update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/mitzvot/035.md

@@ -104,7 +104,103 @@ Were ey pressed to name each of them without knowing this information, ey didn't
 
 As it was, ey could do eir best to guess, and when introductions made their way around the table, ey found eir guests to be correct to the last. 
 
-((...))
+At last, the parade of bows and greetings out of the way, each of the twelve --- for Jonas and Zacharias added to the stanza --- pulled out a chair and sat down, though ey noted that End Waking didn't sit so much as hover on the very edge of his seat. He still looked wide-eyed, feral.
+
+"Aaalright," Jonas said, plopping his hands, palm down, on the table. "To business. I'm pleased to see you're alive, but can't say that I'm pleased to see you're about."
+
+"I imagine not, no," True Name replied, folding her paws on the table before her. "From what Ioan says, you know the general facts of what I know. There has been a long-running plan, perhaps mostly operating as a back-up plan, to shift one or more of me to the side depending on the status of the System. This revolved around the use of Zacharias as a tool to shape my responses while the incomplete information kept me from recognizing this. Tell me, though. Are you leaning on the multiple-Systems-multiple-governments strategy?"
+
+Jonas nodded. "Yes. Oligarchy on Pollux, *status quo* on Castor, and invisible monarchy here on Lagrange."
+
+"You still believe that this tripod will be the most stable structure?"
+
+"I know you don't agree, but it's not a tripod, True Name. By this point, the three Systems are so far apart that they are no longer three branches of the same government. They're three countries, and three countries with identical governments yet divergent societies are unstable."
+
+True Name made that setting-aside gesture, as thought tabling the topic for the moment. "And you," she said, nodding to Zacharias. Her expression was calm, curious, interested. "You have been working with Jonas since around 2180?"
+
+"Oh, thereabouts," he said, grinning. "Though if I am honest, I have always been working with the two of you. It is not that your own goals had no effect on me, my little stink-bug. I played Jonas as much as I played you, and I played my own game when I could."
+
+"Bullshit," True Name said calmly, turning back to Jonas. "And so what is it that--"
+
+"Oh, fuck off," Zacharias laughed. "You do not get to dismiss me so easily. You and I rule together, quite literally, in another life. There is no reason that I should simply be waved away."
+
+"Nah, it's bullshit," Jonas said, just as calm as True Name. "If you were worth anything to this conversation, you would've been part of the preparations."
+
+"What--"
+
+"You're part of the stanza, aren't you?"
+
+"I am, but--"
+
+Jonas laughed, "Just shut up, Zacharias."
+
+"No," the fox growled, his whiskers all abristle and claws digging at the tabletop. "I played my role, but that does not mean that I am some disposable nothing, here. A role is as much the actor as it is-- *stop!*"
+
+There was a loud thump beneath the table, though this time, Zacharias appeared to have pulled his foot away in time to keep is toes from being stamped on, as he instead pushed himself away from the table and to his feet. A brief flicker of something akin to rage flashed across Jonas's face, but was quickly replaced by that bright, friendly grin.
+
+"Fine, fuck you too, then."
+
+There was a no signal --- or if there was, Ioan missed it --- for Guōweī to step into the sim, hand already raised as if for a slap, a short blade held between his fingers. Unassuming, easy to carry, symbolic, and certainly crowded with whatever it was that induced a crash in one's instance.
+
+What happened next happened almost too quickly for em to comprehend. Zacharias shouted, but the cry was cut off in a muffled *oomf* as an instance of May appeared by him, almost totally overlapping the space that he'd occupied, knocking him backwards with enough force to slam him against the door, leaving him to crumple to the floor.
+
+Guōweī's palm came down flat against May's shoulder, but there was no time to see whether or not the virus would affect an instance so far diverged, as that instance of her quit and was immediately replaced with another, this overlapping the assassin's space, knocking him back nearly a meter, only for another instance of the skunk to fork again. With the momentum already in play, this practically sent the man flying, his head cracking against the wall hard enough to leave a sizeable dent in the drywall.
+
