15corpses | WELCOME TO THE GAME.

WELCOME TO THE GAME.

[You have died. When you awaken, it's in your body back to the shape it was in before whatever it was that killed you - but not all is right. Nothing surrounds you but darkness as far as the eye can see. A girl's gentle voice speaks to you from seemingly nowhere. It is a voice you probably haven't heard before.]

It's all right...it'll be all right.

Please forgive me for this, but, you're in the True Game now. As you're now here, on this plane, I...took something from you. Something important. The thing dearest to you. It has to be taken, though, as it's your entry fee - it's one of your means of surviving this!

I promise, we don't mean to do anything terrible to you! But this Game is important, and you getting through it is, as well. You'll receive missions, and for the missions you complete, you'll be given points. The more points you earn, the closer you'll get to leaving this place. And then, when you do finally leave, perhaps you'll understand why you were brought here. You'll regain what you lost, and you'll know the truth.

So please...please survive! I have faith in you! You'll be all right!!

[Sure enough, as soon as she's done explaining and collects your fee, something important of yours is missing. It might be memories, an object, or even a person (that's not a Titled), but they are your collateral now. Your motivation for continuing your existence in this world. You black out, and when you wake again, you're back in the mall, in the bedroom you'd been assigned. You remember everything you'd forgotten while you were alive, although you might have re-forgotten it if that was your entry fee. At least everything here seems mostly the same.

However, there's a few new things to discover... your cell phone now lets you read the surface thoughts of everyone that's living, and imprint thoughts into their heads (except for Croix, The Chance. Maybe it's because she didn't have a power? Who knows.) You also have all the items and money you had when you were still alive, which will be useful, because you still get hungry and, we'll say you still need clothes, but that's actually debatable because you are invisible. Not to other dead people, no, but to the other people in the mall.

Yeah. That's a thing. This version of the mall is full of random people who are using the mall as a mall, and even working the registers - oddly enough, there's this one girl with pink hair who seems to work at all of the restaurants at different times. But no one can see you, except for the shopkeepers of food and clothing stores specifically. (Luckily, the Barcade counts as food.) The Titled can be seen going about their business as well, and you can follow them around and watch them, listen to their conversations. However, nothing you say or do can be perceived by them. Even using your powers goes unnoticed, no matter what you try to do with them. It's like you're in parallel worlds. So that's a little spooky.

Speaking of spooky things, there are also monsters in this version of the mall, though the living seem as able to perceive them as the Titled can perceive you, and even to you they are only barely visible unless you focus on seeing them clearly. But these monsters attack people - they attach to the mall-goers like parasites, however for now, they seem to be leaving the living Titled alone... they prefer to attack the dead Titled, and only the power you gained here seems to truly damage them. They also seem quite difficult to defeat on your own. If one of them happens to come for you, you'll need to find the others, fast. At least if you checked your phone, your first mission told you where to go!]

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[Dio doesn't miss a beat as he launches into a casual pissy rant.] They're these shitty little monsters that are floating around all over the place. If you stay still for too long they come and find you and try to kill you. Keep an eye out. ...also, when you kill them, you get more money for some goddamn reason. [JUST IN CASE SHE DOESN'T WANT TO ENGAGE IN THAT AMOUNT OF CAPITALISM... Dio uses erase and kill interchangably. He'll have to rethink that later.

He puts out his arm in an invitation to link elbows. This gesture is probably a joke, not least because he's now well over a foot taller than Helena and has made no effort to line up the heights of their shoulders, but if she takes it seriously in any physical form, there probably will be a light show.] If you want to go anywhere else, odds are I'll get the chance to show you.

[ Helena gives the raised arm a scrutinizing look, but ultimately winds up ignoring it. Dead or not dead, she has more self-respect than to throw herself at the next best flirty murderer physically. Also, what he said is incredibly distracting from any such frivolous considerations. ]

So, let me get that straight: we're dead, but we're a) still in a mall, b) still need money and c) still need to fight for our undead lives.

