Week 4

[airlockedmods]

[After everything that this case was, you probably don't want to deal with anything else. But you wake up on Sunday, just like before, with some new memories, and some new stores to check out.

Let's see what this week brings.]

Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

(( Don't forget to check in, and check your memory regains! You can also stop by the gacha machine and Xander's office hours. ))

Comments

[misanthropicprinciple]

I'm not primarily a time traveler. I'm an esper--a psychic, I guess. Under the right conditions, I can access something called the morphogenetic field, which is... like another plane, except it's all information and thoughts and feelings instead of space and time.

If the connection's strong enough, I can... see what other people saw, wherever they were, whenever they were. Even in other timelines. Up to the point of transferring my own consciousness to Junpeis in other timelines. I mean, your mind's just a collection of thoughts, right? So if they're all stored in the morphogenetic field and not the physical plane, it makes sense you can upload and download yourself onto different disks, with the right equipment.

[helladoptera]

[ wh- ]

Oh, that's... okay yeah, that's not how it works for me. But it also opens like ten other questions about psychics that I was not prepared for when I opened this conversation.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Yeah, most of them probably aren't really relevant to time travel. What the Doc said wasn't completely accurate to my experience, I guess is what I want to get across. It's less that I necessarily go back in time to change things, and more that... every possibility of something going differently is open to me. And when you can transfer information and wills across those possibilities, you end up with a lot more possibilities. Less Back to the Future and more, I dunno, Groundhog Day.

What about you?

[helladoptera]

I...

[ She looks down at her hand. ]

Before I came here, if... if I raised this hand right and focused, I could kind of... rewind time. I have no idea why because I just started being able to do it one day without any kind of instructions or explanations.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Isn't that usually how it goes?

[He pauses, though, and looks around.]

Hey, you want to sit and talk about this? We can use one of the 2P racing games.

[helladoptera]

Uh... yeah, sure. Sounds good.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Come on, kiddo.

[TO THE RACES. Junpei sits in the Player 2 seat. That's just the way it should be.]

So how'd you find out? About your powers.

[helladoptera]

I uh... had a weird dream about a storm in class, and then they happened, and I accidentally used them to stop a shooting in the school bathroom.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Holy shit. Were you okay?

[helladoptera]

I was fine. And... so was Chloe. [ : ) ] And we decided that, you know... so far so superhero origin story, might as well use my powers to try to do some more good.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Well, yeah. Isn't that would most people would do?

[helladoptera]

Yeah. So we, you know... Chloe's best friend was missing, so we decided to find her. It was... probably the best week of my life, or at least the first few days were great. Getting information out of people is really easy when you can just... rewind the conversation.

But I kept having that dream, about the storm. And the dreams kept getting worse. And I didn't... stupid Max didn't get what they were trying to say.

[ Hi this has apparently turned into "Max finally gets her feelings out" central, oops. ]

[misanthropicprinciple]

[It's okay. Junpei's protag status gives him +5 to listening to backstories.]

...What do you mean, they got worse? What were they actually about?

[helladoptera]

The storm was... the storm was going to destroy the town. Because of me. Because I used my powers to save Chloe.

[misanthropicprinciple]

What? Why, what did that have to do with... Is it like some kind of Butterfly Effect thing?

[helladoptera]

I... guess? But the more I used my powers, even though I was helping people as much as... as much as I could, the worse the storm got. And it turns out, when you get caught up trying to catch a serial kidnapper, you can start having to rewind time a lot.

[misanthropicprinciple]

...Yeah. Yeah, that I understand.

Hey, why don't you start from the beginning? Just... tell me what you want to. I know how that kind of thing goes.

[helladoptera]

Uh... shit, a lot happened in that week. So I moved back to Arcadia Bay a little while ago - it's... where I grew up, but we moved away to Seattle for a while? I'm going to school for photography- anyway, one day I get time powers and they help me save Chloe. And... I haven't really seen or talked to her since we were kids at this point, so we reconnect and we really hit it off. Just like old times, except... she had a life while I was gone. Obviously.

Her best friend, Rachel Amber, went missing before I moved back. She went to the same school I'm at now, and like... Chloe and I realize that rather than using my time powers to dick around at the junkyard, we might be able to figure out what's going on. So we start investigating. You know, amateur teen detective stuff. The Hardy Girls.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Sure, I understand. You're talking to Mancy Drew right here.

[He puts two and two together, and...]

Chloe--she was involved in that shooting you said you stopped, then? That's where it started?

[helladoptera]

Yeah. I... I saw her get shot, and the shock of it made me rewind time by like fifteen minutes. And as we went on, Chloe kept... accidentally dying, but I could save her every time, because, you know. Powers.

[ She has seen Chloe Price die a fair few times. ]

Anyway, we... asked around, started looking for clues, and wouldn't you know it, classic "in over our heads" stuff. [ Max... draws in on herself a little. ] Nothing quite like figuring out the school's spoiled rich kid bully is funding a serial kidnapper dabbling in serial killing. Or that he's your photography teacher. [ Dislikes: Mark Jefferson ]

[misanthropicprinciple]

I... Christ. Yeah, geez. [After a pause, he reaches out gently to touch her shoulder.] That's really screwed up, Max.

There wasn't any way to... I don't know, tip off the police? Get someone older on your side?

cw abduction mention but im gonna matrix dodge any jefferson cws unless prompted

[helladoptera]

[ She lets out a little nervous laugh. ]

The Prescotts are the richest people in town. They... in small towns, there are people the police just won't go after, no matter what. Too important to the local economy.

We didn't even know who they were funding until Chloe and I found... Rachel's body. And then Mister Jefferson, uh... [ ahahaha oh wow she is conflicted about discussing this part ] Kidnapped... me. So that sucked.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Yeah, no kidding. ...You don't have to talk about it.

[He'll talk about his kill murder die games till the cows come home, but remembering that feeling of abject helplessness--the sense that the floor would fall away from right under his feet, that nowhere was safe anymore, not even the apartment he'd lived in for three years and seven months--the memory of being kidnapped from his own home, he doesn't talk about that.]

Did you get out okay, though?

[helladoptera]

I... I got out. Had to watch people die again to do it, but...

[ God, Victoria, who ended up down there because Max tried to warn her... David... ]

When I got out... the storm had hit. For real. And it was destroying the whole town. So I found... I found Chloe, and I realized what I had to do to stop it. To make sure that I could... that I could save everyone, for real this time. Everyone except for-

[ She swallows, hard. ]

Except for Chloe.

[misanthropicprinciple]

...Oh, no.

No, that's... the hell. That's not fair, asking you to make that choice. Max...

[He wouldn't have. He'd have wiped the whole town off the map for Akane. Let the whole planet descend into hell.]