Inside 72: Halfway to a Gross

[5a Violista]

[Sans Swordswoman]

Venus nods: yup, she's totally listening while she's drinking.
"I...I think it might be best to verify that my memories are stable and accurate before talking with them. With...the Buttercup stuff, it took me a full day before things stopped changing, and they changed based on what I was doing during that time. What if they start praying at me and then I become how they want me to be?" Seems pretty risky and unfortunate, especially today. "What if they convince me of something that's not true just because I can't remember it? Or what if my memories are jank? I'd rather not start a new problem before resolving the current one."

Venus considers the proposition to join HALO.
Well, it's not that sports biomechanics is uninteresting - she still likes it - but rather that there's other things she likes more. "Do you guys also do, like, medical research and things like that?" she asks. And funding isn't really all that important. Well, it's important, but Venus would argue the most important part is the connections and networking. "And, well...that plot of land is kind-of part of me, I guess. Comes with the terrain of being part...nature, I guess. Abandoning it would be like...like..." Metaphors are hard for something she's never thought about before. "...like shaving all my hair off and stripping. I guess. Bad analogy, not sure if I can explain it." She sighs, then leans on the table, with her arm connecting between the table and her head. She taps a couple times, thinking. "Okay, sure. Yeah. I'll join HALO; it's better than sitting around hoping the next periodically random lifechanging event answers questions instead of causes problems." Seriously! Her life since coming to the Nexus has just been one random problem after the other. Getting kidnapped by cultists and held hostage, finding out crossdressing was the most reasonable way to earn money, waking up alone in a swamp with a vampire, getting mugged by kids with pokemon, [redacted by the office of self-censorship], getting turned into a nature-fairy-minor-goddess-deer-person, getting attacked by a dead wizard's hand who wants to steal her body, etc, etc, and now this. These sorts of things just seem to happen all the time. Makes her wonder what's considered 'normal' here.

Anyway.
'Basically pretty much' is honestly probably the best way to describe it, because she doesn't feel like saying 'I don't know whether we're some sort of alternate-universe versions of ourselves who somehow have been quantum-entangled or what but that doesn't make sense because that only works on micro scale but i have no idea what happened and it's all weird and i would rather not tell anybody about it until i figure out what happened but i can't just pretend i don't know her at all because it's really obvious that we look and act uncannily similar and that would raise even more questions probably and that's even before getting into the weird mental connection.'
Also, that's really wordy.
Venus sets her drink down, since she's not going to be able to drink while talking through this.
"Special case is, well...first of all, you know how people have names, right?" Yeah. Lots of people have names. "So the Buttercup thing worked by basically attacking your name, especially the names of humans and humanlike people. But, the thing is, where I come from, just having a name, especially a name that was given by someone else, is incredibly unusual: I have eight myself, and a way to defend myself from my name changing, but no way to defend against magic or mind control or anything else that was involved that other people seem to be able to defend myself. Not to mention what a name is is so fundamentally different that it took me months to wrap my head around how names are used here, and it seems this sort of thing half-depends on how you perceive things and how you think things should work." That was a long sentence/thought; she takes a deep breath and picks up her drink again. "Too long; didn't read, for various reasons, it just didn't affect me the same way it affected everyone else."
She drinks. Almost gone.


[Searching for Jo]

The jaguar is definitely not expecting Fade to always be able to see it.

"Hm?" Carmen turns, looking for what he's talking about. And, eventually, she spots it: the jaguar.

"Oh! Oh." She freezes up and stares at it. "Oh, it's one of those. It's..." She thinks for a bit, partially trying to recall everything about it, and partially trying to decide what's relevant. "Good thing you found it without facing it: It's going to attack as soon as I stop looking at it. But if it sees us approach it or thinks it's in danger, it's going to back up and come back after us in ten or so minutes." So, basically, they have to deal with it regardless.

"If it's not hungry, all we have to do is hurt it enough to make it bleed; otherwise, we'll have to do a lot more. But!" In case he decides to immediately go after it, she quickly and forcefully says that 'but' to catch his attention and say the most important part. "It's also got some, um...psychic powers. Like, telekinesis and pyro stuff and maybe even some mind-reading."

"...I need to keep on staring at it otherwise it's going to attack." She can't approach it, either, or it's going to back up and come back later.