Work Text:
Mephistopheles rumbles along its predestined course, slogging along with the crawl of traffic. Charon sits up straight to peer over the mass of cars in front of her, blinking the sleep out of her eyes — she grumbles to herself as the sunset reflects off someone’s windshield into her eyes.
There’s a loud clang as Rodya kicks her feet up against the railing in front of her, her back awkwardly folded in her too-small seat. “Are we there yet?” she whines to the driver. “Hey. Hey, Charon, honey, can we go yet? How long ‘til the rest stop?”
“Charon stops when Charon feels like it.” The reflection in the rear view mirror reveals the older woman heavily dissatisfied with the answer. “Unhappy? Next destination: Charon will drive off the next bridge. Splish splash.”
“Aw, what?! Don’t do that, we’re like, so close, I can feel it… like, is it five minutes, ten minutes? Give me an estimate here!” The driver ignores her — Rodya fiddles with the peeling tape on her axe. “Hey, Charon, where’s Vergil-”
“Can you please not make this more insufferable for the rest of us as it already is with your pitiful whining?!” Outis snaps at the same time Heathcliff yells, “Shut the fuck up!”
“Stormy loud,” Charon calls out in return, moments before slamming her palm into the bus horn at the car that’s pulled out in front of her.
Don Quixote shouts over the noise: “Aha! Dost thou not know?”
“What?!” Rodya yells back.
“Ho! A mere quarter-hour ago, the illustrious Red Gaze hath summoned our very Manager beyond the Backdoor and into his chambers!”
“And as such,” Yi Sang continues, “we have not been permitted to depart from the vicinity of Mephistopheles’ body despite nearing the end of our workday, and will likely be unable to until their return to formally dismiss us.”
Sinclair whips his head around. “Hold on, Vergilius called Dante into his office? Why?!”
Ryōshū laughs. “T.S.D.”
“They’re not So Dead!” He leans further forward: “Right, Miss Faust?”
Faust stares off into the distance, unresponsive.
“Miss Faust?!”
A pencil snaps between Vergilius’ fingers. Dante jerks their head up at the sudden noise, before hurriedly ducking their head again as his eyes flicker to their face, lest they have any chance to meet the eyes of the man before them. Graphite fragments are dusted from fingertips and swept into the wastebasket by the side of the table, distracted, idle thoughts manifesting in yet another destroyed piece of stationary. In front of Vergilius sits a notepad with nothing but half-useful notes written at the top in his semi-neat print, dotted with attempts to come up with anything to say or supplement in conversation or response to Dante’s own elegantly written agenda for their conversation.
- Recent Sinner Behaviour & Performance
- Abnormality Mirror Dungeon Battles
- Observation Log Quality?
- Weekly Battle Report & Findings
Coming up with nothing, he rests his head on his hands as he listens to the manager tap away on their PDA across from him. “What an inconvenient method of communication this is,” he muses to the neat ebbs and flows of their calligraphy, the miserable conversationalist that he is — he supposes, after all, that the natural consequences of avoiding any sort of conversation with them is that he’d have nothing to talk about once they did manage to weasel some one-on-one time out of him, and curses himself for agreeing to their proposal for a strategy meeting in the first place. “...Head for a clock. Faust surely has the capacity to install speakers in there somehow.”
Dante stops typing for a moment, glancing up at him before tilting their head. They tick out a reply, verbally, mostly muttered to themselves. As they hit the enter key, a digital voice speaks from their PDA — [In Mirror Dungeons, aside from Floor 5 bosses that become too difficult to defeat through sheer enemy level ups, we sometimes come into Abnormalities that are difficult to defeat on Floor 3 or 4, Ardor Blossom Moth and Drenched Gossypium. I have burn and bleed teams but they’re useless against the respective Abnormalities.]
“Oh please,” Vergilius says, “One at a time. You can’t expect me to remember all of your little monsters.”
Despite being coworkers for around a year now, Dante equally has nothing good to say to Vergilius, even if they’ve found the workaround to their language barrier through requesting a text-to-speech feature in their PDA. We’re not prepared enough — no, that’s terrible. I can’t get them to roll high enough — well that’s their job, isn’t it? Their fingers tap, annoyed, against the backspace key. I don’t have the right identities — again, that’s their job as manager to, well, manage. <Arghh…> It’s just not working out the way I want it to! Then what are they spending all that time in their room planning out their next Mirror Dungeon run for? To their frustration, their inner critic is sounding increasingly like Vergilius. I-
“Dante,” his actual voice snaps them out of their thoughts. “I don’t have all day. Stop backtracking and say something I can understand already.”
<I should’ve asked Faust to come with me,> they mutter, and then type out their next message. [For Ardor Blossom Moth, nobody sustains bleed for the first few turns where it’s most effective. The basic strategy we’ve come up with is just hit it until it does before it has the time to power up.]
“What great wisdom will you bestow upon me next?”
Should I just up my bleed team? — no, there’s no way in hell Vergilius will answer that. There’s a soft buzzing of electronics from Vergilius’ laptop charger as he takes a long sip of coffee from his mug as if on a timer. [I think my issue right now is that I run out of Bleed Count too fast while Burn triggers too slow. Raw damage isn’t enough when the Sinners are struggling to clash.]
“So… you need a Slash-focused attack style that triggers somewhere between the extreme frequency of Bleed and the slow trigger of Burn?”
Dante doesn’t move for a second, as if processing his words.
“In other words,” he says in their silence, “an effect with an on-hit trigger.”
<Yeah… yeah. That’s it.> Their hands hover awkwardly above their PDA as they talk to themselves. <Why didn’t I think of that?>
He imagines, if they had a head, their mouth would be hovering half-open while searching for words to say. After a few more seconds, they type out a simple message.
[Thanks.]
They start typing again, and Vergilius can’t help but roll his eyes as the awkward silence settles between them. He raises his arms — Dante glances up at him again, only for him to stare back as he stretches his sore back and shoulders. They cower away when his eyes meet their face, clock hands slightly trembling in the fast movement of their head when they turn. Halfway through their paragraph, they seem to shake their head in frustration, hesitating before deleting it and typing something else.
