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madimpossibledreamerchapter summary: souji reads on the forums about the immortals. in the past, the hierophant (dojima) and the fool (souji) have a little talk.
word count: 1970
rating: T
Next, Souji begins hearing the rumors. Some are found by listening in on players in the game, all of which have different attitudes, but the most in-depth information and representation of attitudes he finds on the boards.
One is posted on the official forum under ‘missing friend’. “I got a garbled message from a friend,” one read. “It wasn’t very specific and I couldn’t make out a lot of it, but it said that they saw a shadowy human-looking figure, but it wasn’t a player’s character. Something about a bleeding girl in a Victorian dress and barbed wire, and approaching to make sure she was okay. And burning blood and soulless eyes. And then it went into weird characters I have no idea how I can even find them. Seriously gibberish characters. I tried searching as picture on the net but I couldn’t find anything.”
Most didn’t believe, and a few were rude when they said so. However, there was one who asked a few questions. “Have you heard anything from this friend lately?”
Disbeliever #16: “Of course they’re not saying anything. They’re playing a game. once the joke’s no longer funny they’ll send something”
Original poster: “Nope, no response. I keep bugging them. I even went to their house but nobody would come to the door.”
One pointed out: “t’s p. elaborate for prank” which was a little short but descriptive, though Souji couldn’t figure out exactly what word the first one was supposed to mean.
Questioner: “I don’t want to worry you, but it matches some of the stories of the Immortals and Coma Players. I’ll link.”
Disbeliever #17: “ur kiddin it’s a fad”
Scared Poster: “the media had a special on it toh I mean tho”
Disbeliever #18: “the media likes scary things though! So exaggerating is a thing that happens”
Souji follows the links. It’s probably good to read about the coma players. He doesn’t learn much that Chie didn’t say, but the number of posters claiming something along those lines happened is…long. A couple of them post with links to online news columns talking about players who have ended up in comas as well as snapshots of them playing after the date of the coma. It’s entirely possible that these are faked, though, as some point out.
Probably more important is to note that it’s said that the Immortals could cause this ‘coma players’ phenomenon. Someone posts with a really confusing theory about how someone’s mind could get stuck in a game that has a lot of quantum physics interspersed. Someone else, someone more realistic, posits that perhaps the ‘coma players’ are explained by hackers. Not their being in a coma, but the idea that they’re posting or playing while they’re in the hospital in a coma.
The entry on the Immortals is more interesting. It’s acknowledged that an exact list is hard to get; given the natures of the Immortals, it’s hard to get actual information on any of the Immortals. It’s whispered that perhaps they’re secret bosses, but it’s also said that they disposed of one of the characters at level cap, one of the arguably best characters, according to a linked post with a large discussion on the topic, so no one knows how to beat one. It’s said that any characters who encounter the Immortals, generally, don’t make it, though there are a few who have been in the same dungeon and have supposedly witnessed an attack by one of the Immortals.
They’re supposedly the demonic generals of Nyarlathotep, who in this game for all intents and purposes is The Bad Guy. This guess is made simply because the posters argue that nothing so evil could exist in the game and not be related.
There’s—perhaps—eight, though this is based on shaky, perhaps incorrect eyewitness testimony and appearance. A few argue that several of these Immortals are merely Aspects of the same terrible face, and maybe they’re all actually The Crawling Chaos.
There are individual posts for each of the Immortals, and some have arguments about the ‘best’ Immortal and fan clubs. The Cultists, a Clan with the Allegiance of the same name, have incorporated the Immortals into their ‘religion’, to the point they’ve posted they’re not worried about their own Coma Players because those have merely become part of a greater Design of Chaos.
Souji hopes that they’re just staying In Character and don’t believe what they’re saying, and agrees with the one player who points out that liking these characters is a little creepy, given what they’re credited with.
He skims the entries for each. Several people think these have been made up just to give those who draw an excuse to draw creepy things. Joker, Lord of Dreams. Ceirahn, Siren of the Abyss. Fienahr, Watcher of the Eternal Flame. Strega, Master of War. Nyx, The Mother Night. Deva, Seeker of Twilight. Raedwulf, Blackest of Lies. Vaspran, Game of Hunger.
It’s guessed that Joker is associated with a vaguely nightmarish clown appearance, and the use of flowers. The humanoid with the wispy use of shadow is thought to be Ceirahn, mostly because it’s said that the game’s music changes when Ceirahn appears. Fienahr is a girl in a Victorian dress, wrapped in chains and barbed wire. She’s said to constantly bleed, and her blood is toxic. In the few fan drawings, her eyes look soulless. Strega might be ghostly white and use guns. He’s probably the most innocuous of the lot. Nyx is a woman with wings and an odd, floating crown. She holds a sword. Deva wears many masks that are said to change during combat in a terrifying way. Not much else is known about him. Raedwulf, supposedly, can destroy entire teams with a few words, simply by turning them against each other, but what he looks like is not known. Vaspran supposedly leaves dungeons full of new enemies, twisted versions of the places they’d been.
