath the surface. But soon enough.]

You can have both. You just gotta be willing to put the work into it. Bows are impractical for almost anything but hunting given modern technology, but they're fun, and a lot more calming than guns. And if you want a sparring partner, I know staff, too.

What's Garden?

I mean, I was hoping to learn some from Hawke back in the past, but I never got around to it.

And yeah, a sparring partner I'm not training up would be lovely. Once I got some staffs to work with. Might even help up your game with it. I am a certified instructor back home.

[Oh man, how do you explain Garden? People tend to flinch at it.]

It's going to sound worse than it is.

[The sound of "Hawke" pings him for a moment, but when Nida doesn't continue that name, Clint comes to the (reasonable) conclusion that he's talking about someone else. It's a real name, after all.]

Certified instructor? How old are you? [Granted he's seen martial arts instructors be pretty young, and he's known Nat for forever, but still...] Not sure there's a lot you can teach me, but I haven't done a lot of practicing with it in a couple years, so you might be able to get me back in proper form. I wouldn't mind doing that again.

I've heard a lot of bad things in my time. Try me.

That's a fair question. Twenty. I've been certified since I was in my late teens, but I had been training with polearms since I was twelve. And form is useful. If nothing else, practice matters. A lot.

If you've had experience, then you know losing muscle memory is the worst.

But, basically, I'm a war orphan raised by a mercenary academy.

[Go ahead, Clint, worry.]

[Oh, there is worry, all right. Or, well, not worry. There's a long, drawn-out pause where Clint puts together everything Nida's just said with what he's dropped hints about throughout their conversation, and there's a solid count between fifteen and twenty of nothing but silence before Clint breathes out again, heavily, speaking at the same time. The kind of noise a person makes when they've metaphorically been punched in the gut.]

From one hour to the next. Did they handcuff you to your bed at night?

[It's a worryingly specific question and an even weirder phrase. Clint's not even aware at the moment that his words didn't come out in Russian.]

[Yes, it is a worryingly specific question, and leaves Nida with a bad taste in his mouth. It feels like the sort of question that comes from having been through a situation. Or having heard about it. And the idea of it makes Nida bristle. If he ever heard of a place doing that, he'd do his best to shut it down.

Unless, of course he learned that the Natasha he'd met was a product of such a place. And then he'd do his best and die trying. He'd met Natasha only a handful of times, and he'd developed a healthy respect for how dangerous she was with every single movement she made.]

No, there wasn't anything like that. Detention could be hell if you broke some rules, but not the sorta hell you seem to be thinking? We were soldiers. Soldier's aren't very good, even trained from that age, if you do that to them.

[Oh how wrong he is. But there is a bit of hope in his voice, as if he's asking Clint to tell him that isn't something that actually happened to someone.]

[He's not even going to try and pretend that he can. If Nida's a trained soldier like he's claiming to be, then he's well aware of all the shit in the world (any world) that's messed up, and Clint doesn't believe in hiding the bad things from a person who can take them. He rubs his face with his open hand, putting pressure on his temples to ward off what might be a headache forming, sighing heavily again.]

You got that wrong - they don't become soldiers, they become... automatons. Robots. Brainwashed to kill at a command, refuse forming any kind of bond because bonds are weakness, lethal at any distance with something as little as a paperclip. Controlled and molded into good little death-dealing drones that can slip in and out of personae like they're putting on a shirt, because they have no personality of their own.

[He pauses.]

You're lucky. It takes a pretty extraordinary person to break out of that. It sounds like you got the shit end of the stick, but at least it wasn't that.

[Well... now he feels sick. Yeah, in that frame of reference, Nida is lucky. Thing was? That could have been something he might have been. Another world, a slightly stricter training regime? Who knows. Sure, he'd probably still think some, but he was created to be something like that.]

I'm nowhere near extraordinary enough to have managed to break free of something like that. It was hard enough not to just be the little para-military drone I was without serious help. I barely even knew how to make friends.

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