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The Titanium Tyrant goes to Roses of Villarosa
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There were three things in the head of the Titanium Tyrant and they were wrath and grief and pain, and the fourth was a bullet.

He should not have failed. He could not have failed, and these thoughts were a litany in his head that never ended. He was the man who conquered fate and the world was his work and so everything in it that was wrong he could have prevented, and Thei was dead and she was dead and he had failed and -

When he died his hands were torn and blistered from the workshop; the workshop his daughter had wrested him from, and his eyes were sagging with sleep, the sleep his son had cost him when he went to war, and his armor was dusty, dusty as it had not been worn for months -

Catherine came to him three times; once to hint that his plans were unwise, and once to tell him they were wrong, and once to say plainly that they had made a tragedy, and he was the Tyrant and he had conquered fate but she was right and he was wrong and it was a lie, it had always been a lie, and his children’s knights were killing each other in the streets and Elizabeth had murdered Proteus and Steelmind and Julius was sweeping through the streets in a thousand bodies killing everything that moved and from left and right there was blood and death and Novapest was in ruins (see how you rule your people, King!), and the Titanium Tyrant had taken up the Durendal armor, and never checked the safeties and gone to bring order to the world and in his head he had been thinking that he had failed and she was dead and it had all been a lie, all of it, a lie for twenty-eight years since his little girl first gurgled up at him, and it had been hopeless before that, all of, it, the world never needed him and he'd failed it all and she was dead

Perhaps he would have seen the bullet coming. Perhaps he had seen the bullet coming. It shouldn’t have mattered, because even with the helmet down (they had to see his face, they had to know it was him, he had thought - no, not thought, he had not thought since Your Majesty died -) the Durendal armor had bullet-deflecting shields -

They would have been famous last words, if he’d thought to say them. Instead the last thing he thought was that Stheno Balog, Gorgon Queen of Novapest, was dead.

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The lights come up slowly, over the course of a few seconds.

He's in a warm, comfortable room, decorated like a fairly generic waiting room or office. The chair he's sitting in is plush; the worn upholstery is pleasant to the touch. There's a painting on the wall, depicting a wrought-iron gate, half-open, overgrown with roses; their red petals are a splash of vibrant colour in the room's otherwise muted palette.

Ahead of his chair and slightly to one side, there's a solid oaken desk, somewhat comically large for the slight young lady sitting behind it. She pushes her horn-rimmed glasses up her nose, tucks a lock of straight dark hair behind her ear, and in the same continuous motion reaches up to adjust her halo, a glowing golden circlet suspended a few inches above her head. Feathers rustle behind her, a restless motion of her enormous white wings; her chair is backless to accomodate them.

"Congratulations!" she says, a little hesitantly, perhaps picking up on the fact that he is not feeling very congratulatable at the moment. "You've been selected by the ineffable Will of the Multiverse to reincarnate as," she picks up a clipboard from the desk and squints at the form to double-check, "the villainess of an otome game."

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"Excuse me a moment, miss," the Tyrant says calmly.

Then he stands up, picks up the chair he's standing on, and kills it. Thoroughly, systematically, smashing it against the ground then shattering every last piece of it into a thousand shards along every stress point, tearing out the plush and shredding the backing, slamming the last remnants into the carpet before grinding them under with his boots.

(He's screaming incoherently while he does this.)

"I'm sorry," he says, finally, still breathing hard as he turns. "What did you say?"

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"Ah," she says, somewhat at a loss. "I said."

With a quick breath, she steadies herself and continues more firmly, "Congratulations, you've been selected by the ineffable Will of the Multiverse to reincarnate as the villainess of an otome game."

She regards him and the remains of his chair for a moment, and then adds tentatively, "Was the chair not... good?"

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"... The chair was unobjectionable," he says, and the genial tone in his voice almost conceals the pain. "My older daughter just had me assassinated." It's so much easier when there's someone there to discuss it with, calmly. "Or possibly her assistant who is going to betray and murder her, both are possible from the information I have." He leans on the desk. "Would you prefer I sit?"

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"I prefer you do whatever makes you more comfortable," she says, with a slight gesture towards the former location of the chair. A soft cloud of faintly sparkling blue vapour envelops its remains, and when it dissipates, there are no more splinters; then a second cloud, this one pink, coalesces out of thin air into the shape of a replacement chair and dissipates to reveal one. It's powder blue, where the previous chair was a misty grey, and the upholstery is slightly newer.

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The Titanium Tyrant will sit, then. 

"Now, to go over what you were saying," he says, anger and pain still seething beneath his swift voice, as he rattles off one by one - "I am dead, I cannot or will not be brought back, there is an afterlife, the afterlife involves reincarnation - at least for me - I am still going to be a villain in my next life, and... I am sorry, my Japanese was rusty, what did you say I was the villainess of?"

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She clears her throat slightly and reads off her clipboard, "'The non-existent smash hit otome game, manga, anime, and Broadway musical Roses of Villarosa.' Ah, I'm not fully familiar with the genre myself but otome games appear to be structured similarly to visual novels, with a female protagonist and a plot focused on that protagonist finding love with one of a selection of available boys."

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Sandor Balog, Titanium Tyrant of Novapest, blinks. "... I think my younger daughter has played some of them?" He considers a moment. "I suppose I should ask if this is an ironic hell, or a simulation crafted for a replica of me after my death to annoy and/or redeem me? Both possibilities loom larger in my mind than they did before." Honestly he's going with the latter, though he needs to subtract some plausibility because it would need to be a historian who resurrected him; Minerva, Jack and Mechanos all have better taste.

