come_sailaway | We're wide awake now, our eyes are wide open. We're running this world, we keeping it turning

True to her elevator pitch, Clarke's a quick enough study. She watches his hands carefully once again, fumbles with placing her fingers in the exact same spots along the cards backings as Max does, and in the end eventually manages a decent shuffle. No cards go flying across the table at least, and it's nothing fancy but those cards are heckin' shuffled and Clarke will begin slowly, purposefully dealing them out.

Two up for him, one up and one down for her. It's an almost instantaneous realization that she'd much rather be the dealer in this situation, and she's rubbing a finger across the remaining cards in her hand like she would the safety of a gun.

"I said most, not most expensive."

There's no concept of money in her world. Not really, at least. Resources are either a basic human right, or something paid for with a blood price. No in-between. Social status was earned through the luck of the draw for parents, the color of your blood and the amount of deaths weighing on your conscious. Clarke can't picture what a Lamborghini looks like, but doesn't buy his grief over that loss.

Cards dealt, and noting her own face up is a 2 of spades, her gaze finally returns to Max's face and watches for... who really knows. Micro-expressions on a metal face? A shift in his focus? Where slight of hand failed, slight of tongue could make up for with miles to spare — she's always been better at talking, and palpating peoples worst insecurities and most painful emotional wounds than she's been at playing games.

"Hmm." He looks down at his cards, the apertures of his eyes briefly narrowing, considering.

Not if he's going to take another card, he is because he only has a four and a ten and he's already calculated the odds of the next card he needs. No, he's considering actually telling her what his worst loss was. Because it's not actually a loss, it's more.. well, embarrassing.

"I lost a game to another Omnic, and the bet was that I had to do his job the next day. Most humans can't tell us apart and that was before I was able to do, all of this." Gesturing with his hand and flexing his fingers to indicate all the silver and gold joints and the black tungsten plating covering most of his body. "He was a bartender at an extremely exclusive club."

And serving drinks to rich people who thought of him as an appliance was not a good time for him. And he wasn't in the situation he's in now where he could just crack a bottle over their head and leave. His eyes go back up to her, wondering why she's interested, and a little suspicious.

"In any case, I'll take another card."

Clarke's inappropriate level of interest in each and every passenger she comes across is... both personal, and impersonal. She's somehow managed to take people watching to a whole new level, making snap judgements about who is useful here and who would end up being a liability if they went to war. The constant lookout for new potential allies is admittedly a bit exhausting — and she won't lie, it's hard to rely on the same tricks when sat across from someone distinctly not human. She'd struggled over deciding to trust Gal Friday because she couldn't gauge the amount of honesty or pain behind eyes that she wasn't built with.

She's looking for flecks of a soul in the piercing red lights inset into his helmet, and thoughtfully tilting her head to the side a bit.

"Is that what you're called? An Omnic?"

With that follow-up line of inquiry hanging in the air between them, and some semblance of eye contact established, Clarke very casually deals him that other card he'd asked for.

It's an eight. From the bottom of the deck.

He steeples his fingers because he saw that. Now to decide if he should call her on it.

"Yes, in my world that's what I am. An Omnic. It's not exactly a great name, it's because the factories are called Omniums, by the Omnica Corporation. But it is what it is I suppose."

Better than being called a bot or a robot honestly. That's usually accompanied by angry crowds of humans who want to rip them apart and melt them down to make toasters.

He's feeling generous today, he will let it slide, "It appears you win the round."

Look, don't ask any teenager to keep themselves perfectly contained when they feel like they've gotten the better of an adult in a competitive setting. Does she know how old Max is? Nope, but he seems like an authority on card games, and Clarke can't read the tells across his metal visage that would give away he'd caught her cheat and was simply letting it slide. So that's two wins — one on each side the table — and a little boost to her pride.

Sometimes a girl just needs a win...

She's flipping her own cards over, revealing a grand total of eleven. If she's supposed to hit her own hand again or not, Clarke doesn't know and thus just gathers the deck together before offering it back to him. Go again, the unspoken challenge. She'd meant it earlier, and would play hand after hand until Max gets tired of her company or something more pressing arises.

"Interesting." Is it? From a world running on the fumes of technology and constantly on the precipice of endings, yeah. Robots are objectively pretty interesting. Clarke's just doing her best to roll with the punches on this ship, not getting caught up on things like magic, vampires, and gods.

"So what year are you from?"

This Omnic has been mentally a sixty year old man since the day he was activated. He's actually fourty-one which is ancient to a teenager.

She is supposed to hit again until at least seventeen, but it doesn't matter since Max automatically loses with his hand. And he doesn't need to get into that level of technicality for a casual game.

He takes the deck back from her shuffling it himself, "2076. I'm from Monaco if you happen to be from Earth and know where that is. And you?"