[This is taking too long.]
“Well, I’m not the one that controls time here, Dante. Get on with it.”
<This would be so much easier if you could just understand me. Or else you’ll kick me out before I say anything useful.>
Vergilius raises an eyebrow at their sudden turn to monologue — “If you are thinking that everything would be easier if our communications were more streamlined, I am more than welcome to suggestions. Or,” and he lets a taunting smile linger on his face, “you can simply type faster.” They sit rather dejectedly, a gentle and passive ticking that seems to put sound to their thoughts — he folds his arms on his desk and leans forwards, the slight tilt of his head catching the light on his earring in an almost intimidating way. “I understand coming to me for help, but you can’t expect me to solve all your problems, can you?”
… [If you’ll let me, I have an idea?]
Ryōshū perks up at the sound of the door unlocking — Heathcliff is the only one to notice her reaction.
“Oi, Clockhead?” he calls out tentatively.
The Backdoor slides open.
<What’s up?>
There’s a notable tension that relieves as they stand, visibly unharmed, in the doorway. “Oh, you lived! Good on you, mate.”
<Uh huh?>
“Dante, if you would,” Faust says, “we have some things to discuss before we wrap up the day.”
<Oh, right, just give me a bit, I still have something I need to talk to Vergilius about->
“Woah, hold it!” Heathcliff sits up. “You’re willingly going back in there?”
<...Yeah? We’re not done. I just had to grab something.> Before anyone can get a word in, they’ve dipped back past the Backdoor and into their office.
After a beat, Rodya breaks the silence with her bewildered laughter. “They’ve lost it! They’ve finally lost their head.”
“The manager’s head has been missing for a while,” states Meursault.
“No, I mean they’ve gone crazy!”
“A.T.”
“I don’t think it would ever be ‘about time’ for someone to lose their mind, but… yeah. Maybe.” Sinclair rubs the bruise on his shoulder. “Do you think they could take a hit from Vergilius? What if they just… you know… explode on impact or something…?”
“Manager Esquire is not so weak! After all, have Sir Meursault and I not been exploded before by the dastardly terrorists at K Corp.?!” Don Quixote announces with an air of pride. “Have thine eyes not melted out thy skull before, and the manager hath rewound thy pain? I am certain they can endure even the power of The Honourable Red Gaze Vergilius!”
“The eye-melting thing was you, chiquita,” Rodya groans. “It was gross. Can we talk about something else?”
“You think about Dante getting beat up?” Hong Lu asks Sinclair.
“I- well… wait, no, that’s not what I-!”
“I do too! They just look so fragile, like chinaware!”
“It’s free entertainment,” Ryoshu states, blowing smoke into Hong Lu’s face. He doesn’t flinch, but Faust shuffles away from their antics. “Good on you, kid.”
“I do not think about Dante getting beat up for fun!”
“B.A.H.”
“And that does not make me boring as hell!”
The sound of the Sinners arguing, while typically loud enough to give Vergilius all sorts of headaches even from his office, is drowned out by the heavy clacking of machinery. Dante, to his heavy amusement, is, in fact, a ridiculously fast typer. Previously hidden behind the screen of their PDA, and now seated next to him instead of across the table, their fingers fly across keys like a perfectly rehearsed melody on a piano, the rhythm of typing straddling the line between pleasant and grating — after all, every evenly-spaced key press goes with a loud CHCK-CHCK-CHCK at their insistence on communicating with him through Faust’s old typewriter. Vergilius’ laptop sits neglected across the desk as he watches words appear on ink-on-paper over Dante’s shoulder, a section of his desk cleared off to make space for the loud machine — it hits the end with a near comical ding! before they slide the top bar across easily and both hands are flying over the keys again, creating a cacophonous noise that accompanies the exact beat of their ticking as they mutter to themselves. Vergilius counts the seconds it takes for them to type out a full sentence, and, to his great annoyance, finds that they are much faster on it than he is on the flimsy keys of his laptop.
Sinking or Rupture would be most effective in that case, and Sinking is more versatile and has more support based off of the prevalence of it after the engine resonated with Wuthering Heights when we went there, and ABM is Gloom Weak, but I don’t HAVE a sinking team, and I have a few identities but not enough to sustain it as much as I can sustain bleed, and I would get more but I’m running out of Egoshard Crates because LCA will NOT provide more resources to us without me paying them! Did you know that they ask me to pay them in order for them to help me manifest Egoshard Crates? They pay us! Why do I have to pay them to do better work for their company?!!!!
Distracted by the sound of the ! key being hammered on, Vergilius blurts out the first thought that comes to mind. “Have you considered… giving them the money?”
I HAVE,
Ink smears as they continue to type before the plates have shifted back into lowercase. Vergilius unfortunately finds himself having to lean over their shoulder to read the text as it appears, the text semi-obscured by type slugs slamming metal letters into ribbon into paper at breakneck speed.
but that means less money for meals and nobody wants that!
“So you refuse to adapt to difficult situations because you want to continue sending everyone to five-star buffets.”
Well, no — they stop as they turn to face him, recoiling when they realise he’s mere inches from their face. Vergilius raises his eyebrow impatiently and they slowly turn back to the keyboard. Yes. Yes, because they really like eating. You remember what happened back on the Great Lakes, right? Everyone was miserable, not just because of Ishmael — Dante’s hands hover over the keys as they attempt to reword their thought, passively tapping the spacebar — because of the whole tensions going on, but because they were hungry and sick of eating the same thing every day.
“Charon was perfectly fine with the chicken nugget meal.”
Charon — from their position behind Vergilius’ desk, Dante is now able to steal a nervous glance towards the bunk bed pushed up against the wall, framed by a plain, dark, silver metal, only adorned by the carved meander pattern in its side. The bottom bunk is entirely plain, a single white pillow and unpatterned sheets neatly tucked into its sides; the top has a thick doona patterned with large, pink flowers haphazardly thrown over the edge, and an evident abundance of pillows that pile high enough to be seen from Dante’s seated position. Precariously perched on top of it all is the rather horrific looking Bongy plushie they picked up all those months ago. They decide to move onto a different point of conversation rather than finishing their thought. Feeding them well means keeping their sanity up, keeping their sanity up means they perform better and work better as a team. Sun Tzu said that or something, it’s basic strategy.
