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Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

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Safe, Though All Safety's Lost | Yara
As she had every time but the last (when misery had confined her to her trailer), one of the first things that Suzume did after the trial was head over to the newly opened area. She was not so naive now as to assume that there would be a means of escape in one (although she was still hoping to find a bird somewhere), but curiosity compelled her.
Besides, Suzume could sense that there was a climactic event ahead of them, in the same way as she could tell when a bad storm was approaching because her birds would screech and flitter from perch to perch with virtually no rest inbetween. This was both a less tangible sign and a more subtle reaction. She could not explain it by any justification beside the fact that her gut instinct was warning of something to come - good or bad, she couldn’t tell, but it would herald a great change. If it did not, then there were only two ways that this game could continue; with death after death until a maximum of two students were left standing, or with a stifled peace as they lived the rest of their lives within the studio.
The second possibility was undoubtedly the worst. To never see the sky again was simply unfathomable to her, and she would not let it happen. She had to get out by one way or another.
And, judging by the marks and blood all over the walls of the ‘protection chamber’, somebody else had been just as determined as she was.
When she saw its state, Suzume was tempted to turn and walk the other way- but she didn’t. She’d promised herself that she would be strong now. The dead students needed somebody to do that on their behalf now, after all. And so, after peeking inside and looking around as thoroughly as she could from the doorway in order to make absolutely sure that there was nothing dangerous inside, Suzume stepped inside.
She didn’t know what to make of it. It looked half nuclear bunker, half prison cell; the room seemed so torn between these two purposes that neither title quite fitted it. Why would a film or television studio need something like this? Suzume wasn’t the girl who purposefully ejected any negative thoughts from her head anymore - she knew that the blood was most likely not fake. So where did it come from.
We’re not the first ones to be trapped in here… That was what Koya had said. And she could see why he would think that. Which only raised the question of why they were trapped in here now. And who had been trapped before? Why? Did any of them get out, and if so how?
Suzume pressed her hand up against a clean, bloodless pane of glass, staring at a bloodstain. She felt like they’d been given so many clues, but trying to connect them all made her head ache. There was a truth hidden somewhere, but how was she to reach it? Aihara-sama, Kita-san, Hoshi-san… all the intellectuals, the ones who had clearly established themselves as the brains of the group, were now dead. She felt like a toddler, trying to walk for the first time on her own. They had to step up to the task that none of them-
No! She wouldn’t allow herself to be so pessimistic. She was going to be strong, whether she was strong right now or not. And Suzume was certain that, if she could get the whole group to rally together, they would be alright. That was something that she’d learned from birds - strength in numbers. A flock united can survive come rain or shine.
She heard footsteps, familiarly marked by a metallic clang, and saw the reflection of an easily recognizable figure in the glass. Suzume bit her lip. This was the first test of her resolve to stick by hope. Then again, Yara was out and about - that had to be a good sign!
"Yukimura-dono?" She started, taking a few steps towards the knight. Her next words would have been ‘are you okay’ were it not most blatantly obvious that she was anything but okay. "Is there… anything you need?"
She didn’t really know what she was doing. Suzume had never really been one for thinking ahead.
'Out and about', while not entirely inaccurate, was an optimistic way of putting it. 'Out and desperately seeking some last glimmer of hope' might have been a better way of putting it, albeit not the way she would have put it herself. She had never been high on emotional self-awareness, but Yara was sure of this: she might have been swayed to lock herself in her room, as Suzume had, were it not for the even greater sway of some final, nebulous hope.
She wasn't quite sure what she was searching for, truth be told. She had gone to the room with the pillars. That had been a glimmer of something, a sway of some kind, but not what she needed at present. She had mourned everyone, but this was the kind of mourning that books talked about. Maybe, she thought, she needed to do it on her own time and her own terms, when they had left this place and there were no more masterminds to taunt them with pillars. Looking into Yasei's eyes would be easier when she could make a promise to live and know that she could keep it.
