He had figured it would come down to something like this. Rob listened to the thoughts expressed by others as he wound his way through them, looking for Sid, his expression grim. Neither choice was a good one. Stay here, defend the hotel from an expected bird onslaught, and the people remaining out in the snow would surely die. Go out and search for them, and the probability that the birds would overrun the hotel was very real -- let alone the risk the Chosen would be putting themselves at. The attitude of the one guy he and Sid had managed to rescue still left a bad taste in his mouth, too. He knew he shouldn't let that weigh into his potential decision, but it did.
Scrubbing his face with his hands, Rob sighed heavily. He was tired, filthy, sore and littered with scratches and cuts from the metallic feathers and beaks of the monster birds, his clothing was covered with cuts and the stains of blood and noxious bird crap. He just wanted to take a nice long hot shower and wash all of this off of him. But that wasn't an option right now.
He finally spotted the rainbow-haired head of his friend in the crowd of gathered Chosen. Making his way to her, he gathered her in his arms for a brief hug as he heard Isaiah ("surfer Jesus" he'd called him back at the Prytaneum) make his choice known and Tara argue the same side. He just didn't know if that was the sane choice to make.
"What do you think, Sid?" he asked softly, as if she'd been able to hear his thoughts.
Whimsical Blue
Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 1:14 pm
He'd always been rather observant, but before the Prytaneum Zan had only really used that skill to be sure of who would be receptive to giving him a bit more money while he was working. On this mission, he'd somehow managed to find a whole bunch of people who were hiding in the forest when he'd barely been trying, and he didn't think he should stop now, not even if it meant the ones they'd already helped got a little more banged up holding down the fort. This was an entire building. He was reasonably sure the people inside it could last against the remaining birds for as long as it took the Chosen to find a few more survivors in the snow.
RESCUE THE CIVILIANS
my ability to reply to things is running out early tonight since i need to prepare for a trip, so zan is voting psychically so no one feels the need to respond to him and i don't leave anyone hanging :B
Juliet swallowed. She was not built for these kinds of decisions, for determining what would likely be life or death for other people. If anything, she was a little bit afraid. She considered the hotel, considered the outside. The more she thought about it, the more the choice seemed obvious. The hotel, at least, was a building -- a hypothetically fortifiable space.
The people outside had none of that.
"I think we should rescue the civilians," she said, pushing herself to speak up loud enough to be heard. She glanced down at the floor, then back up. "The people here might be able to fight, but the people out there almost definitely can't. We...we should help them. If we can."
Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 1:51 pm
Kaefaux
happy bonsai
SSBrosB
"There's no majority until you voice your vote, too." Mal straightened up from his lean against the wall. He didn't recognize the face of who had spoken, but he thought the voice was vaguely familiar. "This isn't a choice where you can stick your head in the sand and say you don't care, you'll go along with the group. This decision means deaths, because people are going to die, no matter what we choose."
He wasn't arguing for either choice; Mal just wanted them to be honestly aware of what they were choosing. "The odds are that, no matter which option we choose, some of us and some of the civilians are going to die. Sticking your head in the sand is what sheep do."
When the young woman caught sight of her friend, she shifted and unfolded from her chair. She was up by the time he reached her and more than happy to feel him wrap her in a hug.
He looked like a mess, but it was obvious he'd been putting way more effort into their supposed duty than she had. Oh well. She'd never asked to be made into a hero of anything, so Apollo got what he saw that night in the club. When the hug relaxed, she kept her arm around Rob's waist and leaned into him, flicking a look back out over the assembled chosen again as they discussed options.
"The people out there have zero chance if we don't go get them. The people here have at least some chance if we leave. But I don't feel like I owe any of them anything..." She said, her voice lowered as she turned her face into his neck, her forehead against his cheek to keep her words between them. "So my big question is; which way keeps us the safest? We're the chosen, after all... kind of a rare breed, judging by the number of us. I'm all for helping out if we can, but in the end.... Us before Them. We were hand picked by the gods, they weren't."
It was a selfish and harsh view of the world, and Sid was willing to acknowledge that, even as she twisted things to be more about being Chosen than about plain valuing her own safety over anyone else's.
