6/29 Update - The Last Hero

The Last Hero.wmv 

Synopsis

Sarah - now armed with a mask containing the memories and strength of Ben, Jadusable, and others who have been forcibly digitized into the cartridge - travels back in the game world before the events of 2010 in an attempt to stop The Father once and for all. Arriving in Clock Town, she finds the game completely uncorrupted - a far cry from the glitched hellscape she escaped from. By some miracle, the hard reset had worked and seemingly everything has gone back to normal.   

However, something is amiss as she explores the town and realizes that some of the NPCs are displaying acute symptoms of self awareness. Curiously, she explores the town and makes her way into the Clock Tower where she finally encounters Matt - who somehow exists outside the boundaries of the normal game and was unaffected by her returning to the past. Sarah learns that those who are digitized into the game are forced into inhabiting the bodies of different assets in the cartridge. While most of the NPCs in this game have very little autonomy - even their traumatic deaths that led to the doomed world that Sarah escaped from quickly becomes a hazy memory and then forgotten - there are those who are trapped in this particular cartridge that are most certainly not originally NPCs.

In Ben's unfortunate case, he was a child wanting to be the hero of his favorite game, but was digitized into the elegy statue. The elegy is a cruel rendition of the actual hero of Majora's Mask - Link - that can neither speak nor move freely. Worse yet, however, he remained entirely conscious during this duration even if he could not control himself - he was trapped in a fate worse than death.  

Matt, whether by fortune or by some other yet unrevealed means, was able to inhabit an NPC that could communicate and had enough knowledge to be able to summon Ben on demand to prove his point. He then tells her that her predecessor Jadusable - in his "bull in a china shop" approach of glitching the game as much as he could - managed to trigger an anomaly in Ben to give him some semblance of free will again. Why Ben used this opportunity to pursue and try and scare Jadusable is left up for the reader to theorize, but between his natural curiosity and the new-found attention he was getting online by documenting what was happening - Jadusable kept poking and prodding at the cartridge more and more, breaking it down even further until he eventually met The Father and was digitized himself.

Matt then asks Sarah, and by extension the players, if they had found anything of note that could disrupt a simulation - possibly bringing an end to this digital nightmare for good. Unfortunately, during the exploration phase of the hotel, not enough information was discovered to unearth any kind of lead in that regard. Dejected but refusing to give up, the two then resolve to do things the hard way and battle The Father in his own plane of existence. Armed with the mask that contains the memories and strength of Ben, Jadusable, and all of those that came before, Matt believes it might not be a completely impossible endeavor especially if they attempt the 4th Day Glitch to give this version of Ben autonomy again. Of course, it would stand to reason that doing so would also help to further unshackle The Father as well.   

Their conservation is then interrupted by The Father, who has become aware of Sarah and her mask's anomalous presence. Although weaker compared to his fully corrupted form encountered by Jadusable at game's end - he still is able to exert an incredible amount of influence over this simulated world. Wasting little time, Sarah leaves the Clock Tower and faces down the first of The Father's invading forces. With the mask channeling the rage and power of the souls that have been locked away for decades, Sarah is able to almost effortlessly dispatch the two enemy swordsman and makes her way to East Clock Town. 

Whatever compelled Abel in the real world to change his tune and instead immediately come to get the cartridge sets off warning bells in Sarah's mind. Something tells her that to stop playing the game here would mean losing this opportunity permanently.   

Story Choice

A poll will be published at 6pm EST tonight and, depending on the winning choice, another poll will be published the following day to determine a further course of action. It is imperative to look back at all the clues thus far - even consult the original diaries of Jadusable as to what he did or didn't do - because remember, the game world has been reset to the point right when Jadusable first started playing. 

At this point, Sarah's life is held in the hands of the community - she is the last hero that can stop The Father. 

Next Chapter: The Moon Children 

Previous Chapter: The Truth