balance mod (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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balance_logs2019-10-06 08:14 pm
balancemod) wrote in balance_logs2019-10-06 08:14 pm
Entry tags:
- ace attorney: maya fey,
- ace attorney: mia fey,
- carmen sandiego: carmen sandiego,
- danganronpa: kaede akamatsu,
- danganronpa: kokichi oma,
- danganronpa: shuichi saihara,
- digimon: erika mishima,
- doki doki literature club: sayori,
- final destination: alex browning,
- golden kamuy: hyakunosuke ogata,
- good omens: aziraphale,
- homestuck: dave strider,
- jjba: guido mista,
- kingdom hearts: roxas,
- original: ferran gallagher,
- persona: minato arisato,
- persona: ryuji sakamoto,
- red vs blue: agent washington,
- rwby: blake belladonna,
- umineko: lion ushiromiya,
- umineko: willard wright,
- undertale: sans
Field Mission 5: Il Prigioniero, Part 3
 1. THE FATE OF WONDERLANDA. 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 FORESTThe 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 |
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[Explaining the Kirijou Group means explaining the Dark Hour and Shadows and Persona tho and ehhhhhh. He'll do it later. If she asks.]
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Part of my brain was computerized. [chew crunch swallow.] I think I was the only one, too.
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He ends up sitting a little straighter instead, turning toward her while some uninteresting scene with limited amounts of Cute Dog is playing.]
Oh yeah? What's that like?
[That should be a relatively straightforward question that avoids prying into why she happens to have a cyborg brain.]
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Different.
[That's helpful. She's making an idling noise to indicate that she's still thinking, though.]
A little bit...crisper. It was my memory, so it's not like I had [faintly derisive sci fi snob voice] robot emotions or anything, but there's still a lot that depends on memory. It makes you who you are. That...image of the world [wavey demonstrative gesture] you make from your memories, mine was always sharp. Detailed. But far away, like when you're looking down from a high place. It didn't have anything to do with dogs...computers started to naturally make sense, though. And you can retrieve memories perfectly when they're digitized, but there's always the question of whether they e been tampered with. Not that whole biological brains are safe in that regard here or anywhere.
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For his own part, Shinji pauses mid-potato chip crunch to think on that. There's a slightly sour expression at the mention of tampering; he spent most of Wonderland tampered, and there's still a part of him that wonders if his friends would've been better off with that version of him--though he doesn't really want it back, either. As he is now, the thought of losing all concept of mortality and potential consequences is horrifying.
He shakes his head to clear it, after a moment. Not important. Not the time.]
So...kinda like loadin' up a video game? [That's about the closest reference he's got. Broadband internet had just become a thing in the 2000s, he's only just left dialup hell.] You ever figure out how to tell if what you remembered was real or not?
[....As soon as the words are out of his mouth he kind of winces. Hopefully the answer to that is "yes" and he isn't about to make her relive a whole damn existential crisis right now.]
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[And for part two, laughter, actually. A short giggle. Shaking her head while she chews. Erika doesn't move much when she doesn't have to; at rest, her body sits very still, leaving all vital motion to her mind and the there-not-there devil butterflies that swarm in her presence. She's at rest right now, undisturbed by the question, seated on the floor with screen and snacks around her and a plate on her lap and some kind of unhinged somehow-we're-all-still-alive emotion making words and giggles come lightly off her tongue.]
Never did. It didn't matter.
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Wh-what's so funny?
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[She doesn't tease or pursue or even examine his squirming closely, seeming unmoved by it. Dogs are back on screen; her eyes are tracking their romping.]
It was maybe more like black humor, though. You ever laugh at something when it just gets too big?
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The return question, on the other hand, has him rubbing his neck a little uncomfortably.]
I uh. Don't really...laugh much, I guess.
[Little smirks and huffs of amusement, sometimes, because one of his best friends is Mista, but a full-on laugh? He's not sure he remembers the last time he did that.]
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[Such is Wonderland.]
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...Fair enough.
[He starts poking around the bag for more snacks once the potato chip package is finished, and comes upon ... ah. The banana treats from Maru. She wasn't around for that, was she?]
Mm, not sure you wanna eat those.
[Floating around in midair would probably make it harder to watch the movie.]
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[Also, just kind of bad associations considering the whole Minato dying thing connected to the (lack of) treats at that time.]
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[That's not sounding like an obstacle to her curiosity.
...But probably to his relief, she doesn't push it further. She's still thinking, thinking, thinking. That's a lot of thinking for some floaty banana bois.]
Nothing around here is normal, and everything's out of place. [Oh wait nope it's not even about the treats.] It's never really bothered me. With that going on, I stopped going to school...being outside of normal feels normal. Wouldn't trade that back if the choice came up somehow.
cw for vague reference to suicidal thoughts
I ain't even sure what normal means, anymore.
[Was he ever "normal"? Does the time at the orphanage even count as that? Nothing has felt normal since he gained the ability to perceive the Dark Hour, when he was sixteen.]
Dunno what I'd even do with a choice, either. Livin' a normal life'd be kind of impossible at this point, I think.
[He's been through too much. What would a future that didn't have a rapidly approaching expiration date or a eldritch horror to conquer and a universe to save even look like? Does he even want that?]