Puella Magi - Memento Mori (PMMM-Quest) [Story only -thread]

[DrZiztah]

[X] Excuse yourself and go after Evelyn.

As interesting as the topic at hand is, you have much bigger fish to fry. Well, not literally in this case, but one of your few bonds of friendship coming under peril trumps the fun of planning a weekend sleepover that you won't be able to participate in. It's honestly not even a close contest there.

"Ah, sorry guys, I'll have to leave this here," you tell your friends, edging to the side as your gaze travels back to the form of Evelyn. She seems to have started to steer to the side from the route back to your ride, it seems, and towards the overgrowth of trees. You frown, and give a quick glance and a smile to your friends. "I'll catch up with you in the car soon, okay?"

A glance to the side confirms that your uncle seems to have disappeared from sight while your gaze was elsewhere.

"W-wait, wh- Oh," Kishi blinks as the realization hits her. She has her back covered by Ariane, though, who also seems to understand somewhat.

"Mmm, yes, we'll wait for you, don't worry," she reassured you very understandably, glancing over at Mariko immediately after. "No rush."

Mariko grumbles something under her breath, but lets it be. You guess they have started to pick on the exact nature of your problem while the day has unfolded. Though in a way you'd like some help there, you can understand that you probably need to talk things through with Evelyn by yourself after screwing up with her by yourself. They're just giving you the room to do that, Mariko included.

You nod at your friends, and leave them behind for now to jog after Evelyn before she disappears from your field of vision entirely

You catch up to the girl well out of the sight of the rest of your friends. Her pace is brisk and her eyes seem to wander around the area, finding the abandoned attractions of the park around her obviously mesmerizing. But there's a certain uncertainty to her movements, as if she was heavily thinking about things and feeling conflicted over those.

You only slow down once you're walking right next to her, your steps unsynchronized as you try to adjust your pace to hers. For a small moment, you just walk. Evelyn doesn't turn to address you for some reason, not at first. As such, you make the first move to break the silence.

"Evelyn?" you ask, hesitating about what you should say here.

She doesn't stop walking, but her gaze fixes itself straight ahead of your for now. She listens now. And she answers after a small, tired sigh.

"You know, this amusement park is really full of places to explore. We didn't have the likes of these back in France," she notes with a hint of melancholy in her voice.

Huh?

"I honestly wanted to go out exploring the place like they do in those weekend morning cartoons for children," she continues without missing a beat. "But other things got in the way, I guess. Kind of a shame too, it could have been fun back then."

What do you do?

[] Talk with Evelyn.

===

Social exists.

 

[DrZiztah]

I have a lot of time to think about my mistakes and doubts these days. A lot of it is about matters irrelevant to this particular topic, but this quest gets its fair share too.

I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned this, but Memento Mori was my first truly big writing project, as well as my first time running a game for people who I was not closely familiar with. Now here, 2,5 years and a word count of about 600,000 later, I dare say it has been a wild ride all the way through. I have learned a lot over the course of that time and, even if I'm not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, I think I have improved a fair bit both as a writer and as a QM.

You'll probably understand that the quest with all that entails is dear to me.

But that's also a pretty big problem. Because it was my first time running a quest, I have stumbled onto almost every possible pitfall there is. My failures are too many to count, and from each one I've been forced to learn at least a little bit. A lot of grief could have been avoided wholesale had I understood everything what I was doing back then.

A persona of a gleeful killer GM without actually being quite adept at delivering it. The worst of both worlds right there. Also, stupid taunting.

Letting a crap ton of really cringey stuff go through because I thought it would be okay if the people reading had their fun.

Keeping a structure of micromanaging Tamiko's entire day, which takes a gazillion updates to do.

And so on and so on…

All through that it was all me really wanting to keep on writing. I've poured my heart into crafting the characters and plots you've seen here, and there are still so many things I want write and show to you.

But with every single mistake I have made along the way, the quest has become unapproachable for people who might otherwise be thrilled about reading that. It's no fun reading 600k words of a shitty QM trying to graduate to the class of mediocre QMs. Perhaps had I been brave enough to confront these problems a lot earlier, as I have been aware of them longer than is excusable, things would be workable.

The end result is an increasingly insular quest with few people voting and fewer people daring to read through to get to this point. And with me being as emotionally invested in this as I have been, it has bled onto the rest of my life, as I agonize for the chance to keep writing for days with nothing happening in the thread.

At this point any attempt to steer back to clear is kind of too late. With the story this far the best I can do - for example with the witch fight mechanisms - is just do patching work for a boat leaking everywhere. And the way things are now is just plain unhealthy on so many levels. It's better to confront it, and find a dock to do a proper overhaul.

As such, I will be putting things on hiatus here for now.

