A Whole New World

[tidesnpc]

Characters: Anyone and everyone from all three ships.
Content: The clouds are gone, revealing the long-sought world below.
Setting: The edge of the continent, near the blast site.
Time: After all the monsters have been fought and the ships head southeast.
Warnings: What you bring with you.

Comments

[son_of_the_lake]

Hisoka was standing at the edge of the broken land. There were pale green shoots and clumps of new grass poking up here and there, and then the earth simply dropped away at his feet -- practically right out from under his shoes. The bare rocks sheared off downwards into an aerial mist, faint and light.

It was a dizzying feeling, looking down into the vast gulf of the winds swirling between himself and the lands below. And it was gloriously disorienting to gaze off towards the new horizon, an impossible width, an immense curve. It seemed the earth was larger than anybody had dreamed, though, of course, the science of navigation had predicted this -- but it was different, to view it with his own eyes.

And the waters below! They gleamed across the nether landscape, threading in rivers and pooling in lakes like silver and blue eyes or jewels. And there was a sheet of liquid unrolling towards the south, larger than any human alive had ever believed possible. A lake as large as the sky....

He lifted his binoculars, gingerly. He had gauze neatly knotted around his forehead, and his hair sprang out over it in irrepressible tufts. He adjusted the binocs carefully, and smiled at what he saw.

[edge_of_honor]

"Do you see anything interesting?"

Edgeworth stood behind him, just a little ways away, his good hand in his pocket and his metal arm at his side. He had watched Hisoka for just a moment before he announced his presence, to steel himself for the conversation ahead, and the younger man seemed absolutely entranced by the image below. Not that he could blame him: there was a whole new world down there, bigger and more vast than anyone had imagined. He had seen wonder, he had seen fear, but he had yet to see anyone who was apathetic about this turn of events.

[son_of_the_lake]

Hisoka turned, lowering the binocs. "Just...evidence of culture," he said, "if I'm not mistaken, that is. I thought I saw what could once have been...a stone breakwater wall, sheltering a harbor. Such structures are described in some of the ancient songs. Did you find everybody you were looking for?"

[edge_of_honor]

Really now? Edgeworth's brow raised in genuine interest, but the conversation had shifted.

"Most of them," he said, as he walked to Hisoka's side. "The others should be safe and sound, or weren't even in the area to begin with."

[son_of_the_lake]

"That's good," said Hisoka.

He turned his face towards Edgeworth. "This is a vast change to the world. It puts a whole new light on the future. What will you do, in this new world?"

[edge_of_honor]

"I'm not entirely sure," he said. "None of the nations have announced plans to explore just yet, but I imagine it will only be a matter of days, at most."

Edgeworth glanced away from Hisoka and towards the rim of the continent, and said, "However, if I do join in...it won't be with the military."

[son_of_the_lake]

Somehow, this was not a surprise, despite the fact that Hisoka's perception of Edgeworth was that he was consumately military, and in a certain way, always would be. But in the last year, he had changed in both obvious and not-so-obvious ways. And he was a thoughtful man, who could now let the consequences of change come into his life.

"Do you have ideas of what you will do instead?" Hisoka asked.

[edge_of_honor]

"...I'm not entirely sure," he admitted. "I can't think of a single person right now who isn't curious about what's down there. However, there's still an entire world up here. Somebody has to stay to pick up the pieces."

He glanced back at Hisoka, and asked, "What about you?"

[son_of_the_lake]

"I suppose so," said Hisoka, in response to Edgeworth's remarks about staying up here. "There will be much to do! And you have many skills, Commander Edgeworth. I would be surprised if you don't receive some good offers from the civil service sector when it gets out that you are leaving the Navy. And if that doesn't appeal to you, there's always the business world."

He added, "And as for me, well, it's kind of a long story..."

[edge_of_honor]

Edgeworth blinked, taken aback a bit at the compliments, but soon a small, wry smile crossed his lips. He did have quite a few options now, didn't he? More than he would have ever considered a few years ago. However, at the moment, he was more curious about Hisoka's story.

"I have time to listen," he said. "That is, if you don't mind sharing."

[son_of_the_lake]

"I don't mind, actually," said Hisoka. He cleared his throat. He was a little nervous about this story, as it related not only to what he might be doing in the future, but to areas of his experience that he had never yet spoken of to anyone. But the beginning was easy.

"I told you last year when we met at the Hanami Festival about my lost military records," he said. "I don't think I mentioned the man who contacted me via journal, a few months after I signed on to Serenity, a Major Thomson Delacroix of the Navy Personel Office in Bellcius. He informed me that the records had been found, and that I had never been deactivated, and he seemed to expect me to be a little bit grateful. But by that time, I was so angry that I wasn't willing to listen to him. I said I had already made a committment to Captain Reynolds, and I was not coming back. He was persistent, though. He said he had had me classified as being on special assignment pending my return to regular duty. He tried to blackmail me into making myself useful by spying on the independent shipping community, starting with Serenity. Which of course I would not do."

