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==> Be Dave Strider
Your name is DAVE STRIDER, and you are-
First of all, no, you’re way too cool for that bullshit introduction. Really, what the fuck is there to know? You’re in your bed, hating morning with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns. You haven’t opened your eyes yet, but you already feel about 200% done with this day, and the beats flowing out from your alarm clock don’t do much to make you feel like getting out of bed.
Groaning, you slaps the clock and fumbles for your shades, shoving them onto your face crookedly, just enough to cover your unnaturally bright red eyes. You kick your sheets off and make your way to the bathroom, grabbing your usual set of clothes on the way-a set of faded jeans, and a red shirt with a record split into three pieces.
After showering and dressing, you grab your bag, put in your ear buds, which were blasting out some deliriously biznasty tunes, and went downstairs. Your mother, as usual, was cooking breakfast, and had a bottle of the most alicious AJ ready for you. Yea, you needs to stop using that word. You snatch it and twist off the cap, then take a long swig as you head to the front door.
Your mother looked up from what she was doing and asked, “You don’t want breakfast today, honey?” You shook your head and said, “Nah. Thanks for the AJ mom, you are so unironically the best.” With that, you exited the house, and strolled down the street, heading for school, just a block away.
Half way there you shut off his shitty iphone’s music, and started listening for sweet ass sounds to add to the endless beats you makes in your head. A passersby greeting, a bell of a shop ringing as the door opens, the pounding of feet on pavement-it was turning out to be pretty sick, if you do say so yourself. You would have pat yourself on the back, for being so cool, but nah. That would have made you look stupid.
Soon enough you reached the dreaded penitentiary of a god damn school, not at all fitting for the cool kids. You walked through the gate, and greeted the guys you called “friends” also known as the, “I don’t make an effort to remember your names and I hang around you for no apparent reason” guys.
You tuned them out as they greeted him, their faces blurred and indistinguishable, and followed them to class. You didn’t know what class, and they kind of ran out of fucks at the fuckstore, so you just zoned out and stared at the sky the entire period, a cacophony of beats playing in the back of his head the entire time.
The periods flew by, each passed by you zoning out to pass the time, and as three showed it’s ugly mug, he walked out the door, hands in his pockets, as cool as can be.
Until you got a text.
You hastily dug your phone out of your pocket, and stared at the screen, eyeing the flashing icon. What the fuck was pesterchum? You opened the app and the beats crashed to a halt when you see the rust red text on the screen.
-- apocalypseArisen [AA] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at ???? --
AA: hey dave 0u0!
AA: you probably don’t remember me, but you will soon
TG: uh
TG: what the hell
TG: ive never heard of pesterchum
TG: yet here i am
TG: talking to a hella random person
TG: dunno, kinda ominous
TG: an app i never knew of
TG: an unknown bro
TG: fuck this is going to like murder by numbers or some shit
isnt it
TG: such a bad movie
AA: well, you wouldn’t really be wrong to be wary!
AA: but not because of me!
AA: all i can tell before i go is this:
AA: look to the sky! :)
-- apocalypseArisen [AA] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at ???? --
You stared at your phone for a second, eyes unfocused. That wasn’t weird at all. Not one bit. Nope. This never happened, probably some shitty douchetroll getting off on your confusion. Yea. Totally.
You had gotten home a while ago, and lay in bed, ready to push your snooze button and shut the fuck down. But those messages from earlier. Something about them… when he thought about it, you could hear a light chime in his head, as though someone were messing with a music box…
You shoved those thoughts out of his head, and pulled the blanket over your head. Time to go the hell to sleep. Fuck that noise.
You wake with a start, drenched in sweat. You remembered fuckall about whatever shitty dream you had, but it was three in the morning, and you needed air. You went to the window, cracked it open, and leaned against the sill.
The sky was blanketed in roiling clouds, and there was a chill breeze whipping around. Probably a storm. Shit, thats going to be sucky if you have to walk to school later. Ugh.
Wait. The fuck? Its nearly summer, Houston should be humid and warm as fuck this time of year, even this early.
The breeze strengthened, and your face began to get numb, but you couldn’t help but think. Where the fuck is John? Jade? Rose? The fucking trolls?
Your hands gripped the sill, and your vision was going in and out of focus, chest heaving and mind screaming. Fuck fuck fu-
A towering green monstrosity, standing over the small, broken and bloodied bodies of Rose and most of the other trolls.
