a_sin_for_him | IC Contact

Private armies? How big could a private army possibly be...?

[This all sounds very confusing, to be honest. Private armies were made of mercenaries, weren't they? In her experience, rarely more than twenty or thirty men...]

Who runs things, then?

Well, for as much as anything is really run, that'd be... the corporations.

[And even that's only really part of the planet...]

I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand...how can corporations hold governmental authority? Who makes the laws, who enforces them, who maintains...everything that needs maintaining?

....is this why your former master claims he owns the planet?

[Because she does listen to his broadcasts. But she's dismissed most of what he says as boasting lies made to make him seem impressive beyond simply being rich. It seemed likely, from what Timothy's said of him.]

Yeah, see, you're expecting Pandora to be anything like a sane and reasonable place, which is your first mistake. There's, uh, no laws? No official ones, just, y'know, whatever anyone decides to enforce themselves.

[Be that someone running a settlement, the boss of a bandit camp, or... one of the corporations.]

Basically. I mean, at the point where I'm from, he only just took over Hyperion. But since he's running it and he's got access to all of Hyperion's money, resources, manpower...

Yeah, he basically can just say he owns the place, so long as people let him get away with that.

That's...that's madness.

My master spent centuries carefully infiltrating the government and the military to control both from deep within.

How can any society function without proper laws? I know you've said you come from a violent and tumultuous place, but...

Yeah, tell me about it...

[PANDORA!]

I mean, it's less "society" and more "horrible wasteland that happens to have lots of people living in it". There's settlements and towns, but a lot of it's bandit camps as well. Not to mention lots of places that aren't even really habitable, because wow the wildlife is not friendly.

I'm pretty sure the only reason Pandora even functions as much as it does is sheer stubbornness.

How does anyone live to hold the towns and camps? Or carve them out in the first place?

[And how in god's good name had Timothy survived any time there at all?]

Did you...have you spent much time there? I know you've mentioned the space station, and the moon...

I mean, uh... Lots of people don't? Death's pretty normal there. I don't know a whole lot about the history of the planet, but I think a bunch of the towns were originally made by some of the corporations for their workers and those sort of turned into new towns? And old bases too, I think?

I think lots of it is repurposed stuff like that.

[As for the other towns, well, hell if he knows. Same way Pandorans do anything, he assumes. Through pure stubborn willpower.]

Not... as much. Yet... [He's sure that after the point he's from, Jack probably intends to send him there more and more. It only makes sense.] I-I dunno, I went there a few times.

Elpis is basically just like Pandora, anyway. Just, y'know. Smaller. And with less air.

I...see.

I imagine you must have been afforded some protection, then, being a member of Hyperion? And I assume a high ranking one, all things considered.

[Lust is trying so very hard to make sense of all this. And how Timothy isn't another case of dying and waking up in Pokeworld.]

Uhhhhh...

[Ha ha, yeah, about that.]

I got a gun? [...Yeah.]

That's...good?

I just meant...surely if you're a high ranking member of the corporation that runs things...

Please don't be offended, Timothy, it's only...I'm amazed you've survived.

No, no, zero offense taken, trust me. I'm amazed I survived.

I also got this, uh, device that let me summon like... digital copies of me, so that was handy.

But, uh, for the most part they just sorta... handed me a gun and shoved me out the door. [For a trip right to Helios. Woo.] I... guess you can sort of count Athena and the rest of the team as protection, but that wasn't entirely the... intent of that...

[...Wow, yeah, it's a goddamn miracle he's lived this long.]

I, uh, kinda just had to learn on the job. Turns out you can learn real quick when you've got the right motivation.

...The motivation being bullets. Lots of bullets. Got shot at a lot.

You just don't seem suited for that sort of violent life. I'm glad you did, though.

That sounds...useful? And I suppose that is a good motivation to learn survival skills.

What was the job, anyway? This was after you'd taken the doppelganger position, wasn't it?

Yeaaaah, I'm really not. Everyone else I was working with was, definitely. But I'm glad I don't have to deal with that anymore.

[So long as he gets to be here, at least. Which he's hoping is just. Forever. That'd be great.]

You never learn quicker than when your life literally depends on it, heh... [Ha ha... ha... He almost died so many times.]

Oh, uh. Pretty much immediately. Just finished all the surgery, got my voice modulator implanted, and right as soon as that was all done, suddenly I'm told I got to hurry to Helios because shit's going down there. The whole place was under attack, so... had to deal with that, since Jack was there and all. First it was all about dealing with the Helios situation, then it turned into this whole... thing where we had to save the moon from being blown up.

