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

[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."

[elementofloyalty]

"So they didn't destroy our worlds?" The overall logic of this was becoming quite confusing.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"No one knows if they can be brought back," Hit Girl replied honestly. "All we know is that we might be able to do something after this is over, maybe. It's all a big 'if,' you know?"

[elementofloyalty]

"Sure we can," Rainbow Dash said. "If the Elements of Harmony could undo everything Discord did to Equestria, then they can undo this."

[hit_girl_mindy]

Yup, you lost her with the talk of Elements of Harmony and Discord, even if she was sure AJ mentioned it before.

"Yeah, you really don't get how actual universes and dimensions work. being able to do something like that is a power neither of us really get. I mean, even coming here, you've seen how many different people there are, and can imagine how we're pretty much specks in the scheme of things. What the fuck would be powerful enough to recreate our worlds from scratch, with all the same people and everything?"

[elementofloyalty]

That finally snapped Rainbow Dash's patience.

"YOU know what?" she said, jabbing a hoof at the girl. "YOU talk big about a lot of stuff you don't know a thing about either, but you're sure quick to shut down anything I say. You're just the sort that HAS to be right about everything."

Dismissively, she lifted a couple of feet in the air to turn and fly off.