Well. Anyone's other than Rob's, maybe...
"If you want to go though... I'm sticking with you, no matter what." Sid said.
tatterpixie
Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 2:00 pm
Mercy decided to remain quiet while she listened to the numerous discussions going on around their little group. On one hand, it seemed like the more heroic thing to go out there and defend the civilians from an avalanche, but at the same time, how were they supposed to save civilians from an avalanche that could kill them as well? Then there was defending the hotel and basically leaving around 25 civilians to die out there in the cold. There was no way to sugar coat it, and she wasn't about to. In the end, Mercy knew there was only one logical choice for her since dying was not on her agenda.
Leaving the civilians here to defend themselves didn't seem like the right choice either. They had placed some pretty decent defences around the hotel, and she had to agree with Mal. Some of the civilians could fight, but there were injured, and just because they could doesn't mean they will. This wasn't easy to think about, but at the same time, how many people did she kill? That probably didn't need to die at all? How many people whose lives she snuffed were actually threats the country? Death wasn't anything new to Mercy, she caused it and she has seen it happen.
This would make her seem like a d**k, but she would rather save the few they have there and live to save even more lives rather than die to save 25. Who knows, Maybe some of the civilians would make their way towards the hotel during the chaos, stranger things have happened. With a heavy sigh, Mercy cleared her throat and spoke up just enough for people to hear, "I think we should DEFEND THE HOTEL." She wasn't about to voice her opinions out loud, she wasn't stupid, but she was curious to see how this was going to turn out.
Beth let out a breath, still not sure where she should side. Those arguing to save the civilians espoused the reasoning she did and she found herself nodding in agreement. But even though she knew where she felt she should side, there was a thrill of terror in her at the thought of going outside again to search for more lost people. It was cowardly, she knew, and she wasn't about to speak her mind on that point. "Should we really be the ones deciding this? That's not our family or friends out there. There are people here who care about them." She twisted a strand of her dark hair around her finger nervously. Slowly, she said, "Just because these people are here doesn't mean they can fight. A lot of them are injured. Shouldn't we focus on the people here? The bird in the hand, and all?" She winced a bit at her unfortunate wording, but there it was.
By her count, there were more people for the going out (in the cold!) to find civilians (in the cold!) than for defending the hotel. Those who piped up seemed more site of what they wanted to do, though there were some who muttered among themselves to come to individual decisions. She couldn't find a familiar face to latch onto so she resolved to keep her mouth shut until the last possible moment. Beth wasn't cut out to be a leader. Why did she ever think she was?
Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 2:21 pm
Tom was a little miffed at how he was responded to. It seemed a bit hostile honestly. Sure they were all on edge, but it’s not as if he was trying to be lazy about it. “Well sure, there won’t be a majority if there’s an even number of voters going for either option. And at that point I’ll put my vote.” He turned around to face the guy.
“It seems like you think that I really don’t care about what happens to anyone.” Though perhaps he shouldn’t be responding to this guy, he seemed to be one of those real life internet trolls that you sometimes ran into. Great, and he would have to work with this guy. Great for team building. “Of course people are going to die, but I don’t have a straight answer as to what would be the better path to choose going forward. But hey, I could always just do what you say and sit here without going with the rest of you since you seem to have judged me already.”
He would be staying far away from this guy in the future after this.
xelhaspixiestix
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tatterpixie
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Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 2:26 pm
Rob sighed again, slipping his arm around Sid's shoulder and squeezing her close. "Yeah. We don't owe any of them anything." He remembered agreeing with her that it was 'Us before Them' when they'd gone out to find survivors. But then she made the point that the Chosen were a rare breed, hand picked by the gods, and he thought again, from a different angle that maybe no-one else was considering… Chosen to do what?
To protect humanity. That's what they'd been told back at the Prytaneum, wasn't it? They had potential to be great, yeah sure, but they were warriors too, chosen to protect humanity from monsters just like these Stymphalian birds. Even if it meant putting their safety on the line. They had the weapons, they had the blessings of the gods, and that meant protection. Safety.
