Child's Play

[Idran1701]

Sam just stares, utterly unnerved by the scene, not wanting to even think about what was going on when this was recorded. "This...um...it's...it's from a show or a book or a comic or something...um...right? Thirteen's just playing? 'Cause she never yells, so...it's gotta be just a game or something, right?"

"Or...or maybe like Silvie said, it's not really Thirteen or something...or maybe it's fake even and someone just made it up to mess with us! That's probably it I bet...right, guys?"

[Kelne]

Well, that hadn't exactly been encouraging. "I don't know," Emily said, "I mean, there have been suggestions that there's a war coming in the future. It's really a question of whether all this," she waved a hand at the crates, "suggests things have somehow gotten worse. I think we need to put everything together and work out where to go from there."

[NebulaQueen]

"I think this is more serious than a game, Sam." Silvie gulped, and said, "Emily's right, lets check out the rest of these crates."

And with that, Silvie materialized a crowbar, and went to work on the nearest one.

[BrainWalker]

Max is taken aback.

"That was... pretty intense." Somehow it sounded kind of familiar, though. Maybe like something from a movie or something? Well, that's not really important right now.

"One thing's for sure, if we run into our Thirteen, we really need to show her this and see what she knows about it, if anything."

Max continues helping with the communal crate-opening effort, and tries to forget how scary super-pissed villain-palette Thirteen is. Not having much luck with that.

[Shinigori V2]

As the kids keep opening crates, they simply find more of the same as before. All said, when they're all open, there's nearly a gigabyte worth of material here.

[Besyanteo]

Enzo comes out of deep dive, and looks like he might be about to speak when he stops short looking at the frozen image of this other Thirteen.

"... What did I miss?"

[ChristianC]

Alexis had watched the recording of Thirteen silently, her clear blue eyes showing no emotional reaction to what was happening. Then when the others began to speak she cleared her throat and looked between them.

"Is this from the future?" she turned to glance at Enzo, her frosty glare piercing and unblinking before she looked back at the image of Thirteen. "She told us she's a part of the Wunderkind project, will be, or was. I think it's pretty obvious what happened there." she narrows her eyes just slightly. "D52 aren't honest with us. They don't tell us everything there is to know, but they expect us to just help them out? Logically they'd at least treat us as allies, but we're children to them. Powerful children that they try to keep happy and occupied with stupid stuff so we won't ask questions."

She held the gun she'd gotten up and looked around, saw one of the dwarf workers and took aim. "I learned to kill during my training. They taught me ten different points on a human's body that are unguarded in 56,7% of the uniforms and armors of the known world's nations. Why would you teach a child this and then have them run around fighting criminals like we were Ellastic or something?" she aimed at the dwarf with the silenced pistol and for a few moments she looked like she was going to shoot it. But then she lowered the gun and sighed, shuddering slightly.

"Enzo, did you find out anything about these boxes? If there's a war coming, someone ought to know, right?"

[Besyanteo]

Alexis's statement left Enzo looking confused and a little worried. They had to trust D52. What would they have if they couldn't have that? Even if it was possible it wasn't acceptable right now. He wasn't prepared to consider it, and told himself it was just Alexis acting funny under the influence of the inverted fire chip she had equipped. He start to speak looking uncertain, but improves as he goes on.

"Uh-uhm. It says that the file is 50 years old. I wanted to make sure we learned everything we could out here first before we looked at anything more closely and risked damaging the file... It's a compressed folder right near this relative 'spot' on the drive. I guess it makes sense..."

He looked at the smoking ouroborous symbol as he spoke the last three words, looking put off all over again. Everything was getting weird suddenly.

[Shinigori V2]

"This is crap." Kid says.

She steps forward, kicking over one of the piles of data. "D-52 saved my life. Saved most of our lives. Why would they double cross us or something? More, we're just kids. What reason would they have to screw us over?"

[Besyanteo]

Enzo looked a bit nervous as he looked between the girls.

"Uhm... I think that Kid is right Alexis... D52 doesn't have any good reason to mess with us like you're saying. And, uhm... I guess they haven't had you shoot anyone yet, but is that really a bad thing? I'd be more worried if they had you doing lots of solo missions to go shoot people..."

He stopped, feeling a little lame and unsure of himself. He knew he meant what he said, but it was hard to say it with confidence. It always had been for some reason. God he felt so lame.

