hadriel | Fifth ☂ Voice

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Fifth ☂ Voice

Hadriel.

[His address begins in a straightforward tone. The issues of the past few months are behind them, and they've eked out survival for awhile longer. Sorrow isn't optimistic, but he's not inclined to give up, either. He makes plans, he executes them, he lets things fall into place.

Which is the reason for this.]

Now that most of you know the truth, and now that it has been shown that these creatures will truly follow us to the ends of creation, I have decided to send two of us to scout the location we left behind and intercept with the forces of the machines there. Their purpose would be to gather information- how these inorganics continue to find us, how we might be able to thwart their technology in an attempt to escape for good.

Of the eight of us, there are four pairs which work better together than others. Hope has asked me to let you decide who is to go, but I warn you to consider your options carefully. The gods who leave will not have any events until they return, so we'll throw a large one for their departure.

[Sorrow takes a deep breath. Onto the selection.]

Hope and myself could go. This would leave you without replenishing food and water, as well as limited methods of revival... Hope is valuable, and I would do everything in my power to protect him, and I can also ensure that we're not discovered.

Your second option would be Confusion and Tranquility. The two of them are our builders, and without them, the city will not be repaired and their various contributions will not be functional. Confusion would be adept at avoiding capture, though detection is another story.

Thirdly are Fear and Love. Fear... [He sighs.] Fear operates best in the shadows, though he's still weakened- however, if he leaves, it will mean that we'd be left vulnerable if attacked again, as none of the rest of us can move the city. Love themself is... well, perhaps they can be used as a distraction if Fear needs to escape.

[Sorry, Love.]

Finally, you have Delight and Rage. Since Delight is no longer maintaining the bar, your only significant losses with both of them would be the ongoing deals any of you may have with each of them. The two of them are our most accomplished fighters and would be able to wrestle themselves out of an unfavorable situation, given the power they'd take on from their final event.

[So that's that.]

I welcome any questions you may have.

Poll #18323

This poll is closed.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 53

View Respondents

Who should go?

View Answers

Sorrow and Hope
4 (7.5%)

Confusion and Tranquility
22 (41.5%)

Fear and Love
5 (9.4%)

Rage and Delight
22 (41.5%)

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Maybe you haven't noticed.

[It's a little bittersweet.]

Our proximity inspires emotion. You've been in our temples, you've felt it in one form or another. This happens to any sentient species that spends time near us.

[Sorrow falls silent for a moment, contemplative.]

For a species that operates wholly on calculation and logic, this side effect is unacceptable.

[ ... Oh. That hits Mello just a little too close to where he lives. He has long recognized that his own emotions are both a strength and a weakness: his passion is what drives him; anger propels him onward when others might quit; what he feels is inextricably linked with who he is. And yet, how often over the years has he wondered - if he were able to abandon emotion, to excise it from his being, to be as cold and calculating as Near, would it make a difference? Would he have been able to surpass Near if his emotions no longer had a hold on him, would his brain function better without emotion to hold it back?]

I ... I understand that dichotomy better than you might imagine, actually.

I don't think it's difficult to understand.

[He says- and of the gods, there is no doubt that Sorrow himself is the coldest, the most brutally logical, and the least driven by emotion of the bunch. If anyone knows what they're talking about here, it's him.]

But difficult to find a compromise that doesn't involve our genocide, apparently.

Some people might find it so.

[He thinks about how often Near has criticized his tendency to act based on his emotions - Near, who is the picture of cold logic to the bone.]

Regardless, genocide is an extreme reaction, and a poor one at that. Are there not innumerable universes? Surely there's space enough for both of your races to exist. That's not a stretch of logical thinking.

[It's not that Mello doesn't believe what Sorrow's telling him - he just finds it difficult to believe how this other race justifies its actions.]

[If Sorrow were more sarcastic, he might have had a comment on that- oh, genocide is an extreme reaction, is it?- but luckily, he isn't. He takes it in stride and simply hums in agreement before answering.]

If your greatest fear and most visceral undoing existed in an entire species of creature capable of interstellar travel, would you feel safe from them anywhere in the universe? Pretend like you are not you, but rather an entire race. Would you want to run the risk of you, any of your brethren, or any of your descendants interacting with this species a decade, a century, a millennia down the line?

No ... I suppose not. So that explains why you've been running all this time. But if it were me, my entire race in danger, and there was something after us in a way that no place felt safe, I think I'd do more than run. I'd find a way to fight back.

You and what army?

[He asks, cynical.]

Why do you think we are the last of our kind? Have you considered what happened to the rest of our species? Has it occurred to you that some- or even most- of them tried to 'fight back'? We survived because we were lucky. We ran because everyone else who fought was slaughtered.

Even then, when they were on our doorstep, we fought back. Delight died- then Love, then Rage, all because they tried to fight. Tranquility and Confusion died to buy us time to escape. I died instructing Fear to take Hope and survive.

