Logs:Recruitment Drive
| Recruitment Drive | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2025-01-12 << Every war needs its cannon fodder. >> |
| Location
<GEN> Ridgeback Mountains | |
In the city, with its heavy patrolling and its suppression grid, the war has looked very different. The villages do not have a Sentinel on every corner, don't have the Magistrates regularly sweeping for runaways. What they do have is a tangled mess of fear and fighting, some left almost entirely to their own messy devices and other small communities here razed half to the ground on suspicion of harboring Resistance fighters. In this particular village there is no such suspicion -- the humans have been living in comfortable peace remote-enough from the bulk of the violence for some time. The small handful of mutants they have had in their midst are well in hand, a few menial servants for the wealthier families in town and -- this. Mystique -- fully unrecognizable in the muscular dark-skinned form of a highland hunter from the other side of the mountain -- has been watching the sad scrap of a fight in the sad fighting ring. Neither mutant is a trained combatant, one underfed and watery-eyed youngster barely out of his teens whose thick curling horns and hoofed legs could probably be formidable weapons if he had training, experience, anything aside from a panic-scrambling attempt to get away. The other, a much larger heavily-scarred man currently oozing lava from several cracks in his dark skin, does not look like he's taking any pleasure in this -- just trying to get through this and live another day. The townspeople clustered around are cheering, making their bets -- the liberal alcohol flowing through the group is probably helping the mood. Their mood, anyway. Mystique -- though leaning forward, to all appearances intent and eager -- has a veneer of bored disgust layered over her thoughts. << This is what passes for entertainment in this festering backwater. >> Regan is not heavily bothering with an affect of interest, but that's probably fine -- in her guise as a younger apprentice on his Day Off she looks three sheets to the wind already, lolling to the side and nearly spilling her large dark rum. << Couldn't even be bothered to get some real fighters. >> There's admittedly a twinge of disdain here almost-but-not-quite equally directed at the spectators and the very un-martial gladiators. << A cockfight would have more pluck in it. >> << Their options here were probably slim. >> Mystique's lip does not curl as she watches the younger mutant cowering in the ring. Still, there's a hint of sneer in the tone of her mental voice. Somewhere under her words, her mind is straying to an entirely different arena, far more complex and high-tech than this patch of dirt in the mountains; a different set of spectators far more alien altogether. << Even among our kind, most are not built for fighting. >> << Most are not built for anything. Life forges us uses. >> Regan takes another swig of her rum, leaning back where she sits. Her head is rolling over to the side, taking stock of the small patch of town around them, the cheering villagers. She sets her mug down on the ground beside her, rolling her shoulder -- a shrug or a preparatory stretch, it's hard to say. << Or it doesn't. >> Mystique turns her head to the side. The cruel line of smile cutting across her face does not really suit her broad and amiable features. "Oh, there are uses for everyone." Her words, spoken now in her notably not-from-around-here English, are drawing a couple looks now, but not so many as to pull attention away from the sad fight underway. << Every war needs its cannon fodder. >> "Hff." Regan is sitting up now. She doesn't smile -- she's watching the fight, then watching Mystique. Her mental voice is wry, a somewhat tired complaint undergirded with so many years trying to balance the tightrope between Magneto's allure in the mutant imagination and the reality of Erik, capricious and insane and beholden to nothing so much as his own ego. << With a halfway competent general, we'd need fewer. >> << Life forges uses for even the most aggravating of men. >> There's no small amount of humor even in Mystique's weathered exasperation. In the ring, the "fight" is nearly coming to its inevitable close. There's a zap of a cattle prod when the younger mutant tries to flee. Mystique rises fluidly, her borrowed form melting away into blue scales, black-on-black "outfit" of boots and tight leather pants and a tank top. This does get the small crowd's attention, enough that they don't even prod on the fighters when they stop, too, to watch. "{Stay here and die if you will,}" Mystique is fully ignoring the human gawkers, striding over to address the captive mutants, "{Or come with us, and fight for something better.}" Regan is getting slowly to her feet, calm in the sudden spreading turmoil -- clamoring shouts, panic, the "fight"-ring guards reaching to brandish their weaponry at the shapeshifter. She is not even really paying much mind to the people moving to attack Mystique -- that problem will take care of itself. The earth is rumbling around them, cracking opening up to seemingly simply swallow half the audience whole. She is strolling, unhurried, down a strep of steady land between the illusory chasms. "{You may still die.}" Her Genoshan is a little choppier than Mystique's, but intelligible all the same. Her hand turns up, beckoning to the frightened mutants, though when she turns again she is not bothering to see if they follow. "{But it won't be on your knees.}" | |
