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>>1304508

> HP: 46.37%

Within the confines of the vault, all is silent at last. The distant drumming of the storm has faded to nothing - now and again, there is far-off thunder, like an echo of someone else's war.

You ache.

Your armor does not feel pain. You've had limbs hacked off before, fought on with shattered endosteel bones and scraped-raw artificial nerves. The grand guignol of violence above - that last, bewildering blur - is a cavalcade of distant sense-memories, now. Sensor-ghosts dance across your field of vision, the flickering shadows - cast by the slow, sullen flame of burning pages in a crude firepit - drawn up on the wall by the spitting fire.

There, a trick of the light: the horn-crest of Iron Ogre. The spiked branches of Bell Zephyr's pagan-crowned ivory mask. A spined, brutal shape that might be Rust Kaiser's raised fist-

You watch the shadows dance, the ancient drawings - smudged lines of ochre and charcoal - lent the illusion of movement by the inconstant flames.

Are you awake, Joker? Perhaps you dreamed it all - the descent, the escape, and the long, long mourning that followed. The alliances, the annihilations, the distant skirmishes and histories that you have never been further from.

The story of the world above, and what it means to you.

Once, a Player told you that he could hear all the secrets of the worlds above and below in the roar of the storm, tumbling out in the murmured river. That if you could only focus, you could learn every story from the very first to the very last.

He was mad, of course. But mad does not mean wrong.

(Continued)

>>1304508
>>1304512
Welcome back JQOP. How've you been?

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>>1304516

(It's been an exceedingly busy time, unfortunately.)

>>1304512

If you listen-

If you could only listen-

A rasp. The click-buzz of speakers.

"-How's the arm?"

At the far end of the chamber, Daegal sits enthroned. The Vitruvian Device embraces him with spidery limbs - cables trailing from sockets in his orichalcum armor, like writhing dreadlocks. The metal brackets clamp down on his arms, locking him in place - like a solid, engraved structure. The back of his head is locked against the throne's high back, his hands set palm-down - the grille of the restraints locked over his gilded chest-plate, rising up like a breathing mask.

In the gloom, the wan glow - blue - of his cracked optics, slaved to his Argus Sensor, is the only illumination as the fire burns lower.

You look down, and your left arm is still gone. It was a clean cut, the limb sheared free by Pazuzu's Codeburst - but even a clean cut is vulnerable to the scouring winds and the gritty black sand of the underworld. At some point, the saline drip of hydraulic fluids stopped - the stub of the limb locked up, covered as it is by the half-cape of your Assault Shroud.

[ ] "...It hurts."
[ ] "It's nothing. I've lost arms before."
[ ] "I'll feel better when I get a new one."
[ ] "I'm fine, Kazuya. Just...tired, that's all."
[ ] "Never mind me. How are you feeling?"

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>1304519
>[ ] "It's nothing. I've lost arms before."
>[ ] "Never mind me. How are you feeling?"

>>1304519
[ ] "It's nothing. I've lost arms before."

>>1304519
>[ ] "It's nothing. I've lost arms before."
>[ ] "Never mind me. How are you feeling?"

"Can you meditate? I will probably use the next device and it might help you while you wait for me to wake up."

>>1304524
Seconding this. Also, welcome back, Op!

>>1304524

(There's only one device, and Daegal's currently using it - You'll need to unplug him.)

>>1304521
>>1304522

> [X] "It's nothing. I've lost arms before."

"Yeah," Daegal says. There is something like pity in his voice.

"-Yeah."

A silence descends. The hard edges of your armor scrape lightly against the walls of the cell - scouring new lines across the scraped frescoes.

And you feel nothing. It is the *absence* of sensation that is maddening - Something you thought that you'd forgotten. You are aware of the floor beneath you, of the micro-fractures in your scoured plate, in the physicality of your surroundings. But you cannot truly feel it - It is remote, secondhand, impacts given and impacts received.

If you think about it - Your wrist feels like it is packed with red-hot gravel. Your fingers tic, from severed power-feeds and decaying actuators. Except that is a lie: your hand is a creation of jointed durasteel and electrodrivers. It cannot, by definition, feel.

There's a lot you have to relearn.

> [X] "Never mind me. How are you feeling?"

"I-"

Daegal's voice pulses from his speakers. The rest of his body is completely immobile, a stillness enforced upon him by his interface with the Vitruvian Device. Beneath your feet, you can hear the low thrum of power, building.

The machines are ancient. In a way, you're surprised that they've endured so long.

"I...Shit, I don't know."

His optics pulse, once. "I keep thinking it *should* be uncomfortable, and it isn't - and when I'm not thinking about it..."

He chuckles, weakly. "...There's a lot I've been thinking about."

> "Can you meditate?

"I - I'm not sure I know how."

The electronic buzz of feedback disrupts his words - behind him, distant lights flicker. The air is beginning to hum with charge, as great, hidden machines power to life.

"I just...I keep expecting to *wake up*, y'know. Like all of this has been a horrible nightmare - Any moment now, I'm going to open my eyes and the world is going to make *sense*-"

(Continued)

>>1304528
>And you feel nothing. It is the *absence* of sensation that is maddening - Something you thought that you'd forgotten. You are aware of the floor beneath you, of the micro-fractures in your scoured plate, in the physicality of your surroundings. But you cannot truly feel it - It is remote, secondhand, impacts given and impacts received.
>If you think about it - Your wrist feels like it is packed with red-hot gravel. Your fingers tic, from severed power-feeds and decaying actuators. Except that is a lie: your hand is a creation of jointed durasteel and electrodrivers. It cannot, by definition, feel.

By the way, didn't the Athame make our body more organic? Or did I read that wrong?
I would assume that the armor would have more senses now.

>>1304530

(Yes.)

>>1304528

His voice lowers, to a dull whisper-

"And then I realize...They're really gone. Aoba-san. Yui. Akira-"

There's a catch to his words, now. The focus of his vision shifts, goes distant.

"Every time I think 'it can't be real' - I *know* that it is. I can feel it, in my gut - They're really gone. We were *killing* each other, a d - a *while* ago, and now..."

Daegal casts about. Seeking for the words.

"-And now, we're *here*."

His voice echoes hollowly, from the walls of perfect steel. Across the desolation.

He draws a ragged breath, one he doesn't need. It makes an electronic surrusation, across the channel.

"Anon - Before, there wasn't the time. God knows we had our hands full, then. But now - Now, it looks like we've got nothing *but* time."

A pause. Another pulse of his optics.

"-I think it's time you told me what's going on. What's *really* going on."

[ ] "All of it?"
[ ] "-Are you sure you want to know?"
[ ] "Where should I start?"
[ ] "...It's funny. You're the first person who's actually wanted to know."
[ ] Free

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>1304530
I was under the impression that the armor made Joker's form more visceral with the appearance of being more bio organic without actually being so, but I could be totally off.

>>1304531
>[x] "Where should I start?"
>[x] "...It's funny. You're the first person who's actually wanted to know."

>>1304531
>[ ] "-Are you sure you want to know?"
>[ ] "...It's funny. You're the first person who's actually wanted to know."

"It's like a magical girl anime, except with wastelands full of soul powered murder robots instead of alternate dimensions that prevent collateral damage. And the monsters of the week are people trying to kill you for your essence. Remember the Kerberos Guard concert? The singer challenged me to a duel."

>>1304534
>>1304535

> [X] "-Are you sure you want to know?"

"-I mean...Not like I have a choice, right?" The electronic rasp of his speakers steal the emotion from Kazuya's voice - But you can tell he's smiling. A wan, tired smile, but a smile all the same. "Like it or not - We're here, aren't we? Bit late *not* to know."

His gaze flicks down - as much as he can manage.

"...Before - I'll be honest with you, man. I'm not sure I'd have believed you. Hell, when I think about what we've been through - It sounds crazy. More, it sounds *mad*."

Kazuya exhales, a low, shuddering breath. "But here and now...I keep asking myself - *If* I was crazy, would I be imagining *this*?"

> [X] "...It's funny. You're the first person who's actually wanted to know."

"Wanting's got nothing to do with it."

The levity fades from his voice. "-When those...things - when they broke down the doors - I really thought that was the end. I didn't know what was happening - Maybe it was a stunt, or some trick, or, or..."

Daegal goes silent, for a long, long moment.

"Joker-"

"...If we get out of here - What happens to me?"

And you hear it. The beginnings of fear in his voice.

"You've been doing this for years, right? And - you never get hurt. Not your *real* body. Not-" He falters. He' struggling to explain it, fumbling for the words. "-Not the 'you' I know."

"But - Before you found me...Before I became - this. I thought..."

He's wrestling with it, internally. Torn.

"Anon - Am I going to be all right? If - *when* - we get back to our world...Am I still going to be-"

Crippled. Dying. Blind and bleeding out.

[ ] "I...don't know, Kazuya. I wish I knew, but I don't."
[ ] "-You'll be fine. I promise."
[ ] "We can worry about that later, once we're out of here."
[ ] "That might not be the worst thing that can happen."
[ ] "Even if you were - would that change anything?"
[ ] Free

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>1304539
>[x] "I...don't know, Kazuya. I wish I knew, but I don't."
>[x] "Even if you were - would that change anything?"

>>1304539
>[ ] "-You'll be fine. I promise."
>[ ] "We can worry about that later, once we're out of here."

Also, have Joker drop a bit of knowledge for Daegal about the Red World's history, maybe the previous Red Joker and the like.

>>1304539
"It's hard to say.
On the one hand, your real body does normally not follow you into the Red World, but rather runs on autopilot while you are here, and also gains a massive boost in luck.
On the other hand, you were already in the Red when you transformed.
We can't know for sure if you won't be still hurt, but I can guarantee you that you will be alive."

