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]

"You can say it all you want, Rainbow dash, but the truth is the truth: You can't BEAT death, no matter how cool you are, or even how good you are. Just about everyone on the ship is strong in some fucking way, but we're still being thrown at shit literally out of nowhere. Most people would run away if they had to deal with that. If you want to call those people uncool or cowards, they'll take that over being dead. But to call someone who knew he could die, and tried his best to stay alive uncool? that's just wrong, and you know it."

[elementofloyalty]

"You don't even know what happened!" Rainbow Dash said, snorting angrily. She had this vague assumption that since she herself didn't, no one did; Punchy had just sort of turned up dead one morning.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"You stay in this place long enough, the stories blur. Besides, you've seen Punchy: you think he would go down easy? I don't. The guy was all hero, man. I know the type. No way that he would die for anything less than an impossible situation."

Yeah, she should probably find out herself, but she hadn't been lying about what she said to Rainbow Dash: to her, death stories blurred, and the last one with Howard and Cedric had just been so unfair in her opinion she was sure Howard was in the afterlife going "what the fuck" about his demise.

[elementofloyalty]

"You don't know ANYthing!" Her counterargument was feeble and fueled by anger instead of logic, and that was fine. She wanted anger. Rainbow Dash wanted to be furious, because it hurt less, it felt so much better, than being sad.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"You think so?" Again, the alcohol had done a good job of lowering Hit girl's ire and irritation, but it made her no less cognizant...for now. "When's the last time you lost somebody?"

[elementofloyalty]

"I don't remember," Rainbow Dash said. "I lost... a friend, not too long ago, but not like this...."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"I'l bet its not." Hit Girl took a careful sip, then wiped her mouth. "And that what makes staying here on the ship a little different. You can die if the odds don't favor you, and sometimes, they just don't. So you have to claw your way out of everything to survive. You don't stop for a minute. But that's not a guarantee either. Take it from someone who knows."

[elementofloyalty]

"I'm not going to die," she murmured. The words were broken and bitter, but they were a promise nonetheless.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Then keep telling yourself that," Hit Girl said. "Believe me, you're a long way from your home, and the things we're gonna see aren't going to be nice."

See, she's nicer drunk! If she'd been sober the first words out of her mouth would have been "never heard THAT before."

[elementofloyalty]

And then a brawl would've erupted, so it's good they avoided that.

"I've been through 'not nice'," she said with another snort.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"You've been through unpleasant stuff. Everyone does. When I say not nice, I'm talking about against all odds fights, where there's crazy things shooting at you and there's no hope. That's the kind of not nice I'm talking about."

[elementofloyalty]

"So, like Nightmare Moon," she said, skeptically.

[hit_girl_mindy]

Ok, she'd been drinking so...did she hear that right?

"What's a nightmare moon?"

[elementofloyalty]

"Nightmare Moon, the Mare in the Moon. She was an evil mare who wanted to plunge all Equestria into eternal darkness! She kidnapped Princess Celestia, and my friends and I had to go save the day."

At another time this might have been boastful bragging, but Rainbow was too drawn out for anything more than a flat retelling.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Oh wait, I think I might have overheard that story from the apple pony once."

Not in her HG outfit, but it still counted, right?

"How bad did it get?"

[elementofloyalty]

"APPLEJACK!" Don't you call her friend 'apple pony' in front of her, not when she was miserable and spoiling for a fight. "And of course it got bad! It got really bad! If Twilight hadn't figured out the secrets of the Elements of Harmony, we'd all be living in eternal darkness or worse right now!"

[hit_girl_mindy]

Well good that that got under her...hooves? Of course she didn't forget Applejack's name. She hadn't technically MET Appelack as Hit Girl though, so the more she seemed disconnected from them, the better.

"Fine, whatever, Applejack. But you won, didn't you? And I'm guess if some other big bad happened, you won those too. How do you think things would have turned out if that hadn't happened?"

[elementofloyalty]

"Doesn't matter. We DID win. That was the point I was making," she said snootily. "Thing got real bad and we still won."

[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."