Fifth Blood

[speakveryclearly]

[Unusually for this network user, the transmission is purely Audio. A great deal of transports will of course recognize the voice as belonging to Kanaya Maryam. Strangers will hear a fifteen-year-old female, naturally rather mature and composed, doing her best to sound even more so. She speaks crisply and briskly with no mercy, like the distinctions between American and British English are to be stalked into a dark alley and shot in the back of the skull.]

The armageddon that occurred in the world of Elmer C. Albatross isn't the only one that's ever occurred in paradox space, you know. Just ask Asuka Langley Soryu or Rei Ayanami or Shinji Ikari. Any of them can tell you that the end of a world is always at least as ugly a thing as what happened on May Twenty-First. Anyone who escaped the planet Alternia before the meteors struck can reiterate the sentiments that Exsilium is a far better alternative to no planet at all. For many of us, Exsilium is our home now and we'll fight literally to the ends of an Earth for its sake.

I know not all of you feel that sort of debt to the Initiative. You do want to go home, this isn't your war, it's their fault. That's really too bad. Because if we let the United Earth have their way and don't develop Initiative in both senses of the word, we're all going to be post-apocalyptic refugees before long. We come from dozens of worlds. Would you like to take arms with the Initiative to fight against the reckoning, or watch each one meet the same fate Elmer's world did?

[An open question, Exsilium.]

Comments

[reassures]

No, it isn't. I wanted to know if it was the fault of the people who lived there.

Thank you.

[speakveryclearly]

Before I Came Here I Would Have Said That The Case Of An Apocalypse Is Rarely So Open And Shut To Allow True Fault Assignment
But
Well
We Learned Better On May Twenty-First Didnt We

[reassures]

It seems more reasonable that it would be someone's fault, even if that "someone" is a group of people.

[That's how it's always sort of worked in the past, as far as she can tell. After all... some of the worst things imaginable happened with the right intentions in mind.]

[speakveryclearly]

Thats True
But Then To An Extent
Using The Albatross Affair As A Case Study In Semantics
Do We Blame The Parties Who Opened The Portal
The Parties Who Barged Through It
Or The Parties Who Banged Their Fists Demanding It In The First Place
Such Great Domains Complicate Everything
More Than They Should
Ill Admit Reasonability Has A Strong Allure For Me

[reassures]

I think all parties are to blame.

[speakveryclearly]

How Productive Can That Assessment Be Though
Even If Its True

[reassures]

No less and no more productive than any other assessment.

[speakveryclearly]

Thats
A Smart Answer

[reassures]

Is it?

[speakveryclearly]

In The Sense Of Conveniently Clean And Clever At Least

[reassures]

That's a interesting way to put it.

[speakveryclearly]

Theres A Difference Though Certainly No Lack Of Intersection Between
Completing A Successful Task Of Sophistry
And Actually Being Right
Does That Make Sense

[reassures]

Yes, it does.