[There's more than a little pent up frustration that's bleeding through Sorrow's tone now. Still, he doesn't yell- he's merely firm, speaking through clenched teeth.]

You have never had your back against the wall in the face of complete annihilation of your entire species. You do not tell me what I could and could not have done.

[Well. That's the strongest response he's heard yet from any of the gods, and that's interesting. Mello knows all too well what a struck nerve looks like, and he keeps thoughtful silence until Sorrow finishes speaking, adding this to his stores of information about the gods. When he speaks, his words are measured, tense, tightly controlled.]

To be entirely blunt, Sorrow, you don't know what my life was like before your Door snapped me up and brought me here, so frankly, I don't think you get to tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe I haven't faced genocide the way you have, but I have faced extermination, and I do know what it's like to be backed against a wall when the only options left at your disposal are bad ones.

[Caught in Los Angeles, his warehouse hideout compromised, all of Rod's men dead or dying, with Soichiro Yagami standing in front of him, pen to Death Note and the shinigami's sight to inform him of Mello's real name, Mihael Keehl. Seconds from death, and his choices then - burn or be captured, burn or die - gained him the next day, and the day after that, and the day after, but cost him half his face. He chose to run, through fire and destruction, and build himself back up from the ashes.]

I'm not criticizing what you did then. Retreating from battle is often necessary, and provides a strategic advantage. What I am suggesting is that your current methods are less effective than they could be. "What army," you ask? [He interjects a quiet half-laugh.] Make an army. If you lot could bother to see the rest of us as anything more than cattle, maybe you'd understand that we are far more capable than you give us credit for. If you'd bother to work on cultivating an alliance with us instead of using us as playthings to be used in accumulating power for yourselves, maybe you would be able to see that you already have a potential army.

[By the time that Mello has finished speaking, Sorrow has managed to reign himself in and regain his normal calm demeanor.]

There are less than a hundred of you at any given moment. A small fraction capable of battle, an even smaller fraction willing to fight for us. If you'd still like to stand your ground against them then I'll transport you to their last known location myself.

[But, more to the point.]

I was under the impression that asking your opinion on which of us puts our lives in danger for information was assisting in cultivating an alliance. I've been open with you, I've answered every question but one. Our need for power is non-negotiable, as is sending you home. Anything short of that... please, tell me exactly what I need to do in order to appease you.

If you'd all been transparent with us earlier on, I think you might have more of us willing to fight with you than you do now. I know you weren't here from the start - I remember when you were brought back - but there is a lot of ill will that's been built up over time, and taking one opinion poll isn't going to erase that immediately. If you want people to see this from your perspective, you're going to need to work some damage control. People aren't always entirely unreasonable - of course there are some who will refuse to cooperate out of hand [Will and Marian come immediately to Mello's mind] - but if you can find out what's important them and appeal to that, I think you'll find they're usually willing to compromise. Especially when it's their own survival at stake.

[He inhales a long breath and quietly sighs it out.]

I guess what I'm asking is ... have a little more faith in us.

[A brief pause, and then he adds:]

I appreciate that you've been as straightforward as possible with us. I know not everyone is.

Edited 2017-07-10 01:59 (UTC)

I'll admit that I find it astounding that I'm required to appeal to your standards of politeness and 'damage control' before you'll cooperate in preventing the extinction of my species, from a race that has already eradicated an entire race of creatures we cared deeply about.

[Frankly.]

Many of you consider me heartless, but I think that term more accurately describes those who would not rise to prevent an unprovoked genocide.

[But that's neither here nor there.]

Consider it noted.

[He makes a good point. From a purely logical standpoint, the greater good - mutual survival - would supersede all other factors. But therein lies the crux of the issue - people are not purely logical.]

I can only speak from experience and observation of humans, but there are two very important things you should know about people in general. The first is that, despite what they'd like to believe about themselves, they're not altruistic - they are, for the most part, selfishly motivated. And the second is that while they are capable of logical thinking, they act most often based on their emotions. By our perspectives, you lot have ripped us away from our home worlds, often from friends and family, and subjected us to unwanted - in many cases, severe - emotional manipulations. Now, I can understand, logically, that the reason you do this is for your own survival, but what I feel about it is incredibly pissed off. Not all of us are capable of setting aside emotion and focusing on logic.

Understandable.

[At least they can reach some kind of mutual understanding about that. Sorrow has no false ideas about what they've been doing- it's cruel and cold, but they're desperate and they have no other option. Mello understands this, even if he isn't sympathetic.

He takes a deep breath.]

I'm aware that your species is highly emotional. It's likely the reason that the Door selected you. Unfortunately, it makes it difficult for us to work together- many of you will never overcome your biases against us, and we don't have time to be polite about it.

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