video; what's up with those dragons?

[pinksidekicking]

Type: Video
Sender ID: pinksidekicking (Nimona)
To: General Public
Subject: Dragons
Warnings: Only maybe spoilers for Nimona movie

[ Please do not adjust your screens, there is, in fact, a pink gorilla appearing on the network. One who opens their mouth and a somewhat feminine voice comes out of. ]

You know, there are a lot of awesome things about this place. You can have a crew, no one's trying to kill you just because of being different, all the new foods, getting to explore the world, having ample opportunity to use fish and sea puns... breaking things sometimes. [ The gorilla is counting on their fingers. ]

Really, I could go on and on about why I love this world. [ It sounds like there's a- ]

But! You know what really gets me? We can't adopt dragons! Sure, they say "dragons can't be tamed", or "they're just too wild". [ Cue the quotation marks and the eye roll. ] But all I want in this life is a tiny pink mini-me dragon. Who better to try and be a dragon parent than someone who's also a dragon? At least a dragon on occasion.

Come on, you can't keep placing dragons in front of me and expect me to not want to adopt one of my very own! I am literally made to be a dragon parent, watch this!

[ The gorilla is setting up the phone to stand on its own, then steps back several feet before... with a little sparkle of pink magic - turns into a semi-large, equally pink dragon. It's holding out front arms like "ta-dah"! ]

Dragon parent Nimona!

Comments

permavideo;

[pinksidekicking]

[ The dragon huffs at the first part of his answer. ]

Maybe I'm the perfect individual to parent a dragon. Something, something, teaching responsibility, etcetera.

[ She changes back into person-shape to pick up her phone again. ]

Is that what happens in your world? [ See the disgusted and angry face upon her face? Nimona is upset just hearing that. ]

Permavoice!

[yuezun]

It has before. It likely still does. And likely will continue despite efforts to stop it. Dragon bones, skin, muscle, organs... they are all very valuable and rare ingredients. Many dragons that still remain are orphans.

[Shangque had become his closest lieutenant and someone to whom Daqiang could pose questions. But he'd had to be 'saved' from a series of homes where those who took him in, only did so to exploit him.]

It is not a legal practice, but it is also not illegal by technicality. If the guardian of a dragon child decides to pinch a scale off of them every so often and claims it is because the scale was misshapen and a new one should have the chance to grow in... there are few that have the legal power to judge it as anything other than a concerned guardian. Even if it is common knowledge otherwise. And, of course, there are those that simply don't care. Or profit in some manner themselves.

[Though he sounds his usual bored self, he also does not sound like he agrees with those who do those things.]

[pinksidekicking]

If anyone like that shows up from your world, I'm gonna find them and teach them a lesson.

[ She punches the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, making it clear what kind of lesson it will be. ]

Oo, better yet. Let's go find people that already exist like that here!

[yuezun]

[Were he not cursed as he was, he may have taken her up on that offer. As it was, this diversion to the shellphones was mostly to give himself a short break and allow him pull back for a moment. Get perspective while he searched through texts and tomes on the known curses and ritual theory of the current world.]

The people who work at the hot springs on Avaleci may know of rumors and suspect parties in that regard. It would be best to know who you are targeting before running off and doing it.

Try speaking with apothecaries. Those sorts of ingredients find their way to them. If they run an honest business, they may point you to those they suspect are dishonest in their method of procurement.

[pinksidekicking]

[ Nimona shrugs at him not accompanying him, she's used to doing things on her own. Plus, she's well-aware that he doesn't particularly like her. ]

Or, I go undercover and sneak around to find the suspicious people, then bust in and give 'em a good old smackdown.

[ That sounds far more fun than asking around, in her opinion. ]

[yuezun]

It sounds like all you really care about is a fight.

[pinksidekicking]

I just like to wing my plans. Fly by the seat of my pants, it's more exciting that way.

[ Are these secretly puns? Who knows. ]

[yuezun]

Is the goal or the excitement more important to you? You treat so much with such flippancy it is difficult to tell what you consider serious.

