Second Echo

[echo_of_a_jedi]

[Video]

[The COMP video shows Meetra in the same 'meditative' position on her bed that she took the first time she posted here, but with her expression far more grave...even a little afraid. She takes a deep breath before speaking.]

For the last day or two, I've felt...I don't know what I've felt. All I can call it is a disturbance in the Force, as if some great danger were right around the corner. I don't want to alarm anyone, but please be careful. If anyone needs any help or protection, I've awoken my Persona and I can fight, so don't hesitate to call me for help. Until then, I'll just be...in my room...meditating on what the threat could be. I really haven't felt something like this in years...

[It's clear to anyone with enough practice in reading tones of voice that "disturbance in the Force" or not, she's really afraid of something, but doesn't seem to have noticed it. Feel free to call her out on that. Also, any action tags will need to get through a deadbolted apartment door.]

Comments

[echo_of_a_jedi]

[Just the fact that she could see his face was strange enough. She'd gotten used to him as a giant tin can.]

I feel it too. I won't let the people here die, though. No matter how scared I feel.

[greyerrant]

.... Is this fear? I have been unable to feel fear for 200 years. It is conditioned out of us through indoctrination, and the genetic alterations we undergo dampen it as well.

[ He looks at her, expression darkening. ]

I have always found fear repulsive to me.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

Fear is a part of being human...or any living thing. Eradicating or ignoring fear is an easy way to die.

The only problem with fear is letting it master you, the same as any other emotion.

[greyerrant]

Fear destroys rationality. Even controlling it still causes the short-circuiting of your brain, destroying reason. There was a reason none of the Legiones Astartes know fear. Not for war, but because we could better make decisions regarding the path of the Imperium without fear clouding our eyes. We would always make the right choice, even if it was the harder one.

[ He face grows more disgusted, eyes darting around in his sockets. The green-armored ghost has appeared once more behind them both, watching over Garviel, a strange mirror to him, though slightly taller, and with a more amused expression than the dour space marine ever allows him to make. ]

He is here again, isn't he?

[echo_of_a_jedi]

You treat fear as your enemy and then you ignore it. How's that rational?

[She looks over his shoulder at his Persona.]

Supposedly, they come out at moments of strong emotion or times of great need. So yes, he'll be here again for a while, I'm sure.

[greyerrant]

We don't ignore it.

We -destroy- it. We cut it out of ourselves like cancer, and crush it with our will.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

You can't destroy something that's a part of yourself. Block it out, sever it from your mind, but it will always exist.

[greyerrant]

Only as a concept.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

You're telling me someone as...indoctrinated as you are isn't prepared to fight concepts?

[greyerrant]

The Astartes themselves are a conceptual weapon. You tell me.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

I...

...

I'm getting too angry. This isn't natural, or right.

[greyerrant]

Consider the circumstances under which beings like me were created. Humanity had been sundered for thousands of years by storms that made interstellar travel impossible. We were surrounded by hostile aliens preying on us. We couldn't even unify Terra without a massive civil war.

The Legions were created to represent the noblest qualities of honor, bravery, strength and intellect which we could bring to the galaxy, and we cast fear out, because if we were to know fear, we could never complete the task of the Crusade, which was to free humanity from the fear and superstitions of Old Night, and unite it under the banner of the Imperium.

Unless you mean the imposition of fear upon us, and the terror that seems even now to be igniting itself in my very marrow. That isn't natural or right and I.... am actually angry myself. I don't like that an external force has this level of control over me.