The Script (5)
Second Prince Loki's scheme was already well underway the moment the girl first set foot in Creta. It was a plan crafted with terrifying precision, unfolding in calculated stages.
Placing the girl directly in Theseus's path had been an insurance policy, prepared specifically for the moment Theseus would discover her true identity. After all, the deeper one's devotion, the more shattering the sense of betrayal when the veil is torn away.
"For ordinary people, that's usually where they lose their minds."
Second Prince Loki claimed the girl was the sworn enemy of his family. Whether that accusation held any truth was entirely beside the point. A person blinded by vengeance could never exercise sound judgment.
Yet Theseus had calmly seen right through Loki's deception. He chose to forgive the girl and resolved to protect her.
A magnificent disposition, truly. A hero through and through.
"Did Loki really not anticipate that, though? If Theseus's sense of justice were something that crumbled so easily, Loki wouldn't have bothered with all this elaborate effort."
There would have been no need for such convoluted theatrics when simpler, far more expeditious methods were readily available. Theseus forgave the girl, and right at that precise juncture, Loki activated the poison he had already cultivated within her body.
"Still, even that isn't enough. Loki won't kill the girl outright. If she died, Theseus would certainly feel an immense sense of loss, but if grief alone were enough to break him, he would have shattered long ago when his mother died."
"Then what the hell is his play? Stop beating around the bush and explain it so a normal guy can understand, would you?" Jeff grumbled in irritation.
I was laying it out step by step, so I really wished he would quit badgering me. For a guy who had managed to become a holy paladin, where did he get the gall to bark so loudly...?
"If the girl's life is put on a ticking clock, what do you think Theseus will do?"
"...What can he do?" Jeff cocked his head, his brow furrowing.
"Right. In truth, there are plenty of things he could try, but none that will actually solve the problem. Except for one."
Generally speaking, the lethal poison wielded by Loki had no antidote. Its symptoms were wildly erratic, and no trace of toxins could ever be detected in the corpses. At that point, everybody knew the entire phenomenon was driven by Loki's supernatural ability.
The premise itself was straightforward: a deadly venom eroding the girl from within. The only way to purge its effects was to strike down the culprit who had dispersed it and controlled its flow.
To ensure Theseus didn't somehow miss the hint, Loki had blatantly flaunted his power right in front of him. The instant Loki gave the signal, the girl coughed up blood. Only a complete imbecile could fail to see the connection.
"For Theseus to save the girl, he has no choice but to kill Loki."
Yet Theseus, a dogmatic pacifist, would never take Loki's life. And Loki, knowing this all too well, had no intention of halting the poison's erosion out of brotherly affection. Ultimately, the only move left for Theseus was to threaten Loki with empty words.
Was that the end of it, then? A lingering sense of helplessness at failing to save the girl? Did Loki orchestrate all of this just to inflict a petty psychological sting like that?
"The girl is merely the trigger. Sending her to Theseus's side early on wasn't just to let him grow attached to her—there was a second objective all along."
Loki wouldn't kill her immediately. The poison nesting in her flesh would kill her slowly, and that ticking clock would drive Theseus to anxiety and despair. But that was a mere byproduct. From the beginning, the girl herself was never the real target; Theseus's posture in protecting her was.
"After rescuing a girl pursued by unidentified thugs, Theseus couldn't simply consider the matter settled. He didn't know why she was being hunted, nor did he know what the pursuers were after."
And so, Theseus was effectively pinned in place. He lingered near the girl, keeping vigilant watch over any suspicious figures. If the scoundrels' target was indeed the girl, it was the textbook response. But...
"Loki is a vile, cruel bastard. And a man like that..."
Jeff and I arrived at our destination. The disaster had not yet erupted. All that remained was the verification process to confirm the contours of the script the Playwright had drafted.
"Open it up."
"Right."
Jeff and I had come to inspect Creta's communal well. While out of Theseus's watchful sight, this was precisely what Loki would target.
"Let's see what we have here."
I scooped a small sip of the water to taste it. It tasted no different from ordinary water.
"Colorless and odorless."
Next, I dipped our prepared alchemical detector into the water to test it.
I immediately rinsed my mouth with the antidote.