It’s probably not that important, considering that he’s not likely to run into any of them, not like they’re probably real anyway. But taking note can’t hurt, either.
Previously:
Well. They had the game now. Nanako could play on the family computer, and Souji could play on the laptop. At least it was one of the only good things his father had left him. It hadn’t been bought specifically for gaming, but it was top of the line, and he’d had to buy a new graphics card for a school project before (some video project). According to the product specifications, it would do.
“I’m going to check out the community first, Uncle,” he tells the man when he’d finally made it home from work.
The man looks up from his mug of coffee, a little surprised. “You’re really responsible.” He pauses, then continues, “Actually, with that, I shouldn’t have to mention this, but don’t let it get in the way of either your homework or Nanako’s. School comes first.”
Souji would almost be insulted, but that would be a waste of time. Instead, he just nods.
Dojima sighs, then sets down his coffee, staring seriously at Souji. What had he done?
“Look, I…I’m not sure what to say about your parents. I don’t even know how to deal with my own daughter sometimes. But I want you to know that you’re not alone. That was my little sis’s trouble, sometimes, and the man she married made it worse. I didn’t approve, but more than anything I didn’t want to be proven right.” With the sigh, the detective might as well have been talking to himself. “Maybe I’m not the guy that should be giving this advice, but…it’s our bonds with others that makes us human. Makes us alive. Without those, we’re nothing. I’m not worried about you, not seriously. I remember when you were in diapers. You were as intelligent as your parents, back then, but you smiled. You were curious about everything, and more than anything you wanted to help out wherever you could.”
Souji flinches, and he finds a hand on top of his shoulder, squeezing gently before disappearing. Dojima looks awkward, but he’d been genuinely trying to comfort, and…all right, it made a little more sense than it appeared.
“It may not seem like it, but the relationships we form, friendships, whatever they might be…they stay with us. You probably know my wife is dead. Chisato might no longer be with me or Nanako, and it hurts so much knowing she’s not here.” The clenched teeth tell the truth.
“But I’d never trade my years with her for anything. Nori prided herself on an intelligent son. She didn’t realize she’d been breaking him in ways we arrest people for as detectives. But what she didn’t realize was that she’d only made that curious, compassionate kid hide for a while. What I want to say to you…”
Apparently, he hasn’t figured out what exactly that was, because he has to pause for a moment to collect his thoughts. “What I want to say to you is, decide for yourself who you want to be, what kind of life you want to live. I know it’s easy to do what you’ve been doing for years, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. She was trying to re-create herself, and you’re not your parents.”
Soui was stunned. He’d been warned about becoming his father, his mother. He’d gone through so much, the hateful words about being just another cold snake, just like his parents. Had been told he’d become much the same in the end. No one had said it was his choice. Of course, now that he looked at that, it was really obvious, so obvious that he had to wonder how he’d missed it. It was lonely, of course it was, but what other choice did he have, right?
Except, he did have a choice. He thought he remembered how the other choice went. Pain, that’s all it gave him. That’s what he’d thought. But then, he’d forgotten to take some pretty big things into consideration. Circumstances were different. He wasn’t going to be thrown from place to place. Every move from now on was his choice, and for the first time that he could even remember, he was going to stay in one place for a while with no threat of suddenly being told he had to leave. He didn’t have to worry about what his parents would think. He was free.
The only one he had to worry about disappointing was Dojima, and he thought that would probably end up being really difficult to accomplish. He was hardly going to let his standards fall just because he was free, but this time all the effort would be for himself, not for others.
Secondly, probably not less important, it had been a long time, and while he prided himself on a good memory it probably was not without his faults. The least he could do is try, not for the sake of a quieter or less argumentative life, but for the sake of trying. If he didn’t really put his heart into it, how could he call it a proper experiment? How could he know that the results were genuine?
He comes to himself and finds he’s been spacing out. He re-focuses his eyes on his uncle’s face. The man looks vaguely amused. “I hope I’ve given you something to think about.”
“You have, in fact, Uncle. Thank you.” He allows himself to smile wider than he has in years. My own destiny. I’ll grasp it with both hands. “I’ll go look at the game, sir.”
“Think about going to sleep early once in a while,” Dojima states with amusement, picking up the cup with amusement and raising it in a kind of salute.
