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History Writeup
The long version.
Some vital background
It's impossible to talk about Rita without first explaining blastia. Blastia are a class of magic technology invented by the ancients; after the collapse of this ancient civilization, the blastia were buried underground for ~mysterious~ reasons, but are once again being excavated, studied, and heavily utilized in current human society – their functions include everything from indoor lighting and water purification to massive monster-repelling barriers that enclose all major cities, as well as personal jewelry that allows a person to use magic. Accordingly, in this setting, a mage is essentially a blastia engineer/researcher.
Blastia run on a fuel called aer, which is described as some sort of non-matter substance that gradually transitions into matter in stages, and it is presumably the energy released from these phase transitions that powers the blastia. Magic in Rita's world is therefore considered scientific rather than something supernatural. Aer exists everywhere in the world and affects everything, from one's health to the very weather. An imbalance of aer therefore has detrimental effects to both blastia as well as living organisms. Aer at standard levels is generally invisible to the naked eye but when concentrations are high enough (at which point they're also dangerous enough), it becomes visible, resembling glowing particles. Although it is not widely known, blastia can also be configured to be powered by human life force instead of aer.
Rita's backstory as described in the novel Tales of Vesperia: Blue Sky
Rita grew up in Aspio, an imperial city inside a massive cavern dedicated to blastia research – essentially one big research centre and the facilities required to house and feed the scholars, it was hardly a homely place. Rita never knew her father, and her mother, a mage, died in an explosion on a research trip when Rita was only five years old. One of her mother's mage colleagues by the name of Marget stepped in to take care of Rita when she discovered the child wasn't being properly looked after by anyone else. Rita quickly became attached to Marget, who encouraged her budding interest in blastia and dedicated time every day to checking in on her. Rita was intelligent but hadn't built any social skills, leading her to get along poorly with the few other children around, who were jealous of her outpacing them in studies to become mages, and so she spent all her free time in the research facility's library learning all she could instead of interacting with her peers. This suited her just fine, though, because she felt that as long as she had Marget, she wasn't lonely and didn't need anyone else.
Unfortunately, it wasn't just the other children in whom jealousy and resentment was brewing: as the years went by, the same also happened to Marget as she realized she was falling behind a mere child. She used an only 9-year-old Rita by getting her to solve a problem related to a newly-excavated blastia and then published the results, copying Rita's notes and presenting the findings as her own research behind Rita's back, all with the intention of getting a promotion away from Aspio. Upon finding out, Rita was devastated—she swore off all human relationships, finding solace by immersing herself only in blastia and ignoring all else, becoming a certified mage at the age of just ten. Marget got her promotion, and the two never saw each other again.
Main Canon
Five years later, Mordio is now the name of a famous genius mage, although within Aspio itself, she's more infamous for her eccentricities and bad temper. Perhaps taking advantage of that fame, a blastia thief used the name Mordio to swindle people and steal blastia cores in the imperial capital, and this is how Rita comes to meet the party.
Yuri—accompanied by Estelle, Repede, and Karol—comes to Aspio in his pursuit of the blastia thief; they sneak into the city and break into Rita's house. Estelle is able to defuse the situation by speaking apologetically to Rita, who suggests the real thieves may be in some ruins not far from the city. Rita leads them there, and while they do find one of the thieves, Rita is injured in the ensuing fight. When Estelle heals her using magic, Rita immediately notices something strange about Estelle's abilities: that Estelle's blastia is only for show, and she is in fact using magic naturally. Intrigued and fascinated by this, Rita opts to join the party as they continue towards other cities—even crossing continents—in their pursuit of the thieves, much to Estelle's excitement.
