For a few moments all three of us are completely blind, since the tiny room we're now standing in has no lights. Then a dull white glow of some sort moves over the room, presumably scanning the bracelets present, before a door opens up in front of us. Breathing out a sigh of relief, I move out into a relatively clean grayish-teal hallway, K and Tenmyouji following just behind me.

Okay, I managed to make it into the bomb timeline. Just gotta hope things keep going right.

"Oh yeah, sorry for not asking for your input back there, K." I turn and say apologetically.

Truthfully, it didn't even occur to me to do so, but doing so may have made things more difficult anyways, so I don't really regret it. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission and all.

"It's quite alright." K replies evenly. "I had no particular preference on who to go with in any case."

"Yeah, on that subject," Tenmyouji interjects as we continue moving, "not that I really mind, but why exactly did you want to pair up with me?"

I place a hand on the back of my head, idly rubbing Clover's weird hair ornaments. "I dunno… you… kinda feel familiar, for some reason? I guess I just sort of wanna know why…"

Given that Tenmyouji is in fact Junpei from 999, and knows that Clover is the girl he went through the second Nonary Game with, I think this is a pretty decent justification. Telling him he seems faintly familiar should make perfect sense, at least to the man himself, and quite neatly explain why I'd want to pair up with him.

Sure enough, Tenmyouji nods, seeming slightly cheered. "Well, I can't say why you'd feel that way, but I do appreciate it. Thanks."

I smile in response. Tenmyouji may be familiar with Clover, but to a much lesser degree than Alice, and a hell of a lot less recently. Any personality quirks I may show that he doesn't remember Clover having he can probably explain to himself as having been picked up between now and the last time he saw her. Thus, I can probably relax a little.

The Lounge is just up ahead. I walk up to it, the door opening automatically upon my approach, before suddenly freezing in the doorway as several things occur to me, followed by an extremely unfortunate conclusion:

–-–I just forced my way into the bomb timeline, in order to set myself on the path to the true ending.
–-–In order to get here, I essentially took the decision out of Sigma's hands at the primary timeline divergence point.
–-–Sigma and Phi need to be able to access all of the timelines possible in order to train their consciousness shifting to the point that they don't lose most of their memory upon arrival.
–-–They also need to access all the available timelines to obtain the four passcodes that can stop Dio's bombs.
–-–Because Sigma did not get the ultimate say on who went where, the main timeline will not have split, and the other two primary lines will have been prevented from forming.
–-–Therefore, Sigma and Phi will not be able to access them.
–-–Therefore, they won't be able to stop the bombs.
–-–Therefore, SHIT.

"Is something wrong, Clover?" K asks.

I don't say anything in response, instead simply moving into the lounge so that K and Tenmyouji can enter. Plopping down on the nearby couch, I place the stupid folder I'm still toting around beside me and put my head in my hands, trying not to stab myself with Clover's fingernails.

This is bad. If Sigma and Phi can't access the timelines where they interrogated the bomb passwords out of Dio, we're all doomed. I certainly don't remember them, they were all just random strings of letters… actually, I think some website I checked pointed out they were key shifts of specific phrases come to think of it, but I don't remember what those phrases are and I don't think it was ever even mentioned in the game proper, so that doesn't help at all.

"You okay there?" Tenmyouji asks me, sounding concerned. "You don't look so great."

"I'm fine. Just… give me a minute." I answer, waving him off. "I need a moment to process things."

Tenmyouji seems to quietly accept that, and turns away, leaving me to continue thinking about how to fix my self-made crisis.

Can we maybe interrogate all the passwords out of Dio in just this timeline alone? No, that won't work, the only reason he was willing to give singular ones up in disparate timelines was because he knew Sigma and Phi couldn't stop the other bombs even if they stopped one. Frankly, that was pretty stupid of him regardless, but even if we did somehow manage to get the first three passwords out of him, there's also the one Sigma-Zero provides, which Dio manages to never even let on about. Maybe if we prefaced the interrogation by telling him we know there are four bombs… are there enough places where the timeline splits left that Sigma and Phi can still potentially get the passwords in separate lines?

I think it over. There's the ally/betray choice, then the second Chromatic Door choice, followed by the second ally/betray choice… so, theoretically, yes. Except that without the information from the murder and sickness lines, Sigma and Phi might not even know Dio is responsible for setting the bombs until it's too late. If they could split the timeline at will then it might be okay, but they probably can't do that unless the Nonary Game does it for them, since their memories don't tend to show back up at all until...

