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 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!!

[callbacks]

[Sweet catch, Meridiana. Her arms keep him from collapsing right across Jade's corpse, though his knees still hit the stone hard enough to bruise. Not that it matters. Not much matters anymore.]

...Huh...?

[He should be dead, he should have died instantly from shock, with a wound right through his heart like that, but whatever the horrorterrors have done to the fabric of time seems to be working; he has a little time. Enough to turn his head a little and take in this stranger who knows his name. Enough to blink, eyelids heavy behind his shades, while the world sinks away from him in slow motion.]

...H...hey...?

[Is this an angel. What is happening.]

[occultigen]

It's all right. I've got you; it's all right.

[It's not. He's dying, and there's nothing she can do to make that all right, but she's here and that at least makes it a tiny bit better than it could've been.

There's a dead girl here. Someone he loves, that he's fought and now will die trying to save. She's gone now, too, and once — once the thought of it would've made her sad, and bitter, and heartbroken, but somehow the only thoughts she has for Dave's friend Jade in that moment are You loved him, too, didn't you, and I'm glad you did, too.

She holds him tight, shifts him in her arms to make it a little easier, and reaches for his glasses the same way she once did outside of Tucker's room, moving them away to see his eyes one last time.]

It's all right. You made a difference. You mattered.

[callbacks]

[He has no strength to resist, and while the sunglasses are a comfort, a gift from his best friend, the girl is holding him, and that's. That's better. That's warmer, and with his shades out of the way, she seems that much brighter. With the lights going out all around him, her hair seems like a halo, soft and golden.]

Oh. Really...

[He has no idea who she is, but he doesn't mind her face being the last thing he sees, he thinks. It makes the concept of death--of being really gone forever--a little less terrible, if he can remember something like this in the dream bubbles.]

That's...really fucking...nice of you to say...

[He can't really breathe. The white one--she got him right through the breastbone, he can't do anything. But while his eyelids flicker, he manages to whisper one last thing.]

Hey. I don't...know you, but. Can you do me a thing...

[occultigen]

I know. I know you don't. But I'm someone who loves you.

[Just a few more seconds. Please.

She wants to beg for that, but she's afraid to take her eyes off of him, even for a second, lest he slip away while she's not looking.]

Anything. Anything you want.

[Don't die before you tell me.]

[callbacks]

[His eyes round when she says that, and his mouth opens a bit to retrace the letters: 'love.' He doesn't say it, doesn't return it, but his eyes are fixed on her even as the rest of him slowly fails.]

Say...say that again. But...

[He can't lift his arms to touch her face. His fingers twitch weakly. That's as much as he can manage, and it sucks, but.]

...Smile...? So...I remember...

[occultigen]

[It's hard, of course, to find a smile amid all this. After everything this day has been, everything she's seen and borne witness to — but she can't bear to give him one that isn't genuine, no matter how difficult it is to produce. Not when it's likely to be the last thing he sees.

And so she reaches for his hand and catches it for him, bringing it up to her cheek with the strength that he lacks, a reversed mirror image of a touch that once made him turn red weeks and weeks ago. She holds his hand there and thinks of dinosaur suits and chrysanthemums, of the last song of the night and another moment she'd wanted desperately to make last just a little bit longer.]

I love you, Dave Strider.

[Five words that prove enough to push her over into smiling, the way she's been trying to.]

Once upon a time...you became my knight. My friend. My family. The person...who saved me. And I'll be yours, the one who loves you, forever and ever.

1/2

[callbacks]

[Hearing that, his eyes widen one more time, then crinkle in the last smile he'll ever offer, gentle and grateful and wondering. Then they close at last, and he's still.

Dave Strider dies in the Land of Frost and Frogs knowing, for the first time, a measure of peace. The last thing he saw was a smile. The last words he heard told him that he was loved.

He won't give that up to the Furthest Ring. Not for anything.

Congratulations, Meridiana Everett. You done broke the timeline.]

I don't think this is Golden Ending Meridiana what the hell did you do

[callbacks]

[Or, well, not exactly. Her timeline folds in on itself, doomed from the start, without a stable loop to sustain it. The timeline her love brought her to collapses, too, when John Egbert, Heir of Breath, decides, no. This is not the end.

Time is a resilient thing, and, like water or air, it finds its own course.

In this timeline, the ghost of Dave Strider never traded power to the night terrors, never enabled the Hotel Monofornia to be. But everything that happens still happens, and those gathered to this world by the Elder Gods remain within their embrace, protected in the memories that they meant to use as bait, but now guard with jealous, knightly zeal in the darkest reaches of space, ensure their safety and togetherness. Time passes, or perhaps not, but Meridiana, Silver, Maya, Tucker, Allie, Wash, Kureha, Ryoji, Ryuunosuke, Tsukiyama, Duster, Harvey, Isabelle, Futo, Wario, Haruka, Kayneth, Ulysses--Rufioh, who's spent an eternity here before, who knows enough to show them how to live after death--they are together, if they want to be. They still grow and learn, as they choose, as they visit one another's pasts and learn to make a present of their lives. A future, of sorts.

But if Meridiana remembers a stone tower, the near-blue of a distant forest, the aurora borealis in the sky, she might one day find a boy waiting for her in his red and black, biding time as he watches the stars.]

There you are.

[He smiles, tucking his shades into the front of his shirt, and if his eyes are the dead white of every ghost's, his expression is genuine. Warm.

Death isn't the end.]

Hey. I remember you.

[It's just the beginning.]

[occultigen]

[In the dream bubbles, she doesn't grow tired of climbing anymore.

Once upon a time, in a vastly different sequence of events in an entirely different course of time, Silver had taught her the value of the notion that ghosts don't have rules. It's not quite the same thing here; there are still things that can hurt her, and still reasons she might someday find to be afraid. This isn't one of them; there's no hesitation as she climbs the steps, no memories to drag her down into nervousness and trepidation.

There is, however, a memory lingering there when she reaches the top.

There you are. Hey. I remember you.]

I do, too.

[The corners of her mouth hurt from being pulled far to either side, and that's how she realizes she's started smiling without even thinking.]

I'm sorry I kept you waiting.

[And I don't know why I can't keep my eyes off of you.]