The Empress with a foot planted on the chest of Jade, about to rip the trident out of her chest.
Their worlds, utterly destroyed, John floating among the ruins, right near the body of Vriska.
The scratch kids, Jake laying on the corpse of Jane, a sword thrust through his chest, dying eyes flashing with colors, the cadavers of Dirk and Roxy near him, each mangled nearly beyond recognition.
Your floating in the middle of all this, feeling numb and empty, used to seeing everyone dead. You think its time to reverse. You could have prevented this, he could have stopped th-
“Nope! You couldn’t have Dave!” Aradia sprung up out of no where, smile bright, curiously eyeing the corpses. “It had to happen. Even if you go back, this is one thing that can’t be changed. Theres only one thing we can do.”
You floated there for a moment, finally noting you had lost your glasses, and there was blood running down your shirt. Your chest hurt. You knew what you had to do.
This session hadn’t had a scratch construct, but with all the breaking Lord English did, you knew, for some reason, you two could probably use their powers to cause a reaction to trick Paradox Space into thinking it was a scratch.
Though it would kill them.
You give a single, lingering glance at the corpses of your friends. Then turned and flew away with Aradia.
==> Be the Templar of the Ways
Your eyes fly open, and not enough air was getting to your lungs. You tried to move, to get up, but couldn’t. You saw nothing but darkness, and struggled more. You can’t stay in here, he has to-
[activate fraymotif? y/n]
Your eye twitches. What the fuck was that? Just now, words in his head… “Yes?” You muttered hesitantly.
[fraymotif activated: Double Time + kickstart]
A soft [wuuurve] rose up in the back of your mind, with an overlying tinkling of something like crystals, and a loud [eeerrrrsh], and really, it sounded as though it started right in the middle of the song.
It was pretty shitty.
That is, before it helped break you the fuck out of what you are in.
A transparent, red gear expanded out from you, and red flecks of something, probably some fairy dust shit, swirled around you, and with a sharp crack, your container was broke open, and you jumped the fuck up, though your body hurt like fuck, and scanned the room.
...Well. Fuck.
The room was somewhat on the small side, with a computer terminal a ways away from you, and everything was green, the kind of green the felt is on pool tables. It made you uneasy.
The gear thing, which must have been the kickstart? Knocked the two male trolls who were in the room down, both wearing green suits, as well as green bowler caps, and now that they saw you, they were scrambling to get up and grab their weapons.
Fuuuuuck. You lunge for the doorway, just as one of the trolls, an olive blood by the look of him, rushes at you with a heavy pipe in hand.
Really? A fucking pipekind? Who the fuck uses that!
You grunt when he clips your shoulder with the pipe, making pain shoot through your arm, and you reach out with a hand, planning to pull something from your sylladex.
You pulls out a shitty, ½ sword kind. You almost feels like throwing your hands up and just giving up, but that would be pretty damn uncool. So you bring the sword up to block another strike, but fuck fucking fuck- the blow jarred your arm, and you rolled to the side. You were still weak from doing jackshit for whatever amount of time they had you captive.
As you narrowly avoids getting your pretty skull crushed, yet again, you remember something-your a gog damn Knight of Time. You can fucking manipulate time, and after a brief facepalm, you flashstep away and out of the room, and start sprinting down the hallway and- wait.
You can usually only hold flashsteps for like, fucking ten seconds at most, and even then you get a fucking head ache but. It didn’t end.
Huh. Guess it was the fraymotif. Shrugging, you jog down the corridor, taking a turn whenever you could, and eventually got to a fancy green lobby, with scattered, plush arm chairs and tables.
As well as a metric fuck ton of green suited douches.
You thanked the gods-wait, would you be thanking yourself? Is that a thing? Fuck. What were you saying. You really should stop zoning out, but eh.
You slowly walked towards the lobby door, which led outside, hopefully, but something stopped you. You turn your head to the side and noticed that the [errrrsh] started to rise, and for some reason, your feet lead you to another hall, much shorter than the one you came from, to a room similar to the one you woke up in, with the containment unit in the middle of the room.
You walked over to the console, and stared at it in thought. Could one of your friends be in here? Hmmm.
