On our way back in the carriage, Rosa and I munched on some cookies her maid had filched when we had been running back in the cafeteria (like maid, like master).

I watched Rosa out of the corner of my eye as I leaned back onto the soft cushiony back of the carriage. Ever since we had successfully  escaped into the carriage, she had fallen uncharacteristically silent, her brows furrowed in thought.

I gave her space in case she wanted to say something, but after ten minutes or so of listening to the rattling carriage and the passing sounds outside, I sighed and turned to Rosa. "Are you okay?" I asked, frowning in mild concern.

She took another biscuit absentmindedly and munched on it, still deep in thought. I waited for a response until I wasn't sure she had heard me, and I contemplated asking again when she faced me with her serious, golden eyes. "Fi, hypothetically speaking, if you had the potential to save a group of people-- like a lot of people-- but you never met them and you're not very sure you can save them, would you save them?"

I blinked. "What?"

Rosa shook her head, her  light brown hair brushing against her face. "Let me reword that. Say you have a relatively foreseeable path with an 89% chance of success, plus or minus five. Approximately," she reminded me, as if that made a difference. (It didn't.) "However, the payoff is considerably low. Let's put that value to around... five. Or less."

"O...kay?"

"Now, you have another path that leads to a payoff with the value of hundred or more, but it has a rate of success of that you do not know and cannot know. And it is no longer a perfect-information game but an imperfect-information game. Which path would you take?"

Rosa's eyes were focused on me, practically blazing in intensity, but I still had only the faintest idea of what she was talking about. "That didn't make it any clear," I told her, and she rolled her eyes.

"I made things so simple for you, Fi..."

I snorted. "Simple to you, maybe. Not to me. But let me think."

I turned towards the window and reorganized what I'd just heard in my head. I thought I heard Rosa mutter "Do I need to prepare a lecture in game theory?" but I shut her out and delved into my thoughts.

"...so," I said slowly, after a few more minutes of processing, "what you mean is, you have a choice between a path with less rewards but more chance of succeeding, and a path of more rewards but less chance of succeeding, and you're asking what I would choose, right?"

She nodded. "Exactly."

I threw my hands up. "You could've just said that--"

"I did! But with solid numbers--"

"--but no, you go the hard way, don't you--"

"--as if abstract concepts unverifiable by numerical means can be a better explanation!"

"...Whatever! Anyways!" I barked, just to get it over with.

"Ha, I win," Rosa replied, a smug smile on her face "Anyways."

I rolled my eyes and swatted away the stray sparkles that now sprinkled the air. "Anyways," I agreed. "If I had to, I would probably choose the more successful one. Better than getting nothing at all."

She considered this carefully. "But what if the payoff value refers to the amount of lives you can save?"

My eyebrows shot up. "Wait, so it's either take a risk and save hundreds of people or play safe and save a couple?"

Rosa nodded, her mouth set in a grim line.

"You should've said that from the beginning!" I scrunched up my face. "I was thinking in terms of, like, money. Or maybe, I don't know, food or something."

"Then are you going to change your answer?"

"Give me a sec," I said turning to the window. I lapsed back into silence, running over possibilities in my head. "Then what happens if I fail?"

"Hm?"

"What happens if I fail to succeed, whatever that is?"

She shook her head. "The consequences of failure is unknown. There are no precedents."

"What about the lives that I'm trying to save? Will they still be in trouble even if I don't choose that path?"

"In other words, will choosing that path put them at risk in the first place?"

I nodded.

"Then no. If you don't save them..." Rosa's eyes slid to the ground. "With very high probability, they will all die."

I blinked. "Who?"

"The hundreds you could've saved."

My jaw dropped, mind racing. "Then of course I would try to save them!"

"But you could fail, and the consequences are unknown," Rosa pointed out, crossing her arms across her chest.

"So? They're basically going to die anyways," I countered. "And besides, you could succeed."

She tilted her head, peering down at me. "So you would choose to take a risk? To save all these people you never knew?"

Well, knowing them or not, they were still people, weren't they? I nodded once, sharply. "Of course I would."

Rosa held my eyes for a moment more. Then she sighed and threw herself onto the entire seat with a groan, flopping over like a doll. "I knew you would say that!" she complained.

I blinked at her. "Rose?"

"Great," she muttered, her face smushed against the cushiony surface of the carriage seat. "Now I have to re-plan, and how long will that take?"

"Wait," I said, holding up a hand. "What do you mean you have to re-plan?"

"Isn't it obvious?" she shot back.

"I thought this was a hypothetical question!"

"Ha!" she snorted, glaring at me balefully. "You wish."

A low bit of panic seeped into me as I began to chuckle. Hundreds of lives at stake? That wasn't true, was it? Rosa had no way of knowing even if it was. "You're joking, aren't you? You just want to scare me."

