u/JageshemashFTW

But, I don’t know, I think there’s something to a ‘simple’ gameplay loop if it’s still tightly woven together and satisfying.

When you get right down to it, Last of Us is a resource race. You have a limited amount of ‘stuff’ and you’re always trying to make sure you have an abundance of ‘stuff’ on hand when you need it.

That, of course, describes countless video games, but Last of Us does have a legitimately smart ‘ebb and flow’ to it’s encounters where you’re routinely put into situations where you absolutely have to use ‘stuff’ to get through it, but almost always followed by periods of calm where you can focus on replenishing the ‘stuff’ you used up.

Now, this is all super obvious, I’m not saying anything groundbreaking here and pointing out some secret to genius game design. Like I said, countless games have done this exact same thing.

I just really like Last of Us because it just feels like it strikes a really good balance between ‘Crisis moment, use your stuff!’ and ‘Calm moment, gather stuff’. Obviously, other games have done this too, Last of Us just feels like it knows exactly how to pace those moments.

It’s not always about innovation. Sometimes, it’s about refinement.

Cause like, the justification they give is that they have to go over this hill in order to reach a radio station where Henry’s people are waiting to rendezvous with them, at least as far as Henry knows at the time. And they figure that, instead of climbing over the hill, they could instead cut through the hill via the sewers.

Y’all, I don’t know about you, but if I’m living in a post-apocalypse where the zombies are specifically fungi-based, the last place I’d want to be is in an environment where fungus is known to propagate.

Joel is, in a word, a bit of a hard-ass when it comes to Ellie. He’s authoritative with her, doesn’t have much patience with her fooling around, has trouble trusting her with the more grown-up parts of surviving in an apocalypse (like, most recently, only just coming around to letting Ellie carry her own gun), and generally keeps things curt and abrasive with her.

Yet, mere moments after meeting Henry and Sam, when Joel and Ellie are searching a room for supplies, Joel finds a comic book and nonchalantly gives it to Ellie, knowing she collects them, to give her some kind of entertainment in the middle of the apocalypse. It’s not even treated as a big deal between them. Just ‘Here you go, Ellie.’ ‘Oh, cool. Thanks, Joel.’

Meanwhile, Henry is very openly warm and loving to his little brother, Sam. He is fiercely protective of him, does his best to praise him when he shows initiative and survival skills, and apparently trusts him enough to carry a gun without it being treated like a big deal. On the surface, they seem to be much more equal partners than Joel and Ellie ever could be.

But then comes the scene where Sam finds a toy robot in a toy store, and Henry promptly flips his lid, brow-beating Sam to leave the toy behind, citing they only take ‘what they need’ (implying that Henry doesn’t see a need for leisure items in an apocalypse) and talking over Sam when he tries to argue that the toy robot would take up practically zero storage space.

Basically, Joel has a hard time treating Ellie like a grown-up, but does remind himself that she still needs to be treated like a kid every now and then, because she is. Henry has fully accepted that Sam needs to be treated like a grown up in the apocalypse, but he completely forgot how to treat him like a kid when he needs to. And you need to be able to do both.

Like, correct me if I’m wrong, maybe I’m misremembering the lore here, but from what I understand, the Cordyceps causes the infected to have exacerbated rage and hunger in order to spread the fungus between as many hosts as possible, because they primarily spread through biting. I get that.

So then… why do the infected only seem to target humans specifically to satisfy that hunger?

Like, I know why the Cordyceps want that, but how can the infected tell the difference? As far as the infected is concerned, they’re just phenomenally pissed and hungry, all the time, and nothing else.

Shouldn’t we be seeing infected voraciously chowing down on, like, berries and nuts in the wild or hunting animals like deer? Like, yeah, definitely chase down and eat humans too, when you see one. By why are they just wandering around, muttering to themselves, when there are no humans to bite?

Like, say what you want about individual narrative choices from game to game, it is honestly impressive that every game in the series advanced their relationship in some way from the previous game. They never felt like they were static or retreading old ground, they genuinely felt like they were learning more and more about each other as partners and growing closer as the series went on.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Uncharted’s overall story is, at its core, a love story between these two.

So one of the more common criticisms I hear about Veilguard is that the buildcraft lacks the same amount of depth and player choice as earlier games like Origins and DA2.

And like… Yeah, that is definitely true in an objective sense. There is definitely less fine tuning and minutia to be had in Veilguard. But I also think it’s a bit more complicated than that.

How do I put this? Previous Dragon Age games had more depth in the buildcraft, but Veilguard feels like you get the most expression out of your build. And there is a difference there.

Like, Origins and DA2 has a lot more objective depth in how you build a character, but it also feels kinda homogenized by the end-game, playthrough to playthrough. Like, Origins and DA2 have a settled ‘meta’ when it comes to building your character with no real reason to deviate from it once it clicks for you. Veilguard, while some builds may be more viable than others, all feel fun to play, regardless of your build, which naturally invites more experimentation.

And that mainly comes down to two things. One is the fact that every piece of equipment is unique. And because you can upgrade any piece of equipment to have endgame level stats, all you really need to care about are their special effects, which is much more fun trying to piece together than just ‘number go up’. Second is the fact that subclasses in Veilguard play a much larger role in fight-to-fight gameplay loop than previous games. In previous games, subclasses were essentially just a collection of extra abilities that you added on top of your class’s established toolkit. In Veilguard, subclasses actually change the feel of playing that class.

Like, in practice, it feels like there’s nine distinct classes as opposed to three classes that have a few extra bells and whistles that you can pick from. And you can tell this was intentional on the developer’s part because they outright showcase the subclasses right at the very beginning of character creation. Something that, to the best of my memory, no other Dragon Age game does.

None of that is to say that the buildcraft in the early games were bad! Far from it! The criticism that Veilguard’s buildcraft doesn’t have as much depth as the older games is entirely valid if that’s something you valued in the older games.

It’s just that Veilguard clearly had a different mission statement in how build expression should come across, and I feel it’s important to acknowledge that when comparing Veilguard to the rest of the series.

Uncharted 4 does something kind of different from the previous games that I find really interesting in retrospect.

In the first three Uncharted games, the games are all about trying to get to a specific location. El Dorado’s treasure vault, Shambala, Iram of the Pillars.

But once you’re actually at that mythical location, you’re also at the tail end of the game. Finding that location immediately kicks off the climax of the game right up until the final boss.

In Uncharted 4, you actually spend a good deal of time exploring Libertalia, probably making up the entire last third of the game. You learn all about the colony’s history, both good and bad, and get a really good look into the psychology of the people who built it. Shambala and Iram were both beautiful locales that made for an appropriately cinematic backdrop to have your finale in them, but you don’t really know that much about them as places other than ‘something bad happened here.’

I had this idea for a potential method of expanding Daggerheart’s buildcraft and I’d love to know what you all think.

Basically, the idea is a set of new classes, but with a few exemptions that keep it from being a full class. Namely, they would only have a Class Feature (or set of Class Features), NO Hope Feature, only one Sub-Class that only has Foundation and Specialization cards, no Mastery, and only one Domain.

Namely… all the things you would get if you were to multiclass in the game. Get it? They’re classes that only exist as multiclass options.

The idea is that they’d be less classes themselves and more like modifiers to existing classes. One specific application I had in mind was say your Campaign Frame had some kind of… unlockable power unique to that world. Miniclasses would be a way to mechanically represent that player achieving that great power.

Like, imagine a world where powerful spirits can inhibit the body of a chosen vessel, making that player their Avatar. A miniclass would be a way to mechanically represent this spirit attaching itself to one of your players, granting them entirely new abilities that they didn’t have before.

Could also be a great way to showcase or playtest new Domain decks without needing to build an entirely new Class around it.

When Maric knighted Gareth Mac Tir, he was doing the one thing that was in his power to honor a man who was making the ultimate sacrifice for him. But as for as Loghain was concerned, Maric knighting him was basically a form of emotional manipulation. Not intentionally so on Maric’s part, even Loghain could admit that the gesture was genuine from Maric’s perspective, but the act of knighting itself was seen as a form of manipulation, regardless of intent.

From Loghain’s perspective, Gareth already had a duty as a father and leader of this commune to *not* throw his life away for some brat he just met, regardless if that brat is actually the King or not. So for Maric to knight Gareth in response to him choosing to sacrifice himself to Bann Ceorlic’s men so that Maric and Loghain can get away? Loghain cannot see that as anything other than an insult. The final nail in the coffin of just how pointless his father’s death was, in Loghain’s eyes.

It’s a genuine miracle that these two ended up becoming friends by the end of the book.

His story is done, finished, over, he had his denouement, his character arc has been tied up with a nice bow, we do not need Nathan Drake to come back.

I honestly don’t care if it’s Chloe or someone else entirely taking the reins, I just do not want it to be Nate.

And here we are at the last part. This was a surprisingly fun little project. Thank you all for reading it!

(Final Part: Celia and Delsin)

(It’s been a few days since the General. Somehow, the story managed to get out to the media. Everyone knows that Delsin Rowe, the deranged bio-terrorist, is the one that killed him after going on a rampage throughout the city, blowing up countless landscaping vans for seemingly no reason.)

(God, I am such an idiot!!)

(Celia played me like a goddamn fiddle!! What’s worse, she probably thinks that this is some kind of… collaboration. Like I’d be happy with all of this!!)

(And right when I was actually starting to… To come around to her way of seeing things.)

(I mean, is she wrong? Look at all the stuff I’ve uncovered so far. Criminals taking advantage of Conduits, politicians creating policies to take away Conduit rights, civilians being worked up into angry mobs that are perfectly willing to kill Conduits in cold blood, the military gearing up to go to open war against our kind. This world is just not going to suddenly accept Conduits. Maybe all we can do is just dig in our heels, draw a line in the sand, and take out anyone who dares come for us.)

(….. Whether that’s true or not, and I’m not saying it is, Celia lost any good faith from me when she manipulated me into being her hatchet man. Being her ‘accomplice’ was one thing, I refuse to be anyone’s stooge.)

(I’ve been public enemy number one ever since I ‘assassinated’ the General. Fetch and Eugene have been nice enough to let me hide out in their places, but I know this can’t last forever. I’m not about to put them at risk too, if I can help it.)

(Sooner or later, I’m gonna have to find a way to confront Celia directly. If I can even find her again-)

(Speak of the paper devil.)

(Celia just showed up again. I… I tried. I really tried to catch up to her, to grab her, to stop her. But she’s just so damn fast. Even now, I’m still literally one step behind her.)

(And now, all I have to show for it is another origami dove. Part of me wants to grab it and just… tear it up, burn it, throw it in the trash. Just be done with this stupid game already.)

(But knowing Celia, whether this is a manipulation or not, chances are it genuinely does involve Conduits in danger. She’s never once lied about that, for better or worse.)

(Okay, Celia. One last ‘game’.)

(The manga page is a direct continuation from the last one. Purotekuta lands in the field, interrupting Saisei and Fukushu’s fun. Purotekuta stares down Fukushu and says ‘I fail to see the humor.’ Fukushu just smiles at her and says, with a sneering grin ‘Look harder.’ And with that, Fukushu launches himself at Purotekuta, fully intent on fighting her.)

(Doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out. This is when I fought Augustine. When I challenged her authority, exposed her for the hypocrite she was. And I’m sure Celia found it all very entertaining…)

(On the back of the page is a shorter note, along with a maze in the shape of, you guessed it, a dove.)

—-
*No one left to fall. My vengeance has run aground. What’s a girl to do?*

*We’ve had some fun, haven’t we Delsin? And you’re so close to understanding… Everything. There are two truths to be found inside this maze, and the dead ends are just as important as the path that sees us through. Together, the answers will show you where to find me.*

*Don’t keep a girl waiting~*
—-

(Okay, this one seems simple enough. It’s a maze with some numbers inside it. Find the right path through the maze, mark every number you pass through, and you’ve got another 11 digit code for the intranet. Easy.)

(But… She did say that the maze held two truths. Dead ends just as important… Maybe I’m supposed to intentionally hit every dead end I can, marking each number at each dead end. Do that… and I end up with another 11 digit code.)

(Let’s check the first one…)

(Looks like an incident report about the DUP confiscating one of Celia’s drawings due to images of what could be a ‘coded message’. But because the DUPs couldn’t make heads or tails of what the message could be, they were forced to drop the matter. Surprisingly, it’s not another origami dove, but a drawing of one of her doves. Two doves, in fact. Each with a numbered circle on all the corners and arrows pointing from one circle to another. At the bottom of the second drawing was written ‘= 4 6 6 3’ and the second dove had one of its wings filled in. The circles on each corner of the wing had the numbers 4, 6, 6, 3. Other than that, the two doves looked completely identical, at least in terms of respective numbers and their respective placements.)

(Okay, so, clearly the second dove is like a cypher telling me how to solve the first dove, showing me the first step and having me go from there. But… What exactly is the first step? What does ‘= 4 6 6 3’ mean?)

(Argh, I can’t make heads or tails of this. There just isn’t enough info to go on. Let me check the other access number, maybe there’s a clue there.)

(Okay, here’s something. An incident report detailing strange dove-like graffiti popping up all over Seattle. Normally, the DUPs wouldn’t care about petty vandalism, but the hard to reach locations might imply that they were done by a Conduit. I mean, can’t exactly blame them. Some of my best tags are up on the rooftops of this city. Plus, I know they were done by Celia because it’s the exact same dove design as all of her origami.)

(Huh. Not much more to go off of here. This is the least amount of info Celia has ever given me. I guess all I can do is just check out these graffiti spots. Maybe I’ll find another clue…)

——————

(Okay, Celia. I found your tags (MY thing, by the way), took pictures, and now I’m just looking at a bunch of photos of doves. What the hell are you trying to tell me?)

(…. Each of these doves has a different portion of them colored in. Like the cypher dove in the original puzzle. That colored in wing was surrounded by four numbers. 4, 6, 6, and 3. And the arrows show what order those numbers are supposed to go in.)

(That’s it. Each of these tags show a different portion colored in, each portion is surrounded by numbers, and the arrows tell you what order the numbers go in. Put all of them together, and you have…)

(A twelve digit code. Not another file access number, but a DUP employee ID.)

(I still have that tracking program on my phone, the one that led me to Coogan. Let’s see where this leads.)

——————

(The whole time I made my way to… wherever my tracking program was taking me, I heard Celia’s voice, talking to me over my phone. She was… praising me for figuring out so many of her puzzles, congratulating me on getting this far. She actually sounded… proud of me.)

(I pretty much blocked it all out about halfway there.)

(When I finally arrived, of course Celia wasn’t there. Just a DUP walkie-talkie reprogrammed to regurgitate pre-recorded words of praise. But that’s not what was important. What was important was that the walkie-talkie was right outside an apartment building. Her apartment.)

(Well, she did invite me over.)

(If you’ve ever seen a serial killer’s lair in a movie, imagine that, now cross it with a college girl’s dorm room. That’s more or less what I walked into. There was a whole conspiracy board on the wall, lines of strings connecting pictures and articles. I picked out a few familiar names from the mess of paper. Fishbein, Winegard, Petrovich, Bennett.)

(The first thing that hit me was the smell. Rotting meat. At first, I figured there was something in the mini-fridge that had gone bad, but then I turned around and saw something I didn’t notice at first because he had been covered by the door as I came in.)

