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WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, NINEHEADED. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 009.21.328.89 *** NineHeaded has joined 009.21.328.89 <NineHeaded> this is kuzuryuu fuyuhiko. <NineHeaded> you're probbaly better off coming to find me than leaving a message on this piece ofshit. <NineHeaded> but whatever. if it's not stupid,i'll get back to you whenever i open my laptop again. | ||||
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Mahiru is sitting on a bench. She's wearing her uniform and has a large messenger bag, this probably containing her laptop. When Fuyuhiko comes into sight she stays seated and waves lightly.]
Morning, Kuzuryuu.
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Morning. [There's a pause before he sort of nods to the bench.] Should I sit down then?
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I figured we'd be here a while.
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For the record, Tanaka was more opposed to the rings than I was. [He takes a seat, hands still buried in his pockets. Fortunately she doesn't seem to have offended him that badly.] I mean, sure I wasn't crazy about the idea, but he flat out refused when I told him about it.
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[He'd also known in advance that wendigo exhibit decay on top of their cervine traits - but of course, Mahiru somewhat appreciates Fuyuhiko's more prosaic approach.] So... it sounded like you'd already told him all the stuff that happened "later", like Komaeda plotting against Akane-chan. [This is the logical conclusion about the identity of the traitor to which she has jumped in the time she has had to mull over the matter.]
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[Because not having to repeat himself would have been great. But what can you do.]
Where the hell did you get Owari from though? Does she really seem like the undercover type to you?
[She's one of his favorite classmates and all, but she does not have the brain capacity for undercover work, bless her meathead heart.]
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[Mahiru had dismissed a lot of these possibilities out of hand. She latched onto the possibility of Akane like a steel trap when the "excuse for physical prowess" angle occurred to her. This is the first time she's actually thought was the traitor in our midst Chiaki Nanami, and the smile freezes on her face.]
She's so nice to everybody...
[Her eyes almost twitch as she looks to Fuyuhiko for confirmation because wait, no--]
Even Monomi...
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[She was just so good, so pure, so wholly dedicated to helping them...she deserved so much better than what she'd gotten.]
Yeah, well...considering the traitor and Monomi were working together against Monokuma...makes sense it'd be the only one of us who was always decent to her, now doesn't it?
[Looking back, it was so painfully obvious. Why hadn't they realized it sooner? What could they have avoided, if only they'd pieced things together faster?]
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[Which she will not bring up in specific because they covered that last time, he still has the pain on his face even if there's probably no longer a physical ache (she can't be sure, she's not an expert, barely useful in the trial with the autopsy and the blood from Byakuya's body that filled her nose for hours - Mikan was presumably the one who took the initial step of a bandage before this adornment), but she had really thought that not noticing Peko's predicament was the peak of her ignorance, and she was wrong. Why didn't she think about this instead of trying to implicate Fuyuhiko at that trial? She's a petty harridan.]
They probably did have something to do with us getting kidnapped and losing our school memories but... they really did want us to all get along with each other, huh? I mean, the memories did freak out a lot of us... [Teruteru obviously took the separation badly... and regaining memories alone apparently made Mikan want to kill her two best friends? Not to mention that it's inferred Sonia and Kazuichi were stuck at school simultaneously, and sure Nagito might have been capable of some underlying decency before being confined on the island but Twilight Syndrome couldn't have helped--
Mahiru remembers first introducing herself to everyone on the island - they all seemed pretty much insane to her. She doesn't feel as confident excluding herself from that assessment after what's happened on the peninsula. Her face falls further, words heavier.] Pretty much all of us...
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They had everything to do with us losing our memories. Monokuma wasn't lying about that much, he just...twisted things so that they sounded like the bad guys.
And as for the kidnapping part...well, that's the first of the complicated truths about Jabberwock. We weren't kidnapped, not really. I know this is all going to sound really crazy but...believe me, I wouldn't make this shit up. [He swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.] The whole thing was a virtual reality simulator. A really fucking advanced one that can wipe your memories and replace them with new ones.
[He finally glances over at her, checking to see how well she takes that much before moving on. He doesn't want to draw it out or anything, but he also knows that having everything dumped on you at once, without enough time to process, isn't exactly pleasant.]
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[She says this so loudly and skeptically that a homeless woman across the street raises her head in confusion, though lowers when a squint suggests the two teens are fairly normal and the words are simply incomprehensible.]
You're telling me that this was a computer program and the secret agent was the Super High School Level Gamer.
