Post by Takumi Fujimoto on Feb 18, 2019 5:36:41 GMT -4
As the meeting between all of the students progressed, Takumi stood by after speaking his small strings of words and just observed the interactions between the others. Watching everything unfold had Takumi keeping mental tabs in his head that began to resemble a pros and cons chart. On one hand, it seemed that more dialogue was opening up between everyone, nobody had actually stormed off and left the meeting altogether with any sense of finality, and there was beginning to be a stronger sense of understanding between those with differences in perspective. On the other hand, it still seemed as if there would be no dissipation of the tension that permeated the air and that there were quite a few people present that wouldn't be making friends with each other.
Between Yoruhi, Ryuusei, and apparently Relena, the trio all held a strong distaste for the nature of the meeting as it was happening and seemed to have found some resolve in the idea of sticking around and aiming for a strong performance in spite of Emi's efforts and speech rather than because of them. Despite the apparently shared ideas between the three of them, it did appear as if there were different levels of hostility being held, or at least displayed, by them towards Emi. As far as Takumi was concerned when he saw this, it meant that there would likely be a prolonged social discomfort existing, which may have been something he disliked but he still felt it was preferable to bear it for the time being rather than enjoy an absence of the awkwardness because of the absence of the people partially responsible for it. As long as they stood by, that was one party he could help ease tensions with even if it might take a painful amount of time.
Emi maintained her sense of leadership within the context of the gathering and still appeared to be the center of attention as best as Takumi could distinguish. She spoke up in an attempt to address the concerns of Ryuusei, Yoruhi, and Relena in regards to how she was framing their upcoming task as nothing but a competition designed for them to look good, or at least for them to make her look good. She resigned herself to stating that she never declared it a competition but merely wanted to win, implying that the event was a competition by design and that she just wanted to work towards a desired end result based off the metric upon which they would be judged. To Takumi's surprise, even Emi was apparently a newer student at Yuuei and hadn't spent much time at the school, and she actually seemed to begin displaying some humility in an admission of ignorance for what she was doing, although Takumi still wondered how the tone of her voice would be interpreted as the words left her mouth.
Emi would do a little more speaking with some of the other people in the group, but would ultimately end up transitioning into giving her own "sales pitch" and explain her quirk along with her preferred moniker for heroics. Being able to produce and manipulate salt didn't seem like the most useful quirk for hero or rescue work to Takumi, but Emi began to provide some examples of different ways she could find effective use for it in certain situations. She wanted to be called "Halo" and seemed confident in her self assessment as she continued to speak, making a declaration that her most optimal environment for acting would be in the ocean. This comment prompted ideas of a ship wreck in Takumi's mind which then lead to his imagination replaying scenes from "The Titanic."
Ryuusei took a moment to speak up again, once again calling Emi out in the way she spoke to everyone when they first met, calling out a sense of arrogance and condescension that he perceived from how she called them a mixed bag and mentioned how she wanted to win, but then his criticism moved on to how she spoke more recently in the conversation. The shift in Emi's tone and the manner in which she phrased and presented her ideas had caused Ryuusei to believe that she was not being sincere in either instance and that everything she was doing since they met up was an attempt of manipulation. The next part actually caused Takumi to pull his head back and furrow his brow slightly, a look of befuddlement as he was trying to analyze what was said. Ryuusei gave this spiel about how he would have respected Emi if her brazen ego was genuine and she stayed true to it, but because she was changing her approach due to their resistance he just couldn't respect her as a leader, finishing off his speech by attacking what he saw as a lack of resolve.
That type of talk always upset Takumi on a deeper level, something that didn't just cause him to feel uncomfortable because of tension but actually upset him because it was an idea that he just couldn't agree with fundamentally. Emi might not have been a good leader as far as Takumi knew, if he was asked for his opinion later that day then he would have probably said he didn't think so, but to throw out this hypothetical respect that one could have held for someone but just couldn't find because of this ridiculous standard of behavior was ludicrous. Takumi knew that leadership, like anything else, was a skill and while some people found it naturally it was still something that needed time, effort, and experience most importantly of all, to hone. The way Ryuu tried to call out her ability to lead and outright deny her just seemed more counterproductive than anything he had witnessed since showing up. A mild look of angry disapproval would slowly show on Takumi's face as he tried to wrap his mind around what just went down.
