[BiTPR2] Hell Episode: Like a Bat

[Rater202]

"...What's the cutoff point for childhood?"

[Frozen_Feet]

There's a humming sound and the apparition disappears from before Sarah. It is followed by a clang as Sarah feels something tap the chest and back of her armor.

"Answer only with a 'yes' , or a 'no'." The voice allows no easy pinpointing, but if Sarah glances behind herself, the no-body is six feet behind her and slightly to her right. Its back is turned to her. She can see there's a faded, circular design on the back of its coat.

These weren't hard blows. Sarah can surmise that even if she was wearing normal fencing armor, she'd be unharmed. There was no ill intent behind the question she blurted out, so this isn't a penalty - just a reminder that this is a game, not a discussion.

[Rater202]

"I can't answer the question is I don't understand it."

[Frozen_Feet]

Saying that aloud brings with it a dull throb inside Sarah's head, like the beginning of a one-sided headache. It's dragging out flashes of her life at its best and its worst, all the way up to her death, as if to put them on different sides of a scale and weigh them against one another.

"Would you have considered another who died at the same age as you, to have died as a child?"

[Rater202]

"Yes... And, no. I suppose I didn't have a happy childhood."

[Frozen_Feet]

"Are your birth parents dead?"

[Rater202]

"Yes, both of them."

[Frozen_Feet]

"Were they eaten by Hollows?"

[Rater202]

''...Yes.''

[Frozen_Feet]

"Would you yourself intentionally eat another's spirit to preserve your identity?"

[Rater202]

"Yes, but qualifier: I'd probably go out of my way to find an animal, an unrepentant murderer, or a feral Hollow if need be."

Souls a Hollow eats aren't destroyed but become part of them, and... Sarah remembers. Remembers hearing someone claim that the memories of a Hollow's victims are part of the Hollow, if the Hollow is willing...

Sarah suddenly has memories of being an ordinary pig, then a really hungry pig, then being butchered and accidentally fed to a human girl.

Regardless, killing an animal or putting down a killer isn't an evil act and the souls are preserved. Sarah's somehow retained a big chunk of her sanity, so while doing what must be done for survival is permissible she doesn't have the excuse of madness that other hollows have and must act to minimize harm to innocents she causes.

[Frozen_Feet]

The memory is accompanied by several clangs as the white sword hits Sarah in places roughly equivalent to ones where the pig was hit when it was butchered.

The no-body is now in front of Sarah, holding the sword only a finger's length from Sarah's throat. "Answer only with a 'yes', or only with a 'no'." , it reminds her once more, then takes a step back and lifts the sword in an upright position.

It is a curious thing. Hypothetically, this being can only benefit from Sarah breaking the rules and volunteering this extra information. It seems committed to uphold them even to its own detriment.

It stays silent and still for longer than before, before speaking again: "... in a cyclical world, where Hollows can be reborn as humans, humans as animals and vice versa, where sins can be forgiven or atoned for, do you truly believe it makes a difference what kind of spirit you eat?"

[Rater202]

"Yes."

If Sarah's sins are forgiven and she's reborn... She's not Sarah anymore.

She's someone else, and what Sarah did in a fair world would have no bearing on what happened to that next Spirit.

All Sarah can do is worry about Sarah, and Sarah doesn't want to hurt innocent people if she doesn't absolutely have to.

[Frozen_Feet]

"Is the one who mourns for you also a Hollow?"

Now that is an interesting one. Svetlana is an Arrancar and from the books Sarah has read and the things she'd heard, if she can just remember those, she could know that Arrancars themselves are divided on the subject of whether they're Hollows. The official stance of Soul Society is roughly that Arrancars are Hollows and also Shinigami, and their truce with Las Noches is predicated on them acting more like the latter than the former. Some residents of Las Noches absolutely despise being compared to Shinigami and are openly proud of being Hollows, and consider Las Noches to be a Hollow city first and foremost. And some residents of both Las Noches and Soul Society consider Arrancars completely different from Hollows and Shinigami.

[Rater202]

"No."

Sarah can remember Svetlana. She can remember Svetlana--Mom--clearly now.

As Svetlana explained it, Arrancar were no longer the same as Hollows. They werren't quite Shinigami, but they were somewhere between Hollows and Shinigami and were closer to Shinigami than to Hollows.

Svetlana was a Hollow, but that means she's not quite a hollow anymore. And "not quite" means "no."

[Frozen_Feet]

"Have they done the same things as the Hollows who ate your birth parents? Speak to the best of your ability. "

That reminder probably means Sarah won't be penalized if she honestly doesn't know and answers "no" because of that.

[Rater202]

That's another conundrum, ain't it?

Is Svetlana the Arrancar the same person as Garrotevine the Adjucha? Was Garrotevine the adjucha the same person as the feral Gillian? As the Lesser Hollow? Svetlana certainly isn't the same person as Svetlana the mortal woman strangled to death, even if that woman influenced who Svetlana is now.

Svetlana speaks openly about what Garotevine did as a lesser Hollow, she owns it, she seems repentant for the infants who are now part of her, but Garrotevine isn't the name that she calls herself by--and the first of these shrines taught Sarah the purpose of the name you acknowledge as your own. The spirit that is currently Svetlana has done as Lesser Hollows do, but that was many lifetimes ago.

As for the Svetlana who mours Sarah...

"No."

[Frozen_Feet]

Only five questions remain. "Considering you yourself are a Hollow, do you hate those who ate your birth parents?"

[Rater202]

"Not even when I was human."

It'd be like getting mad at a group bears for stumbling across a salmon farm and eating the fish. The hollows were running on instinct and saw a bunch of easy prey, so they did what was in their nature. Ideally, someone would have been there to stop them, but...

