Catch-all: Taichi

[ercnerd]

Comments

[goalsides]

That's exactly why I'm telling you. I didn't get to share last night, and I'm locked out now so I'm leaving it to you. If I find anything else I'll let you know to update the others, too.

[ercnerd]

You can always ask one of us to let you in, you know. It'd save me the trouble of using my breath.

[goalsides]

I might. Maya, Sagihara, and Lucretia all said they'd let me back in whenever I wanted. But I figured they would listen to you the most about this kind of thing.

[ercnerd]

[He wonders about that. If it were him, he would've relayed the information to Lucretia.]

. . . Before you go, I have something to tell you.

[goalsides]

[it's fine. he likes sieghart enough and figures it'll eventually make its way through.]

Sure. What's up?

[ercnerd]

Did you ask the other three about what happened from the hangar and onward?

[goalsides]

Yeah. I talked to all four of you. Why?

[ercnerd]

Then you heard about how we died, right?

[goalsides]

Multiple times. The collars and everything, and every time it was just a bad end before you rebooted to the last place you were.

[...he at least looks a little remorseful about that.]

I'm sorry it happened to you guys.

[ercnerd]

My immortal body is used to it.

I didn't tell you when you asked for a reason, so I'm just making sure that you're aware of it now. We completed the map, but I have a feeling there'll be more of these to come.

[goalsides]

I get the feeling, too, especially now that there's the idea we're just a part of someone else's story.

I talked to Chad about maybe trying to see if they can track people when they disappear if it happens again. No promises, but it was something to consider.

[ercnerd]

[There's a beat before he sighs.]

I thought I was done being part of someone's story . . . It never ends.

[goalsides]

Destiny's weird like that. [there's a half-grin.]

But now that we know about this possibility, there's a chance we can change the story before it's over.

[ercnerd]

Stories like these are obstinate and prone to self-correction. It's going to take a lot of legwork to challenge ths one's course.

[goalsides]

You don't think people will put in the legwork this time?

[ercnerd]

It's not that I doubt it so much as I find it troublesome. If this were one of Rin's dreams, we could've prevented all of this just by standing still and doing nothing.

[goalsides]

[he seems to think...]

...who's Rin?

[ercnerd]

A girl I know from my dimension.

She has an exhausting habit of pulling people into her nonsensical dreams. I'd say they share similarities with this place, but I've never known them to be harmful.

[goalsides]

Huh. [thinking...] How do you get out of her dreams, usually?

[ercnerd]

The trick is not to trigger the story in the first place. Don't jump down the rabbit hole if you know what's inside. Once you do, the only recourse is to go through the story by completing the tasks ahead of you.

[goalsides]

...you know. We all agree we didn't ask to come here and we didn't apply to this school, but do you think that we accidentally fell down the rabbit hole in the first place?

[ercnerd]

Rather than accidentally, we might have been shoved into it.

[goalsides]

Rin's never inside her own dreams, is she? She controls them from the outside?

[ercnerd]

It's her dream. Of course she's inside. She just assigns herself the most convenient role and makes everyone else do all the work.

[goalsides]

Sounds like a huge pain. [who just allows that???]. I was just wondering. I thought maybe there would be parallels that give us an idea of what's going on. Yamato and I are noticing some patterns from things we've experienced before. I'm trying to see if other people have, too.