The real main objective was finding a Vault, though...

I'm glad, too. That sort of life...it grows tiresome quickly.

You were thrown immediately into a firefight following intensive surgery?

[There's a lot to take in here, Lust's trying to deal with it in small bits.]

You've mentioned Vaults in passing before.

Well, when you put it like that it sounds ridiculous and insane. But uh. Yeah, basically.

...Made aiming a little hard. But, uh, I managed.

[Boy, that was a fun day. Just... such a fun day!]

Right, yeah... Sometimes I kinda forgot most places don't have 'em, 'cause it's just such a big thing back home. Vaults are... sort of a legend that turned out to be very real? Stories about a Vault full of wealth or powerful artifacts or what have you. One reason people would come to Pandora was to look for one.

Turns out that, uh, they're more like caches with stuff left behind by aliens. The one on Elpis had this alien artifact in it. As... well as a scary alien protector guarding it.

Ridiculous and insane is exactly what it is.

...I find it hard to imagine you shooting at anyone.

[Oh, how little Lust knows.]

My god. No wonder your master sent you in search of one.

Well, that's... Pandora.

[And everything surrounding it.]

Ha, yeah, I bet. I did... sorta end up doing that a lot. Shooting people and all...

[A lot. So much shooting.]

Oh, yeah, Jack wanted to find that Vault bad. Really... Really bad. He got really intense about that at the end of the mission. Not, uh... [Well. Context is important for this.] Not that I don't get why.

Really?

[It's almost impossible to picture. Timothy's such a timid and gentle man...of course, Scar had been, in private. And he'd been a serial killer.]

Oh?

[She won't press, but she'll invite him to go on, if he wants.]

Yeah. Well, you know, that's uh, that's just how it goes there. Can't go from point A to point B without shooting a whole bunch of people. Not to mention people constantly asking for favors that also, inevitably, involved shooting lots of people.

[It's part of why it's still so refreshing that people here just... help each other. Without making you jump through any hoops.]

The whole thing was kind of a mess. Just... a horrible mess, really. Jack did a bunch of messed up shit, then some people we were working with stabbed him in the back and tried to kill him... He really didn't take that well.

I wouldn't have thought. I can barely picture you with a weapon...

[Picturing him killing anyone...how heavy does it weigh on him?]

I can't imagine. That doesn't tend to go over well on the sanest of minds.

Never really held one before that mission either, so... If it weren't for all that, then nah, I never would've done anything like that. But, uh... that's how it goes, I guess.

Just sorta got used to it.

[Some things weigh heavily on him. Felicity does. The scientists do. But most of the people he shot? The Lost Legion, the skavs, all that? Not so much anymore.]

Right? Even before that, he was uh... he was going downhill for a while, but it's that point where he started really losing it.

I know you've spoken on how violent and dangerous the world you come from is, I just...I don't know, for some reason I never imagined you'd taken any life.

It doesn't bother me, it simply surprises me.

[She's killed dozens upon dozens, she isn't going to make any judgments. But it's a shock, even so. She hadn't ever thought he'd killed anyone.]

How mad is he? He maintains a reasonable enough facade, but...

I'm not exactly the, ah, usual type of person you'd find in that... line of work anyway. [Tim, just call yourself a Vault Hunter, you are one.] They're a little more like... Well, like Athena, for example.

Right, I get that. I can't even see myself like that type of person and I'm the one who lived it.

[At her question, there's a small pause. How mad is Jack? Unconsciously, he touches the scar on his face for a moment. Not because of the memory of when that happened to him, necessarily. But the memory of Lilith punching that artifact into Jack's face.]

...Mad enough to arm a space station with a giant laser. Mad enough to vent a whole team of innocent scientists into space after one suggested that maybe there was the possibility of there being a mole.

And mad enough to rant about wanting to scorch the whole planet in fire.

I... I dunno, that last one could be passed off as a heat of the moment thing, but... [But as someone whose job was being Jack, as someone with a pretty good understanding of the man...] I don't think that was all it was.

No, you aren't. You belong on a stage or behind a typewriter, not on a battlefield.

[He's a creative soul. There are men who keep their violence tramped down, and there are men who simply aren't inclined to it. She still believes Timothy to be the latter.]

I suppose we should just count ourselves lucky that people like that have no footing here. And that you have the ability to free yourself from him.

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