Of course, I can't imagine not running a quest of any kind, being the fiction-addicted QM that I am. Restarting the whole thing is a no-go for obvious reasons, and I'd rather not do other quests. I love Memento Mori for all its flaws to death no matter what, and in the end I will probably continue from a new thread to give chance for other people to jump aboard without the worst of the baggage and archive panic from this one. There are still stories to tell.

Regardless, for now I just need the chance to be free and do some important soul searching and try to realize all the things I've learned. You will hear from me later in the Summer. I promise you that much. But now I need to rest.

Thank you to all of you who have kept enjoying this quest despite my constant, obvious fuck-ups. And sorry for the suddenness of it all. I hope to see you still around when I get back .

 

[DrZiztah]

[X] Listen.

For a moment you consider answering Evelyn, and your mouth hangs slightly open just for that. But just as fast as the thought occurs to you, it's pushed down with extreme impunity. You close your mouth quietly, eyes glued to your friend's averted face. What would you even say to her here?

What could you say to her?

She is obviously distraught and having doubts about everything that has been going on. But she is still opening up about her worries to you. You shouldn't disregard all of that by talking over her, even if you want to say something, anything to make it feel better. It's something the needs to get off her chest, and as her friend you need to listen to what she has to say. Platitudes don't help with that.

So you say nothing and continue walking behind her. You inwardly sigh in relief as she gets the hint.

"I don't know if you remember, but I tried bringing it up once," the girl continues. "We used to do stuff like that back in France, you know, and I thought it was something we could all try out here too. It's pretty dangerous, but I wanted to have something we could truly share with each other."

You vaguely remember her doing that back when you first came here to practice. She went to survey the area on her own while you practiced with your magic, if you recall it right.

Evelyn continues to walk forward, her direction leading the two of you toward the remains of the rollercoaster there. Even under the coat of ice and snow you can see spots of the old red paint between the rust accumulated over the years. "It didn't really pan out… But in hindsight, I'm not surprised."

Evelyn casually vaults over the gate at the roller coaster entrance and you follow. The closer you get to the attraction, the more determined and keen she gets. You doubt she really planned it out, but she has clearly decided to do something here, and you don't know what it is.

It scares you a little, if you're being honest with yourself.

Evelyn stops walking when you get to the base and looks up at the top of the large curve. Your eyes trail behind her. You suppose it's a fairly tall high spot for a roller coaster, and a distance of a couple jump boosts due to working against gravity. The coaster does have a larger hill on the other side, but Evelyn appears to have become fixated on this one.

"Tell me," she suddenly calls out to you, having turned to look you in the eyes. "How far are you on reading the Potter books? We had a wager who could read them the fastest, remember?"

Err. "Um," you flinch as you realize that you haven't made it past the second one. Evelyn seems to catch on to your embarrassed expression and looks away.

"To be honest, I'm not surprised," she admits sadly. "...I finished the last one this morning. It's a ride, I'll tell you that much, and I'm actually happy that I got the chance to read them. I recommend continuing at your own pace - they also give you stuff to think about."

Every word hits you like a slap to the face and you feel a pang of guilt in your chest. You know you've been neglecting your promise to her to the point you didn't really even try to read. You had a lot going on in your life, you want to say as much, but it would feel like you were lying.

"Well, there was a lot going on," Evelyn continues as if reading your mind. She grips the steel beams that make up the roller coasters supporting structure and hops up to a diagonal one, carefully maintaining her footing on it. "Here we go!"

Your eyes widen. "Evelyn?"

"Come on."

You stare at the back of your friend in bewilderment for a moment before following after her. The structure does actually make it pretty easy, even if you have to take a couple of jumps without support every now and then.

Evelyn seems to find it a lot more straining, but she soldiers on stubbornly, refusing to look down as she climbs up beam by beam. A couple of times your heart skips a beat as it looks like she almost slips. But each time, she catches herself, none worse for the wear in what's probably adrenaline taking over her thinking.

Still, you reach the top in one piece and without Evelyn falling down even once. After dustin goff her hands and catching her breath, she flops down to sit on the wooden platform at the top and looks into the distant city while her legs dangle over the edge. You hesitate for a moment before sitting down next to her.

Both of you stay quiet for a moment, simply staring into the distant city bustling through the moment. Up from here it looks like a shining sea of light in a darkening winter night, the flickers of traffic lights moving to the freezing wind up here.

"Did you feel anything?" Evelyn asks you eventually. "When you were climbing… what was it like?"

"Hmm? Well… I guess it was a bit exciting? Nothing I couldn't handle," you try to answer, remaining modest and guarded. You're not entirely sure where she's going with this.

Evelyn looks down, shivering a little. You're not sure if it's actually from the cold. "I'm…" she hesitates, looking smaller all of sudden. "Well… I don't know if you saw, but I was kind of scared out of my mind the entire time. Frozen metal does not have the best grip, and the structure's all decayed from time. From up here I can just balk at actually having actually made it through."

