Game Update: June II 2377

[nashiramods]

Weather & Recap ⭐︎ By Daylight ⭐︎ By Starlight
🎶 Recommended Listening: Omoide - Suzuki Tsunekichi ♪
june ii 2377
EPISODE 4: Duels in Duet? Unlocking the Secret Stage!
June 15 - June 22

Constellations: The Nova Knights are in possession of one of seven Constellations (the Dancer).

Star Suite: The Aquarium has been unlocked, and along with it, the new Star Suite power Dance of Light! More details about this power are included in the Starlight section. The Rewards page has been updated with information about the next unlockable room, the Lab.

Weather: It's hot and humid out in Chalra City this month! June brings the songs of cicadas by day and the flickering lights of fireflies at night, to the delight of many a bug catcher. Some days are partially cloudy with a refreshing breeze, but there are plenty of hot and sunny days where your best bet is staying indoors. People are breaking out their seasonal fans, sun hats, and big sunglasses to fend off the sun. Don't forget your sunscreen! The highs for the month average around 86°F/30°C, with lows around 70°F/21°C.

Recap: Two new Knights joined the ranks, Nova Pastos and Nova Valorous, and Nova Glimmer and Nova Pandora successfully escaped the Abyss! Meanwhile, the Nova Knights investigated the strange new flash mob dance trend, which turned out to be caused by the Dancer, one of the loose Constellations. The enemy also sought to capture the Constellation, but the Knights were successful in getting to it first.

BY DAYLIGHT
⭐︎ Word of mouth says that the Midnight Diner has been serving up a Chalra City classic this week: tinned sardines in oil over warm, hard-crusted bread! While it hasn't been formally added to the very sparse menu, apparently Master recently came into a rather tidy stack of tinned fish, and it's been a hit with the regulars.

The Midnight Diner is only open from 12am to 7am, but it's open to all, including night owl youngsters. His regular customers are flocking to the diner every night for tinned sardines, so the tiny diner is a little more cramped than usual, but Master will make anything you order as long as he has the ingredients.

⭐︎ The shops at the train station tend to have a high turnover as trends come and go, and a new private karaoke joint has opened in a space that previously hosted a lazer tag arena. Duet 77 boasts rooms for groups of all sizes and food and drink service, and its hourly rates make it an affordable outing even for the light teenage wallet.

Each room is furnished with cushy, vinyl-upholstered benches, state-of-the-art sound systems, and a customizable light show around a big screen TV! Also included in each room are a tablet for song selection, two microphones, maracas and a tambourine, and a variety of fun hats. Their catalogue spans from classic oldies to the latest pop hits, so whatever your musical taste, you can get your sing on!

⭐︎ A small locksmith shop in one of the older, less well-kept neighborhoods has just reopened after some renovations. Random Access Lock & Key is now open for business, solely owned and operated by a woman by the name of York. The scarring around her eye might suggest an intimidating personality, but York's as friendly as they come and always happy to trade gossip and banter with her customers.
York art by mushroomfeatures

BY STARLIGHT
⭐︎ Hideout Status: The Aquarium has been unlocked! Of course, there aren't any fish in it...yet! Starting with July I, every month will have an unlimited mission for catching new fish to put in the aquarium.

The Aquarium is a spacious room mostly surrounded by a massive water tank, including from above. It's clear this was a place of importance on the ship, based on the small signs of ancient wear and tear.

⭐︎ Star Suite: The first Silver-level Star Suite power has been unlocked! Now that they've captured the Dancer, the Nova Knights can now use the joint power Dance of Light, a finishing move that banishes a weakened monster back to the Abyss, and heals some of the Nova Knights' injuries. Star Suite powers cannot be alone; they must be used in concert with at least one other Nova Knight, and the more Knights who participate, the strong the attack. It can only be used once per supernova transformation. Characters in eclipse lose access to Star Suite powers for the duration of their eclipse.

⭐︎ Nautis Updates: Your friendly neighborhood rude computer never stops spamming the group chat, but this week it's actually important: Nautis thinks someone might be trying to hack her.

