Chapter 88

“Li’l ’Don’s game, see, it’s called ‘And Then There Were None,’ and it’s a labyrinth-superstition game!” “Mino?! Why would you take the wind out of my sails like that?!” the sea god said, turning. Minotaur just giggled and patted Poseidon on the head. “Don’t you have other things to be doing, Li’l ’Don?” “Hmmm… Well, I suppose I’ll leave it to you to explain the game, then. Farewell!” With a great leap, Poseidon went flying off the white whale’s nose and plunged into the deep blue sea. There were a few bubbles as she went down, and no sign that she was coming back up. “Wha—? She didn’t d-d-drown, did she?” Pearl asked, staring wide-eyed at the water. At that exact moment, the sea, which seemed to go on endlessly, split in two. With a tremendous roar, the two split again, so that now there were four pieces. They continued dividing, splitting into ever smaller, more complex parts, to form a maze of the sea. “Wh-what in the world is this?!” Pearl cried. “Another god who doesn’t hold back on the theatrics. That’s quite a way to use an ocean.” Fay jumped down off the back of the jellyfish—and landed on solid ground. With the sea split, he and his companions were able to stand on what had been the ocean floor. There were walls everywhere, but not walls made of concrete or earth. They were made of seawater, and they formed a gigantic maze. Since they were made of water, the walls were bluish and translucent, and Fay could see fish swimming around in them. “It’s like we’ve been dropped into an aquarium.” Hesitantly, Pearl touched a wall. There was a plip, and ripples spread through it just as if she had touched the surface of the ocean. “Heh heh! How’s that for a surprise?” Minotaur said, poking her head out from deeper in the maze. “Take a look through the wall. What can you see?” “Hmm? What can I see?” Nel stared hard at the seawater wall. “All I see are schools of little fish swimming around in there…” “No, no! Look at the surface. You can see your own face, like a mirror, right?” “Oh, yeah, I’ve noticed that… Hmm?” Nel leaned in. She could see a faint reflection of herself and the others, a perfectly ordinary natural phenomenon. Fay, Leshea, Pearl, and herself. All four of them were there. And then the pale images of their team grinned at them. “Yikes!” Everyone gasped and jumped back, even Fay; they all felt chills run down their spines. At almost the same moment, the Fay, Leshea, Nel, and Pearl who were supposed to be merely reflections jumped forward, crashing through the wall in a spray of water. Completely identical copies of each of them. No sooner had the fake Fay and his crew emerged than in the distance, the white whale let loose a great spray that came crashing down like a waterfall. “Eek?!” “Hrrrk?!” They were blinded by the spray. When their vision cleared… Fay A, Leshea A, Nel A, Pearl A Fay B, Leshea B, Nel B, Pearl B The eight of them were in a circle, and on their chests they each had a badge that said either A or B. In the spray just now… …the fake team and the real one had been mixed together. “Whaaat? Hold on just a minute here!” the Pearl with a B badge cried at the top of her lungs. “I’m the real Pearl, so why am I B?!” “Wh-what are you talking about? I’m the real Pearl, that’s why I’m A!” the Pearl with the A badge shot back. “You dirty, scheming little fake! Fay! Fay, you must be able to tell that I’m the real Pearl!” “Fay! I’m the real one, aren’t I? With the B!” The two of them looked identical—but then so did the two Fays to whom they were posing the questions. “Well, let me ask you something, Pearl. You see ‘me A’ and ‘me B’ here—can you tell the difference?” ““No, I can’t!”” Pearls A and B answered immediately and in unison. It wasn’t just that they sounded alike, either. Every nuance of their inflection and tone perfectly matched the other’s. “What do you think? Exciting, huh?” said Minotaur, sounding elated. “The fakes are all Li’l’Don! See, she can copy anything reflected in the surface of the ocean. First she copied herself and divided into four, then each of those four copied one of you!” “My goodness…so the false me is actually Mistress Li’l ’Don?!” Nel A said. “Truly a display of skill. To attempt to hoodwink even my real self by flawlessly imitating my mode of speech…!” said Nel B. The two glowered at each other. The two Lesheas, by the way, showed no particular sign of fighting, but chose to simply study each other quietly. “Now, let me explain! This game is about escaping from the Ocean Maze Atlantis! If you can get to the finish line before Li’l ’Don’s fakes, you win!” So it was all about who could get out of the maze first. Anubis’s game had been a dungeon, as it were, but this was more of a proper labyrinth, in the form of a time attack against their doppelgängers. “Oh, there’s one other special victory rule,” Minotaur said, clapping her hands. “Assuming the ‘real’ team gets to the finish line first, you then have to say which four out of the eight of you are the fakes!” “I see,” Nel A said, gritting her teeth. “So