>>1304545
"For all we know, when we get back to the real world, you'll still be in your bitchin' armor. Let's see the ladies back home resist the noble knight Kazuya, now. You'll be swimming in ladies, man, you don't even know."

>>1304539
"The Midas Armor is alive, in a sense. It desperately looked for a host and rejected me. However, it chose you, kept you alive and gave you power to survive. I'm sure it will keep you safe as it has until now."

>>1304540
>>1304545
>>1304542

> [X] "I...don't know, Kazuya. I wish I knew, but I don't."
> [X] "It's hard to say. We can't know for sure if you won't be still hurt, but I can guarantee you that you will be alive."

He takes it hard. You see his fingers twitch against the armrests of the throne, straining to curl into a fist before they go limp once more.

"...Hell," Kazuya mutters. "Fucking *hell* - 'Still alive'? What *good* is that?"

There's a vicious edge to his voice, now - A bitterness that wells up from within.

> "For all we know, when we get back to the real world, you'll still be in your bitchin' armor. Let's see the ladies back home resist the noble knight Kazuya, now. You'll be swimming in ladies, man, you don't even know."

His fingers uncurl. His optics flicker.

"Yeah," Kazuya says, and you have no idea what he's thinking. "-yeah."

A sigh.

> [X] "We can worry about that later, once we're out of here."
> [X] "Even if you were - would that change anything?"

"...I don't have a choice, do I?" he says. "Of *course* it doesn't change anything. What else could I do? Stay here? In this place?"

The 'fuck that' remains unspoken.

"Just - shit, I don't know. I keep telling myself...Once we're out here, everything's going to be all right. I *have* to. If I don't - It'd be a pretty shitty deal to leave, and...Forget it."

> Also, have Joker drop a bit of knowledge for Daegal about the Red World's history, maybe the previous Red Joker and the like.

You were old, when he found you. But he was older still. Not in years, for years are just the accumulation of time without meaning.

He never spoke above his life in the world above. That, you remember. Perhaps he had come to terms with his existence, or perhaps he had merely forgotten.

Sometimes, you wonder. Perhaps he couldn't go home.

Perhaps he had nothing left to return to.

(Continued)

>>1304549
>>1304548

"That's...that's *something*, I guess. Damned if I know what it is."

Daegal's optics cycle.

"Look - Forget it. That's all I can do, right? Hope for the best, expect the w..." There's a forced levity in his voice, now - but it falters. "Just...just keep talking. It helps if I don't *think* about it-"

> [X] "Where should I start?"

"...You're asking me?"

He mulls over this, for a moment. "Start at the end. After - after you left, I didn't think anything was wrong. *We* didn't think anything was wrong. But then Nat-chan got called away, and we heard that the storm was coming-

"*None* of us saw it coming, you know. The skies opened up, and it just rained - I don't know. Blood, maybe. Oil. I saw *people* out there who burst and burned - everyone was trying to get in, to find shelter-"

Daegal's voice falters. He forces himself to go on-

"...Anon - I thought you were dead. I really did. I thought everyone else was dead, and the *phones* didn't work and-"

"I guess - I guess what I'm asking is...Where were you? What happened to Mio?"

The mouth grille of his helm doesn't move, but he manages a grimace anyway. It's all in the voice.

"Nat-chan, Aoba-san...They were helping people, y'know? In their own way. But you-"

"Look - There's a lot I don't know. But...You're the only one with *any* answers. I've never seen anyone move as fast as you - kill as hard as you. That scares me, Anon. It scares the hell out of me. If you couldn't stop it...If you didn't see it coming - What chance do any of us have?"

[ ] Free

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>1304551
"I thoght I wad ready. I had people watching on all sides, I warned Natsumi's faction, I had an army just one command away from being summoned. But even then, I failed to consider that we were in a trap all along."

>>1304551
"...you're right. I couldn't stop it, not alone. But you, me, Akira, Haze, and Rook, *together* made a difference that I could never have accomplished by myself. We tore Pazuzu's plan to shreds, and his greatest allies along with it."

"We had hope the moment you put on that armor, Kazuya."

>>1304551
>"I guess - I guess what I'm asking is...Where were you? What happened to Mio?"
I was fighting Naoya, the White Joker, over Mio.
Naoya wants to use her as a host to revive the Black Joker. Her mother wants to take over her body to come back to life.
The latter part is my fault. Her mother's spirit came to me with a plan to prevent everyone in Seisin High from being consumed for a manifestation ritual for a dead girl. And I was dumb enough to not suspect anything.
There was a tournament going on, at the school's Red World location, where champions of the Hyades, dead girls stuck in the Red world with powerful abilities, were fighting over whose girl becomes the Chalice Queen. Koichi was one of them and killing his Hyades is how I lost him as a friend. He truly loved her.
My Hyades, Cybele, didn't get the Chalice Queen armor because I selected Mio's mother's armor instead to give it to Mio. No, I didn't ask for her consent, but I thought I would rather ask for forgiveness than let Cybele absorb the souls of an entire school. I didn't have any idea on how to make it up for Cybele, though.

I got a chance to a few words to Mio after the fight against Naoya and said the wrong thing. She was hurt and lashed out and both Naoya and me got transported away. Cybele then summoned me, as Alura was torturing her. I failed to save her, as well. Then I used the Athame, the knife in my chest, to remove my Hyades pact because I didn't want to be out of commission while the school was under attack by the Smilers.
I have no idea what condition Mio is in right now.

Man, I really sound like an awful person.

>>1304552
>>1304558

> "I thought I was ready. I had people watching on all sides, I warned Natsumi's faction, I had an army just one command away from being summoned. But even then, I failed to consider that we were in a trap all along."

"Yeah, well...It's what you always miss, Anon. That last, essential detail. That's the thing that gets you, every time."

>>1304558

> "...you're right. I couldn't stop it, not alone. But you, me, Akira, Haze, and Rook, *together* made a difference that I could never have accomplished by myself. We tore Pazuzu's plan to shreds, and his greatest allies along with it."
> "We had hope the moment you put on that armor, Kazuya."

"Me?" He coughs out a laugh, low and scratchy, one that doesn't sound like a laugh at all.

"-I barely did anything, man. I just...I wasn't *thinking*, I guess. I mean - After all that'd happened...I just wanted to do *something*. Just - Pay them back for it, somehow. I didn't think-"

"...I didn't think everyone else would die."

His optics flicker. "Like, that was Akira. *Akira*. We knew him for, what, three years? Or Aoba-san...He used to keep a picture of his family on his table. He said - they reminded him of what was important. Or the others, that poor bastard Haze, who I never met before any of this..."

"...I thought that was the end. Not just of us, but of everything. I - fuck, I thought it was the end of the world. And now we're here, and it isn't anything like over yet."

>>1304559

Kazuya listens.

Time passes. The machine hums at his back, and tiny telltales light up on the throne - astral tracers, curving along the angular surfaces in bolts of neon light. The eerie unlight wars with the flickering flames, as you stoop to retrieve a handful of defaced pages - When you toss them into the firepit, they burn, but slowly.

The smokeless fire sheds no warmth.

"Kouichi...Damn," he says, wonderingly. "I kept thinking - All the while, when we were fighting our way up - we could have used him. Against - that thing. Against Phantom Edge. If we'd brought him along-"

His voice trails off.

"Anon-" There's a low note to his voice, now. Utterly serious.

"Anon, I don't want to say this, but-"

"If you ever meet him again - He's going to kill you, Anon. I mean it. The next time you see him...One of you is going to end up in the ground."

Then, to him - "...Fucking hell, Kouichi..."

(Continued)

>>1304566
"I know. From the moment he met her, it was already inevitable. All I did, was become to him what the Smilers were to me."

>>1304566

The silence looms, vast and blank. The flames spit and crackle.

"Another Joker," Daegal murmurs. "Another *you*-"

"You know-" A pause. Carefully considering his words. "-you know, when I saw Naoya...I didn't think there was anything *wrong* with him. I thought - 'That's a stand-up guy'. I know he had a thing for Mio, but...If you're right - that's *mad*, Anon. That's the maddest thing I've ever heard. It's crazy."

"The thing is - I don't think *he's* crazy. If he's doing this - this...fucking unholy shit...he must *think* it's going to work. I just..."

His gaze flicks away.

"-He's as good as you, isn't he? If not, he's getting there."

"But if he *is* - Why wasn't he with the others? With the monster, that giant freak and that evil old cripple? If he'd been there...We won't even be talking, right now. We'd be-"

"...Well, best not to think about it. But why *wasn't* he there?"

[ ] "-I don't know."
[ ] "He's up to something. I can feel it."
[ ] "Can't you tell? They hated each other, Kazuya. All of them."
[ ] "All he wanted was Mio. And now that he has her-"
[ ] "You're wrong. He *is* mad - He's just good at hiding it."
[ ] Free

>>1304576
>[x] "Can't you tell? They hated each other, Kazuya. All of them."
>[x] "He's up to something. I can feel it."

>>1304576
>[ ] "Can't you tell? They hated each other, Kazuya. All of them."
>[ ] "All he wanted was Mio. And now that he has her-"
>[ ] "You're wrong. He *is* mad - He's just good at hiding it."

"Naoya seems to be incapable of distinguishing Mio and Kotone, the girl who is or was the Black Joker's host.
All he cares about is reviving Kotone, even though he doesn't even know her. It seems to be the result of some kind of trauma involving his mentor.

All of the Smilers have their own goals. You saw Enfer, who only cared about saving the children at the orphanage, or Rust Kaiser who was turned into an abomination by Imago and only continued to exist to protect Megumi.
And Alura was considered a nuisance by everyone else."

