day 2 network

[rimingcouplet]

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

Comments

[compendiem]

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?

[prodigal_disappointment]

[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

[dancinglight]

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?