Pandaemonium
Posts 343
Power Level 30
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Post by Blue Jay on Jul 17, 2016 2:45:53 GMT -7
Blue Jay nodded. “Ah, that’s what it is. Now a lot of what you’ve said makes sense.” He’d been correct - it was a core belief that played into it, at least in part.
He rolled what she’d said around in his head a couple more times before continuing. “That explains why you’re so motivated. And why your goals are kinda really selfish.” Making a safe haven for supers despite the flaws in her plan and who it might detrimentally affect fell exactly into that. It also helped to explain why she was so quick to conflict with those who opposed her; he wondered what role compromise played in her view. He yawned. “So, if after you died you were remembered across the world as a terrible dictator who achieved exactly the government and you wished for but at a great cost to everyone else, would you be content with that?”
He paused. “Don’t feel like you have to answer that. It was mostly rhetorical.” Growing slightly sore, he shifted to sit cross-legged. “If you asked for my view,” he didn’t care that she hadn’t, “I think the goal of life is to be happy. What that means from person to person varies greatly, and it’s up to each of us to figure out what’s going to make us individually truly happy and work to achieve it. Living simply as ‘Blue Jay’ - fighting small crime and doing my part for the city, making friends and fighting good fights - makes me happy. Therefore I do. Obviously other things make me happy as well, and I’m working on those. Therefore, in my view, I’m moving towards achieving the goal of life. In your view, it’s clear I’m not. I don’t have a real driving need to change the world to my personal paradise, at least on the large scale.” Again he paused, thinking a little more about what she meant exactly by a ‘personal paradise’. “If a ‘personal paradise’ can be a personal in scope rather than society-wide and means a place where you can be happy as I think it does, then I guess I am trying to make my own and I’ve been decently successful. At that point we’re basically saying the same thing, just different ways.” He shrugged. “But I’m not looking to impose my beliefs on the world necessarily. What works for me isn’t going to work for everyone.” He chuckled. “So I guess I do fail at your goal of life.
“So now the next question would be how you look through my view. Is what you’re doing now going to make you happy?” He ended his sentence on a second yawn. He was hungry and in dire need of sleep, and as if his body wasn’t enough of an indicator of this, he was rambling. A lot.
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Pandaemonium
Posts 381
Power Level 31
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Post by Aurora Disicio on Jul 17, 2016 4:04:05 GMT -7
"Of course not!" she snapped. "I am not a terrible dictator, therefore I would not like to be remembered as such. With how casually you can disrespect something as important as a name, I'm not surprised that you don't have the slightest clue about personal identity either. Of course, how history remembers me isn't what determines how successful I am or not, it's simply a sign of it because those that are remembered for something tend to be the ones that had the greatest influence in the direction the world went."
Aurora didn't care if it was rhetorical or not, it had a clear answer and thus there was no reason not to answer. Besides, the more he talked the more angry she was becoming. If he wasn't so far away she might have punched him in the face again. Instead, she just started digging her fingernails into her arm. Her expression became rock hard with a kind of intensity that was unusual for even her. Her breathing was slow, steady, and deep; given how her body recoiled involuntarily after every few breaths, this obviously wasn't a pleasant way to be breathing in her current state. Despite her current fury, she listened to every word he said, the signs of her fury slowly building up. When he was finally done and she did finally speak, it couldn't be contained.
"This is exactly the kind of trite that let's the world continue to exist in such a sorry state! People are being treated as criminals and being shot, and possibly killed, because they have the fucking audacity to exist? Must not be that big a deal if people can still be happy in these circumstances! It's too hard to fight for, and that amount of sacrifice will make people unhappy, it must be a terrible thing to do something about! You claim that I'm being selfish when your own actions are based entirely around this meaningless feel good bullshit? You claim that I'm the one that's short sighted when the entire basis for your actions are based on whatever happens to sound like a good idea at the time? You're not countering what I'm saying, you're continuing to confirm exactly why you're absolute scum!"
