OPERATION: YOUTHFUL DISOBEDIENCE

[stresstokens]

WHO: Members of the grand curfew-breaking plan!
WHEN: During the Moorecroft event.
WHERE: Various Moorecroft locales.
WHAT: A bunch of youths have gotten together to break curfew in tandem to get to the bottom of the mystery at heart of this place -- but what they find leads to more questions than answers.
NOTES\WARNINGS: Probable violence, death, emotional trauma, cursing. All the fun stuff! I'll be putting the log headers for pre/during/post-curfew breaking logs in the comments, so just hang tight while I do that, though all members are of course more than welcome to post their own logs if that suits their tagging style better.

Comments

[stresstokens]

It was my first real mystery! I hadn't figured out the basics yet. I'm much better at it now, [ Riz protests, although he arguably hasn't had much of a chance to sort out whether or not he's actually improved; the whole business with the Nightmare King has gone unfinished as far as he's concerned, and he's not yet certain how much help he specifically has been with the whole ordeal.

Still. Riz doesn't have a lot going for him, and he knows it. What he has to rely on is his unshakeable belief in his own abilities, or at least in his own potential. If he didn't, he may as well just lay down and die now. ]

If I were to do it all again, it'd go a lot differently. [ He considers this. ] I still would've killed Daybreak, though. Fuck that guy.

[ His friends had been some combination of appalled and shocked when it happened, but even now, he can't seem to manage even a scrap of remorse about how that went down. ]

[dangerousmind]

[She laughs a little. She can see why Adaine has a fondness for this one.

Adopting a continuing tone of casual and aloof friendliness, she inclines her head before nodding.] Generally speaking, you only want to leave an enemy alive long enough for them to give you what you want. After that, they become another unpredictable variable that'll almost always come back to bite you.

[They should have killed her too, obviously. She's sure they'll regret not doing so before she's finished getting what she wants out of Echo and Aurora.]

With a few exceptions, obviously.

[Maybe.]

[stresstokens]

With a few exceptions, [ Riz readily agrees with a quiet laugh. ] It depends on the, uh... level? Of enemy. A dude like that who's been like -- grooming kids to become part of some weird evil homophobic racist cult? I'm not gonna feel bad about that.

[ He refuses to. When others are willing to kill him, he thinks it's absolute madness not to be willing to kill them in return. That's not nobility. That's just inviting them back to try to pull that shit again. ]

I'm not actually, like, pro-killing? But if someone's trying to kill me, generally speaking, I'm gonna return the favour. [ ... ] Unless they're unkillable robots, apparently.

[ That's a skill issue on his part. Boy, he'd sure like to rip out their wiring. ]

[dangerousmind]

[The morality of adventuring is always fascinating. Contradictory and brutal in a way that (if she was being honest about herself) made her feel a little squemish. Killing everyone on that ship made her gag for weeks afterward. She struggled looking at Kalina or Adaine or Penelope, even as Penelope shrugged it off and seemed somewhat perplexed at how she thought killing nearly a hundred people was "a big deal".

Or is that just how she remembers her own feelings? She's not sure anymore. Did she feel bad? She thinks she must have, but she can only barely remember why. They were strangers. Names on a page. Who cares if they all die?]

I don't think "pro-killing" is a particularly coherent philisophical outlook to begin with. Unless you're an insane death cultist or whatever.

[Even the End was a bit more complicated. She flexes the hand with the blackened veins in memory of that sweet experience of love and rot as she died on the inside and the outside.]

Do you feel bad about anybody that you killed? Or anyone you let live?

[stresstokens]

I don't feel bad about letting anyone live, [ Riz answers, quick as can be. He can imagine how Aelwyn feels, a little. At least back home, Adaine had been convinced that she felt true remorse for what had happened in the past -- perhaps not everything that she'd done, but certainly for how she'd treated her little sister after all of these years.

Riz flexes his fingers, considering how bad he actually feels about any of it, and simply winds up shrugging. ]

As for if I feel bad about killing anyone... I mean, it's just one of those things, you know? I've never killed anyone who wasn't directly trying to kill me or the rest of my party first. I don't believe they all deserved to die, but that's different from regretting killing them. It would have been nice if they could've survived. But if it's me or them?

[ He's a pragmatist. He's always been a pragmatist. Sometimes it worries him a little, that he goes too far, too quickly; he wants to wind up in Heaven with his own dead, not trapped in Hell with Bill. But he still thinks the scale's weights are in his favour. For now. ]

Eh. How about you?

[dangerousmind]

[I don't feel bad about anything anymore.

The words almost slip from her tongue. Entirely lacking in subtlety. When she was alive, she hid her own guilt and shame behind bravado and mockery, sneering at Adaine and waving off the many people she murdered. She doesn't feel proud - that image of cartoonish villainy still doesn't exactly fit the lightless flame in her chest.

If anything, she feels ashamed at how much time she wasted.]

I should have killed my parents years ago. [She shrugs. That's about the summary of it, the amount of feelings she has towards this conflict that don't reach past what is acceptable for her to feel.]

Beyond that, not really. I'm probably supposed to but... [She shrugs. She can't imagine 'I didn't know them enough to care about them' would go down particularly well with this kid, but it's true. She's allowed many people to suffer over similar logic. Although she pauses, thinks some more.]

I didn't really have a role in it - I only found out after the fact, but I felt a little bad about Zayne. Don't know why, he was kind of a cunt, but he was good at spellcrafting.

[stresstokens]

Zayne's cool now. He lives with the rest of the girls, these days -- as a ghost, which he was pretty pumped about.

[ He didn't expect for Aelwyn to truly voice any real remorse over what she's done, more as a defense mechanism than anything else. But as he watches her work out what to say, it occurs to him that it doesn't look like a mask. Not really. It doesn't seem as though she's bothering to lie to him, the same as he's not bothering to lie to her. What's the point?

But that's what he'd expect her to say. It's not what he's been led to believe by Adaine. To hear Adaine speak of it, Aelwyn has felt true remorse over getting caught up in everything - even if it was largely about how she'd treated Adaine - and had made a real effort to change for the better. It's not that Aelwyn's being particularly awful right now, especially not when she's right here helping the rest of them, it just... doesn't add up.

Something happened in between when Aelwyn is from, and when Adaine is from. Things didn't happen. The path of Aelwyn's destiny has changed. He wonders how much Adaine has caught onto that. It's troubling. Everything but the claim about her parents is troubling, because at least that much, Riz can get on board with. ]

Technically, he lives with you too. The others told me you wound up living at Mordred with everyone else for a while. [ Maybe that's what changed her. Absolutely criminal lengths of time spent in proximity to Jawbone a man who, while immensely likeable, is entirely too much for Riz.

He wonders if this Aelwyn is bitter about it. If she wishes she could be that Aelwyn instead, recovering in the peace and comfort of her forgiving sister's arms instead of sent off to deal with some other apocalypse. If she did, he's not sure she would ever tell him. ]