CoLC crossover RP, main thread

"We can save that plan for if we start running out of people" Curly said as Lewis pulled away and Rick drunkenly encoraged the party to keep moving, sort of.

We might not even need to wait now thay we can do some healing"

Library, on phone with Ben

"Damn. ...Do you know if it's going to take him long? He'd be useful for helping with today's challenge."

edited 21st Aug '17 8:23:05 AM by Korodzik

Ben's brow furrowed and he gripped the phone tighter, looking mightily upset at what Garrett had just said.

"Rex is not useful!" Ben exclaimed into the phone. "He's a stupid dork who makes everything worse for people and only thinks about himself! If there's one place that Rex belongs where he'd be useful, it's behind bars, where he can't hurt anyone else ever again!" he insisted, his voice raising to a heated tone. He glared into the phone intensely.

Arcade glared up at Ben as he tried to block him from joining Eve. Luckily he seemed to be arguing with someone enough that he wouldn't notice Arcade slipping past. Taking the opportunity, Arcade moved around Ben and focused on the door again.

Sans started his tale by saying he was a scientist—he sure didn't act like the ones Rex knew. Sans looked at something on his cellphone while explaining he had found some kind of anomaly back in his world that messed around with timelines and periodically restarted time for unknown reasons. The fact that Sans could go back to square one without any warning was a feeling he assumed Rex couldn't even understand and while his amnesia sort of worked on the same principle, the teen really didn't want to correct him. It wasn't the time to argue who had it worse—and more importantly—it definitely wasn't the time to bring up more bad memories.

"I-I... I think I get the picture, yeah" giving up wasn't something he was known to do but dammit if thinking about that wasn't making him want to take a nap or something.

Oddly enough, the source was some random guy that had the power to rewind time—even after dying—and using his experience to defeat his enemies with little effort. That sounded straight out of an anime series. Rex chuckled at how similar the story was to a show he had seen a couple of days ago before his brain caught up with him and he was back to attentively listening to Sans and blushing because that wasn't the best time to laugh.

Speaking of the story, Sans had decided to step up and fight the guy because he was apparently the only one that could tell he had screwed around with time itself but—like everyone else—he couldn't defeat an enemy that had probably fought against him dozens of times already. Luckily, he was taken to the city before he could get killed and with the wish and everything he really had nothing to worry about back home anymore.

Still, that was quite a story and Rex couldn't help but feel uncomfortable about making Sans tell it, even if the skeleton was apparently a-ok with sharing his past.

"That's... yeah, that's just really really awful" Rex looked at the floor for a bit before continuing with the conversation. He had a lot of questions but he didn't feel like interrogating Sans right now "...why did the guy even want to kill you in the first place?"

"I'll only trade a Magisword for another Magisword. They're rather collectable in nature and all, you know." Ruffling around her bag and then pulling out eight more of the things from her collection and enlarging them, the woman held up the oddly themed artifacts in between the crooks of her fingers like the world's weirdest Wolverine impersonator.

Rex actually seemed really affected by the story, it actually surprised Sans a little how he wasn't even proudly saying something along the lines of "well, we fixed it!" and instead he looked downright melancholic. He then made one simple question, but one whose answer was really loaded.

"if you had the power to do anything you want with no lasting consequences, wouldn't you be tempted to do bad things?" Sans asked, not sounding judgemental but instead his tone of voice was just flat, "when you can control time like that, you might want to test the possibilities, the what-ifs. 'what if i say this to that person?', 'how can i befriend this person?', "can i help those people?' and so on, you experiment and get your results, much like a scientific experiment."

Sans paused for a moment, his smile gaining a bit of an edge to it.

"but eventually you will run out of possibilities, or maybe just get tired of it. people become predictable, you start being able to accurately predict everything they will do and then you have to find something else to do and then you begin getting tempted to do things you never thought of before. 'what if i insult this person?' 'what if i hurt this person' 'what happens if i kill this person?', 'what happens if i kill everyone?'"

The light in Sans' eyes seemed to fade for a brief moment as he saw his last sentence, but they came back soon afterwards.

"what i mean is, they didn’t do it because they're evil, or because they thought it was the right thing. they did it because they could, and because they could, they had to. my world exists as a game and in that game, the human is the protagonist."

He then cast a glance towards Friendship and Trust before then looking at his surroundings again. He seemed to consider saying something, but hesitated to do so.