Well, color Clarke successfully distracted from the game before them for the first since she'd sat down. Fully, and entirely distracted, because hey — that's actually almost recent to her timeline. At least in comparison to everyone else hailing from the late 1990's and early 2010's so far. She's not watching him shuffle this time, not trying to pick up tricks or arts of the trade in preparation for one day facing down against their captor. No, she's doing some quick math, failing at quick geography, and then flirting with a headache when it came to comprehending the space-time continuum.

"2149. Also from Earth, I guess, and from somewhere in what's technically Virginia. But — "

Yanno, the apocalypse happened.

"...in my histories, the world ended in 2052. There weren't any corporations or factories left standing."

Edited 2022-05-13 02:22 (UTC)

Well that is interesting, he hadn't met anyone further in the future than he is. Well César maybe, considering his knowledge of technology, but he hadn't inquired when he was from.

"Interesting. In mine there was a giant war in 2045 that decimated a lot of things, and did destroy many factories. What caused yours?"

Because in his it was Omnics. Not him, he's not a military unit, but more tactical war centered Omnics who murdered tens of millions of people before being put down.

That's always a hard story to explain right, because how does one go about retelling the hardships of billions of people counter imposed against the thought that the only way to save humanity was to cull the herd? Does she start introducing the scientist both responsible for the death of the world, and the existence of the few survivors who'd managed to make it this far? Clarke's just going to take it in stride that she doesn't have to explain nuclear bombs to a man literally made out of metal and circuitry, but that's been a sticking point for a lot of people on board thus far.

"The first time, an A.I. got hold of the launch code for every nuclear weapon on Earth, and fired them simultaneously."

He is going to take that so much better than literally everyone else on board.

"Oh. Then it's disturbingly similar to what happened to my world. An AI infected the Omnic factories and churned out thousands of weapons grade Omnics, not me you understand but the military ballistic type, and they attacked everyone. And to deal with the problem the humans exploded nuclear reactors and made half the planet unlivable. Well.. for them anyway. But I suppose it ended that war so it worked out for them."

It's a distinctly weird feeling — to look into a mirror that isn't really a mirror after all, just the shiny plating of a robot who managed to be more personable than most the people on this ship, and find some strand of similarity. Maximilien is the first she's told the bare bones story of the destruction of Earth to, who didn't immediately turn around and offer platitudes. I'm so sorry, or that sounds so awful.

It's not all fun and games and familiarization, though. Clarke almost scoffs.

"So it doesn't matter where. Nuclear weapons are always a manmade death sentence..."

A pause — a beat, focused on her own loathing for the human race, before remembering she's supposed to do everything in her power to save them. (And maybe failed, but would never know for certain.)

"A.L.I.E. only meant to kill off a portion of the population, but left the entire world simmering in radiation for almost 100 years. There were a few survivors, but... We didn't have anything like an Omnic."

Unlivable for them — don't think she didn't catch that, and is left (biased about) wondering what could have possibly walked the planet in the absence of humans.

"If you give people the option of wholesale destruction, there's no way they won't use it when they deem it necessary. And the standards for what makes it necessary will keep getting lower. It happens again and again. I'm not even that old and I've seen it multiple times."

He's lived through too many wars as it is. People just can't seem to stop killing each other, and since that's the case, there will always be people like Max that will profit off of it. If they're going to start wars, someone might as well benefit. Why not him?

"What did people do for 100 years? Live in bunkers?"

Well, safe to say Max would have loved her world. The second Clarke had set foot on Earth, it had been all war all the time, until the final battle all of humanity couldn't defeat — a second death wave of radiation burning the planet to a husk. And even then the infighting hadn't stopped. If anything, it'd gotten worse.

"Some in bunkers. Some lived past the initial blast, genetically enhanced themselves to survive higher radiation levels, and scraped out a living on the Earth's surface." The Mountain Men (all dead), and then Grounders (most dead). If he's dealt out their next hand, Clarke isn't touching it just yet.

"My people are the descendants of every astronaut who happened to be in space when the world burnt. Twelve space stations from different nations came together, and we just focused on surviving. And hoped one day the Earth would be livable again. But even when we made it back, livable was a stretch."

"That sounds rather miserable. Though all wars are even for the winners. But it sounds like there were no winners in your scenario." He can't imagine being trapped in a bunker or a space station with the same people for years while the earth burned. He's not doing so well on a boat with a few handfulls of people as it is.

"Is the hope that you'll rebuild all of civilization?"

No pressure or anything.

For a girl who no longer believes in fairytale beginnings, middles, or endings, the answer is still —

"Once upon a time it might have been. But I don't know if humanity survived the second wave of nuclear damage and now... Even if we could, I don't know if what we'd manage to rebuild could even be called civilized."