She slammed her fist against the wall hard enough that the bed actually moved slightly. Her breathing became jagged and shallow again, not too unlike how she was while trying to get down the stairs at the office building. That took a lot out of her, and the pain was starting to become unbearable again. So much so that her eyes rolled back into her head for a moment, until she managed to catch her breath and let her body settle down enough that the pain subsided enough. Aurora was quiet for awhile because of this. When her voice returned, it lacked the power it usually had again except it was even more pained than before. Aurora spoke slowly and carefully, half to make sure she actually breathed enough this time and half to make sure that this idiot actually understood what she was saying.
"I find it likely that the only reason you can say that is because you have no idea what you're doing. The happiest people tend to be the most stupid just because they're incapable, or choose not to, think too hard about what's going on around them. They don't tend to be capable of meaningful introspection, and thus won't even notice their own flaws. You're saying that this is an ideal state, but I doubt you actually think that," she paused again taking a few more breaths and slumping against the wall again.
"I've looked into the people you target, as I do with most supers. They tend to be petty criminals or supervillains. This is why definable goals are so important. What does it mean to do your part for the city? Are you actually doing your part for the city? Do you know what causes most petty crime? They're not normally career criminals, or even the kind of person that would do something like that normally. Most of them are just in a desperate situation. Taking them out isn't going to reduce the crime rate because they're not what causes it. Without attacking the underlying cause you're not accomplishing anything, you're just hurting individuals who may not even be at fault for what's happening," she paused again, obvious signs of anger welling up in her once more. "It's so absurd that you said I don't care about people because I'm willing to go after the actual problem. When you go after those people, most of them likely have families that they'll be leaving behind. People that were already desperate and now suddenly have one less person around and one less source of income. If you had to face them, look them in the eye, listen to their stories like you did mine today, could you really call yourself happy? This is exactly the kind of thought that leads people to betraying themselves and regret. Do you even know who you are or what you want? Six months from now, are you going to be okay with your decision to save me when everything goes to shit even though you knew what I intended to do?
"To answer your stupid question though," she paused. "Yes, I am happy. This is the only way I can be happy. The world is wrong and needs to be fixed. That progress gets me more satisfaction than any temporary distraction ever could. I just see something wrong and it just eats at me to the point that I'm surprised I'm even able to handle it sometimes. But I'll always be glad for this because it means I will never be able to be a complete waste of space like you and most of the people out there."
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Pandaemonium
Posts 343
Power Level 30
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Post by Blue Jay on Jul 22, 2016 20:40:14 GMT -7
His smile was still light, and the rest of his expression shared it. “You know, the more I talk to you, the more I’m realizing how much we’re both hypocrites.” He chuckled, not oblivious to Aurora’s mounting - and present - anger, but choosing to ignore it. “We’re both selfish, we’re both short-sighted, I think we both keep putting words in each other’s mouths, and we’re both probably hurting individuals that really might not be at fault for what’s happening.” It was kind of hard admitting that, but it was true. “I don’t have any counters to your counter argument; you’re entirely right. But I haven’t heard much for counters to the flaws in your argument either.”
For all his talk of doing what was right and paying attention to the consequences of his actions, there’s been plenty of times when he looked back on what he’d done days or weeks prior and realized he kinda really screwed up. The incident in the park a couple months ago came to mind. Back when he first became a hero he was especially bad at this; there was one instance when he gave a conclusion to the owner of a store who he’d mistaken for a robber. Now, he preferred to watch people before just attacking them, and to try to scare them off before getting at all violent, but there’d still been a couple other instances when he’d hurt perfectly innocent people because he’d been too hasty. Even when he did hit right targets, how much was he actually doing? Not much, honestly and probably, if he was pressed to answer. He was sticking a band aid on a stab wound. This was beside collateral damage, his always had been and still was bane. He was working on it, but she was right. His actions were not flawless. What he was doing was solving very little.
Admitting this brought on a mix of feelings, both good and bad. Neither really weighed out one or the other, leaving him with a neutral feeling. And more tired.
Blue Jay pulled himself to his feet. “No, I won’t regret my decision. I’ll probably regret some of the battles I get into, or hurting some of the people I fight, but I won’t regret helping you. The regret of not would be worse than the ‘what if’ of anything you could do. I mean anything, including terrible dictatorship.” He said this with a bit of humor to his voice, but his words were honest. “Besides, in six months I’ll be dead.”
