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<td valign="top">[[Image:MoA Echo.png|left]]'''Moment of Awesome - [[Maya Lincoln-Lopez|Maya Lincoln-Lopez/Echo]] :''' ''[http://x-logs.livejournal.com/3943837.html Exchanging thoughts on life and how to get through it], Maya's powers interact badly with [[Stepford Cuckoos|Fourteen's]] multiplicity.''
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<td valign="top">[[Image:MoA Echo.png|left]]'''Moment of Awesome - [[Maya Lincoln-Lopez|Maya Lincoln-Lopez/Echo]] :''' ''[https://xp-logs.dreamwidth.org/3883076.html Exchanging thoughts on life and how to get through it], Maya's powers interact badly with [[Stepford Cuckoos|Fourteen's]] multiplicity.''
  
  

Revision as of 14:59, 7 September 2019

MoA Echo.png
Moment of Awesome - Maya Lincoln-Lopez/Echo : Exchanging thoughts on life and how to get through it, Maya's powers interact badly with Fourteen's multiplicity.


Despite herself, Fourteen hid her amusement well. "You don't handle setbacks well, do you?" Not that 14 could really speak, if she were being honest.

“No,” Maya said, eyebrows raised as her arms loosened slightly, the gentle pressure of the spirit of the woods calming her irritation. “Why should I?”

Sophie began to leisurely pace around the edge of the small clearing they'd found themselves in. "Depends on who you ask, really. Because it's expected? Because it's a marker of maturity? Personally, I don't care either way, but you have to know the rules before you can play the system."

Something on the edge of her senses twinged her telepathic net. A mind flitted just on the edge of what she could sense, darting deeper into the forest.

“What makes you think I don’t know the rules?” Maya questioned, unhooking her arms from their fold and sliding down the tree to lean against it with her hands now on her knees. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in the forest. “Besides, maturity according to who? Some adult who thinks they know everything about you or a society who barely functions it’s so weighed down by its own privilege and lack of any actual desire for change? Did you know that we’ve known about Climate change since the 60’s and nobody gave enough of a care to do anything about it, and still don’t. Why the heck should I care about anything those type of people say about maturity? Anyway, doing what’s expected just means people know they’ve got control of you.”

"No," Celeste shot back as Sophie continued to track the mind of what she presumed was the fox. "Doing what's expected means people think they have control over you. People trust what they understand and destroy what they don't. They get so wrapped up in their safe little worlds that they refuse to dig below the surface when everything looks like it should because they're comforted by the normalcy. Standing and raging against the machine just means you're the nail that gets the hammer."

“What does it matter if you’re just doing what they want anyway?” Maya asked, genuinely curious now. Most people in the mansion weren’t willing to have an actual debate with her, too busy concentrating on her delivery rather than her actual words. “Whether they only think they have control over you, or actually have control, you’re still trapped in their expectations either way. I’d rather be a nail and have to work at avoiding the hammer than just be a slave who only thinks I’m free.”

"So instead, all you're doing is sacrificing the power that comes with social acceptance in the hope that others will do so as well to form a group of power for change, rather than manipulating your way into more power that you can then leverage on your own without relying on others. People let you down when it matters. If it's something you care about, the only person you can rely on is yourself."

“That’s true but power is a trap anyway,” Maya noted, feeling a headache growing at the back of her skull, she needed to move, standing still was making her twitchy as hell. “I don’t want power over others and I’d rather simply go off grid; than stick around on only the possibility that I could change something if someone else tried to control me. If you can’t be honest and have people care and make a change, than what’s the point?”

"The point is that you'll never get anything you want, like that." She tweaked the fox's natural instincts ever so slightly and was rewarded as it abruptly changed paths, now headed directly towards their little clearing. It was ultimately a simple trick, learned over several misspent summers of her youths. Suppress a few learned behaviours, send an instinct or two into overdrive, and the fox danced to her tune. She turned back to the younger girl, who she was quickly growing to actually tolerate. "You'll settle. Take whatever scraps the world deigns to give you. The world doesn't care about you. It doesn't care about anyone. What it gives you may be what you want. Odds are, it won't be."

The fox they'd been chasing burst from the low brush into the clearing. Celeste crouched down, letting the fox approach. "Can you really be happy," she asked, slowly petting the fox, "to live a life like that?"

“You’re very invested in my coming to see your point of view,” Maya noted idly as looked at the blood slowly dripping onto her shirt from her nose. That was not normal, nor was the pain trying to spear its way through her head right now. “I…” Maya would have finished that sentence, probably brilliantly according to her but the fact that she’d just collapsed and passed out cut off any brilliance that might have been forthcoming.

Huh. 14 let the fox go, and (free from her influence) it darted into the brush and disappeared. She had something far more interesting to focus on now, anyway. This was only the... third time she'd managed to debate someone into an aneurysm, after all. It was still a novel experience.