When Yara spotted Suzume, already inside the protection chamber, her first instinct was to stop, but not to turn around. She had been tempted to lock herself in her room, but she had always coped better with someone there. By the time Suzume began to actively approach, she had convinced herself that it was better to reach out — though that didn't quite extend to saying hello back, or taking a step forward herself, or even really meeting her eyes.
Last time she had spoken privately with Suzume, she had come dangerously close to crying. That wasn't an experience she was keen on repeating — though, in hindsight, she had far more reason to do it now than she'd had back then. Back then, Yasei had been alive and Kanna hadn't killed a person and Yara had cried just because she'd failed at something, at keeping the group together, a goal so hopelessly beyond them now that it was almost a relief to have watched it slip out of sight. In hindsight, though, it seemed like the kind of thing that Yasei might have worried about — that she seemed like she might have worried about, from scattered comments, behind the veneer of non-worry.
Wordlessly, at first, Yara studied the jagged blade marks carved into the walls. Someone had tried to leave this place before them. Before, her interpretation of the fact would have been absurdly hopeful, just one notch below Atieno levels of sunshine: if they tried to get out, and they aren't here now, they must have gotten out, so we can too, she could almost imagine herself thinking, but the words seemed off, and the failure of her self-narration unsettled her almost as much as her current thoughts. Rather than keep introspecting, Yara frowned visibly at herself, still staring at the wall rather than turning to face Suzume, then forced an answer as best she could. Suzume had been so hopeful at the trial — even after Amane and Koya had died, she had done so much better than Yara could even dream of doing now. There was no point in making Suzume worried, especially with her own private grief; she had just gotten out of her own share.
"I... don't know," she finally admitted after the pause, the various scratches in the walls not becoming any less interesting. "Maybe. I. I mean, it's wicked nice of you to ask, but." And then, she realised, she had crossed some previously unbeknownst quota for words, because the rest caught in her throat — too hot and amorphous to take shape, like an overheated piece of metal not yet hammered into a blade. "...The grief thing kind of sucks, doesn't it?" Before she could even think about being on the verge of tears again, she closed her eyes, the pauldrons of her armour subtly sinking as her shoulders slumped. "I went into the room. With... with the photos. So— maybe you could just... be here for a sec?"
i’m… sorry i never… got to tell you… i’m…. i’m sorry it wasn’t me instead…
i am upset screw all of you
(ps its transparent….)
long past gone - yara
As it turned out, there was actually something endearing (endearing because it was still impossible to reconcile with her own assessment, almost childish) about thinking the best of the situation, despite the grouchy girlfriend determined to rain on everyone’s parade. Or maybe it was just the fact that it was Yara (still honorable, still a mess). For whatever reason she cracked a small smile of her own, even if it didn’t reach her eyes.
"I consider it a part of my charm. Not even any level of radness, just making things difficult for everyone else. After all, if I’m capable of breaking anyone’s spirit on a subject, then it obviously wasn’t dearly held.” Because, of course, she was just a businesslike pseudo-adult who was lawful neutral in everything she did, and everyone who felt threatened…well, that was their own fault.
As for independent self-preservation…well, she couldn’t say she agreed. No one ever knew what was going on in Juneau’s head, Umi’s wreck of a kill was ostensibly an accident, Kakemono was acting on impulse and Natsuhiko’s mole stint lead to him confessing and ending up half-blind for his trouble. Uranami Marika had sprung for teamwork, Koya did what he did (a distraction and nothing more, really) for his sister, and nothing about trial four screamed independent or self-preservation. The only person who had felt that way and died for it was Anri, at the very end. And somehow the rest of the statement seemed too Yara-ish to be suspecting one of the remaining people with that mindset. Like Yasei. …Was there anyone else who had kept up that veneer this whole time, living or not?