>>1304576
"Because he was never with them. Naoya had his own goals, those involving Mio, Kotone and the Black Joker. They cooperated because of convenience and whether Pazuzu succeeded or not was irrelevant. I doubt he cares much about whether I live or die either."

>>1304580
>I doubt he cares much about whether I live or die either."
To be fair, he would have noticed by now that we damaged the Carnifex. If he's as attached to his relics as we are, that might be reason to kill us.

>>1304577
>>1304579

> [X] "Can't you tell? They hated each other, Kazuya. All of them."
> [X] "All of the Smilers have their own goals. You saw Enfer, who only cared about saving the children at the orphanage, or Rust Kaiser who was turned into an abomination by Imago and only continued to exist to protect Megumi. And Alura was considered a nuisance by everyone else."

"You...*knew* them, didn't you?" Daegal says, wonderingly. "You knew who they were, and yet-"

His gaze turns inward, and you know what he's thinking. He's thinking of Rust Kaiser's terrible blow, the one that took Bell Zephyr apart. The terrible roar of agony and release and despair, the howl that shook the world-

"...Jesus, Anon. I thought you'd-"

"I mean - If there was *any other way*, would you have..."

> [X] "You're wrong. He *is* mad - He's just good at hiding it."
> [X] "All he wanted was Mio. And now that he has her-"
>>1304580

He swallows. Within him, Daegal's autoloader clunks.

What do you say to something like that? What answer could he muster? You can almost hear the gears in Kazuya's mind turning, as he thinks it over.

>>1304559
>>1304567

"Joker - I'm not sure I understand *all* of it," he confesses. "All that stuff - Souls. The Hyades. The dead. This...Cybele. If I hadn't seen *worse* things...Shit, man."

The lights of his optics dim, as the illumination of the Vitruvian Device swells. Not long to full charge, now.

"What happened with Kouichi - I just...It's strange. The more you *tell* me, the less I know abou - I keep listening, and I can't imagine you ever doing anything like that."

Softer, to himself. "...I can't imagine us being *here*, either. But look where we are."

"It's just - There's just one thing."

"Why would Mio - No, that's not right." He's struggling, now - Choosing his words, faltering, trying again. "...I know you'd never do anything to hurt Mio. She's - If she's caught up in all of this, somehow - if she's at the heart of it...Ah, hell."

"Just...What did you *tell* her? What could you *possibly* have said? I mea-"

Kazuya swallows, hard.

"...You know she's in love with you, right?" Another of those not-grimaces. "I mean, I thought she made it pretty clear."

[ ] Free

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>1304587
>"Just...What did you *tell* her? What could you *possibly* have said? I mea-"
How the fuck do we get out of this?


Oh fucking god.


"I mentioned Hecate and Cybele when I told her that she's the one I love" might not cut it here.

>>1304587
"Naoya told her a fatal truth. He told her about Tsukimi and how I manipulated Cybele's love for my own aims."
"I couldn't deny or lie. Not about those two things."

>>1304587

"I fucked up, Kaz. Before this, I slept with Cybele. Naoya knew, somehow. He knew, and he told her."

>>1304597
>Before this, I slept with Cybele.
I'm not sure if mentioning that it was partially because of her power would make it better or worse.

>>1304587
"I've made a lot of mistakes in my blind struggle for survival.

I'm not the best person, really."

>>1304597
>>1304598
I'm fairly certain we shouldn't say that. At least not so bluntly. It also happened quite a while ago.

>>1304589
>>1304595
>>1304599

> "I've made a lot of mistakes in my blind struggle for survival. I'm not the best person, really."

"Are you kidding? We're alive and in one piece. If that's the kind of mistake you're talking ab-"

No. He doesn't understand.

> "Naoya told her a fatal truth. He told her about Tsukimi and how I manipulated Cybele's love for my own aims."
> "I couldn't deny or lie. Not about those two things."

"...I'm not going to like this, am I?" Kazuya says, slowly.

"But I still don't s-"

> "I fucked up, Kaz. Before this, I slept with Cybele. Naoya knew, somehow. He knew, and he told her."

Silence.

Silence, awesome and total, descends like the fall of a shroud.

The sickly flames crackle. The low hum of power builds.

An eternity passes. It feels exactly as long as it sounds.

And at last-

"-Anon. Are you absolutely certain I can't get out of this chair?"

[ ] "Yes."
[ ] "Fairly certain."
[ ] "Yes, but I don't see wh-"
[ ] Free

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>1304604
>[ ] "Fairly certain."

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>>1304604
IT'S FINALLY TIME
KICK HIS ASS KAZ

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>>1304604
>"-Anon. Are you absolutely certain I can't get out of this chair?"
Should we just leave him there and continue alone?

I think this might be game over for our relationship.

"If it's helping your sense of justice, I stabbed myself afterwards."

>>1304604
[x] "Fairly certain."
Don't hit me too hard

>>1304605
>>1304606
>>1304608
>>1304610

> [X] "Fairly certain."

The Vitruvian Device creaks. Daegal's limbs spasm, twitching. His right hand curls into a fist, relaxes, curls into a fist again.

"-Good," Daegal rasps. "That's good."

> "If it's helping your sense of justice, I stabbed myself afterwards."

"I *don't care*-!"

His voice rises in a shout. Feedback buzzes.

"*Why*, for *fuck's sake*? Why the *fuck* would you do that?"

His optics flicker, alarmingly. "Do you - Anon, do you have *any idea* what you *did*? Can't you...Can't you *tell* - Do you even have the *notion*, any idea at all - of what this means?

"Oh Jesus Christ Almighty - This was all you. This is all on you. You *fucked* us, and you don't even - You can't seem to understand-"

The throne makes disturbing sounds, as the restraints buckle. The telltales flicker red - the dampeners kick in, with an electrostatic buzz, the perfect steel shackles clamping down.

"Because of you - That sick, *evil* bastard has Mio - if she'd been with us...We wouldn't be trapped *here*, just *waiting* for something to come and *kill* us-"

He makes one last effort to stand, sparks jagging across his armor. Kazuya lets out a brutal grunt, as if he's been kicked in the stomach - Glaring up at you, he subsides.

"You let me *down*, Anon. I trusted you - I *trusted* you. You *swore* you'd take care of her-"

[ ] Free

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>1304619

(Gentlemen - My apologies, but it's extremely late for me: Tomorrow's the start of the work-week, but I'll try to update the thread over the course of the week.

Good night, and god bless. You've been a great audience, and I hope to see you again soon - Again, I apologize for the brevity of the thread.)

>>1304622
Thanks for running JQOP.
It's a shame we had to finally puncture Kazuya's faith in us.

>>1304622
Thanks for the run. I really like Joker Quest.

>>1304619
Question: Did Kazuya ever encounter Hecate?

If yes, I guess something like this could work:
"Kazuya, do you know how hard it was to get over Hecate? It took a long time for me to decide that I could love another girl.
The thing with Cybele, it happened before I had finally decided that I would open myself to Mio. And I had to fool Cybele... She was a scared girl who was forced into an unbearable situation, but she also had the ability to make me stronger. And often her power was the only thing that saved me from certain death.
I had to do it, or I would have lost access to that power. Hell, for all I know she had some Hyades-specific way to punish me. After all, I had a soul bond with her forced on me and after she died, it fucked me up physically.
You don't know how scared I was of repercussions, when she realized that I wasn't brainwashed like all the other Hyades champions, thanks to my armor. It was a spur of the moment thing.

At some point, I thought the two-faced betrayal, metaphysically enforced death battles and murderous rampages were over. That I had finally found a way to make everything right, prevent deaths and be there for Mio. That Cybele would be the last one to suffer from this all.
And it didn't work."


This one is obviously very rough. Please give actual fucking feedback this time.

Op, you are a gentleman, a scholar, and a fantastic writer. Thank you again for another great installment!

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>>1304619
"Do *you* understand? Do you understand how I felt when Hecate, the first person I've been able to talk to about Red since my predecessor, died protecting *me*? How it was to try and move on when every time I was ready to let go, a new clue would appear that seemed to point to her being alive somewhere, waiting for me to find her? How, in the end, all I found was her body, comatose for years and with no soul left inside."

"I was tired, Kazuya. I frantically searched left and right, trying to either find the truth or at least get revenge while more and more groups pestered me, seeking to use me or kill me. I was running on fumes, every fight seemed like it would be the end of me and yet everything just kept getting worse no matter how much stronger I got. At best, I was desperately scrambling to survive and keep those around safe. I couldn't."

"I had not opened up to Mio back then. I was not ready or willing to love anyone and I could not handle being her hero when the world around kept crashing down all the time. I did not love Cybele either, but I needed her power to keep fighting, to not fall apart at a moment's notice and the connection to her was the only way I could hope to remain in the center of events. I used her and paid the price."

"Now you see the result. This is all I have after all those years of struggle. I failed on every front and now you are all I have left to fight for. I don't care what you think about me now or how much you're disappointed, I *will* get you back even if that's the last thing I do."

Should someone archive the thread already?

>>1304619
AND I DID! I DID MY BEST! I PULLED EVERY TRICK IN THE BOOK TO KEEP EVERYONE SAFE! TO KEEP THEM HAPPY, TO GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT, TO-.....to....*long sigh*..............and it still wasn't enough...

>collapse on ground, hold remaining intact hand on helm.

How do you even cope with seeing your first date die before your eyes? How can you move on with loving another girl knowing that the first girl you dated died despite doing your very best to save her? How do you deal with being approached by multiple girls who confess their feelings for you, expecting to you reciprocate while you have the specter of a failed first love over your head?

