THE MASTERMIND AU MEME

[milliondollarpipes]

THE MASTERMIND AU
AMBIDEX EDITION

With Round 3 now over, it's about time we had the mastermind meme!

To those who aren't familiar, this is essentially an AU where your character is the one responsible for Round 3's Mutual Killing Game, and all of the carnage that came with it, from the kidnapping to the motives to the trials to the executions! And now, they have chosen to reveal themselves before the remaining members of their class at the final trial!

As such, you are free to play around with this as much as you would like; did your character make a contract with Kyuubey, or did your character put everyone in the Killing Game for a different reason? What is your character's motivation for bringing despair? What do they intend to get out of this seemingly senseless killing? And what does the rest of the class have to do to stop the madness and go home?

There's probably going to be quite a bit of AUing from your character's original canon happening here to make them into the best harbingers of despair they can be, so feel free to go as nuts with it as you want to! And, of course, feel free to tag others with your character's reaction to their classmate's big reveal; it doesn't matter whether or not your character made it to endgame, have fun and mix up the survivor pool as much as you'd like!

Oh, and feel free to describe your character's sweet new Monobear-themed duds, too!!

Original meme text borrowed and modified from loveisanopendoor!

Comments

[occultigen]

...And this is...the help he gave you? Letting you have...this.

[It makes her shiver, trying to process the implications. Dave, long ago, long before any of this, sacrificing everything and even in the very last, giving a little bit more than anyone else could ever have been expected to.

He would've thought that was the right thing to do.

He would've thought, "why not; at least this way I'm of some use."

He was dead believing that long, long before she ever would've had the chance to scream at him that he was wrong.]

Letting you puppet what's left of him around like this.

[callbacks]

Yeah.

[A simple answer.]

He owed us. We helped him, once, and he agreed to save us in return. Even though he hated us. 'Obnoxious,' that's the word he used to hide how afraid he was of us. But he was afraid of a lot of shit, and we guess complete oblivion must've seemed worse than the personal.

[He shrugs. Or they shrug, in his body. There's no visible difference.]

So we set this up. His powers and Junko Enoshima's memories gave us time to wield against its master. But this body's proving kind of obnoxious in its own way, at the last. [A short sigh.] It wants us to let you choose. The way he got to, or thinks he did.

[occultigen]

[It's strange, she knows, to find a sliver of twisted comfort in the horrible things that the terrors are saying; the things they describe are perfectly in line with the memories she has herself of the person she thought was Dave, and it makes him a little more real, his memory a little more tangible, his ghost a little less forgotten.]

And...what is it we're supposed to choose?

[callbacks]

We've been keeping you all--well, 'alive' isn't really the right word. Existy, maybe? A lot of you've remembered by now, so it shouldn't surprise you to know we picked all of you up post-mortem.

[Or...you know, post-post...you get the picture.]

But we've been dangling you in front of the Lord of Time as bait, pretty much, while the living get on with the business of killing him. So the choice is: Do you want us to keep doing that, or drop it? Leave us--and those kids--exposed?

[occultigen]

...You monster. What sort of a choice is that? "There's no hope for you anyway, but we'll let you 'decide' whether to put all those living at risk out of selfishness that doesn't matter to your fate either way"? That's no decision. It doesn't even pretend to be one.

[She shudders, profoundly.]

...But it was enough to let Dave feel useful, at the very last. Just enough for that. Wasn't it.

[callbacks]

...If we have to couch it in the terms of this game of Enoshima Junko's, we could say that it was his last shred of hope.

[The tentacles stir uneasily at the barrier. Hope means something slightly different in SBURB.]

He never saved anyone, you know. Not once. He died, and died, and died, and all he won for them was time. Just a little more time. And he still chose it, every time the choice was offered.

[occultigen]

[The Nine of Wands in Dave Strider's future — and all that time, she'd really been reading for someone long past, hadn't she. It's nothing short of chilling.]

...Why...? Why would he...do that...

[callbacks]

Asking the literal stuff of nightmare to explain the reasoning of one broken human child is probably a futile effort at best, you know.

[The laugh is so like Dave's. Quiet, voiceless, just a breath pushed through his nose, like when he thinks something's objectively funny but doesn't have the heart to enjoy it.]

We could say a lot. That he was afraid to do anything else, for sure, that he was obligated by the nature of his Aspect. Fate's a cruel goddamn mistress, as you already know, Miss Meridiana.

[After all, they'd been the ones to speak with her, even if it had all been through Dave's automatic responses. They'd been the ones keeping him alive, lighting up the nerves and pathways that had let him laugh again, let him smile.]

