trans_9 | Roaming, restless [After Dungeon Keeper]

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Roaming, restless [After Dungeon Keeper]

Morgan was restless.

When restless, he tended to roam the ship, checking on things he knew of, or seeking out places he didn't out of curiosity. Today was a little of both. After the pitched battle in Hydroponics, he felt a particular obligation towards one plant in particular: the apple tree he'd helped Applejack grow from a seed. For all that he'd done his best to contain Hydroponic in the fight, he hadn't been able to do anything specific to protect that plant.

Done there, he headed back down in the City, off to one particular place that had caught his interest when he had heard about it: an 'air temple'. Not on the map, not listed in the directory, or he'd have wandered over just to take a look a long time ago. Now that he'd heard about it, well...

Time to investigate.

[OOC: Just say where you find him; it can be pretty much anywhere, since his trip covers a lot of ground across the ship.]

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Mindy thought about this a moment. The last time she talked was with that one chick during the council meeting but...that hadn't really gone as well as she hoped.

"I dunno if I can convince people of shit because of how old I look. You know people on the ship: 'what does that child know' and shit like that."

"Not the way you're doing it, of course you can't," Morgan said. "You're blunt force and brute tactics. There's no subtlety to you at all, so you're working against yourself rather than with yourself. Balance, you see?"

Damn, he had a point. "I never thought of it as working against myself. I just figured that I was doing what I had to to get the job done. But I guess there's no harm in trying something like that."

Who would teach THAT though?

Maybe this was a teachable moment itself. "Well, think of it this way -- when you realized your efforts weren't working, and more to the point, you knew why, what did you do?"

"Honestly? I stopped giving a shit. I know my strength isn't with words, and you can already tell when some fucker is thinking to themselves 'why should I listen to this little kid?' So I just didn't bother. They have their code of honor and I have mine."

"I'm a little surprised you'd give up so easily." Just a statement to prompt her to talk further, really, to try to draw out more insight.

"I'm not big on talking, and when it comes down to it, I have less patience for dissension bullshit. All I hear half the time from people is them blaming the Council or Stacy for their lives not being better, when they can do it for themselves. And I'm a KID. If I know this and they don't, can you picture me trying to explain why arguing and bitching is unproductive to the actual mission? They'd pretend I had a point but I know damn well they don't think much of it."

She was definitely underselling what she COULD say, but Mindy cautious when it came to things she knew needed work. She hadn't gone to school like most people, so she knew enough not to try and and overstate herself.

"So far you don't seem like the kind of person who would give up no matter how trivial. Especially if it was because of your age." After all, she didn't do it in fighting, right?

"When it comes to fighting? Fuck no. I give it a hundred percent. But I'm not miss speechmaker with the flowery words and the inspiring messages that get burned into your soul. At most I'm probably better at inspiring a handful of people. But now that I think about it...in the future, I wanna be commanding armies and bringing people down, so maybe there's something to actually doing this kind of shit."

She paused. "Is this something you're pretty good at too?"

He lifted a hand to wave it in the universal 'so-so' gesture. "I can give a speech or sound good for the media, but that's not something I chose to explore in-depth. Then again, I have the unfair advantage of being a twenty-something Caucasian male with money. That all does more speaking for me than I'd frankly like."

Mindy laughed. "Well, at least you admit it. But you make a good point. Expand my options, see what else I can do besides training all the time, and managing the cafe. Might as well: it'll be good for me, give me a chance to put some weight behind what I say."

"Words are just another way of putting your strength and skill against someone else's," Morgan mused. "I chose to practice an instrument... well, in part because it was a gift, but because playing one is an expression of martial arts as well. Everything is martial arts, if you only let it be. So you should always be studying and learning something -- more things than just fighting or weapons."

Mindy sighed. "You know I never went to school? Dad taught me everything. It was training and more training, no way I could go there with the blacks and blues I got, they'd think he was abusing me. If I seemed fixed on fighting and weapons, its because its something I'm good at. Maybe I am good at other things, but I was brought here because I could be the weapon they needed. And I AM needed."

"A body's no good if the mind isn't up to it," he said, tapping his temple with a finger. "And you're not a weapon. You're a person. Your potential, lethan and non-, is greater than that."

"I got you," Mindy said. "Though its hard to not think of yourself as a weapon when you find out why you're on the ship in the first place. I was supposed to be going to school until this happened. It would definitely have helped with the whole adjusting to civilian life, getting a hobby thing."

"I don't think any of us can say why we're on the ship. Why we're awake on the ship. Sure, we have a goal, but there are any number of paths to that goal, and we'd be crazy not to explore every one we can."

"Some people can say they can't say, but come on. I know damn well why I'm here. Stacy is not big momma of the world, she wants to protect the worlds, and she needs strong people to do it. You'd have to be brain dead not to know. Can you say you think Stacy didn't choose you for this?"

"You got a specific letter describing the reasons?" he said, lifting an eyebrow as he smiled.

"No, but it doesn't take a rock scientist to figure it out. I kick ass. I'm good at it. Why the hell else would Stacy have brought me here? I'm not saying that I'm not good at other stuff, and that I might eventually find out those things, but I know why I'm here, ok? I doubt Stacy brought me here because of my char and good looks."

"It may seem obvious, but I'm not going to assume I understand the thought processed of a schizophrenic AI programmed by alien intelligences," he said wryly. "You know what they say about assuming."

"See if you only did that, you'd be ahead of the game, like me," Mindy said, but was laughing. Ok, so maybe he had a point, and bemoaning why she was on the ship was stupid. "But I'll give your idea a try. It's not like I'm a master expert at knowing what I can and can't do when it comes to new things."

"There are very, very few skills you can't pick up with effort and patience," he said, "but some will be easier than others. The point is to study, learn, and internalize, to grow as a person; the journey's the key, not the destination."

More things she really should have figured out on her own: but even she knew she could miss something like that when she was too busy being Hit Girl.

"That's true for anything really," Mindy said, "But I can see how I sometimes lose that when I get really involved in what I'm doing. So maybe I should just concentrate on what I can do now, like the cafe, as Mindy for a bit. I just get anxious when I'm doing nothing important to the mission, you know?"

"That's why you need to take a broader view. In the long run, at least if you're doing it right, everything serves."

"That's true," Mindy said, shaking her head free of any access water. "I do plan to use everything about this life to make way for the next one. And there are...people that just make everything worth the work I put into it."

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Roaming, restless [After Dungeon Keeper]

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