[Idran1701]

"...Yeah, Alexis...um...Mr. Rivendare's always been nice to us, and...and we learned all that stuff so we could help people, that's all." Sam sounds a little unsure himself, even more so than usual. "And...um...wouldn't they tell us if that's what they wanted us to do? I mean..."

He rubs at his wrist, trailing off; she does make some sense, but he doesn't want to think of D52 as bad. They helped him and they're helping his mom, bad guys don't help people...unless they want something else but...

He scowls, looking away from Alexis and trying to stop thinking about all of this. He sends off a quick message to Enzo alone: what if she's right?

[Besyanteo]

<i>Then we need more to go on than a few weird things happening to be sure of that. We have so little to go on right now, we could make almost anything we want out of it. We have to learn more before we decide anything about anything.</i>

Enzo looked at the others, wondering what they might be thinking about all this.

[NebulaQueen]

"Whoa whoa whoa. hold up." Silvie raised her hands, and said, "We don't even know if this is our Thirteen, or if this is part of the same timeline, or what. Unless we can get more info, this could mean anything."

[ChristianC]

Alexis stared at Kid with a surprised look on her face and then sneered, shrugging. She half-listened to the others before she somersaulted backwards, landing on a tree-branch and looking down at them.

"Seriously? Not one of you thought about this?" she whipped back a strand of her hair and looked between Enzo and Sam, "We're not living in a game. I've read books, I've looked at movies like a good girl. And you know what I've learned?" she glared at them with a surprisingly adamant expression. "No one's ever the Bad Guy, he doesn't exist. Not until someone wins."

She sat down and dangled her legs, "I know you all think I'm saying this 'cause I'm using my chip, but I'm the same person. Only difference is that I'm the part of me that honestly don't care about anything, If D52 wants me to kill people, I'll do it. They brought me back to life for this job, so either I do it or I'm dead again."

She looked over at Silvie and shrugged, "Timelines? You're right, this could mean anything, and right now I want to know what it means. I don't care about whose side I'm on, but I'd appreciate being told the truth. Maybe it's time we tell nice ol' mister Rivendare about Thirteen?"

[Besyanteo]

Enzo stared at Alexis. Then he looked at the others. Well, if she wasn't going to listen to him there was the other way of going about things.

"Anyone who honestly thinks we've been betrayed by someone here in some way, raise your hand and we'll totally go talk to Rivendare about the Wunderkind girl from the future he's never heard of and has no reason to believe exists. We'll hope he believes us and stuff and be really really insistent and stuff. Otherwise, I say we open up that compressed file and see if we can learn anything more from it."

He did not raise his own hand.

[Shinigori V2]

Kid crosses her arms over her chest, giving Alexis a flat look.

Janet folds her hands behind her back, rolling her feet between her tiptoes and heels.

[NebulaQueen]

"I don't know about you guys...but I trust them. Seriously, they've done nothing but good stuff for us! I mean, Rivendere works for them, my mom works for them, they-"

She paused, and for once in her life, turned serious. A pained look crossed her face and her voice quieted, and she said, "They gave us these bodies. Before we got transferred, I was just this sick kid at the hospital. You know, one of those kids you see in those cheesy commercials about how you can give some dying little girl or boy a chance to go to a theme park or meet a sport star or something. If it weren't for D-52, I-I don't know where we'd be now."

[Idran1701]

Sam nods quietly as Silvie speaks; a few moments pass after he finishes before he speaks up. "Silvie's right. They're helping my mom get better just 'cause I came in here, I didn't really have to do anything at all. She's gonna get better now maybe, and it's 'cause they're helping her. An' they're helping everyone else here too. You're wrong, Alexis, there are bad guys, and D52 wants us to help stop them. Bad guys do bad stuff, they hurt people that shouldn't be hurt and they break the law and do...they do bad stuff! An' we hafta stop them, and D52's gonna help us do that.

"But...but we can't tell Rivendare about her, 'cause...'cause Thirteen asked us not to, and she wouldn't do that if it wasn't real important. I trust her too, 'cause she's always been nice to us and helped us! I don't like not tellin' Rivendare, but we gotta! Rivendare's never been mean to you or anything, so...

