6am | Ryslig inbox

Mariner, I'm going to be honest with you.

Maybe I still think this is all a dying dream or hell.

Maybe it's because I don't have morals like you do.

But I just don't see how this is terrorism. We set out to cause destruction in a way that wouldn't hurt people. We wanted to show Elias that he can't experiment random shit on us without our consent "for our own good". And I can understand not being upfront when your enemy is a child god who could torture you if you cross him.

How did we even know the EMPs were just there to give us headaches and "slow our transformation"? Elias still hasn't come out and state why he was doing it. Everyone just assumed it was not that bad once it blew up.

Hell, he still hasn't acknowledged it beyond gloating in my face for making me deal with hunger I can't satisfy.

[There's a significant pause before he continues.]

I don't know. I guess I'm just not noble like you.

ok, look at it from the people uninvolved, who weren't affected. the humans.
to them, people following the fog blew up something belonging to the fourth because of some esoteric reason they don't comprehend.
that reads as a religious conflict.
and if monsters are gonna be blowing shit up, in addition to eating them, what's to say they won't be next?

the collateral was minimal, this time. who's to say it won't be the next time? because they don't know if there'll be a next time. neither do any of us. if elias does something else, if the fog does something else - this is precedent! this shows it's OKAY to blow things up when one side hurts you! i don't know if some asshole on either side will take advantage of that and that scares me, phil

elias is being a little shit and i'm glad the pulses stopped but there had to be a better way
if i'd had some time
if i'd had some warning
maybe i could have done something
but this all happened so fast
i wouldn't have even had time to get supplies to disrupt the pulses properly

i'm going to get in his face about what he did to you, believe me. i just need some rubber gloves in case he tries to zap me. 'cause he's vindictive. i know that now.

and i'm not...noble. not like other people i know.
i'm just a fuckup, phil. but i grew up with some of the best people i've ever had the privilege to know, and they taught me things i couldn't throw aside if i even wanted to. my ethics. my morals.
i tried to make mukuro understand that.
i couldn't.

guess that's why we're fighting.

I think that's just how this world is, Mariner.

One side does something the other thinks is terrible, they fight back, so on and so forth until the end of time. I don't know a whole lot of the shit that's been happening before we arrived here, but it seems like this shit has been going on for awhile. And at the end of the day I don't think it's even possible for it to stop, just from what I've seen this month.

[...]

You don't belong here, Mariner.

Like I said, I'm still not unconvinced that this is hell. Sure you're not perfect, but you're a good person. Better than me at least.

I know I can't stop you from fighting. I'm not your dad. But I'm going to be upset if you die.

Edited 2021-11-12 01:36 (UTC)

even if it's always been this way, it doesn't have to be!

we saw in those time bubbles that monsters didn't always eat humans! we saw that they - that we! - were supposed to be protectors! we can make things better!
we don't have to keep fighting a stupid war, we can choose not to!
like what's with me and mukuro, that's personal, not a stupid god thing. people are always going to fight over personal stuff. even in the federation we still have stupid squabbles and we like to pretend we're a utopia.

[She thinks for a few minutes.]

ok look
back in the 2260s my man kirk found this planet that was at war with each other for like forever
wanna know why?
both civilizations were half black and half white - but one of them was black on their left side and the other was black on their right side
THEY FOUGHT AND KILLED AND DIED FOR SOMETHING THAT FUCKING STUPID!
the whole planet killed themselves
they all died out
and the last two of them kept fighting even though there was no point to it anymore

we don't have to do that here, phil

we can break that cycle.
we just have to try.

Might have been more convincing if you didn't give me a retelling of the Sneetches.

... I'm going to be honest with you, Mariner.

I don't think I can break the cycle

I don't think I'm capable of being good like that. Even ignoring how the one time I thought I was helping here I was labeled a terrorist, I was never a good person. Good people don't get stuck in time solitary confinement for decades. Good people don't sexually course an entire town by abusing the loops to learn everyone's pasts and romantic preferences and pretend to be their perfect man. Good people don't murder a groundhog and then shoot their brains out in the middle of a festival.

