By: Daiyu Tang
((This is a long article, that with agreement of players involved provides an ICLY perspective on the Sin to Win ‘Edition 2’. We hope you enjoy, feel free to read in two or three sittings!))
Dear Hathian Observer Readers… This story has been hard for me to write and it’s a story that I wish I didn’t have to write or even think about. Especially the wider context and my own past involvement in the narrative threads that have led to this point… Hurt, anger, fear…
Never-the-less, a City where news is buried because of threat, or fear, is one where darkness will grow. It will grow more and more and those who deserve a chance to know the risks they take breathing the air here, or should be given a chance to know their enemies, will be weaker without the information, without the news.
I, as the Observer’s Editor, do not claim any particular talent other than being cheap to employ and desperate to graduate so that I can find a brighter future with words. But I do claim some words, or at least concepts; morality, principles, justice and truth. In this confusing city of Hathian, each of those are pulled at, torn at, and sometimes it’s not even possible to be sure how to achieve one, let alone all of them, but at the end of the day… I, and the Observer’s wonderful and talented journalists, are not, fake news.
What is fake news, is to somehow side with, excuse, or justify and be an apologist for Tori Tomato and her Yuugen Terrorists.
They Called it “Sin to Win 2.0”
A juxtaposition of heinous contrast. The idea that a person could ‘win’ through choosing to ‘sin’. Through personal experience this didn’t mean indulging in a cake, or taking a cheeky Sunday morning lie-in. Instead, it was, via Yuugen control and manipulation, achieved through hurting others. Sin by breaking your own limits, your own sense of person and morality so that you might escape, changed, but alive…
The Observer covered the terrorists when they last did this in our two part ‘Sin to Win’ adaptation that directly impacted me, but also other good people in Hathian. You may wish reader, if you have not read these before to check them out before you continue here, so that you might have a better idea of the similarities and differences in ‘Version 2.0’.
It Started with Ads
Hathian Police Department Officer Phillip Aubin (pictured right at the HPD Ball) had disappeared and it became apparent once adverts started to float around hidden parts of the Internet, but also (as is their blatant modus operandi via Twitter), that the domestic terrorists Yuugen were behind his disappearance.
The Observer is not aware of any specific allegations against Aubin, so we are unsure why he was specifically targeted, but perhaps it was just because the Yuugen are opportunistic vultures…
As the ads filled Twitter and as the Observer was made aware of certain threads on darker parts of the Internet, we considered what, if anything, we could do.
With the HPD aware of the situation and presumably aware of the live-stream threat, there was nothing extra that the Observer had, no special insight or idea of where the prisoner was being held or what might happen.
All we could do, was watch. Like many of you did as the view count edged up.
We’d like to assume that other viewers were like us, doing it for the news, doing it trying to find a way to help… but this is Hathian and the internet is broad, wide and a web filled with darkness. We know why most were watching.
They wanted to see pain, death and hurt. Just like Sin to Win ‘Version 1’…
Alone, Then the Locks Released
We watched Aubin take a tentative first step or two towards the cell door where he found a key that unlocked the handcuffs at his wrist. In the dark his movements weren’t assured as deprived of his eyesight, everything was done slowly as if he was worried (as he should be) about traps or tricks the Yuugen might have left for him.
It wasn’t long until the first trick came his way. It appeared, from the camera feed that a person was present in the room with him and through some unseen speakers, the Yuugen instructed their pawn (or perhaps Aubin…)
“Don’t let him past you”
Voice over intercom
It perhaps wasn’t clear who the message was for, although perhaps some viewers would have assumed it was for a ‘guard’; yet why would they have unlocked the cell door just to have a fist-fight. I, sitting in the Observer’s office expected something bad, what was it going to be? When Aubin attempted to throw a meaty punch at the shape, I worried the thing was made of concrete, shaped like a human, or full of explosives or something…
It was a training dummy and with what actually seemed a bit of a weak punch, Aubin sent it backwards, before it jolted back at him and bounced into him. Aubin didn’t seem amused. But all-in-all it was hardly much of an initial risk, just a friendly ‘prank’ almost. Almost.
Generators – The Yuugen Like Generators
From past experience Aubin’s next decision to go investigate a generator wasn’t a bad one. Often they seemed to be linked to electric shocks, or door mechanisms or other bits and pieces so trying to disable the one in the room, or perhaps adjust it so there was lighting, seemed a sensible idea.