(There was a dead body, pinned to the wall by a whole swarm of origami doves. The DUP nametag on his vest confirmed that this was Tyler Bennett. I guess Celia wanted to personally take care of this one herself.)

(There were several origami doves all over the place. The missing pages of her manga, I’m assuming. I’ll check those out in a bit. Right in the center of the room, sitting pretty on the floor like a present, was a recording device. Bit obvious, but I’ll bite.)

(It was a confession. More a… a plea, really, to hear her side of the story. She admitted that it was Augustine who tasked her with killing all of these anti-Conduit officials. Politicians, military, civilians. Even voices of dissidents within the DUP. The whole reason she framed Fetch, Eugene and Hank for those early murders was so that Augustine could continue controlling the narrative that the DUP was needed to corral these dangerous ‘bio-terrorists’. That she was still needed. That, and it kept the scent off Augustine and Celia themselves, so that they could continue doing the ‘dirty work’ to keep Conduit kind safe. I’m sure Augustine never once considered the possibility that making normals hate us even more would have bitten her on the ass this badly. All she did was fan the flames and put a target on all of our backs.)

(Even now, Celia sounds… distraught. Like, she knew what she was doing was wrong, but she felt like she had no other option. What else could she do? Just let the Winegards and General Mortimers of the world run rampant and systematically kill every single last one of us? All she ever wanted was to be free…)

(I leafed through the last few manga pages. The first one was the direct aftermath of Fukushu leaping into battle against Purotekuta. Saisei looked on… but not because she was entertained. No, she looked horrified. Distraught that the two people she looked up to more than anyone else in the world were killing each other. The caption read ‘An epic battle of good versus evil. But the roles were debatable.’)

(Fukushu successfully defeated Purotekuta and ran away, his job done. Saisei runs crying to Purotekuta, tearfully calling out ‘Mama!’)

(The next page showed Saisei craddling Purotekuta, tearfully recounting how she had done what she asked. Disguising herself and framing Inazuma, Ushinatta, and Kemuri for countless deaths, sowing chaos.)

(The next page showed the foxes, the Kyoi, emerging from the forest and surrounding Purotekuta, hoping to kill her while she’s weakened. Saisei stands her ground, ready to defend her protector, but Purotekuta tells her to run. Saisei demands to know why should she, and Purotekuta tells her that if she kills them, more will come. They’re simply too many, too strong…. But Saisei glares at Purotekuta, and says she is too weak. Then she jumps up and opens her mouth…)

(The next page is… a gruesome display of Saisei eating Purotekuta, engorging herself on the giant dragon, her body filling up like a balloon until it explodes. The caption reads ‘As Saisei already knew, death is as much a part of us as life. Death is not an ending, death is transformation. A sublime transcendence.’)

(……… The manga is missing its ending. There’s still one more page. Wherever it is, it’s not here.)

(The backs of each page had another piece of the same spider web puzzle from her cell. More than that, each page had another epitaph for every name on her list.)

—-
*Jonas peddled junk, but humans are not for sale. He’s closed for business.*

*The less said of Jonas Petrovich, the better. Like his henchman, Killian Czalov and Skeeter Hidalgo, Petrovich sold lies and bought lives to get ahead. To be safe, I’m putting them all in the gutter.*

*What a sweetheart deal. Fishbein thought he was golden, but all that glitters dies.*

*To Augustine, Fishbein was a trusted lieutenant. But the truth is, he was always Mortimer’s man. When the time was right, he would bring down the DUP from the inside and fill the void they occupied. Guess these boys were afraid of strong women… But not as afraid as they should have been.*

*A vote for Winegard is a vote for fraud, writ large. The campaign ends here.*

*Winegard was a stepping stone for Petrovich and Mortimer. A second-term opportunist funded by phony assassination attempts. He might have swayed public opinion towards more extreme measures against Conduits. There was no way I could leave that up to a vote.*

*A lifetime of lies, snuffed out by friendly fire. At ease, General Mortimer.*

*This story begins and ends with General Mortimer, a man who fancied himself a hero on a crusade to dismantle the DUP, partnering with profiteers like Petrovich, traitors like Fishbein and Bennett, and cowardly bigots like Winegard. He might have succeeded, if not for you, Delsin.*
—-

(Every single one of these men, this was all one big conspiracy to tear down the DUP and take control of the ‘Bio-terrorist’ problem for themselves. But Celia stopped all of them. For better or worse, the DUP isn’t going anywhere…)

(There was one last paper. Not a manga page, but a letter. A confession from Celia, detailing how she faked her own suicide. Like everything, Augustine coordinated the whole thing. She set up a DUP guard named Naomi Lachter, who was the same height and build as Celia, to make the rounds outside her cell. Someone with no family or friends outside the facility, someone who ‘wouldn’t be missed’. Then Augustine snuck a stack of cardstock into Celia’s cell, lethal in the hands of someone who can manipulate paper. Then Celia cried out that she was injured, and Naomi came running, seeing the blood on Celia’s arm. She opened the cell, went inside, and checked on Celia’s injury. That’s when a swarm of origami doves tore Naomi to shreds and mutilated her face. From there, it was a simple matter of Celia simply switching their clothes around. Augustine rushed the investigation, and Celia simply walked out the front door as Naomi Lachter, free to do her work as Augustine’s hit-woman against this anti-Conduit conspiracy. But the thing that Celia really wanted me to know is that, out of all these people she killed, Naomi was the only one she regrets. Because when she went into that cell to check on Celia’s injury… she was kind. She spoke softly, told Celia she was going to be alright.)

(I sat there, right at Celia’s desk, as I worked out her last puzzle. I already knew how the spider web puzzle worked, so it didn’t take me long, although I did get five whole file access numbers from them. Four from the pages, one from another spider web drawn right on the wall.)

(The files mostly just contained confidential mission reports from Augustine to Celia, detailing the deaths of every single one of these men. Not just how she would kill them, but how she would spin the narrative exactly to Augustine’s script. Interestingly, every single one was signed off by Augustine’s ‘agent’ using her DUP ID, but each one only had a piece of her ID. Just another puzzle.)

(There was more stuff on top of all that, attachments to each kill order. Like a covertly recorded phone call between Bennett and Coogan, detailing how they first broached the topic of selling the Conduit-Positive list. A letter from Petrovich to General Mortimer, asking him for the details on the specifications of his new Conduit prison. Fishbein being promised the position as the warden of this new prison, his reward for stabbing Augustine in the back. Instructions from Petrovich to Winegard on how to word his Anti-Conduit Act in just such a way that the general public would glance past how dystopian it actually was.)

(But the most damning one of them all was a confidential debrief from General Mortimer to the Department of Armed Forces. He detailed that their war against the DUP wasn’t entirely just because they were being too lenient on Conduits. That was part of it, but it was also because the good General felt like the DUP was a drain on Uncle Sam’s military funding. More specifically, military funding that he felt more entitled to for his own political aspirations. Hell, even Petrovich’s prison was just another source of funding. The decision to target non-activated Conduit-Positives was a deliberate narrative to show the public the ‘blind spots’ of the DUP.)

(The only thing left in the room of any actual note was a laptop in the corner of Celia’s desk. I tried to turn it on, but it required three different passwords to unlock. Luckily, I already knew what all of them were.)

—-
What is my agent ID?
XXX-XX-XXX-X

Who was I?
Hittori

Who have I become?
Saisei
—-

(I’m in.)

(All I could find was an ongoing message chain between Celia and Augustine, keeping her updated on her mission progress.)

(Or rather… Saisei and Purotekuta.)

—-
Purotekuta: Your hour has come, Saisei. Trust does not come easily to us, but I place my life’s work in your hands. Kemuri, Inazuma, and Ushinatta will sow chaos, but you must fold their stories to serve our purpose.
—-
Saisei: Petrovich and his underlings are dead. I made them beg for what they did to Inazuma and the other girls. But there is a meddler. I call him Fukushu, and he intrigues me. He had Kemuri’s gift, but now he has somehow taken Inazuma’s as well.
—-
Purotekuta: You made me proud, Saisei. Now it is time for Fishbein to pay for his treachery. If what you say of this Fukushu is true, he is far too dangerous for you alone. Continue to watch him, or distract him if you are sure he cannot catch you.
—-
Saisei: I made Fishbein suffer, Purotekuta. The lawyer and the judge are dead as well, and I made certain arrangements so people will think Ushinatta was responsible. But now Fukushu has copied his gift as well. What should we do?
—-
Purotekuta: Stay in the shadows, my sweet. I cannot protect you while you are out in the world. The senator, Winegard, is attempting to frame Kemuri for his own murder. It is not enough for us to kill him. He must be disgraced first, or else he will die a martyr.
—-
Saisei: The senator is broken, Purotekuta. I left his meaningless body as an offering to Fukushu. He haunts my thoughts, even when I do not watch him. I never imagined such power. He does not fear the Kyoi like we do.
—-
Purotekuta: Remain focused. Your ‘Fukushu’ is the bio-terrorist, Delsin Rowe. He is powerful, yes, but he lacks our purpose. We shall claim him together when the time comes. First, Bennett must be dealt with.
—-
Saisei: I made Bennett pay for what he told me in the morgue, one paper cut at a time. But people will begin to wonder what happened to him, and I suspect Fukushu already knows. Your wyverns are not enough. Maybe it is time to end this charade and show our full power.
—-
Purotekuta: I have never been more proud of you, Saisei. But there is freedom in security, and our greatest enemies are preparing to strike. Time to turn them against each other. Goad Fukushu into destroying Mortimer, but proceed carefully. He is powerful and quick to violence. My purpose is not the only thing I hold close to my heart.
—-
Saisei: As you requested, the raven killed the eagle. But I do not think Fukushu is our enemy. He rejects the confines of the DUP, but he shows us a new way forward. He is free, and his freedom gives him power.
—-
Purotekuta: You have done everything I asked and more. But unless he can be controlled, Fukushu will always be our enemy. He is blinded by his power, he thinks he is invincible. But without walls, without his brother, who will protect him? I will put an end to him, one way or another.
—-
Saisei: You will never read these words, Purotekuta. In the end, I could have saved you when Fukushu came for you, but instead, I watched your battle from a distance. I had to know whose purpose was stronger, yours or his. Now I know. You were the only mother I’ve ever known, and I loved you. But I found a new teacher, one who is not afraid, and it is his example I will follow. I know you would be proud. Goodbye, Purotekuta. I have no need of your protection any longer.

Now I wait for you, Fukushu. Come find me where you slayed my mother, so I can show you what you taught me.
—-

(Celia… She’s waiting for me at Augustine’s tower, where I had my last slugfest with her. The DUP cleared out of that place ever since. She’s been hiding right under their noses.)

(No more breadcrumbs, no more puzzles, no more secrets.)

(It’s time we finished this.)

——————

(Epilogue: End of the Trail)

(Well, for better or worse, Celia is gone. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again, and frankly? I’m not sure if I’d even want to.)

(She did leave me one last parting gift. The final page of her manga. It’s just one panel, a splash page of Saisei, merged with Purotekuta. A new dragon, utterly annihilating any Kyoi who come near her. The single caption box simply reads ‘A beginning’.)

(As always, she left me one last note on the back…)

—-
*As the saying goes: Always leave them wanting more. So long, Delsin Rowe.*

*You came here to fight me, I understand that. But I can’t satisfy your bloodlust. You can’t fight an idea, can’t kill what’s inside you. And I’m part of you now, Delsin, for good or bad.*

*You chased me looking for the truth, and now you have it. Would you really say those monsters deserved to live? No, you’re like me. You follow your instincts; to survive, to fight, to avenge.*

*You had your differences with Augustine, and so did I. She wanted to preserve Curdun Cay, but we wanted more. We wanted power, we wanted freedom, real freedom! And now, we have it.*

Since the Paper Trail website is no longer functioning, this entire mission chain of Second Son is missing a whole lot of context of what is going on, why Delsin is going from dead body to dead body, and also a TON of integral world-building. So, I figured for those who are replaying the game or even just playing the game for the first time and are missing that context, I decided to write out a novelization of Paper Trail's ARG segments to kinda provide that context. I wrote it in the form of Delsin's stream of consciousness, piecing together all of the clues and figuring out all of the puzzles. It is written from the perspective of Good Delsin, but I imagine it'd be easy enough to mentally reword certain things for an Evil Delsin playthrough. I'll be posting the last part very soon. Hope you all enjoy!

(Part 5: DUP)

(Another beautiful day in Seattle, another Celia chase across the city. Part of me wonders if these chases are all part of ‘the game’ to her. Like we’re two kids on a playground, running around, wind in our hairs. I’ll admit it, ever since I got my powers, I loved the feeling of just… moving around as something lighter, something stronger than my usual fleshbag human body. Whether I’m a cloud of smoke, a haze of neon afterimages, or riding the airwaves of video signals, there’s something freeing about just… letting go of your physical body and being something else. I’m almost certain Celia feels the exact same way whenever she uses her paper powers. Who can blame her? After everything she’s been through, any excuse to taste that kind of freedom…)

(Our chase today ended the way they usually do. Celia disappears and leaves behind a dove. Like last time, there was no dead body and no crime scene. So I figure this is another one of her ‘quests’ like those Lifeline psychos.)

(This one was gruesome. It showed the rabbit girl, rotting away in her cell in the mountains, looking more and more sick with each panel. The page ended on a cliffhanger with the rabbit’s mouth stretching open as some glowing… thing starts to emerge from inside her. I guess I won’t know what that glowing thing is until I get the next page. The caption reads ‘This is no place for Hittori. Loneliness drank the life from her veins.’ Yeah, like I said, gruesome. The fact that the caption calls her ‘Hittori’ and not ‘Saisei’ shows that this was before she became… whatever she is now.)

(On the back was a shorter note this time, tucked underneath another one of her number puzzles.)

—-
*The weak always die, planting paths for new bloodlines. Evolution calls.*
—-

(Yeah, I’ve heard that kind of rhetoric before. Some people claim that, because Conduits are the next evolution of humanity, naturally that means we’re eventually going to be replacing humanity. That humans are a dying species on their own planet, making way for the genetically superior species.)

(Personally, I think that’s bullshit. For one simple reason.)

(Conduits are human. How can we replace ourselves?)

(Anyway, the puzzle is much more straightforward this time. A bunch of symbols arranged in the pattern of the DUP symbol, a dove, and a line of eleven symbols at the bottom. Each of the symbols making up the dove all have a number next to them. Easy enough to just plug in the corresponding numbers to each of the eleven symbols at the bottom, and we have another access number for the intranet. It’s… almost a little worrying how natural these puzzles are becoming to me. Like they’re just par for the course, now.)

(Whatever. Let’s see what we got…)

(What the-? That didn’t work? Okay, maybe this puzzle is actually more complicated than I thought.)

(Looking closer, I can tell that there’s actually multiples of each symbol on the dove, each one having a different corresponding number. So how am I supposed to figure out which is the right number?)

(Okay, let’s take this one symbol at a time. The first of the eleven symbols I need is just a plain circle. I’m counting one, two, three… six plain circles making up the dove…)

(Oh, but the numbers aren’t random. They’re in a sequence of 1-6, like the spider web puzzle from Celia’s cell windows. Maybe if I trace a line between each circle…)

(There we go. I eventually trace out a whole number. 2. That’s got to be the first digit for the access number. Now I just do that ten more times, and…)

(There we go, now we’re getting somewhere.)

