"You're good at reading people, not that I've a talent for hiding things in
any life. She was locked up for two years and then executed before she
made it to the Barge, and her world was just starting to open back up. You
helped."
Tris smiles at the offer. "I love the ocean. My power's tied to currents
and tides as well as wind and rain and lightning, and I grew up in harbor
cities."
"We didn't get to discussing the world itself. Just some of what happened
on it." Her voice goes tight and angry immediately at the mention of where
and how Fives came into existence. She doesn't bother controlling her
reaction quite as carefully as she does with Fives himself.
"There are still children there," he says quietly. "Maybe as many as a million. I'm working on a plan to get them out, but we need time to do it safely, to organize everything, dock and load all the ships, transfer the hardware for the ones still in tanks. The only thing with the scale to hold back interference would be a storm."
He's run through simulations and thousand times, in the enclosure, it's just all heat and moisture, and he can make storms with orbital lasers easily enough. But he can never direct them precisely enough.
"Could you do it, do you think? You don't have to fight, just - give us the window."
Her breath catches, and she nods. Children without any adults offering
them a reasonable measure of safety and affection are forever a weak spot
of hers. Tris's answer is immediate. "Of course. It doesn't even matter
if the world's weather is compatible with my magic, though I can't imagine
why it wouldn't be. I can bring a hurricane if I have to. I just
need to familiarize myself with the planet's weather patterns first."
A brief pause, and then, "I appreciate you telling me I don't have to
fight. If you needed me, I would for this." A battle, at least, even if
she isn't signing on for the longer war.
"It definitely sustains hurricanes. We have time to practice. And maybe see if Jean can lend you strength - I don't know if any of that energy is compatible, but she's offered." And it's not the ideal situation for a sudden collapse.
"I appreciate that," he adds, quietly. And he does, in strange and deep ways. It's easy to hate the Kaminoans and the bad sergeants, easier even than the Lanterners, whose victims were at least mostly strangers to him. But Jedao has never been the kind of killer who forgot his victims were people. "But we'll have plenty of killers. I don't think it would be the best use of your talents."
People will die, though; everyone involved in the clones' creation, if he has his way, with her assistance.
"You're probably right about the best strategic use of my power. I can
stretch myself further if I don't have to divide my magic and attention
quite as much as active combat requires. Tidal force is likely to work
better for bolstering me than Jean's energy, but I'm willing to try
combinations of both." And she's very conscious of what, and who, could be
lost if her part of things fails.
"How long do you anticipate needing? Not a best case scenario. Give me
the middle ground, to start with. Your window won't close unexpectedly
unless someone manages to successfully attack me. I'll test myself
thoroughly first."
"If we can't do it in a day, we can't do it," he says, turning over the hundreds of scenarios he's run in his head. Depending on which ships he can get there, how much trouble the sergeants are, how fast they can move the tanks - the cadets will be terrified but grateful for instruction, trained in efficiency and already organized by squad and tier, as long as they do> cooperate -
"But a long day. Middle ground, say sixteen hours."
Tris nods. "I can go three or four days on tidal force if my magic use is
minimal. With more intensive magic use, so long as it isn't split between
a number of spells... that should be fine, provided you send me to bed for
several days afterward if I overdo it. You asked me to look for references
to Kamino once. Is that the planet I should ask for in the Enclosure?"
She won't do abundant full-length test runs, just a few, but she'll figure
out exactly where her limits are without tidal force, and with a more
moderate amount of tidal force. She can familiarize herself extensively
with the weather patterns and get used to working with whatever the
planet's quirks might be without running herself into the ground
constantly. Before they go, she'll be able to give Jedao a very good
estimate of how long his cover will hold. "And you'll come with me a
couple of times to explain exactly what you need, and where?"
"Yes. And I can take you to the region in question - or you could just ask for the clone army facility. Ideally -" He pauses for a moment, not sure how to pitch it; he knows it would sound wild even to someone who was used to how his mind works.
"Ideally, we'd want a hurricane large enough for the entire facility to be contained inside the eye, and held there. We can help produce warm and cold fronts to feed it from orbit, if you need, so long as you handle the...precision. It transforms -"
He gestures widely with his spoon for a moment, then breaks into coughing. He recovers after a few seconds.
"Defense becomes harder, the more dimensions you have, right? In one dimension, one person can hold a doorway, or a narrow pass, basically indefinitely. In two dimensions, on the ground plane, you need walls and armies, in three dimensions, in space, if becomes basically impossible, because there are too many angles to attack from. If the only path in or out of the facility is through the eye, that turns a three dimensional battlefield into a one dimensional battlefield that we can protect and control until we're ready to go."
