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Post by supesman on Feb 28, 2022 14:26:28 GMT
"Peace is, ironically, the only thing worth fighting for. Real peace. Not just the status quo but real, everyday peace where everyone can be safe and happy and have the ability to pursue their dreams. if only we were lucky enough to live in less interesting times." Zack said, always keeping in mind the oxymoron that was at the heart of any superhero. A superhero fights for a world that will eventually have no need for superheroes.
"Simplicity is the soul of beauty, after all." Marigold said in reply to Blackjack. Even beyond the people across the coast there was the simple inward and outward motion of the white crested waves crashing against the sand, sending the hiss of water up the beach. "It's often hard to remember to look up and appreciate the little things, especially in the lives of people of the digital world where everything is such a crisis all the time. Taking it in is the only way to center yourself, remember that there's more to life than just the fight." She said, her front legs dangling off the edge of her chair, kicking slightly in the salty air as she just allowed herself to relax into the breeze
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Post by ricochet10-Blackjack&Harmony on Mar 1, 2022 0:15:47 GMT
"That is totally true. Real peace no matter how small is always worth the hard work to not only keep the peace but make things better if only by a little bit. It's like you said earlier about how a small act of kindness can lead to many such acts or even a much bigger act of kindness. This is why Blackjack and I plan to share a small amount of money with travelers in need or even offer them some of our food since not everyone is good at foraging for food in the wild. Not only that I plan to teach them about a few things they can eat so they can forage somewhat for themselves." Harmony said not really bothered to much by Zack's oxymoron regarding superheroes.
"Don't the humans have some kind of saying about teaching a man to fish or something?" Blackjack asked trying to remember the exact saying.
"I believe they do, Blackjack." Harmony said clearly not remembering the saying either.
Blackjack looks over at Marigold as he lands on the table nearby her watching her legs dangle down for a bit as he listened to her talk. His card floating over his head droops in a relaxed way. "It's those little things that one often forgets in the chaos that life can bring but also is the thing that allows many to remain somewhat sane." Blackjack chuckled before he said "Wow. That sounded pretty deep even for me. I guess my big sister is rubbing off on me."
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Post by supesman on Mar 1, 2022 13:48:15 GMT
"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime." Zack said, reciting the proverb from memory. It was just one of those things that most humans, at least humans from where Zack was from had heard so many times that it became a comfortable cliche. Zack didn't let that stand though, he added his own bit to the tail end. "A starving man will accept a fish, a starved man holds no fishing pole." He said, undermining the saying often twisted meaning that prompted people not to help others in need. Learning how to solve the problem themselves was all fine and good but in the middle of the problem itself the advice for dealing with it next time is a bit immaterial.
"Mmmm, you two have the right idea. A little charity to start and then education after that. Charity without knowledge is a temporary solution and knowledge without charity is leaving others to flounder." Marigold said, weighing both sets of ideas back and forth on her out stretched legs like she was propping up an invisible scale with her leg spikes.
"Indeed. Helping people understand their troubles and prepare for them is all well and good but people in the middle of those troubles sometimes just need a life raft to make it through TO next time." He said, smiling. The twins seemed to have the right idea about going about, helping people with their talents, it made him grin openly and widely.
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Post by ricochet10-Blackjack&Harmony on Mar 1, 2022 14:09:58 GMT
Blackjack reflected on Zack's words before he said "Yeah that's the saying but you are right about someone being starved not being to weak to find their own food." Yes it seemed depressing to say something like that but it was just how things were as even in the Digital World starvation was a problem many digimon faced and some digimon died before otherwise obtaining food somehow.
"You're words also make sense, Marigold. One that offers charity should also teach the person they help how to find said food item for example so the ones they helped can take care of themselves afterward. Not everyone is as lucky as the four of us have been in life." Harmony said her card swishing back and forth slowly with the moving breeze.
"I may not always be all that aware of others troubles but even a hothead like myself can see when others need help. My sister and I will be living proof that gamblers don't always have to be seen as having a bad reputation." Blackjack said before looking at the tide moving in and out for awhile.
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Post by supesman on Mar 2, 2022 14:15:35 GMT
"A gambler is just someone who decides it's worth it to play long odd for a high prize right? Well, lots of people can be called good kinds of gamblers then. The things the need doing, that can do the most people the most good, they don't tend to have one hundred percent odds in the first place." Zack said, wondering silently to himself about all the bad outcomes he had avoided in the course of his "profession" simply by skating just above the threshold of a bad probability.
