balance_logs | Field Mission 5: Il Prigioniero, Part 3

	They had discovered one could grow as hungry for light as for food.
	NAVIGATION

1. THE FATE OF WONDERLAND

A. CRESCENDO; FINALE

The beauty of the sentient mind is that hope is hard to kill. Even living in illusion for so long, the Bureau of Balance as a whole believed to the end that a happy ending was possible in Wonderland. That's a good thing, even if an unrealistic dream. Without that vision, that hope, there's no way to succeed. You all know that, don't you?

You knew it when you went back into the tree to save absolutely anyone that you could. Strangers some of them. Strangers most of them. It didn't matter. There's a happy ending to this story; everyone believed in it as surely as they carried out the innocent, as surely as they carried out each other.

You knew it when you got crafty with needle and thread, trying to reassemble the cruel joke Wonderland made with those who lost their way and fell into debt. Nine bodies are saved — including Henrik's, Henrik whose soul is reattached to his body, Henrik whose shaking arms can finally reach out to hold his son.

You knew it when you spoke to a dying Yggdrasil, Maya taking in the suffering and sickness of its years, listening with an open heart until, suddenly, as the tree's consciousness began to collapse, she was taken Somewhere Else. To speak with a man in a sharp suit with places to be. Things to do. Planar systems to devour. You know how it is. A poisoned arrow to Yggdrasil's open wound brought it down for good, leaving Shuichi to hurriedly plant the new Golden Leaf for a new World Tree; leaving Sayori and Angus McDonald to pick up the pieces of their dazed comrades.

You knew it when you tricked the Mirror Maze into glitching apart, giving it quite simply too much to keep track of. The fact that you found a helper along the way certainly didn't hurt, but let's face it: this was genius. The reward is Niel, crystallized, encasing the Compact. Suffering, as he has been for a very long time.

You knew it when three warlocks and a very angry wizard embarked on an ultimately suicidal mission, which just goes to show that the best-laid plans of mice and men sometimes lead to a 50% vore rate. A desperate attempt to keep Adrian distracted for long enough that the Compact could be retrieved was only able to delay him in the end. Just because success is possible doesn't make it guaranteed. Sometimes a fight with the villain ends in stalemate.

Sometimes a fight with the villain isn't a fight at all. Sometimes it's an outstretched hand (or two, or four), and sacrifices from each member of the party, and pain, and . . . self-awareness. Sometimes the villain just wants to let go. Sometimes there are happy endings, but this time Niel — fused into the Tree itself, his life tied up in the dying Yggdrasil, extended by the Compact — just wants it to stop. He doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore.

His friends are holding his hands as they take the Compact and make it stop.

This isn't a happy ending. But that isn't your fault. Hope for a happy ending has, quite literally, saved the world.

The nightmare is over. Wonderland slips away.

2. ON THE EDGE OF THE HORIZON

B. THE PEOPLE

And as suddenly as the myriad indulgences of Wonderland went to ... well, complete shit, there's something of a metaphorical blink of light. Those who were meant to be dead are - both your fellow Reclaimers and the Rolands who could not be fixed in time - but there is still many that are saved. Injuries knot back together at the slightest curative magic. Smog and negativity vanish like they never were, taking the last shambling monsters away with it. The souls of Shadowdale that you have returned to their respective bodies have a new life to forge. Things can be fixed.

If only it were that easy.

Shadowdale, for all intents and purposes, is uninhabitable. For the first time since the Bureau's mission began, an entire city population has lost its home, and must move on. No matter how much blame you may place on yourself for the way things turned out, whether it's guilt or hope that drives you forward, time, and the cycle of life itself, spins onward. And the people who live march on.

To New New Aspen.

Matthew has promised to bring the survivors of Shadowdale to his home, to give them a new chance. You have a couple of options here, if you would like to help them. You may serve as guard, helping escort the people of Shadowdale to New New Aspen. Super convenient for you, since it's right by the Moon Base! You may help them build and settle.

