There was a method to Grey’s madness, he just wasn’t quite sure what it was yet. However, he felt that these things were a bit too coincidental.
He had insane Producers overseeing his storyline, but that didn’t mean everyone was dealing with insane Producers.
For a moment, Grey shifted his perspective. Maybe it was because of the description of Ma Famille, but it was definitely at the top of his state of mind right now.
If he looked at things from the perspective of the aliens that rammed him into this world, they needed to somehow coordinate what were probably billions of participants at the same time.
He knew that if he had to do something like that, he would probably divide his Producers into teams, and then those teams would have sub divisions between them, and then those teams would fall into an umbrella of more sub divisions for the overall group.
Then, he’d probably make a system of priority, something that could tell him when something important was happening in a certain segment so he could decide what to show and what to bury, or what to edit.
Regardless, that was all to say that Grey highly doubted that the Producer overseeing Amunet’s Zone was the same one that oversaw his own.
Now... why was that important?
Well, Amunet had ended up in his Instance. That much was fine, it made sense—kind of. But then she had also somehow ended up with Mon Frere, a perfect mirror to Mon Amie.
That was two oddities. It still wasn’t all that ridiculous, though. There was no third to make it a pattern.
But what had Grey on the edge of his seat a bit was the description of Mon Amie.
The descriptions of the items Grey ended up with fell into two buckets. There were the serious descriptions and then there were the taking the piss descriptions.
The Genesis Games were quite vindictive. Grey had seen the death send off message enough times to know that for certain. But it didn’t really make sense to him why it would be a jokester sometimes and serious at others.
If it was just a person he was talking about, then fair enough. But a "system" sounded like something that should only be programmed in one very specific way.
Mon Amie’s description basically made fun of him for being friendless. That felt targeted at him. The description wouldn’t make much sense if it had landed in the hands of someone who already had a team around them.
So the treasure that just so happened to target him specifically also happened to be the very same treasure that Amunet had the other half to?
It was like someone or something was telling him that Amunet was important.
The whole him asking about her age thing was just a shot in the dark. That was something else he was curious about that he didn’t have an actual answer to. But the fact that she was technically the first minor he had run into...
That was very interesting.
So, since he was on a roll, Grey decided to ask another question he thought might be relevant or not. He didn’t really have any idea, but he had seen Amunet once before.
Well, during the last few loops, there were some times that her real face showed, but it was still often obscured by flickering shadows or whatever devastating wounds she had suffered.
By comparison, that day in Esmeralda’s cabin, he had seen her wholly and completely.
Was she hot? Yes, but that was beside the point. What was actually important was the fact she looked like she had stepped out of Cleopatra’s throne room just seconds ago.
Back then, Grey hadn’t thought much about it because they were in a death game for the entertainment of aliens and he had literally just gotten a pair of panties as a treasure not long before. Who cared if she wanted to cosplay as a hot Egyptian princess?
But since he was asking questions about potentially odd things, he thought that he might as well ask about this as well.
He might not know much about the world outside of North America, but he was pretty sure modern day Egyptians wore jeans and sneakers like everybody else.
In response, though, Amunet crossed her arms.
"Where is that conspiracy brain of yours going with this? And how the hell do you know what I’m wearing?"
Grey realized then that Amunet’s arm cross was less of a sassy arm cross, and more of a "I’m protecting my tits from a pervert" arm cross.
So, Grey tilted his head down toward her crotch.
"Hey!" Amunet took a step back, blocking her chest with one forearm and covering her crotch with a hand. "I will gouge your fucking eyes out."
Grey burst into laughter, wheezing so hard he had to grab a tree for support.
"I don’t have X-ray vision, dumbass. I just caught glimpses and made out the rest."
Amunet looked at Grey skeptically. But then she realized that given Grey’s tendencies, it would have been obvious if he could see her naked. He looked at her like everybody else did these days, like only her face mattered. There was nothing else to see across the rest of her body.
She slowly put her arms down, then snapped them back up as though to check something before she slowly relaxed.
"These clothes were a reward after my tutorial zone. They were cute, so I made them my mainstay. They’re also self-cleaning, so they’re more convenient than wearing most everything else."
Grey nodded slowly. Now that he thought about it, Amunet also knew what America was, and Canada for that matter, and there was no America or Canada in the era he was thinking of.
It seemed he had overthought things.
But the point still stood somewhat. He was still sure that Amunet’s Producers were trying to force them to a head. Now the question was whether it was an enemies to lovers or lovers to enemies trope, or if they were trying to forge something bigger.
That was when Grey recalled something.
Amunet’s Neural Frame... it was the Recursive Type, wasn’t it?
Something clicked for him.