"And that may just be attributable to…it being easier to solve a murder than to get away with one, especially if…if someone won, the game would be over and they couldn’t drag it out any longer and whatever the robots and the person behind them would be getting out of it, they wouldn’t anymore. They could have killed us all last trial, they could still kill us all whenever they wanted, but under surveillance they’re obligated to keep to their rules and pander to the viewers. So…I do think something will happen, yes. Even if they have to force us into a scenario where there’s no other option. But they’ll milk it as long as they can until it crashes down. Maybe more so than before, now, because they’re under pressure."
"If anyone is breaking as a result of that, it won’t be me. But…the most anyone could do is keeping an eye out when the pressure gets more and more unavoidable. If the familial murders are a farce, which they more than likely are, and no one is spurred into action, then…they still control everything about this place. At one point our choice could be something between starving to death en masse or sacrificing two."
As infuriating as it was for their survival to hinge on outside rescue, there wasn’t much to puzzle out except for what they were given by the people in control. A list of names, or a mention of Ashinano Mikoto, wouldn’t save their lives if things came down to the wire. “But at this point, the pragmatic thing is to stay docile. At least right now we have time to consider things.”
Time to consider things. Was that even a positive? There were almost too many things to consider — plot points, tied up in a messy overlap of a chronology that no individual player seemed to have enough of a perspective on to properly appreciate. Her brow briefly straining in thought, she exhaled lightly, trying to logically fish anything resembling a reassuring answer from the depths of the ambiguities Yasei had poured out.
"If they didn't want us all to die at once, for— for showbiz reasons, like you're saying, then they're not going to let us all starve, either," she said neutrally, then paused, suddenly and acutely aware of how deeply she had abstracted their situation by trying to reason it out. Perhaps what she said had been reassuring on a conceptual level, but the very fact that she had been able to discuss it so calmly — that made her wonder how Yasei managed the cold logic routine with such frequency. Horrified into silence at herself, Yara averted her gaze back to the wall, at long last arriving at the conclusion that she had no real way to respond to the rest of Yasei's comments. There was only so much a person could theorise about their situation before their thoughts turned back to the same things: the next body, the next trial, that room, no longer dark eventualities looming behind a translucent façade of optimism but certainties with stark outlines. And if even she was feeling that way, then she reckoned any negativity from her end wasn't doing the slightest to help Yasei.
"...You know, this is kinda getting me to critical death-talk mass. Hmm."
It only took so much cold theorising about what was to happen next — as though it was already certain — before her thought processes underwent a very real shutdown at the prospect. Some part of her was still capable of pushing all that to the side and forcing a smile, though 'forcing' wasn't the word she herself would choose. There had to be a way they could make plans for the future without passing the reasonable limits of morbidity. She owed that level of optimism to both herself and Yasei.
"Okay, dude," she said suddenly, shooting to her feet with an almost alarming speed. "Life's too short to keep talking about death. I'm making this call for you. Come on, I'm guessing you weren't just sitting by the big doors to the gym because it's your fave stretch of wall or whatever." With a consciously terrible flourish, she produced her ID card and tapped it against the sensor — then, with an equally terrible flourish, swung the doors open and glanced back to Yasei, tilting her head in the general direction of inside.
"So, how about it?" She smiled, and this time it came slightly more naturally. Whether the future was a dark eventuality or an utter certainty, Yara had always been best at dwelling on the present. And, for the moment, the present meant propping up the people you cared about while you still could. "We can make plans when we have more info. Letting them into our heads 24/7 is almost like, you know... letting them win. Talk to me about something that isn't this place, 'kay?"
beckoning joy || pre-motive reaction/OPEN!!!
Who was it, was the question, and anna’s thoughts slowly moved onwards on the journey to understand who it was, but the shimmer of metal plates and the neatly cut purple hair was unmistakable. It was Yara, and if there was someone in this place she could’ve recognized faster, that person must have been Koya himself.
