[open] plot clue club meeting

[coolerjunpei]

WHO: Junpei coolerjunpei and You
WHAT: Secret Info Club Meeting and general Plot Clue mingling
WHERE: a conference room. with snacks!
WHEN: roughly DECEMBER!!! 12 this never once said nov
WARNINGS: tba

network preamble

[Having come into some fascinating information, Junpei—

obsessively studies it for a solid day

—and then un: junpei posts something very short and simple to the network for once:]

hey, it's junpei. i'm in the 5th floor conference room in the district 2 building by the bowling alley if anybody wants to know some *big names* and read some pages that aren't half blacked out. you know, for fun.

i've got some chips too. come check it out if you want.

log part

[The conference room is all decked out for some frantic information sharing, or rather:

Junpei has hastily set out some snacks, that is: some bags of chips and a few soda bottles, mostly what he could grab as quickly as possible from the nearest convenience store. He's also tossed some pens and notepads kind of randomly onto the table.

On the wheely whiteboard he's pushed up to the end of the room, the head of the conference table, he's written in big ol' letters:

INFO CLUB MEETING
TAKE A DOCUMENT SHARE A DOCUMENT
IDEAS???

DON'T SPREAD IT AROUND TOO MUCH YET, WE MIGHT GET PHANTOM ARRESTED OR WHATEVER

The most orderly thing here is the stack of ✨✨Documents✨✨ up by the whiteboard. These, he has put in the effort to not make a frantic mess of. Welcome to the club.]

OOC: this is a mingle for the ✨plot clue✨ junpei has received and it is open to anyone who might be interested in the information! if you have cr with junpei or have talked to him even once about The Mysteries, you're welcome to handwave that he sent your character a personal cryptic text about something important, come see. otherwise, seeing his network message and showing up is just fine too.

Comments

ota | conspiracy guy moments

[coolerjunpei]

I.
[If it seems like Junpei is a little manic about this event, that's because he is. The advice of a few people to chill out has been accepted, but look, he's found this goddamn personnel file and can anyone blame him now!!!

He might be pacing a bit or he might be sitting there staring at his, um, annotated copy of The Document in deep concentration, but as soon as someone approaches or looks at him long enough he sort of jumps out of concentration, oop—]

Oh, hey! Big stuff, right? You think we can get in touch with these assholes, somehow? Maybe wave a big banner from the top of a building or something, I dunno. They've gotta have cameras everywhere, so let's hit as many spots as we can.

[He has a new mortal enemy and it feels kinda good, although not in a very good way. Ha ha.]


II.
[He has flipped the whiteboard over. It's getting serious now. He's divided it into two halves, one labeled KNOWN and one labeled QUESTIONS. Under KNOWN he has written:

Director Lukrar Tomasso
Assistant Director Kessarin Sumalee
Association for Societal Preservation
Phoenix
approx. 3054
"crisis" -> climate change
for sure being experimented on (knew this)
there are so many goddamn masterminds!!!!! (he circles this last one too, for emphasis)

And under QUESTIONS he has written:

still could be a simulation???
maybe a big bubble like in that movie with the guy whose life was a tv show?
how do we send these 2 a message? would they even care?

And as one last little note:

are you fucking kidding me?

[He stands there tapping the back end of the marker against his chin, nodding and surveying his work, before he turns to whoever's come to see... this.]

So, what else?

i-

[abstractart]

Maybe? Depends who you're dealing with on the monitoring end.

[he is cracking a beer open and handing it to junpei, because of course he brought a few when he decided he was curious, and junpei sure looks like he could use one.]

Could work if anyone of any note's watching. Could get swept under a rug if it's better for whoever's looking out that their boss doesn't know anything is up.

[the thing about being formerly involved in experimentation is you can make a few guesses,]

[coolerjunpei]

[Junpei takes the beer automatically and does not chug it, but he takes a generous swig. He raises it to Netzach in a little gesture of thanks and then resumes glowering at his printouts. Ough... the mystery...]

This Assistant Director person's gotta be paying attention, right? They're in charge of researching stuff about us. Unless it's some unpaid interns behind all the cameras.

[Which. In fairness. Would explain how he even got this thing, but still.]

[fussiest]

[ complete aside because this is just funny, kaveh leans over after this to tap netzach on the shoulder: ]

Netzach, quick question - not that it has to do with anything, but.

How old are you, exactly?

i.

[featheradrift]

[ He understands Junpei's excitement, he really does. This is some of the first information they're getting about—well, if not their kidnappers, then about the state of the world they're currently in, and who might potentially be involved in their kidnapping.

But— ]

Calm. Down. If that worked, you could have done it before finding this document. How did you get it, anyway?

