#mastermind monologue

Why did you do this? 

“Hm? Why, you ask?” He tapped a finger on his lips, tilting his head. “I was bored, I guess. The crime rate in Japan is soooo low that I’m lucky if I get a decent case on my desk that can actually make me think.” His arms spread out, as did the smile on his face. “That~ is~ why~ I made this… these killing games!” He stumbled on his words. “To solve the seemingly unsolvable! To experience complex murder mysteries you couldn’t find in the real world!”

“... Well, that was the goal at first.” The excitement dropped from his hands to the floor. “If I’m being honest, I lost my real reason for doing this a while ago. I just kept going because I had to. Something compelled me to.”

What is that something?

"I don't know. There was just something. Like a subconscious urge. Hahaha, are you feeling unsatisfied with my answer?"

STARS...  How much of that is true?

"I don’t know anything about STARS, that waiver, this Chiyo Oshiro, or synthetic talents! I don’t know! That video makes no goddamn sense!” 

“... It’s confusing to me,” he starts explaining, his prior malice all but vanished. “As far as I know, this is my first killing game. Yet, the evidence shown to us, and these fuzzy memories that I can’t quite grasp, keep telling me otherwise. I don’t understand! How many times have I done this already?! And why don’t I remember any of them?!”

“If we believe all the facts presented to us. It seems like our memories and our talents aren’t real at all. Chiyo Oshiro also mentioned the world being in ruins, but none of us remember that, right? Which means a big portion of our memories have been altered. Right now, we’re in a simulation. Since Yuko Kuwashima is talking to us through Yunime, that must mean she’s alive, right? Even though she appeared as a ‘ghost’ alongside people who died from our killing game.”

“I think that means... that no one who died in this simulation actually died. They were just removed from the simulation.”

“But then... who am I...?”  Panic returned to his eyes as his thoughts ran amok.

What was the purpose behind all the simulated killing games then?

“... Was it to prevent me from taking actual lives in the real world? Does it have something to do with this urge I have?”

“Even after Chiyo Oshiro was executed, memory and talent augmentation research continued. It was supposed to help, but...there is a bit of a bug in the system. It's rare, but...every now and then, something will fail in the augmentation and it will create something...dangerous, to say the least. Chiyo Oshiro masterminded over fifty killing games, what would happen if that trait resurfaced in one of the augmented subjects? They would be a danger to society...would they not? What would happen if someone received the Mastermind trait during their augmentation, something that gave them an overwhelming compulsion to harm others, to create killing games. What do you think...would happen if a person like that was left to their own devices? At least, that's how S.T.A.R.S. sees it."

“It wasn't supposed to be like this. They wanted to fix you, but nothing they did worked. So they just left you here to rot to protect everyone else."

“What..?”

“............” 

5 games.

“No, no, no, no, no, no… No!!”  This was wrong. This was very, very wrong. Airi collapsed to his knees and screamed. Cracked memories, too distorted to truly make out, filled his mind until they were crammed against the walls of his skull.  Faces, names, friendships, rivalries, pain, tears.

5 games.

Memories of red splashing from his own body like rain. Over and over again, he died. Four times now, to be exact. The pain of death seeped into Airi’s nerves and he screamed until he choked.

It hurt so much. 

And it was all their fault.

“What have you done to me?” His voice was low, growling like a beast. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO ME!?” Both fists slammed onto his podium in pure rage, not caring for the damage done to them. “You… You took everything from me!! You did this to me! You made me this way!!” He took a second to catch his breath, his chest rising and falling violently as he neared the brink of hyperventilation. “I don’t want this! I didn’t want to be this way, and you-! You threw me here to make up for your mistake! You took away 4 years of my life, and for what!? Nothing has changed! How long do you plan to keep this up!?... How many more years will you rob me of?” His voice cracked and moisture pooled in his eyes.

“Why…? … Why…?”

...