I've known for years that I was a terrible person. And if I didn't change then I don't have a hope of changing now.

Maybe you can help this place, but I can't.

[Mariner takes about fifteen minutes to respond to that, because she doesn't know what to say. There's a lot. And knowing Phil even for a month, this is...a lot of opening up. The coercion thing is pretty grody, but he knows how fucked up it is, so she's not going to harp on it.]

it doesn't matter if you were a "good person" in the past
we can always be better
we just have to decide to be

maybe you couldn't change because you were stuck in that loop
that's what loops do, right?
start over and over again from the beginning
you can't grow or change you're just stuck
especially if it was just one day
hell i barely change my underwear every day [When she bothers to wear it, but she is not going to tell him that, especially when they're being serious.]

nobody's beyond help or saving
they just need someone to help them up off the ground.

as much as i like to pretend i can, i can't do everything alone. nobody can.

[Phil doesn't comment on the underwear detail, or on any of this, for awhile. He just keeps reading and rereading the text for about a half hour. He doesn't know how to respond to this. He doesn't know how to feel about this. How could someone who's known him for a month be so firm about the idea that he could ever be a good person?

Eventually, he responds with the one thought he can articulate.]

You know, I still don't know why you care about me so much.

[Mariner had been worried that she'd scared him with her adamant belief that he can be better, or something, so the reply is a relief.]

hey, we all gotta look out for each other here.
we're not going to get far if nobody has each other's backs.

[And to inject a little levity:]

besides, you might be the least boring person in this stupid hellhole.

:)

Well I'm glad you're right about something.

[There's another, thoughtful pause.]

I can't promise anything about changing.

But I'll promise that the next time I do something stupid I contact you first, okay? If it will make you feel better.

uh, check yourself, peep the username, i am ALWAYS right.

[She pauses too.]

okay. and next time before i commit to a deathmatch i'll contact you so you can talk me down from being too hotheaded for my own good.

Oh yes and usernames are always correct. Every single "Chad69"s out there are just as hunky as their name suggests.

... Hey, back on the fight thing, this isn't important but do you know when you're having this fight to the death anyway? Beyond "when you finish monster puberty"?

do you think people would do that? just go on the internet and lie???

oh yeah. uh....they say it takes three months. january? early january? whenever the fog rolls in then and i grow another head or six arms or something

[There is another noticable pause, only about five minutes this time, but it's long enough for Mariner to notice something's up.]

Mariner.

You better not die during this death match.

That is cutting it really fucking close to Groundhog Day.

[hmmmm shit fuck dammit she didn't realize that.

There's a long pause before she responds.]

I don't plan on dying, Phil. I can more than handle myself in a fight. And the only thing these monster changes are gonna be good for is helping with that.

I can't back down from her, either. I'm the one who threw down the gauntlet. If I try and explain that I need to help you if that loop happens again, she won't believe me, and she'll think I'm a coward.

She might believe you, but I wouldn't ask you to explain the situation.

I do want to fight her, but I promised you that I'd be here for you if it happens again.

I'm not going to die, Phil. [She has to be confident about that.] But in the meantime, I'm going to get the information that I can together for you. In case the worst happens.
Which it won't.
But it never hurts to plan for contingencies.

Edited 2021-11-12 04:17 (UTC)

Really inspiring confidence in me there.

Look, I don't mind talking to her about it. Can't you just, I don't know, push the killing back one month? She gave me 500 dollars I think she's okay with me enough that I can convince her to push it back.

Even if you can't find a way out I would like to have people I care about with me if I'm trapped in another time loop.

I have total confidence in you.

[She means it.]

If you want to talk to her about it, then go for it. I just wouldn't want to press you to explain the whole, you know. Thing. I don't know how much she knows about the loop and how bad it was and how worried you are about it repeating.

[There's a pause for six solid minutes.]

You care about me?