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"The Will of the Multiverse is ineffable, so it's hard to say for sure, but as far as I know this is an ordinary otome game villainess reincarnation, which is to say that the Will thought incarnating you as the villainess would make the plot of such a story more interesting."

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The Titanium Tyrant sighs. He has just had a very, very long day week month year, and is not enjoying himself. At some point a bunch of twenty-second century (or so) scientists are going to leap from behind a metaphorical curtain and say 'ha ha! Fooled you!' (and, indeed, know that he is thinking this) and though he is physically fresh and happy (and, he realizes, younger than he has looked for years) that does not help as much as he would have thought it would.

"So. The Will of the Universe is trying to make a more entertaining story, the specific type of story it is making is a female-protagonist romance styled as a Japanese video game," the sheer implausibility of this statement is staggering but he will be polite anyway, "and has seized me as a tool for doing so. Understandable." (He is very interesting pain.) "Please go on."

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"There are a number of choices available to you, to define the style and story of your otome game," the angel explains, smoothing down the papers attached to her clipboard. "You will be able to choose several things about your character design, the tech and magic levels present in the game setting, your background and the background of the heroine and the boy you will be fighting her over, and an assortment of other miscellaneous points of interest; and besides the choices defined on my form, it's also possible for you to make suggestions about the plot and worldbuilding which our universe construction team will take into account if at all feasible."

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He nods.

"I am afraid that I have some questions, before we begin." He leans on the desk. "First, are afterlives universal, and if so, are they normally net-positive utility for supervillains?"

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"The universality of afterlives is a complicated question with many influencing factors," she says. "I think it would be fair to say, though, that broadly speaking across universes, supervillains are unusually disadvantaged in the afterlife area."

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Right. Understood. Everyone needs to be rescued from Hell. One more job for the Titanium Tyrant pain.

"I had, as it happened, been referring to this universe," he says, just to clarify. "Are you aware of its afterlife status or policies for non-me individuals?"

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"Well, it's one of the universes compatible with this style of reincarnation, which rules out several possibilities, but I don't have specific details and the situation could range from 'universal paradise' to 'complete annihilation barring the deliberate intervention of higher beings'," she says apologetically.

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"I see."

This does not change the situation greatly.

"Will I be permitted to bring any of my own people with me to this new world?"

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"Hmm, let me check," she says, her eyes going distant for a moment as tiny pinpricks of blue light flare in their pupils.

"Yes, all right, the rules have been recently revised but you should be able to name any number of people to be reincarnated in your new world alongside you. If the number is three or less, you can choose specific roles for them in the story; if the number is ten or less, you can choose for each one whether they should have a specific role in the story which you do not choose, or simply be reincarnated somewhere in the world where you may or may not get the chance to meet them; if the number is more than ten, you have no control over the circumstances into which they reincarnate." The points of light glow briefly again, and she adds, "If the number is greater than the projected population of the setting you create, some souls will need to be held back for future opportunities to reincarnate into it, and if you manage to destroy the universe before that happens, they'll be sent on to reincarnate into broadly similar circumstances elsewhere."

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Manage to destroy the universe? Well, that's ambitious. The worst he ever risked was shattering the earth.

He nods. "I understand." Which ten would he pick if he was limited to ten? Thei pain, Heavyhand, Blitz, Elizabeth Elizabeth, Julius, Catherine, Mechanos, Prudence, Jack and Andrew. Zenith or Solaris? Would he sacrifice his enemies for them? (He reaches into a pocket of the clothes he usually wears; begins folding a piece of paper over and over again, twisting it between his fingers.) But will he sacrifice the chance to meet his wife to them? Of course not.

"Would my fellow reincarnators recover their memories?"

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"In time, yes, though their recollections may be delayed until after your storyline resolves so as not to interfere unduly in the plot."

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"I see." this would be so much simpler if the answer was 'no'

"You were telling me about my next life?"

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"Yes!" she says. "I have here a form on which I will record your selections regarding your reincarnation. Would you like me to go through the options in order? You can change your mind about your choices at any time up until the point at which you finalize your decisions and we proceed to the reincarnation process."

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"Yes, thank you," says the Tyrant.

(He is currently face to face with the rather obvious fact that he's going to fall in love with someone else, and then his wife will get all her memories back. He supposes he could have her come back as the someone else, but then he could only resurrect three people. For someone supposedly superintelligent he is coming up with remarkably few solutions to this problem.)

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"Right then!" She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and scans the form with her eyes to find the start. "The first question is your hairstyle, which will heavily influence the aesthetics of your character design. The options are Drill Hair, which gives you a free intimidating laugh, Hime Cut, which gives you a free psychological perk, and Elaborate, which gives you a free maid. I can show you examples if you're not sure what they look like."

She fishes three photographs out from behind the front page of the form. The first depicts a blonde girl with ringlets so aggressive they do indeed start to resemble mining equipment. The second, a girl with pin-straight black hair cut long with simple bangs. Finally, the third girl has her dark brown hair in a cascade of interlocking braids that reaches below the frame of the photograph, which cuts off at around the level of her hips.

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This is ridiculous nonsense but unfortunately the risk/reward ratio is in favor of taking it seriously. He wishes he was back to not having to make tradeoffs there was never when he didn't have to make tradeoffs.

(So much for the Titanium Tyrant.)

"Does this maid have superpowers," he says calmly, "or could I hire a substitute? And what psychological perks exist?"

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"The maid is guaranteed by the system to be competent, loyal, and effective; you are granted a choice of two minions with this guarantee from a pool of possible kinds, and the free maid is a third minion of the Maid type. As for psychological perks, the specific one granted by the hime cut is Silk Hiding Steel, which improves your ability to function well under pressure. Some applicants find it redundant and I venture to guess you'll be one of them."

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