FOURTH TRIAL

[bathymetric]

Alright, that's quite enough time. Move along towards the trial, if you would all be so kind. You know what's coming.

[ It's routine by now - go to the vault door, get let into the elevator by Angel, head down to the trial room... it's hard not to notice the losses on the ride down by now, though. Your numbers are starting to really dwindle, even if you're often spread out enough not to notice as much normally. The trial room and its podiums, too, seem more than ready and willing to remind you of the same. The red glow of the empty spaces is constant, potentially unnerving. ]

Remember that as there are two victims to consider, up to two votes may be counted at the end of proceedings. As always, I am but a direct address away, however rude you choose to make it.

Find the party or parties responsible for the deaths of your comrades. And to those parties: Good luck.

[ The screens rise!

Welcome to your fourth trial. ]

Comments

[blackmass]

...No. Della's correct.

That future might be one utterly alien to you. So altered that the world itself may as well be nothing like that with which you were already familiar.

[reallyhatesharks]

[Nova rolls her eyes.]

Sorry, you're right. Of course, there's no reason why someone would want their choices to make the world different. "Oh, you can't change the past, because trauma made you who you are, Nova."

[She's clearly imitating someone, but it's not anyone you all know.]

[nothingcanstop]

...No one ever said that here, Nova.

[ She's getting some...vibes. ]

[reallyhatesharks]

It's not the first time I've had this argument.

[nothingcanstop]

What argument do you think you're having?

[reallyhatesharks]

Whether or not changing the past is useless.

[nothingcanstop]

I never said that it would be. Or that your trauma makes you who you are.

[ She doesn't want to be having this conversation, but she sure will. ]

Just that with the Professor's method, there'd be too much you couldn't account for.

The argument I'm having is whether you think killing all of us was worth it, Nova. Because that's what I think you're trying to do.

[blackmass]

[The frozen smile on Kirei's face seemed to imply a struck nerve, or the brief desire to throw a punch.]

[...It wasn't clear which.]

Several of you have quite a talent for presuming I said things that I did not.

[lovelikeyou]

You already have time travel in your world, don't you?

[reallyhatesharks]

Sure. But like most things, it exists for Fin to use however he wants while the rest of us suffer.

[lovelikeyou]

[oh, woah, what]

Who is Fin?

[reallyhatesharks]

The only person who can stop a sharknado, of course: the great hero Fin fucking Shepard.

[lovelikeyou]

But he wouldn't let you fix the past?

[nothingcanstop]

...It's all about his family. No one else's. Is that it?

[ That's been sticking in her head. ]

[archboxer]

So you thought murder would solve it this time.

[emberserker]

What, the child?

[reallyhatesharks]

No, Gil is my godson. Fin is his father.

[lovelikeyou]

[so are they all named after parts of a shark, or]

[reallyhatesharks]

[No, there's also April, Matt, and Claudia.]

[emberserker]

She does. She said as much the other week.