we can’t just make a beeline for the goal. We have to engage with everyone else as we work our way through the maze and try to find some way to ascertain who’s real.” “Then the question becomes, how do we tell the real ‘us’ from the fake ones?” Fay A said, taking up the theme. “I have a question for Lesheas A and B. Can you tell who the fakes are?” “Probably not,” Leshea A said, shaking her head. “The physiological info has been copied perfectly.” “The Arises, too,” added Leshea B. “This is a god’s transformation—copying a human’s Arise is child’s play for them.” At that, Fays A and B both grimaced. “It looks like we could spend a hundred hours talking it out and not get any closer to the truth. Which means there must be some other way, right?” “Truth Touch! It’ll give you a clue as to who’s the real you!” Minotaur went over to the two Lesheas and tapped each of them on the shoulder. “Any player can touch anyone except their own double and say ‘You’re real!’ or ‘You’re fake!’ If you call fake and touch one of the fakes, they’ll disappear and drop out of the game. If you call real and touch a real person, they’ll stay right where they are. That’ll make it nice and obvious to everyone what the truth is! There’s just one little catch…” Minotaur’s eyes squinted with pure joy. “If you get it wrong, the one who made the declaration will disappear and be out of the game! So be careful!” Concretely, then, it meant this: Truth Touch 1. Pearl (real) touches Fay (real) and says, “You’re real!”
(correct). Both remain. 2. Pearl (real) touches Fay (real) and says, “You’re fake!”
(wrong). Pearl disappears. 3. Pearl (real) touches Fay (fake) and says, “You’re fake!”
(correct). Fay disappears. 4. Pearl (real) touches Fay (fake) and says, “You’re real!”
(wrong). Pearl disappears. “Hey, that’s a great idea!” Leshea B said, nodding eagerly. “It gives the advantage to the real folks, which is only right. The fakes can’t use Truth Touch to make the real players go away.” She meant something like this: 5. Pearl (fake) touches Fay (real) and says, “You’re real!”
(correct). Both remain. 6. Pearl (fake) touches Fay (real) and says, “You’re fake!”
(wrong). Pearl disappears. As options five and six demonstrated, no matter how she tried, the fake Pearl would never be able to make the real Fay disappear. Option five would only confirm that Fay was the real deal, while six would result in the fake Pearl’s own disappearance, and they would know Fay was real. “Precisely!” Minotaur clapped her hands happily. “There’s no combination in which Truth Touch is advantageous for a fake to initiate. Ah, incidentally, the four fakes know who they are. Since all four of ’em are just Li’l ’Don in disguise! Think of Truth Touch as a little way of bridging the gap between what the humans know and what the god knows!” Using Truth Touch would only put the fakes at a disadvantage—this was a mechanic that favored the (real) humans. “Okay, let’s go over the rules!” Minotaur snapped her fingers, and a myriad of bubbles rushed up the seawater walls, forming letters. Vs. The Sea God Li’l Poseidon Game: Labyrinth-Superstition Game—“And Then There Were None” Win Condition: One of the four real players must reach the finish line first. Further, once the finish line is reached, all eight players must be correctly identified as real or fake. (E.g.: Say that the real players are Fay A, Leshea B, Nel B, and Pearl A.) Lose Condition 1: A fake gets to the finish first. Lose Condition 2: The spokesperson for the real players fails to identify the fakes correctly. Other 1: Branches in the maze are marked WAY FORWARD and WAY BACK. (These markings are always correct, so following the WAY FORWARD signs will be the shortest route to the goal.) Other 2: The god (the four fakes) knows which of the players are fake. Other 3: The eight players may all use Truth Touch. Truth Touch— 1. Players may use Truth Touch on any other player except their own double. 2. When they touch another player, they declare, “You’re real!” or “You’re fake!” You’re fake!—If correct, the touched fake vanishes. You’re real!—If correct, the touched real player remains unaffected. 3. If mistaken: The person who initiated the touch disappears. Be careful! At the far end of the large area where they had gathered, there were eight start points, one for each of the players. “Everyone, choose a start point! By the way, each one is a different distance from the goal, so pick wisely! Know which one you want?” Minotaur was holding a cowbell—something usually seen around the neck of a cow wandering in the fields. Now Minotaur gave it a good ring. “Start!” They were off and running—eight players plunging into Atlantis, the labyrinth of the sea. 2 The Ocean Maze Atlantis: Fay stood at the entrance, which was a blue so deep that it seemed like it might suck him right in. “There are just too many things about this that bug me,” he murmured, poking a finger into the maze’s seawater wall. A little splash of water shot out. The walls were made right out of the sea, so