Exile on Main Street

[Dracos]

Dracos pauses, resting. "Okay....I cannot get through that.  Mind taking it down?  I'm going to rest a bit then just practice some simple stuff with you.

Dracos

[Rezantis]

The front door opens with a click and Rez walks in, shoulders slumped.  He drops his coat on the couch and walks towards the kitchen, not acknowledging the two sitting at the kitchen table as he walks in, opens the fridge, and pours himself a glass of juice.

[Dracos]

"Rez you look like I shot your dog.  What's up?"

Dracos

[Rezantis]

"Got an email off Ayame.  A 'if you're reading this, I'm already dead' email."

Rez takes a few sips of juice, eyes it, and pours the rest of it down the sink.

[Dracos]

"...Fun.  Maybe ya should lie down man."

Dracos

[Rezantis]

"I'm more in the 'scream and break things' mindset than 'curl up and cry'.  That comes later."

Rez drops the glass into the sink.

"Dammit.  I don't know what more I could have done.  We tried, we really did, and . . . gah!  Manos didn't look to have finished finding her when we wrecked the place . . ."

[Dracos]

"Trails probably.  Even without finding her he could've left a huge trail leading in her direction that others followed.  Some things ya just can't stop, you know?"

Dracos

[Rezantis]

"That's not good enough.  It wasn't good enough.  Meh."

Rez walks back into the loungeroom, sitting down at his computer.

"She told me a couple of other things, but I'll talk to you about them later.  When I've calmed down."

[Dracos]

Dracos goes back to training, doing simple read, writes, etc with Bjorn until later.

Dracos

[Rezantis]

Rez throws himself into trying to break the encryption around the HDs for a while longer, until he feels like he's calmed down a bit.

Whereupon he writes an email.

And gets back to his attempted hackery before he thinks about things too much.

[Bjorn]

It turns out that letting your brain be the chalkboard for someone trying to develop writing skills better than those of a grade schooler gets rather tedious after a while.  So, using the pretense of encouraging Drac to try "telepathy at a distance, and with someone you can't see," Bjorn wanders out to the lounge (let's be honest here, more of a slump, really) and sits himself on a chair opposite Rez.

After watching him in silence for a while, Bjorn offers, "You wanna talk about it yet?"

[Rezantis]

Rez didn't look up, although he did answer.

"How many people do you think died yesterday?"

[Bjorn]

Bjorn gives Rez a long, steady look, before closing his eyes.   With an expressionless face and voice, he says, quietly, "I'm not sure.  I never knew how many people there were in the Workshop, and as for how much damage the explosion did around that area...."  Opening his eyes, he continues, "Probably at least forty, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was as much as several hundred."

[Dracos]

Dracos speaks up slowly from the other room, responding to the question he wasn't asked, "Maybe a hundred, maybe two, maybe a thousand.  Does it really matter?  We're only human.  We can't save everyone even if we'd want to.  How many thousand die every day from stuff that just shouldn't happen but does?  You can't keep it on your conscience Rez.  Or if you do, you can only use it to escape the fight they intend to bring to you or end the fight that'll continue killing those around.  Anything else is denial.  And since they'll follow you... or me... or Bjorn or Huitz...  wherever we go, Running isn't exactly an option, is it Rez?  We're responsible for who we do save, Rez.  What decisions we do make given poor situations.  Not for being perfect."

Dracos

[Rezantis]

"Why the fuck did Ashnod do that?  HOW the fuck did he do that?  How can any one person have that much power, it was like the wrath of God . . . and we let him, you know.  We helped him.  "But I didn't know what would happen" is a pretty pathetic excuse.  We went in there intending to kill anyone who got in our way."

Rez pauses and looks at Bjorn..

"And you know, we went in there with basically three people to try and rescue.  You, Shade, and Ayame.  One out of three is a pretty fucking shitty average, in my opinion."