“So, let me get this straight. All of us were experimented on, apparently with our consent. We were given fake memories, fake lives, fake talents. But! There's a possible side effect. You might develop mastermindosis or something! Which is what Seta contracted. And you've been trying to cure him by letting him manage five killing games? Wow!” (Ricardo)

"Silence! You all could not be MORE mistaken! If it were solely to satiate Airi's bloodlust, we could easily repeat simulations with artificial intelligence, to keep him busy and satisfied until we could find a permanent solution. You all are here for your own reasons. The nature of the experiment does not matter so much as the end result, that being, witnessing the impact of trauma on the recently augmented subjects. This is the safest environment to do so. Killing two birds with one stone, keeping Airi's mind sharp through the simulations and seeing the impact trauma has on you all. This is the best way to see if any of you are a danger to society." 

“.....”

"No," he glares at Mukuro. "You can't keep doing this! You can't keep hurting people like this! These games and this simulation have to stop!"

"I won't let you!" (Sujaku)

“You morons have no idea what you're talking about!" (Karaju)

"Our experiments aren't wrong!" (Mukuro)

“...” 

 Shambolic. That was the word that would come to the survivors of Queen Rose when asked what this trip turned out to be like. Execrable. That was the word to describe every single death that had taken place in the airship that they set sail on. Jarring. That was the word to describe just what the atmosphere in the room felt like in each trial they faced together. 

Neverending. That’s how this killing game felt to the remaining seven survivors, including Seojun Tsoi. 

His eyes couldn’t meet the rest of his peers.  How was he going to break this truth to people that he had grown to be friends with? Would people really want to know the truth?  The hard, cold truth of it all?  But it was no use lying to them.  After all, the truth is what they had deserved, right? 

 The blonde felt his hands move up to his magenta hairpins. With shaking fingers he unclipped the pins from his dyed locks, the accessories quietly falling into his hands.  His hair falls once more, just like in the observatory.  Only this time, the tables have turned. 

 The room was dead silent.   He pocketed the accessories into his leather jacket, and his eyes gazed up to the skies above him.  His hands tightly gripped the podium.  His haunting gaze was torn away from the rest of his peers, and as he scowled to the heavens above, he knew that one thing was for certain.

Seojun was hellbent to a massive degree, but if he didn’t survive now, all hope would be lost.

“...I’ve got nowhere else to run from here, do I?”  The question came out as rhetorical as he gritted his teeth.  He wanted to bite his lip; he wanted to deny the truth, knowing it would cause everyone to feel the terror that he was reliving right now.  However, he also knew that he couldn’t hide anymore.  His foot lightly stomped into the ground, grinding itself into the glass floor below.

“...Damn it.  Damn it, I didn’t want it to have to be like this.  It shouldn’t have turned out this way...It shouldn’t have been like this…”  Seojun ran a hand through his hair, feeling the imminent stress getting to him as the silence around him slowly grew.  The voices in his head were buzzing, demanding to just get this all over with. 

 “...”  The silence continued for a moment as everyone watched with horror at the Internet Troll’s movements, words, and facial expressions.

“There’s no use, is there?  I don’t have any place to hide now.  It....looks like I have to explain myself to you, explain who the hell…what  the hell I am. ”  His hands were still shaking; no matter what he tried, he just couldn’t stop the dreadful fear rising up in his chest.  However, he knew that this would come from the moment the Steampunk Designer was stabbed in the neck.  It was just a matter of execution.

This was it:  do, or die.

“I’ll start by introducing myself, once more.”  He faced those around him along with stands with crossed out profiles of those no longer here.  “My name is Seojun Tsoi, and I am the one who controlled Akomi.  I am the one who announced the killing game to all of you...and, yes, I am the one who stabbed Etheldred Himura, the Super High School Level Steampunk Designer.”

He crossed his arms, hiding his hands from the distraught faces of his peers.  His eyes flickered to Runa, a pang of sorrow seeping deep into his chest.  God, even with this reveal, the monster they see was still hauntingly recognizable.  He was a hypocrite...But, he was a hypocrite with a cause under his name. 

