★ WEEK THREE: HAVE GUNS! WE'LL TRAVEL ★

[modaphor]

[And so the newly-minted residents of Gun Town lived happily ever after, and Arche received one of her cores back.

The good news is, the reinstallation process required about as much effort as "put the core in the dispensing box and wait"; the slightly less good news is, getting a pack of memories back all in a rush is never an easy process, and it's entirely possible that Arche might be a little disoriented when talking to people. At least she'll probably know a little more about the facility and its circumstances than she did before?

For those keeping tabs on Arche's cat, he seems to have figured out that good-smelling things come from the kitchen and there are many comfortable sleepy-places in the communal lounge, so while he can still be found anywhere in the complex at any given time, those are where you're likeliest to spot him on a regular basis.

Come Tuesday, Arche will announce her successful location of another core; she's getting better at finding them, and fixing up the gateway won't take nearly as long this go-around. Expect another Friday mission, everyone!

But in the meantime, your time is yours, and the facility and Arche are still available to you. If you've been exploring, you might want to consider meeting up with your fellow agents and sharing the wealth; you know what they say, several heads are better than one. (Unless you're a hydra. Then nobody wants that many heads. Especially not Hercules.)

Have a good week, everyone! Who knows what adventure will be waiting for you come Friday...]

SUNDAY | MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY

[OOC: As with last week, if you want to talk to Arche, please use the subheadered comments! Also, we had some agents looking around for clues last week, so as a way of encouraging and streamlining that —

If you intend to look for clues, please explicitly mention what sort of thing you're looking for and approximately where you are looking, and consider asking for mod attention in the comment header so I can find it easier! Thanks, everybody!

ALSO: Because of your valor and prowess on this past investigation and roundtable, everyone gets two free spins in the Prize Machine. HOORAY!]

Comments

[nekromanteia]

Tobias, was it?

[Jade glanced up from the book in front of him, adjusting his glasses. This was certainly unprecedented, but after Labrys and Arche he was beginning to expect just about anything.]

Nice to meet you a little more properly.

[thermals]

[Hey, at least he's not a robot or an AI.]

Yeah. Still mostly a bird, though, don't worry.

[nekromanteia]

Stranger things have happened, I think.

[BOY HAVE THEY EVER]

[thermals]

You mean like turning Little Red Riding Hood and her Grandmother into marksmen?

[nekromanteia]

...Well. We accomplished what we needed to, correct?

[if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid]

[thermals]

We did. I mean, it was a lot easier than stealing the boat.

[Oh, it was stupid, but it's...still kinda cool.]

[nekromanteia]

Far more straightforward, too. After all, there was no guarantee he would have continued on and found the cottage in time even without the boat. While I must say firearms aren't my specialty, it was a good solution.

[thermals]

That's true. It's a better ending anyway, since grandma gets to make it in the end. More interesting too, if you ask me.

[nekromanteia]

...I'm still not entirely clear on the point of that story as Yosuke told it. Why would anyone write a cautionary tale quite that graphic and surreal to begin with?

[thermals]

A lot of people seemed to write fairytales like that way back when. Little Red Riding Hood isn't the only story like that.

Another one I can think of is "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". In that story, a shepherd boy pretends to see a wolf and cries for help, then laughs at the townsfolk who were tricked into coming. He does it a few more times until a real wolf comes along, and when he actually does need help nobody comes. In some versions, he gets eaten along with all of his sheep.

[Tobias shrugs.]

It's supposed to teach kids not to lie...like how Red Riding Hood teaches you not to be too trusting with strangers, I guess.

[nekromanteia]

...Is there some kind of epidemic of roaming wolves in your world?

[Seriously. Auldrant's got monsters for days, but they're not all wolves.]

[thermals]

Not really. They were probably a problem back when the stories were written...I don't know for sure. A lot of stories have animals like that in them. If it's not a wolf, it's a bear or a fox or something.

[nekromanteia]

I suppose that makes sense, to a point. Although it never would have occurred to me that 'watch out for carnivorous monsters' would warrant cautionary fiction at all, so I fear I might be out of my element with this.

[thermals]

If the rest of the pocket dimensions we have to go to are like that one was, I'm not too worried about us being able to figure out where we are, at least. A pretty good chunk of us seem to have some sort of idea...and if not, it can't be too hard to talk it out.

[Right...]

[nekromanteia]

It's true that we seemed to catch on quickly...I'm just concerned the rest may not be so simple, and there's very little I for one can do about that.

[thermals]

[Tobias nods at that, sitting up a bit straighter.]

We're going to have to work together to figure them out, whatever we end up running into.

[He...might have to have a talk with Shijima before the next one. He does not want another repeat of that.]

But maybe Arche can help us out more if we need it, now that she's getting some of her memories back.

[nekromanteia]

It's actually regarding working together that I wanted to talk to you and Yosuke about.

[sweet yulia is jade asking for help WHAT AN OCCASION]

...What other such stories do you know about? There must be some more commonly known than others, aren't there?

[thermals]

[Quick where's Chie with her camera when you need her.]

There are, yeah. Fables and fairytales like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jack and the Bean Stalk, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Tortoise and the Hare...there are hundreds of them.

[nekromanteia]

[Jade was carefully filing these titles away when a thought occurred to him. Of course other worlds needed cautionary tales and fables.]

[Other worlds didn't have their futures written from birth, did they?]

That's... [Distracted by this sudden revelation which had been staring him in the face, Jade hesitated and spoke a little more slowly.] ...interesting. Auldrant doesn't have any of those, or at least not that I've ever read.

[thermals]

Auldrant is where you're from, then?

[He can imagine it's probably not much like earth as he knows it at all, given what he knows of Jade so far.]

[nekromanteia]

Right. I presume it's not very different in structure to Earth, considering we're able to coexist in a similar environment.

[So it's not like either atmosphere is poison, is what he's getting at.]

Culturally, on the other hand, it seems we couldn't be further apart.

[thermals]

[Dude, if you came from a world where the atmosphere was poison, that would both be incredibly metal and absolutely terrifying.]

Yeah, that's probably safe to assume. I'm guessing you don't exactly have a problem with wolves posing to be grandmothers in your world, meaning people didn't feel the need to write stories about them.

[nekromanteia]

Not quite. We have wandering monsters, of course, but I've certainly never heard of one that dressed like someone's grandmother.

[...um back up you have what]

[thermals]

[...okay you can't just slip something like that in without explaining because what now.]

Wandering monsters?

[nekromanteia]

...You really don't have those? Yosuke thought it was odd as well.