Along the way, they run into several strange incidents involving blastia. Rita notices that the blastia in each case are running unusual and abnormal formulae, but all of them also end up destroyed by a mysterious armoured figure riding a dragon, furiously upsetting Rita each time. Another incident occurs when the group reaches the city of Heliord: there, the barrier blastia goes out of control, outputting a life-threatening level of aer while simultaneously at risk of an explosion that could take the entire city with it. Ignoring the danger of getting too close, Rita approaches the blastia to try and fix it, though she starts to succumb to the high aer levels—until Estelle follows to help and her presence somehow dissipates some of the aer, allowing Rita to finish fixing the formula. However, a smaller explosion still ends up happening, and Rita incurs what likely would be a fatal injury if Estelle didn't heal her. Waking up to find Estelle asleep at her bedside after watching over her recovery, Rita finally accepts Estelle as her first friend, an important step that allows Rita to gradually forge friendships with the rest of the party.
Joined by Raven and Judith—the latter of whom is actually the blastia-destroying Dragon Rider, unbeknownst to Rita—the group eventually finds and defeats the thieves' ringleader. However, Estelle is subsequently attacked by a large talking monster named Phaeroh, who calls her a poison to the world that must be purged. Judith secretly convinces Phaeroh to back off and later tells Estelle, who wants to meet Phaeroh and learn about her power, that he resides in the desert. Since Estelle is determined to go despite the danger, the party accompanies her—including Rita, although she uses the excuse that she's doing blastia research. They learn that Phaeroh is an Entelexeia but are unable to find him, and instead meet with another Entelexeia, Belius. Unfortunately, Belius is attacked by monster hunters before she can explain Estelle's nature, and when Estelle instinctively tries to heal her, her powers cause Belius to lose control and the party is forced to kill her; in her death, her body leaves behind an incredibly dense and crystallized mass of aer called an apatheia. The party flees when the knights move in to arrest all involved, but just as Rita notices an abnormally high output from the blastia powering their ship, Judith destroys it and flies away on the dragon Ba'ul, revealing her true identity and leaving behind Rita, who screams after her in hurt and betrayal.
Looking for Judith, the party travels to the destroyed Krityan city on Mt. Temza where they see the remnants of a terrible war, and learn that the Great War ten years prior (of which most people know very little) was fought between the Empire and the Entelexeia. Upon reuniting with Judith and demanding an explanation, she reveals that all the blastia she destroyed were a special type called Hermes blastia, which were so efficient and powerful that they consumed staggering amounts of aer and caused the aer krene to overcompensate, leading to an overall increase in the world's aer that could lead to catastrophe. Therefore, the Entelexeia had been trying to protect the world by going to war with the humans who used the Hermes blastia, and Judith was doing the same by destroying any Hermes blastia she came across. Faced with such a signficant reason behind Judith's actions, Rita was still angry but chose to accept it—although she still scolded Judith for not telling them sooner and trying to take on something so important by herself.
Properly reunited, Judith brings them to Phaeroh, who—as Rita suspected after hearing Judith's story—explains that Estelle's powers are just like the Hermes blastia, and that she will bring disaster to the world if she isn't killed. Yuri and Judith are able to convince him to allow them time to search for an alternative, and he points them in the direction of the ancient Krityan city of Myorzo, which is isolated from the rest of the world. There, they learn that blastia cores are made from crushed and processed apatheia, but all blastia, not just Hermes models, contribute to the aer imbalance problem. This problem is even more dire than expected: they learn that when the aer imbalance grew severe enough in ancient times, it summoned a massive creature, the Adephagos, which tried to devour the entire planet—and that the same thing is at risk of happening again as the aer imbalance grows. The Adephagos was previously defeated by sacrificing the lives of the Children of the Full Moon—in other words, people like Estelle—to power a giant blastia to stop it.
An upset Estelle runs out of the room and Yuri dissuades Rita from following, feeling she needs space, so the party borrows a house to stay in and consider what they've learned, although it's an unhappy discussion, and Raven also steps outside after a while. Eventually, however, the party discovers they can't find Estelle or Raven anywhere in the city, and they discover a teleportation blastia that's been activated. Upon following its trail thanks to Ba'ul, they discover that Estelle is being held captive by Alexei, the commandant of the imperial knights, who intends to use her power for his own ends. He escapes with Estelle while the party is forced to fight Raven, who had secretly been one of Alexei's knights all along—however, during the fight, they discover that his heart has been replaced with a blastia powered by his life force, which was done by Alexei. Alexei tries to have all of them buried together within the shrine where they were fighting, but the party gets through to Raven, who seemingly sacrifices himself to allow them to escape—although he reappears not long after, having been rescued by some of his own knights, and gives the party the chance to end his life as punishment for his betrayal. Instead, they all smack him one and leave it at that, allowing him to rejoin them and face Alexei.
