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Hi again - better news, kind of. At least more useful news.

[ she gives a quick little wave hello. ]

So first of all, quick update on the Reindire. I think I got them addicted to tequila by mistake? In my defence I didn't know that's not normal food for animals like this. I am trying to limit their habit of drinking it with water, but also a robot dedicated to make tequila sunrises just for them in case they get agitated, but dividing it with water or other liquids to ween them off.

Apart from that, they seem to really like Mercenary Day food. Which I've been told you guys call 'Christmas'. But Mercenary Day cake, eggnog, little brightly wrapped candies, something I'm informed is 'pine tree' leaves and 'holly'. That sort of thing. I'm not sure who to tell that to, so if someone could pass that along to the appropriate administration.

Secondly, I made a book, to help people that might be new to space travel. Since not everyone comes from a time and place where they are used to this. [ she lifts up the ring binder of pages, glossily laminated. ] There is no technical speak in here, it's just a no nonsense description of how to put in suits, what to do in the case of chemical fires, what to do if you find yourself in a zero gravity situation. It has pictures too just in case someone can't read or finds the terms hard to grasp. I am leaving a copy for anyone that wants it in the library. I'm more than happy to digitise it as well if anyone would prefer that.

Lastly, in case there is any confusion, I am the big white deer thing with stars and bones that hangs around with the other animals. Please don't try to have me for dinner at any point. I'll give you a warning bite.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No, some of them are the smartest people I've ever met. Maya is terrifying, and not just because she can melt your brain through a third dimension.

But mercenary work pays better than being smart, unfortunately.

One can accomplish both.

I have served as a mercenary when necessary. At no point would I have chosen to set myself on fire.

Really? Not even once? Do you come from one of those places where fire is very fatal?

Yes. It tends to burn things.

I mean it does that for us too. But we just instajet a wound, it's healed in seconds. So setting yourself on fire is a short term problem.

If you are the sort of person who would set yourself on fire for money, your problem is not a short-term one.

Obviously not, they're on Pandora and Elpis. They're usually trying to stop someone wearing their skin as a suit.

My point stands.

It's not their fault. Pandora... it's not something that you get a choice in. It tends happen to you.

There is always a choice.

Not on Pandora. For the most part, I agree with you...

... But Pandora is... those people, that came there, became what we now call bandits? They're victims as much as anyone.

Why, because of the condition of their birth? Kill or be killed, something of that nature?

Sort of.

Pandora didn't have any sentient life before we came to it. Just animals. It was colonized by the Atlas and Dahl Corporations.

But those animals - Pandora has exclusively predators, anything that isn't is so big, so heavy, they aren't prey - not really. So there was that, to start with. Teams would come in, and there are so many moments - of people ended up buried under the corpses of their friends as they were eaten alive on top of them. Of children torn to pieces in front of their parents. Things like that. It still goes like that. People had to go crazy, had to go mad, to deal with it.

[ There is an inhale, exhale, she has seen it, is the silence, more than anyone, she has seen it. She has had her mind filled with the screaming. On and on and on. ]

Then the mutations started. See, Eridium, it's the most valuable thing in the whole damn galaxy. But for humans, it has a nasty little side effect. You'd barely recognise who they were before to what they are now. Psychos, Goliaths, the Tinks. It'd be fine if you had decent safety equipment.

But Pandora was mostly colonized by convicts. People no one wanted it. People life had abandoned for one reason or another. So no one ever sprung for decent safety equipment. They were breathing in the dust, constantly. It seeped into their skin. It's drug-like. You want it, but it's bad for you - and given they were all desperately trying to survive the animals - it was something you hoped would make it better for a little while.

Then, - well, we call them Corporate Wars. One company going to all-out attack another's operations. So that started between Atlas and Dahl. So Dahl just - abandoned them. All of them. Not just convicts. Their workers, their dig teams, their mercenaries. Everyone. They just left them all. Half-mutated, traumatized, with all these animals trying to kill them.

They just... left them.

I probably don't need to explain how everything went, after that. Most people don't even consider them people. Pandora calls people, and then - they suffer, and they die. Or they survive, but some part of them, it bleeds into that sand and they never get it back.

And what are you, then?

You said 'before we came to it.'

[ That was a lot of information to try and process, but he was listening. ]

Human. I was - ... was just a human.

[ her face turns away, blinking quickly. The sand and blood. Her mother's screaming.

The silence afterwards. ]

Just human.

...I do not think I believe you.

It's not a happy story. I didn't...

...

[ She closes her eyes a second. ]

... If you really want to know, I can tell you... just...

Do not feel obligated if you do not wish to.

You owe me nothing.

It's not... that. Telling the truth is important to me.

But the place I come from, the things that I am. Well, most people ask me to stop talking about ten minutes in for a reason. So you probably should be prepared to hear some gross things first.

I have likely heard worse, elsewhere.

If you say so.

[ The sigh is shakey. He thinks that they always do. ]

I was born just a normal kid. Just a little girl. Normal parents. Normal life. I went to okay corporate schools that was the best my parents could afford. My parents worked. All that stuff. We took holidays on Eden-VI, I drew bad pictures of flowers in front of dumb-looking turbo-mansions when they said to draw what you wanted out of life. Got my first gun when I was like five to shoot the giant bugs you get inside corporate buildings, it was really crappy too, the Dahl kids line really had some durability issues -[ Cough ] Anyway, normal. The normal stuff.

Then I looked down at my arm when I was about six, and there was a little blue line and day by day. It grew. One marking became another, then another, then another.

[ He sounds disgusted for a moment. ]

They allowed giant bugs in your school? Ridiculous.

[ Yes, Hanzo. That's the ridiculous part of what she just said. ]

What came of these markings you speak of?

[ she frowns a second, allowed - ? Oh, right, Earth. ] Oh, no, they can burrow through concrete. The turrets outside usually kept them out, but sometimes it happened if the came through the sewers underneath or something.

[ Perfectly normal. ]

Power. I became a siren. [ She lifts her left arm and shows him them. He's definitely already seen how extensive they are. Covering her arms, her chest, her stomach, hips, legs, down to one hoof, or foot as it had been. Curling as intimately as a lover, around and under her breast, hugging the inside of her thighs in swirling rivers of light on her sickly pale skin. ]

There are six sirens in the universe at any one time. Six women, who are granted impossible abilities, and a hunger that drives us out into the universe. I could do things with my mind that defined explanation. For me, it was technology. I could slide my mind into machines with just a thought, could control them like other people breath. But it wasn't just that, it was more like holding this whole, other, secret reality I bent with just my mind.

That was the hunger. To find ourselves out in the universe. I never got to talk to other sirens, myself, but I heard them speak. It was like this... empty place lives inside of us. We can rip stars out of the sky, and you just want to drag them inside of your body, to hold that power, but it will never be enough.

[ So when he supposed her divine, at first, he hadn't been far off the mark. Perhaps closer to a demi-god...or a demon. Either way, she does not speak as one bragging about their abilities.

This is simply how it is. Remarkable and terrifying as that might be. ]

How are these...siren chosen?

[ that is the old pain, the deep sigh with her voice sticking in the back of her throat with the old ache. ]

I wish I knew. But I've never know. We wake up one day, and there is a little blue dot that begins to grow, this knowledge begins to grow in us. No one explains it to us, we aren't given a purpose.

And we usually learn the hard way, that the power we are given isn't a toy.

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