Welcome to the Program

[airlockedmods]

Good Morning, Champions. In the interest of maintaining healthy sleep patterns, a day/night cycle is in effect. Your presence is expected in the cafeteria in exactly one hour.

[The voice comes through not a large speaker, but through the device that's attached to each Champion's arm. Further investigation of the features of the device will reveal a list of profiles, a mini-map, and a list of rules. The hallways are shiny white and silver, with running lights along the floor and lights on the ceiling, and at the junction of the hallways is a sign with a knife and fork icon and an arrow pointing down the hall.

Welcome to the Excellence Program, Champions. Time to get to know your teammates.]

Comments

[photoshooter]

...I don't understand anything anymore.

[playthedamncard]

[It's possible these other player characters are in face NPCs mixed into the bunch, but that seems...extremely unlikely.]

The situation did just get exceedingly more complex than it was a moment ago. If this is correct, the kind of power, the technological advancement, the theoretical physics involved...I wouldn't say impossible, but it would be awesome.

[He means awesome in the traditional sense, not in the radical totally tubular sense.]

[photoshooter]

Well... I guess it would be awesome. Like, that it exists. Not awesome for us currently, you know, inside it.

[And he does mean awesome in the radical totally tubular sense.]

You really think things like other worlds and alternate dimensions are real?

[playthedamncard]

[Oh Prompto honey. He won't correct that, because, okay, it would also be awesome in that sense, too, but c'mon.]

I prefer to deal with what I know to be true and what I know to be possible. I haven't found evidence for such a thing, but I also haven't looked for any. There's nothing I know of personally to discredit the idea of other worlds--the universe is near infinite and expanding, after all--or of alternate dimensions, though that delves into quantum mechanics I haven't spent much time with.

[photoshooter]

Okay, I was following that pretty well until the last part, but I'm figuring that's just a bunch of science stuff I'm not going to understand even if you explain it to me.

[Prompto shakes his head and crosses his arms, leaning back on one foot as he chews this information into bite-sized pieces he can swallow.]

So... alternate dimensions are possible because there's no evidence against them. But you're saying there's evidence against magic?

[playthedamncard]

I am a man of science. Not a magician. I've seen what people have claimed to be magic. Whether it exists or not, whether it's real or not, is of no consequence to me and my future. I have no use for that kind of hocus pocus.

[photoshooter]

Then there's your evidence of alternate dimensions right there, because magic is so, uh, evident on Eos that saying it doesn't exist is like saying the sky isn't blue or up is the same as down.

...

The sky is blue where you come from, right?

[playthedamncard]

Sometimes. [Kaiba, don't be a troll.]

Where does your magic come from?

[photoshooter]

It's not my magic. Like I said, only the Kings of Lucis and the Oracles of Tenebrae have it. It's a bloodline thing. And I think originally they got it from the Draconian, along with the Crystal.

[playthedamncard]

The Oracles. Does that include Nox Fleuret? She seemed to indicate her powers came from the gods of your world. [His tone is skeptical at best.]

[photoshooter]

Well, yeah. The Draconian's one of the Six. ...Six gods, I mean. The Hexatheon.

[Don't call her just Nox Fleuret like that, it's disrespectful, young man.]

It's Lady Lunafreya's job to talk to them when we need them and to heal people.

[playthedamncard]

[He hears that emphasis. And summarily ignores it. That's nice, kiddo, but she's apparently not royalty anymore.]

Don't you have hospitals for that? Healing people.

[photoshooter]

Yeah, but modern medicine doesn't have any way to fix the Starscourge.

[playthedamncard]

And what is that?

[photoshooter]

It's...

[How the hell does he explain the Starscourge? It just is. There's no 'what' about it.]

It's... a disease. It infects people and starts... changing them. Their bodies, their behaviors. It's like this gross black stuff, and only the Oracle has the power to actually cure it. Anything else just makes people more comfortable as it messes them up.

[playthedamncard]

If you have to rely on magic alone to heal it, is it really a disease or something else? Or has your medicine simply not advanced far enough to treat it properly?

[haha asking specific details about ffxv lore...]

[photoshooter]

I don't know, dude. I'm just a guy, I'm not a doctor or a medical researcher or anything. Lady Lunafreya probably knows a lot more about it than I do.

[playthedamncard]

...This does make it more difficult. People from other planets, alternate realities. If you aren't from the same place, why should you care if they get back or not? If their reality has no impact on your own? Everyone is going to have to be very careful here.

[photoshooter]

...Yeah.

[He could argue, maybe, but he grew up in a world perpetually at war. There's Us and there's Them. That's just how it is.]

I think some people will care. I care. [Just in case Kaiba thinks he doesn't.] I guess we'll just have to remind the others that it's gonna be a lot easier to get out of here working together than at odds.

[playthedamncard]

Cooperation does have its merits. Sometimes.

[photoshooter]

Only sometimes?

[playthedamncard]

Did I stutter?

[photoshooter]

No, no, you're entitled to your opinion.