Chapter 92

“If Nel A is the fake, then you must be the real thing, right?” Truth Touch failed. As Nel B is the fake… Truth Touch judged automatically, and if they could trust that judgment, then they already had their answer. “Nel A is the real thing, and Nel B is the fake. That much is solid. There’s just one thing…” Fay deliberately chose not to finish his thought aloud. There was just one thing: Which Nel was which had been the opposite of what Fay had predicted. It had caused him to lead Leshea into a mistaken choice. That was the god’s real strategy, and the trick Fay was going to have to expose. Starting now. “Poseidon,” he said to the god still in the form of Nel B. “I know who you really are, so why haven’t you gone back to the god’s body yet?” Nel B caught her breath. “You don’t want to, do you? Because that would undermine your strategy. A ploy that covers two things: the reason I was wrong about which Nel was real, and which Pearl is the real one.” He turned to the twin Pearls and studied the golden-haired girls, one with an A badge on her chest, the other with a B. On them, and them alone, no one had used Truth Touch the entire time. Leshea and Nel won’t know. I’m the only one who saw all the gimmicks at play. So I have to be the one to answer this. Which was the real Pearl, and which was the fake? “My first thought was, who acted like the real Pearl? You would have to say it was Pearl A, who revealed that Leshea B was fake by using Truth Touch. On the other hand, Pearl B didn’t miss a single bit of information that might be useful to the real players.” Pearl B gasped, and her shoulders shook. Meanwhile, Pearl A smiled earnestly. “Y-yes, Fay, of course! We were together the whole time, weren’t we?” But Fay wasn’t done. “Next angle: Who deliberately behaved suspiciously? Let’s be honest—everyone in this game did stuff that made them look questionable. Even me. I caused Leshea to Truth Touch herself right out of the game. But that was because I was tricked. The important point is who tricked me and when.” In fact, all of them had been taken in. Once they had been suckered by the god’s plan, the finger-pointing started, and then there had nearly—as the name of the game suggested—been none. “I said to the real Leshea that I thought there was a ‘high probability’ that Nel A was the fake. That’s because Pearl said this to me.…” Fay continued, “Do you think I should use Truth Touch on her? If I say, ‘You’re real,’ and disappear, that will prove Nel is a fake!” And Pearl A had, in fact, disappeared. “I trusted that, and assumed Nel A was the fake, which is what I told Leshea. And we saw what happened…” “N-now, wait just a second!” Pearl A burst in. “There’s something fishy here! I used Truth Touch, just like I said I would! The result was I failed, but I had faith that that would still help you, Fay!” “What do you think, Nel? Oh, I’m asking the real one, Nel A.” Nel caught her breath. “I-it’s indeed true that I’m the real Nel…” She looked from one of the Pearls to the other, and finally, in a small, uncertain voice, she said, “Um… One thing still confuses me. If it’s true what you say, that Pearl A said, ‘You’re real,’ as she performed the Touch, then because I am real, she shouldn’t have disappeared, should she?” “Bingo.” “Wha…?” “You said it yourself, Nel. You didn’t know what Pearl said when she approached you to use Truth Touch. You claimed she was talking too fast.” “…Ah?!” Yes: This was the true face of the god’s second stratagem. Fay turned toward the Pearl with the A badge. “Time to compare answers, Pearl—or should I say, Li’l ’Don?” She looked at him like a frightened puppy, begging him not to do this… No. Rather, the god acted as if Pearl were doing these things. “You didn’t say, ‘You’re real,’ and perform Truth Touch. You said, ‘You’re fake,’ and then did it, right?” It had been a complete logical blind spot for him: There was no rule that said anyone else had to hear you make the Truth Touch declaration. It would have worked just as well if you said it quietly to yourself. “You sure were thorough. You—and let’s be clear, I mean the god—used the Swapping Orb to make sure I was somewhere else entirely. Just so there was no way I could hear what you said, right?” Everything had gone exactly according to the god’s calculations. “Fay—you just need to use this orb to change places with Nel A. Please, go to the head of the field!” Pearl A and Nel A had met up. Fay had been sent far away, so there was no danger of him seeing (or rather, hearing) what Pearl did. Once she was sure that it was just her and Nel, she performed Truth Touch while making the opposite of the declaration she had said she would make. That’s why I was thrown off—because I was convinced Pearl had used Truth Touch while saying “You’re real.” Leshea had helped rescue him, too. If he himself, instead of Leshea, had performed the Truth Touch on Nel B, there would have been no one left in the game who could get at the truth of the matter. “Another thing. This was just divine stratagem number two. The real danger was from stratagem number one.” Fay cast a look around at everyone standing there. He was greeted by a mix of expressions of confusion and of curiosity. “When did this stratagem start? It was because I believed what Pearl A said that I started to doubt the real Nel. Ultimately, I accepted almost unconsciously that Pearl A must be real. And the trap the god set to make sure I thought that was that very first Truth Touch.” “And so—touch! You’re a fake!” Truth Touch successful! As Leshea B is the fake, she is removed from the game. When explaining the rules, Minotaur had said, “There’s no combination in which Truth Touch is advantageous for a fake to initiate.” “And that was true, as far as it goes. Truth Touch is the special prerogative of the real players. But that was exactly what allowed the god to turn that logic around on us.” The truth was… Pearl A (real) had not touched Leshea B (fake). Pearl A (fake) had touched Leshea B (fake). “The god eliminated one of her own avatars. You wouldn’t normally expect someone to do that for the sole purpose of deceiving me alone. But this trap goes even deeper than that. Remember what one of our players said during the rules explanation.” “The fakes can’t use Truth Touch to make the real players go away!” “Think about it—it was Leshea A who said that. The god in disguise.” This was the biggest point. Did “the fake players can’t eliminate the real ones” mean “only the real players can eliminate the fake ones”? 