[] Deep breath
-[] I'm sorry. I started this conversation wrong. I'm pushing. I'm terrified of this discussion going wrong, and as a result, I'm handling it badly. I was trying to avoid it by leading in with a related, necessary topic, but I was also stalling.
-[] There's something I need to make clear, in the strongest possible terms: I'm not saying we should release them. I'm not saying don't punish them. This did a horrible thing, and they were stupid, and
wrong.
[] Flatly: Request timestop. We're going to need it.
-[] (Sorry Mami.)
-[] This is really down to both of you.
Maybe Mami, as keeper of Mitakihara. But I will
not do anything without your say so's. Sayaka has every right to have the last word here. And we need Homura to keep my... me-ness in check.
-[] I am
not saying make any fucking decisions today. I am
bringing this up because it needs to be brought up and there will never be a good fucking time to do it.
-[] You want me to explain my reasoning. Both of you do. You're losing faith in me. You think I'm spewing bullshit, that I'm compromised, that I'm not on your side. Let me fucking explain.
[] Sayaka. I have asked you what
you want to do with Oriko and Kirika. My suggestions aren't acceptable. You want to decide when they've been sufficiently punished, want to know what the hell I'm thinking?
Here.
-[] Lay out every fact that I have
--[] Explain the format of your metaknowledge: Pasts, that did happen, and futures, that never did. That cannot, now, but could have, once. Pasts and futures that illustrate how people behave.
---[] Take care to communicate to Homura that you are not discussing her loops. Not every alternate past or future is about her.
--[] Oriko's history (re: her family, her father, etc, as per
@Onmur's
summary). The possible alternate Orikos and their stories.
---[] When you get to the part where Oriko killed Madoka, let Homura confirm that Madoka contracting would be game-over and refuse to explain further.
----[] If absolutely necessary, phrase this as "Madoka contracting sets off catastrophic events. This is extremely dangerous information, and we are not going to clarify it, or its source, any further."
--[] All of your hypotheses about Oriko's psychology, how she was trying to commit honorable suicide, and how you're pretty sure the house arrest was the best her power could find for that after you captured her.
--[] The hole you've dug for yourself by not letting Homura execute her on the spot, why you need to resolve this before it tears the Mitakihara group apart and ruins everything. "I could have let Homura execute her! It would have been easier! Then
and now! But I didn't, we didn't, and we need to resolve this
now, before it ruins fucking everything!"
--[] All of the possible courses of action you have for dealing with Oriko and mitigating this catastrophe. Exile, relocation, house arrest
elsewhere (re: Mikuni Mansion: see below) with supervised grocery trips, community service/enforced Mitakihara Meguca Group Service, therapy, chaperones, Sayaklones, tracking, burning down their house in retaliation, selling Oriko's house and paying back the Mikis- let Kamijou Kqweuoski to be Oriko and Kirika's parole officer, for fucks sake- whatever.
---[] Reasons why what we've got isn't a long term solution
----[] It's working due to Oriko's (massive, misdirected) survivor's guilt over her father's death, not because of her crime towards the Mikis, since she believes she saved Sayaka's life with her actions.
----[] Oriko
desperately feels the need to do
good, to do penance for the sins of her father. (Mental Health Effects of Confinement in the place Oriko found her dad's corpse, probably, and also the general mob-like public can still harass her there, and have done so before. If necessary, house arrest
elsewhere???)
----[] Oriko even
likes doing good, as seen when she's been brought in to help with the last shitstorm.
----[] She's torturing herself by staying at that house, it's more likely she'll manage to kill herself with that.
----[] Oriko's power was driving her to suicide-by-Homu and house arrest was a mechanism.
----[] The eventual involvement of adults; Mikis and Kures (Kirika's family have the least idea what even the fuck, and that's going to become a problem sooner rather than later) and Shizukis
----[] Oriko actually facing her crimes and making up for them- she's been caught, she's helped, but what, in Sayaka's (and by extension her parents', Hitomi and her parents') view, would be the acts and punishments that would make up for them?
----[] House arrest also keeps them from being useful assets to us, even beyond the moral concerns.
----[] [Probably more things here that I can't find/don't remember]
----[] There's a lot of people who should have helped Oriko before all this. Friends, family, parents... they all either betrayed or abandoned her. I'm the only one who cares.
-----[] Interject against predictable reaction to that statement:
Not even specifically about Oriko. I care about
everyone, I can't
not care, even about Oriko. She's useful, she's been helpful, I interact with her enough that
I think she's sincere. I want to trust her, but even I can't, not yet. But I can
care.
------[] This isn't about what
Oriko and Kirika deserve. This is about showing mercy to defeated enemies, who are in poor health, that's exacerbated by their confinement. They're meguca. Keeping them, keeping Oriko, where they are, is only killing them slowly. We hold their lives in our hands. No.
Sayaka. Homura.
You hold their lives in your hands, because I am firmly against summarily executing them, but I won't, I
can't, alter their imprisonment without your say so's. If there is nothing that will convince you it would be more just and more safe and more
useful to alter the form of their imprisonment, then they will live there, and, possibly,
die there. That's
your choice.
--[] Leave nothing out. Everything. Every feeling- I want to turn Oriko upside down and shake her sometimes with how
blindingly stupid she's been about some of this (seer pun intended), but I also don't want them
dead, I want to make them into friends, someday, even if we can't trust them
yet, I want that with
everyone, it's just how I
am, and I guess that's why Homura needs to check that for me, huh? But that doesn't mean I can't
see how they can be
dangerous, how they
have been dangerous. Every personal reason- you guys know about my memory loss, and my weird knowledge, but what I always forget I've never said, is, I perceive the world in accelerated time. It's been today for
six months, and it's been
three and a half years since we captured Oriko, for me. And that's why maybe I push too hard, why it's good you guys stop me, but that also means that I at least need to let you know how things look, to me, in time. And you know- not bringing it up, tiptoeing around you both- sat like
lies in my fucking stomach, okay, even beyond our duty to prisoners,
people, whose lives are under our power, even beyond the idea that I was doing wrong by them- this was hiding things from
you, both of you. Every concern- the future, law and order as we keep growing as a name and as a group in the meguca world. What the fuck even is justice,
we're going to responsible for a wider standard of justice in the meguca world, and it's
fucking terrifying me, okay? Magical girls don't have laws, police, or courts. If your alliance grows...
what the fuck are we planning to do? How? You
don't want to unilaterally make decrees. Hell-
we'll need to bring the adults in before we do any of this, the Mikis and Kures and Shizukis, because they all have a fucking stake in things and it's a mess. Everything.
[] I didn't bring this up so we could make decisions today. I
don't want us making decisions today. But it needed to be said, and there would never have been a
good time to say it.
[] Homura. Do you see where I'm coming from, at least?
[] Sayaka. So. That's all my knowledge. Everything behind why I brought this up, today. Knowing that. What do you want to do?
There are many reasons why we want to help out Oriko and Kirika. Just have to choose the right ones and frame them in the best possible way. Doesn't help that both Homura and Sayaka are listening and have different motivations for hating them. Saying one thing could piss one of them off and help convince the other.