[She says it at first to bring out the absurdity but by the end of the sentence is ready to drag her hands down her face because, again, this is stupidly obvious in hindsight (Monobeasts!) and, really, is less a stretch of belief than physical gods. Furthermore, if he were going to fuck with her he would get more mileage out of something more like this Ryslig stuff she has already been conditioned to believe. And... Chiaki is the gamer.
Christ.]
OK. I guess they wanted a good thing to happen... Why bring all of us together? Some of us hated each other! Memories or not! Not that I really blame anyone but Monokuma in the end... how much time did either part of this even take to set up?
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[Okay hindsight is 20/20 and all but why is it that every time they see something in hindsight as far as the island goes, it's almost embarrassingly obvious? Are they all really that dumb? He'd like to think not, but JEEZ...]
But I couldn't tell you how long it took them to set this up. Even though we shut the program down in the end, I...wound up here before I woke back up on the real Jabberwock Island. I still can't remember anything about our time at Hope's Peak. From the sounds of things though, the program itself had been in developed and functioning long before they put any of us in it. So if I had to guess, it didn't take 'em too long to put us in it once they'd gathered us all up and brought us to the island. Either way, I'm not sure that part really matters much, in the grand scheme of things. Why they brought us together, though...
[That matters. Kind of a lot. Fuyuhiko sighs, and goes back to staring at the park spread out in front of them.]
There was this girl, a few years under us at Hope's Peak. Her name was Enoshima Junko and they called her the Super High School Level Despair. At some point a while back, she started gathering followers...other Hope's Peak students.
[It's probably obvious where he's going with this, but he presses on before there's any chance of Mahiru interrupting..]
And by gathering, I don't mean she just went up to 'em and asked or anything like that. She manipulated them, took advantage of the things they cared about, fucked with them until they were as full of despair as she was. And once they were, they started using their talents to bring despair to the rest of the world.
It probably goes without saying, but...the fifteen of us are the last of Super High School Level Despair. The Neo World Program was a rehab program, meant to replace all of our despair and memories of Enoshima with hope-filled ones we made together on the island. That's why everything was so peaceful at the start and all we had to do was get along and collect Hope Fragments.
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[She doesn't interrupt him; her eyes wander away up to the sun, which has made substantial progress in filling the sky with beams. It's more obvious in this amount of light that her eyes are faintly reddened from working all night, in a dim atmosphere at that.
Who was Junko? Should she be surprised that such a person came to that school when other charismatic leaders had been invited, good or bad? When she had such strong feelings without even meeting Miss Sato...
With enough time she probably could have worked her way up to everyone being criminals as heinous as Mikan became. That they were an organization - frankly still leaves her confused about why they were allowed to cohabitate, but it certainly explains a lot about the end result.]
I guess there's no need to wonder how Monokuma got into the program, right? If any one of us had forewarning at all... We would want to do what we could... We never really hoped to leave the island alive, did we? It's not like Monomi would have been the one to program the death function...
[She looks at him with a meaningful pause. Mahiru is taking this with a decent enough grim attitude - her body has remained very still and her voice just slightly high - but she's not ahoge enough on the hope scale to ask just how dead they are in real life.]
So you guys managed to end the game but before you actually escaped, you're here? ...thanks, I'm sure Monokuma made that so much more annoying and complicated with all these details about crimes that are in the past now.
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[Well at least that gets him to stop staring off at the scenery, but the look he's fixing her with is one of utter incredulity. He's not sure how anybody could fail to have some sort of reaction to that news. He may not have gone into details about the things they'd done as Super High School Level Despair (though, to be fair, all he has to go on is what the fake Makoto told him, it's not like he remembers any of it) but if she was able to figure out that one of them had been responsible for putting Monokuma into the program, how had she not been able to figure out just how terrible their crimes were?]
[Thank god he opted to have this whole conversation in Japanese though so there'd be less of a chance of them being understood if they were overheard. Because his volume is definitely louder now than it was before. Though after his initial outburst, he does make a clear effort to get a hold of himself. Even though he manages to turn his volume down a little though, he's still speaking faster and more harshly than he would normally.]
Don't you get it? We helped destroy the world. We killed people, Koizumi, lots of people. We killed our friends, our own families!! [It probably comes as no surprise that there's a small crack in his voice when he says the word family. He sincerely doubts that he managed to make any friends in the time he forgot, but the thought that he might have killed his own family is a deeply disturbing one. Along with...other things he apparently did. Like self mutilation. At least he's opting to leave that part out.]