Although they fail two more rescue attempts—first falling for a decoy and then getting blown clear across the continent—they finally manage to get into the imperial capital and confront Alexei. They aren't in time to stop him from using Estelle's power to activate a secret function of the capital's barrier blastia, however, and the giant blastia which stopped the Adephagos is summoned from the ocean. Alexei heads for that location, leading the party to have to fight Estelle, who is being controlled. Yuri is thankfully able to call her back to her senses and Rita makes an adjustment to the control formula that Alexei made, and Estelle is able to control her powers again—but since the formula is currently drawing all power from the barrier blastia which is needed to protect the city, Rita stays up all night working on a more long-term fix. The only thing she can come up with, though, is to use Estelle's own life force to power it, since Estelle's ability could interfere with any aer-based formula. Although unsatisfied with this result, they need to stop Alexei from disturbing the giant blastia, so she prepares to head there with the party the next morning...and this is her canon point!
Some vital background
It's impossible to talk about Rita without first explaining blastia. Blastia are a class of magic technology invented by the ancients; after the collapse of this ancient civilization, the blastia were buried underground for ~mysterious~ reasons, but are once again being excavated, studied, and heavily utilized in current human society – their functions include everything from indoor lighting and water purification to massive monster-repelling barriers that enclose all major cities, as well as personal jewelry that allows a person to use magic. Accordingly, in this setting, a mage is essentially a blastia engineer/researcher.
Blastia run on a fuel called aer, which is described as some sort of non-matter substance that gradually transitions into matter in stages, and it is presumably the energy released from these phase transitions that powers the blastia. Magic in Rita's world is therefore considered scientific rather than something supernatural. Aer exists everywhere in the world and affects everything, from one's health to the very weather. An imbalance of aer therefore has detrimental effects to both blastia as well as living organisms. Aer at standard levels is generally invisible to the naked eye but when concentrations are high enough (at which point they're also dangerous enough), it becomes visible, resembling glowing particles. Although it is not widely known, blastia can also be configured to be powered by human life force instead of aer.
Rita's backstory as described in the novel Tales of Vesperia: Blue Sky
Rita grew up in Aspio, an imperial city inside a massive cavern dedicated to blastia research – essentially one big research centre and the facilities required to house and feed the scholars, it was hardly a homely place. Rita never knew her father, and her mother, a mage, died in an explosion on a research trip when Rita was only five years old. One of her mother's mage colleagues by the name of Marget stepped in to take care of Rita when she discovered the child wasn't being properly looked after by anyone else. Rita quickly became attached to Marget, who encouraged her budding interest in blastia and dedicated time every day to checking in on her. Rita was intelligent but hadn't built any social skills, leading her to get along poorly with the few other children around, who were jealous of her outpacing them in studies to become mages, and so she spent all her free time in the research facility's library learning all she could instead of interacting with her peers. This suited her just fine, though, because she felt that as long as she had Marget, she wasn't lonely and didn't need anyone else.
Unfortunately, it wasn't just the other children in whom jealousy and resentment was brewing: as the years went by, the same also happened to Marget as she realized she was falling behind a mere child. She used an only 9-year-old Rita by getting her to solve a problem related to a newly-excavated blastia and then published the results, copying Rita's notes and presenting the findings as her own research behind Rita's back, all with the intention of getting a promotion away from Aspio. Upon finding out, Rita was devastated—she swore off all human relationships, finding solace by immersing herself only in blastia and ignoring all else, becoming a certified mage at the age of just ten. Marget got her promotion, and the two never saw each other again.