[ The incredulity in her voice rises with every word she says. She had assumed that if anything the afterlife would wind up being tormentingly boring (which she'd have no problem with per se) not that she'd wind up in a more crowded and thus more annoying version of the exact same kind of hell as before. Dying really isn't what it (presumably) used to be.

Helena puts a hand to her forehead as if to drown out an approaching headache. ]

This is such utter complete nonsense, such a farce, such... such... shit.

[ She wanted to say something harsher but ultimately the simplest word fits it best. ]

Can we go back to my room to talk? I'm already sick of being out here.

[ She'll explore her area later, it's been enough disappointments for the time being. ]

Yeah! Exactly! All those things! You still need money to fucking eat! Let me tell you, I thought my soul had finally escaped the prison of the flesh. Not just some profound metaphor anymore; literal salvation and actual paradise. But no.

[His arms have gestured here and there as he gets into this surprisingly irreverent description of serious philosophical concepts. Around this time Dio remembers how hard it is for outsiders to directly understand unless he starts from the beginning. He chills out and puts one hand into his coat pocket.] Noise are sort of drawn to groups of people in big open spaces. I've never seen one in, like, a shop, or especially not my own room. So, sure. Your room sounds great. We'll probably be safe there. [He presses the elevator button.]

[ That's uplifting news. It means essentially Helena can still be Hikikomori and.... well, food is another matter. Her charity money from the first minigame was very close to running out by the time of her death.

As they wait for the elevator to come to them, Helena glance's over at Dio's not-face, trying to figure out how such a man longs for spiritual salvation so much. Somehow, it's almost easier to imagine with this appearance, clothes ignored. He looks more like a staunch believer when he looks more... solid over all.

But also more wrong.

The elevator opens and Helena only starts speaking again as they step inside. ]

So, the most important thing you lost was your appearance?

[If she thinks the appearance belies his devotion more, then she'll probably think that the deep voice suits his conviction too, as Dio answers in a very cold tone. She's said something that offends literally every fiber of his being. He respects her previous attempts to respect him, though; he truly does. Helena has proven herself more than capable of abstract reasoning; he can securely detach himself from the present and attempt to teach her better, then pass judgment on just the end result. Therefore, he is not going to hit her. It's like that.] My genes.

[The elevator doors click shut.]

There's so goddamn much all of you don't know about me... [Sigh.] I'll tell you everything, Helena, but I'm warning you now, it might be hard to follow. [He's been looking at her, softening.] Did they take an entry fee from you too? You could always let me in on that on the way there.

[ A shiver runs down her spine as his tone changes so quickly. For all she calls him murderer in her head (and she does constantly, as if to remind herself to never forget), it's always been hard to imagine him actually doing. It's not hard right now, when she's locked alone into an elevator with him. Huh.

The momentary discomfort passes as quickly as it comes, lingering only as a bad aftertaste in her mouth. After a pause to gather herself, she nods. ]

Yes, they did, but even if I tried, I couldn't tell you too much about it. I'm simply lacking the memories to do so. You're probably familiar with the incentive we were presented this week? People we care about attacked by Noise...

I had someone on that fear-mongering image. I simply don't remember who anymore or why they matter.

Hmmmmmmmm. [He's frowning at her empathetically.] That sounds like a pain in the ass.

[This is another time Dio feels pretty relieved that he didn't have to face the later motives. The depiction of currency used on the moon was one thing easy enough to hide, but a realistic level of concern traced back to multiple faces just like his own, or a mysterious figure in that deemed-creepy cultist robe... He's staring at Helena, trying to imagine if there's any possible image that wouldn't seem suspicious, but his mind's eye doesn't demonstrate any vision that displaces his view of her. Oh, well. Dio will just casually keep trying to be supportive.]

I guess they didn't look like a family member or anything? I donno if you even have any, if they're your likes or dislikes... [He is suddenly reminded of his faint conviction that Kaz Kaan had better be a famous author.]

No, I remember my parents. It's not them on the photo for sure.

[ She doesn't sound especially concerned by the fact that her parents aren't even deemed important enough to her to be pseudo-hostage material. Helena is also fairly sure she doesn't have any siblings. She supposes that right now this is not something she can be sure of, but it still seems unlikely.