The people of New New Aspen, only months away from Candlenights, are hard at work carving their annual ornaments. You may help the new residents acclimate - whether it's helping them work the fields, start a business, or take part in their new home's most coveted tradition. And you'll have a new ornament to bring home with you, too.

C. THE FOREST

The deadened woods you traveled through to reach Shadowdale at the beginning of this mission seem somehow even more silent, cloaked in demise, than when you first stepped in it. The madness is gone, replaced with double the silence, a stillness like nothing you've ever experienced before. It's almost as if your senses, save for however you perceive the light of the sun, are gone.

At least, until someone speaks to you. A wood elf - he doesn't give you his name, but he does identify himself as someone who was trapped. Someone who, through your efforts to restore the Rolands, you gave life to again.

And he does have a request for you.

"This place has little hope for revival," he says, sniffing slightly, taking in the silence around you both. "At least, it has little hope in your lifetime.

But I do have something to ask of you. Give this place life, the way you did for the people here. Even if you, or even I, for that matter, will never likely live long enough to see it."

That's sort of an existential way of asking you to do some hardcore landscaping. But you will be provided with seeds of all sorts, and you will have the opportunity to plant them as you see fit. If you would like to build a shrine, or remember those who lost their lives here in some other way, you are free to do that as well.

There's something else curious, though: literally anything you plant, regardless of what it is, will eventually produce a viable bud sprouting from the gray, dry soil.

What does that even mean? If you plant a book of poems, are you going to get a poetree?

Are you even going to live long enough to see it in full bloom?

D. THE EXHAUSTION

You might not be on Lucretia levels of exhausted (she is, remember, zonked, and will remain so all the way back to the Moon Base and beyond for a while), but this has not been an easy mission for anyone who dared to test this Grand Relic's powers.

Whether you return from New New Aspen, or whether you finally catch a ride back to the Moon Base from the forest, you are now free to return home. This is your welcome home wildcard, a chance for you to try to recuperate, address anything at all before the next Lunar Interlude begins.

You will find that the Moon Base has an awfully somber feel to it, from the inner members of the Bureau to the people serving the Reclaimers in the town. Word is starting to trickle in on what you all went through.

blurb code by photosynthesis

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Ferran simply nods to invite Crowley to sit. He could probably use the company.]

It's not your fault. Even though I've known the kinds of things the relics can do... it hasn't been as bad as this before.

[With any luck, that'll be the worst of it. He won't say that out loud for fear of jinxing it, though.]

We all just did what we could. And... we still got it, in the end.

Least we got that much right.

[He hasn't bothered to find out about what happened on their specific mission after he died. He found out that the Reclaimers as a whole managed to get the relic, and he knows that he fucked up and got himself killed. Doesn't need the extra guilt of knowing he died and that his death fucked the group over.]

Was starting to think it was a bit of a hazing, really, just pointing newcomers at a living hell and saying 'right, off you pop.'

[Ferran himself hasn't yet found out the details, but even if he did know he wouldn't share. Crowley went through enough.

He laughs weakly in reply, though there's only so much humor he can muster up.]

It is a bit like that, huh? Even with the milder missions, we weren't given a decent explanation of how this world works... but there's nothing really good about any of the situation we were pulled into.

[The Bureau is a giant mess. How much trauma would all the Reclaimers be dealing with even without the relics' intervention?]

[SO DID FERRAN. Not that Crowley knows that.]

They could stand to cover a bit more in the brochure, yeah?

Though you never really send 40 people on a job unless it's not going to be solved by asking nicely.

[Nobody needs to know about Ferran's suffering, it's fine. ~~Even if some of it has been literally written on his face in the form of some nice scars but you know.~~]

Which is exactly why we need more training, instead of them dumping a bunch of highschoolers and a dozen adults onto a problem with no warning.

[He presses his lips together, frowning for a moment.]

