post-investigation week 5: with Hermann

[alchemicalwater]

[HEY RESPONSIBLE ADULT

DID YOU WANT A SAD GIRL?

Because that's what you're getting: a sad girl hiding out far away from the McDonalds and any of the other bloody investigation spots.

She's also a little emotionally compromised at the moment, sorry about that.]

Comments

[byjove]

[Here he is... Being responsible(?) and an adult.

Truth be told he'd prefer a non-sad girl, but there's no changing what's happened. All he can do is... try to help deal with it.]

Undine? Are you... [Hm.] I'm sorry about what we found tonight.

[Awkward.]

[alchemicalwater]

It's...

[No, it's not alright.]

It's not your fault. There's no way you could have done any of that.

[Even if she had said that about Jacopo's murder not even a week ago, she honestly does mean it now. What had happened was...cruel. That was the only word for it. Cruel.]

[byjove]

And I certainly didn't.

[He sounds offended at the very idea. Removing a man's fingers is one thing, eviscerating him is another entirely.]

I don't know who did, but I do think... [Hmmm gotta word this carefully.]

I suspect there is a possibility it was in retaliation for one of the deaths last week.

[alchemicalwater]

They did it to mess with Akira.

[Blunt and to the point. Because she doesn't have it in her to be anything else right now.]

Ichigo is his partner. Makoto is someone important to him, I think he knew her while he was alive? But regardless, they were sending a message to him. There's no way it's anything but that.

[byjove]

... I agree. And I think it may be a message sent by someone who knows what happened last week. With Chuuya.

[He knows at least one person suspected, but that person is now dead. So...]

[alchemicalwater]

[With Chuuya.

Those words hit Undine like a sack of bricks, and all at once the tears are welling up in her eyes again. Because if there's one thing that describes Undine's feelings right now, it's 'guilt'.]

He saved me, did you know that? Ichigo saved me. He found my hair, and he hid it. He- he lied about it, to protect me. I'm the only one with hair like mine-

[The texture, the curl, it's all very noticeable when you're the only person with that kind of hair in the game.]

-and if anyone had looked closely they would have figured it out right away. But he lied about it, and it saved me.

[He had protected her, and she had failed to protect him.]

[byjove]

[Oh. Well then. He'd wondered about the hair... He'd even checked Akira's himself, just to be sure. Now he knows why nothing turned up.]

Undine, you can't blame yourself for this. I know it's difficult to accept, but if Ichigo took the risk to protect you, I think he must've known- Well, that he was putting himself in danger.

[That doesn't sound great. He tries again.]

It was his choice. And it was the killer's choice to do this. It's not your fault.

[alchemicalwater]

[Yeah, there's a very important reason why Undine hadn't submitted a hair for the hair check for Jonas' murder. Magical blue hair only stays magical as long as it's connected to the magical girl, if it's cut or pulled out it goes back to its original color.]

I know that, it's just-

[God, how does she even begin to explain it?]

You- you're from a world with monsters, right? Dr. Geiszler mentioned it once. But you have people who fight them, right? People specially trained to fight those monsters and keep everyone safe?

That's my job, in my world. I'm one of the ones who fights. I protect other people each and every day. And today I failed at the most basic part of my duties: keeping people safe.

[Undine confirmed for small, cute, fantasy!Jaegar pilot.

Sorta. With less robots and more magic.]

[byjove]

We are, yes, and we do. Newton and I don't do the fighting ourselves, and we spend much of our time in a rather safe environment, but I do understand something of the responsibility in that department.

[It's his job to accurately predict the Kaiju's attacks. A misstep could mean disaster.]

That's not to say you don't have a right to be upset; quite the opposite, it makes sense. But there's still something you can do, we can still win this game, and we can still bring the Erased back to life.

[alchemicalwater]

[She wants to argue, she wants to cry and scream and be upset, but that's hard to do when Hermann is being so reasonable.

So she wipes at her face with her hands, drying her tears as she speaks.]

You're right. We just have to keep going and win, so we can bring them back. That's all we can do for them at this point.