Enter the Hydro God
Inside the game, the players had no way of knowing what was happening in the outside world.
They lay back in the game pods, and after a brief plunge into darkness, light blossomed before their eyes. They found themselves standing in an open clearing.
Then came Noah's Ark's declaration. But Conan felt no fear — if anything, he was almost impatient to take on whatever challenge the AI had in store.
Once everyone had steadied their nerves, they waited for Noah's Ark to explain the game. To their surprise — Conan's above all — it offered no explanation at all. It merely stated the win condition: solve the prophecy and resolve the crisis facing Fontaine.
Conan was still wondering what on earth "Fontaine" was when the world went dark once more. In the next instant, he and the others found themselves standing before a tall, imposing building.
A quick survey of his surroundings told Conan everything he needed to know: Noah's Ark had tampered with the game's content. The sky here was clear, the light bright — this could not possibly be London at the end of the nineteenth century. The area was laced with waterways, and people actually used small boats to get around, which put him in mind of Venice, yet the architecture didn't match that either. For the life of him, Conan couldn't work out which city Noah's Ark had used as its template.
Which meant his original goal of entering the game to hunt for case leads was probably off the table. He recalled the AI's declaration just before the game began and made up his mind: for now, the priority was clearing the game and getting everyone out safely.
While Conan was taking stock of the situation, the players who had been dropped into the same session had already gathered together. They were all in the same boat now, after all — this was exactly the moment for everyone to pull together.
That said, the group had naturally split into two clusters, each sticking with the people they already knew.
Presumably the teams had been divided according to where each person had been standing back in the clearing. In this game area, the players were Mouri Ran, Xia Yu, the kids of the Detective Boys, and the four boys who'd had that earlier run-in with them and had been standing nearby — Moroboshi, Kikukawa, Emori, and Takizawa.
"I think, based on the win condition Noah's Ark gave us, the first thing we should do is find out what this prophecy actually says," Conan said, taking the lead when everyone else stood around at a loss. He glanced toward Moroboshi and the others as well, hoping they would help — this concerned every one of them, after all.
The four boys exchanged looks. They were still a little sore about that soccer ball Xia Yu had hammered at them earlier, but Conan had a point. Their lives were on the line now; this was hardly the time to hold a grudge.
The group split up to question passersby in the area.
Before long, however, they all reconvened at the same spot.
"I got the prophecy," Xia Yu reported. "It was actually easy to find out — everyone seems to know it. The funny thing is, nobody seems to take it seriously. They just treat it as legend, or a bedtime story, something like that."
Ran nodded in agreement. She had expected to have to ask a dozen people before learning anything; the very first person she asked had known. "And apparently this prophecy has been around for several hundred years," she added.
"I checked with Kikukawa, Emori, and Takizawa," Moroboshi said. "What we heard all matches. This must be the prophecy the game means — something about how the people of Fontaine are born with sin, so the waters of Fontaine will rise and swallow everyone. The people will all dissolve into the water, and only the Hydro God will remain, weeping on her throne."
"Oh, and we found out the Hydro God's name too!" Genta couldn't wait to deliver the Detective Boys' own findings. "Her name is Focalors!"
Focalors? The name of one of the seventy-two demons of Solomon?
Conan shot a probing glance at Xia Yu. The Hydro God Focalors — the name was practically a sibling to Barbatos, the Anemo God. The two had to be connected somehow. So was today's affair linked to Ningguang or not? And did Xia Yu actually know?
"Besides," Mitsuhiko chimed in, "this Hydro God seems to be really famous in Fontaine. Everyone knows her."
"Uh-huh!" Ayumi nodded vigorously. "She's just like a big celebrity!"
"More like a mascot than a celebrity, I'd say," Haibara remarked. "On paper she's the ruler of Fontaine, but the citizens clearly hold the Chief Justice, Neuvillette, in far higher regard."
Having gotten a rough picture of Fontaine, the group was about to head into the city proper when Dr. Agasa's voice suddenly boomed out of the sky.
"Hey, Conan! Can you hear me?"
Everyone froze — then brightened. If they could hear voices from outside, maybe there was a way to get them out after all.
But the professor's next words dashed those hopes. There was no way to pull them out of the game, he said — though he could at least give them a hint for clearing it.
"You should be in a game world based on nineteenth-century London, right?"
The hopes that had just rekindled sputtered out. At the professor's question, everyone could only stare at one another in bewilderment — because nothing about this place looked anything like London.
Conan explained the situation, and only then did Dr. Agasa understand: the game's setting had been rebuilt from scratch by Noah's Ark. Which meant the clues he'd prepared would be of no use to Conan and the others at all.
Before the professor could get another word in, Noah's Ark detected the contact and forcibly cut the line between him and the players in the game.
And as punishment for their attempted cheating, the game world promptly underwent a dramatic change.
A squad of guards materialized and moved to surround them. Fearing the guards might turn violent, Ran and Xia Yu stepped in front of the children — as the only two adults on the scene, protecting the kids was their responsibility.
The children were just beginning to panic, wondering if Noah's Ark intended to simply set the guards on them, when a figure appeared on the platform of the towering building overhead — a girl in magnificent, flamboyant dress, with theatrical, over-the-top mannerisms. She looked young, hardly more than a child herself.
Only with the guards' salutes and the roar of cheering from the surrounding crowd did they learn, to their astonishment, that this girl who had appeared out of nowhere was the Hydro God herself — Focalors.
(No one in the game was wearing a Vision, and Noah's Ark had altered everyone's appearance, so none of them looked quite as they originally did.)
Conan could scarcely believe it. He'd assumed it would take real effort — that they'd at least have to gather a few clues before locating the Hydro God. Instead, she had appeared before them this quickly, practically delivered to their doorstep.