But...if we had to pick just one reason. We'd say it's because he loved them, and he wanted them to exist for just a little while longer, if that's all his life could buy them. ...We think that's the impulse we're experiencing now, for instance. Towards you who remain, we mean; fondness, and...an unwillingness to see you hurt.

[...]

It's obnoxious in its own way.

[occultigen]

...Does he exist anymore? You said he's been gone a long time. How long has it been?

[She wants to repeat where is he, but it's hard to wrap her head around the magnitude of this, to even begin to put it in terms she can comprehend.]

When was his last moment...and where?

[callbacks]

[After a moment, he bobs his head slightly to one side.]

The 'when' is kind of meaningless, given everything you know about what we can do. But you remember, don't you. The first motive we gave him, his first memory after that trial.

[He explained it as a dream, asked for her opinion. Lifetimes ago...]

This Dave was killed in the Land of Frost and Frogs trying to retrieve the body of the Witch of Space. Jade. [He corrects himself, tilting his gaze down the length of his sword to the floor.] It was a heroic death, and he didn't come back.

[occultigen]

I do know what you can do.

[And that's what's making her thoughtful, remembering. Mulling over what's been said, what's before them now. The choice that isn't really a choice.

Dave had died wanting to make one small sliver of difference.

That's not such a hard thing to relate to.]

If you'll...if you'll let me go to him, and hold his hand as he dies...then I don't care what you do with me after that. I'll leave it to you; by then it won't matter, anyway.

[callbacks]

[The whispering of the writhing things stops instantaneously, and the courtroom is painfully silent without it. But Dave's face wears Dave's expression now, open and dumbfounded.]

...He wouldn't want that. And he would, he always did, more than anything. [Dave shakes his head, brow furrowed for a moment.] Shit. We--urgh.

[He sneaks one hand up beneath his shades to rub at the inner corners of his eyes.]

He would want you to live, you know. You understand that, right? You of all people, he wants--would want to live. To have a chance at the life neither of you could have.

[occultigen]

Of course I do. I'm sure that's what he wanted: "Let it be me, because it might as well be. Better it be me, than them."

[She shakes her head, arms coming down to hug herself now, hands tight around her upper arms.]

I don't care. He never did know what was good for himself, anyway, and it's not right that he should pay so much for others only to die alone!

[callbacks]

...And what if we told you Dave Strider did still exist? That there was another timeline where he didn't have to make that call, and he wasn't left all alone?

[He grasps the front of his shirt, and--even with the color leached out of them--the wrist-warmers she made him peek visibly from his sleeves.]

Would you still pay to go to this one, who died before he met you? Who wouldn't know who you are?

[occultigen]

A-Another...Dave?

[She takes a step backwards at that, recoiling as much from the sight of the wristwarmers on his hands as from this new information, and all of it — so much of it is so far beyond her, but she's felt that way about this murder game all along, that it's all too much, and whenever it was too much there was always one thing she held fast to, even so.

She'll never be good at this. She'll never be enough to embrace the magnitude of it. But there's one thing she can do, better than anyone else. One thing no one else can.]

...H-How many of these timelines are there?

[callbacks]

As many as there are choices, probably, though most unfavorable timelines are short-lived. We're using his powers, but he didn't understand them very well, so neither do we. Time doesn't work the same way for us.

[After a pause, though, he inclines his head. A surrender, of a sort.]

As far as we're aware, this one is the only one who made this choice.

[occultigen]

...It doesn't matter if he doesn't know who I am. If there are a thousand Daves, or ten thousand Daves, and all of them are fighting for something more, then I hope that all of their choices will lead them to someone who'll tell them how much they matter, and make sure that they believe it.

[She ducks her head, chin coming down to rest against her collarbone, but then she picks her head up again with renewed quiet determination.]

I can't do that much. But if he paid for even ten seconds for you, and for them, and for all of this...then yes, I will. Of course I'll still pay for that, because what matters is that I don't want him to die alone.

If he bought all of us ten seconds, then I'll gladly buy ten for him — and I'll tell him how worthy of love he must've been all along, that someone he never once met still fell in love with him from far away, and came all that way so that at the end, he wouldn't have to be alone.

[callbacks]

[Dave stares at her wordlessly as she speaks, still holding the center of his shirt, until she's done. He maintains that silence for seconds longer, even, until something startles him, makes him drop his gaze and swipe quickly at his face with the back of his hand.

He stares at it, surprised.]

What--what the hell is this. Why...

[He sniffs loudly and then is forced to release the sword so he can lift his shades with the other hand. The blade clatters noisily to the ground, but that's almost less astonishing than this:

The gods--the child--whoever he is, Dave is crying.]