Main Canon
Five years later, Mordio is now the name of a famous genius mage, although within Aspio itself, she's more infamous for her eccentricities and bad temper. Perhaps taking advantage of that fame, a blastia thief used the name Mordio to swindle people and steal blastia cores in the imperial capital, and this is how Rita comes to meet the party.
Yuri—accompanied by Estelle, Repede, and Karol—comes to Aspio in his pursuit of the blastia thief; they sneak into the city and break into Rita's house. Estelle is able to defuse the situation by speaking apologetically to Rita, who suggests the real thieves may be in some ruins not far from the city. Rita leads them there, and while they do find one of the thieves, Rita is injured in the ensuing fight. When Estelle heals her using magic, Rita immediately notices something strange about Estelle's abilities: that Estelle's blastia is only for show, and she is in fact using magic naturally. Intrigued and fascinated by this, Rita opts to join the party as they continue towards other cities—even crossing continents—in their pursuit of the thieves, much to Estelle's excitement.
Along the way, they run into several strange incidents involving blastia. Rita notices that the blastia in each case are running unusual and abnormal formulae, but all of them also end up destroyed by a mysterious armoured figure riding a dragon, furiously upsetting Rita each time. Another incident occurs when the group reaches the city of Heliord: there, the barrier blastia goes out of control, outputting a life-threatening level of aer while simultaneously at risk of an explosion that could take the entire city with it. Ignoring the danger of getting too close, Rita approaches the blastia to try and fix it, though she starts to succumb to the high aer levels—until Estelle follows to help and her presence somehow dissipates some of the aer, allowing Rita to finish fixing the formula. However, a smaller explosion still ends up happening, and Rita incurs what likely would be a fatal injury if Estelle didn't heal her. Waking up to find Estelle asleep at her bedside after watching over her recovery, Rita finally accepts Estelle as her first friend, an important step that allows Rita to gradually forge friendships with the rest of the party.
Joined by Raven and Judith—the latter of whom is actually the blastia-destroying Dragon Rider, unbeknownst to Rita—the group eventually finds and defeats the thieves' ringleader. However, Estelle is subsequently attacked by a large talking monster named Phaeroh, who calls her a poison to the world that must be purged. Judith secretly convinces Phaeroh to back off and later tells Estelle, who wants to meet Phaeroh and learn about her power, that he resides in the desert. Since Estelle is determined to go despite the danger, the party accompanies her—including Rita, although she uses the excuse that she's doing blastia research. They learn that Phaeroh is an Entelexeia but are unable to find him, and instead meet with another Entelexeia, Belius. Unfortunately, Belius is attacked by monster hunters before she can explain Estelle's nature, and when Estelle instinctively tries to heal her, her powers cause Belius to lose control and the party is forced to kill her; in her death, her body leaves behind an incredibly dense and crystallized mass of aer called an apatheia. The party flees when the knights move in to arrest all involved, but just as Rita notices an abnormally high output from the blastia powering their ship, Judith destroys it and flies away on the dragon Ba'ul, revealing her true identity and leaving behind Rita, who screams after her in hurt and betrayal.
Looking for Judith, the party travels to the destroyed Krityan city on Mt. Temza where they see the remnants of a terrible war, and learn that the Great War ten years prior (of which most people know very little) was fought between the Empire and the Entelexeia. Upon reuniting with Judith and demanding an explanation, she reveals that all the blastia she destroyed were a special type called Hermes blastia, which were so efficient and powerful that they consumed staggering amounts of aer and caused the aer krene to overcompensate, leading to an overall increase in the world's aer that could lead to catastrophe. Therefore, the Entelexeia had been trying to protect the world by going to war with the humans who used the Hermes blastia, and Judith was doing the same by destroying any Hermes blastia she came across. Faced with such a signficant reason behind Judith's actions, Rita was still angry but chose to accept it—although she still scolded Judith for not telling them sooner and trying to take on something so important by herself.
