Open RP: Sports? Are you serious?

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

(some time after her fevery/craziness episode. Probably a few weeks while she scrounged up materials. I know Adam wanted in on this one, but anyone's free to join in at their leisure. Warning for Dean in advance: if he comes into this, he's gonna get attacked. Not in a bad way per se, but I still thought the warning would be fair. XD And now there's a post on Starbuck's journal, So everyone can get a better idea of how this game goes.)

She got the ball. What she needed was the court.

It had taken a little longer than she'd expected. Well, to be honest, she hadn't thought about it hard enough. The good news was that she hadn't been bored in quite a while. The bad news was she'd searched for a tool kit forever and then had to take various equipment apart to get the pieces she'd needed, which was no small task. Good for keeping in shape, though, which was something.

Okay, she wasn't exactly sure that she had the pieces she needed. She'd certainly seen a pyramid court put together from scratch, but that was a little different than making it by yourself. Yeah, just a little.

Sador was whining at her again.

"It's not time for lunch yet, you brat," she told the dog as she surveyed the wreck she'd dumped in front of Space Mountain. She had marked out the arena with masking tape that she'd found in an office. It was regulation size, or she hoped it was after all the trouble she'd gone through to get it that way. Only one area left to tape off and then she could try to put up the rest of the equipment.

Not that she had any idea how to do that.

Comments

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Grinning, Adam looked at how the goal worked and asked, "How do you know?"

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

She did a kind of eyebrow-shrug, placing her hands on her hips. "Military. One thing you have to be able to judge with reasonable accuracy on sight is distance. And I know regulation size because I was in line to play professionally when I was fresh out of school. Got a bad knee, though. That was when I discovered flying." So it had all worked out right, really. Because the cockpit was definitely where she was supposed to be.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"Really? You were gonna be a professional? I'd best be careful, then," Adam said, still smiling. "But you seem like you like flyin' better anyway. Isn't it interestin' how things usu'ly work out for the best, even when it don't seem like it at the time?"

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

She pointed a warning finger, smirking. "Don't think I'm going to go easy on you just because you haven't played Mr Unlimited-Power-From-Another-Dimension."

To be honest, Starbuck didn't really know if anything worked out for the best. It certainly hadn't with Zak. Or her mother. Or, oh, her entire frakking civilzation. Perhaps the most disgusting thing about it was, even though she was a devout pessimist in the face of it all, she had some resevoir of hope somewhere that persisted in telling her that everything was going to work out. She wouldn't make it to Earth (she'd die in some huge firefight before the end), but everyone else would, and they would live. Most of the time, she hated it that little resevoir. Right now she wasn't really sure.

"I do like flying better. It was just one of those things; got in the cockpit and had the feel instantly. I miss it around here." She was in control in a viper, at least.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"I don't expect it at all," he laughed. "Don't worry, I'm used to gettin' beat by girls. Well, one girl anyway. Pep made sure I'd never be one of those boys that has to win all the time."

Adam tended to take the long view of things, and if you take a long enough view, things do tend to work out. Not necessarily for individuals, however...

"All the more reason you should fly on brooms with us," he nodded finally.

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

"She was one of the friends you had in that gang you were telling me about?" Starbuck recalled. "The Them, right? Good thing you had someone to keep you in your place." It didn't occur to Starbuck that being beat by girls is something that boys on Earth wouldn't be used to. The gender politics of her civilization was just a little different from the planet that the twelve colonies had set out for. She may be one of the Toughest of the Tough, but it wasn't among a group of prissy princesses for sure.

"A broom is out in open air. A cockpit is contained and has controls; pitch, yaw, roll and all that. I'm kind of doubting a magic broom is going to work the same way." Really doubting it.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

He grinned. "It works 'zactly the same way. Only it's instinctive. There's no instruments to rely on. You jus' gotta trust it." Pepper would do it for sure, he thought.

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

"You mean you have to trust you," she said, narrowing her eyes a little. Sure, that was a great idea for her.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"Oh, I always trust myself," Adam laughed, purposefully misunderstanding. "But I don't have anythin' to do with the brooms. They read an' follow your cues as you're flyin'. You don't hafta believe me, though. You c'n ask James, or Sirius, or Susan; they'd tell ya the same."

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

It was just as well that he had misunderstood, she thought. He was the last person she needed asking about things that were best left well enough alone.

"Susan? I haven't heard about her, is she a wizard like James and Sirius?"

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Funny how he seemed to know when not to press...

"Well, girl wizards are called witches, an' I s'pose she is since she went to Hogwarts, but that's not how she'd identify herself, I think," said Adam thoughtfully. "She runs the First Aid station an' does some teachin' and governessin', watchin' over a little boy named Calvin who's here without his parents."

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

"Right the kid," Starbuck muttered. "Why wouldn't she identify as one? Does she not want anyone to know what she can do?" She supposed that might make sense. Starbuck wouldn't want anyone to know if she had power like that. Too dangerous.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"I don't think she's hidin' it," he explained, "I just 'spect there are other things she identifies with first." It wasn't his story to tell and he wasn't going to. Adam was hardly one to talk about having odd relatives.

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

She paused at that wording. "You're... really careful about what you say and don't say, aren't you?" She didn't understand how he could stand to be the censored. If she had those kind of abilities she'd.... "I'd be a really Antichrist," she laughed. All that power and no one to get her in line if she misused it? It was a damn good thing she had superiors, and that was just being plain old her.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Adam grinned. "You caught me. But, yeah, I am. Words have power, you know. Mine 'specially. An' I try real hard to be neutral which means not favorin' anyone over anyone else. Sometimes it does turn into knots." He shrugged. "Jus' how things are, I guess. Knowin' everythin' helps, but that don't equal wisdom. I made plenty of mistakes while I was figurin' stuff out, and I 'spect I always will. Only human, after all..." The young man winked.

