Shuos Mikodez does stand-up:
There’s an arch-traitor loose with a Kel swarm. I think eventually everything’s going to be okay, but I have no idea what’s going to happen next. And neither do any of you, and neither do your parents, because there’s an arch-traitor loose with a Kel swarm. It’s never happened before, no one knows what the arch-traitor is going to do next, least of all the arch-traitor. He hasn’t been off a leash in four hundred years, he’s as confused as you are.
There’s no experts. They try to find experts on the news. They’re like, “We’re joined now by a man that once saw a Shuos at a dinner party.” Get out of here with that shit! We’ve all seen a Shuos at a dinner party. This is an arch-traitor loose with a Kel swarm.
When an arch-traitor is loose with a Kel swarm, you got to stay updated. So all day long you walk around, “What’d the arch-traitor do?” The updates, they’re not always bad. Sometimes they’re just odd. It’ll be like, “The arch-traitor offloaded all his threshold winnowers, and didn’t use them to kill anyone at all?” I didn’t know he knew how to do that. The creepiest days are when you don’t hear from the arch-traitor at all. You’re down in the operating room like, “Hey, has anyone…Has anyone heard–” [imitates shooting a fellow officer in the head] Those are those quiet days when people are like, “It looks like the arch-traitor has finally calmed down.” And then ten seconds later the arch-traitor is like, “I’m gonna spread word from untraceable sources throughout the Hexarchate that I could’ve defeated the Hafn invasion in one battle if the local fortress didn’t hold me back! I’m Shuos Jedao, the arch-traitor!” That’s what I thought you’d say, you dumb fucking arch-traitor.
And then… then… then you go to brunch with people and they’re like, “There shouldn’t be an arch-traitor with a Kel swarm.” And it’s like, “We’re well past that.” Then other people are like, “If there’s gonna be an arch-traitor with a Kel swarm, I’m going to achieve immortality.” And those don’t match up at all.
And then, for a second, it seemed like maybe we could survive the arch-traitor, and then, 5,000 miles away, the Hafn were like, “We can teleport now and we’re going to blow up a pivotal clocktower!” And before we could say anything, the arch-traitor was like, “If you even fucking look at the clocktower, I will anticipate your exact probable locations and blow you to smithereens. I dare you to do it. I want you to do it. I want you to do it so I can blow you to smithereens, I’m so fucking crazy.”
“You think you’re fucking crazy, I’m the fucking Hafn. I wire kids into scoutships for power with vines. I’m fucking crazy.”
And all of us are like, “Okay.” Like poor False Hexarch Nirai Faian at those goddamn meetings. “Okay.” And then, for a second, we were like, “Maybe the crashhawk high-general will catch the arch-traitor.” And then the arch-traitor is like, “I have recruited the crashhawk high-general. Also, I’m actually Ajewe Cheris.” She can do that? That shouldn’t be allowed no matter who the arch-traitor is.
