[His heart's not quite in it, but that's not his temp's fault. And while Ben is really bad at following dramas as they unfold on the network, he has a vague sense she might benefit from some cheerful normalcy. That's what he's gonna do.]
Hey, you get me this month, apparently. Thoughts, objections, thrown objects?
[Ben is extremely sure that heroes are dumb. She's good.]
They don't take directions all that well. You'd think getting stuff off
high shelves would be easy, but nah, it goes flying half the time. They
struggle with ,well, concepts that work for humans but not squids.
He doesn't guard a lot of stories closely. Anybody who wants can find out all they want about all the weird shit in his life, sibling drama to world-ending catastrophe (which is actually more sibling drama). But he's picky about dying. "Sending fifteen year olds out and telling them they're heroes is a bad idea. When we won we were extrajudicially executing petty criminals, and when we lost... I'm amazed I'm the only one who didn't make it."
She frowns, aware that he's being vague. She normally doesn't pry, figures the past is the past and everyone has a right to wall theirs off. But if they're permanently paired he'll see everything about her, including the two secrets she hoards. So she persists.
He sighs a little and shrugs. "I'd have a hard time recreating the last little bit. It was... messy. I know one of my brothers thinks he fucked up. Dad weighed him down with the whole team leader thing, another cool move to pull on someone whose facial hair wasn't really working yet. And I'm only as present as I am because another brother's power is 'ghosts.' So I haven't gone to a lot of effort to figure out the details."
"That's a shitty thing to do," she agrees. Leadership in packs is not bestowed by someone else, it's earned, it's taken, it's fought for. And it's often temporary. But putting that on a kid?
"Wait, so you mean it's your other brother that lets you talk to everyone? Or can you only talk to him?"
Ben makes a face. "Only him. Bad system. He was actually here for a while, don't know if you ever ran into Klaus?" With the gap in his own barge tenure he's completely lost track of who did and didn't turn up before. "But that's one topic I didn't mind not getting into with people in general. Dying's gross. Most ghosts never get to leave that moment. I'd rather stay away from it."
"Yeah, the name's familiar, but I don't think I ever got to talk to him. Must be nice being here, though, huh? Everyone sees you, can talk to you." Another ghost question: "You can touch things, right?"
"Oh, yeah, free heartbeat with every warden job offer. I'm basically alive while I'm here." Which explains some of Ben's rather casual attitude to barge politic type issues. Being alive seems like reasonable compensation for anything after being insubstantial so long.
"I do adventures." Dorky ones. "I mean, insofar as a magic cruise ship with a holodeck allows." They're talking a lot about him here, but it's a fair offering. She's stuck and he's not. "And we have art and music and all that good stuff."
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Hey, you get me this month, apparently. Thoughts, objections, thrown objects?
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Hi. Yes. I mean, no, no thoughts or anything. Have- have you done this before?
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Kind of out of practice. Renfield was mine. But yeah, I did my share before that.
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Tess threatened to kill me if she sees me, though, so if I disappear that might be what happened. I'm not too worried though.
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[Mirroring her energy here.]
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[There are a lot of fighters here, but they have little in common when it comes to their roles at home, which is what makes it so interesting to her]
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What]
Say that again? You're the ghost of a...squid?
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Ghost of a...
[sigh]
Super hero. But I kinda got the short straw on powers. One of my brothers can, like, throw buses. I got spooky extradimensional tentacles.
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Nah if it was me, I'd take the tentacles. You can be way more creative with those.
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[Ben is extremely sure that heroes are dumb. She's good.]
They don't take directions all that well. You'd think getting stuff off high shelves would be easy, but nah, it goes flying half the time. They struggle with ,well, concepts that work for humans but not squids.
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It seems roughly fair: inmates are here because of their deaths and wardens get to know why.
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"How did you lose?"
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"Wait, so you mean it's your other brother that lets you talk to everyone? Or can you only talk to him?"
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