Sudden Death - Romanticism Chapter 13
Aug. 13th, 2022 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivalriesSeason: Winter
---
Location: Downtown Osaka - Evening
Rinne: Gatekeeper's the SS committee chairman—he runs the show. From his position, he'd have easy access to every order given to participating idols.
So we got that info from him and then posted the orders up all around town.
Tsukasa: ...So in the end, it was you lot who were behind the string of events that steeped the Kansai region in conflict.
Rinne: I mean, didn't ya at least have an inkling? Just a little smidge of doubt?
The law's based on "innocent until proven guilty", but y'know what else they say—"where there's smoke, there's fire".
The world zeroed in on us with the keen sense of a wild animal—they sniffed out the correct answer.
You guys are the idiots who swallowed our story and gave refuge to the culprits themselves.
Nah, wait, this is better—you're the morons who shut your brains off and sheltered us all 'cause one of us is your relative.
If you're aimin' to be a politician, ya gotta learn to suspect your own inner circle first, Your Little Majesty.
Most of those who got powerful enough to be like gods—the absolute dictators—were killed with the blade of one of their own.
Tsukasa: ......
...So you have betrayed me, Oukawa. I believed in you.
Kohaku: I-I don't know. I dunno nothin', sonny, I swear.
Was knowin' nothin'... my crime?
Rinne: Nope, you're good. Don't get it all mixed up—we're the bad guys for not tellin' ya anything ♪
HiMERU: Yes, HiMERU, Amagi, and Shiina are at fault here. You have done nothing wrong, Oukawa.
Niki: Huh? I didn't know anything either, so that makes me a victim too, right? By that logic?!
HiMERU: Heh. We are all allies, and we share the same fate—when we fall, we all fall together.
Niki: NOOOOO! It feels like a ghost is trying to drag me into hell with it!
Rinne: Shut up and quit fuckin' around. We're literally at the juiciest part, where the villain reveals all his dastardly plans to the heroes!
—So anyway, we took the info we got about the orders, then had a certain helper put 'em up around town for us.
Kohaku: A helper...?
Rinne: Yeah. If we did it ourselves, ya would've found us out. So we hired an expert in shady business to do it for us.
Kohaku: Ya don't mean—
Rinne: At the same time, we had Gatekeeper lay the live battle ban on Knights' leader, Tsukasa Suou-kun.
It was the perfect setup. It was all we needed to push Knights into a corner.
The rules ES made just for you would eat you up alive! Oh, the irony! How kindness kills sometimes! Gyahahaha! ☆
Tsukasa: ......
Rinne: Without your bread-and-butter strategy, all you could do was work your asses off to do stuff you're not used to and save up a little at a time.
You're grade-A students, though. You managed fine enough.
Though I bet it threw off anybody who thought of Knights as "unconquerable champions" or a "band of warriors".
Nothin' wrong with it, though.
In this day and age, ya don't see idols at each other's throats so much, and even DreamFes itself's gotten watered down.
It's "proper and correct" for everybody to perform all nice and friendly, nobody fighting, nobody gettin' hurt.
Tsukasa: And where is the fault in that? Would it not be ideal if we could all get along, and no one has to cry?
Rinne: People ARE crying right now. Always have been, and you guys just don't see it.
The traditional DreamFes system or the live battle system here in Kansai woulda let anybody turn the tables all at once.
Up until then, even those who were always squashed down and ridiculed could get some sort of reward and fame if they won a fight.
They could finally make it out to where the sun shines.
But with the way ES works now, there's a gap that'll never, ever close.
Making an explosive comeback is impossible with everyone crammed into their social classes. If you're born in the slums, you'll spend your whole life just lookin' up at high-rise buildings.
Capitalism and meritocracy have a nice ring to 'em, sure. But if you're useless or have nothin' to your name, you can only dream.
Only people with superior talent and who are always at the ready to spring into action are counted as "members of society" and can reap its benefits. Y'know, like social welfare.