Properly reunited, Judith brings them to Phaeroh, who—as Rita suspected after hearing Judith's story—explains that Estelle's powers are just like the Hermes blastia, and that she will bring disaster to the world if she isn't killed. Yuri and Judith are able to convince him to allow them time to search for an alternative, and he points them in the direction of the ancient Krityan city of Myorzo, which is isolated from the rest of the world. There, they learn that blastia cores are made from crushed and processed apatheia, but all blastia, not just Hermes models, contribute to the aer imbalance problem. This problem is even more dire than expected: they learn that when the aer imbalance grew severe enough in ancient times, it summoned a massive creature, the Adephagos, which tried to devour the entire planet—and that the same thing is at risk of happening again as the aer imbalance grows. The Adephagos was previously defeated by sacrificing the lives of the Children of the Full Moon—in other words, people like Estelle—to power a giant blastia to stop it.
An upset Estelle runs out of the room and Yuri dissuades Rita from following, feeling she needs space, so the party borrows a house to stay in and consider what they've learned, although it's an unhappy discussion, and Raven also steps outside after a while. Eventually, however, the party discovers they can't find Estelle or Raven anywhere in the city, and they discover a teleportation blastia that's been activated. Upon following its trail thanks to Ba'ul, they discover that Estelle is being held captive by Alexei, the commandant of the imperial knights, who intends to use her power for his own ends. He escapes with Estelle while the party is forced to fight Raven, who had secretly been one of Alexei's knights all along—however, during the fight, they discover that his heart has been replaced with a blastia powered by his life force, which was done by Alexei. Alexei tries to have all of them buried together within the shrine where they were fighting, but the party gets through to Raven, who seemingly sacrifices himself to allow them to escape—although he reappears not long after, having been rescued by some of his own knights, and gives the party the chance to end his life as punishment for his betrayal. Instead, they all smack him one and leave it at that, allowing him to rejoin them and face Alexei.
Although they fail two more rescue attempts—first falling for a decoy and then getting blown clear across the continent—they finally manage to get into the imperial capital and confront Alexei. They aren't in time to stop him from using Estelle's power to activate a secret function of the capital's barrier blastia, however, and the giant blastia which stopped the Adephagos is summoned from the ocean. Alexei heads for that location, leading the party to have to fight Estelle, who is being controlled. Yuri is thankfully able to call her back to her senses and Rita makes an adjustment to the control formula that Alexei made, and Estelle is able to control her powers again—but since the formula is currently drawing all power from the barrier blastia which is needed to protect the city, Rita stays up all night working on a more long-term fix. The only thing she can come up with, though, is to use Estelle's own life force to power it, since Estelle's ability could interfere with any aer-based formula. Although unsatisfied with this result, they need to stop Alexei from disturbing the giant blastia, so she prepares to head there with the party the next morning...and this is her canon point!
Sail CRAU History - CW for some horror-game-typical events including death and maiming
Rita spent ~2 years aboard the Serena Eterna, a cruise ship pocket dimension powered by characters' suffering where death was impermanent. Some of her most significant relationships included Natsuno Yuuki, Clarke Griffin, and Jade Curtiss, all three of whom she met at the start. She got along decently well with Natsuno, finding him intelligent and capable, and would sometimes
try to boss him aroundenlist his assistance for experiments. They became friends pretty quickly, which turned to crushes, and then to dating, and they're still extremely gross and embarrassing about it. There were matching interlocking cat necklaces involved and everything. Her relationship with Clarke began far more fraught and judgemental, arguments very nearly leading to physical fights on one or two occasions, but being in the same friend circle and going through the same tough times together, they gradually shifted from antagonism to hesitant friendship to downright sisterly. With Jade, although he found it far too easy to tease her and she found his mannerisms kind of insufferable because of it, discovering that they were fellow nerds and casters after all lead to them having long discussions regarding their worlds' respective magic systems and collaborating on spells. Rita was able to see through his excuses and pegged him pretty quickly as a big softy on the inside who was always more of a worrywart than he let on. And despite learning that he had more skeletons in his closet than a bone collector, Jade had already accidentally established himself as the reliable trusted adult to all three teens, becoming something of a father figure (whether they consciously recognized it or not--not, in Rita's case).In an early encounter with the captain, Rita was burned so badly by her own fire magic that her hand had to be surgically amputated – but hey it's fine it was only temporary because she got it back after dying in the battle royale they were dumped into (it was not fine). In the battle, disgusted and horrified by what they were told to do, Rita had run off by herself and was followed by Jade, who cared enough to look out for her. However, they were both attacked by another passenger who injured Rita, and her attempt to cast a spell to fend them off went awry, detonating disastrously and disabling them both from defending themselves from death. Rita apologized after they revived, but still carries a fair bit of guilt about that! Kind of hard not to. Natsuno ended up "winning" the battle royale, and she'll never forget the downright haunted look on his face when he came back.