"I vote we rescue the civilians," he heard himself saying suddenly, to the group, to his own disbelief. "It's what we're meant to do as Chosen, innit?" He looked at Sid with a combination of fear and determination, searching her face for her reaction.
Whimsical Blue
Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 2:33 pm
"She has a point. Let's say we do choose to save them, what happens if we don't find them all? What happens if we end up in the avalanche? Then who helps us?" she asked at length, voice carefully kept neutral. This needed to be thought through carefully. It was all well and good to be selfless, to want to help others, but if you ended up dead... She'd really rather prefer not to, if it was up to her.
The hotel could survive on its own for a time but how long that time was, she didn't know, and since there was no splitting up--she sighed. There was no winning; people would die. People did die. And it may not be in their ability to save them. She wasn't a superhero and she didn't want to be one. Nor did she want to make this decision.
Hearing Tom's voice, Marisol turned and frowned. She wasn't sure what Mal had against him--her time with the latter man had been brief but she'd have no issues then. If anything, she figured Tom would want to rush out to save them.
"Hey, I dragged his a** back when it came to rescuing the people trapped out there earlier. I know if he could he'd save everyone," she inserted, feeling defensive about the doctor. "Instead of calling people out for not jumping to condemn one group of people, maybe take a step back and let us talk. If we tear each others' throats out, there'll be no saving anyone."
Misha had wandered back into the main lobby area just as the two Chosen had burst in with their announcement and she still stood, quiet and shocked and trying to catch her breath at the thought of being tasked with such a decision. She had no right to make such a call. Sure, she could give advice with the best of them but that was about relationships and love. Those things only felt like life and death; they weren't really life or death. All of those people - here and out there. Depending on her and the others? Frankly, there were only a handful of her fell Chosen that she had decided were up to the challenge of adult leadership-type positions. Brian, Rose, Mathilda. Perhaps.
As the talk around her swirled and eddied, sides shaping up, arguments bubbling under the surface, Misha finally unlocked and sagged backwards against the wall behind her. She closed her grey eyes and brought a hand up to rub at her face. Her fingers brushed over healing scratches and bruises, reminding her too well of what the birds were capable of. She listened. She thought.
With a grimace, she lowered her hand, forced a more neutral expression to her face, and pushed away from the wall. She sauntered towards the group and dropped onto an overstuffed, slightly torn chair. Her act was almost convincing and she hoped that no one could yet see through her masks.
"Well," she cut in quietly, "It's a lousy choice to make but it starts to sound like six one way, half dozen the other when you repeat it enough."
Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 3:29 pm
Uh-oh. Tara shifted a bit where she stood, starting to feel nervous about the growing tension. Mal's choice of wording definitely wasn't a route she would have taken, and though they were abrasive, she got the sentiment--or at least she was pretty sure she did. Still. Saying the guy was sticking his head in the sand, being a sheep, wasn't the best course of tactical action. Didn't blame the guy Mal spoke to for responding the way he did nor the other woman for defending him.
"I don't think Mal meant for it to come off like that," she tried to say, hoping the tentative smile she gave could help simmer down what sounded to her like growing tempers. "Poor choice of words, definitely, but the main point is, either choice we make, it's going to have pretty big consequences. Which obviously people are weighing, or we'd all be having the vote right this second instead of talking about it."
Another girl had brought up a good point, but when Tara looked towards her, her smile faltered, fading a bit. "The people in the hotel will probably be just as torn as we are. People with loved ones out there would want us to go out, but people with their loved ones safe here, or not even on the mountain, would probably tell us to stay and help them defend the hotel."
She considered the scenario of trying to save the people still out in the snow. No, if they got caught in the avalanche, likely their gods' protection wouldn't go far enough to save their hides. "We'd only have an hour before the speakers can be used, right? An hour's likely not going to be long enough to find everyone out there, unless we get damn lucky or people managed to clump together." She hated saying that. Her stomach twisted in a sick way, and she felt her lip tremble as she considered the implications of it all. Blundering on, she continued, "Anyone we could find, we'd just need to get out of the path of the avalanche, which would be directed towards the lodge where the birds currently are--far as we can tell--plotting their next big attack. But would we only have the hour until the speakers are ready to go, or could we get more time out there to look for people to bring back to the hotel before we set off the speakers and the avalanche? None of us should be out there when the speakers go off obviously if we can avoid it, is my thought, so could we do that? Find as many as we can, get them back to the hotel, then hit the button to set off the avalanche?"