just like the surface of the ocean, if he put a finger through one, he’d find it underwater. “For one thing, could you just take a shortcut straight through the walls? Assuming you were prepared to get pretty wet? Of course, I guess if you don’t know which way the finish line is, it wouldn’t help much.” He had the B badge on his chest. Yes: Fay B was the real Fay. Which was another way of saying that Fay A was the fake, but no one else would have had any way of knowing that. “I have the same dilemma as everyone else, too. Leshea, Pearl, and Nel—the copies are all too perfect to be sure which is which. And we’re supposed to use Truth Touch to figure it out?” Was that really correct? They had a fifty-fifty shot. If they were right, they could get rid of one of the fakes, but it carried a substantial risk of being wrong and disappearing them. Using Truth Touch without any further information is just a game of pure luck—and I’d like to make outright gambling our last resort. So what, then? Watch and wait? Fay couldn’t do that—this was a race. While the four real players were waffling over whether to use Truth Touch, the fake ones would make it to the goal. And there was another thing: The name of the game included the phrase “And Then There Were None.” That smelled fishy. It might have just been a sly hint at how to complete the game—but as game names went, it made Fay very uneasy. Well, one thing was clear: Standing around would only be the end of them. “I guess in this game, you have to take the risk with Truth Touch if you want to win,” Fay muttered. From directly ahead of where he stood thinking at the entrance to the maze, Fay heard footsteps. “Heh-heh-heh! I see you’re all flummoxed!” It was Fay A, wearing the badge with the letter A on it. Fay B knew he was the real Fay, so obviously “A” was the fake. He sure hadn’t expected his double to walk right up and say hello, though. “Li’l Poseidon, right?” Fay said. “Indeed!” The god smirked with Fay’s face. Fay saw his own face in the mirror every day—and he never smiled like that. It was a very strange feeling…and then the god said, “You’re the only man on a four-person team. You’ve got flowers in both hands, as they say!” “…Sorry?” For a second, he was at a loss for words after hearing such a thing come out of the mouth of a god in his image. He wouldn’t say such a thing. He, the real Fay, would never, ever talk that way. “Don’t tell me you came over to me just to say that?” “Hee hee! It’s no use pretending! Tell me, with which of these women does your heart truly lie?” “……” Fay was silent. “Wha—?! No! Your heart truly lies with…me?! You fell in love at first sight, human?!” “Stop making my body say gross stuff!” Fay burst out. He couldn’t help himself, the way Fay A (fake) was squirming and cooing. He’d never known: It was only when he saw his own body making these perverted pronouncements that he learned the true depth of shame a person could feel. “Ahhh, but I have my dear Mino! Her chest makes the best pillow! I know how she acts, but she’s really quite the lonely type. Oh, how she misses me when I’m not around!” “Now it’s love talk?!” “Gya-ha-ha-ha! Very well, farewell, then!” Fay A said, and raced off into the maze. The real Fay watched him go, pressing his hands to his forehead. He had a headache. “I guess she’s probably pulling the same thing on everyone else…” The Ocean Maze Atlantis, start point C: Staring at the translucent, deep blue wall, Pearl clenched her fist. “I’ve had a flash of insight! I have a great idea. These walls are like jellified seawater—but if you touch them, the surface ripples, which shows that they aren’t very solid. In other words, if we smash the walls with sheer strength, we could get right to the goal!” “Oh-ho? So you know where the goal is already?” “I do not…! Huh?” Pearl heard a sweet voice from right down the hall ahead of her. As she watched, a blue-haired god holding a trident jumped out. “Eeek! Li’l ’Don, it’s you!” “Indeed, it’s not!” “Huh?” Before Pearl could even ask another question, the god wavered like a mirage—and then changed shape. She became a baby-faced girl with golden hair and blue eyes… “I’m Pearl!” the girl said. “I really, truly swear it!” “Wha—?!” Pearl cried, her voice cracking from sheer shock. Nasty! The unctuous tone! The way she peered up through her eyelashes, just begging someone to like her… Pearl knew those were her traits, too, but the god had exaggerated them to a disgusting degree. Moments ago, when they’d all been together, she’d acted exactly like the real Pearl—but now, when it was just the two of them, it got weird. Pearl realized that the god was teasing her. “I’m Peaaarl,” the other Pearl crooned. “Don’t you liiike me?” “Wh-why, you…” Pearl’s shoulders began to quiver with rage, which made the fake Pearl grin. She pointed right at Pearl. “Oh! I found the fake! The fake with her big ol’ boobs and her big empty head!” Crack. Something snapped in the real Pearl’s brain. “Who are you calling faaaaaake?! You’re gonna disappear! Truth Touch!”