Ninth: A Tactical Decision (Text; anon)

[corpsewarblade]

(TW: Murder/Sororicide, Betrayal, DR Spoilers)

[The last few months had given Mukuro a lot to think about- especially with regard to her own death back home. One part still didn't make any sense to her:

What had she done wrong? Why had Junko killed her?

...It was with those thoughts swimming around in her head that she sent another late night message to the network.]

27 AUG XX, 0324

Reviewing the strategy from a recent battle at home. I want to understand the rational for the decisions taken.

A soldier is engaged in a stealth/undercover mission. However, they have made a mistake that risks the operation's success, and have not realised their error.

The mission commander is in a position to eliminate the operative to preserve their mission, without exposing themselves in the process.

Is that course of action reasonable? To put it another way- under what circumstances would you consider sacrificing one of your own men to ensure a mission's success or to prevent it's failure?

Don't feel you have to answer.


🔪

Comments

[mayoninofukucho]

Sure I would. If I choose a fish for an airborne mission or a bird for an underwater one, does that not make me a shitty commander? Making the soldier pay for my bad decision only cements that. I made the wrong choice, AND I made someone else pay the price for it - that makes me unfit to lead. Someone like that needs to be removed from making decisions.

[Damn, how can he get through to her..? Will she even acknowledge any points he (indirectly) makes about Junko and how demented her entire plan was?]

[corpsewarblade]

[It takes her a while to respond. She believed in Junko. She trusted her. Mukuro was still held tightly in her sister's grasp, after all, and it was in her nature to defend her at every turn.

...She trusted him, too, though.]

I trust that. That you'd save your allies each time. That you'd take the fall for them and back them up.

[Not...actually answering the question, but. She trusted him to have her back, if it came down to it.]

She wasn't a shitty commander.
No one else understood her like I did. And I let her down.

That wasn't
I didn't want to disappoint her again.

...Even here I keep messing up my undercover op, though.

[mayoninofukucho]

[Embittered as he feels towards Junko now that he knows the truth, Mukuro's assertation of her trust in him calms his emotions a little. He hasn't written Mukuro off in the slightest - hell, even Gundham, who lived through the whole mess back on their world, hasn't written her off -, but the reminder that she, too, believes in him, helps.]

Even if you blow your cover, didn't you say you made good allies here? Seems like they'll support you no matter what.

...

How was your commander not shitty? How did only you understand her? And how do you think you disappointed her? You can answer privately if you want to.

[On the off chance that she does have enemies here he wants to ensure her personal matters are at least somewhat out of sight.]

Text -> Private text

[corpsewarblade]

['No matter what...' Well, she'll lock the feed anyway, after that prompt. Probably for the best.]

I have. A couple of them know bits of the truth. A couple I can't let find out, no matter what.

[No names mentioned, Hijikata.

But she will answer his question- in a way that she hoped would answer at least the first two questions. Not that she realised it was a truth he already knew.]

My sister. My twin sister.

Private Text

[mayoninofukucho]

[He wonders if he's among those who mustn't find out... too late, if so.]

That explains why you're so adamant to defend her. But you can love your sister, and she can be a bad commander. Both can be true.

[corpsewarblade]

I guess...

She's not 'a commander', really, but she was running the 'operation'. The 'plan'. I just see a lot of things that way. Makes it easier for me to make sense of everything.

But I guess I'm just a 'disappointing battle junkie' in the end. She was always the smarter one of us two. I was her right hand. Her bodyguard.

[Despite her mental insistence that he couldn't know the truth, she still found it hard to not open up. After all, the fact that she trusted him was still very much the truth.]

[mayoninofukucho]

Doesn't that go back to what I wrote earlier? I don't know what your sister wanted you to do, but if she was dissatisfied with your skillset she should either have changed the plan to better accommodate you, found someone else to take over the part you struggled with, or done it herself.

[Thanks to Gundham he knows damn well what Junko wanted Mukuro to do, but that's not the point here. The point is that Junko blamed Mukuro for not being a perfect copy of her, essentially.]