the mastermind meme

[monomods]

 

You asked for it, we're finally giving it to you! Say hello to the mastermind meme!

What does this mean exactly? It means your character is the one responsible for everything! They've been controlling Monobear from the shadows (or maybe they have an assistant to help them, possibly even one of your classmates!), they've been putting forth the motives, running the trials, all of it! And now they've finally chosen to reveal themselves and their true motives.

What are their motives? Why do they want to spread despair? Are they somehow connected to the late Junko Enoshima? And most importantly what is their snazzy Monobear-themed look like? You decide!

Threading reactions is highly encouraged and feel free to AU things up to mix up our current survivor pool as much as you'd like.

Comments

[holocast]

He recognizes that look rather easily, really - it's the sort of expression that one gets when they realize exactly how wrong they were about something. Life. Peace. How much goodness people contain. Exactly how much you mean to one of your friends.

Or perhaps how little you mean, as the case may be. It's a bit difficult to say in this circumstance, and Lysandre's expression isn't giving much away; his eyes may be burning with a sort of cold fire they haven't held since the killing game began, but his features are impassive, almost alarmingly devoid of expression.

"Something of an unpleasant shock, I imagine," he says, the words easy. Arrogant. "It truly is unfortunate that you had to be subjected to such a thing, ma chérie."

[stitchedupbodyguard]

Somewhere, deep in the pit of Veronica's stomach, she can tell that he's lying about it being unfortunate. If anything, he had been waiting for her to figure it out.

Did he even think she would make it this far? How much of that pride had been false?

"...I don't believe it." she replied slowly, hints of shock still in her voice. "I didn't... y-you can't be..."

[holocast]

"Can't I?"

It's purely rhetorical; surely they both know that much. Any answer that one could possibly demand to that is painfully obvious by now.

"Why would I lie to you about something like this? You know my stance on liars, don't you?"

[stitchedupbodyguard]

Deep in the pit of her stomach, Veronica knew that this was the truth, that Lysandre was behind all of it.

She didn't want to believe it.

"You wouldn't, but..." she shook, trying to find the right words. "I never thought... I hoped..."

[holocast]

"Oh, indeed?" There's something just beneath his words, an odd tremor that might have been mistaken for regret once upon a time; judging by his expression, it's something else entirely - barely-controlled laughter, tight and harsh and threatening to escape him, only just kept in check.

"It seems we suffer from the same problem - wanting to believe in people. Wanting to hope that they'll do the right thing. It's a bit of a curse, isn't it? One that I've never really been able to break away from, no matter how many times I'm proven wrong."

He shifts where he's sitting, leaning his back a bit more thoroughly against Gyarados' side where he's coiled up behind him. "I believed in the lot of you as well, you know. But it seems there are some people who just can't be trusted, no matter what they may say to one another.

"Isn't that right...?"

[stitchedupbodyguard]

"Isn't that..."

Veronica shifted nervously, eyeing the massive creature that Lysandre sat on that could only be another pokemon. How big did they come in his world?

"I mean... yeah, some people have lied, b-but not all of them! There's good people in the group, and you're... you don't believe in any of them, do you?"

[holocast]

Lysandre actually seems to consider that for a moment, something strange and perhaps familiar flashing behind his eyes for the briefest of moments - but then the confidence is back, and the coldness with it.

"Tell me, Veronica - how many times did you promise one another that no one else would die?"

[stitchedupbodyguard]

Her expression drops when she hears his question. She knows exactly what he's getting at, but there's no way around it.

"I... a few times, but... it was to... to keep everyone's hopes up."

[holocast]

He smirks a little at that; it's a familiar argument, one posited to him by the boy back in Kalos - one of Sycamore's students, Serena's little friend. 'But that was different,' he'd insisted, but he'd been just as wrong as Veronica had.

And in the end, he'd been just as dead as several of Veronica's classmates.

"And how many times did it succeed?"

[stitchedupbodyguard]

Voice steadily dying in her throat, Veronica thought back to all the conversations she had with Fran about life and continuing to live it. Fran had always said that a life was precious no matter how horrible it was. She wished she was here.

"It... It hasn't." she finally confessed, though she looked to her leader with hopeful eyes. "B-but you can change that, Lysandre! If you help us, you can save everyone!"

[holocast]

"You mean that I can let you go," he says, his voice shifting into the sort of bored exasperation often reserved for a teacher repeating a lesson to a particularly difficult pupil. "Letting you go and saving you are two very, very different things."

[stitchedupbodyguard]

"N-no! You can save everyone! You can bring everyone back to life!" she pleaded with the man, feeling her hopeful self beginning to falter as Lysandre continued to be an ass of himself. "You must know how. Please!"

[holocast]

"Why would I...?" He trails off a bit, looking at her oddly; it takes a moment for recognition to dawn in his eyes.

"Really...have you not worked out why I brought you here, ma chérie? I practically led you to the answer weeks ago."

[stitchedupbodyguard]

She knew she was going to regret it, and she knew that he would more than likely look down on her.

She shook her head. "No... I-I don't understand."

[holocast]

He sighs, but when he speaks, his tone isn't terribly derisive; it's not much of anything, really - he just starts reciting, as though reading facts out of a textbook.

"John, Aradia and Roxy are unstable teenagers with powers that, if left unchecked, have potental to destroy the world. Prosecutor von Karma has led many, many people to death over the years, sacrificing justice for her overzealous desire for perfection. Maya and Sam are abominations unto mankind. Colonel Archer was a sociopath who thrived on war and destruction. Dahlia was a serial killer. Jimmy and Heloise were literally sentenced to eternal damnation for their acts in life. And you...? The things most important for you to get back were weapons. You're no less a killer than the rest, no matter what sort of self-righteous terms you attach to it."

