"Shrimp. What do you know about O-6? I saw that he was in your player profile."

"Oh my gosh! O-6? The hubby wubby? I love that guy! He's soooooooo handsome. He's a real cats MEEEEOW!"

"So, he's not a bad guy?"

"Hmmm? No, he's a real bad guy, Yu. I like him cause he's kind of funny to me."

"Is he always evil?"

"Heeeck yeah! That's why I like him! He's funny, and he just does what he wants! He's always evil, predestined to be evil. I love love love the way he falls, you know?"

"Cause, he gets you with that good boy moment. He's going to be a good guy, and do the right thing, and he's trying hard, but then he messes up and......"

"BAM! He's ripping out necks! He's shooting guys in the head! He's making orphans left and right! He's feral, he's a monster! And he's sooooooooo cute for that, brah!~"

"He's like, kind of a fantasy, like obvs I would totally hate him in real life, but in a computer, you can be like-"

"Here's my feral hubby! He's broken beyond comparison, and I love him sooooo much! I'd try to fix him, but he'd snap my neck in two!"

"So. There's no universe in where he's a good person? He's always doomed to fail?"

Shrimp gets an odd vibe from the questioning. "....uh........yeah he's like. Doomed forever you know. You could give him a paradise, and he'd still manage to accidentally break down. It's kind of something that's always going to happen. He's pre-disposed to being evil. Like, super duper pre-disposed."

"This...this makes me sad and I don't know why! I just, hear this echoing in my mind whenever someone tells me something is "doomed" and I want to stop it! I don't like when things are DOOMED! It reminds me when Cowboy told me to stop playing Fortuna because it was a doomed game, and....I couldn't! I just wanted to stop all those people from dying!"

"It's like.......I.......I remember not being able to do it!"

"Do what? Save your video game?"

Yu stood silent for a moment.

"Doooooh I'm kind of a little too stupid to know what you're saying. Please don't get mad at a lil dumb seal. They don't know what you're talking about, brah."

"Why do you believe things are impossible!?! Why do you animals INVENT THINGS THAT CANNOT BE FIXED!?"

"Please stop yelling at me, Car- Yu. I don't know how to help."

Yu closes their eyes shut. This is wrong. They know they're wrong. Just because they're in pain, they can't take it out on a the person animal in front of them. This was cruel.

They calm down. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you. It's....it's not your fault. It's not anyone's fault I think.... I think that's what I'm supposed to understand. What Cowboy is trying to teach me."

"..........................."

"Yeah, you should be careful, brah! They say some animals never ever forget a person who has wronged them, lol! That could be me you know????"

"Joking!~ I got a tiny little memory saved just for digging big holes in the ground and looking at cute men! You don't need to worry about me."

"I literally, have like, legit???? No idea what you were talking about???? So it was like, you were making weird growling noises at me, like Grrrrr rawr!!!! And I was just standing there like, GULP! Hope they're not going to eat me through the screen! Not that you could do that."

"So like, haha! Did you like, decide on something or what?"

"I decided, I'd like to take notes about O-6!"

"Ooooooh following cute troubled men around (fictional only of course) is my favorite hobby too! We have soooo much in common, brah! I can tell you all about O-6 while you do it!"

"I want to know why O-6 is doomed to fail."

"And uh, not get mad about it!"

"What even like, triggered you to start talking bout O-6 anyway, dude?"

"It was a cut scene. The Hound? CL-7? talked about how O-6 was doomed to be a mass murderer every universe, and how killing him in advance meant protecting all the people he would kill. He talked about how he has seen so many universes, all of them failed and it reminded me.....well that's the weird part. I don't know what it reminded me of, but it was a bad memory."

"But, it doesn't matter. The memory that is." Yu reminded themself that their pain shouldn't be given to people like Shrimp. They would have to hold it in for now. "I just want to learn from this. I think this game could teach me a lot. The people in it are more like me........than anyone else I know is."

"Sounds good to me, brah. Hopefully you'll find out why relating to O-6 is suuuuuper duper bad for you soon. Let's game!"