Week 3

[airlockedmods]

Week 3

[Two weeks in, and all at once four people are dead. Chitose, Miki, Lucina, and Tsurugi - whatever the circumstances, however any of you may feel, their rooms are just as empty at the end of the week. If you check your P.I.P.s, you'll find that their pictures on the profile page have gone monochrome.

C.E.C.E.'s morning announcement comes like clockwork on Sunday. This time, though, there's an addendum to her usual message:]

Congratulations, Champions! By surviving your first trial, you have unlocked the second floor of the ship. A new mini map has been added to your P.I.P.! To access the second floor please stand on the teleporter and select the floor you wish to be teleported to.

[In addition to the new floor, the Champions will find that they've gained another memory this week.]


Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday



(( Welcome to Week 3! Don't forget to check in and submit your memory regains! Turn in your benefactor threads for sweet loot, too! ))

Comments

Closed to Thomas

[photoshooter]

[Twenty plays of the chocobo theme and one rousing rendition of Justice Monsters later, Prompto's feeling... well, still not good, really, but better. Like something capable of facing the facts as they stand, here, if not facing himself.

That's what he tells himself, anyway, as he takes off Chloe's soft shirts and pulls on his full Crownsguard fatigues instead. The Lucian colors. The punk patches.

Now fully kitted out, Prompto knocks on Thomas's door and crosses his arms to wait.]

[andjerry]

[they both dress to make themselves feel stronger, Thomas will realize later, but right now he cracks his door and peeks out to see someone who might be here to protect all of them from the bad guy. He hesitates to open it further.]

What- are you here to protect someone?

[photoshooter]

What? No, what does that even--I'm not here to kill you, dude.

[Such appalled, very offense, wow.]

[andjerry]

No, no you wouldn't be. You're right. You're too innocent.

What are you here for?

[photoshooter]

[Prompto makes kind of a weird face at innocent, but doesn't push back.]

I wanted to ask you something. About why you said... what you did. ...I guess that's my question? You told us all that... so we'd stop you?

[andjerry]

[he projects, just like he put Anna on Miki and Carol on Korra, and the projection in front of him is a young man who thinks he knows what dangerous thing he's gotten himself into, but can't until he sees it. the door opens a little wider, enough that Prompto could get himself inside if he really wanted.]

If you knew about me, I wouldn't have the chance.

[photoshooter]

...So you don't actually want to do it. Right? What you're saying is, as bad as you think you want that motive, you want not to do it so bad you won't even give yourself the opportunity.

[andjerry]

...I think you could say that. And I know it makes me easy to set up if someone else wants it desperately.

But it isn't the first time that's happened. Have you ever been in a place where you knew that no matter what you did, it would turn out the same?

[photoshooter]

[Prompto thinks on that for a long time before he answers.]

No. Can't say I have.

[andjerry]

Then you're lucky. When you've been hopeless, what have you done? [this is what he does. he does something crazy.]

[photoshooter]

...

[He balls his fists at his sides and doesn't answer.]

Why'd you tell me you wouldn't go after Luna?

[andjerry]

You want to protect her, right?

When I first saw her- she looked helpless to me. I know she's not, but-

[his eyes drop, and his voice]

She's the kind of woman he hunts for.

[photoshooter]

And you listen to him... because you have to. And he'd make you... he'd make you hunt for them?

[They talked about hunting, he remembers, and he'd misunderstood then or maybe he didn't, is the thing.]

[andjerry]

That- what, when I met you? No, I wasn't talking in riddles about Game of Death or anything else, that's all true. If it had been like that... [he'd have known it was wrong, he thinks. He starts to go red, and the words come out thicker as he continues, unable to make eye contact.]

I thought he was looking for girls for... the reasons most men do. He has his pick, he has me and...a girl I know... but that wasn't enough. I had to help him find some that just wanted to have some fun. By the time I knew what was going to happen-

[photoshooter]

...It was too late.

[Prompto knows a thing or two about that, at least. He's not looking at Thomas now, and if he crosses his arms again, it may be more to hold himself than to create distance.]

And... did you keep doing it after that? Because you couldn't say no?

[andjerry]

[he shakes his head]

If I did- well, if I did it wouldn't have mattered. He'd gotten that other girl involved, too, she was a friend of theirs... [he leans back onto the wall, opening the doorway further. he isn't looking at Prompto, he can't.]

I remembered the second time Saturday night. He was going to have me finish her off, she was still alive- she was one of my sister's friends, I knew her- but there was someone else there, he thought we were trying to save her.

[photoshooter]

[Prompto breathes in and then breathes out again, shuddering faintly.]

You... you didn't...?

[Kill her, when she might've thought they were all there to help her?]

[andjerry]

[he shakes his head, pressing further back into the wall as he stares up at the ceiling. He's still unsure why he didn't cut those wires that were the only thing keeping Becky from turning into a horrific marionette, whether he should be ashamed because he didn't listen to him fast enough, whether he was too squeamish or whether he'd really listened to her trying to say no, to Agent York telling him it would kill her-]

I didn't. I don't know why, but I couldn't.

It didn't matter in the end.

[photoshooter]

It...

[His hands are trembling a little.]

It mattered then. It mattered that you didn't.

[If Thomas can't look at him, Prompto can still look at Thomas. Can still see how horrified he is, how deep this wound still runs. He swallows.]

That's what I think. If it were me, if I--if I were that girl, it'd matter. That someone... gave me a second more t-to still... be alive.

[To be human. To know he existed, exists. To not be a hungry shadow poured into a machine; to not be gone forever.]

[andjerry]

[if he's going to cry, he holds himself back for Prompto's sake, and laughs a sick, shuddering sound that might as well be those tears.]

I think she knew she wasn't going to make it. It was so much worse than Chloe, worse than- [he's not going to say Lucina's name, and he looks at Prompto apologetic and blurry-eyed.] I'm sorry.

[photoshooter]

Even then, I... I'm glad you didn't.

[Maybe he doesn't understand how she felt--maybe he has no way to understand how she felt, no context for what was happening to her, no sense of the true horror--but he remembers those other hims in those tubes, he remembers seeing them dissolve and get sucked upwards through spidery pipes, and he gulps.

He'd take any pain, any dying, before that.]

Okay. I think I get it. Not--not the whole thing, but why you brought it up at all. ...Thanks for explaining.