Don't worry about it. I don't mind talking about the time loop I was in at all. And if I was I should have put more thought into it before I decided to tell a bunch of children how I shot my brains out as a result of the time loop day 1 of being here. And then tell the whole story to the entire network.

[Oh.

He genuinely didn't expect to read that.]

Of course I do; I can't have the person who's going to stop this hell die on me, can I?

[...]

And

I already get the feeling that the time loop is going to be a lot more lonely if you're not there.

[Oh. She genuinely didn't expect to read that.]

Hey, no guarantees, but I'll do my best. There's enough temporal fuckery in Starfleet history that something's got to match up.

...thanks.

Not many people would say something like that to me.

[God, she misses her close circle of friends on the Cerritos. They'd stuck with her, never let her push them away, and Tendi had even gotten her to admit why she kept people at arm's length. It was easier when you didn't let yourself get too close. People were inevitably reassigned, or ranked up, or died, and she'd finally grown tired of making friendships when they were just going to end. She'd grown up a Starfleet brat, she knows the score, but that doesn't mean she has to like it.

Sometimes people are so determined to be friends with you that you can't help but be their friend back. She'd done that with Boimler - at least, with unilaterally declaring herself his mentor - and she guesses she's done that with Phil.

She wonders if that means she's accepted that she'll be here a while.]

Well those people are terrible for not realizing how cool you are.

Or, as cool as someone who doesn't think I'm hot can be.

[Your standards are trash, Mariner.]

But if it makes you feel better.

I can't remember the last time someone genuinely called me their friend, even before the time loop.

[Not that he blames people for not wanting to be his friend. He has an ego problem and was extremely difficult to work with. It's not like he didn't know that.

... God

It really sucks how vague his memories from prior to the time loop are now. It feels like an eternity ago. Does he even remember what his boss looks like? His other coworkers? Anyone outside Punxsutawney?]

I know I'm a huge pain in the ass so I'm not surprised people can't get past that to deal with my utter awesomeness

[Immediate response that she knows she does, that she'd called her holo-double out for: making a sarcastic quip to deflect. It helps that it's couched in the truth. She is a huge pain in the ass, and anyone who can get past that deserves - or "deserves" - to see the Mariner behind the Mariner. The person, not the façade. She can count those people on one hand.

Phil's joining that group. She might have to move it to two hands soon.]

well, you're my friend now, so suck it up and deal with it

in fact
by my authority as a starfleet officer
and the leader of beta shift
i declare you an honorary lower decker

(that's a good and cool thing)

You and me both! All the time people tell me "you act like a prick to everyone for no reason", "complain about every minor inconvenience that ever happens to you", "you need to put on some freaking pants already Phil, we can't have you half naked on television", but they don't recognize that they're my lovable quirks!

[Half joking, but he thinks she might get a kick out of the implication that he often didn't wear pants during the time loop.]

It better be a cool thing! I don't think I could respect you if this was some lame club.

I don't really have anything to offer you like that. I guess you can be the honor of the first woman who's able to put up with outside of time loop/sex reasons.

[She does not blame him one bit for pantslessness. If she was stuck in a timeloop and nothing mattered, she'd be likely to be free from the tyranny of pants, too.]

we're the scrappy underdogs, doing kickflips, making fun of senior officers, that kind of thing
and we stick together

i'll take that honor. see? you're not so bad. i don't put up with just anyone. if you were a total dick i would have judo flipped you into a brick wall by now.

Oh so the rebels of the group who stick it to the man, huh?

Can't say I've ever hung in those groups but I'll make an exception because I like you. ;)

[But, hm, that second part.]

You wouldn't be saying that if you knew me a few hundred or so loops in. Rita was way more patient than you are and she slapped me more times than I can count.

that's right!

[She's not sure if it'd be better or worse if he knew "the man" in this case was also her mom. Either way, she's not going to bring it up.]

so that's, what, a few hundred days in? if we're still here in a year, then we'll see.

I better still be here in a year, but it's going to be a miracle if you don't punch me once during that time.

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