Mauve sighed inwardly. She knew immediately what Grey was doing.
He played along with her purely because she had wanted that, but if it came down to actually making a sacrifice to drag all of these people along with him, he had no desire for it.
And considering how easily he ignored her before when he realized these people were coming, Mauve had a feeling that fluttering her eyelashes or even going a lot further than that wasn’t going to change Grey’s mind.
If he was a worse person, he would just take what innocence she had left and not do what she wanted. As far as horrible things in this world went, that wouldn’t even be close to the top of the list. She had already seen far worse done.
And if he was the person he had seemed to be until now—at least the person he seemed to be to her after she spoke with Megan and realized the manipulation of the Producers—then he would just straight up ignore her and leave.
Grey had grown this powerful with all the odds stacked against him in Zone 234. All the top Rankers had wanted to kill him, every one of them had tried to corner him, suppress him, crush him, and yet he only came out better and better in the end.
He simply didn’t need any of them, and she was having a hard time trying to find a path to convince him otherwise, especially when she couldn’t even keep her own team together.
Mauve wasn’t an idiot. She could see that Stella wasn’t taking the shift of their roles very well, and she could also see that Stella would probably stab them in the back the first chance she got.
This was Mauve’s own fault, actually. She had planned to be more subtle and gentle in the transition, taking over power between the three of them more slowly. But Grey’s strength had forced her hand.
Humans weren’t all that flexible, and they were very good at ignoring cognitive dissonance.
It was too difficult for Stella to both snap out of the realization that Grey wasn’t their enemy, and the fact she wasn’t actually good enough to be their leader at the same time.
’Maybe I need to take a step back...’ Mauve thought with a slow exhale.
She wanted everything. She wanted Grey on their side and control over this alliance, but clearly Grey was even less interested in the latter after realizing the kind of pressure they would be under soon. None of them had the time to build up others when they were too weak to be bothered with.
But at the same time... could Grey really fight everyone alone?
The Monelay had probably transferred billions of humans from Earth to this place. That meant that every Race participating probably had at least that many.
Of course, it could just be speculation on Mauve’s part. But even if there weren’t billions, there would still definitely be thousands. And that alone was way too much to handle for one person alone...
Especially if these were the weakest of the bunch.
And yet, Mauve couldn’t blame Grey. She didn’t know why, but when she looked at the man across from her, she couldn’t help but feel a slight ache in her heart as though she was feeling empathy for his pain.
What she didn’t realize was that she had already witnessed Grey die so very many times in the previous loops. She had already seen all of their inability to help him at all. She had seen how he was forced to take on the burden on his own while none of the rest of them were even able to help.
Even the second strongest of them all—Amunet—could only self destruct with their attackers.
The lingering sentiment of those loops weighed on her psyche and she moved without much thought.
She reached forward and took Grey’s wrist.
Grey raised an eyebrow, wondering what Mauve wanted to do, exactly.
"I’m sorry. It was too much to ask." She said softly.
Grey blinked, and then frowned. A weird, salty sort of feeling hanging in the back of his throat for a moment before it faded away.
He chuckled. "What do you mean? Protecting hotties is what I do best."
Mauve forced a smile as though she could see through him.
After some thought, she pulled out a bound diary. Grey had already seen it once before, but the Mauve of that loop had long since died.
"This is the trade we spoke about before. It should have what you’re looking for inside of it."
Grey raised an eyebrow, but after a long while, he reached forward and took it.
Then he chuckled again. Maybe history really did have a way of repeating itself.
He pulled out Mon Amie and then gave it to Mauve.
"This is...?" Mauve scanned it and then her eyes opened wide like saucers, her heart beating so fast out of her chest she couldn’t control it even if she wanted to.
A Mythical Item. A real Mythical Item. She hadn’t even personally laid hands on an Epic Item yet. The one Rare Item their group had stumbled across was taken by Stella, and it was the bow she used.
Yet Grey was giving this to her, for what? A clue that might not even lead him to what he wanted?
In the distance, the moment Amunet saw the disk, her own pupils constricted into pinholes outside of her control. She couldn’t scan the item, not at this distance. But she knew of it. Specifically, she knew of the set that it was a part of.
And she just so happened to have another disk that looked nearly identical on her person.
Amunet closed her eyes, her head tilting up.
’Have a shit life, Amunet...’
The words Grey had uttered echoed in her head over and over again. Even in the middle of the battle, it was the only thing she could think about.
She flipped her palm and a disk appeared.