For the DSMP Blade System AU, I've mentioned in previous posts that most things stay the same pre-Staged Finale, with the exception of minor details and motivations (for example, we are hand-waving all non-canon deaths of any Blade or Driver that happened). But if c!Dream has differing motivations for the Plan, why is Staged Finale still happening in this AU?
c!Dream and c!Punz need some peace to work on part of the Plan. Now, Doomsday got rid of L'Manberg, but nobody actually died and frankly neither of them trust the old members of the government not to try another execution attempt, this time hunting Dream down. There is also Tommy to consider
Dream has to protect George. George cannot be uncovered as Dream's Driver, in large part because people tend to forget Blades have their own agency.
Keep Punz and EW!Ranboo safe. The plan needs to shift suspicion of helping Dream off of them. Neither of them should be suspected of being Dream's Driver, either.
Related to point 1, they need to track down an Aegis. That is not going to happen without having time with nobody bothering them.
Testing the Memory Patch isn't very easy with a non-compliant test subject.
In order for Dream to have any peace, he must either be imprisoned (Pandora's Vault has been built, but putting Dream in there would detract from it's eventual use for it's true purpose) or he needs to die. Given that c!Tommy is certainly going to get himself involved in some way, Dream is pretty certain he's going to die. He just needs to make sure it is in front of enough of the server that news of him being a Blade gets out, and that whatever he's killed for makes George unlikely to come forward as his Driver.
See, the thing about Blades is that their core crystals count as items. And there is a lot (so much) internalized prejudice that strips Blades of their agency. It's nonsense, of course. Anybody who's watched Skeppy and Bad's relationship for 5 minutes understands that Blades are their own people, and they do not have to (or always want to) do everything their Driver tells them to do.
Dream figures that the first thing people are going to do after figuring out he is a Blade is assume he is a "Bad Person" because he has a "Bad Driver." And that the second question, after "Who was Dream's first Driver?" will be "Who should be Dream's next Driver, to ensure that he is a Good Person?"
To be fair, he's not wrong. The Skeppy Cage exists in this one too, and no one questions it either.
Dream has faith that the Memory Patch is working. That it will work for him. But the problem is that it is removable. There isn't any guarantee of perfect recall, either. And it needs to be perfect, if it is going to be used as the cornerstone of The Plan.
The Plan, here, has 2 phase. Phase 1 is completing a version of the Memory Patch that can be added to the general Universal Patch Updates. Dream and Punz need to complete the code, which takes time and no distractions. They need to find an Aegis (neither of them have figured out Phil yet) to add their code to the Patch Update. Also other reasons (the Egg). Phase 2 is immortality and the server reset (after the Memory Patch has gone out).
So the script for the Staged Finale is:
lure Tommy and Tubbo
lie about a bunch of stuff (including killing Tubbo) to get Tommy mad enough to kill
have Punz lead the others through the Nether portal, removing doubts of his potential loyalty to Dream.
Tommy kills Dream, revealing Dream is a Blade (Punz will loudly point this out, to make sure everyone understands)
leave a bunch of "dangling threads" in the form Dream's Driver, what the Driver's potential plans are as wild goose chases (George will not be a suspect because the dethronement wouldn't have happened if Dream was George's Blade /s)
Punz leaves while people argue about Dream's core crystal. He waits on the other side of the Nether portal, passive ability turned to max so people don't realize he didn't leave
EW!Ranboo takes advantage of the argument to sleight-of-hand the core crystal. He goes through the Nether portal, hands the core crystal off to Punz, and then leave Ranboo in the Nether with the note that Dream is a Blade and the shock presumably caused the memory loss for the day. Ranboo is now no longer a suspect.
Dream is reAwakened as Punz's Blade, experiments can continue. Even if other people on the server see him, they assume that he is a completely new person/has no memory.