She shrugs. ]

I didn't even have any people on my profile to start with, did I?

[The elevator doors slide back open, and Dio steps forward, clearing his throat, covering any other type of expression.] Uh! Hmmm! I don't know! It's like you said at the trial, your world is really different from mine. Maybe Kaz Kaan's a country.

[He's continuing to walk decisively across the food court.] We're probably going to be talking for a long time. You want to get a drink of water or anything?

[ Kaz Kaan is a........ ? Dio seems eager to drop that topic however, so Helena deems it irrelevant to inform him that it's indeed a person name and not one that means a single thing to her. ]

If we can still consume things I bought before my untimely passing, then there's still a few snacks and drinks stored in my room.

Uh, I guess so? [His typical manner is less pleasant than the average person, and that carries through; Dio makes no attempt to hide the slight frustration he feels at the realization that he doesn't precisely know the answer to this question.]

I've been using stuff like my razor just fine. Thanks for sharing, then.

You're welcome.

[ Her reply is nothing but a casual formality to say, but it still feels like it comes out way too lamely. It's awkward to still have a bit of way ahead before they can get to what really matters, what she really wants to hear.

They walk past Cat Nya-Land in silence and as they do so, Helena remembers that is has been less than 3 weeks since they arrived at this mall and met. It feels longer to her, partially because most of her life in Neo Yokio feels like a lifetime ago, lived by a different girl entirely. She remembers everything now, the bombing, the escape (though that part is oddly unclear still), but all her memories from the mall seem far more pressing. How ironic that the place she hates so much seems to end up shaping her.

She's been in the food court often since Wake's death, but this time it's as if she can still smell burned crabs the closer she gets to Crab-O-Licious.

The first night and the first Friday morning, poignant memories that are anchored only a few meters apart. ]

... if we have to un-live in this consumption abyss forever, I'm going to run insane sooner rather than later.

[ Considering she voluntarily died, it might actually already be too late on that front. ]

Edited 2017-12-13 20:46 (UTC)

[That Dio doesn't fit behaviors into a consistent, let alone conventional, framework of psychological sanity isn't so much as a good or bad thing as it's just extremely obvious.] I'm not staying here either, believe me. I haven't gotten any dirt since I told you "red" on what happens to us, though...

[Doesn't that seem like way less passion than he'd in the condition of not completing his mission? Well, Dio has accepted his decision to tell her the truth, so he's past the point of tailoring his reactions to her expectations of a shallow outsider. At the same time, it's so weird how the events in Rhizome 9 rise to the fore of his mind as he anticipates the conversation about it... He knows in his head that he infiltrated the warehouse, won the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition, and then ended up here. And yet the emotions of the memory are all wrong. Like he's trying to watch a twist ending movie for the second time. Left completed the mission, just as ordered, and then one thing led to another and now there's just disembodied Dio, who exists in some other meat suit, wondering what the fuck his purpose is. Basically just like any outsider who never heard what Brother was told by God. When he kills people, isn't one of the things he tells himself that living on such a dying planet is the fate worse than death? A fighting alliance is not something he offered without knowing precisely the type of dangers that brought Helena here in the first place.

He catches sight of the staircase, and it's not such a big deal since he's traversed it every single day, but it occurs to him that Helena's was the only other bedroom he ever visited, except for Wake.]

I had a single goal to still complete in the mortal world. I wanted to wipe the presumed smug smile of their faces if only for a bit.

[ She's not sure why she's suddenly going into detail about her motivations in death while they're still out in a public that can't see them, but it's as good as any other thing to fill the silence. ]

It had become increasingly clear that boycotting them wasn't actually a hindrance to them as long as everyone else kept cooperating. And really, after all that went down at the weekend trial, I am very sure I was one of the most dispensable people to the little club as well.

[ In a contest of measuring human lives against each other on the basis of 'friendship' Helena has no illusions she'd be on the losing end. The only people she'd truly made efforts with were already gone after all. ]

So I thought: I'd rather die with an impact than perish silently. I want to have stood for something in the end.

[ Helena shakes her head with a fleeting smile. ]

But it appears we've been granted a second chance to make a mess out of things for the powers that be.