She tries to put up a smile, but it's quite shaky. "To be honest, I'm not even sure how I'm going to get down from here. It's, uh… It's pretty high now that I think about it."

"Evelyn? I could always…" you try to suggest with some hesitation, only to get cut off.

"You could always take me down?" she finishes for you. "It's because you're a Magical Girl, right? You're strong like that, and things don't quite bother you the same way."

"Where are you going with this?" you call out loud before you can help yourself. The more you listen, the more upset you feel about this. "Evelyn… you're scaring me with this."

"...The funny thing is, I was going to say the same thing," she says, letting out a weird sound reminiscent of a laugh strangled into a cry. "The more I think about it… the more these things you do scare me."

"...Evelyn?" you ask unsurely.

"Between everything that has happened in your life… I get it, I really do, normal hasn't been an option for you," she continues, and you think she's only now pouring what she wants to say out. Tears well up in her eyes. "But looking at the way things are, I have to ask if you can still remember life from the eyes of a normal girl at all? From the eyes of just Tamiko."

Come again?

"It just feels like we live in separate worlds," she says. "Fighting giant monsters and practicing with magic during evenings… Those are not things most people can do." And by extension... "Those are things I can't do. There's a lot of things I can't do actually."

"...You still keep feeling left behind," you say quietly.

"Yeah," Evelyn replies. "When we come here… There's always this idea in the air that I shouldn't be here. I'm contributing nothing, yet you keep drawing me here." She drags her legs back over the edge and hugs her shaking knees. "And then I also hear about what goes on during your hunts…"

Oh crap.

"So I'm just… I'm just left with the question if anything I do matters at all? What point is there for me to be there?" she finishes, voice cracking as she goes on.

You guess this is the time when you take the ball.

Without any warning or hesitation, you wrap your hands around Evelyn and hug her as tight as you can. The feeling of magic rushing out from your Soul Gem is strong. "You are," you tell her quietly. "You are the point, Evelyn, just you."

You let the words sink in a little before continuing. "It's just Evelyn that's important, because she's my friend. She needn't prove anything else," you keep going. "I want you to be there with us because you're my friend, because I don't want to leave you behind."

Your voice cracks a little despite yourself. "I'm sorry that this all hurts you… I know what it's like to see people do things you can't from the side." Like have friends and family who notice them. "I never wanted to make you feel bad when you were with us. I don't want anyone to feel that way with me."

Dancing around the issue… It won't help.

"You've been agonizing about what you can do… But you just climbed a roller coaster without any help," you point out with a small smile. "If it wasn't for magic, you'd leave us all in your dust! You're so much better than you believe…" And. "...you've been thinking about the contract too, right?"

A wordless, weak nod after a moment of hesitation. You knew it. "I can't say I know what to do. But since… well… do what makes you happy, not what you think you should do! No matter what you do, you're important to all of use because you're Evelyn. Magical Girl or no, just being Evelyn means we will never leave you behind. You're a friend not because of what you can do, but because you simply are!"

You let go of the hug, and gently lay your hand over her heart. "It's just Evelyn… the person there that became my friend when I was alone. I refuse to leave her behind, because I will never stop caring about her."

Evelyn doesn't say anything for a while, as she cries out her tears. You stay there with her, and wait for her to speak up.

So she does. "Y-you do realize what that looks like…" she staggers out, half-crying with something akin to laughter mixing in all of sudden. "R-right?"

You're confused for a moment before your eyes travel to the arm you've held out on Evelyn. Your face flares and you retract it in a snap. "I-I didn't mean it like that! I-I'm not lewd, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not!!"

Evelyn's laughing more than crying now. "S-seriously? Stupid… Only you."

You curl up into a ball of embarrassment and stammer incomprehensibly. Evelyn pats your back. "It's okay… I believe you."

You nod hastily and repeatedly from gratitude. If the others were to see this…

"The others on the other hand… Maybe we should go back?" Evelyn notes shakily, trying her best to suppress the fits. "Uh… Can you, um… get me down too? It's seriously high up here, and I don't like the look of the ground."

You puff your tomato-red cheeks. "O-only if you agree that I'm not lewd!"

"...Fine, I agree that you're not lewd," she replies a bit too easily.

"A-also, that I'm not moe! Or a kidnapper?"

"...I promise to seriously consider it?" she offers lamely. Which is about as good as you're probably going to get here. You scoop up the girl into a bridal carry, and jump into the sky with the force of your magic. It's time to go home.

"...Seriously though, Tamiko… Don't forget what it's like to live and enjoy things as a normal girl. There's a lot more to life than magic."

"...I promise."

That's called having friends.

===

We are back on tracks, people, and here's a link to the new thread for Memento Mori. Link:
Puella Magi Memento Mori

Also, real talk, how many of you thought that I had actually forgotten about this ? Please don't answer, I'm sorryyyy ;;

But with this post, please move on to the new thread.