[quote=@Stern Algorithm]
<Snipped quote by Ariamis>

Having received her orders, Eponine bowed and marched out.  Fantine looked after Eponine with slight concern, but turned back to Maria when she asked her question, "Yes, Lady Maria.  We can't really live without hope, can we?  If we don't aspire to something, we wither...and die."
[/quote]

Maria changed once again into something darker and brooding as she started to speak. "Indeed. We become nothing but screams of despair in the air, to be violently taken and then thrown away by those with purpose, scattered to the winds and consumed by strangers. To live without hope is to accept all the pain you have endured as having been for naught, to throw away any semblance of human will and to welcome complete oblivion."

Maria realized what she was saying and reverted back to her 15-year-old self. "Oh, I was starting to talk silly stuff. Never mind that, Fantine. I'll be at the study now, so don't disturb unless it's something important."

She turned her wheelchair around and headed for the study. It was a room with shelves packed to the brim with books of all sorts of topics and genres. However, she rarely read them; her main use for the room was in the green laptop she had sitting on a small table at the center of the room. Once she closed the room, she began to work on the various sheets and profiles she had already open on it, from small things such as grief seed farming charts to bigger files like intelligence she has collected on the city and the areas outside it. With nothing else to do, she continued working on it, managing and scheming with no set difference.