Raiders Renewed - MO - Prisoners

[Kyt]

Anastasia.

Yuki had been the first one of the group to ever meet her. She hadn't liked her from the get-go, solely from jealousy over the attention to Aloe. If she' only known, then....

Seeing her in the cell, looking like nothing had touched her. Practically in a luxury apartment, at least in comparison. Yuki's ears slowly flattened. The remnants of unsettledness after Demandred were burned away in a roiling anger that had her clenching her fists as she stood behind the others.

Thankfully, she'd had a lifetime of practice repressing her emotions, so that was all she did, keeping back her thoughts, some of which included a few insults that probably would have made Aloe proud.

[Aidan]

Aidan growled under his breath and turned away from the guard to face Anastasia. "Well. It looks like you won't be lacking in luxuries any time soon. Which is far more than you deserve. I can understand Demandred... I don't agree with him, but I can understand him. But you..."

Aidan shook his head. "I don't get it. You worked in the background for so long, gathering power, manipulating everyone and everything you could, to... bring an end to everything you did? That's what you said back on the the Dreadnought. You wanted to suppress magic and the metagene because it was the source of the world's problems?"


Anastasia arched an eyebrow at Damien, her eyes roving past him, to Eden, to Yuki... settling, for a moment, before drifting back to Aidan. She clasped her hands behind her back and tilted her head, listening, nodding slightly.

"Mm... Well, when you put it like that, I suppose it sounds rather incredulous, doesn't it?"

[Resonance]

Aidan had a good point, Ana’s actions appeared on the surface as contradictory. Her tail curled with curiosity and she raised a brow at her response.


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[Kyt]

She knew Anastasia was perceptive. When her gaze passed over Yuki, the fox made no effort to hide the anger and loathing she felt.

Aidan questioned her motives, and Yuki rolled her eyes at the response. "Hai, you are a genius whose plan no one could fathom. Just...tell us or don't." She rubbed between her eyes for a moment, struggling with her fluctuating emotions.

[Aidan]

Anastasia pursed her lips. She drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly before speaking again.

"Though it may be hard to believe, I was honest in my motivation. The things that we can do go against the natural order of the world, and inevitably leads to conflict. The most devastating conflicts in Mobian history have been due to the use of magic. Tolarian history alone is filled with potent examples, from the Imprisoning War, to the Void War, to... well, one has only to look back over the last fifty years to see the kind of recursive loops we are all stuck in."

Her expression grew more serious, the condescension slowly fading from her voice as she looked off to the side. "Arcanists seeking to expand their power. Demons looking to conquer kingdoms. Metaterrorists waging war against the 'ungifted.' Interplanar militaries looking to build empires across dimensions. It never ends. It never ends."

She turned her face back to the Raiders and real anger flickered across her face. "Again and again and again, and the only way anyone has found to keep these forces in check is through the use of greater force. And the use of greater force begets retaliation of even greater force. And so on, and so on. The only way to truly end the cycle of escalation is to strip everyone of their power, and force them all to meet on even grounds."

[Uberwulf X]

"Or, as the daughter of one of the strongest mages in history, and one of the most loathed villains in at least recent history, you can loudly and clearly declare that you'll step away from your heritage of magic and control, wanting to be the first extremely powerful and well-connected metamobian not tied to any organization to pointedly be a bridge between metas and non." There had to be a better name for non-metamobians, for that very moniker implied that they were lacking.

"Bullets work really well against metas without shielding powers, and dampeners work on all metas. There's definitely a way for ur-Mobians--" (Hmm, maybe?) "-- and metas to figure it out together. I'd joke and sigh that I'd be the bridge instead, but I'm clearly a Raider and already tainted by TRIumph." He whistled. "Missed opportunities all around, huh?"

