crashout | ZERO;

[He can recognize a subject change when he sees one, so he settles on a shrug.]

We were sort of doing something exactly like this. Minus the sex part. [Trapped in a building with no easy way out and killing each other. It's fine. Sometimes that happens.] It's almost funny.

[It's not, but whatever.]

You and Carlos, right?

[ it was. somewhat obvious they knew each other. Carlos having Junpei's arm aside. ]

Did you get trapped without warning there too?

Yeah. That's where I met him, a little before that. [He makes no secret about them knowing each other at least.] We were at a test site and we all walked into a trap without knowing it. Kidnapped a few days later and woke up in a bomb shelter.

And you said you'd done this whole thing several times before...

[ wow, hobbies, find a better one soon, she can't stress that enough. ]

... Did you at least win the last one? You know, before getting tossed straight into another.

[Good question.]

Carlos says we did, but I haven't personally experienced it yet. Plus there's something else waiting for us now that we escaped. Not another game, but something that'll change the world. Again.

[ of course it would. ]

Do you know what it is, or is that another thing Carlos experienced that you didn't?

[ she doesn't exactly get it - were they separated or something? - but she won't bother asking. it's probably related to how Junpei ended up with three arms ]

[This time he looks at the ceiling and just. Stares.]

Religious fanatic who's going to start a nuclear war to kill eight billion people. Our job is to find him and stop him before it's too late. Easy stuff.

[It's not easy, but it's fine. He'll take it.]

... Nuclear?

[ judging from the context, it must be really nasty. not touching the 8 billion thing because she can't. fathom that many people existing. ]

I take it he didn't leave a handy map to his hideout or a clue, did he.

Nope. [Which is frustrating, of course.] We have no leads or anything to follow other than the guy exists and we're working on borrowed time. We're not going with the other guy's solution though, so we're making our own.

[ ... oh, is that why he was so insistent she look for another way...? ]

And the other solution was...?

[Of course it was.]

Release a virus to bring on the apocalypse and kill six billion people, hoping that the fanatic will die that way. [No thanks.] As you can see, our options were limited.

[ hm. her first thought is that the odds seem pretty good that the fanatic would end up dead? but again, she can't quite fathom billions of people, so she'll just reduce everything to, oh, 6 out of 8. that's roughly equivalent. and then she'll apply her own situation to it, because that's something she genuinely cares about.

it still seems pretty good, but considering Zero has 5 sisters... what are the odds it would actually kill all of them? not very high, she'd guess. so it probably isn't as worth it as it sounds.

this has been your monthly Statistics and Probabilities with a Mass Murderer! ]

Yeah, if you're trying to kill one person, you shouldn't leave it up to chance. Can't be wrong about him being dead if you're the one stabbing him yourself.

Edited 2019-10-25 04:36 (UTC)

[Congrats on your math, he'll wait for her to work that out before he nods in agreement.]

Exactly. And that's what we're hoping for. Doesn't even have to be a stab. We could shoot him. [Hm.] But to find him, we'll have to work a little backwards. We have some intel to go forward with, but it'll take time.

[ she would've been confused about the "shooting" part, except the trial happened and now Zero knows guns exist. ]

And how much time do you have to find him?

We don't know. [...] We don't even really know if Z--Delta is telling the truth, but we're not taking any chances. Carlos told me we got to the timeline we all lived, but that means Radical-6 wasn't released into the world. We don't have time to waste wondering if this is really going to happen or not when the whole point of the Decision Game was about humanity anyway.

Zuhdelta? Interesting name.

[ what the fuck is a Radical-6? ]

... And what do you mean, you "got to the timeline"?

[ are Carlos and Junpei like Accord? ]

[Awkward...]

...we knew him as Zero in the game before he told us his real name, Delta. The one in charge of the original game the year before was also named Zero.

[So. Haha. Anyway.]

It's a thing Carlos and I can do...a few of us learned when we were playing the game to get out of the bomb shelter. It's called SHIFTing. [He rolls his eyes a little.] To make it really simple? It's jumping timelines, leaving past selves behind and moving to switch places with other versions of ourselves while still being...ourselves.

[Is that simple, Junpei? Is it.]

[ hm... she rolls her eye at that little reveal. ]

If I want to kill someone, I wouldn't set up some stupid murder gauntlet - I'd just kill them.

[ is that supposed to be reassuring...? ]

So you're moving your souls to new bodies?

[ or maybe it's just the mind... seems like something straight out of Three's experiment book, or- ]

Sounds like something the Old World would cook up, but I've never seen it happen before. Too bad you can't do that here - we might actually be able to figure something out instead of relying on unfriendly ghosts.

Edited (zero has... one eye......) 2019-10-25 21:05 (UTC)

Yeah, figured that out pretty fast. But thanks for the reminder. [Wry. It's fine, he's happy to know Zero's up front about her murders. Nevertheless, that's an interesting way to put it and he nods along.]

Consciousness, but yeah more or less. There's a few things that have to happen to do that, and the body has to be yours and also alive, but it makes a swap between you and the other version of yourself. They're like branches of the same tree.

I suspect whoever brought us here thought I'd just try to SHIFT my way out. Carlos couldn't do it either while he was here. And accessing the morphogentic field itself wasn't working last time I checked.

Well, from what I've heard, no one can use their abilities here. It's not entirely a surprise you can't use your morpho... thing.

[ except Nathan and Chuuya and the other dead folk that can use powers, but that topic just infuriates her so let's just do our best to ignore it. ]

It's too bad. I doubt the demons would've stood a chance if we were at full strength.

Yeah, I've been hearing about what people can normally accomplish and it doesn't surprise me at all. It makes the whole thing even shittier knowing we were brought here on purpose and had our powers stripped.

It says a lot though. SHIFTing isn't even really a superpower or anything. It's just a mental thing. Sort of.

A mental thing that might have helped us get around this stupid lack of information that keeps happening.

[ censors? suck. as does not having a braincell. ]

I still haven't found out what happened to the asshole that leaves us trial messages, have you?

Point taken. And if you mean the guy who keeps leaving the audio diaries? Haven't heard shit, but I'm working on it. There's no way those things aren't on a timer and purposefully planted.

That wouldn't surprise me - everything is on such a tight schedule around here, someone could definitely set things up ahead of time.

[ she's not really sure how? that kind of magic would be kind of complicated, wouldn't it? ]

Well, I'll try asking around too. I'll let you know if I find anything.

[ looks back at this a week later and closes my eyes ]

Cool. That's all we can do is keep each other up to date. I appreciate it.

[EVERYTHING HAPPENS SO MUCH, AND YET.]

(no subject)

fleuris - 2019-10-28 04:14 (UTC) - Expand