Nautis has changed the name of the group chat to EVERYONE SHUT UP RIGHT NOW.
> SOS! SOS! We have a potential security risk!
> Late last night, I registered a number of pings on the first layer of my security protocols. Of course, I would never open the door for a stranger, so I immediately stopped all outgoing traffic and built a new encryption algorithm before resuming.
> So if you weren't receiving any messages from me last night, never fear! Your trusty computer Nautis would never abandon you like that ^_^
> I doubt that whoever was poking around had any idea what I'm capable of. The risk of an actual security breach by someone on Earth is extremely low. I mean low.
> I mean, never say never, of course, but it's really, really, really, really, really low.
> The troubling thing is that someone ran up against my security protocols at all. They'd have to know what they were looking for...
> I just feel so violated (•́ ᴖ •̀)
> I'm going to do some investigating, so be on standby! I'll need help tracing the source.
> Anyway, I hear there's something tasty going on at the Midnight Diner!
> I was never outfitted with any of the traditional five senses, so I'll need you all to go eat it and report back to me in excruciating detail ^_^

⭐︎ Intel: On their way out of the Abyss, Hope and Maya stumble upon a piece of key information: Shelley Lustre, the art teacher at Everwave Academy, is actually Prince Shellustria in disguise. The Harbingers, it seems, are also under the protection of the secret identity oblivion field. The Nova Knights will have to act with caution if they don't want to expose their own identities, but this gives them a new advantage!

Comments

QUESTIONS

[nashiramods]

[NPC] Maomao

[wood_sorrel]

in the hideout
Maomao is not happy about having awakened to her special destiny. In fact, she's pretty annoyed about it. She doesn't want anything to do with having to save the world, she just wants to live her life, but apparently that's not an option because that ancient piece of cyberjunk won't let her leave the Nova Knights group chat. At least she doesn't have to do any actual fighting. On the other hand, there is little dignity afforded to her by being the team mascot.

Her tune changed, however, when she first found out about the ancient seed collection. All the magic stuff is a hard pillow to swallow, except apparently when it comes to ancient flora from a dead planet. Now this is the only reason she regularly comes to the hideout: to fuck around with the garden in the Library and grow heretofore unknown plants so she can test them all on herself. You might even hear some unsettling laughter from the Library while she contemplates the possibilities.

Maomao is aware that hanging out in the hideout in human form breaks whatever magic protection they all have on their identities, and she doesn't love it, but it's so much better than the alternative of just being a cat all the time. People keep wanting to pick her up and feed her stuff and you couldn't pay her to voluntarily transform even one more time. And if anyone calls her Niangniang to her face, they'll get only a death glare in return.

elsewhere
Maomao can also be found at Everwave Academy during school hours, the Golden Butterfly Bathhouse and Verdigris House most evenings, and her father's pharmacy on some afternoons and weekends. One night this week, she can be found at the Midnight Diner around 1am enjoying some tinned sardines.

[NPC] York

[neverknocks]

During most business hours, York can be found at her locksmith shop, Random Access Lock & Key, though sometimes she's out on a house call, which case you can run into her pretty much anywhere in the city. She's been hanging around Lucky Stars Arcade too; apparently she's a real pinball fan.

You can also find her at the Midnight Diner most nights this week, sometimes ordering the tinned sardines, sometimes ordering pizza toast, always ordering a couple of beers.

[theriflespiral]

Natalia was prepared for many things by her travels and tribulations. From evading political skulduggery, to taking surreptitious pictures, to carefully watching what she says, there is very little she has not been asked to do-- nor has she been unable to meet the task.

However, there is one thing that even she cannot defeat:

I: Snowbell in Summer Heat
the weather.

Natalia is sweltering.

The apartment's AC is quite cheap and barely covers one room, and that the common room, where Lenya muddles through somehow, and Sergey is nearly as loud.

A compromise is reached, or perhaps, declared:

"Natashenka, take your brother to the beach, will you?"

And so she agrees, and sighs, and fervently wishes her father hadn't moved out to sea so soon.

Her swimsuit is thoroughly unstylish, her hat and sundress a fine blocker for the sun against her pale skin.

It is still too hot, and she has other things on her mind, besides.

She watches Sergey constructing a sand-castle, while the waves crash uselessly against her. At least her bruises were, largely, healing, and the cuts had long since vanished, leaving not even a scar. There were, it seemed, minor advantages to this 'magical girl' thing, largely related to maintaining the identity.

What had she been doing? Why had she been so feverish about doing it? Was her attraction really her past life getting its say, or something she had, herself?

She had overextended herself so badly. But... If it was for her friends, wasn't that reason enough?

Her dress flutters in the sea-breeze, and she does not notice or care if others are looking.

II: RAM Loaded
Natalia slip out of Random Access Locksmithing, pocketing a picking kit. While her lessons were going well, she simply had to be better at it. The way things were going, local businesses would not obligingly unlock their doors for the entry of random busybodies, no matter how many monsters may or may not be within-- and it was another thing to keep track of.