I frown. Hold on, I can't have screwed up that badly. Like I reasoned before, the Nonary Game clearly still has to come to a successful conclusion somehow, given that it's happening in the first place. Meaning that for whatever reason, the timeline must still split enough times for everything to work out, despite my press-ganging my way into this one. Does that mean I can stop worrying?

…no, probably not, but let's cling to that thread of hope and assume as much for the moment, since I don't really know what else to do about this otherwise.

I stand up, feeling at least slightly less apprehensive, and see that K and Tenmyouji are still examining the room. Specifically, they're looking over the door that refuses to open, despite K's best attempts.

"It does not seem we will be able to proceed without the key that unlocks this door." K notes as Tenmyouji gives it a try, scowling as he also fails to budge it.

"It's probably in the safe on that shelf, like the key to the elevator was, dontcha think?" Tenmyouji says, rubbing his back. "Clover, are you up to helping?"

I nod. "Yeah, I'm okay now."

"Alright. Then let's find that password."

With that, our search begins. By unspoken agreement, K and Tenmyouji seem to decide to cluster around me so we can examine the room as a single unit. This leads to a lot more commentary than I'd honestly expected.

"Ho ho, looks like we picked the right room." Tenmyouji smiles as we look over the bar at the many types of alcohol on display. "The door said this was the lounge, right?"

"Correct." K answers.

"Well, if we get any free time later, I know where I'm coming back to." Tenmyouji says, turning to me. "Say, Clover, are you old enough to drink?"

Good question, since I have no idea what the minimum drinking age is in Japan. Not that it's all that relevant when it comes to me.

"I'm nineteen, but it doesn't really matter. I can't even stand the smell of most alcohol, let alone the taste." I tell him, crossing my arms and raising one eyebrow as I stare at him. "Why? Were you about to invite me to do something… untoward?"

"Oh, uh, not at all…" Tenmyouji grins with closed eyes, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head.

Rolling my eyes, I grab the gold needles and the little fastening piece sitting in one of the martini glasses on the bar, followed by the martini glass itself and its two brethren. Seeing no reason to hold on to the glasses for the moment, I move them over to the nearby drink mixer, placing one inside to be filled and the other two at its side.

"What do you suppose this is?" K asks, referencing the mixer.

"It's a-" I start.

"It's a limited edition space crusader helmet from the Clash of the Galaxies series!" Tenmyouji interrupts. "Man, I haven't seen one of these since I was a kid."

"…somehow, that doesn't seem quite right to me." I deadpan. You'd think that out of the three of us, he would be the one most qualified to know this. "I'm pretty sure it's actually a machine for mixing drinks."

Tenmyouji's grin doesn't waver in the slightest. "Even better!"

I snort. I think I was set up for that.

Since we're already working with the drinks, I move behind the bar to take the ten bright bottles of alcohol down, placing them next to the mixer as well.

"So many varieties…" K muses. "I wonder how they taste? Not that the option is even open to me…"

"Don't worry, I'll test them out for you." Tenmyouji says, grabbing up the container labeled 'ISLAND'. "Ooh, this stuff looks nice… don't mind if I do." He motions to take a swig straight from the bottle.

"We probably need that for a puzzle." I tell him while grabbing the globe piece squeezed to the right of the remaining bottles. "Let's please not trap ourselves in here by accidentally chugging the solution."

"Aww…" Tenmyouji pouts. Wow, Junpei is still just a giant child, isn't he?

We haven't found the actual instructions for the drink mixing yet, so I steer our little trio over to the room's sole table. As this is where the full globe is eventually going to sit anyways, I place the piece of it I have on the table alongside the other two.

"What's this, an oversized hook?" Tenmyouji asks, looking genuinely confused about what the object at the center is.

"I believe it is some sort of stand." K explains, conveniently preempting me. "These pieces appear to be parts of a small model of Earth. I would assume that once we have them all together, this is where it will be placed."

"Ah, I see." Tenmyouji smirks, holding his chin with his thumb and index finger. "That reminds me of my youth, back when I was on top of the world…"

"Were you now?" I ask.

