Empyrea

[SirBayer]

Arthur nodded at Ro's words. "Santa was not really Santa anymore." Arthur adjusted his glasses. "The Workmen have been nothing but helpful. They've saved me quite a few times, and I don't see that the MADmen have... done any of that. They've never even appeared. We know the Workmen have done good things. Can't say that for the MADmen."  

[SiberDrac]

Alex knew he was being younger than his age. Supposed to be in middle school, and yet he was this upset about Santa. Ton'yell had hit the nail on the head, though - it was of course important that Santa had been killed, but Alex didn't want to be associated with anyone who had killed anyone. It was stupid, here. They didn't know where they were. And besides - it had been Santa. Who could possibly-

And then he saw the picture Andreas held up. It was horrid. Alex visibly cringed, and immediately, the poles in him switched.

SWEET! The MADmen made that?! DUDE. Dude, hell no, YES, we should stick with them! Bat-s**t crazy as hell but they made effin' Freddy Kreuger? Alex, this is the kind of reason you need.

Jesse... I'm not even going to dignify that with an argument.

Alex was not paying attention by the time Andreas started talking about the Easter Bunny. "I'm not a child," he said to Ro quietly. "You don't have to tell me Santa was sick." He had much more appreciated the picture, disgusting or not. "Why..." His thin voice shivered, and he hugged his arms tighter around himself. "It doesn't make any sense. Why would they do that?"

And how do we know they're not lying?

Whose side are you on, Jezebel? Jesse whined.

Shut up, Jesse. Alex, ask the MADmen for their side. I want to hear this.

Alex thought that was a great idea. He looked around Ro at Maria, not waiting for an answer to his first question. "Miss Maria... is that true? Why would you... do that?"  

[Elesariin]

"Because the Dukes are invading, crazy, homicidal maniacs," the girl replied cheerfully without tearing her eyes away from the ghosts, "... Either that, or they beat Shepard one too many times, and he's bitter."  

[Jokerman-EXE]

Shepard rolled his eyes. "Not slick, little one. It's the first option."

Henry, still munching on that sandwich, strode over to the new people, appearing to be interested in their conversation. Mostly, the dark-skinned bassist just wanted to get closer to the woman; he had yet to determine if he wanted to seduce her or not.  

[Isa-sama]

Had Ton'yell been a short-tempered girl, she would have gotten furious and have made a snide comment about how people always seemed to listen to the white person. I ask to get both sides of the story and they ignore me. One word from Alex, and they'll answer him quickly enough. She buried the resentment for the moment - after all, she (at the very least) would be able to get some answers from somebody.

She rubbed her forehead, but froze at the feeling of having something on her shoulder. She looked down at her feet only to find that the bright orange bug was no longer on her foot. And that thing on her shoulder was probably the bug. She yelped and smacked the bug off her shoulder. The bug landed upside down, but eventually got back on its feet and ran straight for her. She kept swiping at it, but it was apparently determined to stay on her shoulder. What, do I smell good? "Won't you please stay off me?" she muttered. Surprisingly, the bug crawled off and decided to remain on her shoe. She supposed it was still afraid of being stepped on.

Ton'yell was watching Maria, waiting for the woman's answer. If she were going to be ignored, well fine. But damnit, she was going to get the story one way or another.  

[Elesariin]

The girl briefly glanced at Shepard and beamed innocently. "Okay! Somebody else was saying that, anyway. You're not bitter," she added thoughtfully, "More sour. Like cranberries! I like cranberries, though," she added earnestly. Without waiting for a response-- and, indeed, what exactly could one say to a deceleration like that?-- she turned her full attention toward Maria, apparently interested in what her response was going to be.  

[NativeForeigner]

Carpenter crouched down and pointed a hand towards Ton'yell to get her attention. He gestured at the beetle, "You know that thing's acidic, right? You don't want to be smacking it around, kid. Besides, it seems like it likes you."

Maria looked shocked at the accusation and almost stuttered, "Why we would never do that, we wouldn't!" she blurted out, "Not directly, at least..." she added more quietly, "We didn't do it on purpose, it was an accident, it was. It wasn't even us, it was the virus, or whatever that thing is. We're trying to cure it."

"Bullshit." Carpenter interjected, standing, "Cure it my a**, you came here and brought that damn sickness with you, spreading it to our people, corrupting our lands, and you try to say that it's not your fault, that you're trying to fix it?"

For the first time, it seemed that Carpenter had lost his calm demeanor.

"We couldn't help that!" Maria retorted, her face getting red with anger, "Our people are sick, we're just trying to help them, we are!"

"Help them how? By invading our land and killing, or doing worse to our people? What purpose does that serve your "cure", kid? Tell me."

"We had no choice but to come to your world! Ours is almost gone for good, there ain't no cure there, but there could be one here!"

"Then why did you bring the damn disease with you? You could have just as well stayed in your own damn world and deal with your own damn problems. But no, kid, you invaded us, hostilely, killed our people, infected our people, ruined our lives, and you still have nothing to show but your sadistic tendencies."

"We didn't want to do that, we didn't! But we had to!"

"You came with a ******** army!"

Tension was most certainly rising the room.  

