Part 202: NGAE: ~/ sigma\$ cd cyan/betray/red/ally && chmod u+rwx *

Well. This thing's looking rather complete, isn't it?

There's literally only one thing for it.



It's time to get back on this bullshit.

Previously on this route: Sigma betrays Alice in retaliation for "last time" and is somewhat nonplussed when she allies and makes him look like a total dick. This is quickly forgotten about when an antimatter bomb shows up in the Crew Quarters. After the next round of explorations, Quark and Alice come down with nasty cases of Radical-6. Quark is sedated and Alice disappears, to be later found by Phi in the Garden along with another bomb. In the next AB Game, Sigma and Luna ally with Phi who betrays them in retaliation for "last time". Phi, having accrued 9 points, is about to escape but Sigma talks her out of it by quoting her favourite Latin proverb at her. Everyone makes up and goes back to worrying about the bombs. While searching for the implicit #2 bomb Phi briefs Sigma on quantum physics-based time travel and states explicitly what Sigma was beginning to suspect; that the two of them are capable of jumping between the branching timelines of the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition, and that causality may not be as straightforward as they thought. Briefly they consider if any of this is serving a purpose - but they are interrupted by the discovery of the last bomb in the Control Room. Clover - who is totally not a government agent by the way - wonders if someone isn't trying to blow the reactor. Everyone gathers in the infirmary and Phi is about to pat them all down for evidence when Sigma suddenly blurts out that he knows Dio planted them, because he remembered it from another timeline. Sigma fasttalks Dio into fessing up, but Dio manages to activate the countdown anyway, and forces the group to sedate him before they can interrogate the codes out of him. Sigma is forced to rely on his newly not-latent reality jumping superpowers to find the codes and disarm the bombs.



I like to think that, rather than doing this route last, Sigma canonically does it really early on and then just timelines out through the entire rest of the game and back.



In any case, we got it this time. I still haven't written down #1.

But before we get back into this, I wanna call out some bullshit.



Here is a photo I took of my 3DS screen, which is a thing I had to do because this LP took so long that it outlived Miiverse, and now even that laborious-ass process of getting screenshots off of a 3DS is beyond me. There are a few things of note about these notes. For one, although both the available space and the resolution of that space are a fraction of what they are on the Vita, and the stroke is like double the thickness, this memo pad can realistically hold about twice the Notes Per Square Centimeter of the Vita one, and is tidier, and supports superior penmanship. Not bad for a resistive touchscreen from 2011. More importantly, though, notice how my notes look a bit fucked up? Missing chunks, stray pixels? That's not my caffeine-addled handwriting; the notes you take degrade, bit-by-bit (literally, really), every time you jump between timelines. That rules, frankly. That's a great little flourish they put on that there feature. But for lord-only-knows what reason, the Vita version does not do this cool thing. My Vita notes are as pristine as the day I made them. It took me a while to figure this out, and I was waiting for some degredation to kick in so I could find an excuse to casually show my memo screen in an update all low-key and all the readers could be all "whooooooa" and someone would use it to make a grand speculation leap and someone else would call that person a moron, but that never happened and now this is how you have to find out. I'm sorry.

Anyway.



Listen in: [English/Japanese]




So you did know it.


Yeah... Guess so.

VLR OST: [Eeriness]




Come on, it's not like I was hiding it.
I just couldn't remember it at first. Then it just kind of...floated up.
Or maybe it drifted down...


Whatever.
The point is, we disarmed the thing. Amazing.


_{You sure don't sound very amazed...}


Okay... That just leaves us with the last bomb.
It's...um...


It's in the garden.


Right. Let's go take care of it while you're on a roll with these things.


_{Guh... You make it sound so easy...}


Well don't just stand there! Let's go!

[Music fades out]



She spun around and was gone.
I gripped the input device tightly and headed off after her.



VLR OST: [Strain]





Listen in: [English/Japanese]




*Pant* *Pant*


Finally... The last one...


Yeah...


How many minutes left?




It's okay. We can still make it. Just stay calm, all right?
You have the input device?




Okay. Go.


Go?


We've done this twice already.
Do you really need a third pep talk?


You want me to remember another password, right?


Exactly. What else would I be talking about?


But...




I'm sure this one'll be a cakewalk.
Third time's the charm, right?


That's, uh, not really how that's used...
I'm just worried that lightning's not gonna strike twice, or thrice in this case I guess.


No, I think mine still works.
There's nothing to suggest the first and second times aren't charmed too.


Uh...I guess so...


Whatever. Just do it. You're the only person who can.


What about you?
You can jump to other worlds too, right?




I'm doing the best I can, but...
Either I haven't seen the stuff you have, or...
I just can't remember it.
Maybe we've been going to different worlds.


...
...


Anyway—


Yeah. I'll give it a shot.


I'm counting on you.

[Music fades out]












Suck on that Dio, you arrogant son of a bitch!
Ahahahahahahaha!


...
...

VLR OST: [Clarification]




It's like my whole brain is just swimming in endorphins.
I feel like it's just going to melt and dribble out my ears...
This is, without a doubt, what heaven feels like. Honestly, I feel like I could fly right now.
Hell, I almost wish there was another bomb so I could feel this again.
Isn't this great...?