REPORT 019 :: MIA // VOICE

[daisy023]

[SPARTAN-023 is concerned about these leaves. She makes a few filter tests to check on friends of hers, an easy way to make a roll call: Adell, the rest of the Rogues, Valvalis, Kirimi, Nel, Lina, Jordan, Litchi--

Lina's filter breaks.

...

Daisy hesitates for a few seconds. After a minute, she grabs her journal.]

[VOICE]

Lina Inverse has gone home.

[Spoken unemotionally. Bad news she has been too used to deliver.

It doesn't hurt the Spartan as much. She is back where she should be. Even if she would probably forget about her. About this place.

It still feels as if she has lost a person under her care.]

Comments

[Voice]

[daisy023]

...

I wish there was, Kazooie.

[It is frustration everyone shares. She hates this feeling of helplessness towards her comrades' fates.]

[Voice]

[talontrot]

We oughta go kick somebody in the head for this dumb idea. [And yet no amount of head-kicking will solve this situation. Kazooie fumes quietly to herself.]

An unwinnable game is a bad game.

[Voice]

[daisy023]

[Noble Six agrees.]

Sometimes there's a catch to it. Not all games are unwinnable. Spartans were always taught that.

... The kick would be calming, though.

[Voice]

[talontrot]

But if there's a way to win this game, how do we find it? Everything I try doesn't seem to work!

[An edge of what might almost be panicked frustration makes its way into Kazooie's voice. She's never taken this long to solve one puzzle... never.]

It's just stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid...!

[Voice]

[daisy023]

It's all about patience, Kazooie. Sometimes the winning move won't come up at first. But it's there.

[And the Spartan tries to be the opposite. The peace for Kazooie.]

[Voice]

[talontrot]

Well, I don't like waiting! And I really hate losing!

[And Luceti is all waiting and losing... losing at everything she tries to do when it comes to getting out. There's only so much failure her ego can take, even if she brushes it under the rug.]

... if we could break that dumb barrier maybe it'd be okay.

[Voice]

[daisy023]

[As a Spartan, she sympathizes with hating losing more than Kazooie would imagine. Faced with a scenario where she cannot win... She can't see things that way. She should not.]

Maybe. Maybe.

[Her tone remains peaceful. It's not the first time she has had desperate soldiers under her command.]

It all works out in the end. There's always a solution. One never loses until he is dead.

[Words Daisy herself wishes were true.]

[Voice]

[talontrot]

...

Well. We're heroes, I guess. That means we gotta stick to it.

[She wants to think everything will work out. That's how her games have always been. She wins, eventually. She gets all the Jiggies, she unlocks all the stages, she wins at all the minigames.

She beats the game.

But can Luceti be beaten?]