The poison had already spread throughout the entire well.
"Now, Jeff. Let's suppose every single person in this city has been poisoned."
"...What?"
"What do you think Loki will do next?"
As I mentioned earlier, Loki never hesitated to use any means necessary to achieve his ends. Having demonstrated the onset of symptoms on the girl as an example, what would he do next?
"If it were me, I'd say something like this: 'If you don't kill the girl, I will slaughter the townsfolk one by one.'"
Loki intended to force Theseus to take a life with his own hands. Whether that victim was the girl or Loki himself didn't matter. Either choice meant the absolute destruction of Theseus's brand of justice.
"Wait, but couldn't Loki end up getting killed in the process?"
"A cunning rat like him would have definitely prepared a way to keep himself breathing."
Refusing to kill the girl didn't matter. Driving a blade into Loki didn't matter. Standing paralyzed in indecision didn't matter either.
Today, right here in this place...
"Someone is guaranteed to die."
And every single death would be laid at the feet of Theseus's choice. Whether the girl died, Loki died, or every living soul in the city died—in every conceivable outcome, Theseus's moral ideals would shatter to dust.
Did it sound like a textbook villain trope? In this world, a trope became textbook precisely because it was a foolproof formula.
When I first received the script detailing this plot from the Playwright, I realized that an antidote in and of itself was practically useless.
What the Playwright wanted wasn't just a simple cure. It was the manner in which that cure was wielded to dismantle the crisis.
Second Prince Loki's scheme had already commenced, and every person in the city was poisoned. With a mere twitch of his supernatural power, Loki could massacre thousands of people moving through Creta. Poisoning thousands was effortless, but manufacturing enough antidote to save thousands was impossible.
Yet resolving the mass poisoning across the entire population wasn't the point.
"Whoops, pardon the intrusion."
The only thing that mattered was the sheer fact that I held an antidote.
"I apologize for cutting in while you two are having such a grave moment, but I have a word or two to say."
The antidote in my possession was enough to save, at most, a single person. One might ask if that wasn't utterly pointless.
Surprisingly enough, that wasn't the case at all.
"You see, I happen to possess the antidote that cures that poison."
To Theseus and me, it represented a single life. How heavily that weighed on each of us might differ, but to Loki, this antidote was never about one human life. To him, the life of an ordinary person was no different from that of an insect.
What mattered was that a means of neutralizing his lethal venom had materialized out of nowhere.
"So, how about it, gentlemen? Care to indulge me in a brief chat?"
Whether someone lived or died was irrelevant to Loki. What truly troubled him was the existence of something that could become his fatal vulnerability. It wasn't merely the failure of this immediate scheme; it meant an uncontrollable variable had been introduced into every single plot he would ever concoct moving forward.
Crack!
The sound of shattering glass burst by my ear. Before my eyes, the radiant barrier of dawn light crumbled into glittering shards.
When had he even launched that attack...? I was only alive because Jeff had readied his defense in advance.
"Eden?" Loki murmured, tilting his head with narrowed eyes.
For that matter, what kind of attack had he just thrown? Had he hurled something invisible? Well, either way, it didn't really matter.
"Eden, you say? Ah-hahahaha!"
I deliberately clutched my stomach and erupted into exaggerated laughter. After guffawing loudly for a good while, I cut the laughter clean, letting my posture slouch as I drawled:
"Well, I suppose one could look at it that way."
At that exact moment, Melana stepped forth from the shadows cast by the rubble. An ominous, sinister chill instantly rippled through the clearing, suffocating the atmosphere.
"Now then, are you going to mutter 'Under Chain' next?"
Our Motley Crew. This was precisely why I had assembled them.
To prove that we were bound to no single faction.
When the signatures of two fundamentally irreconcilable organizations manifested in the exact same place, a man with a mind as sharp as Loki's was bound to start spiraling into overthought.
"What... are you?"
The question was simple, but the calculations whirring behind his eyes were undoubtedly staggering.
Eden and Under Chain. Clowns wielding the contradictory powers of two diametrically opposed groups. That alone was enough to force Loki into imagining that our Motley Crew had infiltrated every faction under the sun.