“Basic strategy,” Vergilius repeats — without the cover of the table, he incredulously finds that Dante is now waiting for him to speak, impatiently tapping on the K key with their middle finger in boredom. “And so what part of this basic strategy is failing you to defeat Abnormalities you have been repeatedly fighting for months now, Dante?”
Well, that’s the thing, it’s too hard to fight them because we only encounter them in MDs, and if I know the problem Abno is gonna be on that floor then I might as well not run it, right? Without the time for their thoughts to catch up to their hands, Vergilius watches in amusement as their true thoughts come flooding out, aggravation taken out on the therapeutic ruckus of machinery. Because I’m not stupid and I don’t want to revive people fighting something that I know will get them killed, which means I never end up getting practice fighting them because I don’t want to risk ruining a through a good and fast Dungeon run three-fifths of the way through, and the entire thing takes so long that every slow down risks us running overtime and returning to the bus late, right, which overexerts them and ruins their physical capabilities for the next run!
“And what have you learnt so far about this… moth?”
Ardor Blossom Moth. Well, for one, it really likes to set people on fire, and the fire spreads to others. Yi Sang really wanted to touch its wings for one reason or another -- he caught fire, fire caught us, it was a whole ordeal. And that’s cool and all, except you can’t kill someone without touching it, so now everyone is on fire and then it triggers its massive high-clashing AOE attack and then everyone DIES.
“And then you have to revive them.”
<EXACTLY!> they cry, throwing up their hands, and Vergilius huffs as they talk to him directly, the pace of their ticking increasing four-fold as the flames on their head flicker brighter in apparent aggravation — he’s almost surprised by their emboldened gesture, as an anger they haven’t exactly expressed before in the presence of the Sinners begins to boil over. <I’m not even upset at the sensation of my skin melting off anymore,> they say, gesturing wildly in no form of communication except for evident annoyance, their wrists going round and round and round, <it just makes me annoyed because I’m so sick of feeling the same damn thing with so many people! And it’s everyone getting burned, and it’s only them getting burned to death over and over!>
“Dante-”
<Like throw me a bone here, at least let me die in some kind of different way! It’s always skin melting off, hair catching fire, eyes boiling out of your head, every! Single! Time!>
“Dante,” Vergilius repeats. “I will once more warn you that wasting my time with your antics will net you nothing more than getting kicked out, understand?”
<Ah!> Sorry — their hands curl up into themselves, as if embarrassed by their outburst. They tap their head gently, roughly where a chin would be as they reorganise their thoughts before placing their hands on the keyboard again — Ardor Blossom Moth , they type again, before staring blankly at the words. This moth needs to die. Permanently. After a pause, the paper is shifted to a new line and indented with near mechanical precision and speed.
Ardor Blossom Moth, they try again on the new line. <Ardor Blossom… Gahhh…> What was I talking about again?
“Burn. Bleed. Status effects. The difficulty of the battle, rather than your personal feelings towards a mere bug.”
<A bug that’s about fifty times the size of all of us combined, yeah, just an itty bitty bug.> Right, so, Sinking I think would be the next goal, on hit trigger with Gloom damage, which it’s weak to… I’ve looked into their identities but it’s not only that they’re underleveled, it’s that I don’t have them at all. Which is a problem considering I blew all my crates during Walpurgis Night to get my hands on that Ryōshū ID. Their ticking slows to a sigh, almost wistful in its timbre. She’s great, though, heals others, fits well into just about every team, including great Bleed potency application. I don’t regret it, if that’s what you’re going to ask next, I’d much rather have an all-rounder than some specific units for a status effect that might be detrimental against certain enemies. That’s probably a good thing too, because if I decided to invest into Sinking before Bamboo Hatted Kim, I don’t think I would’ve made it this far without ripping my head off my shoulders a second time.
“Don’t do that,” Vergilius remarks dryly.
She’s versatile enough to run Mirror Dungeons on her own as well, so it’s a bit like having multiple units rolled into one, taking the role of DPS, speed, tank and nuke. Ah… maybe I should build up my Bleed team a bit better up to the status of my burn team now that I have her? Or I can use her and W Corp. Don Quixote and W Corp. Ryoshu as the start of a charge team or ah wait no I can’t use both Ryoshu’s at the same time
It’s only when the line is pushed up above the line they’re typing on that Vergilius processes the first sentence of their still-running rant. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Dante, but I suppose I’m not missing anything when you say she has completed Mirror Dungeons on her own?”
Yeah?
“...So I presume your tendency to send… a single Sinner to complete the entire Mirror Dungeon is a completely sane choice that I do not have to report to the Mental Health and Screening department.”
Well- okay, hear me out! They throw up their hands in defeat for a brief moment, reaching into their pocket to pull out their PDA, before gesturing wildly to a portrait of Ryoshu and then themselves — <She asked me! She literally asked me if she could do the entire thing by herself, and you know what?> They slam down their PDA with far more force than they have to; Vergilius is unfazed by the thick stack of print-outs they pull out of the medium sized briefcase they brought into his office and drop on his desk. They sort through the stacks until they reach the appropriate Mirror Dungeon logs, where they slide a single sheet of paper towards him. There, brandished at the top in large letters, along with a highly grainy black-and-white printout of an alternate version of Ryoshu he’s only seen a glimpse of before, reads:
MVP: Lobotomy E.G.O::Red Eyes & Penitence Ryōshū
Damage Contributed: 100%
<She did it! The madwoman did it!> They hold the flimsy sheet of paper up to their face, as if they were to kiss it — Vergilius coughs into his fist in attempts to hide his amusement at their bewildered excitement. <Almost infinite self-sustain, shield on charge generation and self-heal at a mere 15 Sanity cost even without full charge, Painkillers Floor 1 and Grey Coat on the second, a strong counter that can redirect a stagger when combined with Carmilla in non-focused encounters, Vergilius, I tell you, it was beautiful!>
Vergilius doesn’t bother to tell them that he has no idea what these names mean or even imply. The words aren’t meant for him anyway.