"you said you sold out your friends to get away from your boss didn't you?" Sans' focus returned to Rex, "being able to escape without bringing any consequences upon yourself. you sell them, get your money, leave and never have to deal with any of it again now that you're free. it's easy to see why you did that." Sans shrugged and then gave Rex a look that seemed almost proud in a way "although that doesn't suit the you i know. so i'm willing to bet you went and fixed that problem already, you did sound like you regretted it."

edited 21st Aug '17 10:50:06 AM by FullMoon

Outside Library

"Well I'm sure your book is... great." Makoto took a few steps out of the Grinch's way. "Don't let me stop you from checking to see if the library has it. I should probably get going anyway..." Since there was pretty much nothing left for her to do while the Riddler and Garrett hid themselves, and she wasn't sure if she could stop herself from going at them if she followed them inside. What else was even in this city? Anat glanced at Reigen and then took the form of a motorcycle again, allowing Makoto to get on.

"Um, I guess it was nice meeting you two?"

I began to object, but realized I didn't have an argument against her. Not one that wouldn't reveal reasons I didn't want to say to her face anyway. After some struggling for words, I gave up.

"...I guess you're right. Forget I said anything, I guess it was kinda silly."

I leaned against her. It was nice, what for I couldn't place. I don't know. It just was.

A black and pink plastic umbrella opened directly above Rex, and then fell on top of him due to gravity. He'd probably complain but there was a Madoka on it.

Cole leaned back a bit when Ben guided his gaze away from the door, looking up at him with some clear degree of confusion, but then it seemed clear enough that whatever he was looking at involved this...quest to help Silanea. He looked around again at all the people around, and contemplated what Morty said, looking over his shoulder towards the doorway into the room.

Then he heard Arcade and Dave arguing, apparently over Arcade's desire to go into the door as well, and Cole looked back as Ben tried to block them, before getting distracted with the...phone? That was what those were called, right?...that he was talking to someone else on. Arcade seemed to take this chance to try and enter after the others as well.

Cole winced a little, starting to reach out one hand as though to try and grab Arcade away, but then flinched back for a second. He glanced around the room again, looking rather worried...and perhaps a bit guilty...before steeling his expression, looking rather determined, then leaning back in to look into the door as well.

edited 21st Aug '17 5:31:31 PM by ColeMinor

Library

Garrett, shaking his head, simply ended the conversation and put the phone back in his pocket. Kids...

"It's not a bad backup plan" Curly said, wrapping her arms around the tall ghost for a moment "Everything is gonna be fine, one step at a time, okay?"

"God, this is all painful to listen to, ... *urp* stop hugging and crying, and let's go th...th-throw more dice so we can kill shit."

The gravitas of this statement was somewhat undercut by the fact that Rick was currently slumped over Lewis's shoulder even as the pink-haired ghost was trying to sidle into Curly for a hug.

"I dunno, I mean... go for it if you want." Morty shrugged. "Mostly - I mean - you roll dice at stuff while a robot plays bad music at you, I dunno." Then Cole did so, probably to the consternation of everyone else there in the room.

"He'll be fine." said Morty, staring at the door and Cole's now motionless body. "I think."

edited 21st Aug '17 5:34:56 PM by Locoman

Eve|Mindscape|Someone This Young Should Not Have A Working Knowledge Of The Brains Of Psychopaths

Eve kept listening. When Rex posed his question, she answered, too quietly to be heard. "...because they could." Why did people kill others, or do anything? Because they can. When Sans gave a similar answer she just nodded.

Sans mentioned what Rex had said before about selling his friends to a mob boss. "...I know you don't want my opinion... but all I was saying before was that...... it doesn't matter...you don't want to hear it anyway..."

I gave a passing glance at a certain wasted fucker, but otherwise didn't give a response to anything besides Curly.

"........I know she'll be fine. Ya guys have this in the bag."

Library

"To give them pies - what do you think I want with them you dingbats? I'm trying to get some use out of some dumb muscle to help with today's challenge. Now, unless you want to help as well, you'd be better off mopping a floor or whatever it is useless people do." the Riddler said, waving off the interfering louts and taking Samson's advice through the city. He followed kept hugging the walls sharply and making turns until he found the prison. Looking like an antelope as he ran, Riddler picked up the pace to compensate for his shorter size.

Sans explained that the human that attacked his world wasn't really after anything other than his own amusement. According to him, he had gotten bored with the predictability that came with knowing all possible futures and decided to experiment how far he could take it by destroying everything and everyone.

"I don't really get that. I would use a power like that to save more people and, uh, other minor stuff—maybe pull some pranks—but that's it"

More interestingly, the skeleton mentioned that his world was just a videogame for the human. One where he was the protagonist that could do anything without consequences.

"That's a weird comparison. Most videogames are about saving the world"

Rex visibly recoiled when Sans brought up the teen's past in Hong Kong. Of course, he had basically shouted it for everyone to hear but the comparison still hurt. At least Sans realized he would have already taken steps to fix his mistake.