(Oh, well, this is interesting. It’s a counter-surveillance report from the DUPs intelligence network. Apparently, they intercepted a covert audio file from an unassuming landscaping van. After doing a background check on the landscaping company, they pretty quickly figured out that no such company existed. DUPs seem to think that the vans are actually US Government, which really freaks out the DUPs because Uncle Sam never actually informed them of any non-DUP based surveillance in the city. And if there’s one thing I know about the DUP, it’s that they do not like sharing jurisdiction with anyone. Not cops, not military, and definitely not feds.)

(Let’s take a listen at that audio file they intercepted…)

(Hmm, not good. It sounds like a military debriefing, some big shot jarhead talking to a bunch of other jarheads. I guess the military is getting sick and tired of the DUP, and not for any good reasons. They don’t like how the DUP acts independently from the rest of the military, they don’t like how lenient they are with Conduits (LENIENT?!), and they definitely don’t like the fact that it’s run by a ‘bio-terrorist’ at the top.)

(Uncle Sam’s finally giving the DUP the boot out the door, and these landscaping vans are the first wave of intelligence gathering before this turns into all-out open war.)

(Figures. Our government is finally getting around to shutting down the DUP… but they’re doing it because the DUP hasn’t been abusing Conduits enough.)

(This is all Augustine’s fault. She’s the one who spun the narrative of ‘dangerous bio-terrorists’ in order to keep the DUP funded, and now that narrative is biting us all in the ass. If she were still around, I’m sure she’d try to come up with some half-brained excuse on how what she did was actually better than any other alternative…)

(I hope she rots, wherever she is…)

(Okay, focus Delsin. Augustine is gone, you beat her. Focus on the enemy in front of you, right now. There’s a link to another file, some recent development in the DUPs counter-intelligence against these vans…)

(Here we go. The DUPs managed to get a camera on one of those landscaping vans, including a clear shot of the license plate. I still have access to that vehicle tracker from that whole debacle with Winegard. I’m sure the DUPs won’t mind me using it again. I’m technically helping them, here. Ugh, I just threw up in my mouth a little.)

(Okay, let’s go check out one of these vans.)

——————

(Managed to track down that van, and even follow it to one of the military’s hideouts here in town.)

(They really were not expecting me to just walk right in.)

(They put up a fight, but against a Conduit as awesome as me, I took care of them pretty easily.)

(Like… Really easily. Almost laughably easily.)

(Like… Holy shit, these idiots actually think they’re going to take over for the DUPs? I just took out an entire compound of hardened military agents, and I’ve had fights against a couple of DUP troopers that were way harder than that!)

(If these people actually get their way and completely take over the DUP, they’re going to get slaughtered the second they go up against an actual Conduit. Which, naturally, is only going to make them escalate, which is only going to make Conduits escalate, which is only going to make the military escalate, which-)

(Who was it that said ‘I don’t know what we’ll be fighting with in World War III, but I know we’ll be fighting with sticks and stones in World War IV’?)

(Anyway, with the jarheads otherwise… incapacitated, I took my sweet time rummaging around the back of one of their vans. They got a pretty sick surveillance setup back here. I’m almost half-tempted to steal the whole thing and bring it back to Eugene as an early Christmas present.)

(Woah, what the-? They actually managed to find one of Celia’s doves? Where the hell did they find this? There’s… There’s no actual way Celia planned for me to find this here, right? It’s just a total coincidence… right?)

(Ugh, I don’t even want to think about that right now, let’s just see what it says…)

(Ah, so this is what that glowing thing was in the last page. A second ethereal rabbit is emerging out of Hittori, looking far more powerful and, dare I say it, heroic than the scared little rabbit that Purotekuta dragged to this mountain. Hittori falls to the ground, dead. But the new rabbit, Saisei, is standing proudly over who she once was. A caption reads ‘In death, she gained new life’. So this has to be the moment that Celia committed ‘suicide’ in her cell, though I’m starting to suspect her ‘death’ is a lot more metaphorical than I originally thought.)

(It just dawned on me. If Celia really did fake her own suicide to escape Curdun Cay, that doesn’t change the fact that the DUP did, in fact, find a dead body in her cell and thought it was Celia. Meaning Celia was already capable of murder, even way back then. Of course, to escape Curdun Cay, she must have thought the ends justified the means.)

(I’ve heard horror story after horror story of what Curdun Cay is like from the people who’ve actually been there. If I were in her shoes… Could I really say I wouldn’t have done the same?)

(As always, there’s a note on the back…)

—-
*The system changed me, from ugly duckling to dove. But this bird bites back.*

*The thing I missed the most while I was locked in Curdun Cay was the trees. From an unlikely seed to a deeply rooted force of nature that survives through wind and rain to stretch for the sun. Paper comes from trees. In a sense, they are the source of my power, the pulp of my existence. It’s my turn to reach up for the life that I deserve.*
—-

(Okay, back to the task at hand. There must be something here in this van… Hello?)

(Why, hello there Mr Locked Safe. What wondrous secrets do you hold for me? I probably shouldn’t use my powers to crack this baby open. Knowing the government, chances are this thing probably has a kill-switch to destroy anything inside if it’s forced open. Gonna have to do this the old fashioned way.)

(Hmm, weird, the keypad doesn’t have any numbers on it, just a bunch of weird symbols. Says it needs an 8 digit password, but what the hell does each symbol mean?)

(………… Wait. Wait, there’s no freaking way.)

(….. Ha… Ahaha! HAHAHA!! Oh, you got to be freaking kidding me?! It’s the same puzzle lock from Czalov’s drone, way back when this whole mess started!)

(Actually, thinking on that, it does make a weird bit of sense. Czalov repurposed that drone from the DUP, the DUP probably got that tech from the military, just modified it to specifically track Conduits.)

(So this is just the standard security system that the jarheads use for their illicit lockboxes? Oh, that’s… That’s so wonderfully stupid. I love that so much!)

(Okay, good news is I know exactly what to do. Beep, boop, boop, beep. Red, yellow, red, yellow. Beepity-boop. Yellow, red, green, red. Yadda-yadda, Beep-bobbity-boop. Green, green, green, green.)

(Hacker voice: I’m in… Again.)

(Okay, we got some incredibly confidential papers here. It’s probably a federal crime for me to even be looking at these, but in for a penny…)

(Hmm, not good. One’s basically a general missive from the Department of Armed Forces, basically detailing rules of engagement for dealing with Conduits. It’s split into two parts, one for dealing with dormant Conduit-Positives, one for dealing with active Conduits like yours truly.)

(For Conduit-Positives, no due process, no Miranda Rights, no trial. Just knocked out with tranquilizers, fitted with suppression cuffs (which you don’t even need because, again, cannot stress this enough, they don’t even have powers), then lock them in the darkest hole and throw away the keys. Hell, they’re even given cart-blanche to ‘pacify’ any non-Conduits who might try to intervene, family members or just Good Samaritans who recognize injustice when they see it, and leave them on the streets.)

(For active Conduits, the rules of engagement are a lot simpler. Shoot to kill.)

(Good luck with that, jarheads.)

(Ha, they even have a little addendum at the bottom, saying they’re going to, quote, ‘Get in, collar the monsters, and get out before the press get involved.’ Yeah right. If the DUPs couldn’t manage to put a collar on me in the months that I’ve been here, what makes you dumbasses think you’ll do any better?)

(Let’s see, what else do we have? We have a lobbying consultation form from… Oh, look who it is. Our old friend Jonas Petrovich. The mastermind behind Winegard’s phony assassination story. Well, at least until it wasn’t so phony. Looks like he was vying for the contract rights to build a new bio-terrorist prison after the jarheads shut down Curdun Cay. Geez, reading through this is like a checklist on every monstrous thing Curdun Cay did and then asking themselves ‘Okay, but how do we make it worse?’. Even smaller, more cramped holding facilities, absolutely no allowance for any personal freedoms or leisure between incarcerations. At least Augustine gave Celia a piece of paper every once in a while. This guy wants to hook up energy producing Conduits to the facility itself, make Conduits power their own damn prison. Christ, at that point, just fucking kill us! This is just cruelty for the sake of cruelty.)

(I guess it’s a good thing that this prison is never going to be built. I mean, Celia already nipped this problem in the bud when she killed Petrovich.)

(Right…?)

(Something I’m noticing, a lot of these orders and sign-offs are all being signed by the same man, one General Rufus Mortimer. I guess he’s a real Killgrave type against Conduits. Probably the kind of guy who thinks any war can be solved if you point enough guns at the other side.)

(One last paper, this one’s a memo that surveillance locations throughout the city have been uploaded to every team’s terminal. Oh, has it now? This terminal right here, you mean?)

(And there we have it, the locations of all of these vans, and their hideouts.)

(This… is going to take a while.)

——————

(Whew! Okay, that… That took a hot minute. Running all around the city, blowing up just… just a shitload of vans - gasp - really takes a lot of a guy…)

(This definitely won’t stop the military in their tracks, but it at least puts a kibosh on their Seattle plans for the time being. Gives me time to figure out a more permanent solution.)

(Of course, Celia was already waiting for me at the last van. Dropped another dove and disappeared without even a ‘Good job, Delsin’. Because of course she did. Alright, let’s see the new page…)

(Huh. This one is… different. It just shows the rabbit (Saisei, not Hittori) laughing and rolling around in a field, clutching her stomach as a two-headed raven sits on a fence post, apparently telling her stories. But the next panel shows the dragon, Purotekuta, swooping in to ruin their fun. The caption reads ‘But Saisei’s favorite was a new playmate, Fukushu. He would tell her stories, and she would laugh for hours on end.’ And then on the panel with Purotekuta, the caption reads ‘But they drew attention…’)

(Okay… So who the hell is Fukushu? Whoever it is, Celia clearly seems to like him. Probably the first real friend she made after she escaped Curdun Cay. But then Augustine came in and… did something to her friend?)

(Google translate, don’t fail me now. Fukushu is apparently Japanese for…)

(……. Accomplice.)

(A two-headed raven… Just like the logo on my vest.)

(Oh… I see… I’m Fukushu.)

(I’m the first ‘friend’ that Celia has ever made. My fights with the DUP, my antics across Seattle. Those were the ‘stories’ that Celia laughed and laughed at. The whole time I’ve been here, I’ve been… entertaining her.)

(Until Augustine came back and ruined ‘our’ fun.)

(Once more, another note on the back…)

—-
*Talk about roadkill! Say goodbye to the general, and all of his meddling.*

*I’m so proud of what we accomplished together, and to have helped guide you here. To your true destiny. Defender of Conduits, destroyer of corruption.*

*I’ll see you soon. Unless you see me first~*
—-

(The general? Like, the general who orchestrated this whole operation? What does she mean… Oh god… the last van, I… I thought I checked them all, made sure they were all empty before I blew them up! But he… he was tied up and gagged in the back, I couldn’t hear him! Celia must have… And I just…)

(Oh fuck… Oh fucking hell… )

——————

Since the Paper Trail website is no longer functioning, this entire mission chain of Second Son is missing a whole lot of context of what is going on, why Delsin is going from dead body to dead body, and also a TON of integral world-building. So, I figured for those who are replaying the game or even just playing the game for the first time and are missing that context, I decided to write out a novelization of Paper Trail's ARG segments to kinda provide that context. I wrote it in the form of Delsin's stream of consciousness, piecing together all of the clues and figuring out all of the puzzles. It is written from the perspective of Good Delsin, but I imagine it'd be easy enough to mentally reword certain things for an Evil Delsin playthrough. I'll be posting the other parts very soon. Hope you all enjoy!

(Part 4: Lifeline)

(There’s still one thing I don’t get about all of this. If Celia is targeting anti-Conduit people with political influence, people who have the power and positions to make life harder for Conduits, why is she also framing her fellow Conduits for her crimes? Fetch, Eugene, Hank, she put all of them on the chopping block despite the fact that she seems to be doing all of this for Conduits.)

(You’d think, if this was really about protecting Conduit kind from the ‘bullies’ out to get us, she wouldn’t be throwing her fellow Conduits under the bus to cover her own tracks. Or does she just not see the hypocrisy? If there’s one thing I learned from Augustine, it’s that people can justify some of the most warped, twisted acts under the name of ‘the greater good’. Hell, even Winegard, corrupt as he was, still framed his anti-Conduit act as ‘protecting’ the normals.)

(I barely managed to make it five steps from that parking lot where Winegard’s car blew up before Celia showed up again. I didn’t even bother trying to talk to her, I know she was never going to say anything. She’s got her own way of communicating what she wants with me, all I can do right now is play her game and see where it leads.)

(Another chase through the city, but this time, she didn’t lead me to any dead body, or even a crime scene for that matter. Just led me up to this big tower with an, admittedly, pretty impressive view of the Space Needle. I still remember when I kicked the DUP’s communications hub off that thing. Good times.)

(I didn’t have time to enjoy the view for long, though. Celia’s gone again, with another dove left behind. Let’s see where the story goes next…)

(Just going by a glance, I’m guessing this takes place immediately after the page where the dragon, Augustine, was carrying the rabbit, Celia, to the mountain. This page gives us a much closer shot of the mountain… which has a whole bunch of prison cells built directly into the rock walls. Three of the cells have some familiar characters in them, Inazuma, Ushinatta, and Kemuri. Aka, Fetch, Eugene and Hank. The Seattle Three, as the news called them when they first escaped that transport truck.)

(The dragon is putting the rabbit in one of these cells, saying ‘Your new home.’ Okay, this one is easy enough to figure out. The mountain is Curdun Cay, Augustine’s tailor made ‘sanctuary’ for Conduits. This is the moment Celia became her prisoner.)

(Check the back for a note…)

—-
*The dove flaps its wings, carrying hope for the caged. Hunted by hatred.*

*Everyone lives in a cage, Delsin. It’s just that some have more room than others. I hated every second of Curdun Cay. The concrete, the glass windows, the pure silence. The only thing that ever made me happy was my paper ‘privileges’. One blank sheet a day to draw whatever I wanted, write whatever came to me, or shape however I pleased. Strangely, I always chose to make doves. Maybe it was the idea of flying free and its symbolism of peace. Or maybe it was the simple fact that I couldn’t turn my head around without seeing the DUP logo everywhere. Either way, it’s part of me now, forever.*

*The normals are on a rampage. Some believe that peace is only reserved for them.*

*99902XXXXXX*
—-

(Another file access number. By this rate, I’m gonna have every single DUP file saved on my phone’s hard drive. But this is… different from Celia’s usual games. It’s almost like… like she’s asking for my help, to prevent something bad from happening as opposed to just making me the witness to some crime. Course, I shouldn’t assume anything. Knowing Celia, I’m sure this is all some big elaborate test. Either way, I should probably try to get ahead of this ‘rampage’, whatever that ends up being.)

(Okay, plug in the file number into the intranet and…)

(We got another memorandum this time, a general notice to DUP personnel concerning Lifeline Purity. I know those guys, they’re a bunch of anti-Conduit protestors who have this die-hard belief that the Conduit Gene is caused by drug abuse. It’s not, that theory’s been disproven to hell and back by scientists all over the world, but these Lifeline idiots stubbornly hold on to that idea because it gives them an excuse to target people suffering from drug addiction as ‘bio-terrorists in waiting’. Just another method of ‘get the scum off the streets’.)