“However, I’m not ending my confession there.”  His body turns to the owl plushie on her throne, a look of absolute hatred entering those aqua marine irises.  “Because you guys need to know everything that I know.”  Seojun’s hand then flung out towards Torimi with a slant in both of his eyes.  “And before you even think about stopping me, guess what?! Tough shit!  You broke your end of the deal, so now, I get to break mine.”

“With that out of the way, I’m going to give you some background, so take a seat for five minutes, because you’re about to hear nothing but the god damn facts.”

“Once upon a time, I was accepted into Hope’s Peak Academy under the title of the Super High School Level Internet Troll.  That in itself was never a lie, as horrendously stupid as it sounds.  The next thing I know, I was trapped on a ship with seventeen other kids my age, with no recollection of how I got there, or why I was there.  It wasn’t on an airship either - rather, it was an actual boat.  I can remember it clearly; that fucking anteroom was on the same ship.”

“It was in that very room where I saw them. A half white, half scaley green plush named Gekumi... and Torimi herself.  We all learned that we were forced to kill each other for various causes, with the same rules we have here.  Motives and all, with all of the heartache packed into a punch.  Of course, I chose to not feel these things for a good while.  I chose to be someone that would provide as a guiding light for the damned.”

He let a forced chuckle pass his lips, running a hand through his hair.  “After all, back then, I made it a known habit to shut out my negative emotions for good.  Who would want to know the pitiful feelings of a classmate, when they were all going through the same thing?  That was my thought process.  The rules in my first killing game were the same.  The first two motives passed as they did. Victims. Investigations. Trials. Killers. Execution. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.” 

 “The third motive?  They held our loved ones captive, just like our first one.”  He grips onto his podium tighter, gritting his teeth.  “Imagine that.  Imagine your sister being in there twice.  Your sister, who had saved you from yourself, being held captive by strangers, and the only way to get her out of there was to kill someone that you had barely known at all!”  He squeezed his eyes tightly together, letting those tears fall at long last.

“Wouldn’t you do the same as I did?! Wouldn’t you kill someone that everyone despised on that ship to save your sister?!” 

“...Ae-Joung...Ae-Joung saved my life.  It’s only fair I would do the same, right?  I...ended up taking the bait.  I killed someone.  I ended up killing that damned Antonio.  Always the aggressive one around the shipmates...Hell, he killed someone just before I did.  He killed Hitomi, and it seemed like her boyfriend was the one who killed that bastard, you know?  Because I didn’t tell the truth...Because of that...everyone…”

“Everyone voted for the wrong person.”

“Their screams.  I can still remember all of their screams of terror, their pleas for help, their wails of despair.  The eleven survivors were all executed at the same time.  Gekumi was suddenly no more, too.   I had the first hand experience of experiencing hell...no, Hell would have been a more merciful fate.  I should have been the one to be executed.  I should have died in their place.”

One look at this man would tell you enough:  He was a broken man.  He was someone who had been through hell and back, and it really did a toll on his mind.  Even so, he still continued on with his story.

“But because I didn’t, I have the responsibility of reminding you of this.  Torimi is the same person who orchestrated my game.  Whoever is behind Torimi is the one who orchestrated this game, my game, the sixth killing game, the game before that...Do you see the big picture here?  Whoever is behind Torimi is the one that is planning all of these killing games!”

Slowly but surely, his voice rose up, more and more, his anger building as he spoke.  Seojun wanted to be able to get this story, his story, their story across to all of them.  Dmitri, Runa, Josefina, Takuma, Chiyo, Leon...They all deserve to know, didn’t they?

“...After everyone was executed, Torimi came up to me, and congratulated me on winning the game.  She explained to me that Gekumi was controlled by one of the other executed students.  Then, she gave me an offer.  She gave me the choice to come back home to my family, or to have the honor of being her second mastermind in the next game.  The first option was the one I would’ve chosen right off the bat, but then I realized something.”