"That wasn't me, not anymore. I can't even remember doing it. But... yeah, we made up"

Lewis decided to ruin the moment by creating an umbrella and making it fall on top of Rex's head, which promptly bounced and fell on the floor. And to top if off it had a picture a Madoka on it. Was that some kind of practical joke designed to lighten things up or was the revenant still sore about whatever had sparked the physical fight several minutes ago?

"Really funny, man. I'm gonna take my chances with the storm. It's not like it can kill me"

Eve gave her two cents on the situation before deciding to shut up because Rex was not going to want to listen to her. It was nice seeing that she was finally developing some self-awareness. This made Rex curious enough to actually want to hear what she meant to say. He knew it probably wouldn't be pretty but at least knowing Eve had realized when to shut up meant she deserved a chance.

"Eh, I've heard worse already. Come on, what's on your mind?"

"yea, that's about what i figured. i still wouldn't trust you with time control powers though, sorry, kinda hard to after what i've dealt with." said Sans in response to Rex's initial comment.

Rex did seem to have misunderstood one part of the explanation. It wasn't too hard to see how it happened though, that was probably a more difficult thing to wrap his head around.

"i think you got it wrong. my world literally exists in other universes as some kind of videogame where you play as the human. silanea and i even saw the fanboys playing it in the cinema one day. some games have multiple endings, y'know, i just happened to be picked from the bad one." Sans shrugged.

That conversation seemed to be done now, so Sans could focus on Friendship and Trust now, especially since him mentioning Silanea gave him a good way to flow into another topic.

"so if the root of the guilts is the part of silanea that blames herself for what happened, doesn't that mean that the root would be herself and all her self-loathing?" he suggested.

edited 21st Aug '17 8:50:49 PM by FullMoon

Eve|Mindscape|She Literally Travels With An Ex-Assassin

Eve blinked. "...you're beating yourself up about something you don't remember?" She inquired, an incredulous look on her face. She shook her head. "...all I was trying to say was that you are clearly contrite...you're not likely to repeat it... that's all..." She turned and walked away. She turned back for a moment. "...you're not the only one with mistakes in their past....and mine.... are worse... but I can't empathise, right?"

"Hmph!" Little Spiderbee's voice responded, and one could practically hear the slight pout in her expression. "I'm not that naive and gullible for a story, sir; I can tell you're just trying to trick me into letting you continue to use the channel. But since I can't force you off, I'll just have to make you want to leave" the fairy continued, then could be heard a little farther from the microphone calling, "Friend! Hello, come here please..."

There was a bit of silence as she stopped transmitting. Then almost a minute later, there was a brief, inhuman chitter on the channel, before more silence. "Alright, go ahead and continue sir; if you think you can stand it!" Little Spiderbee's voice then told Wang in a slightly sly tone. From then on, when Wang or Hoji tried to talk on the news channel, their sentences would get constantly interrupted by loud noises of inhuman screeching and chittering.

"What? They... Ah damn it" Dave muttered, before shaking his head and sighing in irritation. "Alright, kid put me next to the little guy so I can start scanning him, and you start scanning the toddler for me" the doctor then told Ben, motioning at the now stock still Arcade and Cole.

"USELESS!? I'LL SHOW YOU USELESS YOU JERK!" Louie yelled angrily, letting go of Thomas' broom to drop to the floor and advance on Riddler, but Thomas grabbed his arm to stop him, then whispered something with him.

When Riddler then left the library, there was a distinct feeling of persons following him. The biggest clue was probably the sudden barrage of phaser stun shots coming from the same library door he'd just left out of, from Wells, Nails, and Phillip. They'd just stormed out of the door not long after he had, and were now liberally firing their phasers towards him.

"That is affirmative. Though now his timeline has been altered into a book spinoff" Tester added in when Sans explained about his universe being a video game. "Bleeding Effect typically titles the game as 'Undertale'. Human child player character is typically of androgynous gender named 'Frisk'. Commonly is shipped with three archetype endings, based on whether the human child killed nobody, committed genocide, or killed some but not all monsters" the AI explained, and as his screens turned on and off, this time they showed examples of each thing he was speaking of, from various iterations of Undertale.

Meanwhile, Friendship looked down slightly, deep in thought. "I... I'm still not sure. But it being herself, that does make some sense, I think" Friendship admitted.

"Before you go, there's a couple more things we should tell you" Trust then spoke up. "Down there, closer to the root, the Guilts will be angrier. They won't be holding back like they've been up here. And, I'm pretty sure trying to talk to them to weaken them like you did with Resentment won't work" he then explained.

