🚨G💥A💥L💥O 🚒 T💥H💥Y💥M💥O💥S🚨 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
burningrescue) wrote2020-03-07 09:37 pm
burningrescue) wrote2020-03-07 09:37 pmNHS Catchall
Meme
burningrescue) wrote2020-03-07 09:37 pm
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[Was. He just shrugs slightly, though.]
We're the only ones here from our home, so I have... some responsibility towards him. He'll be a Sect Leader himself someday.
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You did a good job!
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[A little shake of his head, there, but his expression softens.]
He's tried to do the same for me, from what I understand. And you're still trying to help care for all of us, aren't you?
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I'm doing my best! I still have no idea how we managed to solve that, other than Luna.
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[Except oops! Here's a memory coming your way!
Galo is at the base of a massive skyscraper, the tallest building in a city of skyscrapers. The building is the seat of power for Governor Foresight. Security is tight, but Galo is allowed in - the security recognizes him as Promepolis’ young hero, points to the medal he’s wearing pinned to his chest.
Galo sits in the lobby of the building and waits, his mood dark. A man enters, flanked by his assistant, and Galo tells him they need to talk.
The Governor’s office is at the top of the building, looking out over the city far below. Galo lays his medal down on the Governor’s desk.
“You want to return it?” he asks.
“Lio has escaped,” Galo says. “I met him in a mountain cave. He says he escaped from prison.”
The Governor assures Galo that there’s still no need to return the medal he was awarded for Lio’s capture.
“Medals are made to be awarded to and by people who deserve them,” Galo pronounces. “Neither of us are worthy.”
The Governor’s expression hardly changes, but some surprise seems to register as he asks Galo what he means.
“Gov! Is it true that you’re doing human experiments on the Burnish?” Galo is shouting, angry, but when Kray responds with only silence, he flinches, pained and heartbroken. “You’re my hero. You saved me, started the Foresight Foundation, and founded this amazing city. But you’re doing such a horrible thing?”
“Horrible?” Kray asks, still not reacting.
“The Burnish are humans,” Galo says, thinking now of Burnish he’s met, and of Lio, too. “They get hungry, they get sad if they lose a friend. Of course it’s bad if they start fires, but you can just arrest them for that! You can’t kill them for no reason!”
There’s a long silence, before the Governor moves. “I see. Follow me.”
He leads Galo down the elevator, below the building, into a massive underground facility, and there he explains everything to Galo. The magma in the earth’s core has been burning out of control. Within a matter of months, it will overheat, and the planet will be destroyed. The Governor is planning to take an expedition of 10,000 people on a ship to another habitable planet, abandoning the earth. But the only hope for this plan is warp technology, which is powered by the Burnish.
The Governor takes Galo to an underground lab, where he shows an experiment in progress. A young Burnish man, who Galo recognizes as a pizza guy in town, is placed in a machine called a Prometech pod, and spun until he screams and begins to burn. The machine allows some scientists to warp across the room. Kray is pleased - the test was finally a success. The Prometech pods will work. But Galo watches horrified, seeing the pizza guy’s fingers turn to ash. The machine is burning away his life force.
“That’s horrible,” Galo says to himself, but Kray corrects him.
“It’s a valued sacrifice for the survival of mankind. We can’t build the warp engine without the Burnish.”
“There must be some other way,” insists Galo. “If we stop the magma, we won’t need to go to another planet.”
“I’ve considered that, but we can’t stop it with our current technology. Migration’s our best bet.”
“So, you sacrifice the Burnish for that?” Galo is staring at the ground.
“Exactly. Do you understand now?”
“Yeah, I do,” he concedes, still not looking up at him. “But I can’t accept it.”
“Then what will you do,” the Governor asks, for once curious.
Galo clenches his fists, and looks up again with determination in his eyes. “I’ll extinguish earth’s magma!”
