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( can we talk is an anxiety inducing question, no matter how you slice it. )

You could come to my room if you want. Or I'll come to yours.

Is something wrong?

(￣▽￣*)ゞ ur room is pref. ive kinda abandoned mine for the pool lol

no. just have some info i got from jenny. but some of it i feel like maybe evry1 shouldnt kno?? u might be better to have that info and figure out who can kno and who can not kno, if that makes sense?

Okay. I can be back there in ten minutes. But

why shouldn't everyone know what she told you? We're all stuck in the same literal boat.

dunno if i can trust her, but i think that other ppl feel the same. some may try 2 do things to go against what i have 2 tell u. things that will hurt her. dunno if that’s right or not? im no good w/ these things…

u might kno tho. i trust u

I can't, and will never, promise you that I'm any better with these things. But I'll try to be.

And I'd really, really like to know what you've learned.

in that case im outside ur room now. c u soon (๑˃ᴗ˂)ﻭ

[ And he is, tapping idly on his phone even after he’s done messaging Clarke, humming the Tetris theme to himself as he waits. ]

( oh, o-heckin-kay. she's picking up just a bit of speed on her way from up on the tennis courts — where she'd done less sports than glowering at the captain's area for sport — and will eventually push out of the elvator doors on the cabin level before they even completely open. it's really just a long hallway of bedrooms, and she can spot mizuki by 108 almost immediately.

there's the very strong desire — impatient curiosity — to demand answers the second they're within earshot of one another, but clarke also recognizes that the implication of a private, in person chat could carry heavier information that no passerby should hear. so instead, she nods at him when approaching, uses her shiptalk app to unlock her cabin door, and gestures for him to walk in first.

the interior of cabin 108 is... similar to every other cabin, with the exception of the absolute hoard of random supplies between the wall and the bed. clarke had woken up several days before her roommate had, and had very quickly busied herself collecting any non-perishable snack pack from the general store, bottled water, anything remotely flammable — nail polish remover, dryer sheets, pool noodles, etc — in case... honestly, just in case. apart from that the desk area is covered in pages ripped from spiral notebooks, some are taped to the wall; one or two intricate portrait sketches interspersed between rough doodles of magical sigils, rough-drawn maps of the entire ship, and incomplete passenger manifests. the murderboard vibes within 108 are strong.

and let's just ignore the pillow and blanket on the floor. the bed is too soft, and gradually more and more crowded with survivalist supplies. there's a chair at the desk, and that will be what clarke inevitably gestures at, an unspoken invitation for him to sit. )

What'd you find out, Mizuki? And why do you think uninhibitedly sharing it with everyone else would be a bad idea?

( this is not unfamiliar territory for clarke. in fact, it runs so close to the lining of her heart that it's almost all she can do to ask the questions with an even keel and no outward stress reflected on her features. )

Edited 2022-04-11 04:24 (UTC)

[ Mizuki greets her with the usual smile and a small wave on her arrival. He would apologize for springing this on her so suddenly, but it's sort of one of those situations where if he doesn't get it off of his chest now, it may never get done. That, and he's afraid of waiting too long to bring it up.

But he does enter and sit as he's motioned to do, putting his phone away in the process. The room is... a lot. Clarke's certainly done quite a bit more decorating than Mizuki would ever do, but... mostly just because he's been living in the pool. Kind of hard to decorate that with much of anything. He wonders if his roomie did anything fun in there yet? Maybe he should go check up on him... ]

I think it's better if I just... tell you everything? There may be stuff that you might already know, sorry in advanced, but I'll just list it all off if that's okay. Do you want to take notes or something? Should I wait for you to get a pen?

No need to wait.

( only because the second clarke perches on the edge of her bed, there's a composition notebook and ballpoint pen immediately to her right. and it's summarily scooped up, flipped open, with the pen tip ready to go against the page.

but first and foremost, she'll listen. notes can be scrawled after the fact, for now it's mostly just a prop as she levels him with a heavy, demanding gaze — and gives a slight nod of her head, in invitation to start talking. )

[ Inhale. You got this, Mizuki. It's just like giving a report to the Doctor. Only, there's no team to back up whatever you may have left out... No pressure!

...Exhale. ]

To start, the information I'm fine with everyone knowing because I don't think it matters one way or another: We are stuck in... a bubble, for lack of a better term. The barrier that ends a few miles out from this ship... ends this space. There's no continuation of the sea. According to Jenny, it's... a void? Space? Something that threads between realities, where every moment "hangs like stars."

