"No," Rei Ayanami's refusal was swift and direct, leaving no room for negotiation. "This involves personal privacy and team technological security."
She quoted directly from the guidelines Osiris had given her beforehand.
Grace was taken aback, saying urgently, "But—this is too important! This could mean we've found a new way to truly communicate with the Na'vi and with Eywa! It could break the current deadlock!"
"One of our purposes in coming here is also to find a way to break the deadlock," Rei brought the conversation back on track. "Sutai mentioned the past promise of 'coexistence'. We want to know, what exactly happened in the past? Why was trust completely shattered? And is there a possibility of rebuilding trust to achieve true coexistence?"
Grace looked at Rei's calm face, which showed no sign of wavering, then at Asuka and Shinji Ikari beside her (Asuka wore a look of "I knew it would be like this," while Shinji looked somewhat awkward). She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. The scientific impulse was suppressed by a heavier reality.
She walked back to the console and pulled up some old video footage—scenes of Hometree still standing, of Na'vi children curiously surrounding her Avatar in the school.
"Coexistence—" Grace's voice was filled with deep bitterness as she began to recount the history she had personally experienced but was powerless to change.
Grace's narrative was quiet yet powerful. She spoke of humanity's initial caution and curiosity upon arriving on Pandora, how she had poured her heart and soul into promoting the Avatar program, and how she had gradually won the Omaticaya clan's initial acceptance through her Na'vi avatar, "Phantom," establishing the school to teach language and culture.
"Back then, we thought we had found a way out." Her finger slid across the innocent smiling faces of the Na'vi children on the screen. "We demonstrated technology, and they shared their wisdom—about the forest, about Eywa, about the connection of all things... It was a genuine, fragile hope."
Her tone immediately turned heavy.
"But all of this was no match for Earth's greed and shortsightedness." She brought up new footage: giant bulldozers roaring as they leveled ancient trees, thick pipelines spreading across the land like scars, and clashes breaking out between RDA security forces and Na'vi hunters.
"Unobtanium," Grace uttered the word with irony. "This room-temperature superconducting mineral became Pandora's curse. Earth needed it, and the RDA needed profit. The mining operations kept expanding, inevitably encroaching on the land the Na'vi deemed sacred, destroying the ecological balance they relied on to survive."
She described in detail the day the Hometree was destroyed. It wasn't a sudden military raid, but a cold eviction packaged in bureaucratic jargon. Under the guise of "ensuring secure mining corridors" and "necessary resource development expansion," the RDA issued an ultimatum to the Omaticaya clan, demanding they leave the Hometree where they had lived for generations.
"They didn't even give us much time to react." Grace's voice lowered, carrying a long-suppressed tremor. "After the clan clearly refused, those massive bulldozers and logging machines with giant cutting saws drove in. I was right there, in my Avatar body, standing among the clan's warriors."
Her gaze seemed to pierce through time, returning to that nightmarish scene.
"What I remember most clearly is the sound—the ear-piercing friction of metal tracks grinding over twisted, interconnected roots, the tooth-gritting roar of giant saws slicing into ancient trunks. Giant trees hundreds of meters tall, homes that carried countless lives and memories, cracked with thunderous groans one by one right before our eyes, slowly toppling and kicking up clouds of dust and shattered bioluminescent spores that blotted out the sky."
She paused, taking a deep breath before she could continue.
"I watched Na'vi children cowering in terror behind their mothers, watched warriors' arms trembling violently with rage as they gripped their weapons, watched their eyes shift from initial disbelief to heart-wrenching agony, and finally freeze into a look I had never seen before—a mixture of overwhelming fury and cold despair. It wasn't a battle; it was a... one-sided crushing. A crushing of their home, their faith, and their entire world."
"I tried to stop them," Grace's voice carried a profound sense of helplessness. "I blocked the machines with my Avatar body, I screamed at Parker Selfridge over the comm channel, I even tried to contact Earth headquarters directly—but it was useless. All protests and pleas seemed pale and laughable before words like 'schedule,' 'budget,' and 'shareholder interests.' The tiny bit of understanding and trust we spent years carefully building was instantly crushed to dust under the bulldozers' tracks."
Her narrative stopped there. A heavy silence enveloped the research station, broken only by the soft hum of operating equipment.
"The school was shut down, and any attempt at communication was deemed weakness or betrayal. Former 'friends' became 'obstacles' that had to be cleared. Trust? On the ruins of Hometree, trust is dead." Grace closed her eyes, as if she could still smell the smoke from that day and hear the sorrowful singing of the Na'vi.
"So, you ask me if there is a way to coexist?" She opened her eyes, looking at the three young listeners. "Perhaps there is, but the premise is that the endless plundering must stop, we must acknowledge and make amends for the damage we've caused, and we must take actual action that goes beyond empty promises. And this is precisely what the RDA, or rather the Earth capital behind it, is least willing to do. They only want to take the maximum amount at the lowest cost. As for the mess left behind—they don't care."
The long silence stretched on. Suddenly, Asuka slammed her fist onto a nearby metal table with a loud bang, startling Norm. Her lake-blue eyes burned with unvarnished rage.
"That is disgusting!" Asuka's voice rose slightly with emotion. "First they make promises, then they destroy them with their own hands! Just because they want those stupid rocks? This is viler than an open enemy! Those Na'vi—they were just protecting their home, what did they do wrong?!"
Her indignation was direct and pure, stemming from a visceral revulsion toward betrayal—and perhaps a sense of shared empathy, having once hovered on the brink of being used and abandoned herself.
Shinji Ikari pursed his lips tightly, his hands unconsciously clenching. Although he didn't explode like Asuka, his face was filled with a complex mix of emotions—sympathy for the Na'vi's plight, and shame and confusion over the actions of his fellow humans.
He whispered, "So—Sutai and the others, that's why they—"
Rei, however, continued to listen and record calmly. The tragic past Grace recounted did not trigger waves in her heart nearly as violently as it did in Asuka's and Shinji's. She was analyzing the historical causal chain that led to the current state, keeping in mind the task Osiris had assigned her—how to use this information to find that "critical node," the "bargaining chip" that could break the current deadlock.
To her, Grace's anger and grief, and Asuka's righteous indignation, were all just data—elements to be understood, but not things that would unduly affect her core directives.
Grace looked at the three young people, each reacting differently, especially the highly emotional Asuka and the quiet but visibly moved Shinji. A faint glimmer seemed to flicker in her weary eyes.
Perhaps these young people from the "other side" really were different from those RDA people?