[pinksidekicking]

It usually depends on what the goal is. I just don't see why I can't have a little fun and excitement along my way to the goal.

[ Nimona plops down in a chair. ]

So many people are in a rush to get to their goal sometimes, they forget to stop and look around them or enjoy themselves. And sure, there are some goals where you should have hyperfocused seriousness for - like, you know, saving someone's life - but if no one's going to die or end up hurt, then why not enjoy it a little bit?

[yuezun]

[He wants to understand that perspective. He really does. But simply can't. He doesn't have the ability. There is no excitement in his life. There has been some... happiness? since coming to this world. A lot of pain. Fear.

Worry.

But excitement was an emotion he didn't know the taste of yet. Would he even recognize it for what it was if he felt it?]

This venerable one does not enjoy anything he does.

[Not really. Not in the way she meant it. Even the happiness he had felt here and there was as fleeting as sand spilling out between fingers. Definitely there for a time. Long enough to feel. But unable to be held onto in any real quantity.]

[pinksidekicking]

[ The fact of the matter is that Nimona doesn't know how long she's going to live, maybe only another thousand years or maybe a lot longer. People she comes to care for are going to die, and leave her alone - if she ever finds anyone back home who actually cares for her in return. ]

See, I don't want to get to be eight thousand years old [ Or older. ] and not remember what it was like to enjoy things, or to let all the bad things in my life drag me down until I've forgotten what excitement and joy is.

[ Maybe that's what happened to him, or maybe that's what she's predicting will happen to her in the future. ]

People back home would either betray me or just wanted me dead, so I stopped getting attached to them and just tried to protect myself in any way that I could.

[yuezun]

[He wasn't sure he'd ever known them to forget them. Not really. He thinks there was joy once. Before his father pushed the Hellfire sword into his hands at the same time he took the cujo ball away. But how real could it have been when it was based in a lie? The lie that his father had loved him. The lie his father stopped caring to keep going once he realized what a useful weapon Qingcang could be... and method of forging him into it.

No. He couldn't have known what real joy was. So he couldn't have forgotten them when the capacity to feel was stripped from him the way one might methodically peel an orange.

It didn't matter, anyway. To want to know and understand was foolish of him. Unimportant. Could only be a distraction.]

Are you a great villain in your world? For so many to betray you and want you dead?

[pinksidekicking]

[ Betrayal, she knows that feeling all too well. Nimona had a friend once, the one friend who accepted her - until someone told that friend to do otherwise. Now, a whole kingdom dedicates their life to killing her. Even children will pick up a sword and point it at her.

It wears on her, to watch innocent children want to stab a sword through her heart. ]

People actually use another word to describe me: "monster". They see what I can do, how I'm different from them, and it scares them. So they turned it into this big thing, a legend where the "hero" defeats the "monster", and tell it to children so that they'll always be afraid of anyone and anything that's different from them.

[yuezun]

It is a way of controlling others who rely too much on emotion.

[The comment is said with a dismissive air, because something else caught his attention more.]

Your abilities are unusual in your world?

[pinksidekicking]

The whole kingdom is brainwashed by those emotions. They even put up these huge walls that keep everyone and everything locked up behind them. People don't even know what's beyond the walls anymore.

[ A small shrug of her shoulders. ]

Looks like I'm one-of-a-kind in at least two worlds. Mine and this one.

[ Others might be able to change their form into something different, but not like her. ]

[yuezun]

Incredibly foolish, then. The whole kingdom. To be so ignorant of what lays outside their walls.

Were you born with your abilities? Were you birthed at all? How did you come into the world... Do you know?

[pinksidekicking]

Right? They feel safe with their walls and their giant laser cannons, as if that's really enough to stop me if I did decide to do the whole big villain story.

[ Can she survive the full concentrated blast from those lasers? The answer is... technically yes. Even if she needs some time to, essentially, pull her primordial spirit back together.

Nimona holds up a hand at the questions. ]

Woah, woah, slow down there. I could feed you the whole spiel that I usually spin for people about why and how I am the way I am, but I'm trying to not lie about it. So I'll just say that that whole part is off-limits for story-time. A dragon has to have some secrets.

