we_meet_again | Phone inbox

Cobalt: sounds good to me
Cobalt: i'm in the rose garden in the park right now
Cobalt: is that ok?

[attached is a link to a map location]

King: That's fine. I'll be there in a few minutes.

[ And, as promised, he arrives about twenty minutes later. He's scraped and bruised and looks exhausted, but otherwise fine. ]

Hi, King. Good to see you.

You look like you've been busy.

[ Dry, ]

It's been a long few days.

Are you holding up alright?

[has to think about that]

I'm not sure, honestly... I'm kind of a mess. Everything was really bad.

How about you?

Tired... Pissed off. Disappointed.

What part about all of it is bothering you the most?

Gosh, how to even pick a most upsetting thing.

...I think the part that I'm having the most trouble with is that we played in a way I didn't like. And because of that play, we lived, but future is now died.

I feel like garbage for forcing my friends, who have already suffered so much, to die for us. At the same time, I couldn't ask my unitmates to die for my friends, either.

I think I would have rather died than play like we did, but then my unitmates would have died too. Is it more selfish to die or kill someone else? Either way, I hate myself.

Edited 2019-05-03 14:30 (UTC)

[ He doesn't respond right away, probably because a lot of this hits very close to home. ]

. . .

If you could go back and play the opposite way, do you think you could live with yourself better than you do right now?

I don't know. Maybe? Maybe not...

Most of us haven't died before. I'm scared to die, and I don't particularly want to do it, but I'm willing if it means being able to relieve some of that pressure from the people who always seem to have to shoulder that burden more than the rest of us.

But some of the people in our unit are even more scared of death than I am. They should be allowed to fight for their lives, right? Even if I don't want to fight for mine, I don't want to take away their autonomy.

[ A long, slow sigh ]

I think what you've described is the exact conflict Heart Soldier is currently facing as well.

I wish I had useful advice to give, but - I don't know how much of a satisfying conclusion we manage to reach.

What were things like for you guys?

... Terrible.

I wanted us to at least play hard enough to survive, but Hurricane couldn't agree. He wanted to pick only one balloon each round. But I was certain that would get us killed.

After we argued ourselves to a resolution there - we had to actually pick the teams we were willing to hit. But among all of us, we have connections on every single team here, except Baritones.

I'm sure you can imagine how things went as a result.

I can, since we have connections on even Baritones.

How do you feel about the result?

Angry.

When it came down to my connections or my team's, I allowed it to be mine. And they died as a result.

I wish I hadn't done it.

If you could do it again, what would you do differently?

Not allow Future is Now to be targeted.

[That is definitely The Mood]

[quiet and nonjudgemental:]

What would you have done instead? Sacrificed someone else's loved ones? Or stopped fighting so hard to live?

I don't know.

I want my team to stop sacrificing themselves. I'm tired of seeing them hurt. But I don't want to force them to hurt their loved ones, either.

That's why I made the choice I did, but...

I don't think there's actually any good solution. Someone will always be hurt, no matter what.

Yeah.

I knew it was going to be hard, no matter the outcome. But I hoped we could at least play in a way we didn't regret.

In the end, I felt we were forced into a situation where playing without regrets became impossible -- forced not just by the game rules, but by my own unitmates.

We need to talk about what happened, but I'm taking a moment to calm down and get my thoughts in order, first.

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