"Unless, maybe you can reach out to the root itself, but the last time I saw it, it was completely encased in something, and I don't think it could hear me" Friendship added in.

"It seems you have reinforcements" Tester then announced, as with that pixellation effect, Arcade and Cole appeared not far away from the group. Cole was a toddler still, but Arcade was no longer tiny compared to him, given the effects of the mindscape. "Greetings, you will need..." the AI trailed off as it approached the two, his screen still flashing as he went silent.

"I know of this one. He is illiterate. Someone will have to explain the rules to him" Tester then mentioned, as with another pixellation effect, another copy of the simple rulebook he'd made back at the start of the mindscape appeared in front of Arcade.

edited 21st Aug '17 10:38:33 PM by FirockFinion

After Sans explained his comparison of the death of his people with a videogame was more literal than Rex thought, Tester showed on his screens what they endings looked like. This made Rex realize three things. Firstly, that the game's graphics sucked. Secondly, that the guy he had been picturing was actually a child. And thirdly—and more importantly—that he wasn't expecting a literal game to be how Sans' world worked. Of course, the fact that it was represented as a fictional work had already been established but this seemed to go beyond just that.

"...huh. So, that's a thing" Rex said scratching his head.

At least Eve was making some progress as she felt surprised that Rex could feel guilty about doing something he didn't really remember doing.

"It's kinda hard not to"

She tried to comfort Rex in her own words. And while he was thankful, Rex couldn't help but be a bit annoyed at how much Eve liked to bring up but never actually mention her past mistakes.

"Come on, let's stop with all the secrecy, ok? You can tell me what happened. I'm not gonna judge you"

But that had to wait since the party gained two new members. And they weren't all that impressive in the firepower department.

"What are you doing here?!" Rex sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Things were going so well up to this point.

The first thing Arcade noticed was that it was raining. He tipped his head back with an almost mystified look on his face. He was slowly brought out of his reverie by the voices speaking to him.

"Who's il-" he started to ask before looking to the side and spotting Cole.

He stared at the toddler for a few seconds before saying, "Cole! you heard Morty! There's fighting in here, you could get hurt!" He couldn't understand why Cole would risk himself like that.

Turning back to Tester, Arcade jumped in slight surprise when the rulebook appeared before him. He flipped through the pages as Rex appeared annoyed at having Arcade join.

"I would've joined earlier if I knew there was fighting," he said, "I'm here to help you. Though, I have to admit, I wasn't expecting this..." He trailed off and continued leafing through the rulebook.

Tester actually went through the trouble of elaborating on the whole videogame thing, even mentioning that thanks to the divine intervention his world was now a book. The first thing that came into mind was that it could mean that the human, apparently named Frisk, would not be able to reset in there but... It was hard to tell. He also showed the supposed endings, which went mostly as he expect, except for the part where, for some reason, a second human was shown in the "kill them all" ending.

"wait... huh...?" said Sans, as he looked at the screen.

He didn't stay thinking about it for too long though because Friendship and Trust soon got his attention again

"reach to the root, huh..." said Sans, trying to think of what they could even say to the root to weaken it, "'kay, thanks."

And then suddenly things got a lot more stressful when it turned out that Cole, of all people, got himself in the mindscape. As a toddler, which meant he couldn't even fight properly.

"cole, what the heck are you doing here?!" Sans hurried over to where the kid was, seemingly not even noticing Arcade's presence, "you said you were going to stay in the library!"

As he said his last sentence Sans had a brief look of realization that he had actually trusted a 3 years old to stay in place for longer than 10 minutes, again. At this point his only reaction was to sigh.

edited 22nd Aug '17 4:29:28 AM by FullMoon

Eve|Mindscape|Skewed Priorities Much?

Eve paused. "... I am ninety-five percent sure you don't want to know, Rex, and a hundred percent sure I don't want you to know," she answered. "...and you had a chance to find out, and you blew it, remember?Though I suppose it's still open." she finished before turning to see ... Arcade? What was he doing here?

Well, reading a rulebook, obviously. And based on Sans' reaction, Cole was here. Who was now a toddler. That was going to be fun. Eve just walked up to and tapped Arcade on the shoulder.

Arcade was fascinated by how intricate the game was. Everything was simplified into numbers and dice rolls— the families on the Strip would've loved it. From what he could gather, he had information to read about what he himself could do. Before he could check, someone tapped him on the shoulder.

Looking down, Arcade saw the one person he entered the mindscape for. Well, he probably shouldn't have been so distracted by the book. No matter, once he noticed her, he began to grin. With a relieved, "Eve," he lent down and pulled her into a hug.