(I guess the DUP tolerated them because an anti-Conduit protest group is always good for their PR, but now they’re thinking of cracking down on Lifeline because they’re starting to escalate to vigilantism against suspected Conduits, and even the DUP can see that that’s a disaster waiting to happen.)

(Uh oh, spoke too soon. Disaster may have already struck. The memorandum references a stabbing victim two days ago, with the primary suspect fleeing the scene wearing a Lifeline shirt. Lifeline is already starting to escalate their ‘protests’ to straight up just killing suspected Conduits, and who knows if the victim even was a Conduit!)

(Okay, there’s a link to another file with evidence the DUPs collected from the crime scene. Let’s see what they found…)

(Looks like a shredded up pamphlet, but the DUPs were already so kind to recreate the original from the scraps for me.)

—-
*NO DRUGS, NO TO BIO-TERRORISM*

*Sick and tired of hearing about the rights of bio-terrorists? Protect your rights. Join the cause today!*

*Lifeline: Pure Body, Pure Soul. Visit our website at lifelinepurity.com*
—-

(What a bunch of chumps. Hang on, there’s a message written on it…)

—-
*Vince, Operation: No Mercy is tonight. Details on the private message board. New passcode is 54188XXXXX.*
—-

(Operation: No Mercy? I have no idea what that is, but it definitely sounds like something I’d want to stop. Okay, so, just hazarding a guess here, but I’m assuming Vince is the guy who stabbed our victim and shredded this pamphlet to cover his tracks. Not that it really helped him when the scraps can just be rearranged like this. Most criminals really aren’t masterminds, are they?)

(Okay, the message mentioned something about a private message board, probably on Lifeline’s website. Let me just…)

(Ugh, the puritanicalness is just… oozing off this homepage. I feel like I need a shower. Nothing but virtue signaling about how Conduit powers are ‘unnatural’ and how any rights given to Conduits are rights taken away from normal people. Yeah, cause that’s totally how civil rights work, you dumbasses.)

(Okay, ignoring all of that for now, I gotta find this message board. Going through the forums… Mostly just a bunch of people complaining about Conduits existing. A lot of this is just envy that we have powers and they don’t. Some of it is just your usual forum bullshitting.)

(Funny flick? That’s an… odd board to have in the middle of the premier Conduit-Hate Forum. Wait a minute, the OP’s username is ‘Vengeful-Vince’. Now what are the odds… Yep, it’s a private board, needs a password. Let me just…)

(Okay, I’m in. Now let’s see what this ‘funny flick’ is supposed to be…)

(Oh god… This is a snuff film! They are literally just… just beating a man to death because they think he’s a Conduit! He’s begging for his life and they just… they’re just not stopping! If he was a Conduit, he’d just use his powers to stop them! These people are animals!)

(God, and to make matters worse, all of the comments are loving it, they’re praising these psychopaths for ‘doing what the DUP won’t’. One of them is even bragging about how they gave these psychos a list of ‘Conduit-Positives’ that they swiped from the DUP. So this guy had the Conduit Gene, but it wasn’t activated. His powers, if he even had any, were completely and totally dormant. He wasn’t a threat to anybody and they just-!)

(Okay, whatever issues I have with Celia, she is right that these bastards need to be stopped before they kill anyone else. I need to focus on stopping this ‘Operation: No Mercy’, then I can worry about whatever Celia’s long-game is.)

(Vengeful-Vince just posted a new post at the bottom of the board, bragging about how he’s got eight body bags lined up and ready to burn. Jesus Christ, eight?! These creeps already killed eight people, who didn’t even have powers! But Vince made a huge mistake. He posted a picture of him and his goons, literally posing with the dead bodies like a selfie. These people are sick! But I know those neon signs behind them, mainly because I’ve drained them more than once.)

(Thanks for telling me exactly where you assholes are…)

——————

(So, bad news and good news.)

(Bad news, when I got to the site where those Lifeline pricks were planning on burning the bodies, they had already scattered like roaches back to whatever holes they crawled out of.)

(Good news, they hadn’t gotten around to actually burning the bodies yet because apparently some Good Samaritan decided to call the police on them. The police arrived, Vince and his goons took off, now the police have cordoned off the area, waiting to hear back from the coroner’s office to haul the bodies over.)

(Good on the boys in blue, but Vince and the other Lifeliners are still a threat. It’s a long shot, but maybe they left some evidence on the bodies themselves. It’s pretty much child’s play for someone with my powers to hop in, grab the tags off the body bags, and hop back out. Easy peasy.)

(So, number one observation with a bullet, the police didn’t put these tags on the body. These are all DUP issued tags, with a category for writing down powers. Only instead of the usual clinical talk the DUP use, they all say things like ‘Electric freak’, ‘Smoke monster’, ‘Magnetic deviant’. And the cause of death on every single one just reads ‘Justice’.)

(So I’m guessing the Lifeliners put these tags on the body in some kind of sick, twisted way of pretending legitimacy about the whole thing. First the list of Conduit-Positives, now these DUP body tags? Where the hell is Vince and his gang getting all of this DUP stuff? Who’s supplying them?)

(Huh. There’s something weird at the bottom of all of these tags. There’s a row of eleven squares, each one with a random assortment of red dots. Above the row is just the words ‘For Internal Use Only’. So, only someone in the DUP is supposed to make sense of what these red dots mean?)

(Hey, wait a minute… There are eleven squares. I wonder if I just press all these tags together, hold them up to the sun…)

(Bingo! The dots are all arranged to form an 11 digit code. Another file access number. Man, I am getting really good at this!)

(Okay, what does the good Ol’ intranet have for me?)

(Huh? Another one of Celia’s doves? That’s kinda random? Says here the DUP flagged this dove specifically because she made it immediately after a visit to the DUP’s morgue as part of her ‘training’ by Augustine. What the hell kind of training involves exposing a young girl to a bunch of dead bodies?)

(Okay, so… It’s weird that this number sent me to this file specifically, right? If I assume that Celia would have known that I would eventually see this dove, then that means she must have known that I would have eventually found these body tags.)

(Oh, duh. Her trip to the morgue. That must have been when she set up these specific tags to have these specific dots. But then, how did she now that these eight tags would end up in the hands of Vince and his gang? Unless she’s the one supplying them with DUP equipment like the list, but that goes completely against what I’m pretty sure is her whole mission statement.)

(No use speculating about that for right now. Let’s see what’s on this dove…)

(Another manga page, this one shows the dragon looming over the rabbit girl in the wreckage of her village. I guess this page takes place between the dragon scaring off the foxes and the dragon taking the rabbit to the mountain prison. The dragon says ‘I am Purotekuta. The Kyoi will return in greater numbers. You must not stay here.’ The rabbit responds ‘How can I trust you?’. The dragon responds ‘What choice do you have?’.)

(Google translate to the rescue. So, Purotekuta means Protector and Kyoi means Threat. Makes sense, Augustine did everything in her power to protect Celia from anti-Conduit mobs after the Beast’s rampage, for as long as that lasted.)

(So far, we have the rabbit, who is Celia. The dragon, Purotekuta, who is Augustine. The foxes, or the Kyoi, who are the anti-Conduit mobs, and we got the Seattle Three. Inazuma, Ushinatta, and Kemuri. Fetch, Eugene and Hank.)

(Another note from Celia on the back, though this one reads more like a journal entry. Probably so that the DUP wouldn’t piece together that this was a message to some poor chump in the future.)

—-
*Augustine took me to the Curdun Cay morgue instead of skill training today. She said she wanted to show me what happens to Conduits on the outside. There were so many body bags filled with violently murdered victims, brought here for autopsies before they can be released to their families. I didn’t want to look at their faces, but I couldn’t help it. They weren’t bio-terrorists. They were mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers - People’s best friends. None of them deserved this, none of them asked to be this way.*

*I also met the Chief Science Officer, Tyler Bennett, down there. He’s mean. When Augustine wasn’t paying attention, he whispered in my ear that this is what freaks deserve. Does he know I’m a freak too? I don’t like him very much…*
—-

(Tyler Bennett, charming guy. I don’t care how much you hate Conduits, who the hell says that to a little girl?)

(There is one other thing. The file that had the picture of this newest dove also flagged an incident report of ‘inappropriate behavior’ by a DUP personnel. Did they actually manage to catch Bennett’s crack against Celia?)

(Ah, that explains it. Augustine read Celia’s note, and read Bennett the riot act. Course, Bennett denies it, saying Celia was just ‘traumatized’ by the bodies and must have ‘imagined’ it. Imagined it, my ass. I don’t think Augustine or the DUP’s internal affairs actually bought that, but it doesn’t look like they had enough evidence to really do anything about it. Still, Augustine told IA to flag any further ‘suspicious behavior’ to Bennett’s personal dossier, which is very helpfully linked on this incident report, thank you DUPs.)

(Huh, this guy is actually pretty integral to the DUPs whole operation. Apparently, he invented the technology that lets drones use Blast Shards as a power source to locate other source of Ray Field Radiation. Namely, Conduits. Guess I’ll have to send this guy a thank-you card or something, considering I’ve been busting up those drones to absorb those Blast Shards.)

(Security notes haven’t flagged any suspicious behavior since the morgue incident. They even went so far as to review their background checks on Bennett and his family. The only thing of note that they could find is that he spent a lot of money donating to political advocacy groups with strong stances on ‘bio-terrorist’ suppression, testing and monitoring.)

(Three guesses which group that ended up being.)

(Huh. That’s interesting. IA also flagged an email to Bennett… from none other than Samuel Fishbein. One of the three ‘bullies’ from Celia’s ‘Eugene Episode’. Says here that they straight up stole a proprietary Conduit testing program developed by the Conduit Rights League. The same one who pressured Fishbein into giving a public response demonizing bio-terrorists. The CRL developed the testing program to normalize Conduits, to show that we weren’t actually as dangerous as the DUP was making us out to be, but Fishbein had the program stolen and repurposed into filling out their list of bio-terrorist threats to arrest, putting Bennett in charge of integrating the program into the DUP’s network.)

(That must be the list of Conduit-Positives that Vince and his gang are using for their hit-list.)

(There’s another file access number in the email that’s supposed to link to that Threat Assessment List… But I guess the file was corrupted? For some reason, it’s not letting me access it…)

(One mystery at a time. There’s one last thing in IA’s report on Bennett. They flagged an interesting developing relationship between Bennett and a DUP private named Felix Coogan, despite the fact that the two seemingly had no prior relationship before the morgue incident. Several phone calls and text messages between the two.)

(Oh, and how interesting. IA made a note of the fact that Coogan used his DUP issued phone to browse Lifeline’s forums on an average of four hours a day. On company time, no less! Shame on you, Private Coogan. Also, surveillance equipment apparently caught Bennett at a ‘Walk for Purity’ protest march that Lifeline set up. I guess IA was under the suspicion that he was setting up to meet with Coogan at the event.)

(One more thing. When DUP’s IT department requested Bennett’s DUP issued phone for maintenance, he routinely denied the request. He almost got IA involved before he finally gave the phone up, but it was completely bricked from water damage. He claims that he denied the request out of embarrassment from dropping his phone in a fountain, but IA already flagged a text message between Bennett and Coogan only 20 minutes before Bennett turned in his broken phone. Bennett was clearly trying to hide something.)

(Two more access numbers. One for a dossier on Coogan himself, and one from the IT department on their attempts at repairing Bennett’s phone. I’ll check out Coogan first. Know thy enemy, and all that…)

(His record before joining the DUP was spotless. Brief time in the military, brief time in law enforcement, the usual career path to a paramilitary group like the DUP. It’s only after he joined up that he started displaying some real attitude problems. It started with him getting into arguments with higher ups about the DUP employing Conduits as field agents. Makes sense. Most people join up with the DUP because they hate Conduits, and now they’re being asked to work alongside Conduits? Bet that didn’t earn him any points with Augustine. Things only get worse and worse after that. Repeated incident reports of Coogan using unnecessary force to detain surrendering Conduits, verbal abuse against Conduit prisoners, even disobeying a direct order to NOT pursue a Conduit-Positive suspect. The man’s a cowboy, pure and simple. This isn’t someone who joined the DUP because he believed in the cause, he joined specifically because he wanted to hurt Conduits.)

(Okay, let’s see how far the IT department got in repairing Bennett’s phone…)

(Not very far, apparently. They were only able to recover one text chain between the two…)

—-
Felix: Why do you need me?

Tyler: Because I’m on their radar and you’re not. You’ll be well compensated, and I know that you agree that bio-terrorists need to be handled… differently than what Augustine is doing.

Felix: I don’t even want this list in my hands. Feels dangerous.

Tyler: Dangerous pays the bills. Just don’t show it to anyone. You want to get paid, not killed, right?

Felix: Is that a threat?!

Tyler: No, it’s a warning, but not from me. If anyone finds out, we’re both as good as dead.
—-

(So, Bennett got his hands on the Conduit-Positives list and handed it off to Coogan, apparently paying him to do… something with the list, I’m assuming handing it over to Lifeline so that they could do the dirty work of killing Conduit-Positives for them. Bennett’s probably the one who corrupted the list’s file on the intranet so that nobody could piece together what the victims had in common.)

(But that’s not the important part. The important part is that this was recovered from Bennett’s DUP issued phone… Which means that Coogan’s employee ID is right there at the top of the text chain.)

(You know, to this day, I still have no idea who that DUP whistleblower who put that tracking program on my phone is, but he’s really coming through for me now.)

(Okay, Coogan. Let’s have a chat…)

——————

(For once, Delsin Rowe gets an actual win.)

(I tracked down Coogan’s phone to the docks where he was in the middle of a deal, trying to sell another page of the Conduit-Positives list to Vince. They both took one look at me and immediately folded like cheap laundry, begging me not to kill them if they just handed over the remaining list. Coogan even assured me that, because Bennett scrubbed the list from the DUPs intranet, these physical papers were the only existing copies left. I destroy these, and these people never have to worry about being threatened again. Hell, Coogan even sweetened the deal by offering me a data drive he stole from Bennett’s computer, I guess as insurance in case Bennett ever turned on him. So much for Honor Among Thieves.)

(I’m gonna be honest… I was real tempted to say ‘no deal’ and just take the list and drive anyway. It’s not like they could stop me. I let these assholes go, who knows how long it will be before they do this racket all over again. Sure, the DUP were already on their scent, but with Augustine out of the picture? Who knows if they’ll actually do anything about it.)

(Then again, I’m not police. I have no way of actually detaining or arresting these guys. I really only have two choices here. Let them go… or kill them.)

(……..)

(I did what I was supposed to do. Let’s just leave it at that.)

(Either way, I got the list and they don’t. I’m calling that a good day.)

(Celia showed up again. To congratulate or reprimand me, I don’t really know and I don’t really care. But she did leave another dove behind.)