"Yep. Course, then I got in trouble with my geography teacher for standing on the class globe…"

I find myself giggling under my breath at that, despite how lame it was. Weird, why is Tenmyouji being this... well, goofy? I don't remember him being like this in the game, though I suppose I don't remember a lot of the dialogue that happens in the escape rooms. Is it just because he's trying to come off well to Clover? I'll admit that the lighthearted nature of it all is making me feel a bit better… maybe that's the point? He's trying to lighten the atmosphere a bit; make things seem less dire. He'd probably be doing it if Quark were here too... that's honestly kind of sweet of him, in a grandfatherly sort of way.

I move over to the back left corner, grabbing the globe piece brazenly lying in the middle of the floor. Meanwhile, K stares deeply into the couch I sat down on a minute ago, apparently really trying to find something notable about it.

"If any of us get tired, this couch could probably be used as a bed in a pinch." he notes. "Look, it even has pillows."

Tenmyouji hums, rubbing his chin thoughtfully before turning a smoldering gaze towards K. "Right you are. Wanna lie down and share one?"

The straightfaced eyebrow wiggle he proceeds to add causes me to actually bust out laughing. Alright, that one was legitimately funny. Tenmyouji looks pleased.

"I'll… pass. Thank you." K holds up a hand, looking up at the ceiling as if embarrassed.

I decide to pass on checking out the weird sun-clock thing for the moment and move on to the final section of the room. The back right corner contains a medium sized shelving unit, with the room safe sitting on it at about shoulder height. At the bottom is a two door cupboard, which I open to reveal the final globe piece and a small piece of paper. Tenmyouji picks up the page, which seems to have been ripped out of something, while I grab the final fifth of the model Earth and move back to the table to assemble it.

"This paper appears to have been ripped out of a bartender's journal." K says, looking over Tenmyouji's shoulder at the page. "I assume this is meant to be part of a puzzle, though the specifics escape me at the moment."

"Can I see?" I ask, placing the now-complete globe on its stand.

Tenmyouji hands me the paper, which I scan over. Ah, I remember this.

"Okay, so we probably just need to figure out where everyone was sitting and which drinks they had." I say aloud. "I guess we're just supposed to ignore the fact that the kid was also getting smashed... anyways. With the alcohol and the mixer over there, we can make those drinks, place them on those little pads the same way the page describes, and that'll be the end of it. So, if someone is lying-"

"Actually, would you mind if I solve this one Clover?" K unexpectedly interrupts. "There is no need for you to do everything by yourself."

I look over at him owlishly. "Um… sure…" I say, gingerly handing over the sheet. "Go right ahead."

K nods, and begins looking over the page. I continue to stand and stare at him for a moment, still a little stunned, before backing away and seating myself at one of the table's chairs. I guess I could go fiddle with the sun-clock, but… well, it seems kind of wrong to leave K out now, so I guess I'll just wait for a bit.

While K continues to try and work out the logic puzzle, Tenmyouji sits down next to me, causing me to tense slightly.

"Looks like we've got a moment to relax." he says casually. "Feeling any better now?"

"A little, yeah." I reply, internally frowning. Damn, an unprompted conversation. Not good.

"I'm glad to hear it." Tenmyouji smiles sincerely before it fades into a more quizzical expression. "Hey, do you mind if I ask you something?"

I hesitate for a moment, then shrug, not having a justifiable reason to say no. "Not really, I guess. Go ahead."

"That woman, Alice. She said you two work together?"

I simply nod, not wanting to say anything that could be contradicted later.

"This might sound like a weird question, but... that jewelry she wears is real gold, right?"

I blink at him for a moment, not seeing what that question has to do with anything. "I've… never really asked." I eventually reply. "I guess it could be? I hope you weren't planning on trying to steal any of it."

"No, it's not that." Tenmyouji says, looking contemplative. "It's just… do you know where she got it from?"

I don't get it, what is with this line of questioning? What difference does it- oh, right. All-Ice. The only big question in the series whose answer I remember being utterly disappointed in. Honestly, I guess that's sort of a good thing. With the way that whole mystery ultimately ends up going nowhere, and is brought up all of once in this game, it probably doesn't matter what I say about it. In fact…

"You know, now that you mention it, I don't really know." I say, placing a finger on my lips and looking at nothing in particular, as if trying to remember something. "She's worn it for as long as I've known her, so you'd think it would have come up at some point. Weird, huh?"

Tenmyouji nods to himself, his expression stern. I hear him mutter "Thought so…" under his breath and mentally snicker. Yeah, he definitely thinks she brought it with her from her tomb.

"Why'd you ask?" I continue, figuring I'm sort of obligated to ask that as a follow up.