We helped start and continue a war that had no purpose other than the complete and total destruction of everything. Even after Enoshima died, we tried to carry on in her name. We were so goddamn lost to despair that I'm not sure you could even call us human anymore. Why do you think they had to all but fry our brains to make us normal again?! And we even managed to try and fuck that up, because you're right: we didn't intend to make it out of that program. Not as ourselves, anyway. One of us put Enoshima's AI into the program so that she could upload herself into our comatose bodies!
[Not naming names though because that's Hajime's sin to share, if he so desires. Along with his identity as Izuru Kamukura.]
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At least as far as he's aware. If there is, she's got a lot of explaining to do.]...sorry. I shouldn't have lost my temper. Or yelled. [Believe it or not, the two are not always mutually exclusive. Amazing.] I just...I need you to understand this. We may not be able to remember it, but this isn't just something that any of us can pretend didn't happen. I'm not saying you have to wallow in it, because that's not the right thing to do about it either. But it's not just "crimes that are in the past now", y'know what I mean?
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[Fuyuhiko's concern is quite well placed because the very first thing Mahiru does is glance through the slats in the bench and verify that there's nothing beneath it, even though she was here first; she's breathing heavily throughout his speech and just itching for the gap to yell back at him, or wave her arms angrily, it really does look a lot like right before she died. On the other hand, if she weren't the type of dangerous self-destructive person who fell into despair back then, she would never have stayed this close to Fuyuhiko, in the beach house or now.]
Alright, no, sorry, that was--outta line-- [the sentence clauses are erratic, out of order, she's dropping more words now that she's discarded the common tongue altogether] but you acted like you wanted me dead back then and I'm supposed to put that behind me so we can work together, you know? Which is pretty crazy when you put it that way, isn't it! The Future Foundation had to know about that other incident if it happened at our school and they still wanted us to get hope fragments--Do you think without those memories I don't know what it's like, to be some inhuman despairing monster who would kill her own friends and family? I killed my host mom! I dreamed about killing, yeah, my family! I spent days thinking nothing mattered but stalking down the person I could find who was the most like you, Kuzuryuu!
[Her arms cross, and finally the hint of residual bloodlust is gone from her voice - she's a more acceptable and promising type of stern.] Unless there's a miracle in the next, like, month - and I'm holding out hope for that, I really am, you'd better be too - but otherwise both of us are going to be doing that all over again, and we have to think about killing "as few people as possible" instead of "not killing".
[Though especially if they don't roll something like mermaid they might have a chance at scavenging flesh but that's not what they're supposed to get into... Jealous of how much less Fuyuhiko seems to have assimilated these concepts, Mahiru sighs and finally breaks eye contact altogether, folding her hands in her lap. ] I've been worrying so much about how to live here without killing anyone else, about wanting something else more than that. [Mahiru glances up at Fuyuhiko again because - does he know? How serious a hold that sensation has? Did he maybe feel that rush of revenge the same way she wanted to vengefully acquire energy? It really was mostly psychological for her, at least that's what she thought, because she's this awful person desperate for a direction--but does he expect to push through the hunger the way he pushed up the stairs?] I didn't even think of our own dimension like that... how much further we would get if we were all working together with a leader and no opposition... [What opposition? She's thinking of this as what it would be like if the Fog God's followers ran around unhampered. She's been here too long already. For one thing if they were working together, that explains why the first time Mikan fell into despair she didn't kill Hiyoko and Ibuki.] How are we supposed to rebuild the planet from what we did ourselves? With our talents? [Is Soda going to build a machine where she can scan a photo and bring someone back to life?] Like, we were adults by then, we could have been executed for war crimes and that'd be that... but I guess things can't ever be that easy, just like the time the Rotans packed the monsters full of salt didn't work. We have to hold onto hope and do our best, that's what they always tell you to do, even when nothing ever stops because you're dealing with someone as inescapable as that bitch--
[The expression is harsh and perhaps unexpected from Mahiru, matching the way that Makoto and Kyoko talked about Junko without honorific, but there's a sudden flash of guilt in her eyes. Because that's how she learned friendship was never good enough to get you through the day, wasn't it? That her father would never shape up and her mother would never be home all the time and she would never be allowed to move out of the family house or have solace at school she would never escape from that girl she would never have friends and Hope's Peak Academy had seemed like her salvation but it evidently wasn't because that bitch was there too and continued to be the reason Mahiru couldn't even completely enjoy a new group of friends; burn the evidence next time blame herself not that girl who was brought up badly too and didn't deserve to literally die]
So what happens after we find a cure, and stop the gods from bringing in more people, and find a way home? It sounds so simple like that, when it's the furthest thing. I guess - that's all you want from me, right? Fine. I know it's not easy, or okay. This is horrible! I wanted to see the world one day, work in America or go on vacation in Novoselic-- [Not so sure she wants to actually live in Novoselic and she didn't even catch the sketchier stuff Sonia said during the second investigation. Mahiru's fingers are shaking a little, not sure if she's angrier at Fuyuhiko all over again for wanting to take that away from her in the beach house, or at herself for... actually helping to take that chance away from herself by destroying the world in which she lived! How could she do that? Her pictures were enough to get Miss Sato caught - but the world? Why would she get so much attention? With her own mother out of the way? She had thought her life was over and she would have to survive in Ryslig forever. This different emotion - on a much smaller scale it wold be like waking up from a dream where she's dying of thirst and realizing the water is all the way on the first floor - is almost too much for her body to hold. It would be easier if her arms were longer - she folds them behind her back again. No. She's human again for now. They don't have to be weapons.]