+And then it was over. Zacharias's yell faltered, and he stared up, wide eyed, with his gaze darting between the remaining instance of May and Jonas. The latter had lurched away, looking more disgusted than startled.
+
+"Get the fuck out of here," the instance of May growled. "And if I ever, *ever* see you again, you had better believe that I will take you out myself."
+
+And then the instance quit, followed less than a second later by the fox rolling to the side to slip out of the sim. Ey imagined that if Jonas, True Name, and May would all do their best to destroy the fox on sight, the chances of seeing him again were low indeed.
+
+"What just happened?" ey whispered to May, who gave eir hand a squeeze in her paw and shook her head. Ey'd have to find out after.
+
+"Are we done fucking around, yet?" True Name asked, voice flat. "Because I just want to know what it is that you want of me so that I can get back to my life."
+
+"Your *life?*" Jonas asked, incredulous. "You want to get back to your life?"
+
+"Life, yes," she said. "Alive. Living. I want to get back to breathing and eating and drinking and sleeping. Do not take my words too far."
+
+He laughed, shooting his cuffs. "Well, if *that's* all you want, then we could have done without all this fuss, couldn't we? All you need to do is just...go away. Just disappear. Just be gone, True Name. Curl up around your little Name thing and stay there."
+
+May's expression remained calm, but ey could feel the tension in her paw increase, and beyond her, ey could see End Waking bare his teeth. Even the Odists on Jonas's side the of the table flinched. None of them looked pleased. Even Why Ask Questions, jovial as she usually was, seemed to be gritting her teeth.
+
+*He doesn't know, does he?* ey wondered. If ever there was a way to keep a group of Odists in check, that might just be it.
+
+Only True Name, of all of them, remained calm. Serious, yes, but calm.
+
+"What does disappearing and being gone look like to you, Jonas? Do you want me to hide away in a hidden sim forever?"
+
+"I wouldn't say no," he shot back.
+
+"No."
+
+"I thought not."
+
+"So," she said with exaggerated patience. "What does me disappearing look like to you?"
+
+"You just can't be around. You can't be you anymore. You can't be walking around and having people point and say, "Hey, it's that piece of shit skunk!" You need to just disappear, because anything else is just going to destabilize your precious System. I'm prepared for that, but I don't think you are."
+
+She shook her head, but whether at his words or his audacity, ey couldn't tell. "Alright, disappear. You want me to stop being a figure and start being a person. You want me to be other than I am."
+
+"Yep," he said, grin tight and false.
+
+"I have already begun," she said, and with a brief pause, ey saw her features relax, and the sudden shift towards an expression ey knew intimately from eir partner fell across her features. She continued in a voice softer than what it had been. Lilting, less space between the syllables. "Because I already am May Then My Name Die With Me--" Another pause, another shift, one more towards stony and stoic voice suddenly dry and simple, almost cerebral. "--and I am already Do I Know God After The End Waking."  Finally, she fell back into that first register. "And I remain True Name, and yet I am none of these. I could not go back to that which I was even if I wished to."
+
+Jonas raised his eyebrows at the shifts in expression and voice. The frowns around the table on the faces of the other Odists only deepened.
+
+"How can I even begin to trust you on that? You merged your two cronies, so what? You going to go cuddle-camping with Zacharias or something?"
+
+Both May and End Waking bristled at this, but neither spoke.
+
+"I am not what I was."
+
+"I can tell, sure, but you know that's not enough, True Name." His voice was intent, serious in a way ey hadn't seen before. "I am saying that you need to disappear. There is no stable future for the System if you show up in anything close to the same form as you were, and you know that. You were almost assassinated, and doubtless more than you three--" He nodded at May, End Waking, and Ioan. "--know. You show up as you are, and everything crumbles, or at the very least, starts to shift in unstable ways. Plan A was you gone, but plan B relies on you understanding that there's no recovery from a failed plan A that involves you."
+
+"You...what, want me to look different? Sound different?"
+
+"You need to go away, True Name. I don't fucking care how."
+
+There was a moment's thoughtful silence from the skunk before she stood, pushed her chair back in, and turned away from the table.
 
 In the most stunning display of forking ey'd ever seen, True Name began to change.