Dante taps on their PDA until an image of Ishmael appears on their screen, while they continue talking, half to him but mostly to themselves — <Oh and it was so stressful as well. I think I need to ask Faust to up the dosage on my anxiety medication, because I nearly had a heart attack when she tanked ten attacks while staggered, but she did it!> — they thrust the screen in his direction, loosely handling it in one hand as the other already begins seeking out the keys on the typewriter again. He takes it before it can drop to the floor from their flimsy grip; Ishmael’s reflection stares back at him over her shoulder, orange hair tied up by rope instead of flowing out behind her freely as it usually does.
Remember all the way back in K Corp., we had to face the Brazen Bull for the first time? It was too strong; everyone Blunt Weak just got staggered and died, the rest got staggered by burn damage and died too. And it’s still a problem in Thread Lux, similar problems to Ardor Blossom, burns through health and staggers people super easily, so that’s when I realised, yeah, it’s a stupid idea to send one person, but if the Abno has a specific weakness, or a Sinner is just resistant against everything it can throw at them…
They make a circular motion with their hand, prompting Vergilius to finish their sentence. “…One Sinner that cumulatively builds off of their own abilities could trivialise an entire enemy ineffective against them, in the same way an Abnormality can trivialise the wrong team of Sinners.” He furrows his brow — he’s no stranger to taking fights alone (in fact, he much prefers it) but he still bites the inside of his cheek at the prospect of sending a single ex-Grade 9 Fixer to fight hordes upon hordes of enemies alone. The Ishmael that stares back, though, has a strength and independence in the way she squares her shoulders that he once saw in the reflection of shattered glass. “That’s… surprisingly not the worst idea you’ve come up with.”
<Thanks,> they remark sarcastically, And that’s the thing, it really isn’t that bad for more independent Sinners or people who work better by themselves because nobody else gets in their way, and it’s different for each person too. Zwei Section 2 Ishmael is mainly a self-sustaining tank, so while she as a person is nice to work with, she’s built for this style of fighting just on terms of the way she learnt how to fight, but on the other hand, Red Eyes Ryoshu and Wild Hunt Heathcliff, all of their skills are built to support the team around them. But they’re very disagreeable people who have great self-sustain, so even if I’m not mechanically using them to their fullest team-support capabilities they still do better on accounts of being motivated to actually run it by having the space to let themselves fight to their full potential without worrying about other people getting in way of their skills, especially in the case of Heathcliff’s AOE attacks.
There’s still something that bothers Vergilius. “Even so, you’ve been saying that they build off their own strengths. What happens when you run into a group of enemies that this singular person is unequipped to deal with?”
Oh, it’s nothing! I have a log of the enemies on each floor so I just have to pick the ones that can’t do that, but if I’m running someone new I can just pull them out before they actually die anyway. Besides, rewinding one person’s injuries isn’t as bad as a full team of twelve people who’ve drowned.
Vergilius doesn’t comment on that. Although death leaves a bad taste in his mouth, immortality is somehow worse — the opportunity to suffer the pain of death again, or perhaps the pain of living. “Sorry, you have a what?”
The PDA comes out again. After a few taps, on whatever note-taking application they have, Dante slides to him…
He curses under his breath. In front of him, laid out in very neat tables on the tablet screen, is every single Mirror Dungeon Pack, their strengths, weaknesses, enemies, and nodes in a seemingly never ending list. There might be hundreds of entries; every time he thinks he’s hit the bottom he realises he’s merely uncovered the end of a thematically related group of floors; uncollapsing a particular section reveals the enemies encountered previously, the amount, the waves and their strengths and weaknesses, and a different section reveals potential E.G.O. gift encounters, their win and loss conditions alike, for every node, for every pack, for every floor. “You… wrote this?”
Well, Faust asked me if I was going to write an Encyclopaedia once, and nobody else was going to do it so… I thought it’d be a good use of my time. It’s mostly for my personal use anyway. Not like anyone else is going to see it, and the Mirror Dungeon changes with every unique adventure we go on so, well… yeah. Just makes my life easier.
Vergilius doesn’t mean to pry — he does, actually, and exits out of the tables upon tables of Mirror Dungeon nodes. Upon every click through the rather bland looking but extremely well organised notes app reveals more and more information upon every single enemy and ally encountered, sorted by the location and order in which they were encountered. The least intimidating category, located at the bottom of each section, are ally units outside of the Sinners themselves. There are only two entries, after all: In La Manchaland — a peculiarly dressed woman named Jia Xichun, whose expansive moveset is written out in bland yet cohesive print; in Wuthering Heights — an ally named The Red Gaze Vergilius, lacking entirely in skill effects, but with a small, separate section messily parsed together with bits and pieces of information, entirely unlike the rest of their notes. Their disjointed jottings read [Blood Manipulation(?)] and then, evidently written several weeks or even months later, [Bloodfiend style blood manifestation and control; although only seen used on pre-spilt blood when not manifesting E.G.O. Once manifested, self-inflicted harm/blood spilt from crown of thorns is able to be used in combat both offensively and defensively. Vergilius’ E.G.O. (unnamed) retains more blood-like texture than Don Quixote Hardblood Arts & La Manchaland environment, although can be hardened for metal-like properties. Despite growing physically stronger with blood use/spilt, SP seems to go down rather than up as with Don Quixote — SP loss could also be linked to iridescent moonlight attacks, suspect M Corp. materials. More info on further inspection.]
Vergilius, for the first time in a long while, feels rather painfully aware of being watched.
Besides, that’s what their defenses are for, after all, they write, swept away by their thoughts and not noticing Vergilius’ attention still trained on their PDA instead of them. Not all of them are suited to it, but some of them, like Heathcliff and Ishmael, are briefly unstaggerable. Ishmael’s easy -- for Heathcliff all you have to do is time the turn in which he gets staggered to trigger his counter attack so he becomes unstaggered next turn. Ryoshu, on the other hand, is a more offensive person -- if she counters someone weak to blunt, she can easily stagger them and build charge for herself so she has extra shield next turn. Well, that's unfocused at least, which fighting through is annoying in its own right, but those three make it more manageable.