Sam frowns, crossing his own arms. "I don't like this kinda you, Alexis. Not caring about anything is...it's dumb. An' I don't believe you that you're the same person either, 'cause you're not mean, but all this stuff you're saying is. You're nice! Maybe you get scared sometimes, but everyone does! So what? Just...be real Alexis again, the one that does care 'bout stuff!"

[Kelne]

For now, Emily was less concerned about discussing the future than about Alexis. The future would, by definition, wait. The more this new Alexis talked, the less Emily liked what she said.

"Alexis, do you maybe want to take that chip out before you cast your vote?" she asked, "I think maybe you'll regret some of the stuff you do like this as much as you do when you've got it on the fire version." And maybe some of the stuff she said as well. None of them had signed up for this to be assassins, and if anyone tried to thrust them into that role, well, they'd regret it.

[BrainWalker]

"Yeah," Max added, arms crossed for the vote. "I admit you've raised a couple of good points about war and child soldiers and all, but standing above everyone ranting like a loon isn't the best way to deliver them. If you're so sure it's not your chips talking, why don't you prove it? If you've got stuff you want to get off your chest, I think we'd all prefer it if you'd talk to us like equals instead of sheep."

[ChristianC]

Alexis gave them all a cold look as they spoke, then shrugged and jumped down on the ground, arms crossed. Her long hair fluttered slightly in the air before it settled down.

"I was in a coma. I'd been in it for six years. My entire family were burned alive in a fire and I survived because of the tubes they kept in me. D52 got me out of that, but back then I just wanted to die. I still do, but I've got to pay back the debt to them." she glared at Sam in particular. "Thirteen's asked us to do a lot of things, but she hasn't told us who she is or where she's from, just handwaved it. All I want is for D52 to come clean, I don't like being treated as a kid..." she flicked open the panel that held the two chips and clicked the ejects, both chips coming out with a click and the ice-hue drawing away from her into her usual dark shades.

She looked between the rest and bit her lower lip angrily. "I-I don't wuh-want to do anythin T-thu-thirteen asks of us again." With that she raised an arm, looking worried but determined. "W-we're supposed to help p-people, but Th-Thirteen doesn't seem like sh-she likes them. You h-heard her... and um... I don't like that you guys don't even get what I'm talking about!" she yelled out, "I didn't say betrayed! But no one cares what I say, I-I'm not th-the leader or anything!" she gave Enzo an angry glare.

[Shinigori V2]

Janet walks over, placing a hand on Alexis's shoulder and kneeling next to her. "I care what you have to say, Alexis. You know that."

Casey scratches her chin, before taking her bandanna off and holding it in her hand, looking at it. "I wasn't dying, or really orphaned, or even sick." She says. "I was just a kid that happened to turn into Wunderkind. I don't really owe them anything..."

She looks at Alexis. "I do care what you think, Lex. But they haven't given me any reason to think they're up to something weird, and...I'm not really biased on it."

[Idran1701]

Sam cringes when Alexis glares at him, though he looks fairly confused by it; why does she look so mad at him? And as Casey talks, he nods. "Yeah, Alexis, we do so care what you think. You're our sister, we love you! And...and you shouldn't wanna die, 'cause...then you'd be gone forever, and we'd all really miss you." He looks back to the projection of Thirteen, wringing his hands. "...I dunno why that girl was sayin' all that stuff about people, but...but I don't think the real Thirteen thinks that stuff at all. She's our sister too, even if she doesn't tell us everything all the time, and she still helps us when we've gotta do stuff. Like...remember when we had to stop Ettezan from getting Ellastic and she helped us?

"...I'm sorry we haven't been listenin' to you like you want...I can try an' listen to you more, I promise. An'...an' you're right that we oughta figure out what's goin' on before we do anything for sure. But...but then shouldn't we figure out what's goin' on before we tell Mr. Rivendare anything about Thirteen too?"

[ChristianC]

Alexis shrugged off Janet's hand and looked like she was about to say something before she gave a bit of a shudder, still looking a bit upset.

"W-we're j-just glid...gliding along, acc-accepting everyt-thing suh-someone t-tells us a-and a-a-agree to keep it suh-secret. I j-just d-don't think suh-something like thu-this sh...should be k-kept from D52..."

She gives Enzo a look.

"I nuh-never said we shouldn't o-open th-that file t-though..."

