animus_network | first ❅ video;

[It's been a while since Yukiko has been in the Tower at all - three months, give or take a bit. It shows in her face when she appears on the video feed; this isn't the face of a surprised newcomer. It's the face of someone who has explored enough to know that while she was gone, a lot of her friends have left. Her voice is just a bit shaky when she speaks.]

...hello, Tower. This is Yukiko Amagi. I was here, before, and now I'm back. I think it's been about three months. It's kind of hard to tell time when it passes on a dead world. One day blends into another after a while.

[She pauses, briefly, taking a deep breath.]

I know that there were people from the Japanese town of Inaba here before. They were my friends. I also tried sending them a message. I - I know that they're all gone. The message said 'user not found' for all of them, and so I went down to the graveyard to doublecheck. They're definitely gone.

I'll be okay, though. I know they're gone now, but I can be strong enough for all of them. I know I'm back here for a reason, and that reason must be to make sure they're saved, in the end. Really saved, not just 'saved' as in pulled here again.

...so. What did I miss while I was gone?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I wasn't involved in the fray myself, but I heard he got badly hurt.

What that means for us, I don't know. I'm not looking forward to May though.

It can't mean anything good, at any rate. Everyone - well, no. Everyone but Ruana and Jason seems like you can reason with them. Those two are more likely to do horrible things.

...is it wrong that it seems like we're luckier taking our chances trying to reason with Ruana than try and do anything with Jason, at this point?

We might be able to reason with Ruana, yeah.

Whether or not she's going to want to I'm not sure at this point. I don't like admitting it in this kind of situation, but our only option is to wait and see.

We'll have to try.

[But she shakes her head at Neal's last statement.]

There's always another way. Fighting Jason and trying to reason with Ruana can't be the only options - there's Riki and Zo.

Zo's a good kid, I know he'll want to help us any way he can.

Riki seems like the wildcard to me, I've been here nearly a year and I admit I don't know much about him.

Maybe we can use his care of the Tower to our advantage.

I agree, about Zo. As for Riki, I think it's worth a shot. You're right that he's kind of the wild card of the bunch, but he's also done some pretty nice things, as far as he can. He might be more willing to help than we think.

Might be worth a shot.

Apparently typing Jason's name over and over summoned him so I guess we could try it with Riki, too. See if we can't get him to help.

...so spamming him with text messages actually worked? Weird.

[She quirks an eyebrow.]

Well, if it worked once, it might work again. Or he might just ignore the text spam. But it might work!

It was such an obvious thing I guess none of us thought it would work.

Hopefully it works on Riki. What would we ask him, though?

[Yukiko taps her chin thoughtfully.]

...you know, asking a little more about the history of this place might come in handy. Things like 'when did Ruana come into power', 'what do you know about the ways we're pulled here', 'is there a way to send people back before our worlds are destroyed so we can prevent it' - things like that?

That's a good idea, actually.

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