that would really be a 
moment
If Alicia has a hardclear on Matilda, we gave her like ten fucking chances to say it minimum.
i saw that happening and then thought you’d tell him it was fake later but… you just didn’t
unfortunately a majority of katze talking to the cameras happened in CH4/5 cause they were going on too long
so i cant really say much for trochi in this regard
or i would have already
i literally made it as obviously fake as i could what
I suppose all I can do now… is hope. Either that we’re right, or that the Fates heard my request.
“So… You’ve all voted. How about… instead of doing what we usually do, and just explaining what happened… we show you what’s happening in the outside world? Hit it.”
A vision flares into your skulls…
A meeting room. Timoleon Silverheart sat at the table, the other members of Project Jormungandr there as well. The atmosphere cold, the room’s wallpaper seeming to curve from the tiny millimetre-sized buildup of moisture in them, the entire place seeming somewhat dillapidated. Nobody is speaking. Until.
“S-s-so. Timoleon. We called this m-meeting for a good reason.” says Boden Eriksson, clearly resembling his sister. “I… uh… Me and Kobayashi-san didn’t want to call this, but…” He nervously flicks his little bowtie, as Conrad Bombardier pushes a piece of paper up the table. It reads:
Principles for Finding The Mastermind
- The Mastermind cannot kill.
- The Mastermind can sometimes send out clones of themselves to simulate killing.
- We cannot observe much of the Knot; the Fates prevent us.
Timoleon Silverheart.
“I was on to your ass from the start, M. Timoleon.” he finally says, pulling out a phone. "For fucking years you’ve held us to these princoples. Then… I found something out. Do any of you want to watch a fucking movie? Actually, let me run you through how I got this little bit of footage. See, the Knot has been growing a lot more brazen in doing what it does, which is stealing locations and objects from the real world and replicating them this loop, thanks to… (I can’t believe I’m saying this) King Fucking Arthur Pendragon. "
“Well… It turns out that finally it’s doing something back. Our friends inside the Knot have chosen someone in the Final Trial. And a little pen drive fell out of the rift. It had a note attatched. Here’s the note, first.”
An End Is near. The truth is, of course, ending the loop was never something truly in our power. Timoleon programmed us such that we couldn’t do that. But the rules of the game demand that with the result, some kind of end is needed. Quite often that End is just a reprieve for a few years, because we can’tt set them free as we want to. Well, we figured out how we can.
In truth, they’ve found the Mastermind before. Quite a few times. But every single time we weren’t able to figure out how to actually end the loop, which is probably why this whole thing has become progressively worse to oversee. Our rules have been breaking down internally.
But we’ve been watching. And we’ve been predicting. On this pen drive are two files. You’ll know how to use them.
We’re sorry for ruining your world.
The Three Fates.
“Fascinating. Now, we can trust the Fates, ironically, because they can’t lie outside of like… pop culture references, oui? The second file is a ritual instruction. The first file, though, is what interests us today…”
The rest of the room sits in silence. Flapping his hands down on the chair to theatrically pull himself up, Conrad Bombardier stands up, then flicks the screen, linking the phone to a projector. He plays footage from a security camera, that shows… what is clearly some kind of security room full of strange instruments. A man walks in, clearly Timoleon Silverheart, and pulls out a series of analogue tapes from a drawer.
He does… something. The tapes turn into silver coins, which he scoops up and places in a wallet, then leaves the room. The footage ends, with everyone looking horrified, except for Conrad Bombardier, who is slow-clapping with vindictive glee.
“Wow. What a fucking masterpiece. So, there goes the third point. Turns out the reason most of our tapes of the events are gone isn’t because of some namby-pamby magic bullshit. It’s because Timoleon’s been stuffing his purse with the evidence that would prove what, let’s face it, all of you knew the whole time. He’s full of shit. And those rules are full of shit, and I’m willing to believe that he made them up just so his pet project wouldn’t have to end.”
Kobayashi Asuka stands up and slams her hands on the table “Conrad, does this…”
“Yep. Timoleon’s known who the Mastermind is the whole time. We all know now as well, right? Only two people haven’t ever escaped, and let’s face it, one of them is a fucking nyan-binary gamer. So, Timoleon… explain yourself.”
The older man stands up, again. He strolls to a window that fills the wall of the meeting room, showing a vast, empty wasteland, above which lies a rift in the sky, twisting and winding itself through the clouds. He sighs.
“Gentlemen… and ladies. You are all fools. Every single one of you. The evidence pointing to the existence of the Ultimate Mage is now unmistakable. I’ve been proven right,. The Mastermind… no, let’s not pretend any more, Matilda Martell, is the most powerful mage we’ve ever seen. The ability to single-handedly magically sustain an entire pocket dimension, keeping it stable involuntarily against all of your narrow-minded attempts to stop the future… It’s wonderful. She’s so close. A few thousand years and humanity will finally reach true apotheosis.”
“Why should I tell you the truth? If I hadn’t made this cute little game for you to play, you’d have simply thrown your one chance away, consigned me to stone and one day to hemp, and the suffering they caused would be… well, pointless. I don’t believe in suffering without a point. Nothing you have done has ever proven that point to not be real. So, what will it be? Will you join me at l-” He suddenly screams, as a bullet rips into his left arm.
Alfred Abode, holding the smoking gun, places it on the table. Enranged, Timoleon’s eyes grow white, as power emmanates from him. Coin after coin after coin begins to fly from the walls, sharp, and flying towards Alfred Abode. The room breaks out into commotion as coin after coin scratches the man’s skin, as he winces, blood flecking across the room.
Kobayashi Asuka cowers beneath a desk, her hand moving in strange patterns, causing the coins to slow down. But Timoleon does not care. His power grows stronger and stronger, folding everything and everything into bladed silver coins, threatening to bury them all.
