— Minimine’s thoughts just as Jyn and Page pressed her for information.
Minimine couldn’t take Jyn’s and Page’s expectant stares, but she had to acknowledge their small part in a war that was much larger than they could even dream about.
…No, she couldn’t. What was the point of letting mortal lives flicker and perish for something of an abstract scale? She had so much power, and yet she must have someone so weak do her bidding.
As if to answer her thoughts…
[We must not shelter them, my little goddess, like how I must not shelter you. We must not be adrift in fake paradise, my child, or never shall we find one so real; never shall we build one so real.]
…System answered.
Minimine bowed her head. It was a reminder that there were still things bigger than her, and in the gaze of something stronger, she was also weak and tiny.
Even so, looking away would mean an end to every happy little thing she had ever had, and will ever have. For the mortal races of Gaia, it was also the same. For the Knight and the Librarian, it was all…just the same. There was always and constantly something out there to overpower you, something that you could never hope to defeat.
In the face of such overwhelming odds, living in such a vast multiverse of worlds—where nearly every living being, from mere bacterium to entire cosmic brains, needed to get stronger at the expense of others just to survive—why did System teach her gods and goddesses to be unlike those of other worlds? That they shouldn’t pursue strength just to survive, and that survival was only mere survival?
Minimine didn’t know, but I’ll let you know: System’s teachers taught her the values of humanity, and she liked a few of them.
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Happiness, for starters. The sheer absurdity of being in a state of stability despite being surrounded by meaningless and hostile void was just fascinating to her—so much, that it had become a multiverse-spanning obsession, theming all her projects with it, making it the god of her own existence.
Try as she might, however, her gods and goddesses could not find happiness. Why was that? Mortals made it seem so easy.
That was, until Minimine.
It was just a mote—a speck, a fleeting dream from an afternoon nap in the grand scale of a goddess’s lifespan, and yet that one fateful hug had been enough to grant her the shape of something she wasn’t even sure existed before. It was enough to let her arrive at an unexplored conclusion.
“To have the strength to survive, but enough weakness to be happy”—it was something that asked for balance, and to strike that balance, one had to depend on chance, but to depend on chance also meant facing the possibility of failure—the possibility of being unable to defend the things that made you happy.
The meaning of life, thus, in the face of being a meaningless speck under the heel of overwhelming power, was to decide in which direction one faced the enemy at the moment you took that chance at victory.
Indeed—it was the difference between using one’s happiness as a meatshield, and being the meatshield to one’s happiness!
…The conclusion may have spun out of control for a moment there.
[My child… Are you a genius?]
Unbeknownst to Minimine, the System was bewildered by her line of thinking. It wasn’t the reasoning itself that was amazing—lots of mortals have had the same thoughts before—but the fact that it came from a goddess… It should have been impossible. The fact that it had just happened, though, opened all the possibilities.
Before Minimine could interrogate System, she found herself being shaken by lots of crying Priestesses. The sight, sound, and sensation of it turned her into a confused child. “Why are you all crying?!”
“We thought you were gone!” “You weren’t replying for ten minutes!” “Your eyes glazed over!”
Even Jyn and Page had been at a loss.
Minimine gave all her dear Priestesses headpats to convert their crying and tears into happiness. It was super effective.
She looked back towards Jyn and Page, this time with resolved eyes that the two didn’t miss, and so, too, did Minimine find in their eyes the shine of courage and sheer absurdity—the ability to say “it doesn’t matter” before fighting for the few things they could call their own.
“I’m sorry I doubted you,” she told them. The two just blinked.
“What?” they asked.
Minimine chuckled. “It doesn’t matter.”