[Idran1701]

"...I know, Alexis. But I just think...I just think she wouldn't've said that if it wasn't really really important." Sam looks away, frowning. "But I didn't know you were so upset about stuff. I'm real sorry...I just don't know what to do 'cause everyone wantsta do something different..."

Taking a seat on the dirt, he watches the ground in front of his feet. "I just thought that if she asked us to do it then we should do it is all. 'Cause she asked, and...I dunno."

[Shinigori V2]

"..Because if we do something she told us not to..."

Janet thinks, cupping her chin in her massive glove. "...If she's from the future...And she told us it was very important not to do something...It's because if we do it, it would prevent her from coming back and telling us anything at all- Including not to do the thing we did, which we wouldn't have any reason to do if she never showed up, so we'd never do it, so she would be able to come back..."

Janet nods, adjusting her glasses. "It's called 'paradox'. If we do something that prevents Thirteen from coming back to talk to us, we could tear apart the universe...Or something. I don't know, it's really confusing."

[Besyanteo]

Enzo had the feeling that if he refuted being the group leader, and really he wasn't... there was no leader, but if he did then it would just make things worse. Him talking to Alexis didn't seem like it was helping. At the same time, just refusing to talk didn't seem right either. He couldn't think what to do. She'd practically told him what to do, though. He didn't want to be here, so... he sat down, and deep dived. Time to look more closely at that file.

When he got in, he started by making a backup copy of the file with an additional extension: ".bak" If he screwed up, and there weren't any terrible consequences from the screw up, he could replace the original with it's copy and start over fresh. Probably. He watched carefully as it copied to see if the files were matching up.

[Idran1701]

As Janet tries to explain, Sam just looks confused. "I don't get it. How could us doing something hurt the universe? The universe is huge! How come stuff way far away would care if we did stuff or not?"

[Kelne]

Emily seemed to be lost in thought. She was pretty sure Thirteen wouldn't want them bringing Riverdare in on this, and she'd made some good arguments to that effect. "I don't know if telling the adults would do much good," she said at last, "I think the future people are deliberately telling stuff to us because they think we're in a position to influence the future. Thirteen's been happy to do a little nudging, but mostly she's been making sure we keep things quiet. Ouroboros though, they've basically given us a huge infodump in hopes we'll be spurred into action. Not just the sort of actions we'd take anyway, but alter the course of history action."

"For whatever reason, I think we're the ones who're going to impact the course of the future. That means key decisions we take somewhere down the line. Sure, we could tell others, but unless things get seriously derailed the decisions are still going to fall on us."

[Shinigori V2]

Enzo begins copying the files over. Estimated time for full copy...

...Two weeks, 3 days, 20 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds.

There'll be a lot of stuff for them to look over when that time's up.

---

"There's not a lot we can do for now, until we decide how to actually..move forward, I guess." Janet says.

"Let's wait an' talk t' Thirteen an' see why we're not s'poseda tell nobody 'bout all this stuff. If th' reason's not good 'nuff, you guys can tell whoever th' 'ell ya wanna." Casey adds in, tossing and catching her wrench again.

For now, the kids are free to do their own thing, Casey begins walking back to the project, Kid walks off into the forest, and Janet continues to keep an eye on the boxes.


Mission: 11- Legacy of the Infinite- Complete!
Mission Status: Complete!
Mission End Time: 12:02 PM
Optional Objective: Find Altered Iris- Complete!
Damages: 0.00 Credits.
Gains: 150.00 credits.
MVPs: TBA.

[Shinigori V2]

Mission: 12- Tower Defense
Location: The Deck, 19th floor (Wunderkind Floor)
March 5th, 3757
12:00 PM.

The snowy season is coming to an end especially quick this year, with temperatures this week in the 60s. The springy weather is being taken advantage of by almost all citizens of Deck City, including D-52 itself. Throughout the city, a grand construction project has begun in public places- sleek, colorful new terminals have begun to go up, allowing access to maps, directions, even city services. The entire city infrastructure is being upgraded as quickly as possible, and not a single problem has come up.

However, that's not to say that everything is quiet for the Wunderkind; a meeting has been called in the Floor 19 meeting room, to be attended ASAP- There's a mission up.

Casey and Kid are already in the meeting room- Odd for Casey to be out of the mech hanger, especially at this hour.