“That still requires them to endure most of the damage while you hope for their skills to mitigate the damage caused, does it not?”
What’s the worst that could happen? They die? Their middle finger twitches to type something before they stop themselves, and they evidently don’t say what else is on their mind, but Vergilius can almost see them say it anyway — “How painful it must be for them! What a tragedy that they have to experience dying for once!” — and instead they type, Yes. It’s an early trade off for much more damage later on.
“And yet you still struggle to battle against certain abnormalities despite insisting on your confidence.”
I just — ah. He’s right. Dante’s tired of making excuses for themselves. Okay. Yes. But — and here they go again, because they’ve got nobody else to complain about this to — unfocused and focused encounters have their own difficulties, so the strategy applied is different. Sometimes unfocused encounters are far easier, especially when dealing with AOE damage, but they have the issue of less control in which Sinners target who, as it’s basically the roll of a dice. On the other hand, focused encounters are harder but allow me more control in what happens, so things tend to work out better. In other words, unfocused is suited towards Sinners’ natural urges during combat because of the sheer amount of enemies, which I often have trouble controlling, while while focused allows me to, well, focus against someone specific and control the Sinners better.
“Right, so even when you do have full control over your Sinners in these focused encounters, you still have trouble with… what was the other one called again?”
They type, aggressively hunched over the keyboard with one finger at a time to emphasise each letter — DRENCHED GOSSYPIUM.
“Bleed, leeches blood from its enemies to heal and grow stronger,” Vergilius rattles off the top of his head. “If I must hear Heathcliff complain about that perverted flower one more time I am going to rip out his tongue.”
<Not unwarranted complaining, though, I can tell you.> Dante buries their head in their hands for a moment, before pitifully admitting — Every single other abnormality I can escape mostly unscathed if I play my cards right, or just nuke it before it gets too bad, but with this thing it’s impossible. It just clashes too high by the time I reach it in Mirror Dungeons.
“You typically would just win difficult clashes with high-coin E.G.O., correct?”
Right! Not all the time, because, hell, even against enemies that paralyses the Sinners, like Dream-Devouring Stiltcurrent, for example, I just have to use multi-coin attacks to wear off the Paralyse before people can successfully clash again, so even if one coin breaks they still have enough power to clash in the second clash, but I can only launch Ardor Blossom or Capote at Gossypium so many times before Ishmael and Meursault go insane while bleeding to death. And it heals up all damage it deals, so
“Don’t get hit then,” Vergilius says.
<Wowza! I shoulda thought of that!> they sardonically remark — then, they type, Evade doesn’t work against AOE attacks if others don’t have them, and it gives Bleed On Use rather than On Hit, and it targets people with the slowest speed or lowest health, and people are usually AT low health because they have higher health and can tank the damage by blocking.
“Then don’t block. It gets stronger over time, so sacrifice some health to get more hits in with a counter or an uncontested attack in the first few turns.”
But they’ll get
“It’s better than dragging it out for longer and having to rewind the prolonged suffering, isn’t it?”
They think for a moment. I guess. It’s risky, though… the second they get hit they just get staggered instantly because the bleed damage they take usually brings them below the stagger threshold. A lost clash on an AOE skill risks everyone dying from simply bleeding out.
“It’s a risk worth running. Look, you have an unstaggerable Ishmael-“
It’s Blunt-Gluttony resistant, she’s practically useless against it with her nuke dealing x0.25 damage. And also most of her utility comes from her clashable block, which resolves the issue of getting hit if she simply wins, but it doesn’t do any damage which runs the fight longer.
“Better than having someone get staggered on the first turn and then die in the following turns, now isn’t it?”
But I need nukes or else it’ll drain too much blood after too many turns, that’s my problem in the first place. W Corp. Don Quixote, for example, is a great nuker but she just takes slightly too long to build enough charge for her to be effective, and by that point she’s staggered or dead. And same issue with defending, you’re not doing damage if you’re evading or blocking, and then tanking damage to set up a counter is like the WORST possible idea against this thing.
Vergilius sighs, kicking his feet up onto the table as he swipes through their PDA. “That’s what Heathcliff said in the Observation Logs,” he says offhandedly as he attempts to form his strategy into words.
Their head makes a noise close to a cash-register chime as they turn to him. As he’s come to learn, it means their surprise is tinged with unadulterated pride. <You read those?>
“Don’t act all surprised now. Your current issue is that it clashes… how high?”
25, 26? Something ridiculously high like that. A lot of EGO don’t even reach that threshold, especially multicoin. And sometimes clashing doesn’t even matter because it has Unclashable AOE attacks.
“So evading is the only option.”
Precisely. Rabbit Heathcliff has been a godsend alongside his ability to inflict 4 Fragile with good haste, but it’s not enough when there’s other people that can’t evade.
Right — it’s been so long Dante first pulled the R Corp. identities from the engine that Vergilius has forgotten they’re nothing more than a Mirror World identity. “Rabbits are the exact style of combat suited for this, yes? Rush in, tear everything to pieces before they run out of ammunition. Very barbaric, but functional.”
The best defense is the best offense after all.
“And, despite your limited resources, if I am not mistaken, you received… another Heathcliff with a gun from the last Walpurgis Night.”
<Oh, yes! The identities from the Library.> Vergilius hides his glower. Full Stop Office -- are you familiar?
“Ah. So they’re from Full Stop…” Vergilius frowns. “Well then. Better they work for you than against you.”
I can tell. Heathcliff and Hong Lu are a NASTY team together, but Heathcliff runs out of ammunition way too fast.
“So why get him when you already have the Rabbit?”
Skill 2 rolls 22, has a one-time nuke that goes thirty and above, his regular S3 goes for similarly crazy numbers. Supports Hong Lu crazy well especially in terms of ammo management. They sort of just do their own thing after I give the general command, so they can squeeze in extra damage Turn 1 and get a lot more kills and staggers early on, massive synergy when the two of them are on the battlefield together. It's really great to watch, if not annoying when he dumps his entire magazine in three turns when Hong Lu tells him to.
