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[mercurio]

@prom.argentum | ■ ▲ ◌ ▼

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[strove]

My Earth is a bit of an outstanding case, but what do you have that's like horses?

[mercurio]

we got chocobos
big feathered birds

we also got magnanirs and mesmenirs, spiracorns and other derivatives from the same family

[strove]

[What.]

Are those all mounts?

[mercurio]

only the chocobos!
the other ones are wild animals and not really tame at all even when people have tried
they're also great for hunts when they overpopulate

[strove]

Have you gone hunting, then?

I have a bit of experience with it myself.

Well, more than a bit. It's nice to not have to do it, though.

[mercurio]

that's most of everything we did when we left the city
noct, iggy, gladio and myself

it's the only way we could get money

[strove]

You did it just for money? Not to eat?

[mercurio]

most of the wild animals we hunted couldn't be eaten from. a lot of tough meat or scaly as heck
some of them had food in them but... yeah

plus we used the money to repair the car or get money in restaurants!

[strove]

You got money from restaurants?

[mercurio]

yep! that's where we cashed in most if not all of our hunts for the area

[strove]

But it wasn't to help the restaurant to get supplies.

... Right?

[Insert meme image of Clarke-as-woman trying to do astrophysics, only in trying to figure out video game logic.]

[mercurio]

both? i mean there's an actual hunters organization and these hunts are like bounties
so...

...

we help make it easier for them to get supplies but other times it's just like "there's a lot of sabertusks plz help"

[strove]

Oh. And then they work out of the restaurants.

I never saw a restaurant before I got to this world. I've never mentioned that before, but it seems important to say now.

[mercurio]

no offense clarke, but i wonder how many things you haven't seen until new amsterdam
lucis works pretty strangely i guess
even if it's 'lucis' everything but its capital city was under the nif empire's control for about 100some years
war took away a lot of territory and people just tried to exist financially however they could best...

restaurants sure didn't work like that in insomnia

[strove]

There wasn't a civilization to really experience.

[Might as well come out with it.]

People will adjust and acclimate as best as they can. Were Lucis' leaders unable to reclaim their lands? Or did they leave them to deal with what happened?

[mercurio]

uh... it's complicated

long story short? the war pushed the king into a corner. the empire had a bigger army since they didn't use humans technically but robots so man power wasn't an issue, but in lucis magic had to be used by humans and the army's efforts were harder to accomplish
there was a peace treaty on the works but the empire lied and didn't keep their end of the deal

[...]

insomnia got attacked and destroyed, king regis was killed

[clarke has offered quite a bit about her experiences, and prompto's been mostly farting about chocobos and nonsensical things about his own world.]

it's not the same but i get a bit of what you mean
when you say there wasn't a civilization to experience

[strove]

Everything you've said is something I understand more than riding birds and going to restaurants.

[War. Kings dying. People breaking treaties as soon as they can. Clarke is all too aware of those things.]

A hundred years before I hit the ground, the world was destroyed. Nuclear bombs were set off. Not because of war, not because anyone wanted it. It just happened. Most of humanity died. But what remained was still prone to strife. To being at war. There were kings, and leaders without such names. There were people who tried to maintain power by passing on beliefs to the people they used to survive.

Nothing I knew before this was good. It's just that it was all I knew.

[mercurio]

[he has no understanding of what nuclear bombs are, but he assumes that 'most of humanity died' means that it was something cataclysmic; world ending.]

it doesn't sound like a lot of good to be honest
you were raised in space, right? does that mean that you and several others escaped the nuclear bombs?

[a lot of what she says would explain why she is kind but suspicious despite her best intentions. new amsterdam isn't just new in terms of civilization, but the intentions of the people, too. a world this calm, perhaps she never experienced it so.]

[strove]

My great grandparents were astronauts. Unlike here, it's something that was hard to accomplish. There was only one case of "undesirables" going off into space. They were prisoners sent out to mine. Everyone else was a scientist, trying to help advance humanity. When the bombs went off, they were already living in space stations off the ground.

[So, that's that. It's why it's not glamorous or unique, or something that she fully understands giving the weight that other people give it.]

Does it bother you that I sugarcoated this before?

[mercurio]

it doesn't bother me

i can understand not wanting to mention it or skipping on worse details
i've done the same too and it's not because i want to trick others or whatever

so... i get it

i'm glad your family was living in space when things went south
cuz then i got to meet you and i can tell you're a survivor and you think smart about things

we're all trying our best while here, right?

[well. some of us. glances pointedly at ardyn]

[strove]

Part of it is that you did seem so excited about where I came from. I didn't want to show you what that meant. It wasn't easy up in the Ark.

[But had she returned there, Clarke knows she wouldn't be where she is now. Wanting to stay here. Dreading that there is the chance she won't have a choice about returning. Clarke's people don't need her anymore. She's certain about that.]

I can say that I'm confident that it won't always be about getting by here. I know that's not reassuring to everyone.

[mercurio]

the prospect of space is still exciting
you'd probably think the same about parts of lucis i've been to, even if it's not all that peachy and great

[he wants her to know that his excitement isn't in any way diluted despite her own experiences.]

...well, we gotta try, right? walk tall, do what's right

[it's what the king told noctis; it's what cor would tell them with a blunt look, back straight as a rod; it's what noctis would come to tell them, ten years into the future, before he sacrificed his life for everyone else's. besides, he knows of too many who have died for a cause and faced death without fear of it.]

[even if all the odds are against them, he wants to thrive among the thorns. he wants all of them to thrive.]

[strove]

Truthfully? Actual cities are enough to make me wonder. At least you might have a chance of going up to the moon here. It's temporary, and it's unlikely that you'd get trapped there for good.

[Like her people did.]

There's something I said to someone back home. Someone I cared about. [Loved. Will always love. Lexa will never leave her, will never have less of an impact on who she is as a person now.] I told her that life is about more than just surviving. Sometimes it feels that way. It's easy to fall into that trap.

[mercurio]

yeah, eventually, when i get the money for it

[he'll keep dreaming big-]

just getting by you mean? doing enough to make ends meet?
it's true though
focusing on the smaller things in life that bring joy and happiness
that makes things all that much more worth it

so even when we're stuck in a place like this, with all its negatives and unknowns, and i miss people from home?
there's still a lot of good going on for us in this place

[strove]

No, it runs deeper than that. When all you think about is how to survive, you're willing to do anything to make that possible. You think about advancing yourself and the people around you to secure that outcome. Sometimes you only see the worst of it. You believe that the means always justify the ends: and in this case, the ends are survival. You can't only live that way if the world has forced you to do so, and I think ... even among ourselves here, we're risking a lot by failing to remember this. We put ourselves first a lot. We should, to some degree, but not if it makes us lose sight of the bigger picture.

But that just makes what you said all the more true.

We do have a lot of good going on here.