[Idran1701]

After the two of them, Sam's one of the first to arrive, taking a quick seat and keeping fairly quiet. He's been having a relatively light time the last two months; his normal schooling, training in pseudo-intelligent avatar construction under Enzo's supervision. And every couple days, sending off another message to Alexis, trying to get her to come out of her room and...do something with them. Play a game, go exploring, just something besides staying in her room all day. He still struggles to understand the argument, but he still doesn't understand why they can't disagree and still have fun. It's put him in a bit of a funk since the break began, but he's done his best to fight it, at least going out with the other Wunderkind to mess around between classes.

With the mission call, Sam's hopes have risen a little; this has to get Alexis out and about, he knows it! And then they can talk and everyone will have an exciting mission and then everything will be happy again. Yep, everything's going to be just fine after this!

[Besyanteo]

Enzo walks in not long after Sam. He's been somewhat subdued since the strange incident with Thirteen, and the subsequent fight with Alexis. He understood the words she was saying, but he didn't understand her reasoning. As if that wasn't bad enough they still had no idea what had happened to Thirteen and no clue how to start looking into things until that file copied.

He took a seat quietly and waited.

[Kelne]

Emily had thrown herself into training snce the incident. She was pretty sure something was going to hit sooner or later, and she intended to be ready. She'd also been testing the boundaries of the unformatted space, seekng out any places of interest before it was all overwritten by dwarves or something. Not that anybody would do it deliberately, but still.

Emily breezed into the conference room, greeting the others in turn before finding a seat. She could do with a mission, and thought the others could as well. A bit of team activity would hopefully get the group gelling a bit better than they had been lately.

[ChristianC]

Alexis hadn't left her room a single time after the last mission, but if anyone had bothered to check the bandwidth usage coming from her port had been tremendous. Then, as the order came for a meeting, she'd come out.

You'd expect her to look, or act, different, but it was almost eerie the way she hadn't changed, except perhaps for the fact that she'd braided her knee-length hair once more. She sat down quietly, hands in her lap, and glanced to the others. Then she turned to Sam.

"I s-saw your me..." she paused, took a deep breath and closed her eyes, "I saw your m...messages, Sam. I'm s...sorry I didn't r-respond..."

[NebulaQueen]

It's been quiet lately, hasn't it? Silvie really didn't know what to make of it. After their discovery a couple months ago, it was all rather anticlimactic. Silvie expected something big, something that would push them towards new discoveries, but instead it was calm. Relaxed, almost. It should have been a relief, but it just left her tense and worried; emotions she wasn't entirely used to.

Maybe this mission would change things. She jogged down the hall and into the room and plopped right down in an empty seat.

"Did I miss anything?" she asked, her tone chipper and devoid of any unease she may have felt.

[BrainWalker]

Max meanders casually into the meeting room while putting the finishing touches on a BLT bagel sandwich. He had joined Emily for much of her training, and had started on a virtual dirtbike project with Casey. It was going to be sweet.

"What gives? Can't they give us a little warning for these things? I was right in the middle of lunch." He plops into a chair; no chair in particular. He glances over to Casey. "I didn't see you come in. Were you seriously one of the first here? What's up with that?"

[Shinigori V2]

Casey grins, leaning back in her chair. "I knew 'bout this mishun a weekago! It's th' cherry on toppa th' 'hole infrastructure upgrade thing!"

Rivendare comes in, dropping files on the table, within reach of all the kids. "She's right. Your job is simple- We need to install a monitor into Bicycle Tower and get it fully connected with the rest of them around the city. The goal is to have them all connected to the Deck News Network, so no matter where people are they can still get the weather, traffic reports, and use the terminals to get directions. The whole thing is going to be hubbed in Bicycle tower, and we need Casey to go in and set it all up and install the monitor."

He indicates the folders- Blueprints of the tower, the monitor, and programming for the infrastructure. "Your job is going to be to just keep an eye on things. We don't expect any trouble, but better to have you guys deployed with your sister than to find out after the fact we needed you there."

He stands up again, folding his hands behind is back. "This might be the simplest mission we've given you all. ANy questions?"

[Besyanteo]

Enzo looks confused for a moment before asking a question.

"Are we waiting 'til tonight to do this? If not, how are we staying out of sight?"

[Shinigori V2]

Rivendare nods. "You'll be working under cover of nightfall, with the area corded off by police."