Rosa ignored me. "Goodbye my 89% chance of success, plus-or-minus five," she was muttering mournfully into the seat, squishing her face even more. "I will miss you terribly."

Did she just sniff? Was she crying?!

"This isn't funny, Rosa," I said, giving her a look. "I'm not falling for your tricks."

"Oh woe is me," she wailed, rolling sideways until she was facing the ceiling. She extended a hand towards the ceiling, her hands wistful. "This is even worse than that one time I could've won that math competition if I hadn't misread my own handwriting."

"What?"

She looked over at me, and I hoped that the sheen of her eyes I could see wasn't from unshed tears. "I thought my five was a six, can you believe it?" she whispered. "All those calculations, off by one, and the prize ribbon of the competition went to him."

This... was kind of interesting. "Him?" I repeated, leaning closer.

Rosa nodded, clenching her teeth. Her entire body tensed, and her eyes, which had been close to tears just that one second later, was now flashing in hatred. "My biggest rival. The bespectacled fifth grader."

"Wow," I breathed, leaning back into the carriage. Then I frowned. "Wait, what's a fifth grader?"

"The one I was smarter than," she sighed, and she collapsed against the seat again. "I was smarter than that fifth grader, but I still lost."

For a second, I felt an inexplicable urge to ask Rosa, 'Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?' but refrained because that was, well, that was weird. "I see," I said, fighting the urge down. "No, wait, that wasn't what I was saying!"

Rosa looked at me curiously. "It wasn't?"

"No! Can you stop joking and tell me the truth?"

"But I wasn't joking. I haven't been joking for the entire ride."

I threw up my hands. Of course she wasn't, and of course she looked just confused enough to convince me she really wasn't. "Then can you at least clear up what you're saying so I at least know what's going on?"

"You want me to tell you what's going on?" she repeated, raising her head a bit.

I nodded. "Yes please. I would like to not panic at every single thing you say from now on. Ack! What now?!"

Rosa had bolted upright as suddenly as she had flopped over while I had been speaking. She turned to me, her golden eyes in calculating slits, and I leaned back as far as I could.

I knew that look. That was the how-can-I-convince-Fi-to-be-a-tool-for-my-nefarious-and-questionable-intent look.

"You know what? That... doesn't sound like a bad idea," she said, slowly.

"Oh, no," I said, shooing her away with a hand. "No, no no no no no. I take that back. Do what you want and leave me to my panic."

"You asked first," she whispered.

"I didn't know better," I said, gritting my teeth and giving her a Customer Service smile. "Please, won't you let it go too?"

"You asked first," she said again, louder. Her eyes were now so wide open that I could see too much of the whites in her eyes, and her pupil looked smaller. A crazed grin stretched out on her face, and I squeezed myself into the corner of the carriage.

This was getting scary.

"Rosa--"

"You asked first!" she sang, bringing her clasped hands to her cheek. Sparkles began filling the air around her.

I swatted them away as fast as I could. "Get away from me!"

"You asked me to tell you first!" she sang louder, her voice going up in pitches. She threw her hands up into the air, her head thrown back. "And now you must deal with the consequences! You must!"

"No!" I screamed, still swatting the air. Panic built up in me. I didn't want to be in Rosa's scary plans! I finally have some free time now, since I don't have to work so often! 

As I punched at the air, my mind consolidated into one word: escape. That's right, if I could escape from her, maybe I could still be free!

I considered the window of the carriage. Maybe I could roll out of here? Just, just shatter the glass and roll myself out the window? That could work.

"Aaaaahahahaha!" Rosa cakcled, voice high-pitched and her body still curved backwards. She brought the back of her hand towards her mouth. "Aaaahahaha! I am a genius!"

"You'd think these sparkles would know the difference between a beautiful smile and an evil cackle!" I cried.

"What sparkles?" gloated the girl triumphantly, a downright sneer now on her face. Was her light brown hair crackling with static or was that just me? (I prayed, deep inside, that it was just me.)

The sparkles were now practically filling up the air so fast I wasn't sure if I could breathe. I was starting to wonder whether death by sparkles was a possible way to go.

"That sounds horrible," I whimpered, as the sparkles began to overtake me. "I don't want to die because of sparkles." I didn't want to die period, of course, but death by sparkles? That was the most absurd way of dying I'd ever heard.

Rosa only cackled on.

As I drowned under the sparkles, suffocating (it was probably just my imagination, but still) and despairing over my horrible choice in friendships, I uttered one last word in hopes of saving myself from what would probably become a horrible mess.

HELP.

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A/N: Wheee am I late? Nah. I'm not late. Probably. :D