Later, dawg [Open!]

[meat_mooks]

|| Attention, crew. Those who wish to attend the funeral of Matthew O'Connor, please report to the Observation Deck. ||

Another death announcement so soon after the last. It's a sad day.

Once again, the Observation Deck is arranged for the launch. The departed crew member, better known as Punchy in his lifetime, is encased in a central pod. The deck is lit by the starlight pouring in from the open window, a blazing blue star that will soon be Punchy's final resting place.

Another life lost. Time to say farewell once more.

Comments

[hit_girl_mindy]

"So what you're saying is that you're reacting badly not because Punchy fucked up, but because you never had to face a scenario where you won't actually win. It just happened to be the scenario didn't involve you."

Even tipsy? Hit the nail on the head.

[elementofloyalty]

"Oh, so that's how it is to you? It's not bad enough to be worth talking about unless you lose? Doesn't count unless someone dies?" Rainbow glared daggers at her for a moment, then huffed. "That's just sad."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Don't be stupid," Hit Girl said, rolling her eyes. "I could say the exact opposite with what you were just saying, that the only fights worth having is if you win. Yeah, people die, and more times than not I win, but I gotta be prepared if someone I care about loses too, and I am. Winning and living is not a guarantee on the ship. The moment you realize that, the better you'll begin to understand how important winning actually is in the first place."

[elementofloyalty]

"I know exactly how important it is to win!" she said. "That's why I DO it instead of losing! I'm not gonna sit here and think it's okay to lose!"

[hit_girl_mindy]

"It's not about being ok with losing!" Hit Girl said. "No one should be OK with it! But you have to be prepared for when it happens, because the moment you don't? You get sloppy. The enemy is never the same, and if they can use what you feel, your anger, against you? Then you play right into their hands. A loss is bad, and never settle for one. But if you don't think it can happen, and when it does it messes you up? That might be the one loss you don't get back up from."

[elementofloyalty]

"That's what I'm saying! When you're looking at the worst, you don't say, 'hey I might lose', you say, 'hey how can I win this?', right? I mean... it isn't over till you give up," she said. "And I don't give up!"

[hit_girl_mindy]

"You kinda need both, but yeah, you should concentrate on winning. Granted, there's more to it for me than that, but on a basic level, yeah. Punchy isn't dead because he wimped out: he did the best he could. He went out like any of us should, IF its our time."

[elementofloyalty]

"I don't believe in that 'time' thing," she said, lifting into the air just high enough to cross her forelegs stubbornly. "There's no such thing as destiny or fate!"

[hit_girl_mindy]

Hit Girl chortled. "No dude, I don't mean it like time or fate. I believe that shit even less than you do. I'm talking about when you instinctively know there is no way out of a situation, where you are actually risking life and limb and you might die, but you do it anyway. Those situations are going to happen all the time."

[elementofloyalty]

"You just said it was 'his time', that means he had a time in the first place!" Rainbow said with an angry flip of her tail.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"I don't mean it in the literal sense," Hit Girl said, shrugging. "I just mean that he died then, because there was no other way of getting out of it. That guy wasn't stupid, he wanted to live, but the enemy was too strong. I'm not gonna insult him while he's dead though, just because he didn't live. He did his best, like anyone would. Who wants to die?"

[elementofloyalty]

"How do YOU know there wasn't some way?" she said. "You weren't there!"

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Because I believe it," Hit girl said flatly, "and besides, I trained with him once. He was pretty damn good."

[elementofloyalty]

"He was all right. Wasn't THAT good," Dash said. "We took out a tree, though..."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Good enough," Hit girl insisted, shaking her head. "It's weird though, to have these deaths happen back to back. Makes me wonder if some of this stuff isn't planned."

[elementofloyalty]

"How would anyone plan it?" she asked, hesitantly. "WHO would plan it?"

[hit_girl_mindy]

"People that want to break morale," Hit Girl said simply. "The thing is, we can't be too happy here. I've been here awhile, and really? There haven't been many deaths, at least not with this crew. But there have been a lot more, right around the time we find out we haven't been given all of the information we should have. So if I was told the Daligig did this to keep us focused on the super evil Ohm, I wouldn't be surprised."

[elementofloyalty]

"If they did, they just made enemies of every single person on this ship. No one could be THAT stupid. And who says we can't try to be happy?" Don't let Pinkie Pie hear you say that, there'll be a party like no one's business.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Think about it, Rainbow Dash. Look at our crew. See how different everyone is, how they all don't agree on shit? Well it was like that before you arrived, but back then our own goal was defeating the Ohm. Now we have to factor in maybe we're being used to begin with, that someone else might be pulling the strings. And the thing this, we still don't have a clear picture of what's going on. So making enemies of the WHOLE crew when we get new recruits and uninformed people? Still pretty hard to do."

She chuckled. "I don't mind being a little unhappy. Makes sure I don't stay complacent."

[elementofloyalty]

"I don't get what you mean. Everybody so far has been pretty nice..." She'd gladly follow this conversational math if it meant not thinking about Punchy and everything related.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"I didn't say they weren't nice, though not all of 'em are. I'm saying that we don't know how many of them would fight with us if we had to do something that involved fighting. Like I said, everyone is different."

[elementofloyalty]

"That doesn't make any sense. If the bugs showed up tomorrow and started attacking us, who wouldn't fight?"

[hit_girl_mindy]

"People who can't fight, of course," Hit Girl said. "But then again, that begs the question: if were WERE to fight, and let's say we win, are we actually the good guys, or were we being used too? This is the thing that causing all the divisions in the crew: we were used to the Ohm being our bad guys for so long, the it might be all a lie is a scary one."

[elementofloyalty]

"Oh, well, people who can't fight don't count... unless they have to fight. But then they WOULD fight, anyway, right?" It made sense in the pony's mind. "Why would fighting the bad guys make up the bad guys?"

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Let's hope so," Hit girl said, who would still have a plan even if they didn't have all the people helping. At the very least they would have some of them, right?

"Because of how little we know, about anything. When you're told you have to beat the bad guy that blew up your world? You get resigned to it. When you realize its possible someone else might be pulling the strings to make this fight happen, then you start to wonder."