(The manga page this time showed absolute bedlam. Inazuma, Ushinatta, and Kemuri, all escaping the mountain prison and running away towards freedom. Purotekuta roaring in rage from the top of her mountain as she sends a legion of concrete wyverns after them. I’m guessing the wyverns are all meant to be the DUPs. I can only assume that this was the big breakout when Hank crashed that transport truck right outside my tribe’s longhouse. But there’s something else. Just in the background, hidden amidst all this chaos… was a little rabbit, making her own escape while all of the wyverns’ attention was on Inazuma, Ushinatta and Kemuri. The caption box reads ‘Saisei left and went out into the world. The others found their own way out’.)

(I’m guessing Saisei is the name of the rabbit, but I thought the rabbit’s name was Hittori? I guess Saisei is who she became while in Curdun Cay, a way to reinvent herself from the scared little girl she used to be. So… is this implying that Celia used the Seattle Three’s escape attempt as a distraction from her own escape?)

(But then… why would Celia need to escape at all if she killed herself? Or was the suicide part of the cover that allowed Celia, Saisei, out into the world. Come to think of it, the body the DUP found in Celia’s cell was ‘mangled beyond recognition’. Who’s really to say that body was even Celia to begin with?)

(As always, there’s a note on the back…)

—-
*The damage is done. The world wants us dead. Conduits beware.*

*The body bag is a cruel irony, isn’t it? It attempts to cover up a gruesome sight, yet it exudes a deathly aura all its own. The normals hate Conduits because we’re different, and now they demand our blood. Victimization yields vigilantism, and we’re all caught in the crossfire.*

*And then there’s Bennett. I always knew he was a jerk, but now he’s a jerk who’s ushering the military into the business of rounding up Conduits. They must have payed him a not-so-pretty penny to rat us out. The doves are bleeding, and the foxes are coming.*
—-

(As eloquent as always, Celia. Wonder what show of horrors you’ll have for me next time?)

(Ah, right, I still have Bennett’s data drive. I’m sure Eugene won’t mind me using his laptop at his new hideout. It’s a pretty quick neon dash over there.)

(Damn, Eugene, nice digs. Some real ‘superhero lair’ vibes here. Course, I could do without all the Heaven’s Hellfire posters everywhere. There are other games, dude.)

(Okay, there’s his laptop. Let’s see what kind of skeletons Bennett had in his closet.)

(There’s not much here. Just a digital copy of the ‘sample list’ they already gave Vince and his gang. Nothing I can really do for these poor souls now. At least I kept them from getting their hands on the rest of the list. There’s an audio recording made by Bennett himself, almost a confession of why he was selling the list off. He felt that Augustine, a Conduit, being made the Director of the DUP was a ‘corruption’ of the DUP’s ‘true’ purpose. Nothing short of eradicating bio-terrorists completely. After all, why would the government be entrusting the detainment and incarceration of Conduits to a Conduit who might sympathize with them? Clearly, Augustine was the problem. Clearly, Augustine had to be worked around, her authority circumvented so that true believers like Bennett and Coogan could do the real work. Killing the freaks. He even admitted that, after Lifeline proved his point with a trial run, he was going to sell the list again, this time to the military. Jesus, I managed to get my hands on this list just in time.)

——————

Since the Paper Trail website is no longer functioning, this entire mission chain of Second Son is missing a whole lot of context of what is going on, why Delsin is going from dead body to dead body, and also a TON of integral world-building. So, I figured for those who are replaying the game or even just playing the game for the first time and are missing that context, I decided to write out a novelization of Paper Trail’s ARG segments to kinda provide that context. I wrote it in the form of Delsin’s stream of consciousness, piecing together all of the clues and figuring out all of the puzzles. It is written from the perspective of Good Delsin, but I imagine it’d be easy enough to mentally reword certain things for an Evil Delsin playthrough. I’ll be posting the other parts very soon. Hope you all enjoy!

(Part 3: Hank)

(Celia’s back.)

(She’s got some crazy timing to send me on another wild goose chase. We’re still recovering from our fight with Augustine, and she chooses now to make her big comeback? What the hell does she want?)

(You know the drill by now. Celia appears, taunts me to chase her, I follow her to a dead body, she disappears and leaves me to pick up the pieces. I still don’t know why Celia is killing these people, but she clearly wants me to understand… something. Some grand message attached to all of these murders.)

(This time was different, though. She brought me to a crime scene, all right. Lots of police everywhere… But no body. Just a burnt out husk of a blown up car. So… This time it was only an attempted murder? Why show me one of her botched attempts? Just looking around the crime scene, scorch marks everywhere, I figured this time, she was aiming to frame Hank Daughtry. Bit late on the draw there, seeing as how Hank is no longer even in the picture.)

(That’s another difference from the previous two outings. Before, it felt like she was specifically targeting my friends in her smear campaigns. But Hank ain’t no friend of mine. I could care less if he gets pinched for murder. So she’s not just targeting Conduits who are close to me, she’s just targeting Conduits in general. Which brings me back to that one, central question that I just cannot find an answer to: Why me?)

(Alright, Celia, I know the drill. Detective Rowe is on the case. Let’s see. Nothing really much to go off of here. Another one of her origami doves and a whole pile of political flyers for some campaign. There’s also some graffiti on the wall here. I wonder if… Nope, false alarm. It’s just a Sly Cooper logo. Man, I haven’t played Sly Cooper in years…)

(Focus, Delsin.)

(This one looks like a direct aftermath to the dragon scaring away the foxes from the rabbit village. One of the rabbits is huddled over a dying rabbit, crying, with a speech bubble that reads ‘Goodbye, sweet Hittori’ as the dying rabbit passes away, the younger rabbit crying for her Mama. I can only assume that this rabbit, Hittori, is Celia herself. The last survivor of the Beast’s rampage through her home. The shadow of the dragon is back, swooping over her head. She looks… frightened by it. Weird, considering it was the dragon who saved her from those foxes, but now she’s afraid of it?)

(Got another note from Celia on the back…)

—-
*Warm enough for you? Contrary to opinion, revenge is served hot.*

*Senators and death threats go hand in hand, but from my experience? Conduits rarely miss their target. Looks like someone is burning for attention, and now they’ve got ours.*

*As far as dying is concerned, some people are just better at it than others.*

*43300XXXXXX*
—-

(Another 11 digit code. Another file access number for the intranet. I’ll check that out in a second. So, this was an attempted hit. But did Celia actually just mess up her kill, or is the botch itself part of her whole elaborate theater. She’s clearly trying to tell me a story through these murders…)

(Okay, let’s check that new file. Hmm, looks like a picture of the inside of a cell at Curdun Cay. Probably Celia’s cell, just going by all the paper doves strewn about on the floor. There’s some weird scratchings on the windows. Kinda looks like a spider-web, but with numbers scratched into various random corners. Another puzzle like the connect the dots one? I can’t quite figure out what I’m supposed to do, though?)

(Time stamp shows that this was immediately after the ‘incident’ where Celia supposedly killed herself. So this was the state of the cell immediately after they wheeled her body away. Knowing Celia, she must have known that these pictures would have made it on the intranet where some poor dupe she’d rope into her game would be seeing them.)

(The forensic team took some closeups of one of the doves unfolded. Another manga page. This one has the dragon carrying the rabbit away in its claws. The rabbit is crying out ‘Your claws are hurting me!’. The dragons responds ‘This is the only way I know how to hold you.’ The rabbit responds ‘Well, then I’d rather not be held at all.’ The page ends with the dragon flying the rabbit to what looks like a mountain, with the rabbit asking ‘Where are you taking me?’)

(‘This is the only way I know how to hold you.’ I’m starting to get an idea of who the dragon is supposed to be.)

(And the backside of the page is… another spider web with numbers? But a different arrangement of numbers than the one scratched into the window. It’s also going in a different direction from the other one. Am I supposed to fit these two together somehow?)

(Oh, that’s neat. It’s not an image, it’s an interactive panoramic. You can actually change the camera angle to see every side of the cell… and there’s another spider web with numbers on the opposite window from the first. Okay, clearly these magic numbers are supposed to mean something.)

(Huh. Actually, come to think of it, the spider web on the opposite wall and the spider web on the back of the manga page are the exact same shape. More than that, the manga page’s spider web doesn’t just have numbers in the corner like the ones on the window, but circles with numbers next to them. Almost like the numbers on the window web are meant to fit inside the circles of the page web. And while the window web has a bunch of random numbers that don’t seem to have any kind of pattern, the circles on the page web are clearly numbered in order from 1 to 6. So I just take the numbers that fit into each of the six circles, order them appropriately, and…)

(Yep, another 11 digit code. Just plug that into the ol’ intranet and…)

(… Okay, new rules. It just links me to a set of instructions on how to make an origami dove. The same dove that Celia’s been leaving for me. Why on Earth would this be in the DUP’s intranet? Did Celia leave this file here? It’s one thing for her to somehow know all these file numbers, but to be able to leave a file of her own implies that she has direct access to DUP servers. That’s a lot easier said than done.)

(There’s also a template here for where the lines of the origami folds would be if you fold it out… but there’s also some weird markings next to each fold. Ah, gotcha. They’re numbers that have been broken up. You fold the paper correctly, the numbers become legible. Okay, hold on, let me see if…)

(Grabbing a sheet of paper from a trash can. Not my most glamorous moment of superheroism, but needs must and all that. Okay, write down the markings, fold it here, there, up and around… Ha, look at that. My own little dove.)

(Another 11 digit code? Y’know, you could have just made this the answer to the spider web puzzle, Celia. This is getting a little ridiculous.)

(Well, might as well see what this code gives me. Knowing my luck, it’s probably a crossword puzzle…)

(Huh. Okay, no puzzle this time. Just an audio recording.)

(……. Oh… I kinda wish I didn’t listen to that.)

(It’s a recorded suicide note by Celia, detailing how she was able to sneak little bits of paper into her cell, piece by piece, until she had enough to make the swarm of doves that would… that would do the job for her. She came to this decision when she heard that the DUP was transferring her to a military holding facility, back when the DUP was under threat of being shut down. She couldn’t handle that. As bad as Curdun Cay was, at least she could use her powers, if only under supervision. The military wouldn’t have allowed her even that. So… she used her powers one last time.)

(I still don’t know for certain if Celia is really dead. If the paper Conduit I’ve been chasing around is her ghost, just another paper Conduit using her name, or if it really is Celia and she somehow managed to fake her death.)

(Either way, this girl went through something that no one so young, Conduit or otherwise, should ever have to go through.)

(I should go back to that interactive panoramic of her cell. I only checked about half the angles and there’s still that other spider web that I haven’t cracked yet.)

(Yep, sure enough, another dove and another manga page. This one’s a big spread panel of the dragon itself, flaring its wings as it presents itself to the young rabbit girl. It’s savior… or so the dragon thinks.)

(Now that I get a good look at this dragon, it looks almost… mechanical. Industrial. Like it was made of earth and metal twisted together into the shape of a dragon.)

(I had my suspicions before, now I’m almost dead certain. The dragon is meant to be Augustine.)

(I remember Augustine telling me, through my telepathy when I absorbed her power, of a young girl she rescued in the wreckage of the Beast’s rampage. How she protected this girl against anti-Conduit mobs who wanted both of them dead… And how she betrayed this little girl when the military showed up. A show of loyalty to the military that she was still ‘on their side.’ The little girl was arrested and became the first prisoner of Curdun Cay, beginning Augustine’s twisted crusade of ‘saving’ Conduit-kind by locking us away for our own ‘safety’.)

(Naturally, that little girl… was Celia Penderghast. The very ‘ghost’ I’ve been chasing.)

(‘This is the only way I know to hold you.’)

(Back of the page is exactly what I expect. The cipher for the other window’s spider web. Plug those numbers into the circles, get myself another 11 digit code, type that code into the intranet, and…)

(Huh. Looks like an incident report, though I use the term ‘incident’ loosely. It just mentions that two Conduit prisoners of Curdun Cay started getting friendly with each other, building a rapport. Which apparently even that is too much freedom for Augustine to allow us. I recognize one of the inmate ID numbers as Celia’s. Whoever this other Conduit was, apparently he took on a sort of ‘protector’ role for Celia, keeping her safe from bullies. Oh, hey, it’s not a manga page, but there’s a drawing from Celia attached to the report. I guess this is her interpretation of the Conduit who helped her. Some badass looking salamander ronin. There’s some writing at the bottom…)

—-
*My new friend was sent away today. It was my fault, I’m sure. I was just trying to be nice, like he was for me. He told me I reminded him of his daughter. And now, like my real parents, he’s gone too.*
—-

(Man, I wonder who this other Conduit was? Celia clearly cared about him a lot. Let me just plug in this other Conduit’s ID number and-)

(Hank?! Hank freaking Daughtry! That asshole redneck was Celia’s protector?!)

(Geez, you think you know a guy.)

(Psych profile on Hank is pretty much what I already knew about the guy. Career criminal who escalated once his smoke powers manifested. Serial escape artist who busted out of numerous prisons. Played nice for the DUPs in order to feel out their weaknesses for his next big break out attempt. The very one that put him right on my doorstep, kickstarting my life as a badass smoke shooter myself. Though, I wear smoke way better than he ever did.)

(Huh. Says here he took ‘immense pride in never harming a civilian’ during any of his heists. That’s… admirable I guess.)

(He’s still an asshole.)

(Hm? There’s a new access number at the very bottom. Another incident report of an eyewitness who claims to have seen Hank after he escaped from that transport. Probably nothing, especially considering that Hank is already long gone, but doesn’t hurt to check it.)

(Oh. Actually, this is very relevant to me right now. The witness was for… well, the very event that I’m looking into right now! The blown up car and the attempted assassination of… US Senator Geoffrey Winegard. That’s a pretty high-profile target for a safe-cracker like Hank to go after. But the details of the eye-witness account are… weird.)

(The witness claims to have seen a man who matches Hank’s description displaying smoke-like abilities. But when the DUP went to investigate the scene, they didn’t find any trace of Ray Field radiation (the stuff that gives all Conduits their powers) and they even found forensic evidence of a blasting cap being used to blow up the car. So even the DUP were able to piece together that this attempted hit was a frame job. But that doesn’t change the fact that the witness more than likely did see Hank at the scene. He just happened to be nearby when it went down. Wonder if Celia somehow managed to plan that?)

(Looks like they scrubbed a surveillance camera as part of the report… but it’s not showing the lot where the car blew up. What is that place? And what does it have to do with the attempted hit?)

(Oh, hey, I still have that tracking program Eugene put on my phone. Bet if I just take that camera ID and plug it in… Got it. I got a signal lock on that camera.)

(Ha, in all this intranet diving, I totally forgot all about this flier I took. It’s definitely for that Winegard guy, apparently for a re-election campaign. Oh, there’s a note taped to the back…)

—-
*Heroes are false prophets, and they all must die! Heroes like Geoffrey Winegard.*

*I can burn entire cities with my Conduit mind, but I’ll settle for burning the Senator before he has a chance to enact his legislation. If Winegard has his way, he would keep bio-terrorists like me off the street. But my vengeance cannot be contained.*
—-

(So that’s the play, Celia? Winegard is trying to implement some new anti-Conduit law, and you’re targeting him while also framing Hank for the deed. I thought he was your friend?)

