Truth Revealed

“Why did I pick the name Rose?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Is that even a riddle? I mean, the answer could just be what the flower means in Flower Language.”

“Do you know what it means in Flower Language, Reiss?”

“…No.”

“And neither do I,” Arc said. “John?”

“Me? Hmm, well, it was never really something I cared about.” The detective sighed. “Okay, maybe it’s not that. Is there anything else it could be?”

“Like what?” Reiss asked.

“Well, maybe some other significance of a rose. Something like a symbol or an organisation or something.”

“Um, like Valentines Day?”

“…Probably not that,” Arc grunted.

“But when you think of roses, you think of romance, you think of beauty, you think of love, you-”

“What about in stories? Paintings or history? Or-?”

“Vincent van Gogh did a famous painting of Pink Roses,” Arc offered.

“In Christianity, Roses could be associated with the Virgin Mary or Rosaries.”

“So, what? She was at an all-girls school in a yuri manga back on Earth? Great deduction, Reiss.”

“…Why are you only like this to me, Arc?”

“Because-”

“Guys, focus,” John said. “But you both might be onto something. Saint George’s Day in Spain uses roses as part of the celebrations, but that’s not a super widely known fact.”

“So, why do you know it?”

“Because I’m intelligent, obviously.”

“It sounds more like you did a lot of quizzes.”

“Regardless, it’s not the connection,” John said. “Or maybe our approach is wrong?”

“How do you mean?”

“The answer to Rose’s riddle must be someone back on Earth who would have been widely known to a lot of people; otherwise, the puzzle is unsolvable and so why bother offering it to be challenged.”

“Because she just wants to mess with us?”

“I can’t rule out that possibility, Arc, but let’s assume that’s not the case, for now at least. So, let’s start with that.”

“Um, so like staff or people attached to the game?” Reiss asked. “Then, there’s the writer, ADNois, the original artist and co-founder of the company, DaGR…um, I don’t really remember anyone else.”

“Ken Kaji did the OST,” John said.

“There were a few big profile streamers who covered the game like Rhodanthe, but the most famous one is-”

“SoRe-sama, right?” John asked; Arc nodded. “I don’t know much about him.”

“Neither, which is why it would’ve been nice to have Charlotte here.”

“She’s staying by Alice’s side, so leave her alone.”

“She should still be helping us, Reiss.”

“She probably doesn’t want to see us right now, Arc.”

“Boys, stop.” John folded his arms. “SoRe-sama was the streamer who took that photograph of the falling out between ADNois and DaGR?”

“And then he got stabbed to death by a fanatical fan for besmirching the MoH franchise’s name.”

“And then it turned out he was just a psycho, right?”

Arc nodded. “SoRe-sama would definitely have a lot of reason to hate this world, and I think, based on Charlotte’s fangirling, he used to send flowers to his biggest donors.”

“Aw, that’s cute.”

“No, Reiss, it isn’t.”

“…Has Rose ever left any flowers for people?”

“Remember what Stephan said? He said she likes ‘nurturing’ people and watching them grow - the various changed threads across the world could be SoRe-sama’s flowers he’s left for us.”

“That’s a possibility,” John said. “But don’t forget, DaGR threw roses at the executives in that photo. Maybe he hated the game so much that he wants to ruin it?”

“…He certainly has the right motivation, but then-? Hmm, right, they did that so we’d know they’d changed the scenario.”

“Did what, Arc?”

“Well, made notable changes so we’d know they existed,” Arc said.

“…Or maybe we were wrong,” Reiss offered. “What if it’s not that they wanted us to know about them, but they really liked those characters or something?”

“…So, he goes around blowing up all the original story because he liked drawing a girl?”

“Hey, don’t forget how many ‘Same Faces’ there are in certain games and stories back on Earth.”

“Ah, like Bron-?”

“What about ADNois herself?” John asked.

“She’s the author of all the games, so surely she’d love them more than anyone, right?” Reiss asked back.

“We need to write this all down. Here, grab some papers, pencils and just start writing down everything and anything.”

