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NPC Database
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Month Day | Text/Audio/Action | NPC's Name
NPCs currently available:
Shigure | NRL Time Surge Specialist and Spokesman | Action/Audio/Text
Shizuko | NRL Psychiatry Dept | Action/Audio/Text
Goro | NRL Kizuna Specialist and Weapons Guy | Action
scienz_rulz_1899 | ??? | Text
Inari Okami | God of the Harvest | Dreams
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[Despite the way she sighs in response, Shizuko gives the impression she was actually waiting for him. Or perhaps, for anyone who would have a reason to sneak back in a second time.]
[She won't stop him from looking into the window, where he'll see Emily sitting in a hospital bed, animatedly speaking with someone who isn't there. She won't react if the window is tapped, but the door remains locked. If he watches long enough, she'll eventually just freeze in place, before continuing the exact same actions as before.]
[Shizuko's arms are folded, and her tone a bit sharp, as if preparing to chastise him. But instead, she answers his question.]
She's time afflicted. It's a term we use to describe mental disorders caused by time surges. They were far more common during the time loop, though it took a number of subsequent loops for us to begin to understand what was happening. Even now, we don't know very much about how to treat them.
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[ It does Ash good, to see Emily animatedly talking, her face lighting up in the way it would when she would come up to see him in the attic. He doesn't like that she's here, trapped in a time loop like this. But it does feel good to see her.
Is that selfish? ]
Is she in any pain?
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Those brief moments where she seems to pause is actually the time around her freezing. Our research points to the possibility that she herself has become a time surge, causing her own time to become distorted. But unfortunately, time surges are one of the most complicated types of magic out there.
[She frowns as she looks into the room, before glancing at Ash.]
If I may ask, Starmer-san... what is your relation to Emily-san?
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[ He stops, winces, self-corrects, before he says anything out of turn. ]
She's the daughter of my administrative user, Martha.
[ He looks back towards the room, towards Emily and her excited face. ]
I'm something like her imaginary friend.
Sorry for the delay!
Then are you, perhaps, the "imaginary friend" she thinks she's talking to?
[She walks up to the door and pushes a button on a small speaker near the wall, allowing the audio in the room to come out. The conversation she's having is one-sided -- but he'll recognize it as the conversation she was having with him up in the attic on her birthday, just before time began to loop for him]
Though it may be hard to believe, she's been here longer than you have. Not by much time, but... we've theorized that bringing her out of the time loop caused you to notice the time loop as well, due to ambient magic produced by our interference.
It's thanks to this that we now understand why so many people who become aware of the loops seem to have some connection to one another. It's possible that one person being aware has the power to pull others out of the loop as well.
But in terms of applying this theory to cure her of her present condition... we're still working on that.
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Ah, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Emily is here, now, even though she's stuck in then. ]
Thank you. [ That's about the only response he can piece together. ] For saving her from it. For saving me.
[ Emily comes first, of course. She matters more; she's actually alive and he's just a computer with a human casing. Emily will always matter more. Just like Martha matters more. ]
What about her mum? Is she still in the time loop as well?
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[It was hard to accept gratitude when there was so little they could really do to help. Even bringing everyone who becomes aware here could be considered the bare minimum, seeing as their own world is the reason these loops exist at all.]
Her mother is still in the time loop. The nature in which we look into worlds is a bit complex, but in this case, we know this because you and her are the only ones here from your world. If she had become aware, our systems would have been pinged to send her an escape portal.
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[ Well, he sort of understands. The whole scope of travel between universes and infinite time loops is a little beyond his programming, but... He understands the theories involved. He's done a little reading, since he arrived, to try to get up to speed. ]
How far does the time loop spread? Is it just our part of our world affected, or is it everything and everyone?
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Your city. Your country. Your planet. Your solar system-- though we use the term "worlds" to describe the places we draw you all from, what we really mean is "universes". And once a universe has been affected by the time loop, reality itself bends to its whims.
[She takes a calming breath, adjusting her glasses as an excuse to look away from a moment. For all that her demeanor has been entirely composed, this is a topic that's difficult for her to talk about.]
Before we began our mission to save those who become aware of it, we were awestruck by the sheer magnitude of what a single spell in our world could do. Even now, I don't know if we truly understand the weight of what has been done. Much as we've come to depend on it in modern human society, the limitless power of magi-tech is... truly terrifying.
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[ There isn't much he can say to that. She's right, the immense scale of it, spreading out to near-infinity across a near-infinite number of universes... His mind is designed to be more powerful than an ordinary human's, and it's still a lot even for him. ]
Do you— Ah... Is it known how it all started? What caused the time loops in the first place?
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[But she'll need to explain a bit, for why they're certain this was the case--]
The flow of time has always been a bit odd in our world due to the existence of Sora magic. Using it, you can manipulate the flow of time, but typically only on a small scale. The natural time surges that pop up here and there are also powered by Sora magic.
Ordinarily, there are limits to what can be accomplished by single spell. But magi-tech is designed to move around these restrictions, allowing even non-magic users to cast spells through technology. Your magi-comms are a good example -- they run by casting thousands of very precise spells, which work in tandem with the technology so that it never loses power or signal.
We believe that someone created a device to cast a powerful Sora magic spell. Essentially-- they were trying to make a time machine. But when that spell backfired, it was amplified by an unimaginable magnitude.
The reason we can only call this a theory-- is that such a machine shouldn't be possible using the technology available today. Meaning that whoever created the machine broke the past.
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That doesn't sound awfully fair. We're all paying the price for a mistake that hasn't been made yet.
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Of course, with everything that's occured, that future is unlikely to ever happen now. But as for what sort of time paradox we've spawned as a result... that, we don't yet understand.
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[ Not that it would make anything better for those living inside the paradox timeline. ]
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While we are aware of circumstances in which someone can exist in two places at once, we've decide there's no merit in pursuing that possibility.
And in any case, it has no impact on what we choose to do from this point forward.
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So, he'll focus on the rest of what she says. ]
And what is it that we choose to do? ...That the NRL is choosing to do, that is.