WEEK 4.

[trustwellness]

WEEK 4 Three more have died this past week. Milla Maxwell was killed for breaking a rule, Chiyuki was murdered, and you all had a hand in executing Yoshikage Kira. It seems like this isn't going to stop any time soon. How many more will join them this week? Saturday is given to regrouping and rest; on Sunday morning the clock chimes as it always has, but at least there are no bodies to find today. It seems you're safe for now. The night before wasn't necessarily a peaceful one, however; you'll probably feel a bit groggy when you wake up, and it seems you've regained something that you didn't realize you'd lost... Despite the Wordsmith's reaction to the last trial, it seems as though you've been rewarded once again for a job that was...well, it was done, even if he didn't explicitly say it was well-done. Another door has opened in that stairway, it seems, leading you further down into the building; once again, there are more rooms down there, more things to occupy yourselves with. Or perhaps just more means to get creative with regards to how you take initiative with your fellow Apprentices. APPRENTICES REMAINING: 23 APPRENTICES REMAINING: 22 APPRENTICES REMAINING: 20

SUNDAY | MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY

[OOC: Welcome to week four of Trustfell! Feel free to make as many top levels as you'd like and tag out to other characters! This post is for all of your interactions this week... at least until the weekend. Don't forget to save those threads for coins and the activity check!

If you'd like to get in contact with the Wordsmith, you can do so through letters or the switchboard!]

Comments

[oyashiromama]

Me.

[Here we are.]

...It's not exactly the same, of course, because I can only do it with one other person, and...follow her into those worlds. ...It's a bit more permanent than I imagine yours is.

[plentyfriendly]

So you go with her, or not at all? At least you can talk to each other about what you went through.

[That's an advantage, if they're looking to change something...]

[oyashiromama]

I have to go with her. It's...not that I can't return to the others, but rather, that she can't. It's only used in extreme cases.

[plentyfriendly]

Ride-along SHIFT... If I could do that, maybe I could have...

[wait she hasn't used that name]

Oh. "Space-time Human Internal Fluctuating Transfer". That's what my power is called. Or at least, it's what Akane called it.

[oyashiromama]

SHIFT... [That is some acronym.] ...Akane, was that the person who taught you or...helped you figure out how to use your power? I-I'm sorry to ask so much, I just... I have many questions.

[plentyfriendly]

You could say that, but it's a long story. Mind if we talk about this somewhere else, say... your room? Mine works too, if that's an issue.

[She'll take the injector for the time being, though.]

[oyashiromama]

[SOCIAL LINK UP Hanyuu shakes her head.]

My room is...no problem, none at all. I have to get these things back to it, anyway.

[Besides the syringe, yeah, you hold on to that Phi. Let's go to Hanyuu's room.]

[plentyfriendly]

[Later in that room...]

Where should I begin...

I suppose it'll have to be with this: a few days before Christmas, I was... I suppose you could say attacked, but I was unharmed. Mostly it was just sleeping gas canisters.

[oyashiromama]

[Hanyuu lets Phi sit wherever she's comfortable, taking either the bed or the desk otherwise. ...If the desk is Phi's prerogative, just be careful with the papers there, all notes about Alani's religion.]

Someone knocked you out? Why?

[plentyfriendly]

[For now she's actually going to stand.]

I... admit that wasn't very well explained to me, either. I assume the intent was to get my body ready to receive the "me" that would come back from 2074.

But that's getting ahead of the story a little bit. When I woke up after that, I was in... not quite an elevator, but it looked like one. There was a man in there. He was old, and he'd obviously had his right eye replaced with a cybernetic one.

His name was Sigma.

[oyashiromama]

[There are multiple questions, but-] ...Like yours. Phi, Sigma. They're like...the Greek Alphabet.

[plentyfriendly]

But that was just a coincidence. The weirder thing was that I knew his name before he'd told me what it was.

[That was a clue something odd was afoot, even then.]

After the two of us solved some arbitrary puzzles in the elevator, we got out through the top, which opened up into a warehouse. Soon, we'd be joined by seven other people, two of which had gotten out before we did. None of those seven were named Greek letters.

[oyashiromama]

So you two were the odd ones out. How- how did you know his name, if you don't mind my asking? Did you know how you knew?

[plentyfriendly]

At the time, I had no explanation.

But those people had been gathered for the Nonary Game, as it was presented to us. Unlike here, the MC had a face - kind of rabbit-ish, although I always called it a rat to its face. Called itself "Zero III".

Anyway, the rules were simple. Everyone had three points, and if you got mine you could leave.

[oyashiromama]

The...Nonary Game? [She hasn't asked about this particular subject.] I...I'm sorry, I'm unfamiliar with it. Is that...anything like what we're stuck in here?

[plentyfriendly]

A little bit, although gaining points didn't require killing anyone.

To gain points, we played a short "AB Game" against one or two of the other people. You and your opponents would choose to ally or betray, and each gained or lost points depending on what they picked. Two each if you both allied, no change if you both betrayed. If one allied and the other betrayed, the team that betrayed got three and the team the allied lost two.

If you couldn't input a vote before the deadline, you automatically allied.

[oyashiromama]

So...you are encouraged...to betray one another, in other words. [Yikes.] What does "betray" mean? What happens to the other person?

[plentyfriendly]

Outside of the loss of points, absolutely nothing.

[Yay?]

...Unless they have no points left, in which case their bracelet fills them with muscle relaxant and they die. That part I just knew without a reason, too.

[oh.]

[oyashiromama]

...How did you escape with your life? Especially...if you had that thing you used on you? [The syringe.] Was that here?

[plentyfriendly]

Oh, I wasn't stuck with that needle back then. It comes a lot later.

Eight of us got out mostly because Sigma and I were collecting information from a bunch of different timelines.

[Here's why:]

Dio was a terrorist. He planted bombs throughout the facility, and we got the passwords to disarm the bombs. Well, that and the fact that he was a terrorist in the first place.

[oyashiromama]

["This horrible thing didn't happen then, it happened later" AWESOME GREAT TO KNOW]

You were stuck there with...a terrorist...but because you had information from- from other versions of reality, other fragments, you could figure it out and get the rest of you safely out alive?

[...wow that. sounds like a dream, really.]

[plentyfriendly]

More or less.

The whole thing was a setup to get my and Sigma's consciousnesses back to 2028, though, since it was also 2074 and neither of us knew it.

[Remember that horror story? Guess who that was about!]

That was the "AB Project". Akane and... well, I suppose from my perspective now, Sigma's past self... set it up.

[oyashiromama]

[what the hell is zero escape]

I-I... There's some I don't follow. I don't understand...how were you both able to live so long...? Or was it not the same body, in a different time? I initially assumed that, but... How could his past self...?

[She's trying to grasp a lot, but it's hard.]

[plentyfriendly]

Okay, do you have paper? This might work better with a diagram.

[...well. paper that's not written on already, of course.]

[oyashiromama]

[She does indeed have some paper! ...That she's taken from the mail room. She passes it to Phi.]