Kirumi Tojo's Palace | The Ultimate Maid's Failures

[kandata]

By now everyone may be used to find themselves in bizarre locations, between going into palaces and visiting Nekyia. It might not come as a surprise that it has happened again.

What might come as a surprise, though...is how empty this place is.

All around you there's nothing more than a large, gray, featureless expanse. In the distance there seem to be bars, curving upwards to gather so, so high above you, possibly hundreds of miles above, so high it’s hard to distinguish.

It’s a cage. So unfathomably large. You could escape, were you to get to the edges of the cage, but...it would take forever. No matter how you look at it, you're trapped. The atmosphere is so...hopeless. Devoid of anything even remotely positive.

Not that you want to hang around for long, do you? After all, this is someone's palace. Not a place to stick around at. What to do, though?

It’s all so...empty. Silent. Featureless. A flat expanse of hard gray tiles.

Gather together, everyone. Gather and choose a direction. North, East, West, South. All directions look completely identical, but could it affect your time in this place, somehow? Probably not. But all treks start with the first step. Perhaps, if you get moving, you'll progress?

Comments

Left Side

[kandata]

[This is the left side, fellow!

This side of the chamber seems relatively sparse. Look at this. There's a pedestal, and there's an object currently in the pedestal.

Further back, there's something hooked to the wall, beside the closed door of a dumbwaiter. A painting of some sort.

Guess the depths of some sort of hell aren't furnished with loads and loads of things, huh]

[vogelfrei]

[ Being a dramatic bitch, McGillis is drawn to the pedestal. What do we have here? ]

[kandata]

[Going straight to the heart of things, eh? Gaze upon what's on the pedestal, McGillis:



It's a GENERIC VASE. Looks so generic you could even think it's 3D printed.

This vase is sitting nice and comfy on the center of the pedestal. The pedestal itself looks rather nice, but still, this vase does not belong on such a pedestal. It's clashing so much...]

[vogelfrei]

[ HUH.

McGillis is going to park the Exisal and briefly unshrimp himself so he can get out and examine this vase without breaking it. If he lifts it and checks the inside, is there anything in there? ]

[kandata]

[Inside McGillis will find what seems to be a whole bunch of dirt. Doesn't even look like good dirt, it's all in clumps. Nothing nice would ever grow on this.

While he's examining the vase, from the corner of his eye McGillis would notice something moving across the surface of the outside of the vase]

[vogelfrei]

[ Low quality dirt! What a cheap palace, get better dirt--!!

Anyway, the movement is infinitely more relevant than the dirt, so he's going to set the vase back down and try to find what has been moving. An insect of some kind, maybe? ]

[kandata]

[I'm going to tell Kirumi you called her an insect.

Because it's a silhouette that definitely looks like Kirumi. It's moving, restless. Pacing all over the surface of the vase. Like all the other sightings of it so far in the palace, it's hard to distinguish it -- McGillis probably saw it because the angle at that moment was favorable]

[vogelfrei]

[ What the fuck. ]

That's...

[ So for clarity, she basically looks like a tiny shadow cast on the outside of the wall, scuttling all over it? ]

[emptyself]

[ let’s see if soujuurou knows how to appreciate art by taking a look at the painting! ]

[idealitas]

[ Joining soujuurou to appreciate art too, I guess? ]

[kandata]

[This painting is very utilitarian! Should be easy to decipher:

It's showing a cute pixel depiction of Kirumi while the flashlight you all assembled during Phase 0 shines on her. Kirumi seems happy.

Well that's a bit out of left field, since this painting seems entirely unrelated to everything else here. Guess it's completely meaningless and unrelated and insignificant and non-relevant and unneeded and unnecessary and can be dismissed as having nothing to do with anything without a second thought, right?]

[emptyself]

[ seems totally normal! let’s keep going! ]

[emptyself]

As if!

[ soujuurou looks to yi sang, as if having been struck by a bolt of inspiration. wait, who was he talking to there? ]

Yi Sang, do you still have the flashlight?

[idealitas]

I do.

[ HELP

Anyway. Time to shine this weird flashlight on the painting! Little pixel Kirumi in particular. ]

[kandata]

[Shine it there! Ah, flashlight, what do you reveal!

The entire painting vanishes. Instead, there's a dark gray text on white]

'Monokuma has been leaving Flashback Lights for us to find. They were hidden, yet I feel Monokuma intended us to find them, as if that were a game.

We all gathered together and turned the device on. When we did, we remember things.

We remembered the Ultimate Hunt. We remembered people wanted us dead. We remembered we threw our talents away to hide from them.

Why is Monokuma giving us memories we seem to have lost?'

[When the flashlight is pointed away, the painting is back to normal]

[imperiosity]

[He's like. So sideeying the fact that McGillis is literally running around investigating while in this mecha but this is the life they're living, apparently.

Anyways, let's go for the dumbwaiter! Anything fun in there? Are there little dolls packed in there waiting to lose at trivia.]

[strawsandals]

[ Hello Aaron, Yoon will join in on this investigation! He's here to peek also... ]

[kandata]

sometimes...life is hard...

[kandata]

[No little dolls! Look inside, Aaron and you'll find...

...nothing. It's empty. That's kind of disappointing]

[strawsandals]

[ Eh..??? ]

Oh...not what I was expecting.

[imperiosity]

Tch. Pretty anticlimactic, if you ask me.

[So disappointing!! Is there any way of operating the dumbwaiter though?]

[kandata]

[There seems to be controls to the side of it, which you can use. Nothing seems to impede that.

That said, Yoon's commentary seems to have made something happen.

There's the telltale noise of a winch making the dumbwaiter descend, and then it brings something up: a piece of paper that seems to have been typed]

'I'm on standby! Stay tuned!'

[This dumbwaiter heard you both complain and threw you a bone, apparently. That's a little bit condescending?]

[strawsandals]

Huh?

[ What is this. He is so unimpressed. ]

Hey, we're in a hurry, so can you at least tell us who you are?

[imperiosity]

Standby, my ass. Sure you aren't just slacking?

[since it reacted once already, clearly the solution is to just complain more at it!!]

[kandata]

[The platform descends, bringing a note back:]

'A dumbwaiter. I bring objects to and from. But waiting is boring, so I will play Q&A if you ever need it. But I cannot answer anything Kirumi Tojo doesn't know.'

[How conversational!]