1. No. Instead… 2. Fakes could still eliminate other fakes under this system. But the god phrased Leshea A’s words very carefully to lead everyone to think she meant 1 and steer them away from 2. Using Truth Touch has no advantage at all for the fakes, because every scenario results in a disadvantageous outcome for them. That much was true. So who would ever have expected one of the fake players to use Truth Touch at all? That was the idea Poseidon had wanted to put in their heads, even before the game officially began. And she’d used the form of Leshea to do it. What was worse…it had worked on Fay twice. “Here’s the god’s strategy: She uses the illogical move of Pearl A (fake) touching Leshea B (fake) and destroying one of her own players. Then she uses the equally illogical move of Pearl A (fake) touching Nel A (real) and destroying another of her own players—but by doing those two things, she was able to sow the seeds of doubt among the real players.” Nel gasped. “Wait, Master Fay—but that means…” She held up four fingers, then crooked two of them down again. “The god has four avatars—and she herself eliminated two of them using Truth Touch?!” “You got it. Illogical as all get-out, right?” Poseidon had eliminated two of her own fake players. Did she really have to go that far to deceive the humans? No. But that was exactly why she had done it. All to deceive Fay, and Fay alone. “All right. Why don’t you lay out your answers for us, then?” Minotaur said, giving him a probing look. “Who are the four real players here?” “The real players are myself (Fay B), Leshea A, Nel A, and Pearl B. And there you have it.” “You’re happy with those answers?” “Yep.” “You heard him, Li’l ’Don.” Minotaur grinned. At that exact moment, the players Fay hadn’t named—Leshea B, Nel B, and Pearl A—disappeared with a loud pop. “Ooooooh, darn it all!” Four Poseidons stood there, all of them beet-red. “Welcome back!” Minotaur said and gave the four deities a great hug, squeezing them back into one single Poseidon. “Great work out there, Li’l ’Don.” “Grrrr! And I was so sure I could split up their little group before I won!” Yes: As Fay had said, strictly speaking, if one just got all eight players together and went down the line using Truth Touch, this game would have become a contest of pure luck with a 50 percent chance of victory. However…that was only if one didn’t trust a thing their teammates said, and then proceeded completely mechanically through a process of elimination. The game name, “And Then There Were None,” was an ironic dig at humans who completely refused to have faith in the voices of their teammates. “Why, you…” Poseidon looked at them, all of them—Fay, Leshea, Pearl, and Nel—giving them a long, hard stare. “The lot of you never once used Truth Touch while saying, ‘You’re a fake.’” It had dawned on the deity that the only time anyone had used the fake-eliminating “You’re a fake” Truth Touch was when she herself had done so. The four real folks had never once made the choice to knowingly erase another player. They had lived out a strategy that was the exact opposite of the easy, obvious, 50-percent-chance-of-victory play the god had offered them. “Well, sure,” Pearl said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I wouldn’t want to eliminate one of our real friends if I was wrong.” “Yeah! Nor would I. Because I was sure that as long as we had people like the real Master Fay and the real Mistress Leshea on our side, we had a hope of victory,” Nel agreed with a nod. The young-looking god gazed at the two of them, then let out a big sigh. “All right, well. Pretty nice work.” “Hee hee! That was a fun game.” Poseidon stood with her arms crossed, trying to look studiously indifferent, while Minotaur patted her head. “You’ll never be as close as me and Li’l ’Don, but for humans, you’re pretty good friends!” “Well, naturally!” Pearl puffed out her chest. “We share trust in one another that’s even deeper than this ocean!” “I hear you! Humans form teams to face down challenges. And they always give their teams names, right?” Minotaur said. “Uh…” “Why even ask, Li’l Mino? Of course the likes of these would have a team name at the very least!” Poseidon said as Minotaur continued to pat her on the head. “Any team as close-knit as theirs must have one.” “A team name………” Pearl froze for a long moment, but then she racked her brain—you could almost hear the gears creaking as the rust began to come off. “Come to think of it, Fay, our team…” “Never picked a name.” “We still don’t have one?!” “No, I mean…I thought about it. Chief Secretary Miranda would love for us to hurry up and decide, too. She says it’s an administrative pain in the neck to have a blank where there should be a name registered.” Fay scratched the back of his head in embarrassment; he sounded almost timid. It was just that, right after Miranda had said that, the trouble with Lucemia had started. Plus, he was never that good at thinking of names, so before he knew it, he’d put the whole question on the back burner. “Master Fay. This victory makes seven wins for us,” Nel said hesitantly. “We’ve caught up to Mind Over Matter. Now that we have the most wins of anyone in the world—even if we are tied for it—I think maybe it’s time we came up with a name for our team.” “Well…er, yeah, I mean, you’re not wrong.” “Oh-ho? You haven’t decided on a team name yet?” Poseidon said, sounding oddly condescending about it. “Then you’ll certainly never be closer than myself and Li’l Mino!” “Does a team name have something to do with being close?” “On that note, come see us again one day—with your name!” Splash! The walls of the Ocean Maze Atlantis shattered, and the previously divided sea returned to normal. Meaning an ocean’s worth of water crashed down toward the seafloor where Fay and his friends were standing… And Fay and his entire team were returned to the human world. Vs. The Sea God Poseidon—WIN. Game: Labyrinth-Superstition Game—“And Then There Were None.” Time Elapsed: 2 hours, 1 minute, 1 second. 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. 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: The eight players may all use Truth Touch.