ES has honed that method to perfection. With L$, the fruit of their labor, idols can get their hands on everything they need.
They can even hire good staff with the right amount of L$, growing their careers. It's all kitted out for 'em.
For people like that, ES really is the "idol paradise" it claims to be.
But for those who stumbled, or those who just can't make a big break, or who just never had any talent to begin with, it's hell on earth.
They either can't earn L$ or just get paid shit.
Then they can't invest in themselves and get stuck in place, unable to grow.
And while they're sittin' there stuck, the ones who are makin' money just keep on gettin' bigger and richer.
That gap gets bigger and bigger, and then—I'll say it again—even the chance to make a comeback is taken away from 'em.
They might dream of a capitalist society long gone rotten finding new life after a violent revolution, and everyone lives on in equity—
But that's nothin' but a pipe dream. Large-scale worldwide social experiments have already demonstrated that for us, yeah?
Even then, though, that dream's all that bottom feeders have to keep 'em goin'.
At ES now, though, even that dream's slippin' out of sight.
The top stay at the top, and the bottom at the bottom... And ES is the one who decides who goes where and makes the system for it.
If ES says you're on top, you are.
And of course ES only invites those who are convenient, and kicks down anybody too rebellious or useless.
That's why everybody's tryin' to be the kind of idol ES approves of—to be useful to ES in some way.
They all wanna bow to their superiors, follow in those footsteps, and become good, proper businessmen who can work at a steady pace for a salary.
...But that ain't the idols we always dreamed of.
Bein' an idol was a hope, a dream that people just like us could sparkle and shine, could be worthy of love.
—That ain't the case anymore.
That's why, y'see, I—no, we—are pointin' all our rage and criticism at the ES that's tryin' to twist our beloved idols into somethin' else... and digging our stingers right in.
We'll reject it with all we got. We don't need permission or sympathy—we're here to survive, and to do that, we won't hesitate to sting you to death.
---
< Romanticism Chapter 12 || Masterlist || Romanticism Chapter 14 >
---
Location: Downtown Osaka - Evening
Rinne: Gatekeeper's the SS committee chairman—he runs the show. From his position, he'd have easy access to every order given to participating idols.
So we got that info from him and then posted the orders up all around town.
Tsukasa: ...So in the end, it was you lot who were behind the string of events that steeped the Kansai region in conflict.
Rinne: I mean, didn't ya at least have an inkling? Just a little smidge of doubt?
The law's based on "innocent until proven guilty", but y'know what else they say—"where there's smoke, there's fire".
The world zeroed in on us with the keen sense of a wild animal—they sniffed out the correct answer.
You guys are the idiots who swallowed our story and gave refuge to the culprits themselves.
Nah, wait, this is better—you're the morons who shut your brains off and sheltered us all 'cause one of us is your relative.
If you're aimin' to be a politician, ya gotta learn to suspect your own inner circle first, Your Little Majesty.
Most of those who got powerful enough to be like gods—the absolute dictators—were killed with the blade of one of their own.
Tsukasa: ......
...So you have betrayed me, Oukawa. I believed in you.
Kohaku: I-I don't know. I dunno nothin', sonny, I swear.
Was knowin' nothin'... my crime?
Rinne: Nope, you're good. Don't get it all mixed up—we're the bad guys for not tellin' ya anything ♪
HiMERU: Yes, HiMERU, Amagi, and Shiina are at fault here. You have done nothing wrong, Oukawa.
Niki: Huh? I didn't know anything either, so that makes me a victim too, right? By that logic?!
HiMERU: Heh. We are all allies, and we share the same fate—when we fall, we all fall together.
Niki: NOOOOO! It feels like a ghost is trying to drag me into hell with it!
Rinne: Shut up and quit fuckin' around. We're literally at the juiciest part, where the villain reveals all his dastardly plans to the heroes!
—So anyway, we took the info we got about the orders, then had a certain helper put 'em up around town for us.