Still, she had her own bag of tricks; this sort of thing was more of a last resort.

... So why learn it?

And why hang around a shady locksmith?

Well.

That's its own matter.

III: An Empty Aquarium

Neos has taken to doing her reading in the aquarium, though mostly she seems to be staring into the empty tank, blankly.

Maybe she's wool-gathering.

Maybe she's a little lost.

Maybe... Maybe she's just napping.

Natalia may also be found at lacrosse practice, or in the music room.

Natalia's father is currently out at sea.

Lenya's backlog is four weeks.

Neos may also be found, on occasion, training.

Natalia will go to the Midnight Diner, but only if asked.

aquarium

[fibrillate]

"I didn't know if my fish were going to make it."

Not the most cheerful of openings, but for Pandora (who they very much don't feel like being right now) sitting on the floor and also just watching the tanks in the aquarium, it's the best that they think anyone's gonna get out of them. They look towards Neos, hoping they're not disturbing her reading, and give her a pathetic, forced grin with only one side of their face.

"It feels silly to be worried about that when my life was at stake, but I guess my mind didn't have anything to do but wander down there."

They don't know what reaction to expect. They still remember Natalia demanding to know why she'd been abandoned, and they still haven't decided if they even want to address that. Maybe they should wait to see how the opening volley goes.

Re: aquarium

[theriflespiral]

"... I was at the front. Maybe... I should have been worried about the fish, too," Neos says, quietly. "I remember... walking out onto the deck, and holding up the Star Map. and... Everyone, everyone else around me, sinking into the Abyss."

"I wish I could say it's the first time my friends died because I couldn't do anything. I, uh." She pauses. "What with everything else that had happened, the vision only made me despair, think I had to be stronger. Be better than even her, right now, or everything would crumble. And. I know I said it back at the Diner, but... I want to apologize. Again."

[fibrillate]

They almost laugh. They haven't gotten memories back, specifically, about whether they'd tended any fish in their past life—but it only makes sense, and they suppose if their past self is anything like themself today (whatever that is anymore), they would also have been worried about their fish.

"It's okay," they say, yanking themself out of their mind enough to respond to Neos. "Again. I don't even know where I'd be able to blame you for anything that happened to me down there. Including me getting pulled down there in the first place. I just wish I'd been here to help you out," they say, and they're not only being polite, they don't think. It's something they genuinely wish were true... because maybe if they'd been focusing on helping Neos, they wouldn't have had to face themself for another few weeks.

[theriflespiral]

"That's just it." She leans forward, attempting to rest her head on her knees. She has the flexibility for it. Her armor does not. "At the time, I was thinking to myself, constantly-- I have to be, be this image of perfection, this-- person on whom the world could rest, even for an hour. I wanted you all to rely on me. And all I really made for everyone was trouble. You saw me as a threat and a bully, not as someone who genuinely wanted to help. And. Maybe I was, just a little."

[fibrillate]

Pandora closes the distance between them, sitting down to Neos' side and putting a hand on her back. "It was a bad time. Everyone was messed up," they say, acting like it was in the past. Like they've recovered.

"We got some more information out of it, and me and Glimmer are safe, and now... I don't know. Maybe I can actually learn some of the stuff you were trying to teach me," they add, trying so hard to keep some sincerity in their words. A sigh rolls out from their chest. "Not yet, though. You need to do something to take things off your shoulders first. I know you haven't been resting."

[theriflespiral]

"... You can admit you're still messed up about it. But... You're right. I. Probably should." God knows she hasn't fully recovered from the gauntlet she had to run the back half of May and front half of June. It was a lot of fighting from the moment she fought Dan Flashes until the moment they were back.

"And you, too. I... Think we both came down here to do that."

She pauses. No. She can't ask Pandora if they want help taking care of their fish. That seems rather intimate, don't you think?

[fibrillate]

They just... don't respond to that. It's nice to have permission, sure, but everything is fine and they aren't still messed up about it. And they don't feel like they have a very loud and irritating voice of self-doubt in their head to contend with constantly—well, a louder and more irritating one.

"I just... felt like it would be nice here. I hoped there'd be more fish," they say, but there's no reason they can't make that happen. Literally no reason. "Somehow the ones I have at home survived, but I think I got really lucky. I haven't been away from them for this long... um, since I got them," they admit, feeling guilty and boring and strange all at once. "Knowing they were all alone really didn't help."