Fiddling with the generator proved to be a mistake. Beecause? Bees.
Yes, somehow beneath a cover over the generator that Aubin had pierced was a swarm of angry bees explaining the low droning sound that had gone with the generator’s noise. Stung, but with a good sense of the threat, Aubin dropped to the ground and let Tori know how he was really feeling.
“Tori! You an’ your friends ar’ cunts and I’ll gut every fuckin’ one ah’ ya!”
The problem with crawling in the dark away from bees was that you then ran the risk of bumping into things and that’s what just happened where on the CCTV feed we saw Aubin knock into a table that contained a glass jar which seemed to have something(s) alive inside it… without sufficient dexterity (or light) to catch the falling jar, Aubin seemed to perform some crazy little dance as if something was biting him, spiders most likely. His previous cautious approach to the floor also was now slightly in vain as he hopped around and stood in what appeared to be bits of glass. Ouch. Unbeelievable.
If They Give You a Knife…
After a few moments of cursing and more, Aubin found another table in the dark and on it, we could see there was both a caged animal and a knife. Aubin took the knife and used it to cut his uniform into strips for his feet. Smart, reminds me of Kaufmann… hopefully Aubin isn’t such a prick.
Sadly, being smart at self-care didn’t mean he was that careful in the dark and when the looming shape of what he thought was another training dummy was bumped into, this one didn’t spring back and instead knocked over something else. Something which sounded angry and pissed. Oh, and it rattled.
Aubin stripped for the camera, removing his shirt in an attempt to approach the rattler and throw the garment over it so that it couldn’t strike by heat. In the dark the snake surely had the advantage…
The snake was momentarily defeated by the shirt, but then in a moment of perhaps ‘doing too much’, Aubin appeared to try and use a nearby fallen mannequin to strike at it. This didn’t go so well and he was bitten for his trouble. The Observer staff googled the effect of rattlesnake bites, but there were different kinds and it wasn’t clear which had bitten Aubin. On the camera the officer attempted to bind the wound.
“I’ll fuckin’ kill you all! An’ iffin’ I die I’ll fuckin’ curse you!”
Aubin
Let There Be Light
So, bitten, scratched up and attacked by bees, spiders and now a snake Aubin flicked a switch he had seen glowing in the dark and ‘thankfully’ the rooms lights came up. The picture that greeted Aubin could not be considered great though…
Broken glass. The junk off in the corner. Bees that started to get more lifelike as the lights flicked on… On the floor the snake was still there, it’s rattle shaking though not as frantically. Spiders were crawling slowly across the floor, looking lost but still the eight legged freaks that they were. The rabbit, the animal that Aubin hadn’t disturbed still stood in it’s cage peacefully.
In front of Aubin there appeared a door that was locked. On the other side of the door he would see a table with what looked like a first aid kit. The door’s lock had a rabbit shaped motif with a keyhole in the centre… Now Aubin could see that there was that rabbit in the room and next to it a little note asking, ‘Need A Key?’ right about where he found that knife..
With the door locked… were the Yuugen asking Aubin to get intimate with a Rabbit (with a knife?). It sounds horrible, but did they really think (we as livestream watchers didn’t) that Aubin’s demeanour, experience or background in HPD would somehow mean he was squeamish about getting stuck into a rabbit?
Somewhat surprisingly, Aubin didn’t immediate tear the bunny into pieces and instead spent time looking for other solutions to the door problem. He poked and prodded it, he tried the light switches, he tried anything other than desecrate the little cute bunny. It seemed his choice was thus, risk the bee swarm and try and dismantle the generator assuming the lock was powered, or dismantle the bunny and assume there was a key inside it… Sin to Win… would he choose his own pain, or inflict pain on something innocent?
With Bloody Hands
“You’ll all rot in hell ‘fer this cruelty.”
Aubin
With a twist of his muscled arms, Aubin internally decapitated the rabbit… apparently according to Google this was a ‘quick, painless death’. At least that’s perhaps a way to justify it or explain it. Then again readers, was this really that hard a choice? While the rights of animals much be protected, was it prudent that on his own, already injured, Aubin should attempt to tackle a swarm of bees for a possible second option? Dying to angry bees while saving a rabbit isn’t a choice that many would make? Maybe Alice?
With a key in hand from rooting inside the little dead bunny, Aubin made it into the next room.
