[Audio]

[neverfeltthatway]

Hello, everyone. I... I have the list of those who have vanished. [For once, Armin doesn't use his image when making a broadcast, and he's definitely shorter and more terse than normal. It's definitely unusual, for him - but anyone who knows him well enough to notice might figure out why as soon as he starts reading off the names.]

Ivan. Levi. Joscelin. Yua. S-sansa. Adachi. Neeshka. Hitsugaya. Sera - umm, the unfriendly one. And Xaldin.


[Locked to former Illuminated]

I heard some of what happened during the walkabout. If you don't mind, I'd like to hear more about it from each of you in person. When you're feeling up for it.

Comments

[leftbehindagain]

Yeah, he was. Surprisingly not that bad a guy.

--Wait, when did you get here?

[senpaidol]

During the party. Which is good, 'cause I came in my stage outfit and nobody noticed.

Also uh...welcome to weird magic stuff, Konishi-kun. Sorry I never mentioned it in class or anything.

[leftbehindagain]

I don't think anyone would have noticed anyway. You must have missed the drinks table.

[Well, that answers one timeline question, at least.] This is far from my first round of weird stuff. But if you're from one of the timelines where I missed out on the case, I can't blame you for not mentioning it.

[senpaidol]

Oh, you got uh..."recruited"?

[It sounds nicer than "kidnapped". And besides, not everyone went through the whole Namatame deal.]

That's...well, it's not any weirder than me being from the future, I guess. Well, if anyone else was going to get involved, I'm glad it was you. I always kinda felt bad not telling you what we found out anyway...

[leftbehindagain]

If by 'recruited' you mean 'Kanji was trying to figure out what the hell was going on and thought I could stand to get out of the house,' then yes. [Oh yeah, Naoto wasn't kidding about Kanji the Wild Card either. :D?]

It's not exactly something that's easy to explain to someone who isn't caught in the middle of it. As bad as I was doing with something to do every day, I don't know how well I would've taken it without that.

[senpaidol]

Oh yeah...I'm gonna need to talk to Kanji at some point...

So he just...took charge instead of Souji-senpai doing it? I guess I can see him doing that, just not anything that'd come after it.

[leftbehindagain]

Narukami-san didn't get to town until after the ball was already rolling, I don't think. Makes it a little difficult to stop at the gas station. [That... might mean next to nothing to people who haven't gotten the whole story, but he's at least confident Rise will get it.]

We didn't end up having a look around until after Sis died. But he was probably right that I needed out of the house, and who else was he going to start with?

[It's really more like 'who else did Kanji have to start with,' which was... pretty much no one at that point. He'd scared off most of the town with the biker gang incident and wasn't willing to let people get close, but Naoki never quite fell for the Crabby Tough Guy act.]

[senpaidol]

[Rise would have so gone with him...if she hadn't still been working until summer.]

Well if anyone's gonna shove his hand in a TV besides our senpais, it's definitely Kanji!

I'm glad he was able to do that for you, though. And, uh, the rest of the world.

[leftbehindagain]

Hey, he was good. [It's a mild protest, though; in his experience, for all Kanji and Rise bickered, she did respect him.]

This puts us down to three Wild Cards here, though. We were up to six at one point, but Seta-san was... really closed off.

[senpaidol]

Six? I think that's more popularity than even I can handle...

[leftbehindagain]

Only five from home. Minako-san's from Iwatodai.

[senpaidol]

That's still like what, one Wild Card per thousand people in Inaba? One half?

[Hang on a sec.]

Wait, Iwatodai? Has she mentioned anything about a group called the "Shadow Operatives"?

[leftbehindagain]

It's still only the one per timeline. We're not sure why they wanted so many here either.

...No? I think she called it SEES. 'Shadow Operatives' might be after her time, though - she's from a couple years before us, even. [And a bit by way of being dead, but that's Minako's story to tell or not.]

[senpaidol]

Hm...hey, Konishi-kun. Speaking of time, when did you get brought here? Before or after 2012 Golden Week?

[leftbehindagain]

Before. Right at the end of March. Why?

[senpaidol]

~I come bearing messages from~...well, Naoto-kun and Souji-senpai's future, not yours, I guess. There was...kind of another incident during Golden Week, which is when we met those Shadow Operatives guys.

Uh...do you think it'll break anything if I talk about that? I can't play guitar so I'm not sure how I'd fix a time paradox...

[leftbehindagain]

I think I already have some idea from the time Adachi-san ended up in a dungeon, so you probably won't screw things up any more than they already are. I mean, if five Wild Cards from Inaba wasn't enough to do it...

Oh, speaking of timelines. Dojima-san's not from far enough along to know who the culprit was. I think he's going to figure it out on his own, eventually, but he did ask me not to tell him. Pretty sure Hanamura doesn't know either.

[senpaidol]

What? Oh...that's awful, though. Getting shoved off to this other thing before we solved the case? Especially Yosuke-senpai and...

...er...

...Dojima-san? I must have spaced out when Naoto-kun said he was here. That's kinda awkward.

[leftbehindagain]

Yeah, apparently a TV fell on him. [Yes, Rise, that means exactly what you think it means.]

Well, they at least know who it wasn't, and from what I've gathered you guys cut that a lot closer than we did.

[senpaidol]

Eheh...yyyyyeah, that wasn't a fun night.

[Thank god Souji had spoken up then, because she sure wasn't able to get a word in over the yelling.]

[leftbehindagain]

It probably helped in our case that I knew for sure Sis hadn't left the house with a delivery guy.

[There's no judging in Naoki's tone; it'd be an easy mistake to make, based on the available information, and it seems like everyone who tried asking him either got shut down hard or... well, had Adachi do it. And Adachi-san's timeline was just weird all around.]

[senpaidol]

Yeah, that's true! Like how having Yukiko-senpai around let her confirm who was with Yamano-san before she was thrown in.

I'm always glad when us non-detectives can contribute.

[leftbehindagain]

Every now and then we manage to come up with something good.

Adachi-san meant to sit everyone down and compare timelines sometime, but we never quite got around to it. I know his was pretty weird compared to most of them, though.

[senpaidol]

Uh...yeah. It'd kinda have to be.

Private

[leftbehindagain]

[At this point, Naoki takes the conversation private - even with Adachi-san gone, he doesn't deserve to have this all over the public network.]

I'm sure you can imagine how long it took him to get his act together about leading the charge. There were close to double the number of victims - the killer was using the kidnappings as a smokescreen to toss someone else in while the rescue party was busy - I ended up dead, Sis was his second... like I said. Weird all around.