***

“What about the colour of the rose?” Arc asked. “The mark on her mask is a Red Rose, maybe that has something to do with it.”

“Red, red, red…red…red usually means, what, passion? Romance? Anger, right?” Reiss wondered. “A red rose, red rose…John?”

“Hmm, red rose, a red…rose. Why red? What’s the significance of i-?” He stopped and started tapping his finger to his lips. “Red, red, red. Rose. Red rose. A red rose. A red…Ah!” His sudden exclamation startled the two boys. “We’re idiots.”

“Well, Reiss is, but-”

“No, not like that - we missed something important that Rose had given us as a clue. Pandora’s Box,” John said. “Even though it was never stated in the game, Queen Elisebeth used Pandora’s Box to survive in the woods following the assassination attempt. Originally, the queen was going to destroy it but she held onto it, fearing what Rose would do, so she sent it to Tartarus.

“Tartarus and Pandora’s Box are both from Greek Mythology, so part of the mystery’s answer lies there. However, the other half of the mystery lies in who had Pandora’s Box - Queen Elisebeth.”

“Okay?”

“When you think Queen Elisebeth back on Earth, you think of the late English queen, Elisabeth the 2nd. But!” John grinned. “She was the 2nd, not the 1st. Queen Elizabeth the 1st was queen about 400 years before Elisabeth the 2nd and she was the last English monarch to have the surname of Tudor. The Tudor family crest is a rose, a red rose - the Tudor Rose. So!”

“That’s where the answer to Rose’s riddle lies?” Reiss asked.

“I think so. I think we need to think more along these lines.” John cleared his table of all its contents and then started putting paper and pencils onto it. “I don’t know if the answer itself will lie in this train of thought, but it’s pushing us in the right direction. Okay, so Tudors - what do we know?”

“…Henry the 8th?” Reiss whispered. “Divorced, beheaded-”

“Everyone knows that.” Arc cut him off. “Queen Elisabeth…England…hmm, uh, Sherlock Holmes?”

“You’re about 200 years off.”

“I guess you’d know best, Mr Moriarty.”

“Oi. But yes, I would. That was the Victorian Era. Back to this - let’s see. It was still the time when the new world was being discovered and colonised. European superpowers, wars at sea and on land, and-”

“What about Shakespeare?!”

“Not so loud, Rei…Shakespeare.” John laughed. “Yes, Shakespeare was alive during the reign of Elizabeth the 1st. Okay, let’s try this angle then. What plays do you know?”

“…I never paid attention to it at school,” Arc muttered.

“I’ve read them all.”

“Loser.”

“Hey! I had a lot of free time at the school library! What about you, John?”

“I read some back at school, but I don’t really remember them. Try naming some for me.”

***

“DaGR, DaGR, DaGR…”

“John, you’ve just been saying DaGR for the last hour,” Arc grumbled. “Please stop before I end up writing DaGR in my notes.”

“Well, it’s important.” The detective leant back far on his chair. “It’s such a weird name to choose.”

“Well, artists always have strange handle names.”

“Not always.”

“I can think of about two dozen off the top of my head.”

“Well, why not try doing what I’ve done?” Reiss pushed his paper towards them. “I thought maybe ADNois or DaGR might be short for something, like initials. A.D. Nois and Da. G. R. - does that ring a bell for anyone?”

“A.D. Nois?” John shook his head. “The only thing I came up with was the U.N. Owen twist in And Then There Were None. Which is something you two have never read, is it?” When they nodded in confirmation, John said, “10 people are invited to dine on an island by a murderer who used the name of U.N. Owen to appear more legitimate to drag them there to murder them. U.N. Owen is a hidden clue for the word unknown.”

“So, A.D. Nois - Adnois? What’s an Adnois?”

“I have a feeling I was wrong about that one,” John confessed, a little embarrassed.

“Da G. R. might be something. A famous D.G.R. word or person perhaps?” Arc wondered.

“If it is someone’s name, then the first name must start with D and A,” Reiss added.

“…Dante Gabriel Rossetti,” John concluded.