(Wonder what this new legislation even is? This Winegard guy probably has a public website, maybe I can find something there…)

(Immediately, there’s a video right on the front page of Winegard giving a response to the attempted assassination. Also, this was apparently the second time an attempt was made on his life?! Celia really has it out for this guy, but why is she only now just getting sloppy? Gotta love that his first response to having his life threatened for a second time was to immediately go on his website and make a video about he’s so not scared shitless of the ‘bio-terrorist’ scum. He’s definitely riding a campaign of anti-Conduit rhetoric, the type of guy who thinks our very existence is a blight on the world and won’t rest until we’re completely wiped off the face of the map.)

(Man, I hate to give Augustine any amount of credit. What she did was wrong, and she was insane for thinking it would ever work in the long run, but people like this Winegard guy definitely show how Conduits like Augustine could be pushed to those kinds of extremes. If they didn’t go out of their way to villainize us, we wouldn’t have to play the part of the villain!)

(Damn it, now I’m sympathizing with Augustine!)

(Alright, focus Delsin. You’re trying to find out what Winegard’s new legislation is. What exactly spurred Celia on to terrorize this guy so much? Okay, auto-biographical stuff, auto-biographical stuff, auto-biographical stuff, man this guy really likes talking about himself. Who gives a shit if a Senator is a ‘family man’?)

(Wait, here we go. The Freedom for Normal Americans Act…)

(Oh… Oh, holy hell! This is way worse than I ever imagined! If this guy gets his way, not only will the very ‘crime’ of being a Conduit be a life sentence without any chance of parole, not only will just ‘failing to report’ a Conduit to the military be considered a felony crime, but he also wants to implement mandatory testing of every single American citizen, starting with kindergartners! And he wants to imprison everyone who just happens to be related to a Conduit, just in case they might also have the Conduit gene!)

(This is… This goes so far beyond anti-Conduit legislation, this is a manifesto for a Conduit genocide! How can this be legal?!)

(Do I… Should I really be trying to save this asshole? If this Act actually passes, that’s it. The game is over. Conduits will be systematically hunted down until there’s none of us left. Hell, even non-Conduits are in danger just by being related to us! And you can bet your ass that there’d be some ‘enterprising’ figures who would use these new laws to target political rivals. All they’d have to do is say ‘That guy is definitely a bio-terrorist’ and they’d be able to ruin someone’s life with a pointed finger.)

(Maybe… Maybe Celia has the right idea for once? Maybe I should just… look the other way?)

(……… Goddamnit.)

(Well, I’m not deciding anything just sitting here. I still have that camera to check out. Let’s see what I can find at the other site.)

——————

(Okay, went to the site, found the camera, destroyed it (for the greater good, of course) and took its data drive. Had to defrag it before I could access its files. Memo to myself, thank Eugene profusely for all of the hacking lessons.)

(Okay, what am I looking at. I’m seeing a car parked in the lot the camera was pointing at. There’s another car coming in, some guy is getting out and walking to the first car…)

(Woah. Okay, that’s cool. This DUP camera can apparently run facial recognition software and cross-reference it with their database of Conduits. But the guy in the footage isn’t flagging any matches, so whoever it is, it can’t be a Conduit. He’s doing something to the underside of the parked car, he’s walking away…)

(Yep, there it is. The car exploded. This must have been the first assassination attempt. Weirdly, the guy who planted the bomb stuck around and watched the whole thing, so he must have known that the car was empty when he detonated the bomb. That settles it, these assassination attempts are clearly staged. They’re not actually trying to kill Winegard, they’re just making it look like they are. Or rather, that Hank is.)

(But the biggest question mark here is… That’s clearly not Celia planting the bomb. At first, I was absolutely certain that Celia was the one doing all these frame jobs against Conduits, but then who the heck is this guy? Is he an accomplice to Celia or… Did I maybe jump too quickly to Celia as a suspect? Is she actually trying to put me on the scent of the actual framers? Argh, this is too confusing! I wish, for once, she’d actually just stick around and talk to me instead of doing this whole breadcrumbs routine!)

(Okay, focus. The camera was able to flag the license plate on the bomber’s car as he was leaving. According to these patch notes, I can use the DUPs own intranet to track the vehicle across the city. Time to catch me a bomber…)

——————

(WHAT THE HELL?!)

(Okay, so I managed to find the bomber’s car, only to find it parked right outside Winegard’s office… because apparently it was his car?! How did the bomber get his hands on it?! Why drive it back to the Senator’s office?! Is Winegard the bomber?!)

(At first, I thought that maybe Winegard himself was orchestrating the assassination attempts, making himself look like the helpless victim of a dangerous bio-terrorist attack so that he’d have the ammo he needed to pass his Act.)

(And that seemed like a perfectly valid conclusion… until I saw Winegard stepping out of his office, walking to his car, and the car exploding in his face. Only this time, the attempt on his life was very real.)

(I rushed in, not really thinking. The Senator was alive, but barely. Unless he received medical attention immediately, he was a goner. I could heal him with my powers but…)

(… This man is pure evil. There’s just no other way around it. His plans for all of Conduit kind is nothing short of a genocide. Literally, a genocide. What right do I have to just… unleash this terrible, horrible person onto my own kind, knowing exactly what he has planned for all of us? When instead, all I could do is just… nothing.)

(………………)

(I made my choice. Let’s just leave it at that.)

(And of course, who should be there to watch the fireworks with me, but Celia. As always, she didn’t say anything before she fluttered off to wherever she goes when she’s not screwing with my head… But she wasn’t silent either.)

(She was giggling. Like this was all a fun show to her.)

(As always, she left behind another dove. There was also another political flyer with a note attached, just like the first (or I guess second?) site.)

(I’ll check the note on the flyer first. I’m guessing this is supposed to be written as if ‘Hank’ wrote it.)

—-
*You wanted to convince the world that assassins were trying to kill you? Well, you got your wish. I’ve never killed anyone before now, but you went TOO FAR when you targeted our families! WE are fair game, but our brothers and sisters and children never did anything to deserve your wrath.*

*BUT YOU DESERVED MINE*
—-

(…. And I can’t even argue that. If Reggie was still alive, if Winegard had actually tried targeting him, or any of the Akomish, just for being related to me…)

(I know this was all a frame job to implicate Hank… But part of me wonders if he wouldn’t actually agree with all of this?)

(Huh. The front of the flyer has been defaced. They wrote over the URL for his website with winegardLIES.com. Knowing Celia, I’m sure…)

(Yep. It’s a black site, showing all kinds of the Senator’s dirty laundry. There’s a wiretapped recording of a phone call between Winegard and one of his lobbyists, Jonas Petrovich. Apparently, this whole fake assassination scheme was Jonas’ idea in the first place, to drum up anti-Conduit support for Winegard and his Act. At first, I thought this Jonas guy might be another lead for me to chase down… only for an email chain between Winegard and his assistant to shoot that idea down. They already found Jonas dead… at the Crocodile Club. Jonas Petrovich was G, the last of the victims of the ‘Fetch Copycat’.)

(Now for the dove. This time showing that salamander ronin from earlier, the one I already know is meant to represent Hank. It looks like he’s stalking this fat, rich elephant, attacking him and taking his wealth like some highway bandit. The caption reads ‘And Kemuri, who swore he never hurt anyone’. Yeah, I get the irony. Is this why you turned on him, Celia? You thought he was a good guy in Curdun Cay, then found out he was a criminal when you got out?)

(Of course, she left me a note on the other side…)

—-
*Faking your own death, Senator? Pathetic. Here’s the upside, your career is dead!*

*Much like death, the truth will eventually catch up to us. The good Senator seemed allergic to fairness and justice, but I trust that you will be the one to deliver a lethal dose of both, Delsin. Comeuppance is like a shockwave; We will all feel the effects, deserved or not.*

*This is the Age of Vengeance.*
—-

(…. She played me. All this time, she’s been putting me on the scent of Winegard’s self-assassination scheme, making sure I understood what a monster he was, and then she made the staged assassination very real in the end, all in the hopes that I would finish the job for her.)

(I finally get what Celia is trying to do. She’s on a one-woman crusade against anyone and everyone who would ever dare threaten Conduit-kind. And I finally understand what my role is in all of this bloodshed.)

(I’m her accomplice. I just didn’t know up until now.)

——————

Since the Paper Trail website is no longer functioning, this entire mission chain of Second Son is missing a whole lot of context of what is going on, why Delsin is going from dead body to dead body, and also a TON of integral world-building. So, I figured for those who are replaying the game or even just playing the game for the first time and are missing that context, I decided to write out a novelization of Paper Trail’s ARG segments to kinda provide that context. I wrote it in the form of Delsin’s stream of consciousness, piecing together all of the clues and figuring out all of the puzzles. It is written from the perspective of Good Delsin, but I imagine it’d be easy enough to mentally reword certain things for an Evil Delsin playthrough. I’ll be posting the other parts very soon. Hope you all enjoy!

(Part 2: Eugene)

(Well, my life just got a whole lot more complicated, and that’s saying something.)

(That paper Conduit showed up again, leading me on another merry chase through the city and, of course, leading me directly to a new dead body before flittering off again. Okay, see, if this is her way of ‘helping’ me, it’s incredibly annoying. If this is her way of taunting me… It’s still pretty annoying.)

(She also left behind another one of her origami doves. I’ll take a look at it later, right now, I want to take a closer look at this body.)

(Okay… Well, there is one thing different about this one. Whoever killed this guy, they’re clearly not trying to frame Fetch anymore. For one, he’s got a big ass fantasy sword that’s been driven right through his chest, and there’s a crap ton of posters for Heaven’s Hellfire just strewn about everywhere.)

(Whoever killed this guy wasn’t trying to frame Fetch… They were trying to frame my boy, Eugene.)

(Okay, this is officially getting weird. First Fetch, now Eugene? So… What, the killer is going around trying to make Conduits look like murderers? Huh, maybe that paper Conduit is trying to help me. She probably doesn’t want to be the next one of this ‘Conduit Copycat’ smear campaign targets.)

(Okay, back to playing ‘Detective Delsin’. Let’s see what we got to work with here. I’m seeing… a pamphlet on the back of one of the posters, a phone, a key fob, and a note. Weird how they’re all just… scattered around the body.)

(Uh oh, the pamphlet reads ‘Bully #1 The best things come in threes, and offing bullies is the best thing of all! 1 down, 2 to go!’ That’s a pretty clear cut manifesto. So, whoever did this has two more names on their list. Better work fast before things get worse.)

(Oh, right, I still have that new origami the paper Conduit left for me. Let’s see… another manga page. This time depicting the same rabbit village from the very first page, but now under attack by a gang of foxes. Last time, I was able to piece together that this manga might be some kind of allegory for real events, like Fetch being a laser-shooting pheasant. But how does this tie into Eugene? Who are the rabbits and foxes meant to represent? Just one caption at the bottom ‘All hell breaks loose’. Doesn’t give me much to go on…)

(Huh. Actually, thinking on that, this looks like it might take place immediately after the first page I found. Yeah, sequentially, it makes sense. The first page showed a rabbit village looking terrified at something off-panel, this page shows us what they were looking at. So… is the paper Conduit giving me these pages out of order? Is that part of the puzzle? To arrange these pages in a way that makes the story make sense?)

(Well, if that is the case, there’s not really much I can do with the three pages I already have. Guess this will just have to keep being a mystery for now…)

(And, as always, there’s a note on the back…)

—-
*A new killer strikes, the disharmony plays on, navigate wisely…*

Death blooms all around us, Delsin Rowe. This time, it claimed the life of a DUP official. I guess nobody is safe. Regardless of your personal feelings towards this latest victim, you must seek out the truth, or who knows who will end up on the slab?

This time, I’m going to give you some more direct help. If you’re trying to get into the DUP, I’ve already been in there. In fact, I died there.

departmentofunifiedprotection.com/intranet

File Access Number: 3485-XXXXXX*
—-

(Woah. Okay. I need to collect my thoughts here.)

(So, number one with a bullet, the paper Conduit seems to think that whoever killed this guy is a different person from the Fetch Copycat? Multiple Conduit Copycat killers? Assuming the paper Conduit is actually telling the truth and isn’t just covering her own ass.)

(And I guess this stiff worked for the DUP… Hate to say it, but that paper Conduit is right about one thing. Regardless of whether or not I think this guy deserved what he got, I still need to find out who did this. These copycats are targeting Conduits like me, my friends. I’m not about to just walk away from that.)

(But the most surprising thing here is that this paper Conduit apparently had direct access to a DUP federal account number. How the hell did she get her hands on that? And what’s this about her saying she ‘died’ in the DUP? What, have I been getting yanked around by a freaking ghost?!)

(Ugh, not getting anywhere thinking about that. Ghost or not, this is all really useful stuff. I’ll check out that website in a bit, first I want to check out some of the other evidence.)

(Let’s see, I got this phone and key fob, both of which have the DUP logos on them, so I’m guessing they both belonged to the dead DUP next to me. Key fob’s got a six digit code on it, 374134, and the phone requires a six digit pin to access it.)

(Pff, man, this is too easy sometimes.)

(…. It, uh… It didn’t work. Okay, maybe that was too easy.)

(Alright, not getting anywhere with the phone until I can figure out a password. Let’s check that website. Not much here, pretty minimalist design. Geez, Augustine, invest in an online graphic designer or something. All I really can do is search up a file number. Okay, Paper Girl, let’s see what you got for me…)

(…… Oh…. Oh god…)

(It’s… It’s a memorandum from Augustine to the DUP informing them of one of their Conduit prisoners in Curdun Cay… killing herself. Literally using her own power to mutilate her body… via paper cuts. Specifically, from origami doves.)

(The paper Conduit… There’s no way. There’s no freaking way she’s actually a ghost! But… what are the odds that both the Conduit that’s been leading me around and the Conduit who committed suicide would have the same power? I guess… I guess when you factor in the fact that we live in a world with honest to god superpowers, are ghosts really that far-fetched anymore? The file references her own access file. I should probably check that out-)

(Wait… the file has pictures that the DUP took of the origami doves they found in the prisoner’s cell.)

(Oh god… They’re the exact same manga pages! That settles it, it really is the same Conduit! But how?! Did she fake her own death or is she really-?)

(Okay, focus Delsin. Ghost or not, this is all important evidence. Let’s take a closer look at this new manga page. Looks like a direct aftermath of the previous page. The foxes have completely razed the rabbit village, all the rabbits are dead or dying… but then a shadow of a dragon flies overhead, scaring off all the foxes. Man, I’m not even gonna try to piece together the symbolism there.)

(Huh… That’s interesting. There’s no note on the other side this time. Just a random assortment of numbered dots and circles. Weird, it’s like the dots and circles each have their own separate set of numbers, but the placement is completely random. There is one little note at the bottom.)

—-
*Follow the dots the way some people have to follow the rules. The answers you seek will cross your path soon enough.*
—-

(Geez, how long ago has the paper Conduit been setting this trail of breadcrumbs up? There’s no timestamp on the file detailing her suicide, so I have no idea how long ago this was. Did she always mean for this message to find its way to me?)

(Okay, so it’s just a game of connect the dots? But then each line between each dot would pass through one of the numbered circles… giving me an 11 digit number. Another access file! Oh, I just realized, the finished pattern is the DUP symbol. That’s… weird?)

(Okay, now I’ve got two file numbers to work with. I’ll check out the paper Conduit’s personal file first.)