“So they fight like Rabbits without the need for Speed conditionals.” Vergilius leans back in his seat. “And their defense?”
Dante sits there for a moment, mind finally clicking onto the train of thought Vergilius has been following. Evade.
He takes a sip of his coffee. “What did you say before about sending just one Sinner being too few? Ah, right and sending the full team leads to your demise. What could you possibly do now that you have a synergistic couple ready to go at a moment’s notice that specialise in rushing down bosses?” Dante’s about to say something along the lines of are you done? when he continues with, “Ohh, I see… this must be one of those great mysteries of Lady Agatha’s that Don Quixote keeps on blabbering on about.”
<I got it already, I got it…> Some of their internal snark towards Vergilius’ dismissal of them is washed away in acknowledgement of what, they have learnt, to be Vergilius’ rare scraps of kindness — sharing wisdom that might be unauthorised to be shared under the watchful eye of Faust and the seemingly omnipresent higher ups of the company that they’ve never had the chance to put a name or face to. Vergilius achieves this realisation at roughly the same time as they do; Dante is easy to talk to like this, an odd friendliness and kindness — ah, not exactly kindness but rather an openness — rarely expressed in the City that only comes through their unfiltered expression. It’s rather a tragedy that this version of them is only able to converse with twelve other people. What’s more of a tragedy is that Vergilius catches himself peering over their shoulder, leaning closer, enraptured in the act of strategising again. It’s almost enough to distract him from the burning from the mechanics inside his calves, surely rusting from misuse in there, a perpetual reminder of his daily limits of walking around on his own two legs, suited more for combat than living a normal life, and in the back of his mind, his nature as a war machine. This time limit reminds him, for some reason, that he could do with some liquor around this time, inadvertently glancing towards the clock at the corner of his laptop screen. He catches himself and cringes internally. Still, the time reads well past Dante’s allocated meeting time, and as such the end of the work day, and yet he can still feel the gentle sway of Mephistopheles rumbling onwards. He supposes keeping them around long enough for Charon to return would do wonders to stave him off the bottle of whiskey by his foot, despite, to his dismay, their rather efficient workaround their communication issue that he sought to leave unresolved. His bones are more metal than human, after all — not even his eyes, so intertwined with his identity to become his title, are his. The true him, if there is one, is rotting away in a dumpster somewhere; it also sometimes bubbles to the surface, he finds, when he’s around Charon, or when a bright-eyed fixer-to-be takes on a challenge far beyond their capabilities, or when a similarly more-metal-than-man person sparkles with a similar desire to keep someone, or rather, some people safe.
As much as he hates to admit it, Vergilius still has a weakness. He bitterly thinks that it keeps him human.
With one hand he shuts his laptop, hiding the time from view as Dante reaches for the notepad on his side of the desk, crossing an invisible boundary not crossed before. “I see what your problem is, Dante,” he starts off. They sit back to give him their full attention; Vergilius leans off of their seat. His back hurts from the odd position he’s held for the past half-hour, hovering over their back — it must be a rainy day outside, considering his flesh is disagreeing with the metal inside him more than usual, or maybe that’s just his punishment for letting Dante get their way. “Maybe it’s because you’re exempt from employee reviews, considering you write them, but that’s exactly your issue. You understand an individual's strengths and weaknesses to a fault. Quite literally, I might add,” he says, reaching into his side desk drawer and pulling out the last stack of reviews. “Here you wrote, regarding Gregor, that he ‘has an immense physical capability to survive in unfavourable circumstances, but does not have the will to do so, resulting in better cooperation when following orders after combat-induced mental exhaustion’. Which is, if I might say, quite an astute observation.”
<I wrote that?!> they chime. I um… I got a bit carried away? Well, he was the last person I had to write a report for, I was getting a bit tired and
“Yes, yes, indeed. But such observations are nigh impossible without paying close attention to the Sinners both in and outside of combat.” Vergilius places his hand on his chin for a second with a sigh of contemplation. His rather lengthy time as an Office Operator proved his own ability to sense the general flow of a mission and the right people for the job at the mere appearance of a contract on his desk, as if the ideal workflow would project itself into his own mind's eye. Maybe he could’ve been a better lead himself if he simply had gotten to know his employees on a personal level — Denver, at least, had told him enough about herself that he got to know her, and in exchange she knew him a bit better than the others who worked at his office; on the other hand, he almost never spoke to the quieter employees like Nanseul, since Vergilius never approached him to talk outside of work matters.
At the very end, though, he supposes he truly never knew the man at all. Perhaps things would have turned out differently if he did put in the effort to know him, like how Dante is doing with the Sinners now.
“You focus too much on the individual,” he finally settles down on saying. “I suspect this is because of the case-by-case approach we have to the Golden Bough missions, but your ability to focus on what makes a good team is highly lacking. Tell me, Dante, your Burn team you’ve had the longest — what works about them?”
They seem almost surprised to be asked a question after the longest string of sentences he’s spoken to them. Well, they take a while to get going but otherwise it’s mainly applying and sustaining burn damage. Mirror Dungeons are fine with the help of EGO gifts, but outside of that they suffer from the same slow build issues that Charge has. Individually, Liu Ishmael applies good potency and Rodya applies good count. Hong Lu is a bit of a weaker all-rounder, and I’ve phased out Gregor because despite being excellent at applying potency, his clash power is too weak. Dawn Office Sinclair can do both -- he’s just less reliable than the other two in longer combat, and a bit useless in shorter combat because of his EGO taking a toll on his sanity.
“That’s what I mean,” he sighs. “The Liu South Section 4 members already work together regularly, so it’s no wonder they support each other in combat easily. That was not your doing, and you know this, considering you’ve thrown in Hong Lu and Gregor in there for… being part of the Liu Association. Your phrasing proves this — you have Liu Association and then Dawn’s Sinclair. How does he synergise with the team? And as for Sinclair’s conditionals, you build up to it and then what? Hope he applies burn to the same person as the others? You’re too focused on his sanity to maximise his solo potential rather than his capability to sustain burn on others.”
