Well...What Now? [Luffy/Open: Aqures Tosf]

[theendiswherewestartfrom]

August 14 - Aqures Tosf
[Luffy:]

Once Jack comes out of the Crystal Stasis, it doesn't take him long to figure out what's happened. The vortex manipulator now reads the "right" date again. City destroyed, them, what, removed from time?

Jack sighs deeply, and the first person he approaches is Luffy. He slides the treasured straw hat off his head and offers it over.

"Well. That didn't work."

Pause.

"You owe me a new sword, you know."

[Open:]

There is a principle at work here, one that Jack swears used to even be in the Torchwood handbook. Everything has gone wrong: somehow Jack's partly to blame.

This isn't a surprise or even something that is a problem. But Jack will wait for his fellow Heroes to come to him. They'll be expecting answers, either on the stunt he pulled at the Temple, or on what has happened to them, now. He had the answers last time, didn't he? In the meantime, though, there's a laboratory, no, a whole island to explore. Twenty eight years. How much has changed?

Comments

[line_piece]

I understand what you're saying, and even what you were trying to do, but...

[She shakes her head again.]

...But you have to think of how your actions will look to other people. No one in that room knew why you said what you did, or why you thought it would work. All they saw was someone making what turned out to be a senseless sacrifice and looked more like a death wish, aided by someone who I'm sure a lot of people are now afraid of because of how easily he was able to kill one of his own allies.

[Chiaki herself is probably one of the people here who understands Jack and his motives the most, after all, and she was still shocked.]

We may not have been able to stop what happened to the island, but at that moment, we did have a chance to potentially affect Kalki's opinion of us. But instead of looking like Heroes, all she saw was a group of people as dangerous and unpredictable as the Crystal of Fire itself.

[theendiswherewestartfrom]

That gets a very deep frown. "Pardon me if I'm not concerned with the opinion of somebody who's willing to torture and sacrifice the Heroes to get what she wants. Those actions are set in time, too. If she'd seen us all as people trying our hardest to help, but ending up just victims like everybody else, would that have- what? Made her sorry?"

Jack isn't quite buying it. "Give me the choice between looking like we're trying to save the world, but failing, and actually doing something that might save peoples lives, but looking completely insane? There's no choice there."

The bite that has entered Jack's tone disappears quickly. "At least now I know it doesn't work. So you know I won't be trying it again."

[line_piece]

I don't know, but I'd rather not prove her opinion of us right either. She's been right about too many things already.

[Chiaki's more or less been frowning this whole time. There's a lot she doesn't like about all of this.]

I'm just worried about what this means for us, going forward. Kalki's opinion aside, this is probably going to be a pretty big blow to morale.

[theendiswherewestartfrom]

"Fighting against fate only to find out that it was unchangeable all along?" Jack breathes out a long breath. Something he's used to, yes, but not everyone else is.

"Maybe me being a dumbass will make other people think twice before they sacrifice themselves, too. I don't know." And that mutual admission that neither of them has the answers is a little scary.

"I'm just-" How to even put this? "Not used to people- caring. Or trying to stop me. Let alone so many at once. Why? Luffy, the Marshal. Even you? Why does it matter?" There have only ever been two people who have looked Jack dead in the eye and told him that he's not allowed to sacrifice his life, before yesterday. Or, 28 years ago yesterday, however you want to measure it. It's visible in the way Jack keeps fidgeting that the entire thought is something uncomfortable.

[line_piece]

Every life matters. And caring about each other is what friends do, isn't it?

[Granted, she hasn't been around as long as probably anyone else in this place, but she's pretty sure that's the lesson she's learned both at home and in Crystallis.]