We inflated our presence into a colossal, untouchable phantom.
We deceived our opponent with pure, unadulterated bluster.
Deliberately flaunting Emily's mechanical contraptions, I spread my fingers wide. With a crisp, metallic clatter, the mechanical rig strapped to my wrist dispensed a tiny reagent vial.
With that, Ex Machina was added to the equation. And the lingering suspicion that we were tied to Ex Machina threw the authenticity of the antidote into even deeper, more bewildering chaos.
"Curious about who we are? My goodness, has our troupe leader's renown truly fallen so low?"
Finally, right on cue, our Motley Crew's troupe leader, Yuna, popped into existence with a flair.
She wore the very clown costume she had donned when we first met. A completely different build, a completely different gait. Even knowing full well that the figure beneath the mask was Yuna, I could never quite get used to it. Her acting chops were downright terrifying, and her theatrical entrance was nothing short of bizarre.
"..."
Yuna's sheer presence was in a league of its own.
Revered as the King of Assassins, she operated on a plane entirely distinct from the rest of our motley outfit. Theseus aside, there was no way in hell Loki could afford to take her lightly.
"We are but a humble, ragtag crew. And our troupe leader happens to be the most 'Safe' clown in the entire world."
At my introduction, Yuna let out an eerie giggle and began contorting her frame. Her limbs bent in grotesque, impossible directions. She had completely dominated the first impression.
"Well then, that concludes the introductions, does it not? May we proceed with our talk?"
Stepping forward once more, I held up the antidote high enough for everyone to see.
"What would you like me to do with this?"
The mere existence of this vial was far more lethal to Loki than to anyone else. Handing it to Theseus would only save a single person, but...
"I would love to hear both of your opinions. How do you think this should be handled?"
Loki's suave smile shattered. The slight twitch at the corner of his lips laid bare just how thoroughly infuriated he was. Yet in the blink of an eye, Loki smoothed his expression over and smiled again.
"I can assure you. I am the only person here capable of paying a handsome price for that little toy."
"That is what he says. What are the First Prince's thoughts on the matter?"
"Though I possess no wealth to my name..." Theseus began earnestly, "should you grant that to me, I swear on my honor that I shall repay this debt of gratitude one day."
Theseus was upright to a fault. And catastrophically, horrifically awful at negotiations.
He had an uncanny knack for cooling any merchant's enthusiasm, even when one had intended to hand the goods over for free.
"What would you like to do, Troupe Leader?"
I turned to ask Yuna first.
Yuna, who had been commanding the entire clearing's attention with her grotesque, bone-creaking contortions, leaned down at my voice and whispered into my ear:
"Do what?"
Ah. This little lunatic had been so busy messing around that she hadn't listened to a single word I said.
Whatever, fine. You're only here for visual deterrence anyway. Just stay like that.
"It appears our leader values the trust of His Imperial Highness the First Prince far more than material wealth."
The intended use for the antidote had been set in stone from the start anyway.
"Yet, for my part, the Second Prince's proposal is rather tempting as well. How about something like this? We hand this antidote to neither of you."
"..."
A sharp intellect like Loki would understand immediately: between consuming this antidote now and leaving it untouched—an unknown variable looming forever in the dark—which held the greater strategic value.
"However, we hardly possess the confidence to withstand Lord Theseus's wrath. If you should decide to take it by force, I fret over what little we could do to resist..."
And since Theseus wasn't an idiot either, he would grasp the subtext.
"How about it? Why don't all parties take one step back here?"
Force Loki to halt the poison's progression of his own accord. If he did, Theseus would have no further reason to demand the antidote.
"Prince Loki eliminates the stage where he would test whether this antidote is the real thing."
I pointed toward Loki as I spoke.
"Lord Theseus has no need to expend the antidote, which suits him just fine."
I pointed toward Theseus as I spoke.
"And we have the pleasure of nipping this entire catastrophe in the bud before it spirals out of control."
I spread both hands wide toward the sky.
"Now then, in this very place, who is being the most altruistic, and who is being the most selfish?"
Whether we all perish together or everyone walks away alive—the choice is yours.
However...
"And who, I wonder, was the one who penned this magnificent script?"
We are the ones who set the board.