Yeah, no, they basically don't think about you at all... So you really could have survived by hiding a while longer, but you still...

[He's staring at Helena even more openly slack jawed than when he first heard her declare a separation from the material world. That they have this conversation while she walks up a staircase leading the way to her bedroom serves to underscore his feelings that she is some type of angel ascending into heaven, even though he knows that such literal bodily imagery is idolatrous. Dio just really never thought that someone existed outside who still understood this principle that has defined his entire life. That even if she died, she might save these other people, who would deserve to be saved even though they did no emotional favors to her. It would be different if he were a ghost and she were not, and he had to face the reality of this pure person not surviving after a plan that was quite reckless and may have resulted in very little; but at the same time he would probably be impressed if he'd never hoped at all and instead known at the time of his impending death that she would also take this type of gesture and be consigned to the void.

The eclectic mix of doors is in sight, and his adrenaline is high.] I hate them just like you do. Our captors killed us both. They're going to regret not finishing the job.

[ Helena thinks to herself that she'll have to look for Wake and Torri soon, to see how they are doing, as if to somehow atone for planning revenge together with Dio as if nothing had ever happened. It's a silver lining that defeating their captors means saving the other victims - it's a novel end, even if the means are criminal. Helena is starting to get used to that a little. ]

Exactly. I remember most everything from my world now. I succeeded in my goals back there. Combining my knowledge of having managed this with what I have learned from my failures this time... It's a far wider margin of reference.

[ She pauses and shoots him a glance. ]

And that accounts only for me, yet.

[ Her door is open, just as she left it when she went out to become a martyr and just as she left it again as she was resurrected into a different plane of existence. Why protect your worldly possessions when you aren't worldly anymore?

She steps in and immediately heads over to the bed to sit down, vaguely gesturing for Dio to come next to her. ]

Third time's the charm? [The wolfish smile says everything Helena already almost knows: that she is not the only terrorist in the room and certainly not the most experienced one either.] Heh.

[Dio steps over the threshold, and reflexively his eyes flick over to the pristine jacket. He wonders what to say about it, and settles on nothing. By the time he looks at Helena again, she's sitting on the bed. His eyebrows briefly rise as he very briefly, very seriously considers insisting once more that he's not that kind of guy - but he's finally going to tell her that he is this other kind of guy. It's much more important. She'll know. Nobody else will. He closes the door shut behind him.

Once Dio has sat down on the bed, he's not sure where to start. He puts his hand on his heart, like the American pledge of allegiance.] So... me. [He's given this monologue to Sigma and Phi before, so he knows how it goes, but actually, that was just a dam bursting immediately after his honor was irrevocably secured once and for all, now that he could actually hear an outsider gasp at the glorious realities of his life and work... and he had figured they'd barely interact afterwards. To say he cares about what Helena thinks is too touchy feely, but he is hoping to maintain an alliance with her, in this case. He wants to let her react and maybe airbrush just a little. And to do that, he might as well start at the very beginning and escalate.]

My name isn't Dio. I mean, that is what it says on my IDs and stuff; you should probably still call me that, especially since we're still here. But that's just my mask for interfacing with the remnants of the corrupted government. Free the Soul deals with them, but the only authority we answer to is God. We're a sacred religious order, and the head, the holy prophet and master, is a man called Brother. Then the hand of Free the Soul is a group called the Myrmidons. Clones of Brother's younger brother Left, who share his face, and his name, and are all equal, like disembodied souls are supposed to be in the new world. The Myrmidons make the prophesied revelations a reality by cleansing the current corrupted world to usher in the great change. [As if it's a joke, he takes a purposefully unconvincing tone of caught red handed voice.] Basically what any unenlightened person would call terrorism.

[As he's reaching the end of this segment, he gets a little relaxed; for the first time in ages, he can take a jaunty tone and sound a little proud of who he is.] Any organization as large as the Myrmidons needs someone who shows they have what it takes and moves up the ranks to be the best example to the others. A fieldmarshal. [His hand on his heart forms to point his thumb at himself.] And that's the kind of ringleader I really am.