>point to Kazuya

There's a reason why you wear the golden armor of Deagal Kaz,

>point to self

and why I wear the armor of Red Joker. You're the ideal hero of both the Real world and the Red World. Me? I'm just the fall guy, the scapegoat, the "devil of the Red World". Everyone knew about the Red Joker, Everyone feared the Red Joker, Everyone hated the Red Joker, Everyone wanted to kill the Red Joker. And not one person gave a shit about how the Red Joker felt. How the Red Joker felt to be hunted 24/7 365 days a year in the Red World with no one to rely upon, no one to get help from, no one to confess to or to give comfort. How the Red Joker felt when everyone around him pinned their grievances and hatred on him just because he's the Red Joker.

And then Hectate showed up. A girl of many firsts. The first person who approached me without any hostility or fear. The first person who didn't want anything out of me except for getting to know me better. The first person who showed any sympathy.

>empty laugh
shame she didn't get the other two first times...

>look wistfully at the Nhil Sphere.

I think you remember her during our double date at the amusement park on the day of the bombing. She knew me both in the real world and the Red World. You remember the bombing at the amusement park don't you? what happened during the bombing, She and I got pulled into the Red World. That's when the Smilers first showed up, when Pazusu first showed his mug. Hectate had opened a portal to another Red World area away from the chaos. She pushed me through the portal, and got impaled for saving my life. Portal closed before I could do anything else to save her.

>look at the ceiling in defeat.

It wasn't until much much later that I found out Hectate was alive at the hospital... except that she was so far gone that there was no chance of recovery. All they could do is keep her in suspended animation until... By that point in time I was so wrapped up with the whole debacle with Mio and Cybele, to twist the knife in my life even further.

So there you have it Kaz... This whole fuck-up came down to me being a selfish cowardly two-faced devil who failed to save the life of his "first" date, and wasn't quite finished grieving over her.

>>1304904
>he first person who didn't want anything out of me except for getting to know me better
I guess your interpretation of Joker is slightly delusional.

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>>1304904

>>1304904
Tone down the autism, m8. That's too far even for someone as broken as Joker.

>>1304904
This just might work.

>>1304904
>>1304968
It might theoretically work if we first played the "supervillain Joker" angle and pretended to be everything that Kazuya is probably seeing in us right now.
And then we go serious and tell him how it is.
Done correctly, it will make him feel shame for the rage-colored glasses that he just saw us through.

However, I don't think we can pull it off and we already have at least one adequate write-in.

>>1304674
I would just add to the Cybele thing the fact that she didn't deserve any of that shit, either. Otherwise we sound like a sociopath who only pretends to have empathy.

>>1304674
Seconding.

>>1304619
I can't protect people. I tried to protect Hecate, and she... she's gone. I... I knew that against our enemies, being a paragon of justice wouldn't work. I had to fight dirty. Take every advantage I could get. Fight tooth and nail, blaster and fist for every inch I could gain.

And in avenging her, I learned of what could have come to pass. I failed to protect Mio. I failed to protect all those who fought alongside me. I failed to protect those who stayed behind...

And I even failed to protect the innocents who had no part of this.

Every action I do fills me with doubt and dread. I've long since stopped caring if what I do is right, only if it would help me succeed. And for a power that would keep me alive, I felt that selling my body would be a just price. I didn't /want/ to do it, but I had no choice! I had to prepare... to try and... keep everyone safe.

But it backfired. I fucked up, and now they're all gone. All I have left is you, Kazuya. When I saw you hurt, it was the most terrifying moment of my long life. I gave up my power to make sure you were safe. And now things have gone even worse to shit.

All I have is hope and you, Kazuya. So please, sit your ass down and don't move. When I die, I want to know that I at least saved someone important to me. Because that thought is all that keeps me going.

>>1304619
Even though it's probably not what Daegal wants to hear, isn't it true that Mio seemed almost certainly to be the kind of person who would actively resist seeing the truth as much as possible?

>>1304983
I feel like that could be bolstered by acknowledging that Cybele deserved better but also laying out in detail just how fucked up the Hyades system was. Like I don't really remember it being a healthy relationship for anyone.

>>1304904
Perfection
Autism
Perfectism

>>1305020
>Like I don't really remember it being a healthy relationship for anyone.
Well, some like Adamant and Bishamon had Hyades that genuinely cared for them. Remember, we suspected Kouchi would resent us even if we used the Athame on him.

But yeah, the deathmatch alone made it deeply unpleasant.
I'd then stress that we knew not just Kouchi, but also Iron Ogre.

>>1305020
>isn't it true that Mio seemed almost certainly to be the kind of person who would actively resist seeing the truth as much as possible?
Yes. She heard the truth and still deluded herself in rejecting it even after we gave her an ultimatum that she either accepts it or gives up on the relationship. She basically wants to have her cake and eat it.

> Like I don't really remember it being a healthy relationship for anyone.
Relationships are not healthy in JQ by default, so that's not saying much.

>>1305043
So let's expand on that a bit. Like I don't know, I know part of kind of leading Mio on was anons being shitty, but was another part the fear that she'd do something incredibly stupid the second we rejected her?

>>1305054
We also asked Cybele if she could maybe not kill everyone at Seisin High. It's not like we didn't try for that angle.

>>1305060
Those are important details we missed out on in favor of throwing a pity party. Though I suppose it could also be true that this is where Daegal's idealism gets in the way. Like Mio deserved better, but so does pretty much everyone else dragged in here, and maybe this whole time treating her as something to be cloistered and protected didn't do any of us any favors except for Naoya. We'd probably have been better off if we hadn't tried to keep her safe from all this to the point where she'd resist the truth with all the strength she could muster, since that meant she didn't have any resistance against Naoya's manipulations.

>>1305088
Like I don't know, is this calculated on anons part? Have we already determined that Daegal doesn't really care about the details and so just throw up a sob story to distract him?

>>1305093
We are trying to defuse the situation by holding our ground and hammering in that we aren't a psychopathic megalomaniac.
We are a person. We had hard choices to make. And we did our fucking best.
We fucked up and we take the responsibility for it, but we won't let a knight in shining armor tell us how he's superior to us.

Do you think Kazuya would have handled those situations any better?
He'd probably pretended that Cybele isn't real and then gotten fucked over by the finals of the tournament.

>>1305093
In a way sorta calculated? I figured if we're spilling all of the worms and beans to Kazuya, we might as well get pretty emotional about it.

>>1304904
Pls no. This is bad on far too many levels.

>>1305142
it's up to Joker QM to decide if the write-in is too cheesy.

>>1305119
See I like that. I don't think Joker wants pity that much, which means that some of these write-ins are getting off track. At the same time though, is getting in a shouting match with Daegal likely to be productive?

>>1305182
We have nothing but time, so productivity is a non-issue. Besides, Kazuya is just lashing out emotionally, so meeting him halfway and having a honest, if heated, heart-to-heart is more likely to get through to him than a calm and logical explanation.

>>1305182
Given the fact that we sorta acted like a veteran around Kazuya and played it off like we look cool doing so, acting cold and calculated when we just broke the pedestal that Kazuya had put us on would make Kazuya view Joker with more disgust than ever.

Besides, Kazuya seems to be the typical shonen hot-blooded guy who understands people better when people get passionate.

>>1305142
than which part of the disgusting cheese is salvageable?

>>1305259
>>1305247
Okay so matter-of-fact is out, but I still feel like mopey isn't an improvement. How can we get hotblooded?

>>1305288
There's not much of a way, since Joker is hardly ever hotblooded. He is fucking miserable, however, so while being mopey isn't too good, doing so does display his human side better than pretending to be a shounen protag.

>>1305119
>We are trying to defuse the situation by holding our ground and hammering in that we aren't a psychopathic megalomaniac.We are a person. We had hard choices to make. And we did our fucking best.We fucked up and we take the responsibility for it
Definitely this.

>we won't let a knight in shining armor tell us how he's superior to us.
>Do you think Kazuya would have handled those situations any better?
Not this though. Kaz isn't holding himself above us (whatever he thinks of us he still doesn't think highly of himself), he's asserting that we've let him down by failing to live up to his belief in us.

What we have to do is concede that we're a miserable failure, but that our failures were borne of trying to be a hero.

It might be a good place to hammer in why WE hold HIM in such high regard, that we're fucked up and broken and incapable of basic human decency, but he isn't, is a genuine good person, that being experienced and cool doesn't make us a hero and that being inexperienced and dorky doesn't mean he's not a hero.

>>1305259
>>1305288
>>1305313
Showing some vulnerability and self loathing is good, it makes clear that we're just human (or whatever passes for human at least), no matter how capable we seem.

We should also at least make some mention of how Mio isn't a damsel in all this. We knew she was important in the red world, and she could kind of guess even if she didn't know the specifics. But time and again she shied away from the truth for fear it would hurt her and we indulged her because we had a soft spot for her. Really, our mistake was sheltering her and trying to take care of her, but then a large part of why we were doing *that* was because the last relationship we'd had with a girl ended with a blade through her torso.

>>1305600
Huhm. We were weak and human and hurting and wanted someone normal to distract us from the craziness who wasn't tied to all of it, and Mio wanted to be that person, so we let her be. Mulling his motivations over, Anon really is more human than his trauma would make him appear.

(Ironically we chose poorly. Yui would have been exactly what we were looking for, but by the time we met her we were so deep in shit that we knew accepting her would only lead to her being dragged into it).

>>1305600
So in a way, taking care of/protecting her WAS our mistake.

>>1305702
>What we have to do is concede that we're a miserable failure, but that our failures were borne of trying to be a hero.

