text 💎 un: Tohsaka Rin

[defenceless]

[shortly after the storm clears on may 11th and the network connection between both sides of the group is reestablished, the following post appears:]

We're fine, as far as I know. I don't think anyone's dead, at least.

The storm that separated us was brought about by a Dakal named Pomarr. Some of you may remember her as our feline friend who sold her soul to Ryba—or whatever it is she did—to continue to live on after death.

She swept us to an island that looked like it was raised from the seafloor. It wasn't a vacation, but there were definitely remnants of what those big cats must have called home.

Her plan is to revive her entire race, in the same way Ryba "revived" her. As if life-or-death deals with shady goddesses aren't concerning enough, she wants to grant Ryba the power to carry out this mass revival by having her suck Nalanni dry. Pomarr understandably doesn't care much for Nalanni after she drowned everyone she loved; in fact, she showed us this in morbid detail. She's taken Nalanni. Hence, all the Nalawi losing their Gifts and all of this inconvenience we have to deal with.

Pomarr knows where Nalanni is, but she's asking us not to interfere, and she wouldn't give us the opportunity to speak with Nalanni when I requested it. For some reason, she didn't expect that we would be suffering like the Nalawi are. She's promised to try to fix that.

What do we do now, ALASTAIR? I can share anything else you want to know about our meeting with Pomarr, or Yukimura Sanada-san or Mr. Keats can, but this is most of it. We have a situation where the balance of this whole world might be upended if we sit and twiddle our thumbs.

I don't think I need to remind anyone of the potential consequences of messing with either goddess. Or a litter of zombie cats roaming free.

(( ooc: infodump for rin, yukimura, and keats' conversation with a dakal npc, for one of the plot slots! feel free to handwave your character (in either the marooned group or the left behind group) learned this info by reading the post or talking with rin/yukimura/keats/another recruit. yukimura and keats may also be replying to tags! ))

Comments

[adlantisag]

[ She can imagine it. But Kida isn't Archer; she's about as far from a Servant as it's possible to get, and that Rin addresses her like one serves only to burn away the last dregs of respect between them. ]

Our job? What is our job if not to interfere? Just because they see her as benevolent does not make her so!

My compassion does not blind me. It uplifts and motivates me, just as it should. It is you who is so blinded by your desire to find the correct path that you forget what is morally right. I have seen what I needed to see. My choice is made.

[ There's no answer to this, as Kida closes the feed. She's wound up. How so many people can so callously set aside documented proof in favour of what they hope might turn up later makes her stomach churn. ]

[defenceless]

[it's nothing personal—this is how she talks to people in serious situations, when she wants to be heard. this is how she compelled a powerful servant to consider her counsel instead of murdering her on the spot. rin is mostly confused; she's pieced together little of what kida's actually arguing for, but

a response that would assume so much of her own motivations, too, isn't something she can stand down and accept.]

What is what's morally right, Kidagakash?!

[she was never any good at really holding her anger back. it isn't directed at kida, it's directed at the frustration.]

Who are you trying to prove something to? The Dakal are dead, and they should stay dead! The issue is bigger than this planet! There are so many more lives we can destroy if we act irrationally and I will not allow that to happen. Would you sacrifice everything in exchange for your revenge against some stupid goddess?!

[shaking, rin struggles to level her voice, but it doesn't go very well.]

... Think what you want about me. But I won't let any blood cover my hands that I didn't already permit to be there. I won't let their lives be meaningless.

The only way to honor those who have passed is to be brutally realistic in all we do.

[and even if kida never responds... it still isn't personal.]

[adlantisag]

[ No. It's entirely personal. Because Kida isn't really arguing for the validity of god-killing on a universal scale: she's talking about personal morality, about the fact that her teammates have watched a goddess murder thousands and somehow manage to respond with apathy. They need more information, they need more time to deliberate, they pussyfoot around what should, by all rights, self-evident: that what Nalanni did was reprehensible, and she deserves punishment.

Who are you trying to prove something to, Rin says--not to a shrieking girl, certainly, angry and yet unmoved by the suffering of an entire people. What does this child know of meaningless death? And whose lives? The Dakal's deaths were already without meaning, and the Nalawi are dependant on borrowed power to exist. Kida's people have crawled like worms in the earth for thousands of years, hundreds upon hundreds of their number decimated, atrocities leveled upon man, woman and child--and for what? Because of pride? Growing up, she'd been told that the fall of Atlantis was an act of the gods. She'd always thought any being that made themselves so deplorably worthy of defiance should be defied: that's why she has to stand now, even if it's worth nothing. If she's wrong, she'll rescind, but in the absence of any such proof all she can do is follow her convictions.

Nothing, nothing, nothing should ever balance the destruction visited upon children. She refuses the very idea. Brutally realistic? As far as Kida is concerned the only one here being brutally realistic is Koltira, and he's facing attack on all sides. 'Honor' is something precious few here seem to grasp. In Atlantis, Kida's word is quite literally the law; she is not the queen but in the absence of her mother she acts as one, and indecision cannot be tolerated. For thousands of years she's honed her willpower like a blade, and now she's using it to cut. ]