[ Helena listens to the explanation intently, never taking her eyes off Dio's face. The only movement she makes is to draw her feet up onto the bed and hug her legs to her body early into the talk, then she's still as a statue as she takes in what she partially guessed and also what she never would have guessed for the life of her. ]

... your genes....

[ That cryptic remark certainly makes sense now and she has to say it out loud again just to make it sink in properly. The genes of the prophet's brother. All the same as an army of others... The same face, the same genes.... Helena is all for human equality, but the thought is intuitively terrifying. There's a thin line, she supposes, between equality and conformity. Among clones, all one and the same, there's no differences. Equality, as "Dio" says. This inherent sameness should be fundamentally different from the norms that are enforced from the outside, suppressing the nature and needs of the individual. It should be better than that, for it erases any need to compromise the differences of single humans.

Yet, it's hard to imagine. Helena feels astoundingly human, astoundingly Neo Yokian, as her mind has such a hard time letting go of the idea that people are inevitably individuals. It's why school uniforms exist, an outer enforced standard to make high school students understand to treat each other as equals - but not to be mistaken as equals to anybody not from their school. Maybe being a Myrmidon is a tiny tiny bit like being born into the Easton Uniform and never being able to take it off ever.

Helena glances over to the jacket at that, wondering if that is also uniform. Then she takes a deep breath and refocuses her thought.

There's more than one "Dio" out there. There's many, many, many of him. What would Helena think of them? Would it all feel the same as talking to this one, who is just a bit more equal than all the other equals?

The terrorism comes as an afterthought. She'd known his cult shared ideals with her and now it's simply more clear than ever why they clicked instantly back in the first night. Before she even remembered her own terrorism, the basis was there.

She's been silent for a long while now, just staring, she should probably say something more helpful now. Luckily, she still isn't out of questions. ]

Why's the government corrupt in your world?

[For the first couple moments of silence Dio is on the brink of glaring at her, feeling owed a better reaction, until he reads the atmosphere enough to get the idea that Helena is just sitting there, thinking, still paying attention to him, and so his face relaxes as he pays attention in return. It's like the audio feeds in the spacesuits, where he could hear Phi and Sigma's staticky breathing.

And yet when she actually asks a question, he's not ready at all; it slightly knocks the breath out of him. She hasn't dug in her heels and questioned any of his actions that were already obvious; instead Helena goes so far as to rhetorically accept the premise that the government is in fact corrupt. He huffs a laugh, more reflexive than mirthful, not bending his face into a smile.]

Uh, I don't know, why's it corrupt in yours? Some parts are sort of the same, I think. You've still got this America and Japan, right? And they had a war, with nuclear weapons? The places aren't totally night and day... We both know what money is, and that means I'm pretty sure you've heard of, like, poverty. If we talk about that, we'll be here all day.

[What's more revealing is that this topic very slightly gets him nervous. Dio is aware that this is a revelation he received through the sacred, profound teachings, which means it's not usually credited by outsiders. Certainly not Phi and Sigma. Helena, though...] Look, I had a lot of history lessons growing up in the church and all, but my job's not a history teacher, so I'm afraid I can't tell you this stuff so great. You feel me? But... if you're just curious about the differences, I can try to whip up a highlight reel.

[ Ah, these are things she knows about. That's extremely relieving and she lets her shoulders drop a little as she nods along. ]

There's a poor district in Neo Yokio. The rich people drive car races through it without even evacuating the streets beforehand.

[ This is still fresh on her mind, because for some reason she'd been spectating the Grand Prix race. It's not the most dramatic example, but it's a handy little tale to illustrate the similarities between their worlds. ]

I didn't think it would be so similar, given our worlds seemed so different in other aspects.

[ Everyone knows what a CD is, for one. ]

[Dio snorts to express shared disgust at the droll, distasteful game day she describes.] Wow, that really is even worse than the way they filled out Rhizome-X...