[Resonance]

"Your argument is naive if you think there is only deadly world altering conflict due to meta abilities. Even if they did not have those abilities, those seeking power would use other weapons. Wars will still be waged with guns, missles, and the next most deadly desctructive device people invent. And when it comes to war, there is no 'even ground', as you put it. Those with more money and less morality win the war. It is not the fault of metas that there is so much conflict and strife, there will always be conflict and strife until we create a society that can move past it." Eden shook her head with dissapointment. "And the notion that metas are not natural... where did this belief come from? Everything is 'natural'. Even a mutation is a thing that happens regularly in all of nature. And magic has existed since the dawn of time, even if it has not always been accessible. I really cannot understand your argument."

[Kyt]

Yuki's brows furrowed as she stared in disbelief. "You think that taking away magic will stop the world-ending stuff? Technology can be just as dangerous....if not more so, since it allows anyone to learn how to use it."

The fox shook her head. "And who is to say that what you had planned would not take the magic from only here? We've been to other worlds, what happens when something that wasn't suppressed comes to invade?" She gave a shiver, eyes going glassy for a moment at the thought of the Eldrazi.

[Aidan]

Anastasia rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, as though searching for the strength to explain something she found obvious, and then turned to fully face the Raiders.

"I know you've studied magic with excellent tutors. You should know, then, that at its most fundamental, magic is about imposing one's will upon the world - changing what is naturally occurring and defined into something that is not. Transmuting one element into another, conjuring fire out of thin air, gathering the fundamental powers that give substance to reality into beach balls to lob at one another. Magic is not natural - it is, by it's natural, about imposing the unnatural.

"What makes it even more dangerous," she said, approaching the glass, "is that is remarkably easy to use, due to a common genetic mutation. That is why comparing it to the danger posed by technology is irrelevant. It is not easy to build a weapon of mass destruction, and yet you have Vulcan, or the prophet, or whatever he calls himself. You need power and authority to raise an army, and yet consider how dangerous any five of you Raiders are when gathered together. Any one of you," she added, turning her gaze to Damien.

"How, then, should one handle such dangers? Advocate for equality and responsible use, and simply hope the next Shadow, or Hannibal, or Vulcan will make better decisions? Or leave it to people like Amadeus Crosp, to enforce laws that regulate and punish those simply born different? Or perhaps follow Demandred's lead and raise up the meta in the hopes they will regulate themselves?

"Or perhaps do as the Raiders do - abstain from any meaningful change and step in to bring down buildings and rain down airships when things get out of hand? In the light of all that, the decision to simply remove the source of such contention isn't as crazy as it seems."


Aidan listened. He had gotten better at that, over the years, although he would never say it came easily, or that he was especially good at it. He had listened to Demandred, and he listened to Anastasia, in the hopes of understanding what motivated them. Neither of them were crazy, in the traditional sense. There was a certain ruthless logic in their arguments - as well as glaring flaws. Demandred couldn't bring himself to see all Mobians as equals, couldn't move past his trauma to see that there was good in the world. Anastasia...

Anastasia, to Aidan's surprise, had sought power to remove power. To make everyone equal - or as equal as they could be. She didn't seem to want to rule, or control. In her flickers of anger, he could see genuine rage at... something. And knowing how frought her relationship with her mother was, and who her father was, he thought he might understand.

"No one asked for you to do the things you did," he said. "No one forced you to make those decisions. You chose to set yourself against the world, to alienate anyone and everyone, to get what you wanted. You determined what was best for the world and ignored, punished, and hurt anyone who disagreed with you. Instead of... of asking for help, or reaching out to find a way that didn't hurt so many people, you decided to be reckless and violent with your ambitions.

"Maybe you set out with a noble goal in mind, but nothing about what you've done was noble, or in the interests of the world. At the end of the day, it was just to serve your own agenda, your own ends. And the ends never justify the means - not when real lives are on the line."

[Uberwulf X]

Damien folded his arms as Anastasia explained, but despite it being a traditionally "closed-off" stance, it was more because he needed something to do with his arms. The claw of one hand lightly scratched the elbow of the opposite arm. He listened and worked to empathize. He could understand, thought he didn't agree with the specifics of, Demandred's wish to have the previously maligned group have their time at the top. Along the same vein, he understood Anastasia's wish to have everyone on the same playing field, to prevent Mobian-made cataclysms. Heck, the look to him wasn't missed.