You stabbed your sword into the console, the glass shattering easily, and a loud beep emitted from it. Wow you can’t believe that actually worked.
You hear a click and hiss, and hurried to the unit, struggling to lift the hella heavy lid. You peered inside, and jerked back from the orange eyes boring into your face. Dirk.
You laugh nervously and almost poke your eye out when you forgot you were holding a sword, and tried to scratch your face.
“So uh. Yea. Sup...bro.” Saying that brought forth a flurry of images, of Bro getting… getting…
Shaking your head, you continued. “So yep. Woke up from a hella long nap, and there are all these felt douches around here. Kind of stopped time, which now that I-fuck. The musics stopped.” Fuck fuck fuck.
As Dirk was rising from the unit, saying nothing, You whip around and do a x2 facepalm combo.
In the doorway was some asshole, kind of big but not to scary, just smiling and flipping a coin. Behind him was a small man, hair slicked back, like some kind of greaser, who was studying his nails in disinterest, but seemed to be rather twitchy. Each wore a slightly more elaborate felt suit than the others he had seen, and the big one had a striped green hat, with the number 14 on it, while the small one had a solid yellow hat, with a 1.
You throw your sword down and grab another shitty one from your sylladex, as well as one for Dirk. Dirk took it, and raised an eyebrow at you, noting the quality of the sword. Incredibly shitty, his eyes seemed to say for him.
“Those are the Felt core. Itchy and Quarters.” You look at him and ask, “How do you know?” Dirk stared at you and said “Well if you recall, they were, and still are, the minions of Lord English.” Shrugging, Dirk leaned against the containment unit, the sword’s blade resting on his shoulder. “They’re dangerous. But we can probably take ‘em.”
You was about to say something, but swallowed it, and simply grunted, taking a defensive stance.
Nodding to the two Felt, and trying not to pay attention to the sweat beading up on you face, you say,“Ready when you assholes are, I guess.”
The two looked at each other and shrugged, just as the coin Quarters was flipping lands in his palm.
And turns into a mother fucking minigun, bigger than you.
You jerk time to a stop just as he started firing, and saw the bullets frozen in midair, heading straight for Dirk’s head. You pushed him to the side, and got as close as you could before time continued.
Quarters didn’t seem surprised when he saw the sword heading for his gun, and you cursed when he switched it into a quarter, and back again right after his sword passed. You continued to deliver a flurry of strikes, not aiming for the gun now, but for being so big, the asshole was annoyingly nimble.
Soon enough, they were in the hallway, and you groan when one of the bullets from the numerous, short bursts the guy was delivering, grazing your side.
You can’t get your piece of shit sword any closer, dammit. You flashstep behind him, and thrust the sword into his back.
Fuck.
Well for starters. The blade went in, yea. It may be a piece of shit sword, but you’ll fucking give your goat away if anyone denied it’s deadly sharpness.
Well yea you guess this guy fucking denies it, because it goes like an inch in, and by then, time unpauses, and he reached a hand around, grabbed the blade, and yanked it out. Your mouth was agape, because there was no blood, there was no wound. Only a fucking hole in the suit.
This is so fucking stupid, its beyond stupidity. You hereby dub it UbermotherfuckingextremeStupidity, with a fucking capital S, because it is just that stupid, and oh fu-
He had released his sword, and while you were having a fucking stupid tangent, swung his gun around and swung it into your side, which lifted you off your feet and threw you into the wall, and fuck that stings.
With a sneer on his face, Quarters crouched down, grabbed your hair, and pulled your face within an inch of his.
“Dunno why the boss wants you whelps, you can’t even scratch me. Its disgusting, really. How did you ever get so far in the las-”
He broke off when a second Dave appeared behind him, face blank, which is to be expected, and a new pair of shades. He kicked out at Quarter’s head, and he toppled over, grunting with surprise.
It hardly did a thing.
Quarters gets up and looks between the two Daves, one on each side of him, holding their swords steady.
Before he could do anything, future Dave leapt forward, bringing his sword down from above, aiming for his arms, and you thrust your sword towards his legs.
With a chuckle, another quarter appeared in his hand, as his gun turned back into a quarter. This one he flipped-
And disappeared. In his place was Itchy, who was wielding a switch knife, and apparently the fucker had been expecting it. Just as he appeared, he moved a little, then became a blur, coming at you. You feel a sharp pain in your side \ before you could stop time, and you can see the glint of the knife coming in for another stab.