[Elesariin]

The kid quietly got to her feet; she was no longer smiling. In fact, she looked confused and rather frightened. Walking over to Carpenter, she tugged lightly on his sleeve. "Please stop yelling," she said in an ash soft voice, "It's scary, and I don't think you're helping to clear things up by doing it."  

[NativeForeigner]

Carpenter sighed, the sound echoing quietly around the room, then he took a deep breath (exactly how was never really clear) and knelt down to the child's level. He placed his left hand upon her head and mussed up her hair. He looked at her with kind, and once again calm eyes.

"I'm sorry, kid." he said, "No more yelling."  

[Jokerman-EXE]

"He's right." Shepard stepped forward. "No more yelling. Talk is cheap; like I've always said, it's time for action." He cracked his knuckles and stepped up beside Carpenter, the two of them facing down the two MADmen.

Henry, in the meantime, chuckled to himself at this new turn. And continued to nom his sandvich.  

[SiberDrac]

As soon as the arguing started Chris hurled herself to the surface. Alex twitched almost violently as she did, but his demeanor became rigid and attentive as her analytical ears absorbed every word that was said. She didn't pay much attention to the little girl, not quite ready to trust such a flighty character's observations.

It seemed like... there was still no way to make a real decision. As much as Alex and Jesse were throwing around their opinions and making her head hurt, she knew that she still needed more information to come to a proper conclusion, and she knew that the other two simply were not equipped to make that decision. Well, admittedly, Alex was equipped to, but that was a technicality due to the dissociation.

It seemed like... the Workmen still had the upper hand. An army was not a rational search party for a cure. And Maria had been shocked and lost for words... and she had been talking about playing games earlier. Surely she couldn't be trusted. But Chris knew the value of spinning the truth, and the consequences of hearing it wrong - Carpenter could be just as misguided in his assessment of the situation. Still, Maria's stutter had tipped the balance in Carpenter's favor. Chris needed to ask.

"Why the army, Maria?" Her eyes were locked on the woman. There was no fear - only interest, and analysis. This was Chris's element. "You don't need an army to seek out a cure. Why not a team of scientists? Properly safeguarding against disease spread?" She saw Shepard readying for a fight and hissed at him. "Be civil! I need the whole story!" The fact that Ton'yell had made similar demands and not gotten them simply didn't register with her. Ton'yell was not Chris. Chris got what she wanted.  

[NativeForeigner]

Carpenter hefted the little girl, "Shepard, this is civil ground, you know as well as I do that we shouldn't fight here."
He listened quietly, waiting for Maria's reply.

Maria breathed deeply, still recovering from her verbal assault, "Well..." she began, pausing for words, "We brought an army for a number of reasons, we did. First of all, everyone was sick, there were almost no scientist. And we were entering a strange and new land, we didn't know what kind of dangers would be in here! The disease changed everyone, it did, made them violent, stronger, faster, and so forth, so we, uh made an army outta them and went forth."

She made no move to further explain anything.

Carpenter turned towards Chris, "I told you that you're not going to get the entire story here, kid, we'll just argue with each other about every damn part."  

[Jokerman-EXE]

"So here's what we do, then," Shepard cut in, impatient and exasperated. "We each take one of these hoity-toity pricks and toss them through one of those doors." He threw a thumb at the 9 doors arrayed behind him. "I'll take the pale guy. Anyway, we toss them through, then go after them and beat the snot out of them. We send them and their armies back to wherever they came from, and forget this s**t ever happened."

Martin started. "I do say, that's rubbish! We came to this land with peaceful intentions, only to save our people!" Anticipating the response, he said, "If you would only help us find the cure, we would happily withdraw." A thought struck him. "I do say...if you're as civilized as you say, why do you have a standing army and generals like yourselves? Seems rather...well, contradicting, I daresay."

The room shifted sharply from blaming the MADmen to realization and observation of the Workmen.  

[NativeForeigner]

Carpenter shook his head, "You know that would only work if we teamed up on them separately. Besides, if we could throw their army back we would have long ago. They're too strong, Shepard." he said rather quietly, so only the girl and Shepard could hear.

Carpenter turned to address Martin, "We had an army, there's not much left of it now that you've infected most of them. We had an army to protect ourselves from people like you, we didn't go about invading places that weren't ours." he calmly explained.

Maria laughed curtly, "Now why would you need an army in the first place unless you planned on something like this happening? Or unless you were gonna go invade someplace?"

"Any place that wants to remain safe needs an army, it doesn't always work, though, as you so kindly demonstrated to us."  

[Jokerman-EXE]

"Now now now, here," Martin said, sliding smoothly in. "Let me ask this, though: you've got here a hub of sorts, that leads through to many other worlds. You had an army, you had Generals who were uniquely designed for combat. But why?" He looked down his nose at the Workmen. "It seems to me that you were prepared to lead your own assault."

He looked to the gathered groups of people watching. "We are not the ones at fault here, my friends. We were trying to find a way out of the worst situation, and we stumbled here. Here, where we found an army already waiting for us. These Workmen are trying to case us as the villains here, when that is certainly not the case!"

Shepard was stunned into silence. Henry watched with growing amusement.