Kohaku: A helper...?
Rinne: Yeah. If we did it ourselves, ya would've found us out. So we hired an expert in shady business to do it for us.
Kohaku: Ya don't mean—
Rinne: At the same time, we had Gatekeeper lay the live battle ban on Knights' leader, Tsukasa Suou-kun.
It was the perfect setup. It was all we needed to push Knights into a corner.
The rules ES made just for you would eat you up alive! Oh, the irony! How kindness kills sometimes! Gyahahaha! ☆
Tsukasa: ......
Rinne: Without your bread-and-butter strategy, all you could do was work your asses off to do stuff you're not used to and save up a little at a time.
You're grade-A students, though. You managed fine enough.
Though I bet it threw off anybody who thought of Knights as "unconquerable champions" or a "band of warriors".
Nothin' wrong with it, though.
In this day and age, ya don't see idols at each other's throats so much, and even DreamFes itself's gotten watered down.
It's "proper and correct" for everybody to perform all nice and friendly, nobody fighting, nobody gettin' hurt.
Tsukasa: And where is the fault in that? Would it not be ideal if we could all get along, and no one has to cry?
Rinne: People ARE crying right now. Always have been, and you guys just don't see it.
The traditional DreamFes system or the live battle system here in Kansai woulda let anybody turn the tables all at once.
Up until then, even those who were always squashed down and ridiculed could get some sort of reward and fame if they won a fight.
They could finally make it out to where the sun shines.
But with the way ES works now, there's a gap that'll never, ever close.
Making an explosive comeback is impossible with everyone crammed into their social classes. If you're born in the slums, you'll spend your whole life just lookin' up at high-rise buildings.
Capitalism and meritocracy have a nice ring to 'em, sure. But if you're useless or have nothin' to your name, you can only dream.
Only people with superior talent and who are always at the ready to spring into action are counted as "members of society" and can reap its benefits. Y'know, like social welfare.
ES has honed that method to perfection. With L$, the fruit of their labor, idols can get their hands on everything they need.
They can even hire good staff with the right amount of L$, growing their careers. It's all kitted out for 'em.
For people like that, ES really is the "idol paradise" it claims to be.
But for those who stumbled, or those who just can't make a big break, or who just never had any talent to begin with, it's hell on earth.
They either can't earn L$ or just get paid shit.
Then they can't invest in themselves and get stuck in place, unable to grow.
And while they're sittin' there stuck, the ones who are makin' money just keep on gettin' bigger and richer.
That gap gets bigger and bigger, and then—I'll say it again—even the chance to make a comeback is taken away from 'em.
They might dream of a capitalist society long gone rotten finding new life after a violent revolution, and everyone lives on in equity—
But that's nothin' but a pipe dream. Large-scale worldwide social experiments have already demonstrated that for us, yeah?
Even then, though, that dream's all that bottom feeders have to keep 'em goin'.
At ES now, though, even that dream's slippin' out of sight.
The top stay at the top, and the bottom at the bottom... And ES is the one who decides who goes where and makes the system for it.
If ES says you're on top, you are.
And of course ES only invites those who are convenient, and kicks down anybody too rebellious or useless.
That's why everybody's tryin' to be the kind of idol ES approves of—to be useful to ES in some way.
They all wanna bow to their superiors, follow in those footsteps, and become good, proper businessmen who can work at a steady pace for a salary.
...But that ain't the idols we always dreamed of.
Bein' an idol was a hope, a dream that people just like us could sparkle and shine, could be worthy of love.
—That ain't the case anymore.
That's why, y'see, I—no, we—are pointin' all our rage and criticism at the ES that's tryin' to twist our beloved idols into somethin' else... and digging our stingers right in.
We'll reject it with all we got. We don't need permission or sympathy—we're here to survive, and to do that, we won't hesitate to sting you to death.
---
< Romanticism Chapter 12 || Masterlist || Romanticism Chapter 14 >