Trying to keep things flowing in the meeting and at least dispel a small amount of the tension, Emi stepped up and said that their problem was with her and that she was fine with that, but ultimately the goal for everyone should be getting the job done. She called them out on trying to disrupt her efforts to help prepare everyone for the rescue course, which were genuine even if some might have seen them as purely selfish, and offered to stick around and let them unleash every bit of criticism and vitriol after the meeting ended if they so desired. Ryuusei argued back during some of this, accusing Emi of not trying to clarify her words but rather changing them, which tied into his main idea of her just being manipulative rather than an earnest leader, but ultimately he agreed to stick around later and have it out with her. To Takumi's relief, he finally agreed to talk about himself more and introduced himself as the Vice President of class 1-A before listing off some actual experience he had rescuing real people. Despite everything else he had done and said earlier, Takumi was impressed by Ryuusei's resume and his quirk.
When expressive girl with the strange fire spoke, she first got around to actually stating her name as Disukodo Arisu and expressed some basic social niceties. She then seemed to focus more on responding to Shimizu's words and how they seemed to focus on differentiating between the ideas of winning and saving. Takumi subtly nodded along as Arisu spoke about the realities of saving people, particularly the hard truths about the different people needing saving and with different respective amounts of immediate time left, and how there were enough similarities between that and competitions to allow the mindset to be applicable, going so far as to explain how every attempt to rescue people could ultimately be seen as a gamble in which heroes needed to be able to take risks.
When Takumi explained more about his quirk to Arisu, she seemed to be having none of his modesty or lack of confidence in it, and she was willing to express it. According to her, his foam emission was very versatile and had tons of potential applications, some of which she offered to discuss with him later on.
Sure! That sounds great! Takumi smiled brightly and gave her a thumbs up just as enthusiastic as the one she shot his way earlier as he accepted her offer. He still didn't think his quirk would be all that useful, but it was more because of the lack of volume and force he could produce. Part of him knew that with time and training it could become more impressive, like someone with a fire quirk being able to produce just small, candle-sized flames when they were young and then being able to create huge flames later on, but he would still have a way to go before he could be putting out wildfires with his foam.
Following Ryuusei's lead, Yoruhi tried to contribute his own attempt at salvaging the meeting but chose to call people away from discussing their differences of opinion and to instead focus on just what needed to be done. Takumi was happy to hear him try to bring the flow of the meeting away from the source of the tension and make moves towards amiability. He then went on to introduce himself as another student of 1-A and that he had been with Ryuusei during the Ferris Wheel problem that was mentioned earlier. Yoruhi also had a quirk that was basically fire with a twist, and aside from his quirk he also mentioned having experience in parkour, which impressed Takumi. He had seen a few videos on uTube of crazy athletic people doing crazy feats of daring and athleticism, but he could never see himself being able to do anything like that. Something like this would be useful in trying to help people in hard to reach places because of buildings or destruction. In a final word that left a bad taste in Takumi's mouth, Yoruhi finished his speech with a really passive aggressive "self description" about his ability to put differences aside and work with people, and it was really just another call out that was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to get the last word in on the argument in a way that if someone else called him out on it, he could just sit back and accuse them of not letting it go when he was "being mature."
Takumi really wanted to speak up and brave the scary disagreement, but more than his fear of arguing he found himself being held back by his recognition that calling him out on it would in fact cause the meeting to fly off the rails after it had just barely been salvaged. Instead, he would try to call back to an earlier point of contention and try to brush away a line in the sand that he felt didn't need to exist at all. It was really moreso just piggybacking off of Arisu's point that she made to Shimizu, but Takumi felt that his perspective could help bring people together and produce an environment that was more conducive to team work.
Also, to be honest, I don't think there's anything wrong with either way of looking at this event. I mean, we know that none of the people that we'll be "rescuing," tomorrow Takumi would make air quotes with his fingers as he said the word "rescuing" and would try to slowly alternate his eyes across the span of people with him. -aren't actually going to be in real danger. They're all just essentially actors hired by Yuuei for us to be able to practice with, like a dog trainer with a super thick suit when they teach guard dogs how to attack threats. In that case, it's fine to keep in mind that this is a test and that there is something we're being judged on, and if that's the case it's perfectly fine to see this as a competition. On the other hand, if you don't like the idea of this being a competition and think saving people should be seen with more sincerity, obviously that's fine too since you all want to save as many people as possible. I think really, at the end of the day, we all just want to go in there and do our best to save as many people as we can regardless of our perspective.