"I want to believe that you started out wanting what you said. The problem was that you were pretty short sighted, not recognizing that by putting everyone on Tolaria on the same field-- by taking away literal magical power, you take away our figurative power to defend ourselves. This island, this world isn't everything there is. There are beings and events and spaces way outside of this jail, stuff that would frankly amaze anyone to see, and some of those things would be more than willing to run over us. It's an unfortunate justification, but that's what we have. Just because pills are bitter, doesn't make them not necessary to take."

[Resonance]

Eden's tail flicked, "have you asked yourself, what makes the Raiders the Raiders? What makes Demandred and Vulcan do what they did? Is it magic, or is it a problem within society? Because if it is simply magic, then according to you everyone would abuse it, and that is clearly not the case. What advantages or disadvantages did each group face? What choices did they have to make? The issue is so much more complex than you believe."

[Kyt]

Yuki had been ready to make the point again about outside dangers, when Damien did it for her. She nodded, some of the tension slipping from her shoulders as she didn't have to argue her point. She didn't have more to add to this round, so she just waited to see how Anastasia would try to argue it.

[Aidan]

Anastasia looked bored at their initial comments, but her eyes sharpened and settled on Damien as he said something that echoed something that had been said before.

"This world is all that there is, and magic has brought it to the brink of catastrophe for as far back as history can recall. What are you trying to allude to?"


"It's not an allusion," Aidan said. "It's a fact. There are greater dangers out there, and if you had succeeded, you would have damned us all."

[Uberwulf X]

Damien's mouth opened and hung as he narrowed his eyes at Anastasia. He tried to determine if she was just joking, or--

"Oh my gods, you had no idea," he whispered. His jaw tightened, and his visage was one of pity.

"Ana, I mean this as respectfully as I can: you have no idea how utterly fucked the world would have been, had your plans succeeded. You have to realize that TRIumph, for as long as they've been on Mobius, wasn't even from here. Their commanders were all some kind of dragon, except for the last two that were an alien wolf and a large cat-dragon. Their Project: HALO was the first bid to reopen a gate to space, and it took Mr. Hardrive's sacrifice to make sure they didn't. Their satellites weren't there just to drop heavy magical nukes, they were there to open rifts into other dimensions, past what the old Ring Gates could do since those opened Mobian doors. Melanie from the Dolls, who you may know as Clockwerk-- her expertise is in extraplanar physics, taught by that alien cat-dragon. Her work is why TRIumph was able to open a plane in Downunda with a still-missing stone sword, a remnant of one of Hectapol's children. Their Project: Chaotic Moon, had everything gone as they wanted, would have built off HALO and the world would have had to fight a TRIumph with conservatively twice as much military power; check the tapes and you'll see the size of the first airship they tried to get through."

A sigh, and his voice lowered. "Ana, that's just the flavor of extraplanar threat I know I'm not gonna get in trouble for telling you about, because at least three quarters of that should have been fairly common knowledge, and none of that touches on the stuff we've seen during Convergence. I'm pretty sure we're safe from any sort of TRIumph-style invasion, but the worst thing they've ever done for us all is show how vulnerable we are to stuff just outside of our wheelhouse. I--" Damien shut his eyes briefly before continuing, "we have to gear up to fight another world threat that I'm not too sure would have bothered by your 'no more metas' attack. As it stands, I'm still bothered by what's coming up, but I can say that I say that I have allies who haven't left me when I was at my lowest. But if you effectively wiped my support..."

He shook his head.

"Utterly, unerringly, decidedly: fucked."

[Resonance]

Eden’s tail completely stilled and her mouth opened in utter disbelief that Ana had no idea what was out there. “You… how… how did you not realise there were more worlds and planes than this one… You consorted with demons, but you can’t comprehend the existence of aliens, or extra-planar beings? I… We have living proof and historical records of both of these things!”


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