It belongs in a GREAT BIG FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAH

[valkavian]

[ So, Akane is probably in NO condition to host the afterparty, so Val's gonna do the honors here. She leaves a note where everyone can see it once everyone's properly exited the theater: ]

Come to the tea room. I'll get y'all some fucking marshmallows.

[ She's not cooking, but she brought some skewers and the appropriate fixings for both hot dogs and smores and put them aside on a little table, as well as some soda and every possible booze this ship had.

Most of the tables and chairs have been just pushed off to the far end of the room, but some furniture has been sacrificed to start a huge fucking bonfire in the middle of the tea room. Precautions have been taken to keep this shit from spreading, but here we are.

She's content to let most people mingle amongst themselves, but she will be muttering something as y'all come in. ]

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil-

[ A pause. ]

Where my eternal quest takes me, I shall know no fear. My heart is strong and my blood stronger.

Comments

Bathroom

[somuchshipping]

[Hermes enters the bathroom, strips of blood on him where the tree vines touched him. He notices Makima.]

Oh... Hello, Makima. ...Are you okay, after... everything?

[Hermes grabs a nearby towel and begins quickly cleaning up all the blood off of himself.]

[yesorwoof]

Oh, I should have been more worried about you. That was a really close call. The length of the execution just made it somewhat difficult to be sure exactly when to leave.

[Makima is not covered in blood so she watches the weirdly shaped robot writhe around. Did he somehow bleed or were the vines just covered in blood already.]

[somuchshipping]

[Most likely the latter.]

Yeah... Just waiting for something to happen was super boring.

...I heard you still trying to completely solve what happened exactly.

[yesorwoof]

It's a matter of immense importance. We technically didn't even confirm that the culprit toppled the slot machine. If his testimony is to believed, the double agent is openly taunting us.

[She looks sideways at him.]

What do you think?

[somuchshipping]

[Hermes slowly bobs up and down.]

I don't know shit, I only have an intelligence stat of 3. Even in my game, I'm bad at puzzles. I nearly lost a trivia-off with Val because I'm bad at puzzles! Sure, I know a lot about romance and its signs and the mechanics of Fortuna, but I'm...

[Hermes sighs a little.]

I've been programmed to be an idiot and there's nothing I can do about it. We need you. You're the only one who cares! I tried getting others to think more about what had happened so they can figure it out, but they just didn't listen.

...So thank you for caring.

[yesorwoof]

Hermes, please don't worry.

[She is watching for the perfect time for him to bob down enough so she can pat him on the pseudo head. Pat. She is calm, like she was never threatened.]

Public Safety is nothing without the consent of the governed. I need you all just as much. If you didn't believe in me, if you didn't play with his heartstrings, my examination of the evidence would not have meant anything. You should watch me and learn from me in case something happens. If you can learn the rules of Risk, you can learn high stakes poker too.

[somuchshipping]

[Hermes has friends. Thanatos, Mors, Dionysus, Pan... Whatever the name of the person he released from the tutorial is... Circe sometimes... Eros sometimes... He stole Aphrodite from Hephaestus... So there's not really too much of a shortage of people that like Hermes back in his game.

But Hermes has never really gotten affectionate headpats before. Not even from Maia. The action is noticeably deliberate in Hermes's viewpoint, but he doesn't know how to feel about this. He decides to focus on the words.]

...I'll- I'll try.

[If it's an order, Hermes always tries to complete it to the best of his ability. Unless it's from someone he dislikes or outright hates. Like Mercury.]

I'm not really used to solving puzzles. It's usually up to the player to solve them, but I'll try to pay attention to you and what you do.

[yesorwoof]

I'm not very specifically focused on forensics either. Devil Hunters usually have access to, say, the Future Devil or Past Devil to ask for help.

[This is going to be very interesting once she realizes that Alastor was the one convinced that the bruises had to be premortem. She strokes her chin thoughtfully.]

A chain is as strong as its weakest link. Moriarty-kun demonstrated that very clearly. I'm used to pruning the links myself, but it's not that simple here.

[somuchshipping]

[Hrrrm...]

It might be easier if I still had the ability to roomtrap people... It's a mechanic in my game where the gods and whoever they or the player roomtraps is sent to a sort of "mindscape" while stuff happens in the "real world". So while stuff is being discussed in the real world, I'd be able to basically do one-on-one interrogations...

...Or something.

[yesorwoof]

[She resists the urge to crack a smile because his desire to literally use the room trap is naive but his heart is in the right place.]

Well, you can't do that. Val-chan was sure such confessions weren't reliable, you know. But before anything happens, you can find one in one time to talk with friends. You might want to focus on psychological profiling. The dead man's hand was pretty obvious in hindsight... If we didn't know that a double agent was at work, we could have become almost certain of the culprit's mindset from that.