How about telling Kazuya that the reason we fucked up is that we try to be like the ideal hero Kazuya embodies, with the optimistic outlook and idea that it's possible to save everyone, but that doesn't help because Anon is trying to be somebody he isn't.
>>1305750
Also ironic considering Anon's designated role in Red World as Red Joker. Red Joker is supposed to be the boogeyman of the Red. The devil incarnate in Red World who keeps everyone else in line. The Devil isn't supposed to fall in love or have a soft spot for a loved one. But Anon did which kick-started the beginning of Armageddon. Like everytime Anon approaches a girl or falls in love, the girl always gets killed in the end. Hectate got a sword through her chest, Cybele got murdered by Alura, Yui got a school dropped on her, and Mio got kidnapped is likely being soul-raped by the Red World equivalent of Griffith. It's like the world is cockblocking Red Joker as punishment.

>>1305750
It was, but it was a very human mistake derived from both compassion for her and a more selfish desire for her to be our beacon of normalcy.

It wasn't really our big mistake though, our big mistake was fucking Cybele. I got nothing for that, you guys were totally just using her for her healing perk and planning to discard her at your convenience.

>>1305793
>Also ironic considering Anon's designated role in Red World as Red Joker. Red Joker is supposed to be the boogeyman of the Red. The devil incarnate in Red World who keeps everyone else in line
I'm not so sure this is his role as such, just what he is to others by dint of his reputation. His role (and the White Joker's) seems to be being the proverbial wild card to the four suits represented by the main contenders, since he has comparable perks and Red World access but no special requirements or limitations unlike, for example, Daegal or Phantom Edge. Argent was deemed unworthy of that armour, and despite obtaining the sword Akira was clearly just a placeholder for the real Phantom Edge. But anyone can be Joker as long as they kill the previous Joker, it's a free ticket to the endgame, and they wield as much power as the rest and how they choose to direct it is down to their nature rather than the nature of their position.

>>1305809
I think part of it was that anons just figured that manipulation was the name of the game, and everyone doomed to become the champion of a Hyades was gonna be sacrificed at some point, so why not strike first?

>How about telling Kazuya that the reason we fucked up is that we try to be like the ideal hero Kazuya embodies, with the optimistic outlook and idea that it's possible to save everyone, but that doesn't help because Anon is trying to be somebody he isn't.
Maybe we need to change our approach with this, comparing him to us hasn't been working so far. Maybe we should compare him to Argent, they're both more alike then we are, but also different in very key ways. Point out that for all the good he did and all his grand achievements fighting the Smilers and Correctors, he simply wasn't a noble enough person to be worthy of the armour. That Kazuya *is* speaks volumes of him. It's not his ability that matters, it's his character, and *that* is utterly beyond reproach.

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>>1305793
>Mio got kidnapped is likely being soul-raped by the Red World equivalent of Griffith
Pic related when

>>1305937
ironically fitting since Red Joker is missing an arm atm.

If we didn't want to get all verbose on Kazuya, I'd say breaking the calm and shouting something along the lines of "I'm not a hero" at him would be short, sweet, to the point, and 100% true.

I really don't want him to hate Anon.

>>1306398
Anon already hates himself

>>1306398
anon, you don't understand. Kazuya is a hot-blooded shonen guy. he only understands people if people are acting hot-blooded like him.

>>1306512
>The hotblooded shounen guy is completely correct

>Whatdafug.jpg

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>>1304904

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>>1304904
> I'm just the fall guy, the scapegoat, the "devil of the Red World". Everyone knew about the Red Joker, Everyone feared the Red Joker, Everyone hated the Red Joker, Everyone wanted to kill the Red Joker. And not one person gave a shit about how the Red Joker felt. How the Red Joker felt to be hunted 24/7 365 days a year in the Red World with no one to rely upon, no one to get help from, no one to confess to or to give comfort. How the Red Joker felt when everyone around him pinned their grievances and hatred on him just because he's the Red Joker.

What the fuck

>>1304904
>The first person who didn't want anything out of me except for getting to know me better
Also this is complete bullshit

>>1307046
People writing over-long melodramatic write-ins having warped ideas regarding the protag tends to be the norm, rather than the exception. Particularly when we start crawling through this particular sea of shit and razor-wire.

>>1307079
So does a bunch of people saying how dumb that write-in is make it less likely to be included, or is it anything goes even though that's ridiculous?

>>1307153
Also do we have a good alternative for whenever the QM comes back? Like it's not as if he's just going to skim through the discussion and make something based on that.

>>1304619
>>1304674
>>1305002

...Eh, one thing I don't like is putting all the pressure on Kazuya to fix everything like to me, getting both of us out of here is only step one.

We're going to find Naoya, and burn his ambitions to the ground. We're also going to take Mio and ensure that her fate and power is placed in her hands and no one else's. And if what she chooses to do with that power is kill us, then MAYBE that's an ending we're willing to accept. Until then, we're not stopping.

>>1307333
>We're going to find Naoya, and burn his ambitions to the ground.
I honestly don't care, but I doubt we will have a choice in the matter.
>We're also going to take Mio and ensure that her fate and power is placed in her hands and no one else's.
That's impossible for Mio. She actively rejects taking control of her own life or dealing with the truth. Leaving her with all that power is dangerous to both her and everyone else.
>And if what she chooses to do with that power is kill us, then MAYBE that's an ending we're willing to accept.
Fuck that. I'm not willing to let Joker let himself die over something as stupid as that.

>>1307417
>Fuck that. I'm not willing to let Joker let himself die over something as stupid as that.
Yeah same.

Romancing Mio was a mistake, almost as much as fucking Cybele was a mistake.

>>1305600
>Not this though. Kaz isn't holding himself above us (whatever he thinks of us he still doesn't think highly of himself), he's asserting that we've let him down by failing to live up to his belief in us.
That's the thing.
He doesn't think highly of himself, but we see a knight in shining armor who can't do bad.
Implying that fact should show him that we put him on as much of a pedestal as he is putting us.

>(Ironically we chose poorly. Yui would have been exactly what we were looking for, but by the time we met her we were so deep in shit that we knew accepting her would only lead to her being dragged into it).
Yui would have worked perfectly as an anchor for normalcy (except for the fact that she's apparently open to fucking a dude she has a crush on in a classroom), but she doesn't have all that much chemistry with us.
She'd basically be the wife at home, waiting for her knight to come back safely.

>>1305809
The problem was that, at the time, a post cropped up that many believed to be JQOP's.
They were metagaming on the idea that OP wants us to do more evil things.

>>1307417
>>1307539
I did say maybe. I just want it to be clear that we're not quitting with or without Daegal, even if we'd prefer with.

How about we do something like this?

"Kazuya, do you know who Enfer was?
Real name was Ren, a volunteer at the same orphanage that Mio worked at. They were good friends. Can you imagine how surprised I was that the mad bomber takes proper care of a bunch of children?
Calcite Arrow. No idea who he is in real life, but do you know why he hated me? I killed his best friend.
And do you know why? Because his best friend was a murderous psychopath who gloated about killing the girl that I loved. What would you have done to that guy? Would you have let him off scot-free?
Iron Ogre. A guy whom you never met. I encountered him during the raid on the Smilers. Initially he hated my guts, but then started to respect me. We went well together.
Then he became a Hyades champion and I needed to kill him in the tournament. I knew that I have a weapon that can severe a Hyades bond once, but I also knew that both Kouchi and Iron Ogre would be the kind to fight for their Hyades or demand a rematch, even if the bond was severed.
Haze [What was the first word of his name?], real name [shit, I forgot], I personally trained him after Palladium Rook had his body taken over by Alura and been forced to betray us during the raid, followed by him becoming a cripple that could only be saved with a lachryma infusion courtesy of Akira.
These two guys were best fucking friends. They helped me, even though they didn't need to.
Asuna, player name Pythia. Doesn't even know that she's a player, but dreams of the Red and can see the future. Before this entire fuckup happened, I told her to leave the school grounds. I thought only players were at risk, so she was the only one that I managed to save.

None of these people deserved to die. None of them was ready for what happened.
And yet you only care about Mio's fate. Why? You didn't care when I told you that Rust Kaiser's death was a result of me forcing him to kill the only person that he was able to care about. You barely cared when I told you about the Hyades tournament, the players who died from it and the Hyades who were just scared girls who were hoping to escape from their Red World prison and see the real world again.
Why is Mio the most important?
She means a lot to me, but I'm not an omnipresent guardian angel. I'm one guy with incomplete information.
You know, I could have won this fight and saved Mio. I would just have needed to give the Chalice Queen armor to Cybele. She would have killed every single student of Seisin High, but everyone else would have survived, thanks to the power boost that she would have given me.

[1/2]

>>1307651
You see, Kazuya, I didn't KNOW that everyone would die anyway. Because I always run on incomplete information. I try my best, but I'm not like Pazuzu or Naoya. I don't have an enigmatic source of knowledge and I don't have the charisma to ask the right questions without accidentally intimidating someone.

I was trying to be like you, Kazuya. The good guy who tries his best to save everyone. But that doesn't work for me. I'm the Red Joker, bringer of death. I spent 100 years here in hell and learned to be really good at fighting. But don't expect me to be good at investigation and all that social stuff.
You want to prevent another of these incidents? Then live up to your role as the hero. As the guy worthy of the Midas armor. You have always been the socially perceptive one of us two. You can figure things out, I can achieve these things.
I work best when someone can actually tell me what the fuck is going on. You make the choices, I win the fights."


That's roughly my idea. Humanize all of the other people that Kazuya didn't care about. Show him that we will follow his advise going forward, because we KNOW that we are really bad at not being evil.

