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maddox chides him, and zeke laughs. he slips back into the booth and says:[break][break]

"operation design."
[break][break]
he ignores the other question.
[break][break]
he begins talking right away, trying, as best as he can, to be direct, and helpful. but to be honest, he's never had to explain this to someone else, and he really could have done it better.
[break][break]
he says:
[break][break]
"first, you need to create a kind of—er, information hierarchy. before that, you need to learn everything you can about the target, and then decide—what's crucial, what's less so, and how can you move forward ensuring that every piece progresses with minimal information. too little and you won't get the right result, too much and you might jeopardize people and objectives unnecessarily."
[break][break]
in other words, the reverse of every hydra initiate's frustrations—he'll be the one determining the missions without explanaton, the tasks that you simply must trust fit into the higher cause.
[break][break]
funny how that works.
[break][break]
"in general, hydra's ranks apply here, too." initiate. novice. sentinel. acolyte. controller. in most situations, you defer to the person above you. some exceptions are made, for the handler network. "which means you can assign tasks to anyone who's an acolyte or below...but if you need someone else's help—" farah, tiur, zeke, another controller "—that would be more of a request."
[break][break]
so perhaps zeke was, then, preparing maddox for something like this. those nights spent at the bar, telling maddox the stories of their patrons, and smiling in surprise when the apprentice learned so quickly—names, faces, what they order.

you need to know what you're working with. and that means, naturally, who.
[break][break]
"you have to build this out the same time as you're building out the actual plan," zeke says. "sometimes the operation starts before you really know what you're doing—information gathering, for example, is usually a preliminary step."
[break][break]
he pauses, then, reaching the end of his planned explanation. he seems to be thinking about how to best explain it.
[break][break]
he says:
[break][break]
"it will sort of...have its own momentum, once you start," he explains. "the first few missions enable you to do others. every action starts to lead into something else, and you end up revising all three things—the information, the resources, the plan itself—continuously."
[break][break]
"it gets very all-consuming," he admits.
[break][break]
maddox ruchbah
[break][break]
zeke is currently: not hostile[break]
zeke is currently using no spells, ajax has disappeard[break][break]

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Zeke's smile thins a little, and he presses his chin a little further into his thumbs, yellow eyes trailing Farah's absence, as though wondering why on earth she decided to leave him alone, here, with the strangest of directives.
[break][break]
Of course he has information peritnent to this operation.
[break][break]
Of course the Leviathan would leave it to him, barkeeper of the Blind Monkey, to tell her story.
[break][break]
A click of annoyance, squiting eyes as though looking for a way to put the words together, but then he turns back to Maddox.
[break][break]
"Yes, of course," he says, to start with, and then—
[break][break]
"If you read enough books—even the ones we wrote—there's some historian making an angle for anything to be the cause of Hydra's loss," Zeke says.
[break][break]
It's true, too. There's a book explaining how the density of atmospheric stardust, for example, happened to favour Cerberus's artillery engineers more than Hydra's. There's military theory. Battle-by-battle accounts. Morale, politics, anything you could imagine, analyze or conjure, someone has examined the war using it as a lens.
[break][break]
"But I'll tell you a story."
[break][break]
The one they believe, at any rate.
[break][break]
"It's 1953, and Hydra's resistance to Cerberus is slowly starting to wane. Crestwalker is turning the conflict into something far more brutal than either side had ever seen before. The numbers are not going in Hydra's favour, and the war has already been going on for six years."
[break][break]
A familiar scene, then—a bleak picture, continuous defeats at the hands of the wolves in the highlands. No victories worth any song, a series of retreats and stalemates everywhere else.
[break][break]
But 1953 is an odd year for Zeke to choose—there is nothing of particular note, at least to Maddox's recollection, that happened in that year.
[break][break]
"The Leviathan is faced with a choice."
[break][break]
But say that is the most important year. Say, in a kitchen or a living room where the war is being decided, that is the last year that matters. Say 1953 is the year that Farah Serizawa recoils at, say it is the reason the letter was written in the first place.[break][break]

That, anyway, is the gravity of Zeke's voice.
[break][break]
One elbow goes onto the table, fingers curling into a fist and then opening, gently, into a plam:
[break][break]
"On one hand, there is blood. Whatever's already been shed and whatever's yet to be. There is a war, a fight. A losing fight, but not a lost one. There is hope and a just cause. There is every reason to hold on."
[break][break]
Here, the cadence of his voice—he is pulling you in, a siren song about sacrifice, the willingness to die.
[break][break]
Is that not what Hydra is?
[break][break]
The hand pulls back, his head leans slightly, yellow eyes travel to the other arm, now also on the table.
[break][break]
"On the other...there is the coward's way out. An easy death. A surrender."
[break][break]
The pause that ensues is long and deliberate. Uncomfortable, questioning. Zeke looks at Maddox, and finally, after a pause that seems to stretch from 1953 to 2022, he says:
[break][break]
"What if I told you, the Leviathan chose to die rather than to fight? What if I told you she took the easy way out?"
[break][break]
maddox ruchbah
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all npc threads are injury enabled. [break]
zeke is currently: not hostile[break]
zeke is currently using no spells, ajax has disappeard[break][break]

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Zeke pulls Maddox to one end of the story—he is trying to. But the drowning man inevitably kicks, distrusts the water, opens defiant lungs to the sea. Isn't that what kills him, in the end? [break][break]

The yellow-eyed gaze does not relent. Zeke's expression remains carefully neutral, even when Maddox's hand is cast to the side. He does follow the hand, though, unconsciously, staring at Farah's absence once again. [break][break]

Eventually, the subtlest of nods, a single incline of the head just before Zeke leans back, away from the table and presses his back into the leathery booth, looking down at Maddox, contemplative. [break][break]

"When I met Electra for the first time," Zeke says, "I asked her why. Why she was so determined to revive the Leviathan. The word, then, around the docks, was ambivalent. The Leviathan died, or was killed, what did it matter?" What's the point, of a mortal god? [break][break]

Her eyes go in the other direction, through the window, to transparent things, as they often do, when he is speaking of her. "She said:" [break][break]

"What else, I'm going to give her a piece of my mind."[break][break]

The crack of a smile. Maddox is exactly right. It doesn't matter—the choice to bring back the Leviathan, the anger at the abandonment, the shame of the loss. The loss itself, in some twisted way, doesn't matter. What matted then, as what matters now, is direction. Survival. Unity.[break][break]

This is the most honest Zeke has ever been with Maddox—there has been a threshold crossed, somewhere in between his story and Maddox's honest response, the storyteller and the wide-eyed boy have arrived, at last, at the same page. [break][break]

Electra never met Farah Serizawa. But she had given her life for the possibility, and that's what matters. [break][break]

"Maddox, what the enemy here is against is the Leviathan itself—and by anyone's standards, they have a good reason to be. You can never underestimate an enemy that believes in what they're fighting for. It's not just power, or control. They believe, just as we do, that they are fighting in the name of Hydra."


[break][break]
maddox ruchbah
[break][break]
all npc threads are injury enabled. [break]
zeke is currently: not hostile[break]
zeke is currently using no spells, ajax has disappeard[break][break]