They don’t say anything. Their clockhands don’t shift, don’t tremble — neither do their hands or shoulders. It’s rare, but right now, they are entirely expressionless. Its irregularity is almost familiar.
“Chin up,” he says. “Your performance as of late has been above average.”
<I know.>
Vergilius suppresses the urge to smile at their cold remark. This becomes easier as Dante jerks their head up towards the door — he follows their sudden change in demeanour.
Hey, do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?
“...What do you mean?”
They type quieter, careful not to let the keys clack wildly like they did a few seconds ago. I don’t know. It’s strange, like someone’s watching you. I just feel it, you know?
He sits up. “Now?”
They don’t say anything, and their hands hover just above the keyboard as they stare at his door.
“Dante, tell me you have finished the reports on all the Abnormalities you have encountered.”
Dante shakes their head, and he stops clenching his jaw together so hard. What? Yeah, just right now. I feel like somebody’s watching us.
“The door has no gaps to watch us through, Dante. You’re being paranoid.” Despite his words, Vergilius doesn’t tear his gaze from the door. After several seconds of stillness between them, he groans and slumps back in his seat. “You’re becoming a bad influence. Do not play tricks on me like that again.”
Their clock stutters in its pace, half a chime abruptly cut off by gears clicking into place, making a noise that he assumes is them spluttering. <I’m not!> they say, frantically waving their hands around. It’s amusing to him, at least, how easily they switch from serious to frantic, and it at least lightens his heart to know that they can still stay as expressive as they are after all they’ve been through. He brings his mug to his lips to hide a smile at their frantic recovery — schadenfreude. “Now, I won’t complain about you emptying the bus for several hours each day, but you only receive benefits from LCA for running the Hard mode of the simulation once a week, correct?”
There’s a pause. They don’t have to know that, they type out slowly. We’ve nearly died every single mission since… well, ever. Ishmael was fifth, and there we took down the Pallid Whale, and our foes have still only gotten stronger from there. We just faced an Urban Nightmare and we’re just about halfway through this journey, right? Who’s to say we won’t face a Star of the City, or something worse? We’ve nearly gotten stranded in the Outskirts thrice now, and there’s things out there beyond the City’s knowledge of danger. We have to get stronger too.
“What’s the matter, going to have trouble beating down a second rich person’s manor?” Vergilius scoffs into his cup, and then- “Shit.”
So Hong Lu’s definitely next.
“I cannot disclose such… important matters.” Vergilius says, clearing his throat — he glances towards them through the sides of his eyes, and they do nothing but stare at him expectantly. “But think for a moment about the hardest, or rather, most important enemies you’ve faced so far. What were they?”
The last person we had to face when retrieving a Golden Bough, they reply without hesitation. Always someone related to the person who we were fighting for.
“And what was the best way to defeat each final battle?”
Dante ponders his question. Well… there’s no single strategy on what works for all of them, though. It depends on who’s fighting and who I’m fighting and where.
He sighs. “Tell me, Dante. How did your fight with the Don Quixote of La Manchaland go?”
Oh. HARD.
“How did you beat him?”
Good clashers clash with his AOE attacks, bad clashers going against his weaker attacks, and then using high-sanity evaders to avoid any single-focus unbreakable coins. It took a long time, and it would’ve gone faster if I hadn’t had so many Slash skills on my team and also if I hadn’t taken so long to
“Right,” Vergilius cuts them off with a wave of his hand. “And who, out of everyone you know, is a high clasher, good at evading, and only utilises Pierce skills?”
Oh, easy, that would be Don — Dante’s ticking grinding to a slow tock. Quixote. Vergilius takes a sip of his coffee, closing his eyes to the sound of typing again. Oh geez. It’s the flow isn’t it? It’s inevitable that we run into someone that one of the Sinners are strong against? They tap their fingers on the side of their head. The tinny sound it resonates rings out clearly as a whistle escapes them. < That’s how we beat Kromer?! We only beat her because everyone died and Sinclair fights better under stress?>
Vergilius doesn’t say anything, and only gives them a neutral hum. “And who, other than residents of La Manchaland, did you run into?”
<It can’t be that simple.> Dante stares at Hong Lu’s portrait for a moment. Oh man. I need a blunt-and-slash team. No, I have that already, more importantly, I need a Sinking team, I think. They stand up and begin to pace, hands shoved into their pockets as they think. <Vergilius, I don’t have a sinking team!>
“Calm down. You have time to prepare. Besides, you have been perfectly fine without it so far. Follow the-”
<-flow and everything will be revealed,> they mumble to themselves. <Yeah, I think I got it already.>
Vergilius picks up their PDA, scrolling through the previews of the various Identities slotted into neat rectangles. “You’ve got a Heathcliff drowning in his sorrows. Quite memorable in that getup, he is.”
<Wild Hunt? Of course you remember him. He walks and talks like you.>
Vergilius taps through the rest of them, coming to Gregor and stopping at the sight of a long, thin rapier in his hand. “…That’s Gregor?” Aside from the stubble, the resemblance ends there — his hair is darker, skin paler, hair longer and eyes a sickly shade of yellow. Edgar Family Heir, he reads. That must be why he bears such a striking resemblance to his mother. “Seems like this one’s drowned himself in the bottom of a bottle.”
Dante shoots him a dirty look, but carries on anyway, tugging on the back of their coat before sitting down again. They’re my two best Sinking units. I’ve been looking into Dieci but I have enough Blunt units already.
“I thought you used Molar Office Ishmael before?”
Dante fidgets — I guess? She’s great, especially her Evade. Helped massively against Ricardo. To be honest, though, I feel weird about using her because we’ve met Olga. Vergilius makes a questioning noise, and Dante decides to elaborate further. As in, Olga is a real person with her own life and it’s strange to see someone else fill her shoes exactly. It feels… disrespectful?
“Respect has no place in the City. Not when working for this company.”
<It does.>
He ignores them. “I’m just more surprised Rodion didn’t end up with that woman’s identity. It would’ve been a mirror image.”
Ishmael’s a Fixer and sort of a natural born leader, though. She and this world’s Olga both said she wanted to recover her old office back in V Corp. after leading her team into the Library.