"Yara," Kanna responded as though she was confirming not only to herself but to the other girl that she indeed was Yara, and that she had enough power to recognize her as herself at the very least, but the whole response was more instinctive than anything else. Her voice was softer than usual, breathy, as though she was going to fall asleep.
The wail of the metal against the wall wasn’t the most pleasant, but Kanna couldn’t say someone sitting next to her wasn’t pleasant, either: in fact, as soon as Yara had sat down properly, her head tilted to the side until her cheek was against the cool metal of her pauldron. It was pointy, but that was fine. She had slept in pointier places in more uncomfortable positions, that much was certain.
Her other hand was on her lap, the other on the floor with the palm of her hand up, fingers curled over it, and she made no move to accept her ID card, Yara having to be satisfied with putting it on her hand, her fingers making no motion to curl around the slip of plastic and technology.
She entirely missed whatever Yara was talking about, eyes falling closed.
"There are more kittens at home," she said, her voice soft and much less controlled than usual to produce a deliberately distant tone. "All white as snow," Kanna continued, and one could hear the smile in her voice.
"Mii," she said, like she was going to just communicate in cute noises, now. "Miruku… Mimi." The little kittens needed names, didn’t they? "I’ll tell grandmother…" Her voice trailed off, like she had fallen asleep right there and then. Kanna hadn’t yet done that, not quite, but she wasn’t exactly awake either. Everything bad seemed so distant and her home seemed to be so close like she was there. Maybe she even though in this moment, that she was in her home at the Nekomeishi onsen, even if the harsh truth was that she was still securely trapped in a game of mutual killing.
Kanna made no attempt to move at all, resting her head against the cool metal of Yara’s armour.
Kanna's hand was refusing to take ownership of her own ID card, so Yara did, in fact, awkwardly balance the plastic slip on her fingers and hope for the best. It was hardly as though she was planning to just leave, so she could always ensure that the other girl had a more secure hold on her ID before she fell asleep. Which, it seemed, Kanna was at a great liability of doing.
Leaning on her in order to do so in the middle of the corridor probably wasn't the most sustainable of situations, given that one of them would need to move eventually, and it seemed overall safer for Kanna to be sleeping in her room than in a public area of a mutual killing situation — but Yara lacked both the heart and will to completely wake her, either. Instead, she relaxed fully against the wall, glancing down at the edge of her pauldron several times to confirm that it wasn't a terrible place to sleep. While armour was excellent for battling all manner of knaves and demons, it was significantly less suited to the task of being leaned on by a cool girl. Granted, she had seen Kanna dive into a box once, but that was different, and it was hardly in any way knightly not to worry about these things when they happened.
When Kanna finally spoke, Yara glanced down again, making out the words through the haze of sleep that now seemed to languidly descend upon the other girl.
"They're alright, then," Yara confirmed, her shoulders quite notably relaxing beneath her armour before she caught herself, and made an effort once more to remain still.
For a moment, she fell into a contented silence, feeling more at peace than she had for a long while with the knowledge that their families were alright. Her parents would be teaching in separate classrooms on the Hamamatsu campus of Shizuoka University, and then at some hour of the day they would meet again, get into a small silver car, and drive home, speaking a playful amalgam of two languages as they cooked together in the soft kitchen light. They were alright, even in Yara's absence, and they would be alright, and so would Kanna's grandmother, and her cats, and even though she knew less than she should have about both of the above it filled her with a rising solace that her friend could soon go home to both.
"I'm glad they're alright," Yara said finally, the whole spectrum of quiet, sentimental relief contained in the words. "I mean— your grandma, and the cats, and. Huh." She stopped, realising she knew little else about Kanna's family beyond what she had just said (and, of course, Koya). It wasn't as though that had stopped them from being close — but every aspect of socialisation was under different circumstances and different conditions in a mutual killing situation, she supposed. "I guess I don't know that much about you and yours, Kanna. When we get out of here, let's change that. Your cats sound mega cute, after all."
