48
New
- Location
- The Internet
[X] Play the most muzak-y track in your extensive song library.
Fortunately for your muzak-less state, you have the solution in your pocket: a phone chock full of music, with at least one or two tracks that would qualify, sort of. Close enough.
You queue one up, set the volume appropriately low, and grin at the startled looks on your companions' faces. Well. On Elias' face; Val's in more implied than anything else. But he's surprisingly emotive for a guy with a scaled mask for a face, he really is. Maybe it's the tentacles? They shift and move rather expressively as well. It could be that, yeah.
"You can't ride an elevator without muzak," you explain, setting aside your thoughts on Val's emotions for the moment. "It just feels wrong."
"Is that the way it was in ancient times?" Val asks eagerly, leaning in toward you a little. "Elevators always played music?" Elias looks, for a split second, very tired. You hope he wasn't expecting you to keep your quasi-time-traveller status a secret or anything; if he was, he never mentioned anything to you about it.
"Yep," you say, popping the P and ignoring Elias's face. He can get over it. "In the really old days there also used to be a guy who pushed the buttons for you. And sometimes a lever. Mostly it was just the same as this, but with muzak." You gesture expansively at the little box you're all standing in--well, relatively little. It could still hold a space marine in power armour with room to spare, which makes it bigger than the box you were stuck in for thirty-eight thousand years. You don't think you're going to be getting over that any time soon. (And why? It was only supposed to hold whatever was in it for one thousand years. Maybe you were a bit hasty in destroying it? ...Nah, there's no need to worry about it now, and any malfunctions are irrelevant because it can never be used against you again.)
"He isn't singing in either High or Low Gothic," Elias comments. It's not a question, but you treat it like one.
"It's Nihongo. My native language. It... I would be surprised if it still existed," you admit. It's a rough thought, but you have no idea if Japan is even still a--a place on Earth at all anymore, much less the language. The idea that any language would have withstood the test of time is laughable; what they call... well, some flavour of Gothic, you guess, has some sounds and structure in common with English, which is a surprise in and of itself.
"Terra used to have thousands of languages," you continue, as the elevator keeps going down. "Some spoken by billions, others by a bare handful. But they were all considered valuable parts of human culture. It's been so long though that I doubt that any are left." Elias and Val exchange a look.
"For better or worse, you are correct," Elias replies. "None of this is remotely familiar; the only human languages for at least the last ten millennia are High and Low Gothic."
"That's a shame," you say, as the song winds down. You switch to the Wii Lobby music afterwards, but that doesn't last long; the elevator door opens with a soft bing, and leads out into a long hall. It's not the hall to the interrogation room; you would recognise that.
Waiting for you there is a space marine who nods, but doesn't otherwise move from his post. Elias breezes right past him, clearly expecting you and Val to follow. For lack of anything more entertaining, you do.
Where Elias leads you to is a big door guarded by more space marines, that opens into a giant holding cell with weapons lining the walls, all pointed inward at the several hundred prisoners all crammed in there. You give a low whistle.
"That's a lot of people to be interrogated," you comment. Several of them flinch. A few glare at you all defiantly, but most just look... resigned. "And you want me to check them all for daemons?" Elias just nods. "Sounds boring. How about I just force any that are here to manifest, exorcise them, and then we can get on with asking questions?"
"You can do that?" Val asks.
"I can do anything I want," you assert with, you think, understandable confidence. "Well, almost anything," you allow after a moment. "Never have figured out how to heal people, so don't ask me. Actually, yeah, I'm doing it, stay close." And then without another word, you stop holding your cursed energy back, and allow everyone here to feel it. Someone close by faints. No daemons app--wait. It's small, and hiding well, but you can see it clearly now, clinging to an old woman. Inside, like the one attached to the governor. You wonder if she knows it, or if she's just as ignorant.
Better err on the side of caution. You teleport in, Infinity pushing the press of people aside, and grab her for an exorcism--and clawed hands lunge for your face. Guess she's not ignorant. She doesn't get anywhere near you, of course, but that seems to be the sign for everyone around you to start screaming, or worse.
One person in close proximity falls to their knees and immediately begins clawing their eyes. Two more faint. The screaming continues, and you have to ignore it for now, because you need to deal with this daemon--which is easy enough, its skull is still human-sized. The skin and shattered bones of the old woman's skull are sloughing away as you reach for it. It tries to bite, and you snap its head in two with a simple expansion of Infinity. It tries to claw you again, letting out a wordless, inhuman shriek before you crush its skull, splattering ichor around your fingers. Everyone else has pressed away from you far enough that they're spared the mess, however temporary.
The screaming doesn't let up, and seems to be directed at you now.
"I'll talk, Lord Inquisitor I'll tell you everything, just get me away from that!" one slightly hysterical man with ink-stained fingers and the look of a fussy bureacrat says, falling to his knees in front of Elias. Your Inquisitorial pal smiles thinly.
"Then we will begin with you." He drags the man up by his collar, and terrified eyes roll in your direction, before looking back to Elias with all the wild hope of a man saved from certain horrible death. You're not sure whether to be offended or not; while you are aware of your own status as a nightmare for cursed spirits and now daemons, you don't much like ordinary people being terrified of you. It's to be expected, on a certain level, especially given what you just did, but it's still... uncomfortable.
You use Infinity to flick already-fading ichor away from your hand.
"Anyone else?" you ask into the room at large. A number of people are still in... less-than-optimal shape, but nobody seems to have been trampled to death, at least.
"I'll talk," a woman, one of the resigned ones says quietly. "On the condition that I get a clean execution, and not... that." Again, she points to you, and yeah, you're definitely offended now.
You regard her from your full height, frowning deeply.
She flinches.
"I stand by my request," she says anyway. "I want a bolter to the head, not a jacked up psyker."
"I will see to it myself," Elias assures her, and shoots you a Look that clearly says don't mess this up for me. Yeah, yeah; you guess if you scaring the prisoners makes interrogation easier, you can live with it. You guess. Elias gestures for her to come forward and she does. She glances at you and shudders--and oddly, does the same at Val. Friendly, cheerful Val. Maybe it's not just you she's afraid of, but anyone associated with Elias? Because she's definitely afraid of him, too...
You have too many questions and not enough answers, and there are just too many social variables here that you have no damned context for, and it's starting to get annoying. It's one thing to consciously choose to flaut all social rules and conventions, and another thing entirely to just be flat-out ignorant of them.
"Val. Handle this one," Elias gesture to the woman. "I'll take this one." He gives the man a little shake. "The rest of these can think about their choices for a little while. Good job, Gojo."
"Naturally," you reply. Elias turns, and begins leading the way out. A new tentacle snakes out of Val's robes, thinner than the two he always has out, and he wraps it around the woman's wrist. She whimpers, but he just tugs her along. Neither prisoner seems particularly happy about their current situation, despite volunteering to talk.
[] Follow Elias and Val, and their prisoners.
[] Chat up one or more of the prisoners; you're not convinced you've found all you can find here.
[] There are two Vorpal Swords right there who might not know about your little tiff with their Librarian; chat them up.
[] Something else? (Write in.)