(And there she is. Celia Penderghast. Guess I finally have a name to call you. Christ, she was only 19 years old when she…)

(Her powers are something else. I thought paper powers were kinda lame, but she’s able to fold paper to such a degree that she can make steel-like armor or razor sharp blades, just using paper! According to this, she was the very first Conduit ever admitted into Curdun Cay, the first Conduit the DUP ever took into their custody. Psych profile says she suffered from severe and crippling abandonment issues. Can’t say I blame her. She bounced around from foster home to foster home, finally finding a permanent housing with the Penderghast family in…)

(Oh… in New Marais. That must have been when she got her powers. Her family must have been right in the middle of the Beast’s rampage through New Marais before Cole MacGrath took that monster down. She had the Conduit Gene, so she survived the Beast’s Ray Field radiation. Her adopted family… wasn’t so lucky. And then the DUP swooped right on in and took this little girl, still grieving her dead family, away.)

(……)

(‘She has suppressed any and all mention of her family, instead focusing on developing her ‘gift’. She has an artistic bent, often shaping her paper constructs into aesthetically pleasing origami shapes. While she is an extremely promising candidate for fieldwork, she occasionally displays a lack of seriousness and is susceptible to distraction.’)

(…… Freaking monsters.)

(There’s some redacted stuff, mostly just detailing what exactly it was that they were training her for. Just going by what Fetch and Eugene told me about their time in Curdun Cay, I doubt it was anything good.)

(God, I’m shaking. I’m so pissed right now. How could they do this to… to a helpless little girl, still distraught after so much loss? Just because she had powers? That made her an ‘asset’ and not a person to them?)

(Augustine, when I find you…)

(Gah, I gotta shake this off. There’s nothing I can do for her now. All I can do is focus on this Copycat Killer trying to frame my friends. Celia put me on this trail for a reason. I need to see it through. I still have that other file access number from her little connect the dots game…)

(Jackpot. Celia really came through for me. It’s a memorandum from the DUP’s IT department letting all of their agents know how to use their key fob. Seems they use a ROT3 cypher. Just take the code from the key fob and add three to each digit. So instead of 374134, the code is actually 607467.)

(Again, how far ahead did Celia plan this? She left the puzzle that led to this file in her cell after ‘committing suicide’ somehow knowing that somebody would need it to get into a DUP phone. Did she somehow know that ‘somebody’ was going to be me?)

(Nothing here but a voice mail from some woman named Linda Krilley….)

(Huh. Just going by what she’s saying, it sounds like she’s some kind of lawyer? I guess the dead DUP’s name is ‘Fishbein’ and he was one of her clients for a case that they won… but she seems kinda pissed at him that he keeps contacting her after the fact. What was this case about, I wonder…?)

(Wait… She’s saying (well, complaining, really) that Fishbein set up a meeting with her at a nearby coffee shop… with a giant Heaven’s Hellfire billboard hanging over it. She said she’s still waiting for him. The voice mail wasn’t that long ago!)

(Crap! I gotta hustle! With any luck, she’ll still be there!)

——————

(Sigh…)

(Well, good news: Linda Krilley was still at the coffee shop when I got there. Bad news: I don’t think she’s in the mood to talk…)

(The Copycat Killer strikes again, unfortunately. They managed to somehow nail Krilley right to the middle of the giant Heaven’s Hellfire billboard with another one of those big-ass fantasy swords, making it look like Eugene did it.)

(Hate to say it… but it’d be real hard for a normal person to pull that off without an entire crew and specialized equipment, which would have garnered a lot more attention if they did.)

(I don’t want to admit it… but it’s looking more and more like the Copycat Killer is a Conduit.)

(Could… Could Celia be-?)

(No, no, I’m sure it’s someone else. Celia’s been doing nothing but helping me. Cryptically, sure, but why would she do it at all if she’s just leading me to her own victims? I… I just can’t imagine that a young girl who went through what she did would immediately turn around and start ganking people. Much less gloating about it!)

(Huh. Looks like Krilley dropped some kind of notebook? Leafing through it, it looks like a datepad. Makes sense, a lawyer probably needs to stay pretty on top of her schedule. Yep, there’s her meeting with Fishbein right around nowish. She planned to get lunch with someone named ‘Dawn’ in a few hours. Guess she won’t be making that date… And then a prep session in court for the remainder of the day. Nothing really here that tells me anything… Oh, something just fell out the back. Looks like an ID badge… for the DUP?! Hah, so Miss Krilley wasn’t just a lawyer. She was an in-house legal consultant for the DUP. Way to pick the losing side, Krilley.)

(Oh-Ho, and what’s this? An employee identification number? Wonder what happens if we just plug that in to the Ol’ DUP intranet…)

(Okay, Linda Krilley’s DUP biography. Guess she specializes in cases that toe the line between national security and civil liberties, finding the fault lines when the two are in conflict with each other. No wonder the DUP recruited her. Anytime anyone complains about the DUP getting a little too ‘martial law-y’, Krilley here can just pull some BS precedent out of her ass that explains why it’s totally legally kosher for a fascist federal agency to completely take over your city and detain your neighbors without due process.)

(If she’s a big shot lawyer, she might have her own website… Got it. Krilley Legal - Personal Defense Practice. Let me just…)

(What the hell?! It looks like the whole website got hacked!)
—-

*BULLY #2!! THE HELLFIRE CONTINUES!!*

*Hi, I’m Linda Krilley, and I’m a lawyer. I TELL L1ES FOR MONEY!! Ever since I was a little girl, I worked hard and aspired to be where I am now. I LIED WITHOUT SHAME OR GUILT. I DECEIVED, CHEATED AND MANIPULATED PEOPLE TO GET MY WAY MY ENTIRE LIFE!! Now I get to live my dream everyday. I CAUSE NIGHTM4RES EVERYDAY!! I’m currently on retainer to the Department of Unified Protections, protecting the people who protect us from the threat of bio-terrorism through diplomacy and counseling. THE DEPARTMENT OF UNIFIED OPPR35SION BOUGHT MY SOUL, SO NOW I USE BULLYIN9, BRIBERY, AND BLACKMAIL TO PROTECT THE VIOLENT THUGS WHO PERSECUTE CONDUITS!! After years of defending against unlawful arrest allegations and other frivolous lawsuits, my record speaks for itself. 23 straight victories and counting. I NEVER BOTHERED TO COUNT HOW MANY LIVES I RUINED!! THERE IS NO DEFENSE FOR WHAT I’VE DONE!! WHEN I FINALLY LEARNED WHAT JUSTICE REALLY WAS, IT COST ME MY MI5ERABLE LIFE!! I rest my case. I BURN IN HELLFIRE!!*

*Integrity THREATS Diligence DECEIT Intelligence BRIBES*

*Five years ago, I founded my practice on three basic principles. To always give my clients honest counsel, to work tirelessly to defend them, and to be the most well-informed attorney in the business. FIVE YEARS AGO, I FOUNDED A PRACTICE BASED IN 9REED AND COWARDICE!! I SWORE TO TELL MY CLIENTS WHAT THEY WANTED TO HEAR, TO THREATEN THEIR VICTIM5 OR BUY THEIR SILENCE, AND TO BE THE MOST CORRUPT AND RUTHLESS ATTORNEY IN THE 8USINESS!! The world has changed a lot since then, from the emergence of smartphones to the re-emergence of bio-terrorists. But my mission and principles that guide me have held fast. OUR GREED HAS W4RPED THE WORLD!! FROM THE EROSION OF CIVIL RIGHTS, TO THE DEMONIZATION OF CONDU1TS, AND MY PRICES AND METHODS HAVE ADAPTED TO SUIT MY NEEDS!! My clients are treated like family, and I will do everything I can to keep them safe. THOSE I DEFENDED WERE MURDERERS, AND I DID EVERYTHING I COULD TO GET THEM OFF!!*

*I’m Linda Krilley, and I am here to defend you. I WAS LINDA KRILLEY!! AND NO ONE COULD DEFEND ME!!*
—-

(….. Geezus, laying it on a little thick there, pal! Like, I’m no fan of the DUP either, but this is some real ‘Don’t come to school tomorrow’ energy. Again, this looks like someone trying to frame Eugene. The hack job that deliberately looks like some stereotypical movie hacker’s work, the constant references to ‘Hellfire’. Eugene isn’t that dramatic!)

(Well, okay, he is that dramatic when he’s doing his whole ‘He Who Dwells’ avatar thing, but that’s like… roleplaying.)

(Huh. There’s a box in the corner here. A couple of questions and some blank boxes to fill in the answers. ‘Who is the biggest bully in the courtroom?’ and ‘What is the case file number that changed everything?’)

(Case file number? One that Krilley worked on, I’m assuming. But it’s not like that would be public knowledge. I guess I could go to the courthouse and look up some records there, but I doubt they’d be so willing to open their doors to Seattle’s Most Wanted Bio-Terrorist.)

(Huh. Hang on. Does this hacker just have the most atrocious spelling ever or… are those numbers in the place of letters supposed to be deliberate? Let me just… Yep, 11 digits. It’s another DUP file number.)

(…. But… Why? Why would the hacker, who I’m assuming is also the Copycat Killer, hide a DUP file number in their creepy manifesto? They wouldn’t do that unless they already knew that someone seeing this would have already been tapped into the DUP intranet. And the only reason why I’m tapped into the intranet… Is because Celia directed me there.)

(Celia wrote this. It’s the only explanation.)

(Celia Penderghast… Is the Copycat Killer.)

(But… Why? What’s her motive? Why target my friends, her fellow Conduits? Why put me on the scent then lead me through all these puzzles and breadcrumbs? Just to toy with me? Flaunt how oh-so-clever she is? Why me specifically? That’s still the one question I don’t get.)

(Or… Is she trying to tell me something? Some grand message with the world’s bloodiest letter.)

(Every time I answer one question, it feels like a hundred more fall into my lap.)

(I’m not gonna get any more answers just screaming ‘Why?’ into the wind. I have another file number, let’s start there… And see what Celia is trying to show me this time.)

(Huh. No file this time, just a clip from a news broadcast covering a federal legal hearing. From what I can gather from all the legalese, the hearing was to determine whether or not the DUP would have full unilateral authority to detain American citizens suspected of being Conduits, sorry, ‘Bio-Terrorists’, without due process. Essentially giving them extrajudicial powers to suspend an American citizen’s personal rights if the DUP had ‘good reason’ to suspect them of being a Conduit… And the court ruled in favor of the DUP, giving a middle finger to countless years of constitutional rights.)

(I guess I always knew that something like this must have happened. I always figured there was some shady backroom deals going on with Uncle Sam that let them treat Conduits like trash. But seeing it be so publicly discussed like this is… It kinda makes me sick that our lives, our very existence, can just be… up for debate like this. A debate that we can apparently lose.)

(I guess it wasn’t a popular decision among everyone. A Conduit Rights activist group actually protested the law enough to garner a public interview from the Deputy Director of the DUP, Augustine’s Right Hand Man… Samuel Fishbein. So the first body that Eugene was framed for was the Number Two guy of the entire DUP? This is way more high profile than I initially thought…)

(Man, just listening to this guy talk is giving me an aneurysm. Credit to the lady giving this interview, she’s asking the real questions, grilling him about the DUP using fear mongering to make Conduits seem more dangerous than we actually are… Only for him to respond with even more fear mongering. Nothing but ‘what-aboutisms’ of how Conduits just can’t be trusted not to go on non-stop killing sprees over every little thing, so the DUP has to be able to legally step on our necks as much as they damn well like. I mean, think of the children!)

(Huh. She just called him, or well, said that the Conduit Rights group kept referring to Fishbein as a ‘bully’. ‘Who is the biggest bully in the courtroom?’. And it looks like this file references the case file that gave the DUP their extrajudicial rights. ‘The case file that changed everything.’)

(… Not it, huh? What am I missing? I know I got the right case file, but who is ‘The biggest bully’ if not Fishbein. Think Delsin, think…)

(The Copycat Killer… Celia… Said in that pamphlet that she was going to kill three people. The ‘biggest bullies’ against all of Conduit kind. That’s Fishbein, who browbeated a country into falling in line. There’s Krilley, who made it all perfectly legal to do so. Who’s the third bully?)

(….. Wait. No, Krilley didn’t make it so that the DUP would have extrajudicial powers. She’s just a lawyer, all she could do was argue why the DUP should have extrajudicial powers. But the actual decision wouldn’t have been left to her, or anyone in the DUP for that matter. That decision would have been made by one single person.)

(Quick google search… ‘Who was the federal judge who ruled in favor of giving the DUP extrajudicial rights to suspend con… bio-terrorists without due process?’)

(…. Got it. Judge Marcus Paulsen. ‘Who is the biggest bully in the courtroom?’)

(…. That did it. Okay, what am I looking at. Looks like GPS coordinates for the Ellefson Building, here in Seattle. Why point me there? It’s just a TV station. Hold on, let me look up any broadcasts they might be doing tonight…)

(Oh… Oh shit… Judge Paulsen is going to be there, tonight, to give an interview. Crap, I need to get there, now! Though something tells me I’m already too late…)

——————

(God, I’m such an idiot!)

(How could I forget what was *underneath* the Ellefson Building! Eugene’s old hideout! And who should be waiting there for me but the cold, dead body of Judge Paulsen. Right in the middle of Eugene’s inner sanctum of nerddom. Argh, I’m gonna have to call Eugene and tell him that he can never go back there. The police were crawling all over it by the time I made myself scarce. It wasn’t a total loss. I managed to snag the Judge’s wallet just before I bugged out. More out of desperation than anything. I’m hoping there’s something, anything here I can use. Otherwise, I’m out of leads… again.)

(…… Sigh. No evidence. No clue. Just a final message from the killer. Another Heaven’s Hellfire poster with another pamphlet on the back.)

—-
*The biggest bully of them all: GUILTY*

*The dis-honorable Judge Paulsen has been sentenced to DEATH. Finally, true JUSTICE prevails!*
—-

(Well… Crap. Now I really have nothing. All of the ‘bullies’ are dead, I have no more leads. And-)

(What the-?! CELIA?!)

(Don’t go anywhere!! Celia, STOP!! I just want to talk!! Celia-!!)

(….. Damn it. She’s gone. That paper power makes her so damn fast! Oh, and look, another origami dove. I almost don’t want to read it… Fuck it.)

(Okay, another manga page. This one showing another gang of foxes, only this time this nerdy looking chicken is stepping up to them, summoning a flock of angelic falcons to scare them away. Obviously, this chicken is supposed to be Eugene. The caption box reads ‘Ushinatta, who went back to playing games’. Google translating Ushinatta to… Loser. Well, that’s just mean, Celia.)

(Okay, so the chicken is Eugene, summoning his angels to scare off… normal people? That’s basically what he did when he escaped Curdun Cay. Well, not just any random normal people off the street. Bullies, people who targeted Conduits. Is that what the foxes represent, then? Anti-Conduit bullies?)

(Huh, thinking back on that rabbit village, the village got torn apart by a group of foxes. And Celia wears an origami rabbit mask. Okay, I get it. I see what you’re saying, Celia. That was your ‘village’. And then the ‘bullies’ came and made your life hell.)

(So then… Who was the dragon who saved you?)