“…Who?”

“Famous English poet and artist, 19th century.”

“Is that when the Tudors were?” Reiss asked.

“No, but there are a few things that could be evidence, or they could just be conjecture.

"First, there are two paintings of his that spring to mind. The first is simply titled ‘Pandora’ and it does indeed depict the famed Pandora holding the very box she was never meant to open. The other is probably his most famous - ‘The Lady Lilith’.”

“I haven’t heard of it.”

“Neither have I, Reiss. What kind of painting is it?”

“It’s one Dante did of his mistress, depicting her sat at a make-up desk with roses behind her. Do you two at least know who Lilit-of course you don’t.” John sighed. “Lilith was considered an evil temptress and was thought to have been the first wife of Adam, the very first man, banished from the Garden of Eden for her sins. The roses behind Lilith would give a connection to the Rose we’ve met, but…”

“But what?” Arc asked.

“I can’t remember what colour the roses were.”

“Seriously?” John nodded. “Reiss, what about the ones in that viral picture? What colour were they?”

“Um, red and pink, I think?”

“…Well, it’s no surprise you don’t really remember everything. What else did you think of John?”

“The second thing is the fact that DaGR’s concept artworks for the MoH games always took on a look like an oil-painting, a style he was inspired by from Dante’s works. DaGR had spoken of his love of the artist a lot before he left the limelight, so it’s possible DaGR is the one whose been reborn in a female body.”

“Perhaps,” Arc whispered. “Hmm, I don’t know, I feel like it’s not like him.”

“Well, DaGR didn’t exactly leave the company on good terms,” Reiss said.

“True, but I do remember that whenever DaGR appeared at panels or on stage, he’d always wear a full facemask and call any female fans he met ‘Lady’. The Eagold family testified that Rose always addressed Alice as the Little Lady or some variant of Lady.

“Well, it’s a possibility if nothing else.”

***

“Rhodanthe in Greek mythology was apparently a queen of great beauty who attracted many suitors,” John said, half asleep and lying down on the table. “It literally means Red Rose so-”

“But Rhodanthe didn’t even finish the games, did he?” Arc groaned. “Would he really have a deep enough understanding of the games to do everything Rose has?”

“…It’s not like Rose has been going around seducing everyone either, has she?”

“No, only you and Charlotte would do something like that, Reiss.”

“Are you just upset because you don’t have a chance with any of your favourite girls from the game?”

“Even if that was true, do you think I would admit it?”

***

Eight hours had passed.

They were exhausted.

Their heads were a mess, and none of them had any confidence in their theories anymore.

“…Shall we call it here for tonight?”

“…Unless you want to start paying me overtime,” Arc huffed.

“…You’ve got more chance of spontaneously combusting.”

“…I think that means we’re done.” Reiss sat up and tried to stand up, but nearly collapsed from exhaustion. “God, I need some healing.”

“Alright. Let’s tidy these things up a little and then we’ll break for the night, okay?”

As they were cleaning up, Reiss couldn’t help but chuckle.

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just.” He stopped and showed Arc the paper he’d written on. “Back on Earth, I used to be dyslexic, so I was always misreading things. I used to call DaGR DaRG or ADNois ADoNIs.” He laughed. “I’m so glad I-”

“Say that again.”

“John?”

“Again - the way you used to read the writer’s name.”

“U-um, it was ADoNis - why does-?”

“Paper and pen, now.”

Arc didn’t hesitate to hand them over.

Quickly, Arc wrote the name as Reiss had misread it and then slammed his head onto the table in anger.

“What the fu-?!”

“It was staring us in the damn face this whole time!”

“…I think you just broke your face on it.”

“Shut up, Arc!” John stood up straight, took a deep breath and said, “Go back to Shakespeare for me.”

“I thought that-”

“Arc, shush. Reiss, go through every Shakespeare play you can for me, now.”

“U-um, okay? Julius Ceasar, Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Mu-”

“Boom!” John slammed his hand on the table.

“Please stop that,” Arc whispered.

“Name the characters in Midsummer for me real quick.”