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

((*looks up at missing word on last post* *facepalms* I swear, I do proofread, my brain just choses to skip over things that are wrong. >.<))

She cocked her head to side, took up the pyramid ball and dribbled it once. "Okay then, enlighten me; you say that all of these terrible things have happened on your planet, in your history. If you have all that power, you could stop that from happening, you could end suffering and tyranny. You don't do it. So what's the bigger picture that I'm missing?" Gods know if she had the chance to wipe out every frakking cylon with a thought, to do the whole thing over again and fix it, she would. She wouldn't even hesitate.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

((*laughs* It's okay. I think I figured it out anyway. XD))

"I don't," Adam agreed. "'Cause what would people learn if I fixed all their problems? Don't seem to me like they'd be very good people. There'd be no point to havin' free will anymore if I was makin' all the decisions. An' then there'd be no point to people."

Appropos of seemingly nothing, he added, "Seems to me that if someone kills a whale, they oughta know all they've got is a dead whale. But it's about knowing the consequences an' makin' choices anyway. In the end, it's gotta be up to them if they're gonna make things better or not. I 'spect if Heaven an' Hell stop messin' 'round with 'em, they might jus' figure it out on their own. So, instead of changin' things the way I want, I jus' make it so that they can change things the way they want, for good or bad. They're jus' names for sides, anyhow. But if it's gonna be a fair experiment, it should be fair an' no one should interfere in the results. Far as I can tell, people tend to swing to the middle anyway. 's all 'bout balance, an' that's where I c'n help. See, bad stuff is sometimes the only way to make good stuff happen. Without sufferin' there'd be no change at all an' people would stagnate away. Make sense?"

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

((That's because you're smarter than me. XD))

She was starting to feel like this was a doctrine difference, maybe. After all, free will wasn't exactly the focal point in her society. And with all the talk lately of prophecy and destiny, lots of people were beginning to wonder about free will at all. As the scriptures say, all of this has happened Before, and all of it will happen Again.

And then the rest of it really made her brain do loops. "So... existance is an experiment? Why would anyone design it that way?" Experiments were bad. They got people killed, so many.... But it was the talk of suffering that made her drop the pyramid ball.

"You were born to a woman who believed that suffering was good for the soul, so you suffered."

It was just how things worked. It was their burden. You couldn't change that because that was what it meant to be human. Wasn't that what she had said to Leoben? "Yeah, makes sense," she said quietly, her brow furrowed too harshly for such an plain response.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

((Piffle. XD))

Adam just smiled that mysterious smile. "That's one of those things I can't really tell you. Sorry."

But he looked concerned at her expression when she dropped the ball. "You okay, Starbuck? It don't end there, you know. Sufferin's not jus' for sufferin's sake. Like I said, it makes people take action when otherwise they wouldn't. There's reasonin' behind it, but there's no way I can explain it all that you'd be able to understand. Your mind jus' doesn't work the same."

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

No, her mind didn't work the same way. Because suffering was just for suffering's sake. You didn't take action for it, it just was. That had been the point, no matter what Leoben said. Blood in her hair, and rubber bugs, and fingers in the doorjam-

"Because you're special, Kara. You can't be weak like the rest of them, you hear me?"

She smiled. "Well, we can't all have your brains." It was that devil-may-care smile she wore when she wanted to rip something to shreds, or make people think that she was just a little crazy. Probably wasn't far from the truth, not that she cared.

She picked up the pyramid and whipped it toward the goal. It went right in, clean shot from a bad angle. She wished it hadn't.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately Starbuck didn't have the same scope as Adam did. He could tell that nearly every action she'd made in her life stemmed from her early suffering and attempts to either run from it or deal with it. But that wasn't something you could just tell people. They needed to figure it out on their own.

"I didn't say I was smart," said Adam calmly, not worried by her broken smile. He just drew his aura in again to surround and comfort her. "I'm jus' designed dif'rent. A reg'lar human couldn't know everythin' without goin' crazy. Even I try to block most of it out most of the time 'cause it's a bit overwhelmin'."

He watched the ball go in with nothing more than an impressed look.

((If this is too godmoddy, please let me know and I'll rewrite!))

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

((nope, it's just right :D))

Just like the first time they had met she felt that sense of calm fall in. She hadn't wanted to spend a day thinking like this, so it made that feeling easier to accept. Sador padded over to her and nudged her knee with a wet nose before looking up at her curiously. Starbuck patted her on the head.

"They were lucky that you turned out to be so stable. With all that power couldn't you have just rewritten the board completely?" She paused as another thought came. "Could you get out of here if you wanted to?"

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"It wasn't luck," he laughed, but didn't explain. "An' I dunno if I can change the underlyin' rules. There's really only one person who has more power'n me on Earth an' that's God. If He don't want the board to change, there's nothin' I can do about that. All I c'n do is keep it goin'. It'll be interestin' to see what happens anyway."

Adam rubbed the back of his neck. Anyone else would have looked vaguely embarrassed. "Yeah, I c'n leave if I want. But I don't. There's some stuff here needs lookin' after for now, so I'm helpin'."

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

She halted. Frowned. "Then you know what's keeping us here and why we were brought here." The frown deepened. "And you're not going to tell me why."

That was going to madden her from time to time. Like right about now.

"Can you at least tell me... why me? Why me and not someone else from the Colonial Fleet? Someone else would have been a better choice if they had wanted a representative. The Old Man, or Lee, hell, even Gaeta would have been a better choice than me, tight ass that he is."

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"Sorry," he said contritely. "It's best if no one knows. But as for why you? 'Cause you're the one who was chosen. 's all I c'n say..."

Attempting to change the subject, he glanced around at the pyramid ball court. "Is it done, then?"