(Oh, right, there’s usually a note on the back…)

—-
*There you have it, folks. Bullied people get even, bullies get dead.*

*I bid adieu to another chapter of loss and revenge. Where will death strike next? Unknown as of yet, but be assured that I’ll summon you to the next scene of misery. Follow my lead, follow the scraps, and follow the trail.*

*Goodbye for now, Delsin.*
—-

(…..Until next time, Celia.)

——————

Since the Paper Trail website is no longer functioning, this entire mission chain of Second Son is missing a whole lot of context of what is going on, why Delsin is going from dead body to dead body, and also a TON of integral world-building. So, I figured for those who are replaying the game or even just playing the game for the first time and are missing that context, I decided to write out a novelization of Paper Trail’s ARG segments to kinda provide that context. I wrote it in the form of Delsin’s stream of consciousness, piecing together all of the clues and figuring out all of the puzzles. It is written from the perspective of Good Delsin, but I imagine it’d be easy enough to mentally reword certain things for an Evil Delsin playthrough. I’ll be posting the other parts very soon. Hope you all enjoy!

(Part 1: Fetch)

(Sitting on the edge of the rooftop with my ‘totally legally acquired’ evidence. Hey, it’s not ‘vigilantism’, it’s just… helping the police out, that’s all. That dead body hanging off the sign… It definitely *looks* like something Fetch would do… if you literally never hung out with Fetch or seen her handiwork up close.)

(Okay, evidence. C’mon, Delsin, you can totally detective this shit up. Reggie makes all this forensic stuff look so easy. Let’s see what we got to work with.)

(An origami dove and the dead guy’s wallet. Guess I’ll check the dove first. Whoever that weird… paper Conduit was, this definitely feels like her calling card.)

(Huh… is this a… page from a manga? Definitely never seen it before, and I know my fair share of manga. Can’t really make out the story just from this one page. A village of… rabbit people? And they’re all scared of something… Kinda reminds me of those old Usagi Yojimbo comics.)

(Oh, there’s something on the back. Let’s see…)

—-
*Death is just a passing phase. I’ve danced with demise and let me tell you, he’s a bad dancer. (Always stepping on my toes) But I’ve learned to embrace the macabre- To navigate its twisted depths. Conduits and ‘normals’ are at a crossroads, and if we don’t look both ways? We’ll all get run over. All I want- All I ever wanted- is harmony between our peoples.

I know you, Delsin Rowe. Or rather, I know of you, and would like to know more. Follow my lead and I’ll show you the trail of bodies. Seek out the corpses and you’ll find the truth decaying within.*
—-

(…. Wow, okay. That is… some real serial killer ‘Alfred Hitchcock’ shit. So, parsing out all the crazy, it sounds like this chick is… What? Leading me to different homicide cases so I can… help her crack the case? Or is she the murderer and this is her way of taunting me? Why me specifically?)

(I don’t think I’m gonna learn anymore from this dove. Let’s check that wallet…)

(Damn, I hit the forensic jackpot. A photo of a beagle. Cute little guy. A photo of… some guy wearing a bunny costume, that’s random. A newspaper clipping. And a bunch of cards. This one’s an employee identification card for a private detective agency, so I’m guessing our dead guy was a private detective. Emilio Brunberg. He lived here in Seattle. Let’s see. A library card for Simcoal Library… under a different name? Skeeter Hidalgo. So… who’s the stiff? Skeeter or Emilio? This card is a business card for… Brunberg Detective Agency, again, under the name Emilio Brunberg. And a parking ticket for Gruderman’s Parking Lot. Lot: 12, Section: Z.)

(Maybe something on the back of the pictures. Let’s check the beagle first. ‘Puddles, earning his name’. Guess that’s not much of a clue. Sometimes, a picture of a cute pet is just a picture of a cute pet. And the… guy in the rabbit costume says on the back… ‘Halloween, 2012’. Oh, that makes sense. Still, he must have lost a bet or something to make *that* his costume. Okay, pictures are a bust. What about that newspaper clipping?)

(Woah. Okay, skimming this a bit, but this article seems to be about a murder that happened a few weeks back… The murder of Emilio Brunberg. So that definitely means that the dead guy currently hanging off that sign over there is Skeeter Hidalgo… but then why would he have Emilio’s detective ID card? His business card is one thing, Emilio could have just given it to him. But his ID card? Just going off this clipping, it sounds like the police ruled out a Conduit as the killer. Well, Brunberg’s killer, at least. Skeeter’s killer is still up in the air. Seems they thought his death was involved with organized crime, right here in Seattle. It is true that drug dealers have been getting pretty bold on the streets after the DUP more or less replaced local police.)

(Huh… Drug dealers. Another connection to Fetch that has nothing to do with Fetch. It’s like whoever’s doing this is trying to implicate Fetch as a person of interest.)

(Ha, listen to me. ‘Implicate’. ‘Person of interest’. Ah, Reggie’s really rubbing off on me.)

(That business card has a link for Brunberg Detective Agency’s website. Let’s see… Seems pretty on the level. Some quotes from former clients singing their praises.)

(Huh… Employee Login. I wonder…)

(Username. Easy enough, it’s right there on the ID card. Password… Oh, wouldn’t you know it, I forgot ‘my’ password. Some security questions. ‘What is your craziest Halloween costume?’ Bunny. ‘Where do you park your car?’ Lot: 12, Section: Z. ‘What is your dog’s name?’ Puddles.)

(Hacker voice: I’m in. Hehehe…)

(Okay, what are we looking at here? Looks like a bunch of case files that Brunberg was working on. A lot of these are already archived… Huh. He did a lot of work for Conduits… Investigating reports of a Conduit’s parents abusing them. Investigating the DUP harassing a Conduit Rights Activist. Investigating whether or not a steel Conduit was involved in a murder. This guy was a total Conduit ally! Man, I’m kinda sad I didn’t get to meet him…)

(Wait, there’s one case file still active. ‘Missing Person Case: Neon Conduit- Abigail Walker’ Fetch! He was looking for her? To arrest her or help her? Guess it doesn’t really matter now. Let’s see what he had on her…)

(Ah, that explains it. He was hired by Fetch’s parents. Apparently, they regret turning her in to the DUPs and now want to reconcile. Yeah, well, too little too late, Mr and Mrs Walker. You don’t exactly sell your own kid up the river and then just say ‘Whoopsie, Sorry about that.’)

(Eugh, I’ll forward this to Fetch later when I get the chance. She should at least know that her folks are looking for her. What she does with that info is entirely up to her.)

(Oh. This is interesting? Looks like Brunberg flagged a member of the drug dealers as a person of interest in Brent’s death. Killian Czalov. He’s been having a hard time finding him because he stays hands off with his crew, contacting them only through burners and… a reprogrammed DUP surveillance drone?! Where the heck did he get that?!)

(Okay, he’s got a POI file on Czalov. Known crimes: Narcotics distribution, human trafficking, and exploitation of minors. Charming guy… He runs a tight ship, men loyal to a fault. Guess that’s how he’s managed to stay ahead of the cops. That and a dead drop network of repurposed DUP drones. Hate to give credit to such a scumbag, but that’s honestly pretty clever… Ah, here we go. Known associate: Skeeter Hidalgo. Right hand man. So the pieces are starting to fall into place.)

(Okay, hypothesis. Brunberg was getting close to Czalov in order to piece together his involvement in Brent’s death, hoping that would get him closer to Fetch. Czalov didn’t like that, so he sent Skeeter to kill Brunberg, and take his ID card for good measure. Probably so they could do… Well, exactly what I’m doing now. See how much he actually knew about their operation. But then someone else, still don’t know who, killed Skeeter… and went to a lot of trouble to make it look like Fetch killed him.)

(What I still don’t know is ‘why?’)

(Hm? Looks like Brunberg was contemplating tracing Czalov’s phone. I wonder if he actually got that far before they killed him…?)

(Score! Someone named ‘Patricia’ sent Brunberg a memo saying they uncovered Czalov’s phone ID. Patricia, I have no idea who you are, but you are a legend!)

(Just plug that in to that little program that DUP informant put on my phone… Got you.)

(Okay, Czalov. Let’s have a chat…)

——————

(Wow, okay. So… Couple of developments.)

(Number one with a bullet, Killian Czalov was already dead. Another copycat killing made to look like Fetch’s work. To make matters worse, his boys were *not* happy to find one of Seattle’s most infamous Conduits standing right next to their boss’s corpse.)

(Good news, though. After I took care of those chumps, I actually managed to catch a glimpse of one of Czalov’s drones that he used for dead drops. I wasn’t about to pass up that little flying evidence locker, so a quick little neon race throughout the district, and I am now the proud owner of a Czalov-owned lockbox. Let’s see what’s in my little Christmas present.)

(Hmm, keypad lock. Four digits, numbers only. Don’t want to just use my powers to bust it open, I might damage any of the evidence inside. Looks like I only get six guesses… Hang on.)

(Hey! Hey, buddy, wake up! Now, look, I’m sure you can look around and see the sorry state that your friends are in and make the smart decision not to test me any further. Not that you really can, with all those smoke chains tying you down. Now, I’m gonna ask you one little question, and if you tell the truth, I’ll let you go back to taking your little nap before the police get here. If you don’t… Well, let’s just say you don’t want to know what lungs filled with scalding hot ash feels like. (That’s just a bluff, but he doesn’t need to know that) What’s the password to open this thing?)

(Huh? A puzzle lock? What, you mean to tell me the password changes every time you go to open it? How the hell do you guys ever get anything done? Alright, alright, I can tell I didn’t wake up the brains of the outfit. Go ahead and go back to being unconscious. When you wake up, you’ll be in a nice, soft cell.)

*THWACK*

(Dumbass. Okay, let me think. So, the password changes to a random four digit number, and you only get six guesses to figure it out before it changes again. Kind of an eccentric security system for a gang of drug dealers. Then again, this coming from the guy who shoots smoke, and now neon laser beams, out of my ass. I’m not exactly one to judge.)

(So… I guess I just start with any random code. Uh… Let’s go with 1226. Good as number as any…. Okay… So now I have some colored dots here. Red, yellow, red, yellow, in that order. I’m guessing, since there’s no green, that none of these are right… But maybe yellow means I have the right number but the wrong order?)

(Let’s try… 2364… Okay, we’re getting somewhere. Green, red, yellow, red. So, 2 is right on the money, there’s only one other place that six can go… 2657… Green, green, red, yellow. Getting closer… 2678… Green, green, green, red. 2679… Aha! Green’s across the board! And with a whole guess to spare! Should I be concerned that I find validation in ace-ing a puzzle used by criminals? Ah well, let’s see what I won!)

(Woah. Uh… that’s $10,000 in cash… Which I will *not* be taking because god knows how dirty that money is. Ugh, being a superhero does *not* pay.)

(Let’s see. A letter here to Czalov from some guy called ‘G’. Just G. Going by the tone, it sounds like this G guy is higher up on the food chain, given how much he’s telling Czalov off for not doing his job correctly. Sounds like Czalov was, ugh, ‘supplying’ G with ‘entertainers’ for his club, the Crocodile. Sex slaves. ‘More like that pink haired bitch with the spicy attitude. I liked her.’)

(Oh-Ho-Ho, then you are gonna *love* me, pal…)

(The Crocodile… I know that place. That’s where Fetch and I fought each other when I first copied her power. Guess she picked that venue so that she wouldn’t care about trashing the joint. Not that I blame her.)

(What else… Looks a burner phone… with a text message from, of all people, Skeeter. ‘I took care of that detective. He’s not gonna be snooping around anymore’. Well, that’s one case solved, at least. One of what feels like a thousand at this point…)

(Well, sounds like I got my next suspect. Let’s see if G is at the Crocodile… and hope he’s still alive by the time I get there…)

——————

(Damn it.)

(Well, got to the Crocodile. Bunch of drug dealers were there, and they were pissed because their boss got whacked literally seconds before I got there. Tried to take it out on me when they saw me, but… you know how that song and dance goes.)

(Once I got finished putting those chumps in time-out, I went inside and, sure enough, another body strung up on a neon billboard. I can only assume that this must be G. My list of suspects has already gone cold… Save for one.)

(That paper Conduit from before… She showed up again, just for a second, before dropping another origami dove and fluttering off to god knows where. I would have chased after her, but she literally flattened herself to fit through the cracks in the wall. Paper powers are no joke, apparently.)

(Just like before, unfolding the dove gave me another page of the same manga. At least, I think it’s the same manga. It’s the same art-style as the first dove. This time, the page showed a… pheasant ninja? It looked like she was fighting some frogs in bowler hats with… energy blasts? Not gonna lie, this manga is kinda dope. Just one caption box over the pheasant ninja. ‘Inazuma. Vengeance was her drug of choice.’ So… The pheasant was getting revenge on these frogs for something? Quick Google Translate tells me that ‘Inazuma’ is Japanese for ‘Flash of Lightning’…. Hey, wait a minute. An agile warrior shooting laser beams at a gang of criminals, seeking vengeance? Is… Is this supposed to be Fetch? Did the paper Conduit make this manga as a sort of… tribute to her?)

(There’s another message on the back…)

—-
*Money equals pain. If you’ve got enough dollars, the world is your dungeon.

Hell of a party, huh? This club is dead. I’ve had my fill of shady characters for the time being. But one thing’s for sure: This problem isn’t going to go away, Delsin. Someone clearly craves the spotlight, neon style. Unfortunately, this is only the beginning of what I have to show you.

I’ll see you around.*
—-

(Just who is this paper Conduit? Is she the one killing all these people? Or is she trying to help me find whoever’s killing them? I hate to say it, but my little investigation here has hit a dead end. Nothing for it now but to just wait and see if this paper Conduit tries to contact me again.)

(Either way… This definitely isn’t over.)

——————

Look, was Cole Young an entirely necessary character in the first movie? Not at all. At worst, I definitely feel like it was a mistake to make him the main hero of the first film. Introduce new characters never seen in the games? Sure, that actually sounds fun. But maybe not to the point where they overshadow the characters we actually came to see.

I didn’t want THAT to happen to the guy!

Can we get this man a Tylenol? He’s gotta have a splitting headache.

Like, say what you want about the story or the characters, I know they weren’t everyone’s cup of tea. But in terms of pure gameplay loop? I think Second Son may be the most ‘fun’ to play. Like, specifically the word ‘fun’ as the most accurate qualitative term I can apply.

Cause at the end of the Hero Path of InFamous 2, he ends up getting canonized as the Patron Saint of New Marais.

Thing is, you can only really be a Patron Saint if you yourself are of the Catholic faith.

Honestly, it wouldn’t be that surprising. I imagine with a name like MacGrath, he would have some Gaelic ancestry, which would imply at least coming from a Catholic family.

Civilian just got riddled with bullets or poisoned by mind-controlling tar? Just zap their hearts and it will be good as new!

But after Second Son came out and Delsin was likewise healing people with even more nonsensical methods like smoke, neon, and whatever the fuck ‘video’ is in terms of what it’s made of. Yeah, I don’t think inundating someone’s lungs with smoke is entirely healthy.

So, in lieu of a better explanation of how the fuck this all works, I decided to create my own fan-theory.

Most Conduits have some form of healing factor that is facilitated by absorbing their respective ‘element’, whatever form of energy or matter it is that they have psychic control over.

My theory is that many Conduits possess a common ability to ‘share’ their healing factor with others, essentially briefly synchronizing their superhuman biology to another person to share the benefits of that biology.