Ioan was surprised by just how harried True Name looked during their coffee date. The skunk's blouse was wrinkled, her normally orderly fur mussed atop her head, and her whiskers all abristle. She looked as though she'd not slept for a few days and certainly not changed outfits since then.
All the same, her arrival was much the same as all the others had been, with her smiling brightly to em, ordering her coffee, and joining em on the couch in order to set up a cone of silence.
"Good morning, Mx. Bălan. I trust you are well?"
"Uh, I'm fine, I guess." Ey frowned, continuing carefully, "What about you, though? You look...well, terrible."
The skunk's smile faltered, betraying the exhaustion that plainly lay beneath. With another blink, the cone's ACLs changed to opaque it from the outside. "I came in a rush, my dear, I apologize for my appearance."
"You don't need to apologize, True Name. I'm just worried. Lots of Secession Day preparations?"
"Of a sort, yes. Things have been rather stressful the last few days." She laughed, shook her head, and added, "Well, more than a little. I have been stretched very thin and...struggling."
"Struggling?"
The skunk's eyes darted around the coffee shop, scanning each face within at least twice. "I am not comfortable expanding on that at the moment."
Ey held up eir hands disarmingly. "Of course. Are you at least excited about the day?"
"When I have the chance to slow down, I can feel some of that excitement. This provides me a good chance to do so. Twenty-five years since Launch and both LVs are continuing on in their journey with very few problems. Two and a quarter centuries since secession and life continues smoothly here."
"That seems to fit with your goals pretty well."
She gave a slight bow of acknowledgement. "That it does, my dear."
"You and Jonas planning anything for yourselves, at least?"
"There will be a gathering, yes," she said. "Today at noon."
"'A gathering'? Not a party?"
She shrugged. "His words, not mine. I do not know what he is planning."
"Well, hopefully a good one."
"Agreed. This will limit my time here, of course, I hope that you understand, and I may be distracted as several of my forks merge down to limit conflicts while there."
Ey nodded. "That's alright. I've got stuff to work on, too."
(( TN looking particularly harried. They talk about Secession day and 25th anniversary of Launch, but the whole time she's really visibly anxious. The topic of Jonas comes up and that spikes, with her scanning the crowd. They slowly get back to talking about ??? and then she starts to get a real panicked look as more of her instances go offline, starts freaking out, looking outside, at the crowd. She spots Guowei and scrabbles along the couch to grab em by the wrist and slip out of the sim to home, hollering for em to grab May, who's already dealing with an intruding assassin, which she does by forking into an overlapping space and letting collision algos bounce him out of the way, even as they're trying to bounce all those forks from the sim. Ioan grabs May and goes to Arrowhead lake where basically all three have a panic attack (TN wades out into the lake and screams, May eventually goes to retrieve her) while TN explains the assassins. She wonders who could've sent them (Jonas has been drumming up imagined foes of late), but May asks who might know to send them after her root instance (Ioan like huh??? you've been meeting me with your root instance?), at which TN blanches (under her fur, presumably) ))