Future Dave put a stop to that, thankfully. He put his foot out where Itchy had gone the first time he had been here, and he immediately tripped over it, and crashed into the wall face first.
You have to resist the urge to say something douchey, but hey, the guy deserved it. He was, apparently, knocked out, and you walked back towards the room Dirk was in, leaving Future Dave to whatever he planned to do.The wound stung, but thankfully it didn’t hit anything important, and it wasn’t bleeding to profusely.
You lean against the doorway, and just stared at Dirk. Well fuck. Just like Bro.
He didn’t have a scratch on him, or a speck of blood even. His sword was on his shoulder once again, and he glanced at you stoically, nodding a small greeting. Quarters gun was on the ground in pieces, smoking and sparking, and he himself was clutching his leg, which had a deep slash across it. Besides that, his body was riddled with mostly superficial cuts.
Quarter’s teeth were clenched and he stared at them with a newfound hatred in his eyes. He heard a cough behind him, and you glanced over his shoulder, and proceeded to facepalm. Again.
There were about a dozen Felt goons glaring at you, each with a strife specibus at the ready. You glance back at dirk and say, “Hey Dirk, uh, we really should go.”
While Dirk nodded and strode over to the door, you turn to the goons. “Yea guys, sorry to dissapoint, I know you were looking forward to getting your asses kicked by an absolutely sicknasty duo of bros, but I think I hear my mother and or sister calling, so see ya.”
You crack a smile when you see a vein throb in the neck of a particularly large blue blood. The troll leapt forward, but you were ready You stopped time, and grabbed Dirk, hauling him over your shoulder. Youthen started flashstepping down the hall and out of the hall to the lobby, and kicked the door open, like some cliche superhero.
Your head started to hurt after four consecutive flashsteps, but fuck it, because this shithole is crawling with assholes.
The door led down another hall, a few more fucking halls, then a large staircase, spiraling down. They were about ten stories up. Urgh.
Your head was pounding now, which played hell with your sick beats constantly in the making, but fuck, like hell would you stop and fight, there might be more core members around. So you add the fucking pounding to the beats, and forged on.
By the time you reached the bottom, you felt as though you could hardly breath, and sweat rolled into his eyes, stinging. They were in another fucking lobby, but at least this one led outside, and the only Felt in sight were a couple of goons lazing around. You set Dirk down, who made no comment on being picked up and hauled down here.
They ran for the door, because you felt as though a 300 pound tap dancer was using your skull for a dancefloor, and when the goons jump up, you shoves your sword in one, who fell to the ground, and kept running. You saw Dirk become a blur out of the corner of your eye, striking the goons head from his shoulders in a single, clean motion. He was surrounded by some weird pink shit, and what the fuck? How the hell can he move so fast, he’s just a player of heart. Like, yea, your bro moved fast, even faster but that was...Dave’s bro.
Shaking your head, they crashed through the door, and into the sunlight. Which was bright as fuck, and you had to cover your eyes for a second. You misses your sunglasses, dammit, and getting a new pair will be the first thing you do, then you need to go finish that time loop.
Blinking a few tears out of your eyes, you shoved your hands into your pockets, which fuck, you don’t have pockets, your in a fucking hospital gown holy shit this is embarrassing. Now you needs shades and clothes, fuck, might as well get the weekly grocery shopping done as well.
Continuing to mutter to yourself, you stared out at the city. If it can even be considered that.
“Just how fucked up is this new universe…” You say to yourself.
Stretching into the horizon was a sprawling expanse of squat, large buildings, with huge towers here and there, and rails set above the smaller buildings, presumably for transportation. In the sky were advertising blimps, apparently showing off the newest Empress approved bullshit, as well as numerous airships, which were patrolling.
The place they had come out of was on a forested expanse of property, with the mansion being the only building. A small road led to the gate into the city.
Dirk had already started towards the gate while you had been looking around like a dumbass, and you start after him.