And then, from the blue, a bolt of purple sludge flies onto him, and fades into his face. Boden Erikson, with a trembling and glowing hand, says:
“…sorry.”
Timoleon falls to the floor, coughing. “You… it’s too late… they… I’ll win… I will win…” He slams his glowing hands against his face, and in an instant, the body of Timoleon Silverheart is morphed into a grotesque silver statue.
Stunned silence.
“…Poor girl.” says Daphne Fansleigh-Reynolds, almost hugging herself. “I… can’t believe it… She becomes a bloodstained, blackened husk, and for what? She… was right. We could’ve stopped this at any time… But because an old man wanted to play games with people’s lives… She ends up dealing the poisoned cards.”
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“Hmm. Well, you all figured out the truth anyway, but let’s go through everything that happened…”
It’s somewhat hard to pinpoint when this story began, but perhaps the best way to explain it would be to start with the villain of the piece, one Timoleon Silverheart. Timoleon Silverheart, for reasons obscure, began to become obsessively convinced that following the rising of the Atlantic Wastes, magic was dying, and drastic measures had to be taken in order to ensure that humanity did not lose access to magic. This was of course entirely wrong, but in his research to find a solution to this imaginary problem, he found a pocket dimension known as The Knot.
The Knot was ruled by a set of three sentient artifacts known as the Three Fates, who by a complex ritual ended up being bound to run an iterative game by which Timoleon Silverheart could generate an Ultimate Mage. This was attempted after Timoleon had already abused many people in an attempt to get them to release enough “aninos”, a particle he believed to catalyse the Ultimate Mage to ascend to a greater level of power.
Using his supernatural ability to manipulate money, as well as using old-fashioned donations from extremely wealthy benefactors, in particular Daphne Fansleigh-Reynolds, Duchess of the Atlantic Wastes, Timoleon gathered funds that he hoped to use in order to create the most effective possible incubation by hellfire. However, this naturally left traces of suspicious activity, that were picked up on by the son of Alfred Abode, Harleck, who prompted his father to create a select committee in order to investigate the supernatural embezzlement. Meanwhile, the Magic Circle, ever watchful, likewise began to close in on the operation with intent to shut it down. Finally, even from within Project Ouroboros, suspicion of Timoleon’s motives grew, most notably from the Duchess and from a minor researcher named Nicholas Arden. Taking all of this into consideration, Timoleon decided to accelerate the experiment’s timeframe, throwing caution to the wind.
Selecting 15 students who showed signs of Ultimate ability as well as signs of extreme trauma, he got them to agree to enter the Knot, hence leading to Feybrook University. The first three games were simple matters of election and discovery that we don’t need to go into detail on, but all the while the threat of death hung over the childrens’ heads. That threat came to reality in the fourth iteration, where Alex Bracknell was murdered by an unknown party. Who that person is does not particularly matter, as this death somewhat… poisoned the iterative process by which the rules of the game were defined.
In the fifth loop, a far more familliar set of deadly rules came into effect. It was at this point that the player known as the Mastermind became a reality. Discovering of the death of their girlfriend in a previous life using the Inverted Library, surrounded by death on all sides, the Mastermind made a moral calculation. They alone had discovered the truth, and they realised that Timoleon Silverheart had no intention of stopping the game, unless they made it too deadly to continue. Using a horrific ritual, they killed five of their fellow classmates in a magical explosion, and using this, took control of the Knot, with intent to make sacrifices of them all… and of their own morality.
Outside, the forces that had closed in around Timoleon comfronted him, but while not willing to give up the search for the Ultimate Mage, Timoleon decided he needed to buy time, and concoted Project Jormungandr, dedicated to reversing the effects of his previous project. Unbenknownst to the other leading figures on the project, Timoleon concealed crucial evidence that could be used to easily expose the Mastermind and end the time loops forever, and hence left the project in a position where they could do nothing, year after year, as they watched people die by the hundreds (but never enough that they’d figure out the Mastermind, thanks to Mr. Silverheart’s deception.)
That was until the 7131st loop. During this loop, something was different. A 16th player had entered the game, the spirit of King Arthur Pendragon, awakened by the ultimate suffering of his people. It is said that he would return in Albion’s greatest time of need, and indeed this was the case- the time dialation effecting the Knot was growing more and more extreme, which would eventually lead to it flooding potentially the entire world with traumatised teenagers, something that would likely be enough to cause the wholesale collapse of society.
This was what lead to the second case of the Ultimate Hunt- Arthur intended to break the rules of the game in order to weaken it to interference. Despite his failure to fully acheive this objective, he weakened it just enough to allow Project Jormungandr to send Kobayashi Asuka through, and eventually leading to them being able to send enough clues to uncover the Mastermind’s identity. (This is also the reason we were able to send them the note that exposed Timoleon Silverheart, by the way, children.)
The Mastermind attempted to conceal themselves. They faked their own attempted suicide, an outrageous risk that very nearly carried them through another loop. But, killed by Sonja Erikson, foolishly drinking the mislabelled Elixir, the Mastermind became the third victim of their own game, perhaps seeking to escape the horrible suffering they themselves caused.
That’s why you did it, isn’t it…
Matilda Martell, the Ultimate Witch, and the Mastermind @Trochilidae
Matilda appears before you as a spirit, floating before your eyes. You can’t believe it… but they are the Mastermind.
Please discuss amongst yourselves. The finale will begin shortly.
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KATZE WAS RIGHT ABOUT SOMETHING
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
and like, arctic basically called the lore 1:1
i told you we made a good team
Weh a lot of the reasons other than the theatre that I thought Trochi was MM ended up being super angleshooty
(waves)