Quoted By:
■-■:
>>■-■ (M1 Wisdom ⸫ Roll: 31 = Success)<< (Discern the Toy’s motivations.)
At this very moment, Erika Kruppman (or what little remains of her) is on a school’s rooftop, surrounded by many Toys as the gargantuan Violet Tower looms over her- and said Toys want to crack her open to take out the ‘Cog’ inside of her-
Green Jester: “CRACK IT CRACK IT CRACK IT CRACK IT!”
-that much is evident.
Black Knight: “...DESTROY...”
This is their reaction to Erika’s ‘pinging’ with her Soul Gem, which means that Toys were meant to intercept the signals that Magical Girls send via telepathy. Which, in itself, means that the ‘Cogs’ are either the Soul Gems or the Magical Girls themselves- which at least means that they don’t want to break the gem itself.
Red Wizard: “THE PAIN. THE SUFFERING. THE DESPAIR.”
Spider-like Toy: “THEN LET’S LOOK AT CLOUDS WITH FUNNY SHAPES!”
Their handler, a Crow Knight of the Order of the End, is at a loss of words to regard the current situation with. It’s safe to assume that, so far, the possibility of Toys turning against each other was not considered- and that she has no idea on how to act out of protocol.
Cricket: “WE CAN’T FEEL PAIN YOU IDIOTS! DO IT ALREADY SO “”I”” CAN SEE INSIDE THE BOX!
Priestess: “DON’T!”
Erika would be sweating if she could, but now is certainly not the time to panic. The ‘Clock Box’ the Cricket had mentioned… it must be how the Toymaker gives her Toys motivation. Despite their individual natures, all Toys seem to have been programmed like computer applications, with clear rules and goals and ingrained knowledge the lost president of the MAC-BA finds to lack. In other words, to Erika… it's almost safe to assume that watching what’s inside that box is every Toy’s end goal, their dream, even if there’s nothing inside of it- and that they’ll do anything to see what’s in it.
Then it’s simple: to see what’s inside the Clock Box, they have to capture ‘Cogs’, meaning Magical Girls. That may be their only rule. Following the Order’s orders may not even be a requisite since the Toys would want to see the Box right after following any of them, while the capturing is a concrete goal in itself. That would make it a simple program, predictable, hard to misunderstand.
Erika’s intelligence gifts her a question: just how shallow those definitions could be? What would ‘capture’ entail to a Toy? What is the ‘Clock Box’ to a Toy?
And yet, the one question relevant to this moment remains: “how do I /not/ get cracked open?"
>?