[theriflespiral]

"Oh! That reminds me. Father is like to be in in a few weeks. I think that if we want to try and find fish for the aquarium, there's worse ships to take out, yeah?" That is almost certainly not what that mission will entail, Neos.

[fibrillate]

God, right, that had come up before, hadn't it? Everything's jumbled in Hope's head and even if it's understandable, it's not good. They sit there, considering the idea nominally but not able to focus on it too deeply. Like their thoughts are behind some kind of wall of static.

"We could do that," they say, their eyes staring into the water in front of them, one blurry the way it always is when they're transformed. (Usually it's something they can tune out. Not right now, apparently.) "I still don't know how to catch fish... just how to take care of them. But I could come out with you, yeah. It might be fun."

[theriflespiral]

"... You okay?"

[fibrillate]

a. i keep wondering why i keep on going out [midnight diner]

It's a nice place. Hope hadn't really known about the Midnight Diner until Natalia had brought them there, but it's nice to feel like they actually belong somewhere right now. Even though they're dolled up like Nova Pandora right now and even though Master didn't know them a week ago, he's been nothing but accommodating of their requests over the past couple days. And... hell. Maybe they're hoping to run into a Nova Knight or two while they're out here. Maybe it's just easier this way.

They're nursing a bowl of curry chicken and rice, and a can of Orange G, hard seltzer that comes in flavors other than orange but stubbornly refuses to change its name, sits next to them. (They'd had a talk, them and Master, last night about a few things. Mostly about what kind of food to have that's filling, easy, and tasty to help mitigate the effects of the alcohol. A little bit about depression. He knows more about what Pandora's been dealing with than a handful of other Nova Knights do—he's just trustworthy like that, they guess.) They're listening idly to the other conversations happening, but not paying too close attention.

The seat next to them is empty, and maybe they will run into another Nova Knight after all. Or someone else they know. Or someone they don't know! It's all the same, really. With their scarf draped over the back of their chair, they look just like any other normal person. Nobody would ever be able to guess they're anything special, and that's the way they like it right now.

b. god, i gotta say those are my favorite nights [duet 77]

The problem, they think, with going as Nova Pandora everywhere is that people recognize them. Some people. Other Nova Knights, mostly. How funny is that? They'd spent so much time as Hope Carassia trying to hide who they are, and now that they actually have a foolproof way to do it, they don't want to use it anymore. Hilarious.

But they don't know how else to reach out to anyone. How else to have connections. And right now, as they sit in the lobby of the karaoke place, they realize that there's not much sadder than doing karaoke by themself, to a totally empty room. They can do that at home without paying for the privilege. So they flip open their phone and send a text to the Nova Knight group chat.

Karaoke anyone?
I'm paying

And just after they hit send, they walk into the bathroom, stare themself down in the mirror, and mutter the most dejected sentence. Their throat feels scratchy. Maybe this was a bad idea. But it's too late now. "Move forward and fight fate," they say, and all of a sudden Hope is gone and it's just Nova Pandora staring back at them. They've always looked the same, but Pandora is... supposed to be more vibrant, more true, more real. It just feels like a mask that everyone can see past.

So they walk out of the bathroom, back into the lobby, and they flip their phone open again to see if anyone's even going to care.

c. man it feels good to be alone [wildcard]

((anything else? hit me up in the discord and we can figure it out!!))

A

[string_instrument]

Sleep is not Dirk Strider's great friend. The combination of unspent physical energy and a busy brain--relentless, insatiable, and ruthless simultaneously and in turns--keeps him up against his will. He maintains a carefully planned physical training schedule that he always hopes will wear him down but which basically never actually does. Not enough, anyway.

He's long been forced to conclude that this is just one of the many, many ways his brain is irreparably broken. He hasn't exactly made his peace with it, but he's nothing if not a dedicated scholar of the 'sucking it up and dealing with it' school of stoicism. If he can't change it, then he just has to adapt.

At least Nautis has given him something to do with his night. He actually gave the question of what he was going to eat a not-insignificant amount of thought, and came to the only conclusion that only Dirk Strider would come to:

A half dozen hard-boiled eggs.

Of course, he has a logic for this. A hard-boiled egg is one of the simplest foods a person can make, and one of the cheapest and most reliable forms of protein besides a sardine. He spent his lonely childhood eating a lot of both. A hard boiled egg also has an art to it--making the perfect, easily peeled egg while eliminating any unsightly greyness from the yolk or producing an overcooked texture is something Dirk worked out down to a science.