Blue Jay stretched his arms over his head. One of his shoulders popped.
“You sure you don’t want some painkiller?” He asked. It was getting harder to ignore the pain in her, well, everything. It was all he could do to keep himself from outright telling her to stop hurting herself like that.
“We should probably figure out how long you’re going to be staying here and, if you’re leaving before you’re feeling better, how you’re going to get home.” He had a couple of suggestions, but he wanted to hear what she wanted first.
In a moment of absent silence, his mind floated back to the conversation at hand. “Isn’t that the challenge, remaining happy once you’ve lost blissful ignorance?” He mused. “If this is what brings you satisfaction and makes you happy, then I guess I can’t fault you for going for it. Doesn’t mean I won’t try to stop you, but I can’t fault you for it. I just hope it’s not a false happiness - I’m not saying it is, but there’s a lot of things out there that people say’ll make you happy but just leave you feeling empty.”
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Pandaemonium
Posts 381
Power Level 31
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Post by Aurora Disicio on Jul 23, 2016 13:39:35 GMT -7
"Hardly. I mean, it's clear that you have no idea what you're doing, but I make a point of trying to find the correct solution to everything. I've spent a great deal of time figuring out who I am and what I believe in so that in difficult situations I have something to fall back on. I'm sure if you, or anyone for that mattered, looked into what I actually do you'd find me quite predictable. And I've already countered every argument you've thrown at me, to the point that you literally ragequit and ran away."
Aurora rolled her eyes. It was typical that he'd project his weaknesses onto her, and that her clear explanations would never be good enough. She had long accepted that. At this point, she was content with the fact that she was at least able to get him to acknowledge his own faults, even if he insisted on projecting them back onto her too. That was the first step to self improvement. Sadly, her body wasn't really letting her enjoy this victory. It was already hard to deal with, but that outburst earlier made it worse. She couldn't even sit up at this point, and was having to lean on something just to stop it from being completely unbearable. Even leaning on something, the pain was bad enough that she wouldn't be surprised if it was enough to take out someone with an average pain tolerance. It was fortunate that hers was pretty high.
"How?" she let the word linger for a moment. "I'm not arguing with your decision to make sure I lived, I obviously prefer it that way, but do you know why you feel this way or how you know you'd feel that way?" she closed her eyes for a moment, debating on how hard she should push this. "Do you honestly mean anything? Think about it for a moment, make sure that's what you actually mean," she paused for a moment. "I have decided that this goal is important enough that I will do anything to make it happen. Anything. I will only go as far as other people make me, but there is no depth I won't sink to, there is no option that is off the table," she paused again. "That includes killing every single unpowered person, and possibly the supers that would try to stop me, in this city."
It wasn't the most pleasant thing to talk about, but it was important for him to think about. Talking in such absolutes when he probably didn't mean it was dangerous. It was important for peoples' rules, their ideas, to accurately reflect what they're actually thinking to avoid bending them in the wrong way. Aurora meant every word she said and never exaggerated. Even this was not an exaggeration in any way. She thought about it for quite some time, and it wasn't easy to decide exactly how important it was to make this city for supers. She hoped it wouldn't come to that, but if it did it would be because she exhausted all her other options, so she would move without an ounce of hesitation.
"I doubt anything short of morphine would make a dent of this, and somehow I doubt you have something like that laying around. Even if you did, I'm not sure I'd want it," she sounded less confident in her tone there than usual. "I'll leave once I can actually get up and walk. I don't want to stay here any longer than I have to.
"I never asked you to stop trying to stop me. I told you, people should fight for what they believe in. I think people are wired that way, which is why it bothers me so much that no one seems to actually care about anything anymore. They all say they do, but when it comes time to actually work suddenly it's not that important anymore. Entertainment, small gestures of being helpful or useful, or anything of the like can't replicate the real thing."