>>1307582
>we see a knight in shining armor who can't do bad.
>Implying that fact should show him that we put him on as much of a pedestal as he is putting us.
It's not quite like that, more that unlike everyone else he's uncorrupted by the Red World and is still ruled by his humanity, and it's a pretty sage bet that makes him the hero everyone needs (rather than the one they got, us). Also, given the armour he's not just a noble heroic person, he's quantifiably a noble heroic person. He just doesn't see it in himself yet because this is all still new to him.

>>1307653
>>1307651
I can back these

>>1307822
>>1307653
>>1307651
you for got to link it to >>1304619 bruh.

>>1307651
>>1307653
I don't know, while I feel like this is important stuff for Kazuya to know I feel like of course he's still really overwhelmed and is going to focus on the people he already knows, so blaming him for being most concerned with Mio doesn't make sense, even if I do approve of the overall attitude.

>>1307952
The hope here is that he'll realize that he's only getting the cliff notes version of the events. That he simply does not understand the scope of what we've been participating in.

>>1308048
>he simply does not understand the scope of what we've been participating in.
Man, he knows this all too well already and has said as much repeatedly. What he appears to be taking umbrage with here is that all of this essentially happened because we slept round our girlfriend's back, and that furthermore we did it to exploit someone emotionally vulnerable (however twisted and dangerous) purely for personal gain. The world ended because we were a philandering dickhead, and while all this calamitous alternate reality stuff is beyond Kazuya's comprehension at the moment, what he DOES understand is something as mundanely shitty and thoughtless as cheating on your girlfriend.

>>1308108
Wait, was Mio actually our girlfriend or did we just not dismiss her crush on us?

>>1308108
Also I feel like even if we hadn't slept with Cybele, all the killing we did would have been enough to make Mio flip out.

>>1308799
I don't believe a formal declaration was ever made, but when is it ever in relationships? We repeatedly took action to reciprocate her feelings over a long period, I'd say that counts.

>>1308799
>>1308974
Blame Wata, but we decided to accept her as our girlfriend when we tried to talk about the Red to her.
Which didn't work out.
Then we decided to take her as our girlfriend anyway.

>>1308108
So should we tell him that much less people would have died had we fooled Cybele more and flat-out rejected Mio?

>>1309887
>>1308108
I don't know, I guess while that's not necessarily exactly the takeaway I feel like the point is that this horrorshow isn't really a logical result of being shitty at relationships. Like yes, in a way all this is our fault, but in a way that's actually real, this is all Naoya's fault and maybe Hellebore's fault as well. ...Actually I feel like we've lost track of what we actually want to convey here.

I think >>1305600's revision of >>1305119
Seems to be closest to what we want to convey here?

>>1309929
I would like if we could still make mention of the real lives behind the players we'd been fighting at some point though, as >>1307651 suggested. In particular pointing out that Mio is not the only person that matters, and the part about how we could have prevented all of this if we'd fed Seisin high to Cybele, it hammers in the point that however flawed we are, things still aren't that clear cut.

>Like yes, in a way all this is our fault, but in a way that's actually real, this is all Naoya's fault and maybe Hellebore's fault as well
Plus there's this aspect of it. Everything we did was done because we had reason to believe at the time that it would help prevent exactly this outcome, and that was always what we were working towards. If we'd been willing to make more innocent sacrifices then maybe we could have stopped it, but we couldn't bring ourselves to. The whole situation was fucked, and we were fucked too, and despite our sincere efforts we failed to unfuck it, but we were always trying to, we were just beaten by people who actually DO want to see the world burn.

Man, as an aside the Red Joker is such a fantastic fucking Byronic hero.

Oh neat. This is still alive.

>>1310025
The thread or the quest?

>>1310027

The quest. I haven't read it since the White Joker tried to NTR us IRL.

Or actually, some time after gold joker and that guy who could read the thread except for things in spoilers? I only have vague memories.

>>1310031
>Or actually, some time after gold joker and that guy who could read the thread except for things in spoilers? I only have vague memories.
Ixion, the guy who introduced us to the magic of Tachyons.

You should catch up. Technically, the quest was supposed to have us die a few threads ago. We managed to achieve an unlikely chain of events that derailed everything.

>>1310033

Around which thread should I resume reading? I don't remember where I left off.

>>1310034
Thread 70 is where the Ixion encounter starts. So you should probably start somewhere around there.


As an aside, Thread 52 is still misarchived, as I just noticed.

>>1310033
where did the rails go?

>>1310095
They saw that the breaks had disappeared and went out to search for them.

>>1309989
I feel like with Mio at least, indulging her desire to pretend everything was normal because on some level we wanted that too is more accurate. Or did we actually believe that Mio was so unstable and volatile, any form of rejecting/informing her of the truth would make her freak out on an apocalyptic level?

Additionally, I feel like while telling Kazuya about Hecate is important as a humanizing thing, should we acknowledge that Hecate almost certainly had some ulterior motives for being around us, she just died she could unveil them but it's hard to care about that?

>>1310201
>Additionally, I feel like while telling Kazuya about Hecate is important as a humanizing thing, should we acknowledge that Hecate almost certainly had some ulterior motives for being around us, she just died she could unveil them but it's hard to care about that?
Good question.
I don't think it fits the flow of any of the arguments.
We can mention it later on. Maybe as a counterpoint to how Mio instantly faltered while we chugged on even know that Hecate had ulterior motives.

Mio probably didn't love us, but her image of us. This is not the kind of speculation that we should reveal to Kazuya, though.

>>1310271
Funny thing is the same could have been said of every character in the quest other than Akira.

>>1313929
Akira just wanted to sword really hard.

>>1313973

That's why he was the best.

Everyone gets a bit crazy for swording sometimes.

>>1305088

Has anyone considered that Kazuya likes Mio, platonically? He may not be romantically interested in her, but he's done everything he can to help her get closer to Joker. He's especially furious because of that.

>>1314144
Yeah, he did seem to care for her a lot. He mentioned our treatment of her constantly.

If we take that into consideration, we can fucking throw out the rest of our write-ins. In that case, the best idea would be to just kill him right now.

>>1314147

Mio seems to basically hit it off with anyone male, really. Even Bishamon was stunned when he met her. Unfortunately, she fixtated on Joker because people decided to kiss her really only on.

After that, there was really no shaking her.

>>1314147
Sure it's not just him being a bro and trying to prod his best friend into a relationship with a nice girl.

>>1314149
Ultimately even when Joker had a better grasp of her personality, he still proved unable to resist her charms.

>>1314147
That seems a bit too harsh anon, because I'm pretty sure Kazuya isn't dumb enough to think he CAN kill us, and he certainly can't leave the Black and defeat Naoya on his own.

>>1314147
>In that case, the best idea would be to just kill him right now.
He can have her if he wants to, desu. She's second worst girl anyway.

>>1314370
Dude, HE'LL TRY TO MURDER US NOW MATTER WHAT WE SAY if the speculation is true.

>>1314624
That's moronic even by the standards of this quest.

>>1314641
What variation of "yupp, there's more important people than your waifu who we've cheated on and given a fate worse than death" will NOT bring out a murderous rage on ANY character?

>>1314646
That seems like a pretty severe misrepresentation of the situation anon, I don't think any write-ins are dismissing that we fucked up with Mio, and your attitude is the kind of flailing around that makes stuff worse. Especially the "no matter what we say" part.

>>1314662
I was responding to the "he can have Mio" guy, who missed the point to an astounding degree.

The problem with "Kazuya is in love with Mio" is that half of the write-ins are along the line of "why do you only think about Mio?" and "have you ever thought about us?".
Both of which a guy in love would react really badly to.

>>1314677
But the person you responded to said that he might like Mio platonically. I do agree that judging by >>1304619 we should probably respond specifically with an acknowledgement of how we failed with Mio above everything else. I feel like >>1305702
has kind of the right idea, but we need to verbalize it properly. We kept Mio at an arm's length due to mourning Hecate and because Mio didn't actually WANT the truth, but we didn't force the issue or just shove her away like we should have because we liked the way she made us feel human (and also maybe because we were afraid some stupid bullshit would happen to her if we ever let her out of our sight, but maybe don't vocalize that part)

>>1304619
Let's break down Daegal's points
>1. Why would we sleep with Cybele?
>2. This current situation is all your fault
>3. You let me down/what the fuck is wrong with you
>4. You promised you'd take care of Mio

Which of these points should we focus most on addressing? >>1314677 seems to be in favor of 4 as the focus, which so far doesn't seem to be covered that well. ...Or is discussing this mostly pointless because the QM will just get snippets of what he considers the highlights and assemble it however he wants?

>>1315042
Well, we have to get through all of it before this talk is properly done, so the real question is what do we open with?

I'm thinking we start with 1, since the explanation is simple enough "We were using her", though we should present this as it was (however vulnerable and hurting, she had absolutely no regard for anything or anyone else and was as dangerous as any of the other villains in her own way). This leads into 2 and 3 vis a vis our being a shitty failure (>>1307653, >>1305119, >>1305600, >>1309989), which allows us to cover the stuff about how we're bumbling through this by the seat of our pants and trying to stack things in favour of the good guys, but are only human, and being only human leads us to 4, where we cover how we screwed up with Mio because of being human (>>1305809, >>1305702, >>1310201, >>1314719). The stuff about the other players (>>1307651) is good and we want that in there somewhere, probably either at the end round the Mio part (for "why only her?") or at the beginning around the Cybele part ("they'll do horrible monstrous things, but they're still people with human goals"). We also want to elaborate to Kazuya the fairly concrete reasons we have for having faith in him (>>1307700, >>1305905), though this doesn't fit anywhere in particular, so should probably just be slotted in when the issue of our belief in him comes up.

How's this sounding?

>>1315113
Gut very gut

>>1315113
That sounds about right, though I feel like cutting out Hecate is a mistake becuase that could do a lot to humanize us and Kazuya might respond well to that because we're speaking the language of heart.