Following the battle royale, during a stretch of relatively light months, Natsuno told Rita more about himself, explaining that he was a shiki and that since he was dead in his own world, there was nothing for him to return to except death. Having come to
like himdecide he was a good research assistant, Rita told him that if he couldn't go home, then she would bring him to her world. Not long after, though, they learned it wasn't possible: the captain told them they were doubles--themselves, yes, but split off from their world and their time--in other words, there already was still a Rita Mordio back home, separate from the Rita Mordio on the ship. She had something of an existential crisis about this for a couple of months--and she felt bad for giving Natsuno false hope--but among more misadventures (including fleeing from a pack of zombies resembling the people they used to know) at least as far as saving her world and Estelle went, she came to accept it. After all, the her back home was still her, and therefore she knew she could trust another her to keep protecting what was important, even if she wasn't sure now what to aim for regarding her own future.October! Boy, October happened. It happened so much. First--unaware that a number of systems on the ship were no longer working as normal--Natsuno blew himself up without telling anyone, in order to settle another character's grudge from the battle royale. But instead of waking up the next morning he instead remained dead for three days, and Rita was devastated by his initial vanishing--thinking he had disappeared from the ship entirely, as some had already done--and even once his intact but still-dead corpse was discovered, she felt angry, helpless, and beyond upset not knowing why he was dead or when (if) he would revive. Once he did wake up and his CR all lined up to tell him he was an idiot, he promised to try and value himself more. They hugged and it was very sweet. Unfortunately he went and died again, although not by choice this time, and fell victim to a spate of ghostly possessions that was starting to go around the ship. Rita was completely unaware that his soul had been replaced, although in an emergency meeting regarding the possessions, she did finally admit that maybe ghosts were real on the ship, at least, which she had been stubbornly denying up until then. When she caught a possessed Tear in the act trying to spook her, the ghost killed her, and the one possessing Natsuno used his shiki abilities to brainwash her once she awoke into believing that Clarke was responsible. Rita immediately chased Clarke down and attacked her with magic when the other girl ran, but wasn't able to catch up before Jade intervened and stopped her. Jade would later fall victim to the same brainwashing when trying to confront Tear, and so they attended the Halloween party harbouring zero suspicions. Everyone was sealed in at midnight and the possessed--who were the souls of a previous group of passengers--attacked to try and create more vessels for their allies. Clarke fell victim and the ghost possessing her killed Rita, allowing her to be possessed in turn, and Jade ended up murdering all his teens to yeet the ghosts out of their bodies.
As one might expect, the post-October vibes were pretty rough. Rita blamed herself for not realizing earlier that Natsuno was possessed, but she explicitly didn't blame him for the brainwashing, nor did she blame Clarke for murdering her at the party, recognizing that neither of them were in control. Rather, she was furious on their behalf that their bodies were used that way. Continuing this theme of responsibility, Rita was cognizant of the fact that although the brainwashing may have caused her to think Clarke was the initial one possessed, it didn't make her chase the other girl down--that had been Rita's choice. She apologized for this, and it marked the start of the gradual shift in their relationship to something less antagonistic. And speaking of shifts, sometime later Natsuno and Rita recognized their feelings for each other and began dating. It was incredibly normal and Rita would refer to it as ~research~ while also remarking what a powerful sort of magic love must be. She doodled Catsunos in her notebook and if spotted would claim this was also research. Super normal.
