It was the response he'd expected to hear, more or less. Infinitely hopeful, above all else, almost blindly believing that he would somehow be able to avoid the countless conflicts and crises studding the next few centuries without his well-intentioned endeavours harming anyone unnecessarily. It was a nice thought. One Harpuia almost wished he could believe in.
He considered debating further. If the Eurasia Incident had been halted, that would save lives, but it would also mean there was no need for reploids to clean the earth up, and no need for Neo Arcadia to act as an actually inhabitable home for mankind. If X had never used his body to seal the Dark Elf away, then his DNA would never have been used to clone the Four Guardians. Those three things, Harpuia felt, were the influences that shaped him most in his youngest years. The time he'd spent as a creator, not a destroyer, had nurtured his protectiveness toward the humans he served, taught him that life was a valuable and fragile thing. Neo Arcadia itself had been the pillar that held Harpuia up, the locus of all his beliefs. The DNA that was used in his creation, most importantly, gave him a legacy to aspire to. He'd inherited something precious, and had laboured for most of his life under the desire to be worthy of what he'd inherited.
If those were taken out of the equation... would he really still be Harpuia anymore? It was a question he wanted to ask, but... again, that sense of bitterness crept into his thoughts. What was a reploid's identity but one more of those fragile illusions? Zero had lost everything he'd once been when he'd awakened, but that didn't stop the Resistance from sending him out onto the battlefield. Not one of Neo Arcadia's citizens had noticed when the first X had been replaced by a different X entirely -- nor did any of them say a word when that same copy suddenly changed into a hollow, stuttering parody of himself. Not just Master X, either -- he'd seen firsthand just how much the Eight Gentle Judges had changed under the influence of Weil's "upgrades." They were nothing like the fair and gentle pacifists he'd once known. No trace of Inarabitta or Foxtar or any of the others remained in those heartless, cackling shells.
In the grand scheme of human society, who Harpuia was just happened to be an incidental side-effect of his duty. Not something worth arguing about, especially if the topic was the greater good. With no further points to press, then, he simply filed that answer away. It was one worth holding onto -- it shed an awful lot of light onto the nature of X's character. Save the cheerleader AND save the world, huh...? Making everyone happy, even if he had to sacrifice himself... and only himself? It seemed unrealistically out of touch with reality to him, but it struck him as interesting nonetheless.
"How greedy... But can you really do that by yourself?"
His gaze remained fixed ahead of them. Had it been anyone but Harpuia, they probably would have smiled; he couldn't help but feel a faint twinge of amusement that he was asking Master X the exact same question he'd once asked a very different reploid. This really was a strange set of circumstances he'd found himself in.
no subject
He considered debating further. If the Eurasia Incident had been halted, that would save lives, but it would also mean there was no need for reploids to clean the earth up, and no need for Neo Arcadia to act as an actually inhabitable home for mankind. If X had never used his body to seal the Dark Elf away, then his DNA would never have been used to clone the Four Guardians. Those three things, Harpuia felt, were the influences that shaped him most in his youngest years. The time he'd spent as a creator, not a destroyer, had nurtured his protectiveness toward the humans he served, taught him that life was a valuable and fragile thing. Neo Arcadia itself had been the pillar that held Harpuia up, the locus of all his beliefs. The DNA that was used in his creation, most importantly, gave him a legacy to aspire to. He'd inherited something precious, and had laboured for most of his life under the desire to be worthy of what he'd inherited.
If those were taken out of the equation... would he really still be Harpuia anymore? It was a question he wanted to ask, but... again, that sense of bitterness crept into his thoughts. What was a reploid's identity but one more of those fragile illusions? Zero had lost everything he'd once been when he'd awakened, but that didn't stop the Resistance from sending him out onto the battlefield. Not one of Neo Arcadia's citizens had noticed when the first X had been replaced by a different X entirely -- nor did any of them say a word when that same copy suddenly changed into a hollow, stuttering parody of himself. Not just Master X, either -- he'd seen firsthand just how much the Eight Gentle Judges had changed under the influence of Weil's "upgrades." They were nothing like the fair and gentle pacifists he'd once known. No trace of Inarabitta or Foxtar or any of the others remained in those heartless, cackling shells.
In the grand scheme of human society, who Harpuia was just happened to be an incidental side-effect of his duty. Not something worth arguing about, especially if the topic was the greater good. With no further points to press, then, he simply filed that answer away. It was one worth holding onto -- it shed an awful lot of light onto the nature of X's character. Save the cheerleader AND save the world, huh...? Making everyone happy, even if he had to sacrifice himself... and only himself? It seemed unrealistically out of touch with reality to him, but it struck him as interesting nonetheless.
"How greedy... But can you really do that by yourself?"
His gaze remained fixed ahead of them. Had it been anyone but Harpuia, they probably would have smiled; he couldn't help but feel a faint twinge of amusement that he was asking Master X the exact same question he'd once asked a very different reploid. This really was a strange set of circumstances he'd found himself in.