animus_network | [voice] IS ♞ EVEN ON THE NETWORK'S CHARACTER MAP XI: color coded for your convenience

The first voice that boisterously sails from the terminal's speakers is clearly recognizable to those who know her as Sayaka Miki, formerly erstwhile agitator back in.. what seems to be totally unaltered spirits.

"Yo, my lovely towerlies! I hate to interrupt our monthly cycles of being really really sad for a while after getting stupid things done to us, but I wanted to point out something that I thought was very fascinating, actually."

The second voice (that of Jin Shirato) cuts in quickly, unable to resist the comment.

"I don't. Everyone's whining over stupid shit anyway."

Sayaka plods onwards, despite the interjection.

"And for any of those upper - hm, lower, actually - echelons listening in, hey, don't be shy, I'm okay with you hearing this, too. Turn up the volume, put it on a couple extra screens for added effect. Anyway. Just listen to me a for a second. You know what all this information pumping means? All these horrible things you were forced to give away? It's not just random torture, no way, I know what that looks like. They're scared. Of us. Of what we might be doing."

"Make that what we are doing. It's not like they've made habit to be preventative before, after all-- how many blows to their sanctuary do you think is too many?"

"Or maybe just one special guy in particular is the one who's afraid. After all, it was his turn to man the wheel this time. And why not? Buddy, you've got every reason to be nervous. You're the predictable one, and you've already gotten in hot water before. "

"Maybe he's just afraid of turning out like Dax."

"-Exactly. It's just going to be a matter of time until you're complicit in some great final blunder. And I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for it."

The sounds cuts.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've never met you before but I think I already like you. [You can hear the smirk.]

Name's Jin, nice to meet you. The loud one is Sayaka, official advocate for the rise of anarchy against science.

Now we've got pleasantries out of the way.

After what just happened? I'm almost surprised more people aren't losing it on the network.

Nice to meet you Jin, I'm Amelia.

Oh they're losing it. They're probably just too busy losing it in places that are less convenient to get to a computer. Not everyone likes to give the bastard the satisfaction he wants. But we like to rub it in his face.

... yeah after everything that happened, that makes sense. [Right, the admins can probably see this. She'll try to keep her emotions somewhat in check right now.]

How often does this happen? I've never seen anything like what just happened.

The information dig, or the game where we horribly mutate the Tower population?

Err, the second one.

Pretty regularly. Every three or four months I'd estimate, but I don't have any idea anymore.
The sooner you get used to it, the sooner you learn it doesn't really matter anymore.

That's the famed Miki charisma for you. It gets to everybody, I promise.

You do have a certain way with words! Oh! By the way my name's Amelia.

Does uh, does this happen frequently? I mean what just happened in the last few days.

Amelia, gotcha.

It depends! We're kind of on a staggered schedule of horrifying body modification and brainwashing versus everything else that could happen. That flavor is every few months.

Yay. At least we'll have some downtime before something like this happens again? I haven't been here that long, a couple of months or so.

Exactly. Unless we magically get doubletime just because Ruana felt like it, or the schedule gets shook up because of surprise whales or ghost implosions or whatever.

[... there's a moment of silence.] Err excuse me, could you repeat that? On my end it just sounded like you said surprise whales, and that can't be right.

_{[oh

you can't just hear Sayaka's grin, you could practically count the teeth put into it]}

Okay, I lied. The admins saw it coming a little while before it hit.

[We just went to video for a moment. She feels like she can't articulate what's going through her head nearly as well as that stare she's giving you right now, Sayaka. It takes a second for her to even try to say anything.]

Surprise whale.

_{[Sayaka meets your video challenge, Amelia. Her grin is just as wide as the sound of her voice prophesied.]}

That's right. It's like, some endangered species native to this insane planet, and it wanted to bust this place open like a delicious can of soul sardines.

It was pretty awful.

[STILL STARING AT YOU. For a second her mouth opens like she's about to say something, but her mind hasn't quite caught up with this, leaving her standing there with her mouth open for a moment.]

So. A whale, I'm assuming flying because it didn't look like there was any water out there... what, rammed the tower or something?

[... soul sardines? Really?]

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