A couple more months later and reality itself became unstable on the ship, with characters sometimes finding themselves in memories of other passengers. These memory cracks were fully interactable and could be changed, leading to alternate versions of events existing in a person's recall of the memories. Rita ended up Natsuno's memory right before he was killed by his vampire friend feeding on him one last time. Although knowing she couldn't change anything long-term, and that she didn't really have a right to go changing Natsuno's memories, she also couldn't simply sit by and abandon him, so she chased the vampire away and watched over him for a while, telling him that he deserved better than the hand he'd been dealt. Similarly, Natsuno himself confronted Marget in Rita's memory and challenged her excuses in a way the child Rita was unable to do, allowing Rita herself some closure. Lastly, Jade ended up in the memory of a very young Rita shortly after her mother's death and ended up becoming Designated Dad, a role which he played very well for the single evening he was there, even if he was extremely harried trying to explain this to Rita on the ship later. Rita did find it a little weird, and although subconsciously may have wondered how such a change might have played out for real, otherwise never examined her feelings on that too closely. Doing so would have only made everything weirder, of course.
The reality breaking eventually lead to everyone being imprisoned in a big room together for an indeterminate length of time, summoned one by one into a labyrinth to potentially die. With stress running high, Rita very nearly started a fight with Darcy, resulting in a lecture from Jade when she wouldn't back down--a lecture which has stuck in her mind since then. Nobody likes having to get a Disappointed Dad talking-to. Turns out she'd rather prefer to at least live up to the expectations of the people she likes and trusts...
Unfortunately, speaking of disappointment--sometime after their freeing from the labyrinth, Rita really did get into a fistfight with Darcy over something incredibly stupid (their personalities had always clashed ever since a game of Uno), and in a fit of fury after her nose was broken, called Darcy an undead freak. This made its way to Natsuno who was understandably not happy, to put it mildly, and was a visceral reminder that words have power and she shouldn't just go slinging insults no matter how angry she is at someone. She's kept that in mind since, trying to be a bit more careful, though it's still a work in progress. Very much in progress. Baby steps... But the status of being undead is certainly something she'll never use to hurt someone again.
All this time, Rita's cabin roommate had been something of a revolving door, with five different people coming and subsequently vanishing from the ship: a constant reminder that their existence could end at any time. This was made all the worse when Clarke and Jade both disappeared, and although Rita tried not to let it rule her emotions, she couldn't shake the fear--that anyone she became close to would be at risk of vanishing. This was capitalized on by the ruler of a pocket dimension they were sent to for a month, who used brainwashing on Rita to make her think it was preferable to stay in that pocket dimension, where nobody would disappear, even if they were under constant surveillance and forced to conform. The brainwashing was partially undone by Natsuno doing some counter-brainwashing, and the hold it had on her was fully broken after the realm collapsed. But she still felt angry with herself for falling victim to the mind alteration, hating that she tried to force that life on those she cared about against all their wills. She won't dictate her friends' decisions for them, and she won't settle for false happiness, either. Leading to...
Rita helped a group of passengers launch a space probe beyond the ship's dimensional barrier. Not only did she set up the magic to give the rocket the thrust it needed, but she also distracted the captain so he wouldn't be able to stop it in time. A letter was received in response, indicating that whoever received the probe wanted to acquire the ship as a museum piece. Rita found it too suspect and initially declined to follow the letter's instructions to place a red string around the captain's neck, but the return of Clarke and Jade prompted new mixed feelings: as she said to Clarke, she now had more to lose if nothing was done and the entire dimension fell apart. Clarke put the string around the captain's neck, thereby re-enslaving him, and the letter's sender refused to negotiate or let the passengers go free. Everyone was transported into bare prison cells, and that's where Rita was stewing in regret and trepidation when she ended up in Etraya.