Chapter 635: Destroyed Trust
"No," Rei Ayanami-kun refused cleanly and directly, leaving zero room for negotiation. "This concerns personal privacy and operational security."
She directly cited the operational guidelines Ryo had laid out in advance.
Grace froze for a moment before speaking urgently: "But... this is too critical! This could mean we have found a completely new avenue to genuinely communicate with the Na'vi and Eywa! This could shatter the current stalemate!"
"One of our primary objectives in coming here is also to find a way to break the deadlock," Rei Ayanami-kun steered the conversation back on track. "Tsu'tey spoke of past promises of 'coexistence.' We want to know: What truly happened in the past? Why did trust collapse completely? And does any possibility remain to rebuild that trust and achieve genuine coexistence?"
Grace looked at Rei's serene, unyielding expression, then glanced at Asuka and Shinji-kun beside her—Asuka wearing a look that said I knew you'd ask that, while Shinji-kun shifted uncomfortably. Grace drew a deep breath, forcing herself to regain composure.
Her scientific impulses were suppressed by a far heavier reality.
She walked back to the console and pulled up archived visual records from years past: footage of Hometree still standing tall and proud, and Na'vi children gathering curiously around her Avatar inside the classroom.
"Coexistence..." Grace's voice carried profound bitterness as she began recounting a history she had experienced firsthand yet had been powerless to prevent.
The Broken Promise
Grace's narrative was measured yet deeply moving.
She spoke of humanity's initial caution and curiosity upon arriving on Pandora, the immense toil she poured into championing the Avatar Program, and how, step by step through her Na'vi avatar, she earned the tentative acceptance of the Omaticaya clan to establish a school teaching language and culture.
"Back then, we believed we had found a way forward," her fingers brushed across the screen showing the pure smiles of Na'vi children. "We demonstrated technology, and in return, they shared their wisdom—about the forest, about Eywa, about the connections binding all living things... It was a genuine, fragile hope."
Her tone darkened immediately.
"Yet none of that could stand against Earth's greed and short-sightedness." She pulled up new feeds: colossal bulldozers roaring forward to level ancient canopy giants, thick pipelines stretching like festering scars across the landscape, and violent clashes erupting between RDA Security forces and Na'vi hunters.
"Unobtanium," Grace spat the word with dripping irony. "This room-temperature superconductor became Pandora's curse. Earth needed it, and the RDA demanded quarterly margins. Mining operations expanded relentlessly, inevitably encroaching upon lands the Na'vi considered sacred, tearing apart the ecological equilibrium they depended on for survival."
She recounted in detail the day the old Hometree was destroyed.
It was not a sudden military strike, but a cold-blooded eviction wrapped in corporate bureaucracy.
Citing the need to "secure mining corridors" and "pursue necessary resource extraction expansion," the RDA delivered an ultimatum to the Omaticaya clan, demanding they abandon the ancestral Hometree where generations had lived.
"They didn't even give us time to mediate," Grace's voice dropped, trembling with long-suppressed grief. "The moment the clan formally refused, those massive bulldozers and tree-fellers equipped with giant rotary saws rolled in. I was right there in my Avatar body, standing among the warriors of the clan."
Her gaze seemed to pierce through time, returning to that waking nightmare.
"What I remember most vividly is the noise—the screech of metal treads grinding over ancient root systems, the deafening roar of saw blades slicing into primordial trunks. Giant trees hundreds of meters tall, homelands carrying countless lives and memories, groaned and snapped one after another before our eyes, crashing down to throw up blinding clouds of ash, dirt, and shredded bioluminescent spores."
She paused, taking a ragged breath before she could continue.
"I watched Na'vi children cowering in terror behind their mothers. I watched the warriors gripping their bows, their arms shaking with violent fury, their eyes shifting from sheer disbelief to agonizing heartbreak, before hardening into a look I had never seen before—a blend of towering wrath and ice-cold despair. That was no battle. It was a one-sided slaughter—a brutal crushing of their home, their faith, and their entire world."
"I tried to stop it," Grace's voice was laced with profound helplessness. "I stood my Avatar directly before the treads. I screamed at Parker Selfridge over the comms. I even tried reaching out directly to Earth HQ... but it was completely useless. All protests and pleas sounded pathetically hollow before terms like 'schedule,' 'budget,' and 'shareholder returns.' The fragile trust and mutual understanding we spent years carefully building was pulverized beneath the tracks of bulldozers in an instant."
Her words trailed off into heavy silence, leaving only the sound of her labored breathing inside the module.
"The school was shut down, and any attempt at diplomacy was branded as weakness or treason. Former friends became 'obstacles to be cleared.' Trust? On the ruins of Hometree, trust died." Grace closed her eyes, as if she could still smell the acrid smoke and hear the weeping songs of the Na'vi.
"So, you ask me if a path to coexistence still exists?" She opened her eyes, looking at the three young listeners. "Perhaps a way exists, but the prerequisite is halting this endless plunder, acknowledging and making amends for the devastation we caused, and demonstrating concrete action rather than hollow promises. And that is precisely what the RDA—or rather, the corporate capital backing them—refuses to do. They only want to take everything at minimal cost; as for the wreckage left behind... they couldn't care less."
Echoes of Outrage
A suffocating silence settled over the field station, punctuated only by the low hum of diagnostic equipment.
Suddenly, Asuka slammed her fist down onto the metal table with a loud crack, startling Norm.
Blazing fury burned undisguised in her lake-blue eyes.
"That is utterly pathetic!" Asuka's voice rose with sharp agitation. "Making promises only to tear them apart with your own hands! All over a bunch of stupid rocks? That's more disgusting than facing an open enemy! Those Na'vi... they were only defending their own home! What did they do wrong?!"
Her indignation was direct and unfiltered, rooted in pure revulsion toward betrayal, alongside a personal sense of resonance—she, too, had walked the razor's edge of being utilized and discarded.
Shinji-kun pressed his lips tight, his hands clenching into white-knuckled fists. Though he did not erupt like Asuka, his expression was a storm of empathy for the Na'vi's suffering, mixed with shame and confusion over the actions of his fellow humans.
He murmured softly: "So that's why... Tsu'tey and the others..."
Rei Ayanami-kun remained poised, listening and logging every detail.
The tragic past recounted by Grace did not stir chaotic emotional ripples within her as it had in Asuka and Shinji-kun. Instead, she methodically mapped out the historical causal chain that led to the present crisis, calculating the mandate assigned by Ryo: how to utilize this intelligence to locate that critical node—the leverage required to break the stalemate.
To her, Grace's grief and Asuka's outrage were simply components of the incoming data—elements to be comprehended, but never permitted to compromise her primary directive.
Observing the distinct reactions of the three youths—especially Asuka's fiery outburst and Shinji-kun's quiet, genuine sorrow—a faint spark flickered once more within Grace's weary eyes.
Perhaps these young people from the other side really were different from the corporate suits at the RDA.