Also tone is still tricky, but I'm not sure how to resolve that.

>>1315206
Another thing to keep in mind is what our desired outcome is. Like even though it hurts, I feel like maintaining our friendship with Kazuya is an untenable position and might not be worth attempting, but instead just... try to make sure he won't waste both of our time trying to kill us, either now or in the future?

>>1315206
Well, the Hecate stuff is in one of those posts, so it's on the list of stuff to factor in.

>>1315218
>try to make sure he won't waste both of our time trying to kill us, either now or in the future?
I...don't really expect this to be a problem honestly, the impression I got was less "This is your fault, and now I will kill you in revenge for it", and more "Anon you fucking IDIOT" angry friend type beating. If there's one person we can count on to not take stupid petty actions like that it's him, I think he knows that even if it's all our fault it's not as if we're actively working towards it.

>Another thing to keep in mind is what our desired outcome is. Like even though it hurts, I feel like maintaining our friendship with Kazuya is an untenable position and might not be worth attempting
>>1315206
>Also tone is still tricky
I'm thinking we need to just (as corny as it sounds) speak from the heart. Be honest and forthright about all of it, not damning or glorifying ourselves, just present the facts: the information we had at the time to act of off, the decisions we made and the reasons for those decisions, be they idealistic, pragmatic, selfish, compassionate, hotheaded or whatever. The tone to take away here is "Warts and All". We're not here to pass judgement on ourselves, that would just be self-indulgent. We're here to present who and what we are to Kazuya as we are, and allow him to be the one making final the decision about us, no matter what that decision may be. We deeply value his friendship, but accept that we may no longer be worthy of it (and that losing his respect is a small price to pay to keep him alive). I think if there's anyone Anon would trust to pass judgement on him it would be Kaz.

This, incidentally, might be a good place to include our thoughts about him.

I miss Hecate

>>1315358
I see two possible ways to get this information to him:
1. Say it all in a quiet voice. Just flat-out tell stuff.
2. Start off by shouting at him. Open up with the stuff that makes us angry. Then continue in a quieter voice with the other details.

Even if it is true, saying that not only did Mio not know who we really were, she didn't want to know the real us, she almost actively resisted until she had no choice, and thus the idea that she loved us is... Inaccurate at best, probably isn't something we should say to Kazuya right? Even if it's plausibly something that kind of got to Joker.

>>1317048
Well, unless we say that we were making this sacrifice of allowing her to ignore our true selves for love...

I don't think Kazuya would buy that, though.

>>1317064
Yes, because it would be not true. She actively resisted the truth, and though it was inadvisable, we humoured her anyway because we liked her and we liked the way she made us feel. Our motive was half selfish, but I feel that's not actually a huge problem in itself; one's actions being half selfish when it comes to love is kind of the norm.

>>1304674
I like this, but I do think we should open with something more along the lines of >>1306398

>>1321005
I like it too, but I worry it's a bit whiny and more focussed on Anon's fee fees. Obviously that's something we want to factor into our response, but I don't think it should be the whole thing either.

Well, in an attempt to tie some of this together (and with credit/apologies to the authors of the choice segments lifted and incorporated into this gestalt response), here's a spin on it (it might be a bit lengthy because of all the inclusions, sorry).

>>1304619
"I'M NOT A HERO!"

*pause*

"...I'm not. The man who wore this armour before me, he was a hero. I'm not him, I'll never be him. But I'm not a psychopathic megalomaniac either, I'm just a person, a broken fucked up miserable failure of a person. I always tried to fight the good fight, to save the innocent and thwart the evil. I try to save everyone, even though my gut tells me it's probably futile. But it can never be that simple, not for me. I'm the Red Joker, all I can do is destroy. At best I can destroy whatever threatens the people I care about."

"...I'm not at my best as often as I'd like. I let my feelings get the better of me. Mio? I knew she was important to this place somehow, and the longer I knew her the more sure I was. And she knew too. But she didn't want to, just wanted to deny it all and push it all down and live a normal life."

"I...I wanted that for her too, Kazuya. I had a gnawing feeling in my gut that something bad would come of it, but whenever I tried to tell her what I was, what *she* was, what could happen...? She wouldn't hear of it. Time and time again she actively resisted the truth, shied away from it for fear it could hurt her...and I indulged her, let her be sheltered because I was selfish, because I liked the way she made me feel again. I should have forced the issue, should have told her whether she wanted to hear it or not...but I couldn't. I wanted her to be happy, *needed* her to be happy. It hadn't been long since I'd lost...no, since I'd failed to protect Hecate. I was weak and angry and *hurting*...and Mio made me feel like a normal person again, for the first time in a long time."

"I kept her at a distance at first, felt like I would be betraying Hecate somehow. But as I scambled and searched left and right looking for her, or at least for revenge, and found nothing but dead ends and more questions...it started to sink in that she really was gone for me and I began leaning on Mio even more. We needed each other, but neither of us could bare to face the truth about ourselves, or each other. I would have gone to any lengths for her. And I tried to, and in the end that was what caused all of this. She deserved better, but so did everyone else."

>>1321584
"...I've been thinking a lot about what I've done Kazuya. How things might have turned out if I'd taken a different course of action. And you know something fucked up? There was a way I could have savd Mio, kept my promise to you prevented all of this. Do you know what it was? All I'd have needed to do was let Cybele win. Give her the Chalice Queen armour, and let her consume the lives of every last one of the Seisin High students. They'd have died horribly, but with that power I could have stopped all of this. And yet I didn't even consider it. I mean, would you have done it? Would you have ever been able to forgive or even look at me again if I had? It's monstrous, and I couldn't bring myself to do it. I tried to save everyone, and in the end I saved no-one. My failures were borne of trying to be the hero I'm not."

"I wasn't willing to go that far, but I still did awful things to try and keep up with the Smilers. What happened with Cybele...it wasn't something I'm proud of. She was like all Hyades, a monster: dangerous, deranged, without compassion or constraint or regard for anyone but herself or her champion. She *would* have gladly killed those students without a second's thought, and had no compunctions trying to bend me to her will with her powers...but she was still a girl. Still a scared, lonely, hurting little girl who just wanted to make sure she'd never be lonely or hurting again. Who just wanted to feel real sun on her skin and real wind in her hair, to love and be loved. To not live in a souless prison forevermore."

"They're all like that you know. Like Enfer, the guy with the bombs? His real name was Ren. He was a volunteer at an orphanage. The same one Mio worked at, in fact. They were good friends! Can you imagine how surprised I was that the mercenary mad bomber was really someone like that?
Or Calcite Arrow. No idea who he really was, but I do know that he hated me with every fibre of his being. And the reason for that? I killed his best friend, because he was a murderous psychopath who killed the girl I loved and gloated to my face about it. Rust Kaiser and Bell Zephyr just wanted to protect each other, the only people they had left, even if he was barely functional anymore, nothing would stop him. For all the masks they wear, these people are very much still human, motivated by human desires. Compassion, ideology, greed, hate, love..."

>>1321586
"But they're still a danger, still a threat to everyone blessed enough to have lived without knowledge of this place. I needed Cybele's power to fight them...so I played along with her. Made her think I was what she wanted me to be, indulged her, made her happy...and in the end, I betrayed her because I was trying to have it all and save everyone. Mio's mother Hellebore offered me a way out, a way to save her and the students, and I didn't look to closely because I was just so glad to have another option, a way to save Mio and the students...and of course, it was a trap, a prelude to all this madness. They even got to Cybele before me, I couldn't even save her. Tortured her, tortured me. She got to live just long enough to find out that the one person she thought it was safe to love didn't love her back. Even though she died in my arms, she died alone."

"I can't protect people. I tried to protect Hecate, and she... she's gone. I knew that against our enemies, being a paragon of justice wouldn't work. I had to fight dirty. Take every advantage I could get. Fight tooth and nail, blaster and fist for every inch I could gain. And in avenging her, I learned of what could have come to pass. I failed to protect Mio. I failed to protect all those who fought alongside me. I failed to protect those who stayed behind...and I even failed to protect the innocents who had no part of this."

"Every action I do fills me with doubt and dread. I've long since stopped caring if what I do is right, only if it would help me succeed. And for a power that would keep me alive, I felt that selling my body would be a just price. I knew it was wrong, but I had to prepare. To try and keep everyone safe."

"I put her through that because I was desparate for any advantage I could get against the Smilers, anything I could do to stack the deck against them, because for all my power? I really don't have a fucking clue what I'm doing anymore. Back when all I had to do was survive I could manage, but with all these factions and schemes piling into one another it's all I can do to barely keep afloat by whatever dirty means I can. I work off of whatever scarce information I can get my hands on, even though half of it is lies, and try to sort all of it out and make sure that on the whole and in the long run I'm doing the right thing. I try my best, try to make the right calls on all the hard, ruthless decisions placed in my way...everything I did was done because I had reason to believe at the time that it would help prevent exactly this outcome, and that was always what I was working towards. If I'd been willing to make more innocent sacrifices then maybe I could have stopped it, but I couldn't bring myself to. The whole situation was fucked, and I was fucked too, and despite my sincere efforts I failed to unfuck it. But I was always trying to, I was just beaten by people who actually DO want to see the world burn."