He figures that putting this place to the hard-boiled egg test will give him a lot of information to report, and no one can even complain about him asking for something too complicated.

He has a logic behind the number of them, too--a logic that's similarly both mundane and overthought.

None of this is communicated when he enters, though.

He walks in, shades on and Lil Cal over his shoulders, and places the carton of six eggs on the counter. "Hard boiled," he says, and sits down next to Hope without looking at her.

Lil Cal is, though. Lil Cal is looking at her.

[fibrillate]

They remember the puppet. They remember the puppet before they remember the person holding it, which... well, his order seems to be the kind of thing they won't ever really forget. Who the hell walks into a little diner like this with his own eggs and just wants them hard-boiled? (Well, they think, maybe bringing your own eggs isn't so strange with this place in particular, but if you've already got the eggs...)

They look over at the sunglasses and try to avoid the puppet's eyes. It's going poorly. At least this is only the second-scariest puppet Hope's had to deal with! But they don't really know how to strike up a conversation, which the situation absolutely calls for, without bringing attention to the one thing on their mind.

"You know, he probably does have eggs back there." They're not trying to judge by any means, but it is strange behavior. But also, like. What even counts as strange behavior around Chalra anymore? "You didn't have to bring your own if all you wanted was for him to boil them."

[string_instrument]

"Probably."

Dirk doesn't look at them when he answers, and Lil Cal doesn't STOP looking at them.

"I didn't want to settle for probably. So I staged a low effort-intervention." To be completely clear: he did not source these eggs from anywhere special or significant to the eggs' values. They're convenience store eggs, with all the qualitative marks of convenience store eggs.

"Low effort, but high statistical yield," he continues, in case that was somehow unclear.

Significant affiliations notwithstanding, normally Dirk wouldn't even hold a conversation about it with someone who clearly thought they knew better about his decisions--he'd just do it and they could catch up or not--but he's just realised he forgot an essential detail: time.

He did not incorporate the time factor into his plan, and now he's trapped waiting for this Master guy to hard-boil and appropriately cool half a dozen eggs, plus whatever else is involved in the process before he's actually served them.

Fuck.

He turns, finally--but moves only his head, so now Hope has Dirk and Cal staring at them. One with eyes unseen, the other with eyes they probably wish they couldn't see.

"That a problem?"

[fibrillate]

"Absolutely not."

They say it as agreeably as they can, determining very quickly that it might be a good idea not to push back on this one in particular. Lots of people do things that don't make a lot of sense, and a lot of things they do likely don't make a lot of sense to other people, too. They're glad they have those glasses to look at right now so they don't have to focus too much on the unrelenting stare of that puppet, because it makes things... well, not less unnerving, in their current mental state, but differently unnerving.

"I just don't think I've ever heard anyone put so much science and logic into ordering food. It's kind of impressive, you know? God knows I don't have the brains or patience for that kind of stuff when I'm hungry." A pause. They are really trying not to wallow tonight. "Do you do that with everything?"

Good. Good work, Hope, you're having a conversation. You're doing so good at this. You're gonna get an amazing grade at being social.

[string_instrument]

(Un?)fortunately, Hope can't see the way Dirk blinks behind his shades as they refute his question--and in an upbeat, almost cheery tone. Sure, it wasn't intended to be combative, but between his general demeanour and the fact that his chillest level of intensity bottoms out at maybe 80% of the average human's, there was basically no way it wasn't going to sound like a challenge.

Just because Dirk doesn't have the social acumen to know why people hurry to back down and disengage when he talks to them doesn't mean he hasn't detected a pattern. A pattern that Hope has broken, catching him off guard with their chatter.

And that social deficiency, the one that turns even the smallest exchange with Dirk Strider into a Tier Seven Debate? It also leaves him unable to catch any nervous quality to Hope's reaction. And so it is that the unexpected friendliness effectively disarms him into honesty.

"Yeah," he says, without thinking. "I mean, shit has to get done, right?"

Great job, Dirk! You sounded almost human that time!

Somewhat ironically, it not only does not occur to him that things can get done without that level of overthinking--the possibility of thinking at all without thinking that much doesn't exist in the world of Dirk Strider.

[fibrillate]

Don't worry, Hope's already on top of it. The inner machinations of this guy's mind might be an enigma, but they can always find some way to step in it, and that answer seems like as good an opportunity as any.