[Frozen_Feet]

"If you could turn back time, would you save your birth parents?"

[Rater202]

''...No.''

It's not that Sarah wouldn't want to save her Birth Parents.

It's that the power to turn back time is dangerous--there are only two outcomes to Sarah going back in time and saving her parents.

1: The Paradox causes her to cease to exist, which would potentially result in an infinite paradox that destroys the universe if causality can't correct for her now impossible presence in the past, or multiverse theory happens and she's essentially done nothing to change her own timeline--in essence, she wouldn't have saved her parents but the parents of some other girl who coincidentally happens to also be named Sarah Smith and have a partially hollowed soul.

If her only options when taking an action are to kill herself or to fail to do what she set out to do, then it's best not to take that action.

Besides, dwelling on what-ifs don't get things done.

[Frozen_Feet]

"If you could, would you resurrect those you yourself have killed?"

[Rater202]

"...Yes."

Under certain circumstances, at least If it were possible to bring those hollows back as Arrancar, or perhaps as their original selves, or otherwise sane, then most of them probably wouldn't deserve to die.

She doesn't regret killing them--it was her life or there's--but ideally life has value and sarah didn't like hurting people if she didn't have to.

And if it turned out they were still evil when sane, she could always re-kill them.

[Frozen_Feet]

"Is retaining your self-image more important to you than becoming a better person?"

[Rater202]

"No."

Those aren't mutually exclusive. Sarah can stay Sarah while becoming a better Sarah. If Truth Man thinks Sarah needs to stop being Sarah to be a better person then he clearly has a messed up idea of what 'better' is and isn't worth considering. Her opinion of him lowers from this singular question.

[Frozen_Feet]

They aren't always mutually exclusive; that is a far cry from them never being mutually exclusive. However, if Sarah honestly believes they would never conflict, then she cannot be considered to be lying.

Only one question remains.

"Can you name in your mind five principles of a just punishment?"

[Rater202]

1: Punishment must be understood. Punishing someone who doesn't understand what they've done wrong, who doesn't know that something is wrong, or why, isn't right.

2: Related, punishment must not be done for the sole sake of punishment: It must be done to educate on or correct behaviors or rehabilitate harmful deviation. Inflicting punishment for the sole sake of inflicting pain is immoral and thus unjust.

3: If education or rehabilitation are impossible, such as in the case of beings who can't understand the wrongness of their actions, or by the type of personalities who would never acknowledge that what they've done is wrong, then instead punishment must be done to isolate them from those they may harm by their ignorance or malice. Imprisonment if they are innocent in temperaments, such as a fool or the mentally ill, or it's believed that rehabilitation might be possible in the future, execution if they can't be safely contained or if they believe the impossibility of rehabilitation is permanent.

4: Punishment must be proportionate to the crime. If all one has done is steal a single loaf of bread to feed their starving family, then a punishment more severe than a slap on the wrist is unjust: The cultures that cut off the hands of petty thieves are rightly looked down upon as barbaric in this day and age.

5: Most importantly: The punishment can only be just if the person actually did something wrong. A politician killing a citizen who merely expressed disagreement with his policies is no better than a common murderer.

Of course, by these rules, Hell itself is inherently unjust, but that's becide the point.

"Yes."

[Frozen_Feet]

"Good."

The dull throb inside Sarah's skull stops. For the moment, she is not the one under scrutiny.

"You have answered all my questions. You are guilty of running your mouth, pettiness and supreme conceitedness, but so far, you have been more honest than any other who has tried to pass."

"Now it is your time to hear my guess on why you are here and what you should do to atone for your sins. If you agree, you will ask twenty questions from me in turn. If you disagree, I will step aside and let you continue your suffering."

"Do you understand?"

[Rater202]

''Yes.''

Not like she's running on a time limit.

[Frozen_Feet]

"I will preface my guess by telling you five principles of a just punishment in turn: retribution, proportionality, restoration, rehabilitation and prevention."

"Retribution: those who cause suffering deserve to suffer in turn."

"Proportionality: suffering inflicted by the punishment must be equal to the suffering caused by the act being punished. Together with retribution, this creates the lowest bar for a just punishment to pass: 'Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth'."

"Restoration: the punishment should work to undo the effect of the act being punished. What was stolen should be returned, what was broken should be fixed."

"Rehabilitation: the one being punished ought to understand why they are being punished and made to abandon their wicked ways, so they can return to society as one of its members."

"Prevention: the punishment should prevent both the one being punished, and everyone else, from committing the same act, through restraint or fear of consequence, to give examples."

The nobody flips the blade around with its unseen hands and grasps it by the blade.

"It is never given that a single punishment can fulfill all five, for the first noble truth of all six worlds is that life is unsatisfactory and impermanent. Perfection does not and cannot exist. That is why there is reincarnation and that is why there is Hell: because some injustices fail to be punished in a single life time."

"Now for my guess: Your crime in particular is that of killing Hollows in self-defense, without caring for what this would do to them. Since you neither ate nor purified them, they are now sand in Hueco Mundo. Since that fate is equal to what happens to sinners in Hell in time, in accordance with principles of retribution and proportionality, it is only fair you would end up here. "

"This did not need to happen. Had you lived, you could've found a way to release from Hueco Mundo an equal number of souls to those you doomed. You did not do this because, as said, you are petty and conceited. These two lead you to your early grave. You may not hate those you killed, but you have never regretted killing them either. If you had felt sorry for them, maybe retribution would've given way to restoration and rehabilitation, and you would've gone to Soul Society and become a Shinigami."

The unseen hand offers the sword to Sarah, hilt first. "It is not too late to change your ways. Nothing lasts forever. Not even punishment in Hell. All you need is a single tear of compassion for those you have slain, and an honest commitment to saving as many souls as you doomed. Agree or disagree?"