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

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

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?

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[Oh, there is a lot going here--Sayaka's a little confused by it all, but the bowls caught her eye first. She'll go check out the first bowl! What's going on here?]

[Well! It's a big bowl, and it's completely empty right now. The rim seems to be asking a question:

How many people would you be willing to sacrifice to save one person?

Cheery question, eh?]

[...Mmm! Do not like this question! It startles Sayaka briefly, and it makes her think because her initial thought is none. It has to be, right? It has to be, she'd be a terrible person if she truly thought about killing someone.

But then her mind goes to Fray. To Argenti, to Soujuurou, to others. Could she really say that she wouldn't sacrifice someone to ensure their safety, if it came down to it? If she couldn't save them herself, if sacrifice was truly the only way...

...]

...I don't want to sacrifice people anymore.

[She says it softly, but truthfully. She genuinely doesn't think she could bring herself to do it, after nearly sacrificing everyone for her escape--and sacrificing so many girls to further her career. She can't. She can't.]

[Sayaka's response is very truthful. The cave rumbles a little, like it's acknowledging what she said, and there's a very low whisper of something that sounded like Kirumi, too soft to understand what that was, but...looks like spoken words don't affect anything with the bowl. Bummer!]

[...

Sayaka feels her cheeks puff out indignantly. She bared her soul for a second and all she got was unintelligible whisper ASMR in return? The audacity! The nerve!

Is this more likely to do damage to her than it is to the bowl in question? Almost certainly. But Sayaka will give the bowl a swift kick (14) in indignant rage.

...And probably wince after, but hey!

She will go and investigate the bowl further like a good little dangan romper after that, though. Is there anything else that can be seen on the bowl, or is she gonna have to climb inside? Or maybe try another approach?]

[embrace the kirumi asmr sayaka

That kick seems to have gotten something louder from that voice tht sounds like Kirumi:

'Be careful, please do not hurt yourself...!'

It must have been something Kirumi felt pretty strongly about, if that overcame the general limitations of being unintelligible.

The bowl was very unmoved by her kick, though. Geez]

[All Sayaka has now is a (very minorly) hurt foot and tingles. Unbelievable.

Even so, Kirumi's voice does seem to startle as she comes in a little clearer, and if anything Sayaka feels even more embarrassed doing this and having her realize it--]

S-Sorry, Tojo-san. I imagine the last thing you need is to worry over us.

[Something clearly needs to be done about this bowl, though Sayaka isn't quite sure what can be done...

...Still, it's about the size of a Jacuzzi. Will anything happen if she tries to climb in it? Maybe there's something further on the inside, or maybe some sort of mechanism. Maybe?

...Or maybe it's dirty and Sayaka can try to clean it--]

[When Sayaka climbs inside, the bowl bursts into flames, incinerating her! Blazes fill the bowl, destroying what it got!

Okay, no. It does fill with fire, and it does seem like it'd incinerate anything that got placed on it, but it's not affecting Sayaka at all. To her it's nothing above lukewarm.

When the flames disappear, she and everything on her are intact]

[...

It takes all of Sayaka's willpower not to scream (19), but considering the fact that she scrambles out of the bowl shortly after and just. Checks herself over for singes and marks and just. Okay! Sure! This is happening!!!]

Okay! Never doing that again.

[...Does this need to be answered with proper sacrifices. Where the fuck does one get those--should she leave the bowl for now and consult the others, maybe?

...Though, if no one has gotten the third bowl, Sayaka's curious about the question there too--]

Edited 2024-10-03 00:34 (UTC)

[Nobody has gotten the third bowl yet, so take a look and see if it's helpful to you!

The inscription is the bigger one of all three:

How many people would you be willing to sacrifice to save 127000000 persons?

Golly]

[...That's almost as big as her entire fanbase. What the hell.

It hits, after a moment--are...these questions that Kirumi has had to ask of herself? Before she killed, before she acted in her own killing game? Are these bowls meant to symbolize that?

Well, the weight of that hits like a brick to the head. Is there anything else about the bowls to check over, or should Sayaka go and consult the others?]

[Looks like the bowls got nothing else for Sayaka to discover. Go ahead, Sayaka! Teamwork makes the dream work]

[...Okay. Curiosity is absolutely getting the better of Sayaka.

She's gonna go to the machine Argenti was at and print out some people over there. What happens if she puts one into the bowl? She'll do the first bowl first.]

[When the paper dolls falls into the bottom of the bowl, Monokuma's voice sounds. It's...somehow, the voice is lacking its usual mocking tone. It's as if someone or something is using Monokuma's voice to communicate, instead of it being actually him]

'You're Sayaka Maizono. You would sacrifice one person to save one person. Is this your final answer?'

[...SHE LITERALLY JUST SAID--]

I--I gave my answer earlier, that's not what I'd--!

[...Maybe this is what's needed to proceed, though. And it's...one person...listen if she just thinks of it as doing it for someone she cares about it's fine.]

...Y-Yes. Um. Final answer.

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kandata - 2024-10-03 01:24 (UTC) - Expand

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destage - 2024-10-03 01:29 (UTC) - Expand

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kandata - 2024-10-03 01:38 (UTC) - Expand

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destage - 2024-10-03 01:51 (UTC) - Expand

[ so that sure was a thing with sayaka and the one person thing huh, but by now joshua has seen the question on the third bowl, so,

he's also heading over to the machine to print more people - except that it's taking too long to print that many people so he's wandering over to the dumbwaiter. ]

Hey, can I have like, 250 thousand of those paper people?

[ surely this is fine ]

[The dumbwaiter doesn't reply. Instead, the dumbwaiter returns, densely packed with a cube of paper filling the entire space.

When Joshua gets the cube out, it'll automatically unfold into a paper doll as big as the Exisal McGillis pilots. It's marked with '250000' on a side of it. How will this fit into the bowl?

Palace logic is how. Thank goodness something like this is paper and therefore carrying it isn't a total pain, although Joshua may need some assistance on that regard anyway due to the size, haha]