A Pig Named ‘Elena’ and Carrots
As well as the medical kit that he’d seen earlier, there appeared to be syringes that the Yuugen announced over the intercom might help him with his snakebite problem. There were also carrots, a hotplate and a sink. Next to the sink was a gourmet cookbook, with… rabbit dishes. Oh, these Yuugen with their edgy humor right?
As well as the rabbit references, there was a piglet in a cage, with the nametag on it showing ‘Elena’. It looked like Aubin had all the stuff for a feast (rabbit, pig, carrots…) what would he do and where could he go next? The door in this room looked locked tight with no obvious key hole.
“Congratulations on making it through. You’ve earned yourself a little respite. Have some water and a snack, you’ll need it for what comes. On the table we even left you a present. A little anti-vemon just for you. Or maybe it’s just filled with morphine… Hard to tell… But we gave you a friend to help you figure it out.”
Yuugen Announcement
Aubin seemed a little… at a loss for what to do, he was glancing at the food, the corpse of the rabbit and the pig in the cage. We weren’t sure the relevance of the name ‘Elena’, although there had been an FDH staff member with that name who used to have her picture up in the Gein… it was a long time since I remember seeing her. Perhaps it was a reference to a Yuugen crime not reported (at least in this paper).
Aubin it seemed, didn’t want to make a quick move for one of the syringes. The problem with the waiting was that sometimes the Yuugen set deadlines…
Dead by Deadlines
With a thirty minute timer now counting down, Aubin approached the two vials on the table and then attempted to taste one of them, perhaps there was a way to identify the difference between anti-venom and morphine. Perhaps this was part of his police training, or perhaps he was just more versed in survival than most, but to me sitting in the Observer, I’d have had no clue.
Seemingly finding it hard to choose between the two, he eventually shrugged and found a vein in his arm and injected most of the syringe. As he was a big guy it looked like he took a lot and after he had done this he removed his tourniquet near the snake bite. It looked like he was betting on having chosen the right vial.
Then he skinned and butchered the rabbit.
While there are plenty of Youtube channels dedicated to food preparation, it’s still hard to watch, but so far at least, Aubin was coming out well. He had done nothing objectionable and had made reasonable choices in the circumstances. Once the rabbit was cooked and with the timer getting now, he started talking to the Pig; perhaps those vials had something a bit weird in them, or perhaps Aubin just liked animals…
“You think there’ something angry in there waitin’ ‘fer me?”
Aubin
He was referring to the next room; while from our view on the stream we couldn’t see into it yet, it was clear he was worried there was something inside that might hurt him.
Make a Choice
“If you had a choice to save one innocent life, or the lives of three of your most corrupt brothers in blue, who would you choose to save. Now, you have to answer. If you don’t, then someone close to you will be our next target. Only… You’ll be here and unable to help them for being too damn stubborn.”
Yuugen
Aubin: “T’be honest, sounds like ah’ trick question. Yer’ expectin’ me t’ say t’ innocent, an’ then you’ll spout some nonsense about not backin’ t’ blue r’ some dumb shit, an’ iffin’ I say ma’ colleagues, ‘yer gonna say that i’m as much a monster as t’ rest ah’ y’all like ya’ tried convincin’ me t’ other day, ain’t I right? Do say. I’d save t’ innocent though. Ma’ colleagues, bein’ pieces ah’ shit still have integrity deep down, even iffin’ it ain’t much. They’d tell me t’ leave em’.”
Well reader, that is an interesting perspective isn’t it? As I watched I thought about what he was saying and… while I’ve never dealt with some of the ‘real pieces of shit’, some cops who have a bad reputation have saved my life (more than once) and some who do nothing that objectionable have done the same for my friends and colleagues. At the end of the day while I might see some cops running to save themselves (or their cop friends) what Aubin said isn’t… impossible. Some might save the innocent.
Do you agree with this reader? Or do you think Aubin was talking shit to try and answer the Yuugen the way they wanted?
A Growler
The door to the next corridor opened, but before Aubin could continue on his journey the clear voice of Tori came through the intercom for him (and us).
“It’s not well known, but my brother was in HPD. While he was HPD and before I knew about him, he and I used to go in circles. We spent years trying to kill each other. One time, in retaliation for my kidnapping his girlfriend to force him to fight in a cage match, he got hold of me and forced me into his own… special version of a fight. I survived, so my money is that will you too. You’re almost out Aubin, only one obstacle left. Good luck.”