"Just trying to confirm a theory." Tenmyouji mutters, waving me off. "Don't worry about it too much."

I let the subject drop after that, and return to absently watching K as he begins mixing drinks. Unfortunately, that little discussion has brought to the forefront of my mind something I've been trying very hard to ignore — namely, that it is freezing in here. I guess that makes sense, given that outside this base is nothing but the cold vacuum of space, but I wish I at least had something more to cover myself. Why the hell does Clover wear this?! Or rather, NOT wear this, seeing as how her clothing encroaches on the nonexistent. Meta-wise it's for the sake of fanservice I'm sure, but that doesn't make it any less stupid in-universe, and I don't recall it ever being explained why she went from a perfectly reasonable outfit in 999 to essentially stockings and her underwear in VLR.

I hiss under my breath, rubbing my arms in a futile attempt to warm myself. I suppose it's possible that Clover could be modeling herself off of Alice, who's somehow wearing even less than she is, at least around the torso. Her outfit only got a pass from me during my playthrough however because it actually played into the mystery of her character — if Alice truly was All-Ice, formerly frozen Egyptian princess/queen/whatever-it-was preserved into the modern age by virtue of having Ice-9 in her body instead of water, then she would need to always keep her body temperature relatively high to keep herself from "refreezing". Her outfit, however, is notably about as far away from the concept of heat preservation as possible, and the inherent contradiction this posed made Alice's ridiculous outfit potentially justifiable as a literal plot point. One naturally assumed that it would eventually be explained, perhaps by some sort of inherent cold resistance, or some other supernatural element not yet introduced by the series... but, as it turns out, there is no mystery. Alice is NOT All-Ice, which explains why she isn't a frozen stiff throughout the game, but also means that she has absolutely no good reason to dress that way. She does, however, have every reason to be just as cold as I am right now, if not more so. So I hope she's silently suffering like me over in the crew quarters, because it's likely her fault that two particular parts of Clover's upper anatomy feel REALLY uncomfortably hard right now-

"Oh hey, how'd we miss this before?"

I turn around to see Tenmyouji looking at a series of partially faded black and red letters painted on the wall behind us, which make no obvious sense in and of themselves.

"Is this some kind of code?" Tenmyouji wonders aloud, scratching his head. "RLRL could mean right-left-right-left… but what does the rest of it mean?"

If I recall, it's actually just a bunch of letters hiding the name of one of the drinks we need to mix for the password K isn't currently working on, which will be revealed after we do something else. I don't particularly want us to waste time on a wrong assumption, so I'll have to say something.

"Maybe, but I don't think so." I reply after taking a second to organize my thoughts. "The stand is stuck to the table, so the globe must be needed in this particular spot for a reason. I have a feeling it has something to do with those letters, since they're the only other thing nearby." I don't actually remember how that specifically works, but I'm fairly certain of it.

"Hmm…" Tenmyouji looks unsure, but before anything further is said, we're both interrupted by a robotic sounding noise of puzzlement coming from a few feet away.

"Strange…" K says, looking over the martini glasses he's arranged on the bar. "I am certain that my logic is correct, yet nothing seems to be happening."

"Can I see the page again?" I ask, getting up from my seat.

K hands over the journal page. "From what I can gather, the mother has a mix of Red and Planet, the father one of White and Island, and the son one of Blue and Ocean."

I look over the page again, taking a minute or two to work out the logic from scratch. Yeah, that seems right… weird, what's the issue?

"You have them in the right order, right?" I ask, puzzled.

"They are arranged as described." K answers. "I re-mixed the drinks, in case I had made one improperly, but there is no reaction. Perhaps there is a button or switch that must be pressed which we are not seeing?"

"Actually, I think you just have to flip the left and the right glasses." Tenmyouji interrupts. "The bartender is the person describing this, right? He's on the OTHER side of the bar."

K and I look at him, then each other, before K experimentally exchanges the positions of the two martini glasses. The screen on the right instantly lights up.

"Oh. I hadn't even thought of that." K says, sounding ever so slightly embarrassed. Honestly, seeing as how I didn't remember that bit, nor did I notice it upon actually examining the problem, I don't really think he needs to be. VLR is tricky like that sometimes.

Briefly wondering how the tech here even works that it can detect different kinds of mixed drinks (some sort of chemical analysis?), I move to the right to take a look at the screen. The screen around the code is blue… which means we somehow found the secret file password before the escape one. Again.

…how do we keep doing that?