Post by Katsuro Hachi on Apr 4, 2016 10:45:40 GMT -5
[ BETWEEN ANGELS AND INSECTS ]
Do the ends justify the means?
It's a question every human asks themselves when confronted with a difficult decision, or a task that needs completion at any hypothetical cost. What would you do, to get the job done? Would you kill? Steal? Lie? Wound? It depends on the cause, of course. Would you kill one to save a thousand? Would you kill a thousand to save a million? A million to save a billion? If the ends justify, and the greater population benefits - surely the answer is yes. That's what the utilitarian says. The functional pragmatist.
But there is a greater cost, some would argue. Not the cost of the dead or the wounded, not the casualties of the one-man war you've raged, the rampage which meant it was all necessary. The cost not to others, but to yourself. This is the more selfish argument that perhaps, the extreme means are not always justified by the ends -- especially egoistically. By all means: kill one to save a thousand. But you must consider and accept that you have committed murder. Even in the name of good, you have extinguished a single other human life, with all its endless fruitful possibilities, the millions and millions of combinations of consequences and branching decisions -- you have cut short one man's story, and put an end to his final adventure.
As the last of the defeated feral mangrove Betamon shattered into crystalline shards of data, the Shadramon stepped neatly over him and cast his stoic, unrelenting gaze over towards their ringleader. The Gekomon, wounded, bloodied, shedding energy and data. He would soon expire, and cast his amassed stages beyond up into the wind, with a fraction reforming an egg so he could possibly be reborn better, purer -- but all the same, weaker and youthful again. He was wheezing up against the tree. And around him, the flames grew higher. This little slice of the jungle's outskirts was burning. A charred tree branch, sap hissing as it bubbled and popped, fell down behind Katsuro as he stepped forwards.
"You are far from my normal area of vigilance," He decreed. "It is lucky that I noticed you when you did, else I would have missed the infractions occurring here." He cast his arms out to his side, looking over his shoulders at the patches of scorched earth where the Betamon had been. "Lashing them together in servitude under your name? Slave labor? This is not how we were brought together as digital brothers and sisters. This is not fair, this is not equal, this is not just and this is not right!"
"Wh-who are you!? Who are you to say what's r-r-right and what's wr-wrong?!" The Gekomon took one last deep, resounding, guttural sniff of the air in front of him, before narrowing his eyes and spitting down onto the floor. "You reek, i-insect," He hissed. "You r-reek of h-human." His voice was getting weaker now. His eyelids starting to buckle under the pressure of staying conscious. His body starting to teeter and disobey orders from his mind. "Y-you have... n-no... no... no right..."
"You broke the law. Fearmonger and slave-driver. Your punishment is just reversion to the egg, so you may be given another chance. And even that is one more chance too many" He paused, and stepped forwards, lowering his head and breathing the last words the Gekomon would hear through his pink maw. "So, in the name of justice," The Shadramon broke a vindictive, triumphant grin. "I will have your data." As if on cue, the Gekomon shattered, the frames of his Champion form and all its amassed experience too weak and unstable to support his damaged core.
It melted away, and those little iridescent crystals flooded upwards into the Shadramon's chestpieced. And as the last of the data vanished, that was when he saw it; tucked away, in a little makeshift cubbyhole in the grandest of all the trees that the Gekomon had been resting against, keeping Katsuro from seeing it. The Osuzumebachi had done his duty -- and for that, the Digital World had rewarded him once more. It was an idol. Slick wood, varnished and green, smooth and papery to the touch. A winged head-totem; great, bulbous orange eyes, and two trailing crests which would flow behind him in the wind, preceding him, as the reputation of he and his Code's justice would evermore whenever and wherever he dared to tread in the Digital World.
Katsuro smiled a little wider. The inferno was rising, now. He tucked the idol away and began to walk. The fire, though of his avail and indeed caused by him, was not his problem, not his responsibility. The newfound idol meant that he had the further blessing of the Hive.
The ends had justified his means. He left the jungle to burn.
