truth_is_cold

[Private to the Admiral | Audio]

[Ugh, he doesn't want to do this.] Return Mariska's duplication ability at one half strength.

[Public | Audio]

[He's feeling a little terse.] I have returned Mariska's duplication ability at one-half strength, with the understanding she will only use it in self-defense. [Yes, he is very unsure about this.] If she doesn't use them in this way, she is aware there will be consequences. [Both in losing her abilities and people defending themselves.] This will allow her to produce four copies of herself that she remains in communal contact with. If she is attacked for no reason, I will defend her.

[And he's out. Because he has to go scrub his face like that would remove the memory of her breathing in it. He has a feeling he's going to have to go kidnap a legitimate genesmith from his universe and figure out a way to save that baby himself.]

[Private to Castiel, Buffy, Dracula, and Dean]

[And he comes back to add...]

I would like to speak to you if you would be willing. I admit to being hesitant to return any of her abilities. I am out of my realm of expertise, but I know that I need to give her the chance to behave responsibly with her abilities rather than jump to any conclusions.

However, if something does happen, I would like to be prepared. She's susceptible to head shots, and her bite is currently not infectious.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She won't be hungry, however she's suggested she has the intention of provoking people into violence against her and she feels that she is doing people a favor by turning them into one of her kind.

She has nowhere near your sense of decorum, even back when you were newly arrived.

Those are not good signs. I will keep an eye out for trouble with her. And with Steve Newlin, who apparently is a liar of the first order, young, and impulsive.

Something about him made me apprehensive. [It was the adamantly religious thing, though.] I will keep that in mind.

I am going to try and mitigate any potential problems. Even if he is a liar from a questionable background he is a young vampire and he has a need for community and support. I won't condemn him before the fact, but...be wary.

In my universe, there is a race that I have mentioned. They are the Magog. They eat sentient beings, invading whole worlds and devastating their populations. They reproduce through rape, infesting unwilling living sentients and then their progeny devour their way out. The first planets they attacked and destroyed when entering the Known Worlds were ones settle by my people.

But among this race, there was a Magog who infested a monk. This monk taught him the ways of the Saints. Most religions by that time had become a uniform fixture, and he taught him about the iconic figures of Buddha, Jesus, and the Divine and the Way.

Wayism was started by Magog that wanted to live with others in the universe. A Magog in monk's clothing can almost undoubtedly be trusted as safe, or as having great restraint. Magog aren't given to lying or deception, anyway, so they find strength in their religion rather than use it against anyone. Even as what they are, they still represent it well.

I knew a Wayist and he was a good man. If you've not noticed, I've been careful not to attack someone who has yet to do anything to me or mine. Mostly thanks to the Wayist I knew, as there's nothing I despise more [or he's more bone-quakingly afraid of] than the Magog.

A story you might want to keep in mind when talking with Mr. Newlin.

[He listens quietly, and gradually his expression becomes one of mild horror and grief. He pities these beings even as he despises their actions. But...at least some of them seem to have found a way of becoming...different.]

It is my ambition to lead my people, and as many of other bloodlines as will listen, in the pursuit of a higher form of vampiric existence. I have hope that both he and Willow will eventually embrace such a path. But I suspect they're both quite a ways off from that.

And now I understand the depth of tolerance you showed when I was wounded and you led me down to the blood stores. I am in your debt.

I believe very strongly that an organism capable of deeply contemplating its future should have the ability to choose how its body should enter that future.

I'm... unsure of how to approach my current inmate, and I doubt she will take my claims in earnest.

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