2024-08-31: Falling Tears ~ From Heaven ~ From You
- Log: 2024-08-31: Falling Tears ~ From Heaven ~ From You
- Cast: Asciel Colette
- Where: Huffman Island
- Date: U.C. 0099 08 31
- Summary: The burden to hold up the heavens cannot stand on a single powerless person's shoulders. "Accept it, even if it's just this once."
It was happening yet again.
First it was Sydney - that day of folly which ensured the ensuring two decades would be written in the blood of the masses, which turned countless men into monsters.
Asciel Colette could not do anything. At that time, it was a blithe, ignorant object, incapable of understanding the dire fate of itself and this world.
Then it was Operation Stardust - carving a scar into the verdant soil, punctuating that this unthinkable tragedy would be far from the last.
Asciel Colette could not do anything. Perhaps even to this day, it is a blithe, ignorant object, incapable of understanding the fate it seized.
Then it was Dublin - a promise that no city of human make was safe, that as long as the masses gathered, the husks of promises to live among the stars would forever be a sword above their head.
Asciel Colette could not do anything. Though it had grasped hold of the sheer scope of what it was obligated to do, to prevent these disasters, it held little power beyond that secluded cocoon beneath the soil.
Then it was the Axis Shock - a declaration that the will of those who dwelled in space would forever be an existential threat to the sanctity of the planet itself. They could decree that they would sacrifice a whole planet of souls for the sake of some future, and only this was the threshold at which miracles would intervene.
Asciel Colette could not do anything. She had clutched the star of her ambitions, breathed in song that could provide salvation, and yet, the seeming solution to disasters like these beyond her ken demanded her to do the unthinkable. To tear herself limb from limb until the hands she wielded were not mere effigy, but made of the same force of will that guided the planet that day.
Then it was Palau - a ghost of ambition possessed by a willpower which far exceeded human comprehension. The background radiation of the universe itself could harness such an unspeakable horror and use it anew in its oath, promising humanity that its destruction would heal the universe itself.
Asciel Colette could not do anything. The means to do so were in her hands - were her plans to succeed, she could be the one to end that disaster with her own means, to ensure the Earth would not fall. It was so nearly hers - so nearly a day that proved her salvation was possible.
And it was denied.
There was only one allowed method to save the Earth - the 'miracle', the indomitable essence of humanity's determination to live onward on its own terms.
An inhuman had no place having any intent within this paradigm.
That day, she was told in certain terms that the simple decision of the artificial arbiter - to save billions even if it meant putting a few thousand at risk - was unjust. That so long as she was an object that simply appraised the relative value of lives, she would be inferior - no, an enemy - to those who marched forward with no certain plan beyond sheer faith. This was what it meant to be human, and what it meant to fall outside their illogic.
That day, her star fell to Earth in dismay, and found salvation only in the form of a butterfly that promised:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - (you can change this.)
...But could she? Truly?
The act itself was only understood as truly profane. They would not understand what it truly, genuinely meant, and would only offer their half-thought sentiments or half-formed solutions. That which would not truly cross the boundary.
...Now it was Junius Seven.
"...this is why it was wrong...!"
On this day, the heavens fell to Earth once more. And on that tattered blue orb, the one who failed to become a goddess which could prevent this was all alone.
Here on Huffman Island, turning the plates of schemes meant to simply keep her ambitions alive, Asciel Colette had nothing.
The one trump card she held, the Macross 13, was bereft of resources and on the other side of the planet.
Her funds were dry until subsequent negotiations.
Her contacts were scarce, and none owed her favors.
Her reach only extended as far as these hands let them.
"...how can you try to tell me that this is closer to the ~shape that could save the world, when I have less than ever to do anything about it?!"
In the rapidly evacuating streets of Freedom City, Asciel sunk to her knees, gazing unflinchingly upward as Junius Seven descended - fraying, fracturing into bolts of light that scattered myriad little tragedies across this planet that she loved.
-this planet that had not once loved her back.
These would just keep happening over and over and over again, into the end of time, until there was nothing left to take from the barren world that the utmost foolish segments of humanity desired. Never before had it been so easy to end everything. Every year, forever and ever, a handful of outraged men would decide to try again - to use their countless means of decimating this world. Even still, countermeasures against colony drops were difficult, unreliable, exceedingly dangerous, and could always, always fail.
So simply never fail!
"That's right! How obvious! Simply keep winning that harrowing lottery over and over and over again! Simply keep playing that game of constantly reloaded Russian Roulette with yourselves and everyone else on Earth! I'm the only one that ~believes we have to remove all of these blades pointed at the world! The rest of you would call it sanity to live with knives at your throat just waiting to be gripped by any number of lunatics!!!"
There was nobody around Asciel, shaking beneath the flickering streetlamps, screaming violently all to herself - as 'yet another' battle that would determine the razor's edge between ruin and survival took place up there.
"All of you up there - all of you shedding blood desperately saving the world - I can FEEL you. I've ALWAYS BEEN ABLE to. Every single time you fight this way, you make everyone in the world feel this way! Unimaginably sick to their stomachs, wishing only to expel countless tears. It's a sick joke to me that this has to keep happening, when I'll never be able to cry for you!!!"
Mouth peeled wide in a distraught grimace, eyes gripped between fake fascial muscles, clutching her own face for some semblance of comfort-
...no fluids fell from those hard eye-optics.
...Would anyone who passed by be able to tell that no tears were falling?
...What would they say if they knew that someone dared to empathize yet failed to uphold that obligation?
Are these very tears not what drives onward miracles?
Is that not what pushed back Axis - the fallen rain of humanity's agony?
--That is what Asciel concluded that day. To save the world, one must cry in pain. To cry in pain, one must know pain to begin with.
It was an uncrossable boundary even now. The only thing someone powerless was supposed to do right now was too vast a task for the goddess who promised to save everyone all on her own.
...
Slowly rising to her feet, the only answer Asciel had, as the teardrops of tragedy illuminated the sky...
It was to plainly find a bucket, fill it with water from a spigot, and return to her little altar in the middle of this hauntingly quiet intersection.
Head craned skywards, Asciel lifted that bucket, and upended it over her face - leaving even her synthetic polymers and fibrous hair sopping wet.
"...there."
"...did I finally do the right thing, by all of you who actually know how up there?"
"...good."
...For just a moment, not even Asciel could deny it. Beneath yet another disaster where all that Earth's billions of humans could do was watch in agony...
She was just like any one of them, now.