What if the fight is all we are? Sitting an opposite a robot who seems to lean towards human's self-destructive nature as their main feature, optimism drains like water through a sieve.

Clarke finally drops her gaze, hiding a sniff behind a business-like cough, and finally reaching for whatever cards had been dealt in her direction.

"Sorry. We were playing a game."

He watches her, processing what she's saying but also looking at her face, how she masks every emotion. Max is poor at reading those anyway, unless they're strikingly obvious, but even he can be impressed at how well she holds it together.

"It will be something though. Something that isn't endless fighting and destruction. I assume that's the hope anyway? Or are you desiring something different?"

Maybe she enjoys the fighting, some people did. In his world he can't imagine Reinhardt retiring and tending to a garden in his spare time. He lived for battle, he was nothing without it.

"We were, but we do not have to."

She hates fighting, but it's no longer a matter of what she loathes and what she loves. Fighting has become as necessary to survive as breathing, and Clarke's dug herself so deep into the pit of wartime leadership that she no longer knows if she's capable of peace. The dreams of it are nice, but what if the fight is all she is anymore? Survive first, then find your humanity again. That'd been the rule, but what if there wasn't much left when she finally had the opportunity to look.

For being marketed as a vacation, life on board the Serena Eterna hasn't exactly proven to be a place to rest, breathe, and reassess one's life. Even in the middle of a party, Clarke's sought out yet another person to use as a ladder rung towards what she can only see as a final confrontation with their Captain, and pushed him into teaching her how to play (and cheat) at cards. There's no peace here, just impermanent death and the number twenty-one so far as she's concerned. Maximilien offers an out for their card game, and she's so tired of everything. But still resolutely shakes her head.

"No, I have to. Let's bet on something this time — not the chips, something that means something, even if it's small."

This had been the exact opposite of a vacation for Max. He'd gone from a place of power and prestige that he'd clawed his way into after years of fighting and subterfuge, to here where there wasn't an economy and he had none of the respect to back him up that he had in his world. To say he hated it was an understatement.

But he also wasn't interested in why they were here, or solving mysteries, or even acknowledging the Captain was a real thing that existed. He wanted to leave, he just didn't want to do any of the work to make it happen. Normally he had lackeys for that.

"You have to?" his voice conveying just how strange a statement that is. "Why?"

Similarly, despite all the creature comforts — plentiful food and medicine, sunshine, decadence, clean clothes, a shower she could stand in for hours without worrying about exhausting a water ration, even some semblance of safety in the eye between storms — Clarke would also like to return home. She'd maybe been dying alone on an irradiated planet, but still felt like there was business there to attend to. Perhaps most pressing, she simply can't stomach the thought of being under the thumb of something with no tangible body to fight.

So Max, meet a potential lackey. Just don't call her that to her face, it's a bit insulting.

A picturesque example of contrarian, Clarke's got topics she'd bare her soul over, and those she'd rather bury beneath her own heart and never speak of. Secrets she'd share, and those she'd take to her grave over and over and over, until finally digging the final one. And her intention of following in Pirate Jenny's footsteps — hopefully with better results — teeter totters between the two. He asks why?, and there's absolutely no desire to answer honestly, but at the same time... she always has to wonder, to weigh, if it would help to bring more people into her plans. At least she's no real connection with Maximilien, and thus shouldn't care if he gets hurt in the crossfire, right? So —

"...I think everything here might end in a game of chance. Maybe even a card game. So I need to learn the rules."

Edited 2022-05-16 03:45 (UTC)

He steeples his fingers, thinking about what she's saying, and more importantly, what she isn't.

"If it does, and somehow you can play a game of cards for your soul like you're making a deal with the metaphorical devil, the rules would be meaningless wouldn't they? Why would someone who brought us here to suffer be bound by any worldly ideas of honor. I'm not even sure they'd need to cheat, they wouldn't need to play the game at all."

However; he sees she's serious about all this, deadly serious. And that kind of determination isn't something he's going to dissuade - not if she might end up being the one to get them all out of here.

"That said, if it is a game, then there's always a chance you'll be the one to win. Someone has to right?"

"I have it on good authority he loves games."

Good might be a bit of a stretch, but she had squared up with the only known survivor of Game Night With The Captain twice now, and hasn't come up with any tangible reason for Pirate Jenny to lie to her when the goddess just wanted her own people back. Or whatever was left of them, and then maybe death.

But at the same time Jenny's confidence that it won't be a trick mirrored against Friday's warning that it's always a trick have her torn — scrambling to learn the right way to play any game, but hungrily scratching for ways to rig the odds. No one survived by playing fair all the time, and that's how they've come to blackjack lessons.