==> Be Boy Skylark
Boy Skylark? There has never been, nor will ever be a Boy Skylark. There is, however, one Warden of the Wind
==> Be the Warden of the Wind
Your name is JOHN EGBERT, or as the rebels know you, WARDEN OF THE WIND. You have little memory of your childhood, nor do you know who hid you from the Empress until you were thirteen. Whoever it was, you sure a glad that they did. On that day, April 13, you seemed to come out of some sort of trance, and set out on your own, venturing out into the streets of Iaska
Now, seven years later, you are the LEADER of the REBEL GROUP called HURRICANE, solely devoted to putting an end to the tyrannical rule of FEFERI, the EMPRESS.
Of course, you aren’t really doing much to take her down at the moment, seeing as you're kind of...tied up.
Heh heh. Okay you admit, that was the weakest pun you’ve made in years. You’re pretty glad no one can read your mind, or anything.
You were leading a raid on a small warehouse, containing food, medicine, and helpful technology, but someone found out and the culling drones were called in. You managed to hold them off long enough to let your fellow rebels escape, buuuut you kind of got captured. And by kind of you mean totally.
They deemed it too risky to let the drones transport you, so you are currently held to a chair by chains, surrounded by three drones, with some troll standing at the entrance of the warehouse, waiting for an airship to airrive.
Okay you’ll stop.
Your trusty hammer, Casey, is currently on the shoulder of the troll, her beautiful ornate steel head glistening in the sunlight. You really miss her.
You start to whistle inconspicuously as you slowly start pulling strands of wind towards you, wrapping around the chains. With a small tug, they snap, and everyone turns to you as you rise up, wind whirling around you. You smile at the troll as he starts yelling, and proceed to fly at him, bringing your leg around to connect with his head, and snatching Casey before she hit the ground. The drones stomped towards you, each preparing rockets to fire
You give the dumb robots a cheerful grin as they let loose a dozen rockets, and you blow them upwards and around, back towards the drones, who don’t move fast enough to avoid them.
Well that was stupidly easy. You float towards the sky, not wanting to wait around for the airship to arrive, and hide within the clouds. Time to head back to base.
A few minutes later you touch down in a small alleyway, and head to the very back of it, where a plain concrete wall, belonging to a bakery which sells tasty muffins, stands. You move a strand of wind through the miniscule cracks of the the secret door, wrap it around a small lever on the inside, and let your self in.
You great the usual blue blood who stands guard, Jarren, and head down the hall, a set of stairs, and another hall until you reach a small cavern, with about two dozen rebels in it, some relaxing, others going through the things they took today. You pull down your hood, and when they saw you, they broke out in cheering, and you just smiled and waved.
You head over to a table, set Casey down, and sit, observing the sorting. A majority of these things will be going to citizens who haven’t exactly been treated well be the Empress.
“Glad you made it back sir, though I never doubted you were in any trouble.”
You turn towards the voice and grin, buck teeth evident. It was your second in command… Casey.
No. You so did not name your hammer after her. You can’t prove jack shit buddy.
She stands six feet tall, just a bit taller than you, wears the usual garb of your rebels, a one piece dark blue suit, padded with kevlar and light synthetic metal armor on the inside, with a cloak the same color hanging from her shoulders, similar to what you wore. Who said that rebels couldn’t wear suits. No one. Thats who.
She turned her light blue eyes towards you, and her mouth is set in a grim line. “They are catching us more and more John. I don’t know if this is a coincidence or not, but I think we should calm down for a few weeks before we proceed.”
You know that you should, but all that will happen is that the Empresses forces will simply grow in size, and they’ll just torment the people more, and GAH, you feel as though you and your group are doing jack shit about anything!
You sigh and ruffle her short orange hair. “ Yea. I know! But bluuuuuuuuh. We can’t just do nothing Casey! We need to stop the Empress from hurting more people! I can’t just sit around and watch.”
From the look on her face, you know she had been expecting this. She grinned and patted you on the shoulder. “Yep, knew you would answer how you usually do.”
She hopped up and jerked her thumb back over her shoulder, towards the planning room. “We should probably start organizing the next raid.” You nod and follow her to the room, motioning to a few of the people who had been with Hurricane the longest to come with you.
Once inside, you all sat around a small holo projector, while Casey brought up a detailed map of the city. One projected, she placed a marker over the warehouse they recently raided, in the north-east section of the city, one of a dozen marks on the map.
“So. This is the thirteenth raid we’ve conducted, and this is the second time they reacted quickly enough to bring drones down upon us. We have the fire power to take them, yes, but we don’t want to stay and find out what else they can use against us.”
