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]

Take this from me, and smash it.

[She's careful in the way she phrases it; every word is important. For something like this, it can't possibly be easy in any respect. Every second will need to be nothing short of absolute agony.

She still hesitates in saying it, and keeps her eyes on the gem in her hands, rather than on him.]

No matter what I say. How I beg you not to. How I plead that there must be another way.

Take it away, and smash it. That's all.

[callbacks]

[Dave nods, even if she's not looking. He pauses a moment longer, as if there's something he might say. Something he might tell her to make it easier.

But that isn't the point of this exercise, is it.

He reaches in and takes her soul in his hand, rocks to his feet and pulls it away from her with nothing like expression on his face. It's all in her power, now, his grief, his misery, the cry of denial he can't voice.]

[occultigen]

[Something wrenches in her chest as his fingers close around her soul, echoed in the cry that escapes her. Instinct makes her lunge for it, a sudden bolt of deep and visceral panic that she can only chalk up to survival instinct. Most of it is genuine; a very small bit of it is calculated. She's gotten good at hurting people over the years she's been this way, and it's not hard to guess what's likely to make this worse on him now.

So she doesn't try to hold back her fear, doesn't put on a brave mask or try to make it bearable with thoughts of nobility and sacrifice. For once, she focuses on her terror, how badly she doesn't want to die, and lets it bubble up to the surface without restraint.

It has to be enough. She can feel the power growing by the second; the more it hurts him, the stronger her last act will be.]

N-No — wait — !

[I'm sorry, she thinks, and prays he'll keep his nerve.]

[callbacks]

[Dave's several feet away when he opens his hand, looks down at the shimmering light within it. Meridiana is so pretty, all rose and gold and the beginning of dusk. He can't look at her Soul Gem and think cruelty, not when all he can see in it is quiet and safety and a smile shared only with him, the only true sunlight he'd seen in three years.

It's a few moments before he realizes he's stalling, waiting for some other Dave to flicker back through time and tell him not to do it, tell him that this isn't the way. But no other Dave is coming. He's alone in this.

He puts the Soul Gem down on the floor and wraps both his trembling hands around Caledfwlch's hilt. It's a heavy broadsword. This will only take one hit.

After a long, weighty moment, he turns his face from the glimmer of sunset to the girl herself, lets her fear punch through him like a wall of ice water. If she were smiling, it would hurt as much. If she were crying. If she weren't looking at him. Pain is no longer something that happens, it's its own country, and anywhere he turns now he's going to find it, going to drag it through his blood.

Dave is killing Meridiana.

She's made a liar of him at the last, because he promised never to hurt her, and this--if this isn't hurt, he doesn't know what is. If the sight of him twists as much in her as her eyes do in him, he doesn't know how she can breathe. He can't.

The hope doesn't make anything better. He wanted so much more for her than this. So much more for them.

I love you, I love you, please--

He raises Caledfwlch above his head, steady in the end, as he fixes his eyes on that small, beautiful light through his tears.]

AAAHHHHH!

[He brings the sword down.]

[occultigen]

[What it comes down to, in the end, is a paradox.

There's always a drawback to bargains like these, always something hidden in the way they're worded. She's never been a particularly ruthless person, and certainly wasn't when she started on this course of hatred and cruelty, but the years have taught her a few things, enough so to see how this last final gamble might have the power to make an end of things.

The power to protect herself isn't synonymous with protection itself. She's never been invincible. She's only had the power to be, if she chooses to make it so. If she gives up on that, she's as defenseless as anyone else.

But here, now, in this one unique and beautifully executed sequence of events, she's giving up on her wish in a way that fulfills it to the utmost degree, letting herself be hurt by the one person who never would, dragging him down into depths of pain beyond any she's ever inflicted before because her existence had brought him so high that he has so, so much further to fall for it.

The power it's producing is unimaginable. It's an anomaly, a perfect solar eclipse, a once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event born of the right place and the right time and the right people in the right circumstances.