Hisoka paused. "Six months ago, he hit on another idea, that of recruiting me for a particular project, the fourteenth Underworld Expedition. It was set to launch this coming July, from Neery's Point, which is just up the Ivonian coast northeast from the head of the Badlands mountain chain. But apparently the Sky Serpent's tail delivered a hefty whack to the nearly finished expedition craft, and so they had to postpone while they repaired or rebuilt. And now there is no need for the Neriad X1V, a pressure-sealed, watertight ship specially built to withstand the pitch-dark, turbulent, poisonous ocean the project scientists thought might be beneath those clouds. Anybody with an old bucket of an airplane and a couple of gallons of fuel can go down there, now." Hisoka smiled.

And then he continued, "There are a few loose ends to tie up, though. That expedition was considered a suicide mission, since, as I'm sure you know, none of the earlier ones have ever returned. But Ivona was prepared to keep sending them until one did. Obviously, somebody has to dragoon people into volunteering for such projects, and that was one of Delacroix's funtions. Well, I said I would do it, on certain conditions..."

[edge_of_honor]

In all honesty, he thought Hisoka should have returned to the military. Despite his obligation to this Reynolds, he still had a duty to the state. Furthermore, if he could have been easily considered a deserter, a dangerous position to be in. It was quite a risk to take for a ship he had recently joined.

Then Hisoka mentioned the blackmail. His eyes narrowed, and disgust warped into cold fury when he explained how he had very nearly been roped into a suicide mission. It was bad enough that they had doomed him to a bureaucratic limbo. But now they had to damn him to certain death?

"What conditions were they?" he asked slowly. His curiosity outweighed his anger, which was enough to keep his composure for now.

[son_of_the_lake]

Hisoka was silent for a moment. He had seen the change of expression on Edgeworth's face. "Well, I was too young and inexperienced to lead the expedition myself, or to be the second in command, but I wanted to make sure I had enough rank and position to have a big say in how things went. I trust my own judgement and my skills, and I don't always trust those of others. So, I was going to be the navigator, and I wanted it understood that I would be the captain's third officer. And I asked for a promotion to major. I'm too young for that, and he told me so, but what the hell. He gave in. There was a third condition, but I'll tell you that in a minute."

Hisoka chewed his lip for a minute. He was thinking of how disorienting it felt to have expected, at the least, a very strange fate, and now to find he must make completely different plans. "You know, if the science people had been correct about what was down there...there is one thing I know for certain. I'd have brought that expedition home, or I would have died trying."

[edge_of_honor]

Edgeworth listened patiently to Hisoka's explanation. His demands were quite bold, but at that point, he had nothing left to lose. Why not be bold?

His last words, though, brought the whole thing together. These weren't the demands of a selfish, overly ambitious whelp; they were of a man who was determined to do everything he could to lead a crew of doomed souls out of certain peril. Edgeworth's gaze flickered for a moment, and he asked, "What of the third request?"

[son_of_the_lake]

Hisoka's eyes softened as he watched the Commander's face. Edgeworth rarely said exactly what he was thinking, and Hisoka could not know those thoughts directly, because he did not read people's minds unbidden, and still he could feel the warmth and the understanding flowing towards him like...ripples of sun-shot lake water, under a kindly sky.

It almost made him dizzy, at times like these.

He took a breath and made the effort to answer the question, though. "There is a nasty note in my confidential file, up there in some gleaming cabinet at Bellcius Headquarters, where the whole Navy's personel records are. I have no direct evidence that it exists, and yet I know that it does. There would be similar notations in the files of the other six men and women who were junior officers on the Mary Rose and survived its destruction along with me. I wanted those comments permanently removed, for all seven of us. I particularly wanted it for those six, because I made the decision that brought us all under suspician. I don't know that such a deletion would have helped their careers (or mine) at this late date, but I felt it was worth holding out for. And Delacroix finally agreed. Maybe he was simply making promises he thought he would never have to keep, or maybe he really thought it was worth it because he believed it would help give the expedition a better chance of sucess. I don't know. But anyway..."

He laughed, softly. "I'll never know, now. The deal is off, of course. But I'm not leaving the Navy. I'm staying, and they can deal with me as they like. They'll still need navigators. That world down there, out there, is a huge one! And it's probably more dangerous than it looks to us at this moment. There'll be work I can do."

He suddenly looked contrite, and a little embarrassed. "But you are stunningly patient. I'm going on about my own affairs, and I haven't asked you about yours. How are you, really? How is the work with the mechanical arm going?" His eyes were warm with interest.

[edge_of_honor]

Edgeworth was filled with a strong, sudden sense of curiosity: just what, exactly, happened aboard the Mary Rose so long ago? He wanted to ask, but now wasn't the right time. Perhaps later.

That wasn't the only puzzling thing about his reply. He was also surprised that Hisoka had decided to stay with the military after all of this, especially in light of his earlier decision to stay with his other ship. However that, too, was another conversation for later.

He blinked at his sudden awkwardness and, his voice soft, said, "It's quite all right. And I'm fine, for the most part."

(He wasn't completely fine. But, he was as fine as one could expect, all things considering.)

"As for my arm..." He slowly flexed his mechanical fingers, and said, "This one's temporary, at least until mechanic can finish work on the real model. However, it's..."

He glanced down at his hand, and shook his head.

"It's rough, unwieldy, and jams at the worst possible moments. But, even so, it's still one of the most amazing things I've seen."

Granted, this wasn't the first time he'd seen an automail arm. However, it was a different thing, to have one of his very own.