[ It could just be another planted document—although, it revealed far more than previous planted documents, so he's not sure if this was intentional. ]

[coolerjunpei]

[Let him have his mastermind mania!! No, this is not a great mental state to be in, and on some level he knows that, but on another level: he's been saying since Week 0 that this place has a person in charge waiting to pull the trigger on them all, and then he had to wait like six months for a name?

Well, a few names, but it's been forever!! For a brief moment he looks like he might lose it professionally, before he shuts his eyes and sighs. Loudly. He's fine.]

Found it in that new place that opened up, the science... thing. Center. Somebody must have missed it when they set up in there.

bestiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeee 2

[gripper]

( kromer is skimming through the documents, expression reminiscent of a teenager who's just been handed some really boring papers to read and write a DBQ for their advanced placement class.

but she's listening, she's paying attention, she's raising her hand— )

Mr. Junpeeeiii, I have a question. ( like she's a student. smartass. ) Actually, three questions.

( she will helpfully raise a finger every time she asks one! )

One: What's climate change?

Two: How's it a crisis?

Three: What the hell has any of the crap we've already been subjected to have to do with it?

[coolerjunpei]

[Junpei knew he shouldn't have texted Kromer personally to come see this... he was a fool... she could have asked him these questions some other time when he wasn't ready to smash his face into the whiteboard, but no--

After he thousand-yard-stares for a solid couple seconds, he gives her a look, brow furrowed.]

What, really? For real, what's climate change? Uh, okay, it's like— we fucked up the atmosphere so bad that the planet is melting now. But it's also even colder in winter. And there are more hurricanes and things like that.

[He makes a point to reach over and tap Phoenix, so he can add,] I drove past there once, so I know it's the same kind of fucked up that they're talking about.

[He's skipping the crisis one because he thinks that Just About Clears It Up, so next,]

That last one's a good question, though, because I have no clue. Do you want to write it on the question board yourself?

[Wiggling the marker at her... play with him in this space you voluntarily came to, Kromer...]

i. & ii, sort of

[fussiest]

[ kaveh, who'd seen the message and had come equipped with a giant tray of cinnamon buns, offers one to junpei.

he is also frowning at the whiteboard on display. you can do both. both fuel and obsession are meant to keep one going; kaveh knows that well enough, and this is the first breakthrough since his arrival here. it bears obsessing about. ]

Well, in essence, everything we've done in this place so far has been one-way communication with them. But what sort of response would you want from 'getting in touch', as it were? Let's start there, then reverse-engineer the message, and then find the appropriate way to connect.

[coolerjunpei]

[hey fancy guy

Junpei is grateful for the cinnamon bun, despite his whole... mood about all of this, or perhaps because of it: it's a delicious distraction, if only for a moment. And he was planning on just eating chips for another day, so.]

I want to know what they want. I mean— [he gestures a bit with the bun,] we know they want our responses to all this shit they put us through, but how is that helping them? If they're having this biiig crisis, aren't the experiment parameters wrong? They should use knowledgeable volunteers.

ii.

[limbical]

[Daan, for his part, has brought kind of a mini-bar, in a way. More in that he's brought things to mix with, but he settles a glass of orange cream soda in front of Junpei. With a straw, even.]

To me, it seems like we're just expendable test subjects. What do you do when you don't want to sacrifice your own people?

Well, you find new ones. What's more expendable than random people from other worlds and dimensions? But that's my current theory at the moment. ...Could still be a simulation, I suppose, which isn't impossible considering they do seem keen to try to do psychological experiments.

[coolerjunpei]

[Is it a curly straw. Junpei takes the glass without comment, taking a grateful sip, because going full speed over these whiteboards and everything else is dehydrating work. He glances at it, and then at Daan's mini bar, but hm. He'll get there.]

Sure, they don't give a shit about us at all. I'm pretty sold on that one, too. It's this one- [he taps his marker on "crisis"] that doesn't fit then, right? What help are a bunch of random nobodies from all over the place in helping themselves?

[...And,] You're not gonna hand me alcohol to chill out? Netzach did.

i

[justscribing]

[Now this is all very interesting. Alhaitham is here, going through the information methodically and modifying his own conspiracy theories accordingly.

He glances up from the paper in his hand.] They certainly have some way of monitoring us, but likely the minutia is being handled by researchers far below the directors in status who then report the results up the chain. If we want their direct attention, it should be something exceptional that whoever is actually tasked with watching us doesn't know how to handle.

[Start a proverbial fire, if you will.] Where did you find these documents? This room?

[coolerjunpei]

People keep saying that... Business-oriented masterminds are way more hands-off than solo masterminds, I guess.