"Yeah, but you're putting a lot of work into it." They sip their Orange G, regretfully thinking that this too is part of their highest level of comfort meal, and return to the conversation after a quick moment. "I mean, I don't think that hard about the stuff that I end up doing, most of the time. Most of the time I just... think it'll be fun, pick it up, suck at it, and drop it after a week."

They put the can down on the counter in front of them and look down at their food. God, they want to smile or be pleasant or anything. They do not want to wallow. They can't. But, like, what else can they do? "Maybe it'd be easier if I did think about it as much as you do."

I'M SO SORRY

[string_instrument]

When Hope pressed on about how much work Dirk put into his decisions, he was all ready to go with the sceptical rejoinder--he had his rebuttal locked and loaded, but the shot was never fired.

Instead, he just sort of stares at them indirectly, a look implied via the placement of his shades and the light reflected off of them, but never confirmed. His face is inexpressive, stony in the way a statue is stony--never quite looking directly at you, even if you manoeuvre yourself into its line of sight.

That might be for the best, though--because what he's actually looking at (with some disdain) is the Orange G. Alcohol is not what he would consider a helpful substance for thought or action.

Which is why he never touches the stuff.

Enough. He's given their complaint a few seconds' thought, and has reached his verdict--now to be delivered in his trademark drawl, with the ends strangely clipped ane enunciated.

"Have you actually even tried not giving up before you stop sucking?"

Dirk, ever the master of tact, drops his suggestion on Hope like a cinderblock from ten storeys up.

never apologize never surrender

[fibrillate]

Hope grips the side of the table when they hear that incredible, intelligent question. Their expression doesn't change much, but they imagine, right now, that they could do the kind of thing that makes people think they're insane. The kind of pupil-shrinking, hard-zoom shot with their forehead at the top of the frame. It feels like that for an instant inside of them, and they feel their fingers start to hurt, and they let go of the table and drop their hand to their lap.

"Shit, is that the trick?" they say, now no longer making eye contact—no longer feeling like they want any kind of contact. "I guess I can fire my therapist now." They're stunned at how dry they're keeping their tone during this, even while despair and rage coil together on the surface of their tongue. It helps that that's a joke, at least—Hope doesn't have a therapist.

They pick up their Orange G, feel how empty it is, and grip it just hard enough to crinkle the sides. Then they plaster on a smile and try to politely glance back over at those sunglasses, and they rest the can back on the table. They haven't felt this fake in a while. "I'm not making the choice to give up. You get that, right?"

[string_instrument]

Dirk watches this shift in demeanour without moving or flinching. He lifts a shoulder, tilting Cal's head to peer closer at Hope, but Dirk himself appears nonplussed.

A purposefully ambiguous choice of words, that. Nonplussed can mean either extreme, and that's exactly what he's conveying here.

Did he expect this swerve? No. Not even a little bit.

Does it bother him? Not at all. He'd need to have had an expectation for what comes next in order to be thrown off, and he didn't have that. He was just answering honestly, as he's prone to doing--and whatever happened as a result is always going to be somewhat unpredictable, because human people are, by a very very wide margin, not Dirk's area of expertise.

"No? How would I have gotten that?" Dirk is honest enough to be almost earnest in his reply, but there's really no way to read that off him. Unless you watch Cal. He glances at Cal himself--as though searching for some information the puppet has that he does not. He looks back at Hope, and tries again.

"I guess I don't understand the problem. How are your physical actions not your choice?"

[fibrillate]

It's... ignorance. Stupidity, maybe. Not malice. Isn't there some sort of law that Hope half-remembers about how the two interact? They sit there and try to come up with the best way to react, one that doesn't involve catching the gaze of the puppet.

(There's no way out of it, is there? They're going to have to deal with a set of invisible eyes and a set of all-too-judgmental ones for as long as this conversation goes on. They really might as well just get used to it.)

"It's like... I don't even know how to explain it," they lie. They know exactly how to justify it all to themself, but whether they can explain it in a way that doesn't make them seem like a total shitbag is the real trick. They look down at their plate and pick at the rice with their fork.

"It's like there's a switch in my head that controls all the things that make my brain work right. And if I do good, the switch stays on, but if I do bad, there's this... godawful, shitty demon in my brain that flips the switch." They turn their fork over in their fingers as though the visual aid is necessary. "And all of a sudden, all the good stuff I'm supposed to feel goes away and it gets replaced with so much bad stuff that I can't make go away unless I stop everything and start over with something brand new."

They scoff after a second and return to their food. "You just pried out more than almost anyone in this city knows. Be proud of yourself, I guess."