(And maybe the multiverse simply recognizes that when a time kid is driven to the height of despair out of love for the one sweet thing they'd move mountains for, well, that's the right formula for miracles to happen.)

The gem shatters from the force of the blow, and Meridiana's body goes limp like a rag doll's — her legs still twisted beneath her, her head fallen to one side on a carpet of loose blonde hair.

For a measure of seconds that drag on far too long, that's all there is. The end. Nothing more.

But then, gradually, something changes.

There are cracks running along the floor, racing for the walls and running up them like rivers of fire when they touch; there's light glowing inside the empty spaces they're leaving behind, the hue of sunset seeping in through the splinters and fractures of the walls around them. It's like watching an egg hatch from the inside out; the lines rush toward the ceiling, and when they all converge at a point overhead, the pieces and fragments of building that have been cut into petals by those cracks all come loose, and begin to fall away — opening outward and crashing down like a concrete flower in bloom.

The roar is deafening. The devastation is immense.

And not a single fleck of plaster touches a single one of the survivors, protected as they are in their place at the center of the blossom that, at last, has opened up to let them see the blue sky overhead, and the warmth of the sun.

One by one, up from the ground, the flowers begin to grow and grow — fueled not by the soil and sun, but by the final command of the maiden-turned-dragon that had once made this castle her domain. They grow like Sleeping Beauty's thorns, crimson roses and white lilies, far too large for any natural flower to ever be — and when these blossoms have finally opened, they reveal the sleeping body of one of the dead inside.

One after another. All those who died. Life begins anew, like flowers that grow in the spring after a long and bitter winter.

And if Dave happens to count, and compare the number of flowers to the number of victims and executions that occurred during the game, he'll find that there's one too many, and that the last one is taking the longest of all to bloom.]

[callbacks]

[Dave is oblivious to it all.

He crumples a second after she does, sword clattering out of nerveless fingers to fall, nameless again and without legend, to the ground. Dave follows, knees to floor, curling like a quotation mark, arms pulled tightly around himself like there's anything to hold together anymore. Any reason to try. He sinks until his forehead touches floor and there's nowhere further to go, and he cries, endlessly, bitterly.

There's no purpose to his pain anymore, but it doesn't go away.

The cracking ground doesn't move him; he's blind to the opening walls. The noise, the destruction, they're all just an external echo of the same sound inside him, unbearable and all-encompassing. The world is ending again, and why shouldn't it? If he were able, he'd welcome it. As it is, he hardly knows it's happening. If the room is breaking apart, he's already shattered.

He doesn't move until it's quiet again. Until he has to accept that he's still alive. 'Dave,' says one of the other survivors; maybe more than one. Maybe they come to touch his shoulders, to try to shake him out of it, to hold him when he doesn't budge. But he doesn't unfold until all the flowers have. Until the sun has warmed the planes of his back, heated the back of his moon-pale neck.

It must be Allie who helps him up. Maybe not. But when he notices he's on his feet again, he's only inches from the last flower. Close enough to touch its outer petals with his numbed, empty hand.]

...?

[The croak is a question.]

[occultigen]

[It comes open at his touch, and parts its petals to reveal the girl that was once the mastermind inside.

It's apparent, at a look, that she's breathing; there's a wisp of her hair that's fallen across her face, and it's shuddering slightly in rhythm with the breath she's drawing. Her pallor has fled; she's pale, but from fashion rather than from sickness, and there's a warmth beneath her skin that hasn't been there before.

Fueled by all of his grief and all of his despair, the mastermind's final act had been this:

End this game, and give him back everyone he's lost to it.

The mastermind had died for what she'd done. The world where nothing but survival mattered had ended. A life artificially prolonged through love and the inability to bear the thought of her death was one she'd lived before; she'd seen how it ended once, and known it wasn't the right one.

The girl who's returned is not the mastermind. It's the person he'd lost to the game, just like all the others.

And right now, she's coming around.]

...D...ave...?

[Once upon a time, Dave Strider fought, and suffered, and saved every single person he set out to.]