Something down the corridor liked the sound of the oinking pig and seemed to creep forward and when our camera view switched we could see that Aubin was potentially going to have to deal with a gator, a probably very hungry gator…
Crawling out of an inflatable pool, which hardly seemed a way to keep a wild animal calm the thing started to advance on Aubin… and the pig… and it was going to be the case reader that many of the livestream watchers probably hoped the larger of the pigs was eaten first.
Aubin kicked the cage down towards the Gator and as the cage was only flimsy in construction the gator had no trouble getting into the cage and pretty soon piggie Elena was extinguished from the world with a sickening crunch that even over the livestream made us all wince. But now, what would Aubin do? That door behind the pool looked like the way out, but how to get to it?
Hakuna Matata Asshole
“An’ that, my children, is t’ circle ah’ life. Ah’ predator finds it’s prey, an’ makes lunch ah’ it. Raise ‘yer hands iffin’ ya’ have questions.”
Aubin speaking to the camera after feeding Elena to the gator
As Aubin crept into the room to see how he might get past it became obvious the Gator also had some young with it, so any meal it had wasn’t going to keep it ‘docile’ for long, especially if Aubin was perceived as a threat against the young. The officer, repeating though his old trick attempted to throw his shirt over the gator which Google tells us is because Gator’s can be confused if they aren’t able to see.
The door was locked and while the shirt had provided some temporary protection, Aubin’s large frame didn’t exactly scream ‘stealth’ so as he sloshed around the wet floor the Gator’s head turned towards his general direction and the shirt half slipped off. It growled and opened it’s jaws.
On the surface of the pool floated a small toy boat and Aubin in a flash of perhaps genius grabbed for it, perhaps thinking the key was there. Once he had this, he used all of his enormous 6ft+ frame and muscles to flip the pool, gator (and baby gators) and all and with that water, gators and bits of pork chop went everywhere and the gator was not happy.
As Aubin started to wrestle the gator for his life, there was the sound of gunfire over the live feed.
As a stream viewer we now know this was the HPD coming to the rescue, but at the time we wondered if there was more to this test than some animal abuse and risk…
Vanora to the Rescue
And so it was as HPD stormed the Yugen’s hideout that Vanora, the Gothic rose of HPD was Aubin’s saviour as he wrestled with his gator. The Observer thinks he should be thankful that Tori hadn’t borrowed ‘Fluffy’ from Camden…
“Aubin stop fucking slacking and being on vacation. You didn’t get approved for leave.”
Vanora
(( As Aubin finally makes his escape with the help of Lieutenant Vanora, the opening of the basement door triggers the security feed to the livestream to start to cycle through the different cameras in the warehouse. Unfortunately, this hadn’t gone exactly how it was planned! As the cameras continue to feed to the stream, the viewers would see chaos in the upper levels of the warehouse. The HPD actually did appear to find their lost corporal! And the Yuugen would obviously had their hands full with cops, outnumbered 2 to 1. The struggle would go on for what seemed like awhile, before every single Yuugen in the building fell to the might of the HPD. At some point during the mayhem, the feed goes dead. ))
Sin to Win – Version 2
So dear reader as I sat watching the stream as it ended and then later as I read this, I was confused. Surely Aubin had been put in danger and perhaps worse had happened before he was on stream, but was this a test of his morals? Killing some animals rather than risk his own life? Was it a test of his wit or strength? Hathian provides that every day…
While I am sure it doesn’t feel that way to Aubin as he nurses his wounds and likely assists his colleagues in Blue in taking ‘justice’ (sic) against the Yuugen terrorists, it has to be asked? Has Tomato become irrelevant in terms of her tests?
Sure she and her friends can murder, injure and explode things. But as I look back to sitting in a room with Em, Josh, Emily and others… deciding who would live or die or agreeing to surrender life so that other’s might live… mayhap the lessons used to harder. Is it too early to suggest that, at least for the Yuugen lessons that Hathian has resisted them?
Daiyu Tang – Hathian Observer Sub-Editor
((Many thanks to Aubin and Tori’s typists for agreeing to allow the Observer access to the feed and for agreeing an article to remember the roleplay. As ever, I’d like to extend thanks to the Yuugen and all who facilitate detailed, well-thought out RP for people across the sim, whether big and complicated like this, or small and fun like Johnnie’s series. If you have a story you want featured in the Observer, whether you want journalists to be actively involved, or something done more ‘after the event’, just reach out, I or any of the talented journalists would be happy to help!))