Next, the information I just want you to have to do with as you see fit: Jenny is very old, to start. Apparently, old enough to have been part of the whole "born from the first lightning in the sky," whatever that means? And she has two brothers. She cannot remember them, however. She believes they're still on this ship, potentially as ghosts? Unclear. The Captain apparently uses the... "ghosts" as a source of his magic?? And his magic is finite, meaning there are ways for us to wear it out.

This is where the tricky part comes in. I fear if we wear it out too much, we risk Jenny losing her brothers, but if we can somehow contain how much we try to make him use his magic, perhaps we can all come to our happy endings? ...I don't know. I'm not very good at solving things like that. But you're very smart, Miss Clarke, so maybe you have some ideas?

[ A beat. ]

Ah, one more thing. I asked her something we should expect to prepare ourselves for. She said, "Having to unanimously vote for who you are going to sacrifice. Including the sacrifice."

( no pressure at all, because... actually a lot of what he's here to report collides very nicely with what clarke had learned during her own casual interrogation of pirate jenny. or the almost immediate debrief she'd held with natsuno (and jade, but not by choice) the second she'd stumbled from the theater. clarke does very little note taking, but nods along readily. the idea that life in this bubble doesn't exist past the barrier natsuno discovered early on is... troubling. fascinating. question-making, because then where did jenny's ship come when the horizon had previously been devoid of shadows for miles. they ought to have seen her, right?

and... honestly? the tricky part isn't that tricky. it's just another trolley problem, though clarke immediately recognizes she'd never asked if he'd pull the lever there. guess now is as good a time to ask, no matter how heartlessly she phrases it. )

There are almost fifty of us on board here. Who didn't ask to be here, and don't want to be here. Who still have a majority of their souls and senses of self intact, and who could go back to their own lives if we found a way out of here. Would you put four shadows of humanity — and their grieving sister — above the lives of everyone who walks around you on a daily basis?

( and then, past that unsettling tidbit, it's basically another arkadia quandary. look at a group of people, and decide very quickly who should live and who should die. the bonus here is there's only a thin tendril of personal connection; they've only been on this ship a month and a half. )

Despite everyone's right and drive to live, I think there are a lot of people here with nothing else to lose. And more than a few who'd be willing to lay down their lives for other people. If you were to make a list of sacrifices who'd most likely agree to their fate, whose name would you put down?

Edited (ignore the numbers; we don't actually know how many bros jenny lost, just how many hands she fucked up asdfghjkl;') 2022-04-11 06:30 (UTC)

If I knew how to answer that sort of question, I wouldn't be coming to you at all, Miss Clarke. Rather, I would be offering that information to everyone as I saw fit. I can only speculate on the choices and what they mean...

[ If he was good at this sort of thing, it would've probably made his job a lot easier. Alas... ]

A list of sacrifices...? Mmh... I don't know? I suppose I would... [ ... There's a pause. And though he might try to say that he would put himself on that list, there's a voice in the back of his head that stops him. "I ask--or order of you is this: you have to live." Strange. Didn't he take back that order? Then why can't he make himself say it... ]

... I don't know. I would do what you would want me to do, Miss Clarke.

( at the same time, being good at this sort of thing would have probably landed him firmly among the real of psychopaths. don't ask clarke to extrapolate where that leaves her if she's become an aficionado on hard choices and playing god, the answer is nowhere good. these sorts of jobs aren't supposed to be easy, they're supposed to hurt.

secretly, she's glad he falters to add his name to the list. it's telling, and reinforces the idea that so many on board the serena eterna have better lives waiting for them if only they could escape the captain and his grasp. mizuki's answer is incomplete, but clarke's nodding along until his final notion, where she sorta... record scratches. stop, stares, knits her brow and the only thing immediately to respond with is: )

Just call me Clarke.

( then moving on to the bigger chunks of meat to chew over: )

I don't want you to do anything, Mizuki. I'm not asking you to. ( very much remembers his offer to eat her enemies, but still isn't quite there yet. ) I just — ... Thank you. For telling me what you've learned.

( really, virtually none of it is something clarke didn't already know, but that doesn't take away from the almost soft, appreciative half-smile she gives him. the approving nod of her head, the slight cant of her head. )

I guess I don't know if you were asking me to tell you which part of this is okay to share, or just wanted to say it all out loud first, but.

I think you have to figure that out for yourself.

Decide who you trust here, don't hold anything back from them. Don't make any sort of list, we're not to that part of his game yet. And if we get there —

( oh, the emotional weight here. yet the offer is honest and genuine. )

I'll make it, and you won't be on it.

[ He's just so used to respectfully using "Miss" to people he looks up to. But, he can drop it, absolutely, and nods to signify as such. ]

Alright. I just figured some of this might be nice to know. For example, maybe it takes up his magic to fix up parts of the ship that we destroy. In which case, I'd be happy to help with that. I'm sure a few others would be as well. Simultaneously, I wasn't sure if you would want to monitor the amount of damage, just in case you wanted to not put Jenny's brothers at risk? I really don't know what the best case scenario would be here... but if you think it's something that's safe to share with everyone, maybe we can all brainstorm together~?