[He shrugs, like, that's really unfortunate! Because he only knows how to deal with the up close and personal, actually-in-the-room-with-you-the-whole-time brand of mastermind, and not Doctors and Researchers.]

It was in the office in that science center place. Like, really crammed back there in a cabinet. Somebody must have missed it when they set up. Doesn't feel like it was on purpose, after this long...

[Unless they have a mole, but god, he can't add more layers right this second. One at a time.]

How exceptional are we talking, though? For the thing.

[fussiest]

Oh, you're here. [ kaveh doesn't even bother looking up from where he had been pouring over the documents. he's never needed to. he wouldn't mistake the cadence of alhaitham's footfalls for anything.

his hand beckons. ] Did you bring our notebooks? And the good pens. I think I lost all of mine at the gala.

ii

[icanfixer]

[ thank goodness kromer asked what climate change is, since she also does not know. but there's like. a lot of things that are really going over her head right now, so she's raising her hand as well. ]

Pray tell, Junpei, what is a "tv show"? Is it alike to "the news"?

[ please. please. ]

[coolerjunpei]

[Hello and welcome to ONLY DON, and definitely no one else who doesn't take him seriously--]

Oh, uh, yeah. Pretty much exactly the same, except TV shows are for entertainment. See, in the movie, this guy- let's call him TR- he lives his whole life in this one small town and he can't leave, or more like he's afraid to leave, because he's afraid of water and it's an island, right? And then one day he starts to notice a lot of weird shit going down, like props falling and people stopping to advertise food in normal conversations, and it turns out, his whole life was a TV show for people outside his bubble all along!

[this is technically. a description of a tv show.]

So, I mean, we could be in a bubble.

I

[wordchain]

[ As Junpei paces, Yesod looks up from the information to take in, considering the question and others' input, too. ]

Perhaps we could begin with any contact details stored on the computer in the director's office at the science center. Though I suppose there is no guarantee that any communication can be sent beyond our own devices.

[ Let alone outside of the confines of this city in another form, if Junpei intends to try the details found in the personnel file. ]

ii

[entwinedfate]

[ Ha. Sorry, he's gotta be That Guy for a moment-- ]

We're at least into 3056, going by publication dates. I thought you'd like to know.

[ Today's certainly been something. He'll sip his room temperature water. ]

In addition, you can add we're most certainly iteration 50; if we are into 3056-- or better yet, 3057 since they seem to be reflective of that year's gathered data, then Dr. Sumalee's publication in regards to "Assessing Community Stability" plays well into what's been written about the iteration that may have taken place that year, 47. Do you think the ones between that round and our current one didn't make it to the point that we're at now?

ii

[keepgodwaiting]

[ Hello. Hi. Constantine has about four different places she'd like to start, and so, marching up to the whiteboard, she's going to start with the Questions side and point at would they even care? ]

What makes you think these two aren't the ones running this iteration?

ii, but like, waves hand around. all of it.

[arbit]

( how long has this woman been here. she has a question. she will not raise her hand.

she has tea, though. where did she find this, )

Such details are fascinating, but I've yet to discern from the myriad of scribbles as to what they might consider a success.

( especially considering some other documents found in the science center. )

Our apparent 'failure' has consequences, that which they're all too eager to share with us in short order. So, then. What does a stable community mean to you?

I.

[numerouno]

[Scaramouche is intrigued enough and bored enough that he comes to the conference room as suggested. What awaits him isn't what he would call "big," but... it's a start. It could be a start, he'll give them that.

Or it could be nothing at all.

Done skimming the contents, he opens his hand and lets the personnel file fall, watches it drift through the air to settle on the table.]

It's an egghead. So what?

[It's almost like he didn't hear anything the man just said (except he did; most of it, anyway). But his glowing optics are on the file. If it does mean something, then yeah. They could be on to something big.]

OTA: Cross-referencing

[keepgodwaiting]

[ okay okay okay OKAY

Johanna has arrived with her own notebook in hand and is bent over it with a copy of Sumalee's personnel record, underlining various words and tapping her pencil on the table as she counts letters. ]

"Psy-cho-lo-gi-cal" ... That's thirteen, okay ... "Psychologically" -- fifteen. Shit!

[justscribing]

Do you usually learn new words this loudly?

[Hello. He's tilting his head to look at the copy of the record and sneak a peek at Johanna's journal.]

[abstractart]

Oh, hey, that 12-letter that wasn't working out before... new option. If it doesn't include punctuation the 2-letter before it could be "Dr"? Bet you that's a specific person. Can't get it 'cause we haven't seen the right name.