“…Lots of work there. Dangerous district.”
Apparently so. I think Meursault told me something about N Corp. and V Corp. having tensions from an unauthorised execution of their Taboos outside of their district’s control a few months before Faust picked him up, on top of the Distortion phenomenon causing extra trouble there. It doesn’t seem en route though, so hopefully we don’t have to deal with that.
Vergilius redirects the conversation: “And is there any reason why you wouldn’t be using your two best sinking units in a smaller team, as with Heathcliff and Hong Lu?”
They tilt their head. Well… you know the earlier problems we had between Kurokumo and Blade Lineage? They’d be at each other’s throats so we only ended up using one faction at a time? Dante looks to him for a response, and he stares at them with the exact same, bored expression. Right, now, for the best Sinking identities, imagine instead of that, it’s personal. Really, really personal.
“How so?”
They hold up seven fingers, pause, and then hold up one on one hand and three on the other — thirteen. After what seems like a deep amount of consideration, they make the crude gesture of chopping off their right arm.
Vergilius raises an eyebrow. “Oh dear. Gregor lost his arm. What a shocking turn of events.”
Giving up on their game of charade — Gregor took out Heathcliff’s eye and married his childhood love, and then Heathcliff got so mad he cut off Gregor’s arm, manifested E.G.O. in the form of a headless wolf and now commands the dead, so Gregor’s dedicated his life to hunting him down and killing him and vice versa.
Vergilius rubs the space between his eyes. “ ...I’m beginning to understand your predicament.”
Yeah. That. Put them in a team together, and it’s not good. They just, well. Nobody else quite matches their capabilities, and I think they would work well together, but I can only use one at a time. They stop. Well, they’re the World of Wuthering Heights identities. I thought you were there for the whole ordeal.
“…If you remember, Dante, I was quite preoccupied during this all-important love-triangle.”
<Oh. Right.> They stop. Right! Yes. Thank you for that, by the way. Really. It means a lot. So thanks :)
Vergilius doesn’t say anything. There it is again — their expectant stare, waiting to seek something of him, clock hands ticking in a mix of nervousness and anticipation. It’s almost enough to convince him to say something, anything in response; a reason or explanation of the sort. To his relief they tear their attention away from him to glance at the door.
Vergilius?
“What is it this time.”
Are you sure you don’t feel it too?
“Dante, for the umpteenth time I do not appreciate having tricks played on me-”
<No, really, I feel like something’s…>
“Stop pushing me!”
“I ain’t pushing, it’s the kid that’s trippin’ me up with his big axe-“
“Th-that’s not mine, it’s Rodya’s-“
“Well don’t lean on the bloody handle!”
“Uh, guys?”
The latch goes with a click — a moment’s silence passes before the door violently swings inwards, smashing against the wall as a jumbled pile of people tumble through it. The more responsible half of the Sinners (if such a thing even exists) are a safe few-steps away, while the others crash to the floor with a cacophonous medley of shouting.
“Hark! Sir Vergilius, Manag-” the heavy door bounces off the wall and smacks Don Quixote on the back of the head with a rather horrifying thud — “GAK!” She crumples to the floor in defeat, from the combined perils of the unforeseen ambush of the door, on top of (or rather, below) the full weight of Heathcliff, who rather unfortunately has found his place crumpled on top of her despite being a full two heads taller — on top of him too, is Sinclair, and awkwardly rolled off to the side of the pile are Rodya, Ishmael, and to Dante’s surprise, Ryoshu, who’s cigarette is dangerously close to Ishmael’s hair as she easily props herself up on the two women’s backs. She seems awfully disappointed, for some reason (was she expecting them to be tortured?!) as Hong Lu and Yi Sang stand behind them, managing to catch their balance it appears, the former politely holding a hand over his surprised expression; Dante thinks they hear Outis’ voice hiss, “You idiots!”
The collective groaning of the injured sinners is quickly silenced by Vergilius standing up — Dante doesn’t need to look to their side to know his eyes are glowing.
“What is the meaning of this?” he growls at the very same time Dante exclaims, <What the hell is going on?!>
Faust pokes her head through the doorway, careful not to step on anyone. “Dante, it is seven o’clock,” she deadpans. “We have been waiting for you to officially release us for an hour now.”
<Huh?!> They quickly scan the walls only to find it entirely clock-less and otherwise completely barren — rather, they take her word for it and turn back to Faust. <Oh, wow, I completely lost track of time and->
“Everybody out.”
Dante stands up — Vergilius is about to say not you, moving to grab them by the wrist as he’s done with many a misbehaving Sinner, but they’re already in the process of sliding their PDA into impossibly deep coat pockets and clearing his desk of their belongings. <Sorry,> they say in his general direction, perhaps to turn his wrath away from the Sinners practically tripping over each other to leave his room. <I shouldn’t have wasted so much of your time.>
He doesn’t answer — of course he doesn’t — and simply folds his arms.
The Sinners long gone, without caring to shut the door behind them in their haste, Dante both takes their time and moves too fast for Vergilius’ liking. He glances towards the exit, relaxing in his stance; the bus has stopped, and he can hear Charon talking to someone in the main body of the bus along with the telltale sound of her oar dragging across the floor.
Dante gathers their briefcase and stray papers in their hands — just before they leave, they hesitate by the door. Raising their hands in a slow, uncertain gesture, they sign out:
See you next week?
It’s a childish attempt, palms facing towards themselves the entire time, awkwardly clutched by their chest; accursedly, he understands them perfectly well. “Yes. Same time.” Vergilius sighs and folds his arms. “...And Dante.”
He stares right through them; somehow, they don’t feel the immediate urge to cower away. It’s rare enough to see him staring at someone without his eyes glowing out of anger or, more pitifully, disappointment; yet in this light they look almost like a cool, if not comforting shade of brown. For a moment, Dante forgets they’re speaking to the Red Gaze, and all that’s in front of them is a strategist, a coworker, a tired old guide — a person. <Yes, Vergilius?>
Brows still parsed in concern as they tend to be, he sits back down, resting his chin on his hand; his index finger hides a small smile from the manager’s view. “...Take your typewriter with you.”