[ Mizuki's no good at solving things, but he can pose pretty good questions for other people to solve. He thinks that, at the very least, that makes him a little bit of a valuable asset to a team setting like this! Maybe? Okay, maybe he's not totally sure, but...! He wants to be useful. ]

Ehehe. Why do you think I'm here right now, not holding anything back? [ You might be against his weird devotions right now, Clarke, but that doesn't mean he's stepping down from them. ]

... You're so kind. Thank you. But if you decide to, I won't be upset.

I won't.

( the first point to hit on, yet a promise she can't exactly keep. but at least in this moment? one she absolutely intends to. the problem being, clarke griffin and her impossible choices have a habit of undermining her best intentions, and tend to make her failures all the more heart wrenching. the only real confidence she can hold here is that, if his name's on that list, hers is somewhere above it.

if mizuki could devour evil people, he had so much more use to the people on board than someone simply numbed to the idea of slaughtering them.

as for devotions and trust? it feels unearned on her end. all she's done for him is entertain a few hypotheticals while drenched in finery chosen by their hosts, and then asked a few prying questions about her home world while slathered in gristle. none of which ought to earn the amount of faith that she can physically feel being lumped on top of her chest when mizuki counters her challenge to find someone to completely trust with the kind, casual declaration that he's already found that person. really the best recourse for clarke right now is to buckle her confusion back, keep it close to her chest to chew over at a later date. they've got more important things to discuss, like a plan. )

Destroying things and forcing him to repair them is a good place to start. But that's something we'd need to test on a small scale, and covertly, before we used it as a baseline for any sort of attack. That's absolutely something we could work through together and brainstorm together.

( and now for the unkind, decisive moment: )

But Jenny wishes she could have burned alongside her brothers. And after this long, considers death to be an escape. I don't think we need to worry about putting any of them at risk, and should just consider it as finally allowing them rest.

( so yes, clarke's absolute willing to sacrifice every shade on board to save the handful of souls here. )

[ Mizuki ponders this for a moment, doing his best to try to understand this sort of rationale. On some level, it makes sense. If Jenny had told Clarke that much, then surely the trolley problem here being her family versus the hostages here made things easy. He understands it... but he doesn't rationalize it very well. But maybe his bleeding heart is showing for someone who lost their family...

He doesn't need to get the rationale, after all, right? He never has before, so what would make it any different here? ]

Edited 2022-04-12 01:46 (UTC)

Alright, then we'll tell everyone about it. And, who knows, maybe something good will happen, anyway? I had someone tell me a long time ago that good things come to good people. Maybe we'll just have to see what that makes Jenny?

[ Probably not a very good person, but anyone who's lived to be a number in the five digits probably wouldn't be labelled as a "good person". Not that Mizuki would make that sort of judgement call. ]

Edited (So many typos don’t look at me) 2022-04-12 01:48 (UTC)

( he wouldn't be the first person to blink at her in the wake of clarke revealing her intentions — priorities, plans, thoughts, anything really — and that moment of silent consideration serves as a painful reminder that the trust mizuki's decided to put in her is misplaced. unearned. potentially disastrous, and promisingly painful

will she always think she's making the right call? the best call? the only call that got as many people out of a situation alive as possible? tough choices with the betterment of humanity in mind, and bloody battle plans with the endgame of peace and prosperity? absolutely.

will those impossible choices ever be right? or easy? absolutely not.

it's a tad relieving for mizuki to eventually nod along, not challenge her too much or show any outward signs of doubt before they've even seen if this plan fails or succeeds. it's a breath of fresh air, and then a gut punch of a reminder that she's so far removed from everyone that knew her downfalls — surrounded by new people to disappoint and get hurt if she got this all wrong. so... )

Don't get me wrong. If we can help her, we will.

But karma's a joke. Bad things happen to good people, and bad people get happy endings. That's not a question of good or evil, that's just how life goes. Fate doesn't discriminate, and in dire straits we need to make our own chances.

( a real glossy way of saying you can't save everyone, so pick who matters most. )

[ It's not as if Mizuki even has anything to challenge Clarke with here. For the most part, he agrees. Mostly because it's in his nature to agree with those he looks up to, but also because looking out for those he cares about it far more important than looking out for those he doesn't know all that well. Least of all pirates.

Still, he lulls his head a bit at Clarke's dismissal of karma. There's a cold laugh in return. Again, she's completely right. It's far too optimistic for anyone to think otherwise, even if Mizuki really wants to believe it. ]

...Fortitude. We need fortitude. I spent a lot of time in Terra learning what the means from people.

