ACE

[ballies]

(pirate noises)

Comments

[selfimmolation]

Okay...

[ he's mentally immediately checking out ]

[ballies]

Just— they might have an overlap of both. The fake world and the real world. It’s just a thought, but not one I have evidence for.

[ there there……. let the brain cell be free… ]

Other than that, I know nothing. Which is great.

[selfimmolation]

That's kind of all of us right now. [ grimacing ] Did you see the newspaper Nico's group got last week...?

[ballies]

From the place they ended up last Thursday?

[ looks at where ty has promised me this info in her next tag and looks back again. ]

Nico showed me, yeah. Have you seen the one that Axel, Saya, Sigrun and I got?

[selfimmolation]

Saya showed me. [ we will discuss the nico stuff when ty gives it to you ] I think I've seen all the papers so far, but... I don't know about making sense of it all.

[ballies]

[ she nods. ]

Everything about the competition being changed, to what happens if a team loses… I don’t know what the point is? Other than someone really wants a villain for the people to hate, regardless of who that “villain” actually is.

[selfimmolation]

Right. I can't figure out what the end goal is at all. None of it makes any sense. Or what the moon has anything to do with all of it either.

[ballies]

Other than it completely wrecking the place before we came here? [ … ] I don’t know. Is it for someone’s entertainment or are we meant to be reading more into what Nico, Will and Reigen saw?

A city of people playing along, with someone manipulating a “villain” to control them?

[selfimmolation]

I don't know. In their thing, people were being forced to play along, but from what we've read, they don't remember anything and just... become part of this?

[ :T ]

[ballies]

Well… if something happened before we got here, we wouldn’t remember that. [ frowns ]

I just don’t know what the point of these things are— other than we get those notes at the end. It could be someone’s way of trying to contact us undetected.

[selfimmolation]

... Yeah. Where do these notes even come from in the first place?

[ballies]

Exactly. Like the one we found in the konbini, someone had to have put it there — although that one seemed more situational, and these are like snippets of lore or planning documents.

[selfimmolation]

Right, the konbini message didn't seem like the same thing as everything else... It seemed similar to that text we got this week, about "the mole".

[ballies]

We assumed Chiemi wrote it because we didn't have a sample of her writing, but I don't think that theory held up very long after the trial. I really think someone else is awake on Thursdays, although it doesn't seem like they've been successful in preventing things from happening.

If they can prevent them at all.

[selfimmolation]

... I never thought Chiemi wrote it, but I couldn't figure out who else it could have been. But that the way it's written, they only know some of what goes down on Thursday, not all of it, which was what made it weird.

[ballies]

General “we” then. It was referring to the medal, wasn’t it? [ … she frowns slightly. ] Ugggh. There must be something that means they can’t just leave a blunt note like “this was used for this reason”, otherwise wouldn’t they do that?

[ nine hour trials are going to be the end of her. ]

Well. Maybe not? There’s usually a few places we find evidence in. Imagine you’re awake at the same time as two other people — you’re not attacked, so you go looking to see if you can see what’s going on. This isn’t a small place, the chances of you coming across something aren’t going to be high, exactly. You might see the end of something, you might see the aftermath of something.

[selfimmolation]

Maybe. Nico thought it was possible maybe whoever wrote this just... saw a vision, or something. So they've got partial information but no context, or something.

[ballies]

[ thinks. ]

... That could do it too. Like you were watching security camera footage. Partial context and no chance to intervene.

[selfimmolation]

Right. And it'd explain why they didn't try to give us any other detail, like who it was used on or why.

[ballies]

Yeah! [ their brains are huge ("nico thought of this") huge. ] It would add up.

... I'm not sure how it helps us outside of knowing someone can do that, and knowing the hints are important but that's better than nothing.

[selfimmolation]

... It's a start, I guess. Doesn't help with any of the other papers, though.

[ballies]

[ she groans and goes back to looking at the candles. are these supposed to be stress relieving? she could do with stress relieving. ]

Some weird anonymous informant? If it's the same person I have no idea why they have such a big urge to help us. Maybe they're just a secret super-fan or something.

[selfimmolation]

Where did they even get that information anyway? And why give it to us?

[ballies]

And what's the catch?

[selfimmolation]

Us having to decipher them, maybe.