2025-01-26: Fates
- Cutscene: Fates
- Cast: Gilbert Durandal, Rau Le Creuset?
- Where: Chairman's Office, PLANT
- Date: January 26, 0100 (2025)
- Summary: Gilbert Durandal takes Destiny into his own hands, while an old friend laughs.
In the Chairman's Office of the PLANT Supreme Council Building, Gilbert Durandal sets down his phone, his chair turning to face a chessboard - the white side he plays just turns away from checkmate.
In the Chairman's eye, an ethereal figure emerges across from him, a blonde man, his face obscured by a mask. Durandal smiles, but it fades just as quickly as the man across from him.
"Could it truly have been so simple? Does our work end here, with a peace achieved by a series of contrivances?" Durandal asks, seemingly to himself, clicking from broadcast to broadcast.
Colonies declaring their independence. Areas liberated from Britannian rule. The defeat of the feared Crossbone Vanguard within a week, thanks to a Spacenoid coalition. The consolidation of power in the OCU. All possibilities Durandal hadn't even imagined in his scenario. No... they are impossibilities.
"Are we truly the ones making these decisions? Would I have found all that I truly desired along a path I never chose?" Durandal clutches the White Queen in his hand. Did he make sacrifices he ought to have not? Was his plan miscalculated?
The masked man re-emerges, with a wry smile on his face, along with a younger, blonde boy. "You start thinking like that and you'll run out of time," he answers, with a chuckle. "A path you never chose is no different from a path that never existed." Adjusting the mask, "You cannot return to the past. You cannot change it! Mankind's bloody destiny is to repeat its violent history again and again, just as they did 12,000 years ago!"
"Are you saying there's no hope?" Durandal asks, and he feels as if he's 6 years younger, the optimistic researcher discovering the secrets of humanity at Mendel and Ranvui. When he and Talia split, for the sole reason of genetic incompatibility - because they were not destined to be.
"What is hope?" The masked man counters. "Do you think you can have all your prayers answered, just because they are what you dreamed of? Will you turn back time, because what was supposed to happen didn't?" The masked man raises the Black Queen. "Can you say for certain you won't repeat the same mistakes?" His grin grows wider. "Don't you wonder... just who decided all this? What's already been decided?"
Durandal grits his teeth, in frustration, backed into a corner once more in this dance of logic with his old friend. "Then I'll change everything," He decides. "If history is to assert itself, I shall open a new path. We'll start over again, if we must." His eyes dance across the chessboard.
"Adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine... no one understands better than I what must be done." His lips form into a smile, seeing a path to victory even in this lopsided game. "Therefore, I will be the one to oversee the narrative. For the script I envision is coded in our very DNA."
A quiet knock on the door as Durandal pauses. “Gil,” a voice says.
“Rey. Come in. Have the preparations been made?” Durandal lifts his head, his stance remaining as impassive as over.
Rey slowly walks in the familiar office, taking a seat opposite Durandal. “Yes, sir. We can make a broadcast at any time. For the world you envision, Gil.”
A winning smile from Durandal as he folds up his chessboard.