PC: Tama 💀

[resumed]

Comments

[resumed]

[ ohhhh my god he's not even sure what he wants to ask about first, if it's about the shoe thing or this ip thing. give him a second to shake his head as if that'll help him comprehend things.

he gets it. he does understand what she's saying but that's still kind of ominous to him. ]

Do you do this a lot back where you're from?

[ballies]

If someone’s committed a crime, it’s kinda… standard that you can look this stuff up. There’s red tape and steps to work around before you act on what you find, because of course there is. [ except if you work in ABIS, but details. ]

That’s modern day law enforcement. If the crimes are online, you have to track them online.

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[ he's nodding along... ]

We don't really deal a lot with law enforcement where I'm from. Unless we're running from them but that's different. We mostly take care of ourselves and solve our own problems.

[ballies]

[ she tilts her head. ]

... I'm surprised you're allowed to do that.

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[ ... ]

I guess it's more like...other people still have law enforcement to keep them in line. We still have police and firefighters and everything. Our problems are a little more...unique?

[ law enforcement is for mortals. ]

[ballies]

[ she just tilts her head at him. ]

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[ he mimics the motion. ]

...even if there aren't newspaper archives here, there's probably a newsroom somewhere. Maybe there's information there?

[ DON'T JUST IGNORE WHAT YOU WERE SAYING. ]

[ballies]

... No, rewind a moment. Other people?

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Yeah. You know. [ uh... ] People who can't defend themselves?

[ballies]

...

Those are normally the people law enforcement is trying to protect. Normally. Some parts of it suck.

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Right, which is what I mean. Other people rely on law enforcement for their safety. There isn't much they can do for people like us.

[ballies]

... there's the "people like us" again.

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[ ...hm... ]

Tama, if someone called the police because a manticore was chasing them, what do you think would happen?

[ballies]

... They'd probably think you were drunk. Or high?

[ excuse me, a manTICORE? ]

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[ haha. ]

I was ten and he was posing as the vice principal of the military school I was at.

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... Doesn't a manticore have the body of a lion?

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And the tail of a scorpion. [ yes. ]

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I'm almost impressed they hid that.

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Mortals can't see through the Mist, so he looked like a regular person to everyone else.

[ normally he wouldn't be as candid about it, but it's obvious to him tama is going to have questions. ]

[ballies]

[ mist…. ]

Yikes. You could be shaking hands with a manticore and not know it….

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That's how it is for most mortals. All kinds of monsters and items appear differently than they do to people like us because it's what their minds can accept. The Mist makes it so that things like swords look like baseball bats. Or monstrous birds look like regular park pigeons.

[ballies]

So you just get a bunch of weird, unsolvable murders and it’s because literal mythology crawled out of the woodwork and went on a rampage?

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Well no, we kind of are there to prevent people from dying in the first place as best as we can. And it's not like they crawled out of anywhere. They've sort of always been around. When the gods moved with civilization, so did everything else.

[ and so now it's a global thing. ]

[ballies]

… So, gods and mythological creatures stopped living on mountains and got wifi, and that made them everyone’s problem?

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Mount Olympus is at the top of the Empire State Building. [ yeah. ] And we try not to really use technology because it makes it that much easier for monsters to track us. But otherwise yeah the gods have continued living and where there's gods there's monsters, other beings who keep trying to overthrow the gods and reclaim the world, and...the children of the gods.