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Pandaemonium
Posts 343
Power Level 30
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Post by Blue Jay on Jul 26, 2016 1:12:10 GMT -7
“I am certain.” Blue Jay locked eyes with Aurora. Any hesitancy in his voice was gone, as was much of the fatigue. “Because people's’ lives mean more to me than anything else. Anyone’s life. I don’t care if you run an orphanage or are the CEO of the most exploitative company in the world, or if you’re an unpowered or a super. I may not have the more material or ideological things nailed down - whose ideas should run the nation or whose problems outweigh others’ problems, but I do know one thing: no one deserves to die early. I don’t care if you’re Aurora Disicio, and you’re intent on achieving your goals even at the cost of lives, and if you dieing here means a city of unpowereds might be saved somewhere down the road. That utilitarian viewpoint is stupid and I don’t buy it. I’m not going to let you die if I can help it, and I’m certainly not going to off you myself.”
The thought hadn’t even occurred to him. Granted, a lot of thoughts hadn’t occurred to him at the time, but even if someone had been standing beside him saying, ‘if you kill her now, you’ll save thousands’, he wouldn’t have done it. That’s why he did stupid things like bring Unhallow back to the Bulwark HQ, or step in immediately if he feared someone’s life was going to be lost, regardless of who that person was. For all that he didn’t know, it was the one thing he could stick to as a certainty. There was a kind of comfort in it. Even if it did sometimes did just come full circle to punch him in the face, or make it blatantly clear how undefined the rest of his moral code was. Or how much of anything else he tried to stand on was actually solid. On some degree, it bothered him. It was certainly hard to justify some of his actions to his teammates, and some nights himself. But on another, he was okay with it. He was content with the fluidity.
“Yeah, I don’t think I have any idea what I’m doing.” He chuckled. “I’m still just holding out for the next dragon attack. But I’m good with the way things are, and your argument still hasn’t been enough to convince me over to your side. Glad it works for you, at least.” Yawning, he took the step between him and the corner of his room and picked up his sword. “I think I’m going to go get food and then crash on one of the couches downstairs. Feel free to stay as long as you want, if you need anything just yell or something. Someone’ll hear you probably and wake me up.”
The most he could likely find was some generic pain killer, and she was probably right on the amount of help it’d be. He felt bad there wasn’t much else he could do, but, he told himself, it wasn’t like he was expected to. His house wasn’t a hospital. He didn’t owe her anything else. This was plenty, wasn’t it? It was probably about time he took care of himself.
He returned to the door but didn’t open it just yet, in case she had some other insult she wanted to throw at him or some weird conclusion she felt the need to jump to.
A moment of silence gave him an afterthought, however. “I have to disagree with your last statement. Little gestures can add up to a lot. Not always, but a lot of a little in the right place can do way more than a single person can. If you ask me, it’s the job of people like you to focus those little things towards a single goal, not try to accomplish it all yourself.”
Blue Jay yawned. “You can take that as the mad ravings of someone who hasn’t gotten enough sleep and who doesn’t know what he’s talking about even when he has.”
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Pandaemonium
Posts 381
Power Level 31
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Post by Aurora Disicio on Jul 26, 2016 1:46:23 GMT -7
Her gaze was just as unwavering as his during his little speech. Once he was done, she looked up mulling over his words before nodding once. Aurora's lips curled into a satisfied smile, and a lot of the tension appeared to melt from her shoulders. The pain obviously didn't though, but that was unlikely to go away any time soon. She figured she'd be feeling that for the next month.
"I can accept that."
He should have just stopped there because when he kept talking, the scowl quickly returned. Aurora sighed and looked at him again through the side of her eyes.
"You've already told me that you're not happy with the way things are, at least in terms of what I'm trying to accomplish. There's a difference between being happy with something and being upset with something, but being able to find happiness elsewhere. There's also a difference between being happy with something, and either not considering it worth the effort to change or not knowing how to change it. You can sit on your ass all you like, but at least be honest with yourself about it."
She shifted in the bed, trying and failing to find a comfortable place to lay in. If she were home she might have even gone back to bed. As hungry and tired as she was, Aurora had no interest in taking anything further from here. It was just too uncomfortable. Before he left, she opened her mouth once more, but then thought for a moment and closed it. He misunderstood what she was saying, but what he said was still true, so it was fine. Her point was that small gestures couldn't compete with actually accomplishing something, and given his comment about her, he seemed to agree. That was good enough for now. He could learn one thing at a time.
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