"Still though, gambling in this sense takes a lot of skill. being able to crunch those kinds of numbers in your head, reading other people at a glance, all without letting a single ounce of that emotion show on your face. It's impressive." Marigold said. It was a skillset her and her father couldn't even touch. Most of their skills lay with martial arts, crime scene investigation and what could be broadly called "community outreach". Neither of them were exactly the kind of mathematical minds that could look at a deck of cards with more arrangements than atoms in the universe and calculate the odds of a singular positive outcome.
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Post by ricochet10-Blackjack&Harmony on Mar 3, 2022 1:24:02 GMT
"I guess it's a matter of how a gambler goes about using the money they manage to earn if they succeed in winning at all." Blackjack said as he took in Zack's words. "Life is a gamble in and of itself seeing as survival is far from a guarantee in the Digital World with stronger digimon tending to have higher odds of survival simply cause they tend to be more experienced fighters."
"Yes there is a lot of math involved as well as being able to read people meaning my brother and I have gotten fairly street smart even as babies. All of which is an impressive undertaking considering our best skills were self taught from the moment we slipped out of the Village of Beginnings as hatchlings. Maybe we are kids that are just to clever for our own good, I guess." Harmony said with a short giggle. Sure Blackjack and Harmony knew what they did by mostly sneaking and observing strangers to the point they could of been ninjas. Harmony grinned as the image of Blackjack dressed as a ninja entered her mind and it was quite funny a sight to imagine.
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Post by supesman on Mar 3, 2022 14:37:15 GMT
"Couldn't be us, I tell you what." Marigold said with a smile, looking over to her father as Harmony described the process of finding and using all the right information for gambling. "In our line of work you kick in the door, get all eyes directly on you and then gauge reactions from there. Things tend to get REALLY chaotic, really fast." She said, almost able to hear the sudden rise of shouting and cursing that would come around whenever her and her father would bash down a door with their feet and put an entire mob on notice.
"The first casualty of any fight is the plan, after all. Doesn't mean we don't do any staking out but recon like that tends to make or break on whether you can adapt or not on the fly anyway." He said, shrugging. It wasn't like a hand of cards where you could take all of your time darting eyes between your hand and the player in front of you. Snap decisions tended to be much more required when there was a Kabuterimon swinging a steel beam at your head like a baseball bat and he's not even the only guy making a move along those lines all at once.
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Post by ricochet10-Blackjack&Harmony on Mar 3, 2022 23:50:31 GMT
"I'm not saying that neither of you aren't smart enough to be gamblers but the knowledge I mentioned does make it easier of course." Harmony said before she continued "I'm sure in your line of work things like patience and intelligence comes in handy especially if investigating a criminal is needed before kicking in the door and readying ones self for said chaos about to happen."
Blackjack smiled with his oh so familiar roguish grin before he said "Oh believe me, Harmony and I know about adapting on the fly. It tends to go hand in hand with being gamblers and being very young. One has to adapt in the Digital World as fast as possible or they don't tend to survive to adulthood. That's just the cruel reality of this world." Leave it to Blackjack to tell things bluntly like they were when Harmony didn't think of doing so. Though his words could at times sound a bit harsh it was the honesty that others tended to appreciate.
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Post by supesman on Mar 4, 2022 14:21:34 GMT
"Oh don't get me wrong, knowledge and preparation come in handy. We'll spend a couple of nights at least staking out a criminal that we want to take down. Gauging their habits, their associates, their hideouts. Any times or places where they tend to drop their guard. The difference being that once the fight actually gets started the bad guy doesn't tend to take turns or give us time to consider our metaphorical cards before making our next move." Zack said, well aware of the constant hair trigger, moment to moment decision making that was required in a fight. Information was one thing, putting it into practice on a heartbeat by heartbeat pace was something else entirely.
"That's just life really. You never get the time to consider every side of every option all at once. In the end sometimes it's sink or swim and you have to make the decision with the knowledge you have on hand." Marigold said. That applied to fights, it applied to games, it applied to every second of life that went on. Sometimes you had to pick a direction and just go for it.
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Post by ricochet10-Blackjack&Harmony on Mar 4, 2022 23:30:17 GMT
"Yes preparation can be very handy giving one an out if things go wrong. If we prepared before challenging three Gizamon to poker we might of known they were sore losers and would of been more prepared to retreat when things went sour. Harmony and I can't always rely on others to save us. We were lucky a pair of Dracomon saved us but what about next time?" Blackjack said.
"Something tells me though that Zack is the type to occasionally toss the plan to basically leap in and kick said criminal in the face. Sure it is surprising but sadly doesn't always work on digimon. Yet I agree life is occasionally about either sinking or swimming since life is a race for survival. So far in that race Blackjack and I have held our own." Harmony said with a smile her card swishing which reflected her good mood. Yes life could be harsh but that was not always the case. For every harsh thing that happened it was balanced by gentle moments which made life all the more worth living at least in Harmony's opinion though she wouldn't be surprised if Blackjack felt the same way since she and her twin had a lot in common with one another. Maybe more so then the average twin.