You--you would give that time up? For him, even though...he couldn't give you anything back, even though it's hopeless...?

[occultigen]

[And it says something, really, that she's moving before she even realizes it — that her automatic unconscious instinct is to move toward him even when she knows that "him" isn't precisely him at all; she can't help but respond to it, his pain, his tears, the understanding of how agonizingly lonely he must've been then, and that some part of him was even now.]

It's not hopeless.

[The words come quiet, but they don't waver.]

I don't want anything back. I just want to be at his side, just that long.

[callbacks]

[He shifts back when she moves towards him, but his leg hits the throne behind him and he just sits, graceless and blind, both hands pressed against his eyes.]

We can't--we can't--we can't kill you, you're...Oh my god, this stupid goddamn useless body is such an intractable piece of shit, stop--stop weeping, asshole! Auuugghh.

[Dave doesn't stop weeping. He just bends further into his hands, and the monsters outside this nightmare keen distantly, tainted as they are with this shadow of humanity. Eventually, he looks up, and offers her both his greyed-out hands. After wiping them on his pants. He's not gross.]

Come--c'mere. If you're really gonna do this...we will remember what he doesn't. We'll always remember.

[occultigen]

[It's hard not to be a little wary of the offer, even admit the upwelling of emotion; if it were Dave and Dave alone, she wouldn't hesitate an instant, but his mouth is still using "we" and it's the monsters she doesn't precisely trust, not him.

But the monsters are the ones that can't abide the crying, and yet the mastermind still is — so there must be something more, those shadows of impulses and beliefs and feelings that belonged to the Dave she remembers, and those, she trusts.

Somewhere out there, in all these timelines and among all these choices, there is a moment when that Dave is waiting. It's the moment before the killing blow lands.

She'd best not keep him waiting any longer.]

...Does that make any difference to you? That you'll remember it...?

[She walks forward, quiet and steady, and reaches to take his hands in that same old familiar way.]

[callbacks]

[His hands tremble when she touches them.]

It makes a difference to him. And we're...trapped, by his memory. Hornswoggled, we guess.

[A new sound trickles faintly in, as if from far away. Steel on steel, the ring of swords. His voice is low and hoarse.]

Are you sure.

[occultigen]

[It's a foreign sound; on some subconscious level, it frightens her, but whether that's because she knows what it means or just the very fact that it's something that shouldn't be present amidst the darkness and its whispers and its shattermarks is anyone's guess.]

I'm sure.

[Let me be your knight. Just for a little while.]

Please.

CW: Impalement

[callbacks]

[And then she's there. It's loud and bright, though the sky is dark, and entirely too much is going on. But most of it is in the background, some distance from the strange spire of stone where Dave is fighting.

There are two of them, one dark and one light, and a girl with wild hair as black as her dress lies still and cold on the raised slab beneath their battle, as if sleeping on a poorly placed bed. Dave is desperate, one sword to their two, but he's fast, and it almost seems like he could at least get away, if he can't win--

But it ends quickly. The white sword through his heart, from the front; the black lower, through his back, so he's caught between the two. His own sword, pale grey, falls from his hand, and so too falls blood, its proper red once more.

Time slows as the dogs withdraw and Dave, too, begins to fall, and the gods whisper one last time.]

Now, Miss Meridiana. This is all the time we can grant you.

CW: Impalement, suicide, very vague allusion to eye trauma

[occultigen]

[It's like watching an execution, the way it unfolds.

Maybe it's because she knows full well that he's going to die at the end of it, which makes it less of a fight and more of a foregone conclusion. Maybe it's that the odds are so clearly stacked against him, even as he holds his own for those few brief seconds that prove just enough to make it bitter when the inevitable finally comes. Maybe it's the synchronization between the two killing blows, white in the front and black in the back, and red skewered between.

(I'll save her in exchange for your eyes, he'd hissed, and they were so preoccupied with their devil's trade that they never saw her drawing the blade from where it was hidden in the cane, never noticed her turning the point toward her chest and pushing it through to moot the point before the exchange could ever be completed. Not until it was already long too late to take it back.)

It hits her, then, that these are likely to be the last few moments she lives, too — and she's giving them up for love, again.

Maybe this is her lot in life; to have died three times this way, it can't very well be a coincidence, can it?

But it was her choice, this time. More her choice than it's been, any other.

And so she snatches up her skirts out of the way of her feet and runs toward the dying Dave as he falls, giving everything she has to try to get there and catch him before he can touch the ground, because in a few seconds anything she holds back isn't going to matter much anyway.]

DAVE!!