driftfleet | Chapter 1: Goodbye, High-School Life

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Chapter 1: Goodbye, High-School Life

Who: Nagito Komaeda and anybody else
Broadcast: Fleetwide video
Action: On the Marsiva
When: 1/30

[Komaeda shows the stars before himself, arranging his bad arm one last time to make certain nothing is showing. It's a wasted effort- his hand is already tightly bundled up under multiple layers of bandage and clothing. He switches the view so he's fully visible.]

Hello, hello! What an interesting setting we're in now. I don't suppose Monokuma has given us any announcements to explain why it looks like we're in space?

[He smiles, eyebrows quirking up. It's an expression that seems to beg forgiveness, though there's a shadow of another expression, a colder one, behind his eyes. The combination of those two layered expressions reads as contempt, but is it just that?] And, goodness my, but it's quiet here. Have I been locked up again? In punishment? I promise you all, I did what I did in order to further you-

... To further hope.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yes there is! People have black, brown, or blonde hair. White if they're elderly. Occasionally, perhaps, they have red hair, but that's quite rare. Do you have a genetic disorder where you age at a faster rate?

[Komaeda starts to laugh.] That's ridiculous! People have all sorts of hair colors you're leaving out. What about sky blue? Lava red! Plum?

... Were you particularly sheltered as a child?

... Are you colorblind?

[That would make sense.]

What kind of colorblind person sees extra colors rather than less?

What kind of a boring world would only have such a small number of hair colors, too?

My world. And it's not boring.

Anyway, I thought that might be a reasonable explanation for your nonsensical list of hair colors.

It sounds that way, if you really only have.... three? Four? hair colors. How do you even tell people apart?

That's just hair! My hair is perfectly normal and natural!

You look at their faces, of course!

Don't take this the wrong way, but when you're on one of the smaller ships, could I take a blood sample?

... But how do you pick them out to look at their faces?

[Uncomfortable laughter is a go. HE HAS TAKEN THIS THE WRONG WAY.] A blood sample? From me? I'm really not particularly worth study.

-- You're gonna have to learn, kid. I don't think we have that many diverse hair colors here.

Anyway. Just a small sample. Nothing invasive! I promise!

That's absurd. How could you- wait, how many other people are there here?!

No thank you, hahaha.... [Komaeda raises up his good hand as if to ward her off.] And besides, any time somebody says "nothing invasive," doesn't that usually mean it's actually very invasive?

Eh... about forty? Not that many! I would say not much more than forty. Anyway it's just a little needle stick! I promise I'll be very gentle with you.

Fourty... [The implication is dizzying. And Hange doesn't look like any high school student he knows, either. However, she does seem to have a certain, ah, energy to her.] You never did answer my question.

Do you think there's something... you might be the best at?

The best at?

[There is actually... a pause as she thinks about this.

And then it's time for a sad trombone.]

Oh, well, not really, to be honest! Maybe at researching, but who knows, there could be someone better out there!

I see... how interesting. [He was at first inclined to dismiss her as a normal bland everyday person, but there was no denying the ferocity she'd displayed in the attempt to further her "research." She certainly did seem to be exceptional, in some fashion or another.]

Have you met anybody better than you at it?

Oh not really I suppose! Not yet. It'd be interesting! You can learn a lot from people more skilled than you, you know? When I started out, I wasn't as good as I am now, but since then I've become much better and it's from the tutelage of people who were more advanced than me when I began. A scientist can't really do these things alone.

[An unusual attitude, and one that makes Komaeda tip his head in thought. Could that attitude be applied to other areas of Super High School Level skill? He had a hard time imagining how he could make use of that tactic to control his luck, though.]

I think... you have an unusual attitude about that. Aren't most people very prideful about that sort of thing? "I'm the best!" and so on. Do you think the people bragging are always wrong about being the best?

Oh, well, maybe not always! But someone who's the best wouldn't really need to brag, would they? And when they're bragging about a skill they aren't practicing it, are they? If it's a skill you want to refine, practice is better than talking it up.

I see... [She's definitely not just your ordinary run-of-the-mill person. Ability that shines through regardless of all else, talent that blossoms regardless of circumstances, an attitude bent on furthering that skill...] I think you're really somebody that people should admire.

Haha, that's sweet of you to say, kiddo, but you hardly know anything about me! What, do you have something you're the best at?

'Kiddo?' How old do you think I am? -- Regardless of what I know about you, I know that the hope that's growing inside of you is something that people respond to. Hope is really the ultimate good, don't you think?

You're younger than me unless you were lying about that aging disorder.

[A beat.]

Hope can be useful. I don't know if I can call anything the ultimate good! But it's useful and that's enough for me.

How old are you? [Admittedly, he's partially curious because he can't recall the last time he met anybody outside of his own age range, much less anybody outside of that range he found himself taking any real interest in.]

... If you don't think hope's an ultimate good, what do you think it is? [Pardon him if he sounds a little dubious. Nothing to see here except a HOPE-OBSESSED FREAK.]

I am thirty! [Miraculously. Most scouts don't make it this long. Most scouts, statistically speaking, don't make it past sixteen, but Hange can't be super high school level scout. That's Levi, or maybe Erwin.]

And... hard work, maybe? Haha, this is a heavy conversation for a first meeting, kiddo!

I don't think I've met anybody that old in a while.

[Komaeda makes a small face at the nickname.] Do you think so? Thinking about hope makes me feel light as air, personally. [And he hates, deep down inside, that he feels a trickle of something other than excitement and anticipation when he thinks of hope. That trickle is getting bigger, he thinks. Fears.]

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