Kray smiles, suddenly. It’s the first genuine smile on his face this entire time. “I knew you’d say that,” he laughs, disdainfully, and his security guard presses his gun against Galo’s back. “We’re short of time. Can’t have an idiot making a fuss.”
Galo is staring at him now, in shock ever since he felt the gun. “Why, Gov?” he asks, his voice breaking.
Anger flashes across Kray’s face, and he slams his prosthetic fist into Galo’s stomach, knocking him off his feet with the force of the blow. “Don’t call me Gov.” He stares down at Galo with open hatred. “I’ve always hated it. You’ve always been an eyesore to me!”
The security guards lift Galo off the ground and drag him away. He’s brought to a remote prison cell, and the door is slammed behind him, while he shouts for Kray, or for anyone, to come and let him out. He pounds on the door until he runs out of energy, and then sinks to the ground, crying.
“Why, Kray? You were my hero…”]
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But it isn't too much of a distraction from everything else, and perhaps more than anything else, Nie Huaisang understands betrayal. Especially from someone you've looked up to, someone who was never meant to be like this-- especially when it seems to make no sense at first. There's no clear reason why things should be that way, but suddenly they are, the floor dropped out from underneath.
When that memory ends, he's struck silent for several moments, eyes still a little wide; his expression settles, though, into something more sympathetic. There's no pity there, though.]
-you've been like this with all of us, even though someone like that turned on you...? No one could have blamed you for behaving differently, you know.
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What, one guy turns out to be an asshole, and that means I get to be one, too? Nah. That's him. That's just him.
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[-Because he can't say the same for himself.
The memory starts off normally enough; he's writing letters. Two of them. One to a certain man, and one to his wife. The one to his wife will be sent with someone she trusts, who she's certain to listen to when she reads the truth about what this man has done.
And the one written to the Chief Cultivator, to Jin Guangyao-- this is a provocation.
He won't know that it's from Nie Huaisang, but he will know someone knows what he's done. That within seven days, his crimes will be exposed, and he will be killed-- that everyone will know exactly what he's really like, under the kind act he's put on.
It fooled Huaisang for a while, too. There's a flash of memory within the memory: a short man in yellow robes that match Jin Ling's, placing a hand on his shoulder, talking soothingly to him after Huaisang and his brother have argued again. Bringing him gifts, supporting him-- becoming a shoulder to cry on and a source of help following his brother's death, when an unprepared Nie Huaisang had suddenly been left all alone, and Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen supported his ascent to Sect Leader.
A genius move, he thinks, in retrospect. Install someone useless and give them advice on what to do, knowing they'll surely take it. Jin Guangyao must have thought for the last ten years that he was running the Nie Sect.
He never knew Huaisang well enough, though. Huaisang is too good an actor for him to have known. He's continued to cry on Guangyao's shoulder, to call him 'brother' while concealing exactly how much he wants the man dead, ever since he realized his brother's death wasn't an accident at all. To think Guangyao had the face to console him, to support him, with Nie Mingjue's blood on his hands-
His grip tightens too much on the pen, and Nie Huaisang sighs, finishing up and sealing his letters, turning to the caged bird he keeps in his room. "I think this should force him to act, don't you?" he asks, and it chirps words in return: I don't know! I really don't know!
He doesn't know just what the results will be yet, either, but-- it's time to put everything into motion. Jin Guangyao shouldn't survive; if Huaisang is lucky, he won't go down with him.
But he's prepared to.]
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[It's. Hard for him to follow all of the political details in this. But he gets the gist of it.]
He pretended to be your friend all that time, even though . . . your brother. . .?
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...he made it look like it was something else. Nobody-- no one else knew. They've all trusted him.
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[Like. He was betrayed and still wants to trust people, but he still gets it.]
It's definitely way harder to trust people after something like that happened, right? Every time, I always think to myself, am I just being a big idiot again?
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[His brow furrows, a little.]
He wouldn't suspect me, but if anyone got too close and slipped-- he removed anyone he thought was a threat.
[Better not to risk anyone else, then, or risk them tipping his hand.]