achates | day 2 network

Why are we here? Just to suffer? No, seriously, why are we here?

We've been so concerned with running away from demons and finding out more about the town that we haven't paid any attention to why we woke up in our special little slice of Hell. If we want to get out, we need to put together why we were dragged here in the first place.

I took a closer look at the train[1] yesterday to check for wear and tear characteristic of other structures in Beelzeburg, and came up zilch. Our express train to Hell is as new in town as the rest of us, which means that if we use the advanced scientific investigative principle of "basic correlation," we can conclude that we arrived on the train instead of being randomly teleported to that location for some reason. Take a look at the train route[1], too—the town was a cul-de-sac on the train's journey before whatever happened, happened, and judging by the direction the train was facing, the train was coming in when we woke up in it instead of going out.

Then there are our COMPs and our gems. I talked to K5[2] and confirmed that he and A☆L☆A were installed on computing devices to administrate demon summoning and network the gadgets together for the communication feature we're using now, turning them into COMPs. I also re-confirmed that there was another group that was brought here before us.

From this, we can deduce that we were sent here by a group with vested interest in demon summoning and the circumstances of this town, enough so that they were willing to send in another group of schmucks after the last batch bit it. Commandeering a whole train and outfitting each of us with a COMP implies a level of organization that can't be attributed to an individual actor or something within Beelzeburg that abducted us here for its own purposes.

There is some good news part and parcel with this, for once: it's unlikely that the whole world, or at least the one this town belonged to, was destroyed. If an organization with this level of capability still exists out there, then they have some literal ground to stand on. It seems more likely that the chunk of town that's now Beelzeburg was somehow ripped away from the rest of the world and dragged down into something like Hell; the part of the town that's missing on our maps was its entrance and the way the train got in pre-fuckening, so that was the ingress point for our fun little field trip into the abyss.

Anyways, time for bad news, as usual. The train was sabotaged. There's no other explanation for its state when we woke up. I doubt that whoever sent us here wanted most of their precious guinea pigs slaughtered before we could even get started on their project, which, judging by the numbers we saw on our COMPs at midnight, has to do with the areas of town that are still sealed off. There's someone, or something (let's be real, given where we are it's probably something) that wants us to fail, and they're more likely than not to make another move once we take a few steps towards solving whatever puzzle our "sponsors" want us to take a crack at.

Also, here's something that's are major-league bugging me that has nothing to do with any of the above but is nonetheless driving me crazy, so I might as well put it here after you've already gone through the effort to read all that. The chocolate in my pocket. I used it to bribe Frankenbun on our first day here and gave what I had left to Kate. Yesterday, it was there again. I ate it just to try and get rid of it for good. It's back. What the fuck?

[1]Train investigation (a collection of photos of the interior and exterior of the train, along with some maps of its route through the town and a pre-Hell town map)
[2]Interview with Keigo

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You've been working hard, Alice.

Sabotage, though... you think it was somebody here? Otherwise, maybe somebody in town. Maybe they're still here.

Haven't seen a number pop up again. Rosie suggested "days we have left to live" so at least it's not that. What areas of town are sealed off? I think I've heard of the school, hospital, greenhouse... that's it so far.

How was the chocolate?

[Ugh, what is this awful warm and fuzzy that kindles in Alice's chest when her hard work is acknowledged? Gross. Disgusting.]

Well, someone has to.

I doubt that it's any one of us, but if the footprints in the greenhouse are anything to go by, there are still some humans lurking around in places that we can't see. We can't discount involvement from them. There are probably more sealed areas that we haven't discovered yet, we'll have to do a more detailed, coordinated investigation.

I don't like chocolate. I don't even know why I have it. I'd be happy to give it away, honestly.

I'll take a look around the greenhouse myself. Don't know too much about plants, though. Wonder why they bother coming out of hiding to go there.

Maybe someone/thing stuck new chocolate in your pocket when you weren't looking.

If only. It's the exact same brand (that doesn't exist here), exact same taste, exact same bitemarks, every damn morning.

It's driving me crazy. Is the chocolate a fixed point in time? Is the void vomiting up copies of chocolate just like there were apparently copies of us here when those photos were taken? Who knows.

Oh. I thought those photos were edited.

[ He'd seen those photos, and immediately discounted the idea of that person being him. After all, NO version of him would be smiling like he is in those photos. Happy... ]

I dunno about the chocolate, but it seems significant. Probably best to just hold onto it for now. At least with that, you'll never go hungry.

Who would put edited photos in almost every household just to mess with us?

I don't even like chocolate, is the problem.

Somebody talented in photo editing.

A good bargaining chip for other things, then. You'll have no problem finding somebody with a sweet tooth.

[Did Syvlain read all of that and make note of what Alice found and all of her conjecture? Absolutely. Is he going to pretend he didn't? Probably.]

is this place actually called beelzeburg

Probably not, but considering that we're the ones trapped here and the locals refused to put its actual name anywhere on a map, we can call it whatever we damn well please.

fair point
im gonna call it doomsdale
or maybe demons den

Pitsview
Hornbough

Aiell's Asscrack
Vilebury

I've never heard of "Aiell." Color me curious.

I wish I could tell you this was a new scenario for me as far as being wrapped up in vague situations... I really do. Unfortunately, this is all too typical for me back home, aside from the fact that we're surrounded in a dangerous locale with a ton of demons who want to use us for their own benefit or kill us. But I digress. I agree that the only way we'll get out is if we come together.

[So the train came with them... It wasn't a stagnant point of entry for any other unfortunate souls who were plucked here.]

Another group...? What happened to them? Are they still around?

[How did they arrive here if the train was new?]

So you're thinking there's a second party in the shadows against this pet project of our keepers then? What would the goal be? After all, most of those here seem to only care for their own well-being or the selective groups they've formed. What purpose could there be to bring us here or to even try to kill us before we arrive?

I'd bet you dollars to donuts that we're not supposed to be a bunch of amnesiacs wandering around aimlessly. That was part of the disruption. We know for sure that everyone has memory issues, it's not outside the realm of possibility that the other memories that got papered over are a casualty of a more targeted effort to erase our knowledge of why we're here and what we're supposed to do.

[It took Tsubaki to answer back, mostly because she was mulling over the whole situation with their memories and Alice's theory.]

...It makes you wonder. We know our memories have been tampered with and yet... How do we know what's real and what isn't? Without someone here who knew us from back home to tell us what memory could possibly be wrong or forgotten, how do we know what really happened to us...?

Welcome to my personal hell, Tsubaki. I've spent all of the past three days trying to figure out where I learned the combat instincts of a special operations veteran when all I can remember is a dysfunctional family and the life of a runaway, and come up nada. Everyone has little inconsistencies like that.

How far does it extend, I wonder..? The idea that there's no real way of knowing is unpleasant.

[Like what's saying that she won't forget people she knew, even? As if her thoughts about Azem weren't complicated enough.]

I wonder if it would do us any good to write down what we know about ourselves. Not necessarily for other people to read as much as to verify where the inconsistencies may come in for ourselves. And maybe if we come across other people who know us, they could verify certain points?

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