TEXT | BONUS XMAS MINGLE

[synfluxmods]

[ The moment the clock strikes 12 midnight to usher in Christmas Day, a hoard of delivery drones will be activated throughout the base. They enter each Outsider's room or finds them where they might be and drops a gift off into their hands. Some Outsiders who have been gifted a paid subscription or virtual gift will receive this gift in their oculars instead.

Each gift was individually chosen. Please refer to this table to see what your character will receive! (If we have missed anyone, please contact us on the mod contact page.)

There's a brief note from Captain Yamakawa. ]


My Angels of LILITH,

I know we haven't made it easy on you during your stay here, but please know that we truly, genuinely appreciate your service and what you have done to protect our world from the impending threats. Please take this gift as a token of LILITH's appreciation.

Happy Holidays to you all. Let's hope for a peaceful and fruitful new year.


Sincerely,
Jun Yamakawa

[ Feel free to use this network post to chat about the gifts your characters received. Happy Holidays everyone!! ]

Comments

[gyve]

( "they kill us on the bridge," silco seethes, and kaladin's eyes widen.

memories sever his ability to breathe. memories of people using him for profit, supporting them and their comfortable lifestyles. trying to fight back only to be forced onto the plains daily to die, carrying their bridge. memories of comrades fallen, their bodies pierced by arrows. old and young men, some only boys, like tien. memories of tien's cold corpse warmed in futility by his own. they string together in a chain whose links have locked tight around him, only growing longer each passing week. so many more than he can bear.

yet silco can bear a length of his own and, despite being weighed down by it, stand tall. it's his revenge to keep existing, an ever-present death rattle for anyone who would try to force him back to the mines, the bridge, the river. they're brandished as a weapon somehow, lifted and lashed at everyone who gets near.

by the time silco's through, kaladin's breaths have become short and noisy, suffering a mild panic. his eyes are wet without tears, glassy, and they remain wide, distant as though seeing into his past through the veil between roshar and earth. )

I want to... ( he trails off into silence.

then blinks. sucking in sharply, kaladin refuses his lung's further sips of air, refocusing on the conversation with a rapid search of silco's face. )

You told me you didn't have any powers, Silco. But being able to carry on... That is power. Everything else is a placebo. ( when his flash and fancy is stripped away, what's left of him? kaladin is a worn spear wielded in the dark. ) Flight, weapon summoning, using Stormlight... I can win a fight against a beast or a man with a bigger stick, but I've never been able to do what you do.

Hate as a compass... I've tried. I failed. I can't do it. I won't. I'm... ( scared. )

ironic that next month silco is going to torch this, typical

[zauneyete]

[ It's so typical. People that cannot imagine doing this. Can't imagine letting themselves fall further and further into the monster.

Maybe some of it, the fact that he admits that he can't reminds Silco too much of other people who couldn't maintain the hate. Who had looked at the monster they became, and turned away, because it was too much. Too scary and terrifying. Bestial. Silco looks at Kaladin's cowardice, and it reminds him of hands on his throat, the feeling of water rushing around his ears, and struggling to survive. He sees him for what he is. Someone to lash out at those he considers "lesser" and then hate himself afterward for the crime of lashing out. Regret it, and try to do "better" as if better rights the wrongs perpetrated.

Silco? Projecting his traumas onto other people? Say it isn't so. ]

I know it is.

[ He says it with sharp bite, with the confidence of a man who knows who he is. ]

I don't need powers to do everything that I have accomplished. I don't have them. I am not the smartest, the fastest, or the strongest. [ Never that. ] But I know what it is to be without. I take it where I can find it, and I refuse to allow anything to stand in my way. You understand that, don't you?

To carry on is transgressive. To thrive is an insult.

I will transgress against what is expected of me. [ A half-laugh. ] No matter what, it is still victory, even if I fail in the end. I've survived longer than most where I am from, and I intend to survive even longer.

[ h a h ]

TYPICALDKAJSNDJKNA

[gyve]

( silco gives him an answer, but not the answer. in the end, it's just another way to survive, and kaladin feels disappointed that even the men claiming to know the best method to persist in a doomed universe are pretending.

perhaps it simply doesn't exist. )

But you're living for them. Surviving for them.

( hating them. spiting them. transgressing against and insulting them. )

What does it mean to live for yourself? How do you stop letting others define you?

That's what I've been searching for, I think. Unfortunately, I don't know if I'll ever find it.

[zauneyete]

I do not live for them.

[ He spits out, fierce as anything. ]

I live despite them! Because if I did otherwise, I would let them win.