It wasn't perfect. It still left people potentially out there. But if they worked together, all of them, the Chosen might have a better shot at finding enough people... without the Chosen then being out there when the avalanche happened. No, she wasn't interested in putting her life on the line per say but... well. She'd smiled a bit towards Rob when he'd tossed forward the notion that saving people was what Chosens were meant to do. It did raise the question of why they were "chosen" in the first place, if not to potentially put their own lives on the line for others. A tricky thing to have a full discussion over right then--but that's sort of what the choice was. Which option gave them the greatest shot at protecting people?
Isaiah frowned. He stood up and, as he did so, he slipped out of the light jacket he'd found in an abandoned suitcase. He replaced it with the shredded and s**t-stained shirt he'd arrived in, and then covered it with the heavy jacket they'd all been given.
"Look, I don't know about all this 'what we should do as Chosen s**t'." He said, plainly. "I'm not going to let 25 people die because I think I'm better than them or because it's what I'm meant to do or whatever..." He glanced around again, did his best to look at everyone interested in what he had to say at least once in the eyes. "Any one of them could've been Chosen, from what I've seen so far. There's as many ordinary people here as there are extraordinary." He looked towards the narrow crack in the wood of a nearby window, where he had been gazing out at their white surroundings.
"If that avalanche kills me, than that's what was supposed to happen. I'm not gonna leave them out there when I've got the ability to help them. But I can't do it alone, and we'd be giving them their best chance if we all went out together."
uh i guess to anyone that hasn't voted yet lol
Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 5:21 pm
"I'm with him." Even if the guy looked like a surfer dude. They were all Chosen for some reason, right? Besides, saving civilians was kind of Brian's gig. Of course there was a part of him that wanted to stay at the hotel and protect those they had already worked to save, but to imagine all of those people outside, smothered under the snow? It would take them hours or days to die. They couldn't let that happen. The people inside the hotel had a better chance than those out in the woods. Avalanches took down forests. People were nothing. He remembered those they had seen, who had fled from the birds. Did they have any idea they could die in minutes?
"These people will have a better chance. I wish there were enough of us to split up, but there's just not. They have boarded windows here. There's nothing outside. They'd all die. I couldn't live with myself knowing we just up and let all those people die without giving them a chance." Army or police force, that was how it went.
RESCUE THE CIVILIANS
happy bonsai
"him" = Isaiah - don't have to reply, just letting you know! <3
bobaTJ
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anemosagkelos
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Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 5:53 pm
Marisol shook her head, if it was just her own life maybe she could throw caution to the wind and vote to save people not knowing what the outcome might be. She couldn't do it when her vote was forcing everyone's lives to be put in jeopardy. It felt wrong. These weren't her lives to give or volunteer.
"Defend the hotel," she said out loud, voice firm and eyes sharp. "If you all feel able to volunteer other people's lives in your quest to save others, great. I don't. People deserve the right to make that choice themselves and so far it seems people are more inclined to guilt everyone else into following their desires."
They could think whatever they wanted of her. She didn't care about their opinions. She knew who she was. It didn't help that she'd made real connections among the chosen and she wasn't about to sacrifice their lives without their permission. This was why in the military they had generals and whoever to make these type of s**t decisions.
The odds were stacked about her choice, she felt. A public, majority wins, vote would be more inclined to push people to do what felt selfless and good for fear of retaliation or judgement. The words being thrown around had already seemed designed to push everyone's thoughts in one direction: saving others was good, defending the hotel was cowardly. She would have scoffed if it didn't unsettle her so much. What gave these people to right to impose their own morals onto the rest of them? How could someone purposely decide to sacrifice all of their lives just because of their own want?
"If the majority wants to save others, I'll do so happily. I can't, I won't, force everyone into it because the lot of you have some savior complex." That said, she moved off towards a wall and leaned against it. No one here had the credentials to make these decisions. And frankly she just didn't trust most of them to give a damn past their own wants.
