A Gentle Network

[The gentle brush against the Strangers' minds comes in early evening. It is, as all mental touches are from Fayura, soft and unassuming, much like a polite knock at a door. Once as many minds are connected as she thinks will open the door to her, she speaks.]

I am curious, Strangers, what you would do with the young man who shot and killed Councilwoman Vera.

Many of you come from worlds where there are laws against murder. While we have no such laws here, when a Blood male in a Queen's Territory kills another without cause, she may demand a price from him. Sometimes, that is his own life if he was negligent enough with his temper and sometimes, it's something less.

My trouble is this: if I execute him according to the laws of the Blood, of which he is not one, the Guilds will rouse their people into a furor and attack not only me, but the people of Draega. If I turn him over to the Ebon Council, the Guilds will do much the same, and that will incite the Council to strike back. And if I return him to the Guilds for accolades instead of punishment for taking a life, the Ebon Council will have cause to rip apart the Guilds and anyone in their way to extract from him the price for murdering one of their own.

Were you me, what course would you take? And please try not to shout over each other; this is as many of you as I could reach.

Good morning my fellow voluntary recruits! [Wow, that's a whole lot of sarcasm packed into one sentence.]

Now that things aren't blowing up and people aren't getting murdered left and right, I was hoping I might be able to ask some questions of some of you all, 'specially those who've been here a bit. [The sarcasm is gone, replaced by a sort of guarded interest.]

My name's Alex and while I got the whole orientation thing when I got here, it's pretty obvious there's way more going on than they said. I'm not opposed to helping or anything, I just want to make sure the right people are getting helped. [A snort of humorless laughter] Then again, I suppose everyone always thinks they're the 'right' people. Guess I'll just have to use my own judgement like always.

But I need information. I know some of you have been here a while and I'm hoping some of you might be willing to share some of what you've noticed around here. What's really going on and such. There's a lot of moving parts and I really don't wanna get caught up in something without knowing it.

Thanks in advance. And I'll be sure to share anything I'll find out too. I think we Strangers are going to have to stick together.

[Peter looks...high up in his far-caster video. God knows where he is in the city right now, but it's definitely not at ground level.]

[He's still not sure about how he's decided to deal with his secret identity here. It feels like he's playing a dangerous game allowing people to see him without the mask, and just hiding his name, but with such a small group, it'd be exhausting trying to keep the identities apart. If he was just a guy hiding himself in a big city, it'd be one thing, but it's the other Strangers he has to work with. It's not a big team.]

[So he shows his face and if a few people connect his voice to that weird guy in the spider jim-jams he's not going to deny it. Bare minimum, they're probably going to notice that said face was nowhere to be seen anywhere during the fires.]

Anybody else notice how some places in the city are exuding an aura of bloodshed and pure evil? Just me? It might just be me. I don't know how many of you have gotten close to some of them.

[In his aerial exploration of the city, he'd passed over or past a few areas that had just...felt bad. He'd made sure not to land on the roofs or linger long; who knew what security they had.]

Food's not the worst, I've noticed. [He bites into a Frankenstein approximation of a hot dog and keeps talking with his mouth full.] There was a sausage vendor in the bazaar that makes some decent brats. A few people watched me combine one with a roll, some ketchup-like stuff, and some relish - think I blew a few minds. If pizza doesn't exist here, I'm going to see if I can talk someone into inventing that next.

[Just casually reporting on the food, because clearly that's important.]

[He segues into what's actually important without much of a segue at all.]

I also don't know how many people heard, but two of the queen's guys were talking, loudly, after the fire. Yada yada Queen was hurt - maybe bringing us in - blah blah she might have lied about eventually sending us home. We should maybe talk about that? And the fact that we're strangers here - hence our nifty little built-in magical superteam name that none of us actually agreed to.

As we all know, this world is a garbage fire [he feels secure in calling it such, being one himself] and the city occasionally is on normal fire, and that means even the people that want to fix it like the Queen might be willing to completely screw us to do it. So instead of being reactive, we need to be proactive.

[He looks like he feels a little stupid pulling a "go teamwork," and that's because short of the other spiders he's never actually had many other superheroes to do any teamwork with.]

We have to try to help this place in whatever way's best for everyone but we're going to have different people pushing their own agendas. So we need to cooperate. Pump as many sides for intel as we can, share information, and try to get a spin-free picture of everything that's happening. And also watch out for our own butts, because nobody else is going to. [He gestures with the hot dog.] We should maybe be low-key about it. It's more useful to us if everyone else thinks we're an uncoordinated and easily-manipulateable group of stooges that can be nudged around the board. Element of surprise and all.

[It probably doesn't sound that illogical but the man it's coming from doesn't really seem like someone who knows what he's doing. Starting off with a report on the food options, getting relish on your shirt, and not noticing the ketchup at the corner of your mouth tends to damage your credibility when public speaking to a group.]

I'm Ben, by the way. Ben Reilly.

[ooc: set after the fire and the tdm, but before Fayura's open.]