“There’s Theseus, Hippolyta, Puck and-”

“Theseus!”

“…The guy who killed the Minotaur is the clue?” Arc asked.

“Theseus is most famous for slaying the Minotaur, but he’s also famous for establishing a particular cult - the Cult of Aphrodite. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite had a mortal human lover who, upon his death, had an anemone flower grow where he’d fallen. But! Much more importantly, beside his grave, where the tears of the Goddess had landed, a red rose had sprouted.

“His name was Adonis!”

“Seriously?!”

Arc let out a low laugh. “Would we have ever gotten that without Reiss?”

“Maybe, but ADNois. It was right there this whole time,” John chuckled. “We’re not dealing with a disgruntled project lead, a toxic streamer or some random psychopath - we’re dealing with the original author of MoH.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense. This is her world, these are her babies, right? Why would she want to destroy it?” Arc argued.

“Maybe, there’s more than meets the eye about this whole case. Reiss, that photograph that SoRe-sama took - the roses were handed by ADNois to DaGR, right? So, we just assumed that DaGR was the only one with a problem. I know it’s been a lifetime since you’ve seen that picture, but what was-?”

“It was blank. ADNois wasn’t smiling, she just looked - corporate?”

John grinned. “What if something went on behind-the-scenes of the Days of Iron development that we didn’t know about? What if there was something the public didn’t know? Something they couldn’t let us know without sinking the release. What if that’s why ADNois and DaGR fell out?”

“…So, she hates her own games? Even though she stayed to write them?”

“I don’t know. I think we’d only know for certain if we got another chance to speak with her.”

“You two can do that by yourselves this time,” Arc said. “I’m not going near that beast again.”

“We have to.”

“Why?”

“W-well, because-”

“Look, you two, I don’t know if it’s because you’ve been playing hero for too long or something, but there are 4 enemies left to fight, and they wiped out all the other enemies in this world. The Blue Banners, the Silent Sect, Hell even the Silent Sister herself, and you think we can take her? Especially while she has that Pandora’s Box thing. That’s not a fight; that’s a death sentence.”

“…Do you have nothing you’d risk everything to protect in this world?”

That gave Arc pause.

Upset at how Reiss had pulled at the heartstring Arc didn’t know he had, Arc clicked his tongue and said, “I’ll help, but I’m not fighting Rose. You two can do that bit on your own.”

“That’s good enough,” John said. “Admittedly, just knowing that Rose is ADNois isn’t going to make a lot of difference unless we can somehow solve the mystery of why she’s doing this. If, like I’ve theorised, something went on behind-the-scenes, how do we uncover that?”

“…I think I have an idea already.”

“Let’s hear it, Arc.”

“You’ve both played the games multiple times, right?” They nodded. “And you both remember that Queen Elizabeth survived that assassination attempt when she was young, right?” Again, they nodded. “In the game, it’s never stated how she managed it, but we now know that Pandora’s Box allowed her to survive. So, here’s my idea - what if there was stuff from the game that was cut due to time, money or whatnot, and things like that are what caused the fight between DaGR and ADNois?

“What if there’s clues related to the cut content that we could still find traces off in this world?” Their eyes lit up and Arc smiled. “Just because we weren’t told in the game that Pandora’s Box exists doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We never got the full list of inmates inside Tartarus, so we never really knew that Samantha existed in lore books.”

“So, how would we find this cut content?” John asked.

“Oh! I had an idea! You know how we could only explore towns and environments a certain amount of distance or depth? What if there’s stuff hidden in there?” Reiss suggested.

“That’s a whole lot of ground to cover, though.”

“…Still, it’s a start,” John said. “I have contacts and I can use a lot of my personal funds to help cover our blind spots. Again, it’s not perfect, but it’s a start.”

“I’ll ask the girls and my friends if they can help too,” Reiss said.

“And I’ll see what leads I can dig up in the underworld,” Arc said.

“Then, we’re in agreement. We won’t let things go the way Rose wants them to - we’ll find her, and we’ll stop her.”