The description works. Tris has never been anything like a soldier, but she's witnessed and fought in pirate battles. She knows the kind of defenses that work in a harbor, and she grasps that they wouldn't work on the open sea. "That make sense."
And that... is going to be a tough storm to control. Tris thinks back to the time she tried to stop the tides. At least she's learned something since then. "I'll need to know the area of the facility, then, and I'd like to practice with and without assistance from cold and warm fronts. Storms want to move, and to grow or shrink. Mages get killed when they try playing with forces of nature too big for them to handle."
Which absolutely does not mean that he's still short a weather witch. "I'll find a way. I won't risk all of their lives, and yours, and my own if I'm not relatively certain I can handle what you're asking."
"You've got some wiggle room. It can grow, of course. And you can just release it after - the whole place needs to be destroyed anyway. Anything we can do to stop them starting production again -"
Well. It'll save him a little ammunition.
He turns, for a moment, presses his face against her shoulder, takes slow breaths. If this works, if this works - that's one more ace in his hand, one more piece of the puzzle. One more step to getting the vod'ike safe. And he knows the sound of someone who will try everything possible.
"The danger in letting it grow is that it can't grow too much or it will pick up enough power that I'll have no hope of holding onto it. There's a careful balance." Fortunately, Tris is good at judging that, at least when it comes to weather.
Jedao's face against her, his deep breaths of incredulous relief, are enough to prompt one of her still rare gestures of affection. Tris raises a hand to pet the back of his head in slow, soothing strokes.
How could she say anything but yes? Softly, she tells him, "Fives and I have led very different lives, but I do know what it felt like to be a child who was treated as an object rather than being valued by any adult in my life. I can't leave them to that and worse."
Sure you could, he thinks, even though he knows it would be - petty, uncharitable to say. But of course she could. Everyone has their own lives. Everyone he ever knew, before the barge, survived by being inured, on a very basic level, to the suffering of others. Himself, for all that he turns it hard sideways, very much not excepted.
She could, if she didn't want to be able to live with herself afterward. She knows that. Tris got into her foster family's hands just in time to prevent her becoming inured. It takes a lot to shock Tris, when it comes to cruelty, but it doesn't take much to make her care. Her teacher, her mothers, and her siblings shoved her back into caring.
"Nonsense," she says gruffly, hand still in his hair. "Don't you know how satisfying it is to do something as opposed to just being impotently angry or worried?"
"Oh, it's all mixed up for me. I spend so much time waiting and planning - and planning plans that get tossed out the minute they start, war being being what it is. And I never got to see much of it work. But I'll take your word for it."
He takes her tone as a hint to straighten, slowly, despite how much he always relishes touch.
Tris leaves her arm around Jedao's shoulders as he straightens rather than
letting go completely. "Rosethorn had a point when she said I'm happiest
picking up strays. My favorite successes, now that I think about it, have
been measured in adoptions. All the animals, of course, and I raised a
little girl for several years after her mother and foster mother were
murdered."
She doesn't quite laugh, but there's wry amusement in her voice when she
continues. "I can't very well adopt a million children, but if I can do
anything to get them into the hands of someone kinder, I will. You'd have
a hard time picking a cause I care about more."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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"You're good at reading people, not that I've a talent for hiding things in any life. She was locked up for two years and then executed before she made it to the Barge, and her world was just starting to open back up. You helped."
Tris smiles at the offer. "I love the ocean. My power's tied to currents and tides as well as wind and rain and lightning, and I grew up in harbor cities."
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"You know Fives, don't you?" He knows she does, but he'd like to gauge her own assessment of the relationship.
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Tris somehow isn't surprised to hear that, but she doesn't respond other than to lean her shoulder against Jedao a tiny bit more.
"I like Fives. Why?" She'll elaborate if asked, but doesn't immediately.
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About the world, or about made, although given Fives' blunt openness about somethings, he almost certainly has.
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"We didn't get to discussing the world itself. Just some of what happened on it." Her voice goes tight and angry immediately at the mention of where and how Fives came into existence. She doesn't bother controlling her reaction quite as carefully as she does with Fives himself.
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He's run through simulations and thousand times, in the enclosure, it's just all heat and moisture, and he can make storms with orbital lasers easily enough. But he can never direct them precisely enough.
"Could you do it, do you think? You don't have to fight, just - give us the window."
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Her breath catches, and she nods. Children without any adults offering them a reasonable measure of safety and affection are forever a weak spot of hers. Tris's answer is immediate. "Of course. It doesn't even matter if the world's weather is compatible with my magic, though I can't imagine why it wouldn't be. I can bring a hurricane if I have to. I just need to familiarize myself with the planet's weather patterns first."