"And challenges. So." She's offering Max a halfhearted sort of shrug, noting the three of hearts and four of clubs — seven total, absolutely begging to be hit — in front of her, and tapping the table for another card. Whether Clarke Griffin ever has any success in leveraging what's left of her soul against their captor is highly improbable, but damn if she isn't willing to lose — and die, then lose and die again — trying.

Absently, and under her breath, one more point to make. "For us to really suffer, there still has to be a chance, right? Some sort of hope left to squash out at the last second, and then let us believe it's our own fault for not playing the game to our full potential. For there to be standards, there has to be some sort of rule book, right?"

Whatever the hell we want isn't sustainable in the long term. There's always patterns, and if no rule book exists, "...maybe we get to make them."

"Did someone tell you that? Where is everyone getting all this information about the Captain? How do we know he even exists?"

Max is still convinced he doesn't, it's just some ruse to get everyone banded together against a common cause, except the cause is fake. It would be a good plan, blame it all on some supernatural being that was in control of everything and have everyone so distracted by that they don't find the real cause. He'd come too late for Jenny and no one has told him anything about that other than there was some sort of storm which he's glad he missed, being not waterproof.

He diligently hits another card for her, a 9, while looking down at his own four. That's never good, anything under 17 he has to hit again as the dealer and what he needs with a 17 is.. well, a four. And now two are already out on the board.

"You're not wrong, if there was no hope everyone would give up and sit around waiting to die. And generally those who want others to suffer do want them to think it's their own fault." He runs his fingertips along the edge of the deck absently, "Conversely if this is simply entertainment for some sadist, then we could be as boring as possible until they lose interest."

Again with the secrets, all those three questions get in response is a shrug. An impartial — "It's not hard to figure out if you've been paying attention."

Jenny and Friday told her. Jenny, Friday, and the specific taste of the magic on board were basically the only avenues of information they had so far. And as for existence... Clarke's own experience at the previous party paled in comparison to the losses of Rita Mordio and trauma of Yuri Lowell — the only person who's seen the captain's face so far.

"You haven't been here long yet, right? I didn't recognize you, at least. But I think it's pretty obvious there are people here who aren't going to be content to sit on their hands and be boring."

Name and shame, their party host. Equal amounts of shame, probably Clarke herself, but she's being humble. There's just... too many fighters here, used to relying on their own luck and foresight to prevent death. Each wrapped in their own ideals, all from different worlds, and no leader to unify the entire ship. The fight may be all they are now, but how does one launch a successful campaign from so many different angles?

Despite her insistence that they keep playing, she's not paying any real attention to the odds in the moment — too consumed within her own thoughts, physically unable to relax and enjoy a party without it ultimately coming back around to that sense of impending doom hanging over their heads — and gestures for another card before even really thinking about it. Make or break her 16, Max.

Maybe if he cared more he'd know what the hell was going on. But unfortunately he doesn't, so until the Captain actually shows himself, he's just going to live in ignorance.

"Around three days now. So no, I don't know anything that's happened, nor do I have a true bearing on what any of this means." He's so new to the boat he doesn't know who Jinx is or why she's throwing a party and hasn't even met her. "No, I don't suppose that would work other than a theory. And whoever was in charge would probably try and instigate something. It was more a hypothetical."

He's good at negotiating with humans, predicting how they react under stress is a whole different matter. One he's going to have to learn at some point.

Revealing another card for her, even though it's probably not a wise decision on her part, turns out to be entirely in her favor: a five of diamonds. (~~I swear to you I RNGed this~~) He actually blinks down at it.

"Well well, that's a very fine hand. I hope your luck holds out in that way when you challenge a more critical opponent than me."

A shitty hypothetical, but...

"It's a nice thought. That we'd all be able to come together and agree on something like that."

It's fine, Max. Caring as intently as she does is super fucking exhausting, actually. Especially when every avenue of investigation she traipses down just leads right back to where she started, with no further information to be gleaned. Past figuring out the impermanence of death on board and being forced to take Pirate Jenny's word as truth since there wasn't any other party to thoroughly question, it's been... a lot like running in circles in knee deep mud. Only so long until your legs give out and you drown, but instead of taking a rest, you just run off caffeine and fear, occasionally stopping by a party and...

— winning another hand of cards? Properly and soundly this time? That's...

She hadn't even been trying, and doesn't even look down at the results of her hand until Max says something about it. And even then has to do some quick math and quicker game recall before finally realizing how perfect an end this had been. There's still that distinct rush of gratified excitement at having won something, but ultimately isn't enough to comfort the slowly expanding black hole of dread that's woken up and stretched in her chest cavity.

"Not luck." Just chance, right?

And having reaffirmed this game was as easy to play as it was to lose, Clarke finally feels moved to push back her chair and stand.

"Thank you for teaching me, Maximilien. Maybe we can play again some time."

We're wide awake now, our eyes are wide open. We're running this world, we keeping it turning

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