... but I guess complaining about it here won't do much. [Except make him more annoyed.] I've heard Lucretia is still out of it, anyway.

[Crowley's brows furrow behind his glasses at the mention of Lucretia.]

She's still in hospital, then? Shame.

[He doesn't sound like he's going to send her flowers, but his voice is otherwise neutral.]

[Ferran hums his agreement. He shares a similar feeling to Crowley, and whatever he might want to say to the Director, Ferran wouldn't try to argue him out of it.]

There might be a line when she wakes up. I think people are finally starting to realize how haphazard this all is.

[Nobody he's brought up Lucretia to has tried to defend her in any meaningful way.]

[Crowley's not unfamiliar with unsafe working conditions. But in Hell, the main risk comes from your performance review, not from the job itself.]

Mm. "Reckless" might be another way to put it. Can think of a few more, but they don't sound quite as nice.

I'm trying not to have anything against the woman - everything she's done is perfectly human, not really malicious. But I can bet her "lead from behind until everything really goes pear-shaped" strategy isn't doing her many favors, either.

You don't have to censor yourself for my sake.

[He'd probably agree with all of the words Crowley has in mind.]

Given that her damage control also involved casting a concentration spell for days on end and collapsing into a coma? Yeah, I don't think it is.

[He doesn't feel very bad about her, and that much is apparent in his expression and tone.]

I have to wonder what she was thinking, creating this Bureau but making such basic mistakes... even if she is younger than she looks, she knows more about this world and the relics than any of us. [He lets out a tense sigh.] She can't have been that stupid...

[Crowley's seen the worst of humanity acting at its most malicious. Nero, Caligula, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Witch Hunts. All of them acts of undeniable evil, some of them committed by people who thought they were doing good. Not to mention the HR nightmare of his previous employer trying to execute him.

The point being, she's human. For all the good and ill that involves.]

No, but she might just be that desperate.

This whole thing smells like a 'Plan B,' and I'm not just saying that because I can't possibly imagine anyone's Plan A involving picking up a random demon and hoping for the best.

Or a bunch of high schoolers.

[A demon could feasibly do something, would have experience with the supernatural, at the very least. But kids? Some of them had lived normal lives before Faerun, and weren't exactly equipped to handle... this.]

I guess a part of me hoped that someone powerful enough to reach through to other worlds would be competent enough to... at least lead us. But if she really is that desperate... then she must think there's something about us that's stronger than them. The rest of the Bureau and the relics.

[But continuing along with the idea of desperation:]

Or... she can't find anyone else willing to handle them.

Depends on the kids, I guess.

[He's seen a group of 11-year-olds fight the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.]

I'd put my money on the latter.

Besides that, less of an HR nightmare to employ people who don't technically exist if you're going to be putting them constantly in danger.

I guess. [Ferran himself was technically supposed to save his own world or whatever.]

And they're more likely to believe you and go along with your plans.

[People who've lost their worlds already have a reason to believe Lucretia and the Bureau. They've been through enough to not need much more prodding. ... this is an aggravating subject, though.]

Anyway... complaining about it to each other will probably only get us so much. But it's nice to know someone agrees, so... thanks.

'Course, yeah. Anytime you want to get it off your chest.

[He glances at Ferran from behind the sunglasses.]

...Thanks for the spares, by the way. [He adjusts his glasses without revealing his eyes, to convey what he means.] Angel said you gave him a pair to try and remember me by.

I might take you up on that sometime.

[He replies with a faint smile, trying to draw himself out of the more negative mindset. He's not opposed to indulging in it on his own, but he'd rather not drag other people down with him.]

You're welcome... I'm glad they could be useful somehow, even if they didn't exactly work for the memory thing. And let me know if you need anything else copied.

[They must have had a lot to talk about, after the relic was destroyed. Aziraphale seemed to be doing okay from their discussion on his post, but it's always good to get another perspective.]

... He's doing okay too?

Field Mission 5: Il Prigioniero, Part 3

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