He closes his eyes after that's out there, collecting himself; it takes him a moment to open them again.

"Don't you understand? Every single one of you has had it within yourselves to be hideously, hideously dangerous. However, Miss Usami was my doing as well, designed to encourage you all to foster bonds between each other - to encourage you to become friends, and to remain united no matter how bad circumstances got. Monobear's role was to provide you with adversity.

"And what happened as soon as the lot of you were faced with that adversity, Veronica? Can you tell me?"

[stitchedupbodyguard]

They started to kill one another. Veronica knows that Lysandre would want her to answer with that, but she abstains. The recited lesson does get to her more than a little though, and it shows. She grips a handful of her cloak in one hand, looking down at her boots.

"They're.... w-we're not dangerous! Not for the sake of being destructive! I got my blades back so I could protect people, not kill them for no reason. John, Aradia, and Roxy are heroes trying to save their universe. Von Karma was just doing her job as a prosecutor..."

She couldn't think of what to say for Sam or Dahlia though. "Maya's a marine biologist, and Jimmy and Heloise don't remember their previous lives..."

A shake of the head. To think that Lysandre had planned all this out, and now this was happening...

"...What about you? Do you have it within yourself to be hideously, hideously dangerous?"

[holocast]

"It's very telling, you know - what you're willing to justify as someone 'just doing their job.' How much does that matter to those whose lives were taken? Killing them because you had to, killing them because you wanted to - don't you understand? It's all the same. People are dead. How many have you killed yourself in the name of 'protecting others'?"

He isn't dodging that last question of hers, however; if anything, it seems to have amused him greatly. "As for myself, if you're trying to get to me that way, it isn't going to work - surely you don't think this is the first time I've eliminated people in order to ensure that the world can continue on untainted?"

[stitchedupbodyguard]

Veronica honestly could not answer his question. How many people had she killed? Thousands? Millions? They had all come at her so much... never ending.

"It's not the same! It's never the same! Those people chose to come at us and would stop at nothing to destroy everything I loved! The best thing I could offer them was a quick and painless death."

She stops dead in her tracks, eyeing the man with greater scrutiny than before. Was this the man that they had trusted in so much before? "You... you've killed people before... and you think it's okay to do it again?"

[holocast]

"Ma chérie," he replies, his voice cold, "in order to get what I want, I'll kill as many people as I need to."

[stitchedupbodyguard]

"T-then you're no better than anyone that you call monsters!" Veronica shouted, stomping the floor with one of her boots. Many emotions flew through her as she spoke. Rage, denial, betrayal.

"This isn't how it should go, no one here deserved the treatment you gave us!"

[holocast]

"Do you think I don't know what I am? Believe me, I've known from the beginning." He leans forward again, clasping his hands lightly in front of him. "In becoming an embodiment of Despair, I'm more repulsive than the rest of you put together. This is undeniable fact, and furthermore, it's something that I've never tried to deny.

"But it's clear that I'm never going to agree with you with regards to exactly what you deserve. Unless you believe that my being as vile as the rest of you means that all of you deserve it less...?"

The thought seems to have his interest for the time being, his words taking on an unsettlingly light quality. Almost curious. "Tell me what you plan to accomplish in attacking me in such a way - if a serial killer is executed, is it any less just if that execution is carried out by a criminal? Does the killer deserve their just punishment less because the person responsible for administering it isn't pure themselves?

"I'm a hypocrite, of course. I never said I wasn't. But how does what I've done absolve any of you?"

[stitchedupbodyguard]

"Because... because you started all of this in the first place!" She shot back at him, feeling her fists clench in growing rage as she beheld the man who was simultaneously admitting that he was worse than everyone on the island combined, but at the same time stating that everyone else deserved to die for him. "Nobody was killing anybody in that first week! If you hadn't brought in Monobear, and started this entire mess, no one would have died!"

"And I don't murder," she exclaimed slowly, "I kill only those that deserve to die, those that come against me with ill intentions. Call me a murderer all you want, but I've saved more lives than anyone on this island. And the others were just as happy to not kill each other until you started this horrible game with no way out! Some of them do deserve punishment for what they have done in the past, but you deserve more than anyone else. You admitted it yourself."

[holocast]

"If you're going to continue arguing the point, ma chérie, I suppose I can humor you for now - tell me about these people you've killed. Why were they after you? What made you the person with the right to decide their fate? Isn't it possible that some of them were only doing their job? Do you know what their intentions were, or how justified they may have seen themselves as?

"After all, I'm a terrible person, we can both agree on that - at the same time, I believe myself to be justifiably so. How do you know that those you've killed didn't believe themselves to be in the right - that to them, you aren't the one deciding to take their lives away while they're doing what they think should be done?"

[stitchedupbodyguard]

"I was protecting my father." she stated flatly, trying to drive the point home like a hammer to a nail. "He's the greatest doctor in the world. He can do anything. We were being hunted by yakuza, and gang members, and secret societies, all trying to take his knowledge and use it for their own, selfish and destructive purposes. They. Didn't. Stop. No matter what I did, they would keep coming."

Veronica eyes were steeled, and her jaw was set. "I did everything in my power to protect those I cared about. what about you, Lysandre? Don't you have anyone that you care about?"

[holocast]

He doesn't falter far, though he does hesitate before he responds; that odd, brightly alive look in his eyes is still present, however. "I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't."