Takumi couldn't be sure if his words reached anybody there, or if anyone would agree with them, but he was optimistic that explaining the common area between both mentalities and how they both would ultimately lead to the same goal would help ease some of the discord between those present and at odds. Ultimately, there wasn't anything more that Takumi could really do to help, but just like everyone here trying to learn how to be a hero, or Emi learning how to be a leader, maybe Yuuei was a new environment to help spur Takumi's growth towards being a better mediator of sorts.
Between Yoruhi, Ryuusei, and apparently Relena, the trio all held a strong distaste for the nature of the meeting as it was happening and seemed to have found some resolve in the idea of sticking around and aiming for a strong performance in spite of Emi's efforts and speech rather than because of them. Despite the apparently shared ideas between the three of them, it did appear as if there were different levels of hostility being held, or at least displayed, by them towards Emi. As far as Takumi was concerned when he saw this, it meant that there would likely be a prolonged social discomfort existing, which may have been something he disliked but he still felt it was preferable to bear it for the time being rather than enjoy an absence of the awkwardness because of the absence of the people partially responsible for it. As long as they stood by, that was one party he could help ease tensions with even if it might take a painful amount of time.
Emi maintained her sense of leadership within the context of the gathering and still appeared to be the center of attention as best as Takumi could distinguish. She spoke up in an attempt to address the concerns of Ryuusei, Yoruhi, and Relena in regards to how she was framing their upcoming task as nothing but a competition designed for them to look good, or at least for them to make her look good. She resigned herself to stating that she never declared it a competition but merely wanted to win, implying that the event was a competition by design and that she just wanted to work towards a desired end result based off the metric upon which they would be judged. To Takumi's surprise, even Emi was apparently a newer student at Yuuei and hadn't spent much time at the school, and she actually seemed to begin displaying some humility in an admission of ignorance for what she was doing, although Takumi still wondered how the tone of her voice would be interpreted as the words left her mouth.
Emi would do a little more speaking with some of the other people in the group, but would ultimately end up transitioning into giving her own "sales pitch" and explain her quirk along with her preferred moniker for heroics. Being able to produce and manipulate salt didn't seem like the most useful quirk for hero or rescue work to Takumi, but Emi began to provide some examples of different ways she could find effective use for it in certain situations. She wanted to be called "Halo" and seemed confident in her self assessment as she continued to speak, making a declaration that her most optimal environment for acting would be in the ocean. This comment prompted ideas of a ship wreck in Takumi's mind which then lead to his imagination replaying scenes from "The Titanic."
Ryuusei took a moment to speak up again, once again calling Emi out in the way she spoke to everyone when they first met, calling out a sense of arrogance and condescension that he perceived from how she called them a mixed bag and mentioned how she wanted to win, but then his criticism moved on to how she spoke more recently in the conversation. The shift in Emi's tone and the manner in which she phrased and presented her ideas had caused Ryuusei to believe that she was not being sincere in either instance and that everything she was doing since they met up was an attempt of manipulation. The next part actually caused Takumi to pull his head back and furrow his brow slightly, a look of befuddlement as he was trying to analyze what was said. Ryuusei gave this spiel about how he would have respected Emi if her brazen ego was genuine and she stayed true to it, but because she was changing her approach due to their resistance he just couldn't respect her as a leader, finishing off his speech by attacking what he saw as a lack of resolve.
That type of talk always upset Takumi on a deeper level, something that didn't just cause him to feel uncomfortable because of tension but actually upset him because it was an idea that he just couldn't agree with fundamentally. Emi might not have been a good leader as far as Takumi knew, if he was asked for his opinion later that day then he would have probably said he didn't think so, but to throw out this hypothetical respect that one could have held for someone but just couldn't find because of this ridiculous standard of behavior was ludicrous. Takumi knew that leadership, like anything else, was a skill and while some people found it naturally it was still something that needed time, effort, and experience most importantly of all, to hone. The way Ryuu tried to call out her ability to lead and outright deny her just seemed more counterproductive than anything he had witnessed since showing up. A mild look of angry disapproval would slowly show on Takumi's face as he tried to wrap his mind around what just went down.
Trying to keep things flowing in the meeting and at least dispel a small amount of the tension, Emi stepped up and said that their problem was with her and that she was fine with that, but ultimately the goal for everyone should be getting the job done. She called them out on trying to disrupt her efforts to help prepare everyone for the rescue course, which were genuine even if some might have seen them as purely selfish, and offered to stick around and let them unleash every bit of criticism and vitriol after the meeting ended if they so desired. Ryuusei argued back during some of this, accusing Emi of not trying to clarify her words but rather changing them, which tied into his main idea of her just being manipulative rather than an earnest leader, but ultimately he agreed to stick around later and have it out with her. To Takumi's relief, he finally agreed to talk about himself more and introduced himself as the Vice President of class 1-A before listing off some actual experience he had rescuing real people. Despite everything else he had done and said earlier, Takumi was impressed by Ryuusei's resume and his quirk.
