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Rakim had flown to Ogun's for their gaming night this time - in the wake of what had happened, they'd become afraid to walk outside.

"All right... Let's see, let's see, what do we have here..." The chimera sifted through his games absent-mindedly, striving to come up with something good to pick up that would help them take their minds off things for the time being. "How about Lemmings? Would you be up for that?" his lion head asked the bat. "Sure, why not," Rakim had shrugged, "I could go for something grisly and lighthearted right about now, couldn't you?" Ogun's four heads nodded as he turned the game on in front of them. "That seems about right, doesn't it," his dragon head agreed while the game's vibrant, iconoclastic soundtrack began to fill the air around them. They had many positive memories associated with that game.

"Wanna play first?" his ram head turned to ask the bat, half-handing him the controller as he did. "Nah, I'll watch first. It's been forever since I played this to be honest," Rakim grinned. "All right, then," the chimera shrugged, bringing the controller back in front of himself as he did, "let's see if I still remember how to steer these little motherfuckers away from walking off a cliff," his snake head hissed. "Easier said than done, isn't it," the bat chuckled, settling more comfortably on Ogun's couch arm as he spoke. The chimera never understood how Rakim managed to get comfortable perched up there, but it didn't matter. The bat assured him that he was, even though it did make him look like some kind of gargoyle.

"First, I just need to get this little guy here to start digging for a bit..." The bat stretched and yawned next to him as he played. "As long as he doesn't dig himself into a hole he can't get out of," Rakim winked. He must not have been sleeping very well recently for some reason. "Yeah, we can't have that now, can we," his lion head acknowledged. "Now, I need to make sure these little fellows don't go 'splat' when they fall off *this* platform..." The bat thought about all the occasions on which he knew his wings could save his life when someone else would have fallen to their death in his place, about the weird mixture of guilt for that and resentment for so many other things that he'd had to negotiate over the course of his life.

"Good thing none of them are on any 'no fly' list," Rakim jested. "You're right about that," his dragon head chuckled. "Now, this level only gives me one miner, but that's all I should really need." He was surprised by how much of these levels he'd forgotten over the passage of time, but they were all coming back to him as he saw them while he played. "And if he strikes oil, they all get rich," the bat snickered. His ram head pursed its lips. "Well... There's a great big obstacle for them over there, but, if I just make them all into climbers..." his snake head started, putting his plan into action, "... they should still all be able to make it to safety." He turned his lion head to Rakim while keeping his other heads on the game, and tried to smile.

The bat smiled back. It was hard to stay in a dark mood listening to the game's cheerful soundtrack, even knowing that it was meant to mirror the lemmings' presumed mental state on their blissfully oblivious march toward probable oblivion. "I hope you had an okay time getting here, even though you had to fly," his dragon head said, "I imagine the skies would be getting crowded these days." Rakim sighed. "You'd be surprised... Some of us say they would, but they're even more afraid of getting shot out of the sky than of getting bashed in the streets," he explained as Ogun set a basher in motion to get through a wall, "so they're hoping that if they just walk with their heads low and their wings folded close, no one will notice they're bats."

His ram head nodded. "I can see how that would be, yeah..." The bat rubbed one of his wings pensively. "More of us are getting these clipped, too... I swear I'm not trying to bring you down or anything," Rakim smiled apologetically. "No, don't worry about that," he shook his snake head. "I mean, I can't exactly get any of my heads cut off, even though it might make my life simpler sometimes," his lion head grinned, "but aside from that I sort of get it, yeah." The bat's eyes widened at a fire trap. When he'd played the game as a child, he'd never made the connection between the fire traps and his fear of fire which, for some reason, now appeared to him clearly. He privately wondered if the same could be said of the chimera's fear of drowning.

"Some of us try to stop them, because it tends to make us really depressed and they're afraid it'll create an expectation that we'll all get clipped so that other people will stop resenting us as they have been for so long, but some of us are saying it's important we give each other permission to do whatever we feel that we need to do to survive, you know?" His dragon head nodded. "Yeah... People are being forced to learn to manage risks they shouldn't have to," his ram head answered, "trying to stop people from taking risks at the risk of being labelled obstructionists, or putting themselves in harm's way, even at the risk of having to make sacrifices themselves," his snake head added as he set up a blocker near the edge of a lava pit.

"Meanwhile, everyone is saying we should be working at building bridges," Rakim went on as Ogun made a builder start building a bridge over a pit so that the rest of his team of lemmings could make it across it without falling into it and becoming trapped in it, "but bridges that will lead us where, to who, you know?" He scratched his lion head pensively. "I don't know, really." Talk of people sacrificing themselves to help others always made the bat think about his mother. "Did I ever tell you about the second time I saw my mother cry, Ogun?" He shook his dragon head. "You told me the first time was when the towers fell. If you told me about the second time I don't remember it offhand though." Irshad had never cried easily.

"It was after she didn't manage to pull someone out of a fire one time." His ram head cocked an eyebrow. "It can't have been the only time, can it?" Rakim shook his head. "No. As terrific as you are at your job, no firefighter's perfect." The chimera grunted thoughtfully. "So what was so special about that particular time, though? What made it different?" Ogun was still playing, but for all the issues it had caused for him over the course of his life, having four heads was at least helping him keep his attention on more than one thing at once. "She *could've* pulled that person out of the fire that time... she really could've. You know my mother wears her veil on the job, right?" He nodded his snake head. "Gosh, you can't possibly mean..."

Irshad had wanted the first thing people saw when they were pulled out of the fire to be a Muslim firefighter, with a veil, having just saved their life. It hadn't just been part of her activism - it had been her job and her belief system, combined into the calling that had made her who she was. "Yeah... That one time, when she reached to pull someone out of the fire, the person saw her veil, and spat at her face. They told her they'd rather die than be pulled out of the fire by someone like her. She still tried to yank them out by force but they fought back. She tried to fight back, to use her training to knock them out so she could still pull them out, but... There was just no way for her to do it. So they burned." He shook his lion head. "Christ..."

Ogun was at a point in the game where he was supposed to set up a bomber. He paused. "You know, this game aged weirdly." He turned it off. "Let's try something else."