[ Usually by force. And usually without their choice in the matter. She doesn't need to know all the details right now, though. They're not important. ]

Do you think we have that here on this ship?

( it's always, always okay to want to believe in something that might make life a little more palatable. understandable. comforting, even. but it's important to separate aspirations and hopes from the often colder, harsher reality they were faced with. the idea of karma could be a blanket wrapped around ones shoulders on a cold night, but shouldn't be counted on to keep frostbite at bay. )

I think we have a lot of people who've had to be very strong in their home worlds. I think we have stubbornness in spades. ( she is directly speaking about herself here, tbh. ) We might even have competence. And durability.

But I don't know about fortitude. Not yet. ( far too many people have seemed at ease here; some even prefer this nonconsensual pleasure cruise a decent break from their home worlds. one man wishes to run away from the grief of losing people close to him, some consider this a disjointed afterlife or else that their deaths were robbed from them. one girl was far too interesting in eating italian dishes floating through the walls instead of figuring out just where they were coming from. )

We might not know for sure, until people are pushed to decide for themselves how hard they want to fight for their lives. What did you learn about fortitude? What do you think courage would look like here, in the face of insurmountable odds and mysterious forces?

[ There's a light laugh, then a small shrug. ] Well, that was sort of a problem that I ran into. Learning about people's fortitude started to make me doubt a lot of my original views. I cannot confidently answer what true fortitude is, but rather, I know it's something needed for situations like this. It's a strange place to be in, right? But I've met many people who were confronted with their options-- calmly accept one's demise, or struggle to live on at any cost. When making the choice at their leisure, people who often say they'd choose the latter, as it's "simply" a matter of survival. Yet those who are forced to swallow the contents of those choices, in the heat of the moment...

[ He picks up his hand and twists it around to play with one of his side bangs idly as he kicks his feet in his chair, like he's talking to Clarke about something mundane or just talking about his day. ]

They've proven that instinct alone cannot give rise to true fortitude. They are easily crushed, or easily destroyed, or easily lose themselves.

[ He lulls once more, and... just starts to look tired. ]

... I don't know what it means to have it. I would like to see someone show it to me, though. And I think we need it desperately on this ship.

( wow okay.

clarke distinctly remembers only giving him bits and pieces of information about her home world, most generalized and sweeping. none of the specifics, at least not without the dressing and plausible deniability of hypotheticals. so why does this conversation feel like it's taken such sharp and sudden turn into directly calling her out? her and the remnants of the 100; all of the sky people, all of the clans in the face of the apocalypse. easily crushed, easily destroyed, easily lost — and it's hard not to take that as a condemnation of jasper jordan, who'd stared down at the deathwave and decided he'd rather paint dnr on his hand and go out smiling instead of fighting anymore. )

The same person could fight tooth and nail to survive on instinct alone, willingly accept the consequences, and still decide it wasn't worth to go through a second time. It's not an either or scenario. The people, the times, the circumstances, and the desire to live — all of those change. I don't think you'd get any more solid a definition of true fortitude than you would true hysteria.

I can't offer you a textbook definition or example. But I guarantee those who've swallowed their consequences without issue somethings wished they'd choked on them.

...Perhaps you're right. For true hysteria, I definitely understand your point of view. Here, though, I'm afraid I have to disagree. I believe that true fortitude, in the long term, will better one's "self". In the end, people with that fortitude will make the worlds- this place or otherwise- better. Brighter futures, better people, and the knowledge to pass onto others.

I can only hope that whoever has something like that will share their thoughts and feelings with me. Maybe then I'll finally understand.

( but mizuki!!! that's exactly what's happening here!

though clarke can gauge that her meaning isn't quite getting through to him. or maybe it is, and just really disagrees with that assessment, but he'd be wrong to. she briefly casts around for a way to explain it that might make more sense, and lands upon... )

Brave people can have evil motives. Genocidal warlords have the resolve and confidence to think they're doing the right thing. Not all types of fortitude are geared towards the betterment or survival of humanity, or would make the world a better place. Even what starts as the best of intentions can quickly become the worst sort of crime.

Have you never heard that every villain is the hero of their own story?

[ He never claimed to be a smart man, okay? Okay.

But he is very dead set on this sort of thing. If just because it's something he's seen over and over and over. To the point where his whole worldview on how people work and what they think and what that means to him had changed completely. He still has more to say on the matter, of course, and many thoughts that he needs to sort through to truly convey himself, but he simply shakes his head for now. ]

I haven't.

it's horrible but i love it <3

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1/2

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cw: suicide mention

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