When expressive girl with the strange fire spoke, she first got around to actually stating her name as Disukodo Arisu and expressed some basic social niceties. She then seemed to focus more on responding to Shimizu's words and how they seemed to focus on differentiating between the ideas of winning and saving. Takumi subtly nodded along as Arisu spoke about the realities of saving people, particularly the hard truths about the different people needing saving and with different respective amounts of immediate time left, and how there were enough similarities between that and competitions to allow the mindset to be applicable, going so far as to explain how every attempt to rescue people could ultimately be seen as a gamble in which heroes needed to be able to take risks.
When Takumi explained more about his quirk to Arisu, she seemed to be having none of his modesty or lack of confidence in it, and she was willing to express it. According to her, his foam emission was very versatile and had tons of potential applications, some of which she offered to discuss with him later on.
Sure! That sounds great! Takumi smiled brightly and gave her a thumbs up just as enthusiastic as the one she shot his way earlier as he accepted her offer. He still didn't think his quirk would be all that useful, but it was more because of the lack of volume and force he could produce. Part of him knew that with time and training it could become more impressive, like someone with a fire quirk being able to produce just small, candle-sized flames when they were young and then being able to create huge flames later on, but he would still have a way to go before he could be putting out wildfires with his foam.
Following Ryuusei's lead, Yoruhi tried to contribute his own attempt at salvaging the meeting but chose to call people away from discussing their differences of opinion and to instead focus on just what needed to be done. Takumi was happy to hear him try to bring the flow of the meeting away from the source of the tension and make moves towards amiability. He then went on to introduce himself as another student of 1-A and that he had been with Ryuusei during the Ferris Wheel problem that was mentioned earlier. Yoruhi also had a quirk that was basically fire with a twist, and aside from his quirk he also mentioned having experience in parkour, which impressed Takumi. He had seen a few videos on uTube of crazy athletic people doing crazy feats of daring and athleticism, but he could never see himself being able to do anything like that. Something like this would be useful in trying to help people in hard to reach places because of buildings or destruction. In a final word that left a bad taste in Takumi's mouth, Yoruhi finished his speech with a really passive aggressive "self description" about his ability to put differences aside and work with people, and it was really just another call out that was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to get the last word in on the argument in a way that if someone else called him out on it, he could just sit back and accuse them of not letting it go when he was "being mature."
Takumi really wanted to speak up and brave the scary disagreement, but more than his fear of arguing he found himself being held back by his recognition that calling him out on it would in fact cause the meeting to fly off the rails after it had just barely been salvaged. Instead, he would try to call back to an earlier point of contention and try to brush away a line in the sand that he felt didn't need to exist at all. It was really moreso just piggybacking off of Arisu's point that she made to Shimizu, but Takumi felt that his perspective could help bring people together and produce an environment that was more conducive to team work.
Also, to be honest, I don't think there's anything wrong with either way of looking at this event. I mean, we know that none of the people that we'll be "rescuing," tomorrow Takumi would make air quotes with his fingers as he said the word "rescuing" and would try to slowly alternate his eyes across the span of people with him. -aren't actually going to be in real danger. They're all just essentially actors hired by Yuuei for us to be able to practice with, like a dog trainer with a super thick suit when they teach guard dogs how to attack threats. In that case, it's fine to keep in mind that this is a test and that there is something we're being judged on, and if that's the case it's perfectly fine to see this as a competition. On the other hand, if you don't like the idea of this being a competition and think saving people should be seen with more sincerity, obviously that's fine too since you all want to save as many people as possible. I think really, at the end of the day, we all just want to go in there and do our best to save as many people as we can regardless of our perspective.
Takumi couldn't be sure if his words reached anybody there, or if anyone would agree with them, but he was optimistic that explaining the common area between both mentalities and how they both would ultimately lead to the same goal would help ease some of the discord between those present and at odds. Ultimately, there wasn't anything more that Takumi could really do to help, but just like everyone here trying to learn how to be a hero, or Emi learning how to be a leader, maybe Yuuei was a new environment to help spur Takumi's growth towards being a better mediator of sorts.