A brief pause, and then, "I appreciate you telling me I don't have to fight. If you needed me, I would for this." A battle, at least, even if she isn't signing on for the longer war.
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"I appreciate that," he adds, quietly. And he does, in strange and deep ways. It's easy to hate the Kaminoans and the bad sergeants, easier even than the Lanterners, whose victims were at least mostly strangers to him. But Jedao has never been the kind of killer who forgot his victims were people. "But we'll have plenty of killers. I don't think it would be the best use of your talents."
People will die, though; everyone involved in the clones' creation, if he has his way, with her assistance.
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"You're probably right about the best strategic use of my power. I can stretch myself further if I don't have to divide my magic and attention quite as much as active combat requires. Tidal force is likely to work better for bolstering me than Jean's energy, but I'm willing to try combinations of both." And she's very conscious of what, and who, could be lost if her part of things fails.
"How long do you anticipate needing? Not a best case scenario. Give me the middle ground, to start with. Your window won't close unexpectedly unless someone manages to successfully attack me. I'll test myself thoroughly first."
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"But a long day. Middle ground, say sixteen hours."
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Tris nods. "I can go three or four days on tidal force if my magic use is minimal. With more intensive magic use, so long as it isn't split between a number of spells... that should be fine, provided you send me to bed for several days afterward if I overdo it. You asked me to look for references to Kamino once. Is that the planet I should ask for in the Enclosure?"
She won't do abundant full-length test runs, just a few, but she'll figure out exactly where her limits are without tidal force, and with a more moderate amount of tidal force. She can familiarize herself extensively with the weather patterns and get used to working with whatever the planet's quirks might be without running herself into the ground constantly. Before they go, she'll be able to give Jedao a very good estimate of how long his cover will hold. "And you'll come with me a couple of times to explain exactly what you need, and where?"
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"Ideally, we'd want a hurricane large enough for the entire facility to be contained inside the eye, and held there. We can help produce warm and cold fronts to feed it from orbit, if you need, so long as you handle the...precision. It transforms -"
He gestures widely with his spoon for a moment, then breaks into coughing. He recovers after a few seconds.
"Defense becomes harder, the more dimensions you have, right? In one dimension, one person can hold a doorway, or a narrow pass, basically indefinitely. In two dimensions, on the ground plane, you need walls and armies, in three dimensions, in space, if becomes basically impossible, because there are too many angles to attack from. If the only path in or out of the facility is through the eye, that turns a three dimensional battlefield into a one dimensional battlefield that we can protect and control until we're ready to go."
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And that... is going to be a tough storm to control. Tris thinks back to the time she tried to stop the tides. At least she's learned something since then. "I'll need to know the area of the facility, then, and I'd like to practice with and without assistance from cold and warm fronts. Storms want to move, and to grow or shrink. Mages get killed when they try playing with forces of nature too big for them to handle."
Which absolutely does not mean that he's still short a weather witch. "I'll find a way. I won't risk all of their lives, and yours, and my own if I'm not relatively certain I can handle what you're asking."
no subject
Well. It'll save him a little ammunition.
He turns, for a moment, presses his face against her shoulder, takes slow breaths. If this works, if this works - that's one more ace in his hand, one more piece of the puzzle. One more step to getting the vod'ike safe. And he knows the sound of someone who will try everything possible.
He isn't used to yes.
"Thank you, Tris-ye."
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Jedao's face against her, his deep breaths of incredulous relief, are enough to prompt one of her still rare gestures of affection. Tris raises a hand to pet the back of his head in slow, soothing strokes.
How could she say anything but yes? Softly, she tells him, "Fives and I have led very different lives, but I do know what it felt like to be a child who was treated as an object rather than being valued by any adult in my life. I can't leave them to that and worse."
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"You're a good girl, Tris."
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"Nonsense," she says gruffly, hand still in his hair. "Don't you know how satisfying it is to do something as opposed to just being impotently angry or worried?"
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He takes her tone as a hint to straighten, slowly, despite how much he always relishes touch.
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Tris leaves her arm around Jedao's shoulders as he straightens rather than letting go completely. "Rosethorn had a point when she said I'm happiest picking up strays. My favorite successes, now that I think about it, have been measured in adoptions. All the animals, of course, and I raised a little girl for several years after her mother and foster mother were murdered."
She doesn't quite laugh, but there's wry amusement in her voice when she continues. "I can't very well adopt a million children, but if I can do anything to get them into the hands of someone kinder, I will. You'd have a hard time picking a cause I care about more."
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Tris nods. She still struggles to ask for help, even after a decade with her foster family and over a year on the Barge.
"I wasn't either, once upon a time. The instinct never goes away, but I hope you have the opportunity to get used to it."