[He looks back up at Helena.] The thing is, your world is just a lot like mine before the disaster. In the year 2028, though... Free the Soul spread a plague called Radical-6 across the earth. More than two billion impure people succumbed to the disease, realized that their lust and greed had chained them to their flesh irrevocably, and freed themselves from their bodies. Then some authorities decided the best way to stop the epidemic was to blow themselves up in their own huge antimatter reactors. That killed four billion people and put the Earth into nuclear winter. So some of the survivors had to go live on the moon. [A snarky aside he is wrapping up for her like a present:] By the way, most members of that first generation were either government officials or else very rich. After that, the plague went underground, and for years afterwards there were were only a couple instances at a time of miraculous retribution. The progress has continued some, like the old national governments have way less weapons left, that kind of good thing, but the process isn't complete. You still have to lie and cheat and steal if you really think you need to get ahead in worldly matters. So it's been like that for a while. In my timeline it's the year 2074.

[ This time Helena gives a strong visible reaction. Her eyes widen more and more as he goes on and by the time he gets to the four billion death count she lets go of her legs to press her hands over her mouth in sheer horror. A feeling of nausea spreads through her whole body as she tries and fails to imagine the true extent of such a catastrophe.

Helena, who's never had to worry about the bare necessities before coming to the mall, finds herself confronted with an idea of destruction that surpasses those she got from history books and war zone accounts by far. In front of her inner eye, she imagines the corpses of Neo Yokio citizens piling up, rich and poor alike. She imagines the Corellis getting into a rocket to the moon, wonders if there are Corellis in Dio's world who did just that. She imagines herself... either killed by an explosion or dragged to the moon to survive while the less privileged suffered on.
No matter how hard she tries, none of these fantasies seem quite real to her.

And that is Free the Soul.

That is what Dio believes in.

The mention of terrorism hadn't shocked her in and of itself, after all it's something she herself identifies with. She'd thought it more minor, she'd thought...

She doesn't know anymore.

But Dio is 22, he's not... He has to have been born 2052. That's 24 years after the disaster. Dio is not at all one of the people who caused it in the first place. It's shallow relief, selfish relief, to reassure herself that it's not him just the organization he was made by who caused all that destruction.

And yet, her shoulders are still shaking slightly.

So many people... so so many people... animals, too, all that life on earth...

Helena wants to say something, but this time worlds fail her completely. Dio sees her as pure, but suddenly the ideals he applies to make this judgment are nothing but a further horror. If she told him about her past, would he think her as just as deserving of death? Now that she's dead, she's got nothing to lose by just testing it, but she still hesitates. She's still afraid. ]

H-hey--

[When Dio first processes the lingering quality of her horrified expression, he is so concerned that he suspects the arrival of some external threat, and he scans the room again. But no Noise came. The call is coming from inside the house. His face crumples softly enough that there's no anger or sadness underneath the sheer confusion. It was all going so well, and he just really doesn't understand. As if he's been regaling Helena with tales of his charity work rescuing cats from hurricanes, and then she balked at the mention of their first million dollar fundraiser. Is it the suicide part...? What is it?]

Uhhhh... There's more, but... [The desire for her to praise his individual glory is still very strong for Dio. She wanted to know why he killed Wake and so on, and the link is not explained yet. However, that topic suddenly seems out of immediate reach. He raises his arm in no certain direction.] Can I get some water, now? Do you need crackers or anything?

[ ... and there he goes again, with this concern for her that hasn't seemed odd before and that seems like a colossal misunderstanding now. Dio is, without question, the weirdest thing that has ever happened to Helena. There are so many things about him that are agreeable, even if sometimes eyeroll-worthy, and even a little charming, but then he kills people without remorse and wishes death to all the people on planet earth... It's hard to reconcile the way he sounds so utterly lost now with the merciless cold of his narration.

Helena finally forces herself to unclasp her hands from her mouth and gestures weakly to the pile of food and drink that isn't opened yet. ]

... take anything you want. I'm fine.

[ With regards to food and drink anyway. She wraps her arms back around her legs, tighter this time, to suppress any shaking of her body. ]

And I... I have a question before you go on.

WELCOME TO THE GAME.

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VLR spoilers start here

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1/2

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content warning for abstract brief mention of specific real historical atrocities

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suicide cw.........................

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