“If I chose to leave this ship for good, who knows how many other games would’ve commenced under her damn wing?  If I didn’t take this offer up right now, countless upon countless amounts of lives would suffer from the same fate.  People around the world…”  He puts a hand over his chest for a moment.  “People like us would be put in the same situation that we’re all in if I didn’t side with Torimi for the time being.  If I didn’t find out who was behind her, and take them down with my own bare hands, who knows how many more lives would be lost?  How many more lives would be put through the same torment?”

“So, I told her that if I were to take the second option, that I had a special request.  I wanted the person behind Torimi to play in the killing game with me.   She- They ended up agreeing, surprisingly enough.  That was the answer that I needed.  Thus, I took it.  I took the offer of being a co-mastermind, so I can put an end to this endless cycle once and for all.  This lead to me here… on The Queen Rose.  I was introduced to my own little mascot, Akomi.”

“I’ll say this now - I didn’t choose the option for him to talk like that.  Torimi wanted this mother and son gimmick, which was traumatizing for me, and she knew that.  She believed that she could overpower me just because of this, just because she’s the one who brought me to this corner that I’ve been backed into.  I’ll let you know now - she was wrong.”

“...I know this doesn’t excuse me from anything I’ve done.”  He suddenly murmurs, glancing to the side for a moment.  Tears continued to fall from Seojun’s eyes, streaming down his cheeks.

“I know I’m still at fault for all of this.  For all of the deaths here, and trust me, there are days where I regret taking this position.  Cici...Izaya...They deserved someone better than me.  They all deserved…You all deserve someone better than a monster like me.  Because it’s true; I can bet what you’re thinking.  That I’m the cause of the deaths of our friends.  That I must think this is all a joke.  That I’m such a hypocrite.  But I’ll let you all know this:”

“Nothing that I felt towards any of you was a lie.”

“I may have lied about not being involved in this mess, yes.  I may have lied about being someone you could rely on, and for that, I’m sorry.  I don’t have enough words that I can say that can express how fucking horrible I feel right now.  But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t care for each and every one of you. No memories that were made between all of us was just a ‘part of the plan’ to me - to me, they all meant something.  I meant everything, that I swear to you. Fuck, if I could, I would trade my life with anyone that has died in this place.”  Except Townsworth.  Good on you, Petra.

His eyes met with everyone around him, and when they looked into his eyes, they saw something different. There was a fire in his eyes now, some sort of spark of determination that was set alight.

“You can do...whatever you want to me, after we manage to get out of this joint.  You can beat me down, damn me to hell...hell, you can kill me if you have the mercy in your body.  But, please, for the love of god...Work with me, just a little longer.  Help me accomplish my mission:  to find out whoever is behind Torimi, and bring them down once and for all.  To put a stop to all of this madness.  Please help me…”

I-I don't, I don't...I don't want to leave Airi here...! It's not..It's not right! (Hanae)

"I am well aware this is not the kindest option, but Airi consented to this when he turned himself in asking for help. How can we let him out knowing he still has such violence inside him?"

Can he not change?! (Hanae)

"But what will you all do if we let him out and he ends up hurting someone? Hurting multiple people? Are human lives so petty to you? That you're willing to risk them on a mere whim?" 

“There will be no more killing games, but we can keep Airi in a peaceful simulation upon letting you out. Of course...everything will be reset, including his memories."

What's tha point of that? It'd defeat da whole purpose, right? (Cai)

"...A vote. That's what we agreed on. That's what we have argued for because there's too much bias amongst us researchers to truly ever decide on what's suitable- no, what's right for Airi-san."

"Even if... even if it means he'll never be my friend again, he's deserved the right to hold on to these memories. That he and everyone else here fought hard to save, even if it means he might never be truly happy. That's what I'm giving up in exchange, even if Yu-bin-ssi, Suchart-kun and Manju-chan don't agree."

It's time, everyone. You know how to vote. I know...you'll make the right choice."  (Kotori)

Let Airi free.

"...Very well, everyone. I accept your decision. I hope you know what you're about to do. If this fails, this is on you. After the execution, you all will awaken."