105. FOURTH WALL POST [Action for Saffron City, anywhere in Saffron City! Video's okay too]

[foolishwren]

<sub>[You know what?]

[Heather's not even sure why she TRIES anymore.]





[So done. So done.]</sub>


Here we go again.


... Yes, Cooj, I still love you.

Just not right now.

Comments

[foolishwren]

I've been better.

_{[She didn't feel like lying. But she does stand up, brushing off her clothes. She'd rather not waste this time, either.]}

What about you, kiddo?

Been stayin' outta trouble?

[hasavision]

[He laughs, but it's not a very cheerful one.]

Not exactly. But in the end, I avoided getting sacrificed?

[...If only because someone else did instead.]

[foolishwren]

... Well, that's always a good thing to NOT have happen!

<sub>[She senses that moroseness behind it, though. And she understands that, sort of. Things are always complicated.]

[She avoided being the sacrifice in her OWN story only for a woman who had once been her best friend (who she'd admittedly been going to kill anyway, but details) threw herself onto the metaphorical altar instead.]

[She may have wanted to kill Claudia Wolf, but she hadn't wanted to see her go through that.]</sub>

[hasavision]

Y-yeah...

[He manages a wan smile. And... in the end, at least Mitsuru was able to reunite with his sister. He would be able to spend a whole thousand years with her, watching over the world.

...Okay, that still doesn't make him feel much better. This seems like an excellent time to awkwardly change the subject.]

So... has a lot changed here since I left?

[foolishwren]

... Well... a lot of people are gone, now.

But for the most part... things are chugging away more or less like they always do.

_{[Every so often something crazy, world-ending, or TERRIFYING happens... but it's always dealt with. Life rolls on.]}

[hasavision]

And nobody's found a way back, have they.

[Being that there are people still here.]

Did anyone ever complete the challenge for all of the badges?

[foolishwren]

Nope.

A few people have won all the badges though, yeah.

It's like I always told everyone. Getting those things has nothing to do with going home.

[hasavision]

...Oh.

[He'd really thought that might have been the way... It's definitely disappointing to hear that is not the case, even if he'd managed to leave himself.]

And... there's no other leads?

[foolishwren]

Not as far as I know.

_{[She shrugs.]}

I don't really give a rip.

Even if I knew how to get back, I wouldn't.

<sub>[And she's gotten a little bit bitter about losing people-- even if she knows she's in the minority, she's frankly pretty happy with other people not knowing ho to get home either.]

[Not that she'd ever admit that out loud... it's selfish as hell and she knows it.]</sub>

[hasavision]

...

Is this place that much better than home?

[foolishwren]

When the worst thing about a place is the fact that it might make you leave without warning, you know it's better. Besides... that part isn't so different from home anyway.

_{[There's a sort of flat bitterness in her voice.]}

[hasavision]

[Well, when she puts it like that...]

Hey, Heather? Can I... ask you something?

What... happened in your world to make you hate it so much?

[His voice is hesitant. If she decided not to answer, he'd probably back off right away.]

[foolishwren]

<sub>[She looks at him for a moment. Not angrily or anything... but she does have to sort of consider whether she wants to say anything or not.]

[It doesn't matter one way or another, really-- he's gonna be gone once this weekend is over after all, so it's not like she really needs to worry about anything bad coming from his knowing.]

[In the end it boils down to whether or not she wants to think about it hard enough to be able to explain.]</sub>

... You said you were gonna be sacrificed to save the world, right?

[hasavision]

...Yeah. And you... really hated the idea of sacrifices 'cause of what happened in yours, right?

[foolishwren]

Yeah.

In my world, I was the sacrifice.

But it wasn't meant to save it. _{[Not in the literal sense, anyway... and given Heather's intimate knowledge of the God that was to be summoned, she didn't trust the SYMBOLIC saving to be real, either.]}

It was meant to destroy it.

[hasavision]

Destroy it...?

[foolishwren]

To purge the world with fire and bring on Paradise.

But I don't think the 'Paradise' that would've been created was the one all the crazy culties had in mind.

[hasavision]

Wha...

Why would you ever do that? Even if it's supposed to lead to paradise, killing so many people...!

[foolishwren]

Religion does crazy things to peoples' minds.

[hasavision]

[Well, he can't argue with that. The Old God cultists were pretty crazy.]

I just never ran into a religion that wanted to destroy everything before. One of them didn't like Travelers like me because they thought we were demons, but even they weren't... well, that kind of crazy.

[foolishwren]

Well, some of them just wanted power.

Some really thought they were going to create a paradise.

I don't think any of them really knew that what they were doing was going to destroy everything.

<sub>[It had been arrogance, really, that led both her mother AND her once-best-friend to try and birth God into the world.]

[Dahlia had thought she could control the creature and make its power her own. World domination. Perhaps even more. But no matter how cunning she'd been, it had been stupid to think that she could control God once it came out.]

[And Claudia... well.]

[Perhaps with Claudia, it had just been naiivete.]</sub>

[hasavision]

I can get trying to rule the world, but destroying it just doesn't make any sense. [Since that's essentially what the northern kingdom had been up to.]

Either way, though... I'm glad your world is still safe.

[foolishwren]

It wasn't that they were planning to.

They were just wrong.

<sub>[Well, Claudia had known... but she had thought Paradise would spring forth through the blood and ashes once the old world was annihilated.]

[Unfortunately it would have been a very different sort of Paradise than the one she had in mind.]</sub>

But yeah.

Me too.

Nobody knew how close it came, y'know. Just me and one other person.

Everyone else who was involved... they're all dead.