Week 5

[airlockedmods]

[As with the weeks before, life in the Fantasy Sweet returns to something resembling normalcy with shocking efficiency. The second floor rest area and Adventure Zone Death Orb Room are spotless again, the demon glitter has been vacuumed, the deflated orbs have been replaced. It's like none of it ever happened, like three more friends aren't dead and stored away in the guest house morgue.

There's a new floor to explore, their "reward" for a job well done.]

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday



[ooc: Don't forget to to turn in your activity for week 4, submit your memory regains and put in your threads for the Benefactors!]

Comments

[misanthropicprinciple]

[Ooh, hello. That gets Junpei's attention. He has not yet begun to fight, et cetera.]

I'm all ears.

[scourgingstars]

I do remind you we're being watched as well as listened to, so we're not quite at liberty to hold a proper discussion on the matter.

Allow me to phrase it this way. We're not going to overpower him as we are now, so taking an angle of brute force is right out. What he hates the most is being bored, and the purpose of all of this is entertainment in some form. He wants an engaging story, full of dramatic turns and presumably a stunning finale. And if you ask me, he's getting careless when things deviate from his planned outline.

I think we can use that.

[misanthropicprinciple]

[He absorbs this with steady attention, then nods, smiling thinly.]

You know I'm in. Whatever we come up with.

[He trusts Ardyn. He trusts Ardyn to be a hateful, spite-driven, all-out villain--and that's exactly what they need against a piece of shit like PAL, who'd vaporize a man just for talking back to him.

PAL or the people pulling his strings, anyway.]

In the meantime, I haven't examined the upper floors as much as I could have. I'll keep us all posted on anything that comes up.

[scourgingstars]

You focus on recovery at the moment.

[Ardyn Izunia was many things, none of them good. What he was not was an idiot. If PAL could be talked in circles or any kind of loophole found, then who better to attack that angle than an immortal chessmaster comprised of ninety-five percent spite?]

The others are going to need you in the best condition you can manage. Let me take the strategic aspect, and you deal with trying to keep them from throttling each other once you're able.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Uh, what? Why am I on the team spirit committee? I'm not exactly Mr. Congeniality here.

[scourgingstars]

...You really have no concept of how broken this disastrous group would be without you, do you?

[misanthropicprinciple]

[...Apparently not.]

But I... I'm an asshole.

[Does not compute, Ardyn.]

[scourgingstars]

Junpei.

I am a genocidal immortal made entirely of daemons.

This group has very low standards.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Haha. You, uh. I guess you have a point. Maybe I am Mr. Congeniality by comparison.

[Though, really. It should be Kip. If anyone had the charm and the genuine intent to keep them safe...]

Ugh. Mannn, searching rooms for nonexistent clues is way easier than running P2P interference... Can't, like. Arianna do it.

[He's kidding. He's half-kidding.]

[scourgingstars]

I never said you had to do it on your own. Just that it should be first priority after you've recovered. Enlist whoever may be willing to help, and we can work towards investigation once we're halfway pulled together.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Mm.

[He thinks about it, then sighs and leans forward a little where he sits, hands coming together loosely in his lap. His eyes tighten when his fingers touch metal, but it does seem he already does have some functionality in the arm.]

...How are people doing, after...? I know I'll have to check on Queenie. [A pause.] And Church.

[They were already fraying. And after what happened to Kip? He has to worry.]

[scourgingstars]

'Poorly' would be the shortest summary. I left fairly quickly myself, but Queenie in particular seemed not to be taking things well. Church will get by, he excels at that. It's the people unused to bloodshed one should worry might break.

[misanthropicprinciple]

...Hey. Be careful with him, all right? I know he's your Shield and all, but...

['It doesn't--it's not relevant to anything. I, um, I think my girlfriend's dead.']

There are only so many hits he can take. You know?

[scourgingstars]

...I know. I'd have to be completely blind to realize this is wearing on him, but there's only so much I'm capable of doing with that. You're far better at handling that aspect than me.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Well, I can relate.

[Both because he still has the capacity to relate, and also, because girlfriends suck sometimes.]

I know, like... caring is hard. [He carried those daemons, too.] I'm just asking you not to give him too much to worry about, if you can.

You're the one that'd break him.

[scourgingstars]

...I'm doing all I can not to. You of all people can understand that. I've already asked too much of him, even in this state I can recognize that to be the case.

He takes on too much, and that sympathetic nature is...not something I find leads to anything good. But the last thing I want is to make that worse.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Yeah. I know.

[Funny how Ardyn attracts those types, huh? Or maybe there are just more of them concentrated here, in this horrible, suffocating, deadly space.]

I'll look after him. He's... he's my best friend, here. If he takes on too much, I'll take it right back from him.

[scourgingstars]

I don't know how much it means from me as I am now, but...thank you.

[misanthropicprinciple]

...I kinda think it means more.

[Kingsglaive feelings sealed, he finally lifts his shiny new hardware.]

So, opinions. How fucked does this robot arm make me? Given that we'd all already been installed with the latest computery spyware.

[scourgingstars]

It depends on how quickly it was thrown together, or if there is just a massive supply of things like that prepared in advance. I imagine the latter, in which case there could be all manner of unexpected things from it.

[There was some oddly familiar sense when he glanced over the arm; like this wasn't the first arm he'd seen burned off and replaced. Oh, well--it was probably nothing important.]

You might consider asking Rhys; he might have a better idea than I would.

[misanthropicprinciple]

You're right, I should.

[He puts his left hand to his chin.]

It is kind of weird for them to just... have arms in stock. Right? I mean, if we're supposed to be isolated out here in space, it's not the first thing I would've put on my packing list.

[scourgingstars]

Unless incidents like that were accounted for, in which case I'd not be surprised. The alternative is that it was cobbled together from spare parts in a matter of seconds, which sounds less likely.

[misanthropicprinciple]

[He turns his arm over, examining it as dispassionately as he can, though it still gives him the heebie jeebies to think it's part of him, now.]

Yeah, this really doesn't look like something someone just jury-rigged together. It's... I mean, I'm no expert, but as far as robot arms go, it looks really professional. Like... sleek. Even moreso than Rhys's.

[scourgingstars]

I have to say it's ahead of any technology I'm familiar with, to my flawed recollection. But it's clearly something that has to have been prepared in advance. I can't answer 'why' except to say 'for situations exactly like this'.

[misanthropicprinciple]

If they knew... but, no. [He closes his eyes and swallows again.] He said it was unintentional, right? Zapping my arm off.

[He doesn't remember a lot about what happened after the laser fired, but he was, unfortunately, conscious.]

If that's the case, then... they might have a lot of, ah. Spare parts handy for all of us. And if PAL got it so quickly, they have to be stored on site. So, where?