51: 50/50

The daylight hours were truly the most frightening for the armada musketeer Custos Quintus.

They were not the only frightening hours, that was for certain – he had felt some element of fear at almost all times, especially when his Commander was present within the cabin – but this was definitely preferred over the uncertainty that would proceed to take over in her absence.

As any proper Captain would, Sydney was present in various locations during the daylight hours – on the helm, on the masts, below decks, chasing and giving orders to her crewmembers, who complied in a somewhat lighthearted manner –

They have no idea.

Samantha Hawkins and Jewel Zabra – the both of them were shockingly naïve, although this was more applicable to the buccaneer than to her smaller sister – in – arms.

While they pretended that all was normal, that all was fine and well and dandy, as some humans would say – he felt nothing but terror, observing his Commander as she worked, upon the decks of her own massive ship, her pride, her Grand Fife.

This was a mask, he knew, there was a fifty percent chance – or it was genuine.

Whatever it was, the chances were exactly equal – and he had no certain way of determining the mood and mindset that she would be in upon re – sealing herself inside of the cabin when night fell once more.

Would she be calm – or would she be cruel?

Quintus' attention now briefly flew to his former Captain and Commanding officer, Optimus Caerulus, where he lay, bond and prone, in the most hidden and shadowed corner of the rather large cabin.

His night would rely on this chance as well – even though there was no method of prediction as to what the outcome of this chance would be, given that it was exactly fifty – fifty.

Quintus did not necessarily rely solely on statistics, as of now – for he had been exposed to the crew of the Grand Fife, of a combination of the most exaggerated, contrasting and conflicting emotions possible – and naturally, such an environment, ever so different from the setting that he had been built for, had affected his thought process.

Even so, he could still remember the times of his previous allegiance – in which such emotions had been completely absent, in which he had been void of them as well.

They did not play a part within him then.

No – instead, he would rely on chances – and within these mazes of complex algorithms and calculations, there were exactly two feared numbers – zero and fifty.

A zero percent meant that there was no chance – therefore, chances were invalid in such a situation, and he would be left with nothing to base his decisions on – he could not act, he could not process.

He could only remain prone.

It was truly a terrifying thing, to confront a zero – and the same went for a fifty, as the arguments set on either fifty that made up the hundred would match each other and cancel each other out – leaving him with the equivalent of a zero.

Really, how was it any different?

His Commander, this woman who had the strange ability to switch moods at the drop of a hat – she induced an infinite zero, he concluded – and it was only fair that he was terrified.


I actually think that this was the concept that had confused the most people in CM - to explain it simply, Quintus was trying to determine a constant pattern or trend in Sydney's behavior so that he could learn to predict her actions, words, and emotions - but it is rather impossible to do so when she acts one way around her crew, 50% of the time, and the other 50% of the time, when she is alone with him, she acts in a completely different way, and thus he cannot determine which one the "true" Sydney is.

If you had already understood it to begin with, I do apologize for rambling - and if not, I do hope that this was able to somewhat explain it further.

I hope you enjoyed, and be sure to leave a review!

- Severina