>>1321592
"Again and again I fought for what I cared for and again and again I failed. Now, the only thing I have left to fight for is you. I can understand if you don't want that. Why would you? I've failed everyone else I ever cared about after all. But no matter what you think of me, no matter how much you hate me, I'm afraid I can't take no for an answer. I *will* get you back even if it's the last thing I do. Because when I was at my lowest, when I saw what my failure had wrought and sunk to rock bottom...I found you, he friend who had always stuck by me no matter what. And realised who I'd been carrying this armour for all that time. It was never mine, it was just along for the ride until it found the one person it was made for, the only one worthy to wear it. Great heroes and noble people in the past always tried to obtain it, and every last one of them was rejected because they were still unworthy. But then I found you and all of a sudden I had hope again. It hadn't all been for nothing, something good came from my actions after all. I couldn't be the hero the world needed, but I could help him be what he was always meant to be. And when I saw you hurt, it was the most terrifying moment of my long, long life. I gave up my power to make sure you were safe, and I have no intention of stopping."

"I know it feels like I'm putting you on a pedastal, but I'm not. All I expect from you is for you to be you. You're a good person, the kind of person I was never able to be. You doubt yourself, doubt your ability, but it's not ability that matters, believe me, I know better than anyone. What matters is your character, and THAT is beyond reproach."

"So that's it. All I have is hope, and you, Kazuya. When I die, I want to know that I at least saved one person important to me. Because that thought is all that keeps me going now."

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>>1321584
>>1321586
>>1321592
>>1321599
How long did it take for you to write this presidential speech of pure autism? It does hit all the points, but I can't help but sense the redundancy.

>>1321613
There was so much stuff to pull from, I didn't want to miss too much that wasn't salient to his question or the points we were trying to make. By all means cut it down if it feels too redundant.

>>1321619
with all of this discussion about crafting the perfect hot-blooded speech to persuade Kazuya, I'm guessing Joker QM is gonna need another thread for this. We're at page 5 by the time of this post.

>>1321637
I kind of feel like he's holding off for a while because he needs some kind of consensus on what to say, considering this is such an important decision and there's so much we could tell him, some of which could have significant consequences if just blurted out.

>>1321584
>>1321586
>>1321592
>>1321599
Thank you for handing your essay in on time, Anon.
I'll have it marked within the next week.

>>1321661
I literally just copy pasted everyone else's posts.

>>1321661
Anyway, the hope was more to get our ducks in a row so we have a more concrete idea of what parts would work and what wouldn't, and start to formulate an actual response. Obviously I don't expect us to use the entire thing (or any of it, for that matter).

>>1321669
Is that an admission of plagiarism? You realise I can't accept the assignment now, yes?

>>1321687
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

>>1321690
Very funny, Anon. Now you've still got some time before the deadline, please try and come up with something original by then.

>>1321697
Yes Miss...

>>1321697
even in death and at world's end, sensei still wants anon kun to turn in his homework.

>>1321669
And even then you removed the references to Haze, which I think are kind of important.

>>1322624
Haze is important, but I'm not sure how he fits into that part of the response because it's otherwise about the people we've been fighting

>>1304619
"You see, Kazuya, I can only do what all the voices in my head tell me to do. Sometimes they do a pretty good job, but other times they don't seem to have paid attention to anything going on except the events right at that moment.

So they told me to fuck Cybele and then complained that I did it for the rest of /forever/."

>>1324723
Very good

>>1321584
>>1321586
>>1321592
>>1321599
Okay, I like it, you hit all the points I wanted to hit, but it's super fucking verbose. Like, subtext isn't just something that only JQOP can do with NPCs, we can also include it in our write-ins, and I think this post is in major need of dropping some text and adding in some things unspoken.

>>1325839
Actually, reconsidering it, I'm not certain that any of this is necessary. Trying to explain what we did with a long-winded speech is just going to come off as an incredibly conceited attempt at justifying an action that was terrible. So maybe we should limit this to just a few sentences.

"I'm *not* a hero, Kaz. This is what I've been trying to tell you, but you just didn't *understand*. Any justification I can give you is going to ring hollow. Because it *is* hollow. All of it."

Beat

"So here it is: I did what I did, all of it, every single goddamn thing I have done, because I thought it was my best option at the time, and oh hey wouldn't you fucking know it, I have a really terrible idea as to what that actually *means*. My perspective, in case you hadn't noticed, is *fucked*. I'm *not* like you. Black and white and shades of grey; All meaningless. I can only see the world through a shitty lens that stains everything red."

"So, Ka- Daegal. I let you down? *Good*. The sooner you see that I am not an example to follow, the sooner you can start being *better*."

Key point here being that Joker always took the option he thought was best, which means nothing because everyone does that. However, because Joker has a really fucky definition of what 'best' actually means, especially when it comes to morality, all of the decisions he made based on that broken definition were fucked from the outset. Kazuya is strictly a better person with a working moral compass, so his 'best option' is a vastly different beast from Joker's 'best option'.

Don't justify, don't whine about muh feelings, just explain that we never wanted anything to turn out this way, but we've been working from incomplete information not just strategically, but also morally.

>>1304619
>>1326019
Supporting this. Simple and gets the point across as best as we can for us. If he has any other questions we can fill him in, but that's all he needs to know.

>>1326019
>>1326246
Although we still need to tell him we're not going to leave him behind no matter how much he wants to give up at this point. If he protests it's because damn it he's our comrade, friend, and a good person and we just won't let that stand.

this is some advanced autism here, I'm impressed

>>1326283
I figured that was one of those unspoken things.

>>1326297
Hm, true. We can save that for when he gets mopey then.

>>1326291
Questers can go to surprising lengths from what I can tell.

>>1326019
>>1304619
While I'm not sure if Daegal will respond that well to this kind of message, even if we managed to edit out all the redundancy of the previous posts, Daegal probably doesn't want a dissertation either. So at least this is concise and poetic in parts.

>>1326361
Maybe it'll look better if we can put one foot on top of a bloody pedestal while we say it?

>>1326019
That's nice, but a bit too short.

At the very least, he will want to know what the fuck was up with that Cybele and Mio thing.
Maybe do tell him that we could have avoided all this had we dropped Mio like a brick and not indulged her.
However, mentioning this doesn't work in your short version. It requires buildup if it isn't supposed to sound like a copout.

>>1326391
We could talk to the NIHL sphere as if it was a skull.

>>1326019
Wait here's a problem, we can say that everything we did was because we thought it was our best option at the time but a: I feel like he'll really want us to elaborate with Cybele, and b: Mio wasn't the greater good, our interactions with Mio were wanting to be human

>>1321649
It doesn't really seem like he's the kind of person who cares that much for consensus when it comes to speeches.

>>1327843
It's not really about the greater good, though. The 'best option' can mean a lot of things beyond just crunching the numbers to make sure that (Right) > (Wrong), including things like Joker wanting to feel normal.

>>1327677
Exactly. A big ten paragraph speech that includes the explanation of everything that happened is going to sound facetious as fuck, and most of it would be Joker whining. I just don't think it fits. This leaves a lot of that unsaid but implied, so if he really wants/needs to ask after eating that bombshell, he's free to do so.

>>1327918
Do you really think your write-in would sound less facetious? Like what makes you so sure Daegal won't get annoyed by what he sees as Joker trying to distance himself through reciting edgy poetry? That refusing to even attempt to explain his reasoning and pretty much going "because I'm a terrible person" isn't going to be seen as self-depreciating and melodramatic?

I agree that what we have needs to be really pared down, but I'm not really sure you're on the right track here.

>>1328057
On the other hand, this quest can get pretty anime on occasion, and Kazuya himself is a pretty anime guy, and that was definitely an anime speech you just wrote, so... maybe it is the ideal response.

>>1328057
Well, it is melodramatic, I'll give you that. It's basically the norm for Joker Quest, and I like it. I was trying to mesh it with the style, though I'm not sure if I succeeded.

I don't think it would be seen as self-depreciating because it technically isn't. Joker isn't saying he's a terrible person, he's saying he did the best he could with what he had, which he did, and that expecting anything more was stupid. He's made it clear how skewed his perceptions are many times over, but Kaz doesn't buy it, and I think that forcing him to finally make an effort to understand Joker would offer the clearest explanation possible for his actions.

>>1325839
>>1326019
>>1326361
>>1327677
>>1327918
>>1328057
>>1328095
Yeah, as the writer of the essay I was kind of hoping to just lay out what we needed to get across and let people take the scissors to it and decide what was necessary and what could be spared in the name of brevity, but it seems like that wasn't really the issue.

The issue appears to be the dilemma that a monologue could be considered pompous and self indulgent and send the wrong message (and be needlessly verbose and clunky on top of that), but that on the other hand something brief and concise would completely fail to get across key information salient to both understanding the things we're trying to explain and more importantly to answering the questions Kazuya asked in the first place.

We don't want to recite Atlas Shrugged at him, but neither do we want to blow him off with a pithy response that doesn't really tell him anything he wanted to know.

Is this seeming to be the case to anyone else?

>>1328830
It's a bit of a head scratcher, yeah

>>1328917
A solution to both would be more of a question/answer session with Kazuya, that way he can request clarification on whatever points he wants one at a time, and we can give it to him without writing War and Peace.

>>1329028
But of course, to do this we'd need to know what his responses would be, so I doubt it'd be workable.

>>1329028
I figured that was going to come afterwards, if he's still missing a few things after finally understanding the situation and putting two and two together.

(Gentlemen - My apologies, but last week was utterly awful. Fortunately, the end of this one looks to be more promising. I'll consider the options; this thread will likely go down, but I'll see what I can do for the next one.)

>>1335846
No worries, sorry we're having so much trouble with this speech challenge.

>>1304619
"I let a lot of people down, Daegal. Hell, I'd say I let *myself* down the most. That's what happens when you do better at survival than anything else. You want revenge? You want payback? Do it better than me. I always took the worse of two options. You get strong enough, skilled enough, smart enough that you don't ever have to choose."

"Shut up and rest up. This Hell is a *long* crash course in survival. It'll be a good start."