Kuzuryuu, you're... [Fine is the first thing she wants to say. That would be an insult. Obviously he's been way less compartmentalized about this whole thing, not to mention probably exposed to much more compelling, graphic evidence that this happened. He's even scarred (more thoroughly than Mahiru knows) from those events on the island. However, there's no denying their circumstances at home have key differences, especially in how important the favor of the gods is to their personal welfare, so she just presses on with that tack.] But me, how am I even supposed to go back to our world?
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[And maybe that's why he's a lot less bothered by the whole idea of turning into a monster than he should be, he realizes. On some level, he already knew that he's really something much worse. Even if he doesn't remember it. Killing people, eating them...it's a terrible prospect and he's not looking forward to it but genocide on a global scale is something much, much worse.]
You're not dead, that's how. Weren't you listening? The whole thing was just virtual reality. Everyone who died...your bodies are still alive in the real world. You're all just in comas now. And since we shut down the program without letting the session complete itself...we have the chance to wake you back up.
[He laces his fingers together in his lap, staring at his joined hands.]
Don't ask me how we're going to do it, 'cause I don't know the specifics. Like I said, I wound up here before I had the chance to wake up in my real body and see what we're dealing with. But even now, I'm sure the other four are well on their way to figuring out how to do it. Hell, they may have even managed it by now, for all I know.
[Hinata's like a super genius now or something. Surely they're fine. Those of them that aren't stuck here, anyway. But that's a road of thought he's not really in the mood to go down right now. He's not sure what being here means for his real body...technically it shouldn't be POSSIBLE for himself, Gundam, and Mahiru to even exist here in the state they're currently in. Trying to rationalize the humanized avatar thing just makes his head hurt.]
As for this monster business...I'm not going to waste my time hoping for a miraculous solution before it has a chance to affect me. People have been stuck here for a year and haven't managed to figure out how to change things. not that I'm not going to give up entirely and not try and help figure out a way to undo things, but...I've already accepted what's going to happen to me. And what I'm going to end up doing because of it. [Killing and eating people. Gross.] I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm dealing with it.
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[She furrows her brow. While it takes her significant effort, she manages to not immediately snap that both the outcome and the prognosis are completely impossible to predict, totally separate from what she remembers of Byakuya's body cold and Teruteru fried to a crisp. After all, that gap of knowledge is why she bothered to meet with him in the first place. And however much more straightforward it would be to hope that either of the Gods would bring them as they did herself and Gundam, that's not what she wants for them. Not a part in this genocide, or the pressure to prevent it.]
So after we deal with this, we might get to see them again...
[Her voice is almost entirely drained. Mahiru has put so much energy into adjusting to peninsula life - she's more than ready to go to sleep during the day after this meeting is over - that she neglected reserving any for later. It's a little admirable that Fuyuhiko has gone through all this, and seen their prospects on the peninsula with as much perspicacity as is possible without death perception, and his guilt hasn't sent him tumbling into the ocean, even if, come to think of it, he has probably never found time to visit Vandare. Sonia is still alive and awake; she probably gave many more speeches about finding resolve.]
We're on the same page. That we have to do our best until then.
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[It's still weird, even being the one speaking the words instead of hearing, to be so fiercely optimistic. To say something like that with such conviction and no real proof. He's always been so cynical about everything, so glass half empty and unwilling to believe in illogical things. But it feels like...if he shows even the slightest doubt that they can achieve their supposedly impossible goal, then he'll jinx it. That he'll let down the other four or otherwise betray them somehow. They'd made an agreement, hadn't they? Not to give up? Not to forget? To make their own future?]
[He exhales with something akin to relief, finally relaxing completely for the first time since he sat down on the bench.]
Yeah, we're on the same page. No giving up. No matter how shitty it gets.