She placed a marker over a small residential district in the south-east section of the city. “These guys were just raided by Imperial forces, and they destroyed multiple buildings, and killed three people. Twenty seven more were wounded. So I propose we deliver the majority of the supplies there…”
Aaron, a human who had proved himself to be the master of his stop sign kind in the heat of combat, spoke up. “Butttt, there are Imperial forces still there, i’m guessing.”
Casey nodded. “They have a single legislacerator searching for evidence to put innocents on trial, her partner, a ruffiannilhator, and a dozen Bronze Guard. Thankfully no drones or airships.”
Dorlin, who had proven herself a trustworthy troll, going on numerous scouting missions, and once flew up to the side of an airship that had been about to kill dozens of innocents with her rocket pack, and managed to take out the pilot by throwing her spear with astounding aim, spoke up.
“Be that as it may… this is going to be difficult. We have twenty four of us here, and only six of us use firearms, and even then, only one has an explosive rifle. The rest just uses melee and whatnot. We can’t risk taking more than six on this mission, and if Warden wanted to bring more, we only have two trucks. We literally can’t bring more if we are to bring the supplies. So. What are we going to do, Warden?”
All eyes in the room turned to you, and you gnawed on your lip a little, thinking. “Well, we’ll just have to take six of the best. They need the supplies…” Sighing, you shrug. “Thats all we can do. We’ll take Yeeres, Aaron, Kevin, Crekee, Mike, and myself. Fair enough?” They all nodded.
You push yourself up, and stride out to where everyone else was. “Listen up! Yeeres, Aaron, Kevin, Crekee, Mike, and myself are going on a mission. Get everything ready, we’re leaving in five!”
Time to kick some ass and save some...asses…yeah anyways you kick that statement into the trash, grab Casey, and head to the underground tunnel that held the vehicles.
Half an hour later, you are all in the trucks, and nearing your destination. Before you get there, you give a nod to Aaron, grab Casey, and float off into the clouds, following the trucks. The nearer you get to the area, the more you feel sick. You can see a stupid amount of destroyed buildings, scattered belongings, and plenty of blood stains.
You swallow and focus on the task at hand. You see the legislacerator interrogating two humans, though all you can see of her features are small pointy horns and bright red glasses. The trucks stop, and everyone creeps closer, moving among the wreckage, unseen by the numerous trolls and humans of the Bronze Guard, all clad in uniform bodysuits, padded with kevlar, with a small amount of metal armor on the chest , arms, and thighs, as well as a helmet that covered everything besides the mouth. Each toted a Betty Crocker CAD assault rifle. Gog damn Batterwitch!
You wait until everyone is in position, and take a moment to feel the wind around you. You start twisting the breeze together, and soon enough, you have a small tornado swirling around you. They take notice and start running away, but you move the tornado to move through them, and three guards were tossed into the air. You wave at them as they fly by. They’ll have a fun time on the way down.
You calmly float down, in the midst of the guards, who were still panicked from the sudden tornado. You smile brightly at them as they slowly turn to you and finally raise their rifles. You stand there, with the wind whipping around you, as they fire their entire clips at you, and every single bullet was blown aside. When they stopped, you whistled, and everyone surged forward, the first one into the fray being Aaron, crushing a guard’s head with his stop sign.
You leap towards the guards, and quickly and cleanly crush the skulls of three in quick succession. Within ten seconds, they all lie on the ground dead. The ruffiannihlator and legislacerator were looking at them, eyebrows raised.
You float towards them, hammer dripping with blood, and tell them jauntily, “Would you mind going away? And mayyybe not hurting innocents? That’d be great!” The legislacerator grinned at you, flashing a mouth full of sharp teeth, and started holding her cane in both hands.
“I’m so sorry, hehe! I would mind that, would you mind that Speril?” The ruffiannihlator, Speril, you suppose, nodded and cracked his knuckles. “Why yes, I would Terezi.”
Terezi cackled and slid her cane apart. Oh cool, a sword cane! You’ve never seen one of those.
“I’m terribly sorry, but you are currently breaking several laws, and I can’t just let you off with a few citations! Mr. Leader of Hurricane! Or should I say...John! >:]”
You...you aren’t quite sure how she just made that face. But you shake your head, heft your hammer, and fly forward. You did give them a choice, so whatever.