[ And he knows that they're secrets, so they're only partially secret. Not lying to him about it. No one knows how or why Nimona got her powers not even the mun. ]

[yuezun]

[She had said she was unique. If she was birthed from a set of parents and not, say, born from the primordial chaos of the world, or from energy that had collected in a lotus for thousands of years, then she may not be as unique as she implied. Only just.

But he didn't care enough to pursue it. He had only be mildly curious. And it held no importance to him. So he let it drop.]

Why do you not conquer them? They sound easily conquered. Then it wouldn't matter if they were afraid of you. They'd still have to serve you.

[pinksidekicking]

[ Nimona has not lied about being the only one, though it's anyone's guess exactly what way that means. Could be she was born this way and those parents died, could be the witch story she tells, could be she was just born from the primordial chaos of the world or something like that. We will never know.

She props her chin up on her hand. ]

Oh man, it would be so easy. One prison break and I pretty much destroyed most of their main building. [ Yes, she is proud of that. ] But... did you ever want like just one person in the whole entire world who wasn't afraid of you, who you could talk to about anything, who you trusted to watch your back from anyone who wanted to stab you?

Guess I can't just get rid of my feelings and have the whole world afraid of me. And I'm not sure that I'd want to be emotionless.

[yuezun]

Without emotions, you wouldn't have the burden of caring about what they wanted. Or that anyone is afraid of you.

[A pause.]

Or that you have no one you could trust.

[He says it softly. And though his tone does not change from it's usual bored air, there is definitely something in it that spoke of wanting someone he could trust the same as she wanted one. And equally... in wanting to not feel the pain of loneliness wanting, and not having, brought.]

[pinksidekicking]

[ She blinks at that. ]

If I didn't have emotions, I'm not sure if I'd have anything to do with myself, then. Like, I'd be a useless lump who only ran off of instincts. I wouldn't want to be happy, or find excitement in anything. I wouldn't be curious or be lonely, so maybe I wouldn't even try to interact with people at all. Maybe I wouldn't have any goals in life.

[ There are some things said that don't apply to Dongfang, but Nimona had essentially grown up in the wild. Had almost no human interaction at all, so if she didn't care about anything, maybe in the wild is where she would have stayed. ]

And sure, it sucks having to deal with the pain, loneliness, fear, sorrow, and all those other negative emotions, but those have help shaped who I am today. I like myself, most of the time.

[yuezun]

Without emotions, you have nothing to distract you from facing challenges with logic. You would only be useless if you let yourself. This venerable one has not had emotions for over 30,000 years and still has a purpose. He is the leader of his people.

[Their weapon.

Their tool.

Tools didn't need emotions to be used.]

[pinksidekicking]

[ A tilt of her head. ]

Were you born without emotions, or did you lose them along the way? [ A pause. ] This is a question with an answer that would honestly change like... so much.

If I didn't have emotions from the start versus, I had them and was able to form goals before losing them.

[yuezun]

This venerable one did not 'lose' them. They were killed at the root. Removed to allow this venerable one to obtain the power necessary to lead his people in revenge against Shuiyuntian and conquer the Three Realms.

[Loyalty to his people was all he could remember for thousands of years. And even that had no emotions attached to it. Just a purpose.]

[pinksidekicking]

I mean, one definition of the word 'lose' is to 'cease to have' so...

[ Tapping her chin thoughtfully. ]

Okay, so saying I lost my emotions back after the very first betrayal. I was young, I was afraid, I'd just sort of set a village on fire after being run out of it.

[ She is genuinely thinking on this. ]

I probably would have run around as whatever I felt like all the time, become the actual monster they claimed I was, never tried to make any friends, never trying to be accepted. Wouldn't have cared who I hurt, or what I destroyed.

[ Nimona points at the screen. ]

Maybe that doesn't sound too bad to you, but remember, you aren't only looking out for yourself. You have your people to consider, to look after their well-being. I didn't have anything like that. I would have only cared about myself. Thought about what is best for me alone. So anyone and everyone would have been a target.