I am living for myself — [ Really, for someone else, but he will not share that. Kaladin has not earned the right. ]

You do it by finding what matters, boy. You do it by fighting for something for yourself. For me, it is a dream that I refuse to let die.

[gyve]

( silco's temper is volatile, kaladin thinks. watching him is a raw experience, like watching a wild animal. )

I don't want that. I want to move forward with my friends. (their lives are so bright that it's hard to look at them any longer. ) They've all become happy, and I'm grateful for that; they deserve that, but it's...

( painful. lonely. )

... What's your dream, Silco? If you took your hate for them away, what would be left?

[zauneyete]

For me and mine to have what should have been ours generations ago. For us to be out from under a boot that stifles our air, to no longer be dependent on runoff and scraps.

My dream is for our Nation of Zaun to be a reality.

I would have half the hate for them that I would have had — were they only to release their grip.

I would rather never think of them, than focus on how to survive despite them daily.

[ Silco says this, but we all know the truth. Without his dream, without his fight, he was nothing. Just a small man fighting a tide so violently he ruins everything in his path. ]

[gyve]

The Nation of Zaun.

( independence. a way to prosper without the great hand of silco's "betters" descending to steal what he makes. )

I don't understand. That's an honourable goal, Silco. Zaun should be a reality, and you've strove for that. Clearly, you have.

But... these people... these people have nothing to do with it. I don't understand why you hated that woman in the alley who couldn't have possibly earned your spite. And when you left me that... calling card. The one with your eye on it. What purpose did that serve?

Why does my interest in supporting others bother you so much?

[zauneyete]

Well, the first one is obvious. You interfered.

[ WITH WHAT? (his meal) He doesn't elaborate. Either he thinks he doesn't have to, or he is unwilling to share it via the network. No need to let LILITH know he did it. Though he does smile, and although there are no fangs, it still seems sharp. ]

The second, is because I wanted to see what you would do.

[ also weirdly innocuous, except ]

I wanted to know how fast you would pick it up, how fast you would respond, and if you would respond. Because knowing things about people like you is how I will account for you, should I have need.

[ Not for him, of course. But to avoid him. ]

Besides, in supporting others, I have learned, people become lax. Complacent. Look at the Kaiju. Instead of teaching them to fight for themselves, or motivating them to do it, they simply spend their time drinking, relaxing, playing as if the Kaiju do not touch their lives.

That is what your coddling does.

[gyve]

( he didn't expect silco to take the time to actually explain. it's a point in his favour, loath as he is to dole one out. there's a way to look at this that isn't weighed heavily to his own perspective; he must try to be fair.

then he insults the civilians again. )

You—

( taking a deep breath in, kaladin closes his eyes. )

Fine. Fine. Test me. Surveil me. Do whatever you feel you need to do to prove your point. Perhaps one day you'll realize that committing despicable acts in the name of a goal a universe away is an excuse, not a justification.

Maybe you say everything you say because it helps you sleep at night.

( but. with kaladin, there's always a but. )

But I can't let your last point stand without challenge. Humans can't simply survive; they must live, too. I'm including you and myself, as much as I hate to admit that I'm restless.

While our sole responsibility on Earth is to eliminate kaiju, theirs is split between protecting the sanity of their everyday lives and keeping this city going despite everything they've already been through. They exist in a world that seems to want them dead, and they have for a long time without our "help."

They're the heroes, Silco, who deserve to relax and have fun on the days they aren't fighting for their lives their own way. Don't you dare put them down for that just because you don't have the strength to.

[zauneyete]

[ There's a moment where he looks like he's about to blow. It's written across his face. His uninjured eye twitches, and his eyebrows draw down. His lips peel back around his mouth, showing off the cracked teeth. He breathed out, a bit of his hair seems to have drifted down into his forehead at one point, and he looks... furious.

So, so angry.

Because he doesn't get it, does he? He doesn't get that these people are offered the luxury that his so often aren't. Oh yes, there are some now who can, but the runoff prevails. That nobody cared about them, and when they tried to take it into their hands, they were just struck down. How many times had it happened? Silco wasn't novel, other than the fact that he'd pushed harder in the end. Found Something. Barely. Just like Vander had eked out quiet complacency, Silco had eked out rampant capitalism.

His jaw clenches. He opened his mouth, about to say something, but instead, he closed his eye, ran a hand through his hair. It's like watching a man take that anger, fury, and tuck it back away, like a child putting a toy away. But there is still that eye, ever open, ever burning. As much as Silco can tuck it all away, it persists.

Staring at him with such fury. ]

How nice for them, that someone cares so much to allow them their indolence.

[ CLICK. ]

THESE TWO

[gyve]

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