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Post by supesman on Mar 5, 2022 14:26:58 GMT
"Oh ho ho, sister you have no idea how right you are." Marigold said when Harmony mused about Zack's willingness to just toss the plan to one side and start plying by the seat of his pants. "Like he said, the first casualty of any battle is the plan. There is always, ALWAYS that one little, tiny thing that no one could possibly have accounted for that basically just tosses everything out the window." She said, frustrated by how often they had come up with fool proof plans only for everything to go bottoms up at the last second.
"One of the digimon had a power we couldn't have predicted, they've come into some kind of powerful artifact that same day, they pull up with a kidnapping victim or a hostage about ten seconds before we're saddled up to go in, etc, etc, etc." Zack said. To a point he was just as frustrated as Marigold was but a part of him couldn't help but be a little bit bemused about the whole things. After all, the pair had always come out on top anyway so there was no point in dwelling on how complicated things USED to be. All's well that ends well and all that. Marigold's frustration also made him grin too much to dwell on it for that long.
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Post by ricochet10-Blackjack&Harmony on Mar 6, 2022 0:58:36 GMT
"You have a point seeing as Blackjack and I have only met you two today and are only going on the limited information you two gave us regarding how Zack can easily find trouble. Just as you guys have limited info on how much of a rogue my brother Blackjack can be. At least Blackjack is the loveable kind of rogue that I have found fairly easy to live with despite his hotheadedness. At least Zack also seems pretty chill unless provoked as well so that's one less thing you have to worry about, Marigold." Harmony said with a smile.
"Man that digimon having an unpredictable power musta been scary even if you guys didn't outwardly show it. I honestly don't know how I would handle such a situation though I'm sure Harmony would of figured it out fairly fast as she is the level headed one of us two." Blackjack said in response to hearing of the situation Zack had found himself in. How he and Marigold managed such a tough issue was beyond the young gambler's knowledge.
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Post by supesman on Mar 6, 2022 13:50:32 GMT
"You play it by ear and you try not to die or get anybody else killed. Generally tends to work out for us." Zack said in response to Blackjack's worry about situations that they had found themselves in. There had been a LOT of panic involved in the moment. "Your adrenaline hits you in the back of the head like a sledgehammer, your brain is working at ten miles a second and going mostly nowhere but before you know it you're standing over the guy and the memory of what actually HAPPENED is more or less a total blur." He said, admitting that the rush that came with that kind of danger could play some real tricks on the mind after the heat had faded.
"Oh for sure. A lot of times people will be talking about what happened and I'll suddenly think "Wait, we did WHAT?" because I have this vague memory of something along those lines but it hadn't fully clicked in the moment the stupid, dangerous thing we just did." Marigold said, balking at the absurd risks that she and her father had taken in the heat of the moment that only truly sunk in after the fact.
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Post by ricochet10-Blackjack&Harmony on Mar 7, 2022 0:26:28 GMT
Blackjack then began to laugh before he said "Play it by ear, huh? Boy does that sound familiar especially for gamblers like me and Harmony as this is something we do all the time. While adrenaline can be an amazing thing that keeps one alive in a pinch, it can also be trouble if it shuts off other ones' common sense as it sometimes happens to me. It has been an unfortunate issue I have faced but fortunately I have a big sister as level headed as Harmony just as you have a daughter like Harmony to make up for when you lose your common sense cause I have a feeling that is a way you and I are alike."
"Sounds like some folks just fill you and Zack in on what happened if you survive, huh Marigold? I guess that comes in handy somehow." Harmony said calmly after listening to both father and daughter even though her twin had joined the conversation.
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Post by supesman on Mar 7, 2022 14:21:49 GMT
"Oh for sure. Sometimes we have to get the locals to fill us in on what we did, what we broke and what it's going to take to fix it because we'll start on one side of town trying to talk the guy down and then the next thing we know we're on the opposite side of the village having busted through eight walls and my dad is holding god knows what, I've got something I can't identify splattered all over my shell and people are mumbling about us smashing a fruit cart over the poor bastard's head." Marigold said. The memory that she was conjuring much too odd and specific to be something she was making up on the spot.
"That's a real story by the way. Apparently we had to bash some Ikkakumon over the head with a cart full of fresh fruit. The first thing we remember is Marigold covered in watermelon juice and me holding the remains of one of the wheels in my hands. it's like trying to piece things together after a bender with all the aches and none of the drinking." Zack said. he was always slightly worried about the adrenaline blackouts but they hadn't resulted in anything terrible or permanent happening so the best he could do was shrug it off.
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