Welcome to Gaia! ::

When she was a child, Elaine had once had a cat that would, during lightning storms, puff up into a perfect sphere and proceed to shock anyone that dared touch it, as if it had intentionally been shuffling its paws over shag carpet.

Taking to the streets as Joy, she felt like that cat - not simply because of the recent and more literal events, but also because of a growing disquiet. Some of it was probably fed by her troubled thoughts of late and her nascent United Theory of Everything Cosmic Bullshit, but some of it was more difficult to place - some nebulous restlessness, and the sensation that she was somehow accruing a static spark that might burst forth in a nasty way if someone had the temerity to test her.

It hadn't, yet. But it made her feel as if she had an incipient dangerousness in her. She remembered both Hy-Brasil and Gouvernail warning her not to be reckless. Given the opportunity to do it, she might rebel against it violently - or she might, for once, consider the advice she had been given, and act with caution.

It turned out to be the latter. That whole United Theory of Everything Cosmic Bullshit had some gaps in it, and she was unhappily realizing that the only way to fill it would be to ask questions of people who might not be eager to answer her.

It took her a moment to recognize that she had seen the Negaverse agent before, and a moment later to realize that the delay in recognition was because she had decidedly changed. She slowed her steps, reaching for the silver whistle in case this went tits up, and paused far enough way to either dodge or bolt, depending on what came next.

"Getting a bit long in the tooth," she called out. And then, almost to her own surprise, she spread her hands in an appeasing gesture, wariness in every line of her posture. "I won't kick you in the ribs if you don't throw a drink at me," she said.

She realized, absently, that some of the Negaverse agents she had seen had looked terribly, terribly young, and she thought of a certain seven-year-old boy handed off to train as a soldier, and felt a pang that she tried to ignore.

"I'd say I'm watching my figure," she said, "but I'm pretty sure you're not offering me anything sweet." And then, generously: "But nice punchline."

Joy's arrogance was not incompatible with recognizing when being humble would be a good play, and as she had with Grieve, she adopted a tone of cheerful humility.

"Seems like you could probably kick my a** now if you wanted to anyway. I'm not looking to get my a** kicked. I just wanna talk." And then, with a momentary lapse of judgment born of her distracted thoughts: "How old are you? Never mind. You're probably not allowed to say."

She did not respond immediately to Brassite's answer, instead giving her a look that seemed more like it might result in an abrupt cascade of tears than anything else. But she recovered herself, attempting to bounce back to her previous state of cheerful wariness, even if the joy of making a shitty pun eluded her.

She did not lecture. But perhaps she was thinking of it.

"Why?" She asked at last. "Why that?" She pointed vaguely at Brassite, her uniform, her weapon encompassed in the gesture. And then she added, with quick soothing: "I'm not sitting on a high horse. Not yet anyway. Maybe the high horse is coming. I didn't ask for any of this s**t, God just recruited me or something and I haven't figured out how to burn my draft card."

"That's a good ******** reason," she said, with fervent sincerity. "That's probably the best reason. One of the only things I've liked about this entire thing is the idea that if I see a guy beating up on some girl I can actually do something about it instead of standing around hoping someone else puts their foot in eventually and knowing no one will."

She paused. "Pay and healthcare would be nice, too. No deep pockets for us. Probably should be." She fidgeted with the ribbon around her hand restlessly.

And then, carefully: "What about your bosses? Making the world a better place too?"

This sort of conversational wheeling was not Joy's strong suit. She was too honest for it. But she made an attempt, anyway, struggling to sort out a way to phrase her questions that wasn't outright hostile.

"I don't think ours have senses of humor," she said, thinking fleetingly of Gouvernail and realizing that she had internalized the idea of the Code as being in the same sort of mold, except possibly even worse. "I don't know if they have money, either, but if they do they're being like the usual rich people and sitting on a pile of it without sharing it around."

This, too, was pretty in keeping with what little she knew of Gouvernail's pre-recruitment history. But it was a little hard to try and hold modern economic and political theory against the youngest son of a rich man during the era of the feudal serf.

It's not like it had done him any good, either.

"Can you - can you tell me how they make the world better?" she asked, after a tentative hesitation. "I mean - on the big picture. I got thrown into this and told it was imperative I fight, but I don't even know what I'm fighting, really."

This was only partially true, and she inwardly cringed from it. She knew enough to firmly feel that she was on the correct side, at least - the side not yanking starseeds from random civilians (as far as she knew) was a low bar to clear. But it was true enough for the purpose.

She paused, but fair was in fact fair. She had gathered enough to understand why she was asking, and had in fact been feeling a sense of creeping unease about what she'd find, when she returned to the Garde.

"I don't know," she said, distractedly. "I went before it happened and I can't get back as much as I'd like." Her words caught up to her, and she made an expressive face. "Not that I want to get back that often - sitting around in a dead ruin on a dead river with a dead guy who gets pissed and yells at me every time I try to, as you put it, work on the small picture world. Which is all I'm doing," she added, defensively. "I didn't sign up to be a pawn for a stupid game between a bunch of cosmic gods, or whatever."

She sighed, looking a bit slumped. "I go back soon," she said. "If I see you around, I'll let you know what the weather's like over on--"

She paused.

"--my wonder," she finished cautiously.

This was probably not treasonous - and furthermore, Joy had the sense to realize that not everyone was observing the faction lines with rigor.