It was definitely a when now and not an if — she was certain of it. The last trial had been hectic, but with the side effect that enigma had unravelled into chaos, and now, it seemed, there was only one direction in which they could collectively travel. Even though it had been put on display by the robots themselves, it failed to strike her that this bare, tenuous state of alright-ness could be temporary.
long past gone - yara
Somehow, even though Yara spent about five minutes straight rambling, the bits of silence in between her words felt bizarrely weighty. That was fine for Yasei, at least. She wasn’t the one worrying about what particular inflection or lack thereof or wrongly expressed opinion had caused all the internal monologuing in the first place. Once again, a hallmark of that particular Yasei who’d had a meltdown at the trial. While just listening to the unpolished, unrehearsed answers, her head still wasn’t turned to Yara, but her eyes never left and she barely seemed to blink.
She didn’t precisely freeze when Yara’s expression changed, but only because she hadn’t been moving much before, and it was easy enough to lock down an instinctive grimace, even if the sense of entirely wrecking that particular sentence made her skin crawl. Maybe Yara was right, and they were all people, and only learning anything about them in the context of everyone killing everyone else had adversely affected relationships with people who she might have otherwise liked. …Or maybe it would just be better to brush her own thoughts under the rug for the moment, because this wasn’t over until it was over. Maybe if she wanted to trust someone after all this was over, she would. Until then…it was really just the two of them against everyone else, wasn’t it?
"It would have been a loss," she amended, tonelessly but somehow even more unenthusiastic than her usual tonelessness. The more people that died in some tragedy, the less likely it was for anyone to remember their names. That was how it usually went. If one person ended up clawing out of the corpses and wreckage by the time the cavalry finally came, then they’d be the only person who would end up named in the aftermath. Not much of a loss. But that would sound cold.
"And I said—earlier. That she was punished. I should have pressed it, but I didn’t. If everything did come up to a vote that excluded the culprit behind both deaths, it was because I allowed it. Claiming ignorance doesn’t…change anything. Given the circumstances, eventually, I still failed." Not that Ryou (whose dead body still wasn’t shown, every genre-savvy battle royale contestant had to realize that was a bad sign) hadn’t been an ultimately disposable person as well. But after about half a class sees the other half die horribly, it starts to lose its sting. Individual deaths are just something that happens.
She wanted to combat Yara’s It’s not like any human could just sit by—because she had any number of things to say to that—but the point of asking was to listen to the most vaguely reassuring words anyone, probably, could come up with. Even if they fell flatter than any self-described knight’s had a right to. Saying things out loud made them easier to believe, which was why this was probably the worst time to add We’re all going to die one by one and our hopeful saviors stood by and watched it happen.
"…Together." Yeah, because everyone hadn’t been doing enough to be all friendly despite not knowing who would kill who. Whatever was happening and whatever was going to happen it wouldn’t be her fault. Except for the things that were, quite obviously, her fault. Like…almost shooting someone just for hugging her, what the hell was that about. Whoever had decided they were going to play by the robot’s rules, though, that wasn’t her fault at all. She only existed to defend herself here. Other people being too trusting and dying too easily—it wasn’t like she could change that.
"Maybe it will be over soon. But—if we were really capable of ending it ourselves, exploiting loopholes without maybe getting us all killed in the process, or just sitting on our hands for a week without accidentally or on purpose murdering someone, because this kind of thing happens so often in other settings—wouldn’t we have stopped by now?"
"...Man, I think you're wicked rad, but sometimes you make it kinda difficult to make a case for friendship and teamwork," Yara informed her matter-of-factly, though not uncritically. For a moment she paused, her mind going through the unfamiliar motions of actually dissecting her optimism down to its finest components. Being who she was, of course: not to doubt it, but to reassert it with the force and absolute conviction it deserved.
"Yeah! Together," she then repeated, blissfully ignoring or else avoiding the skepticism Yasei's first repetition of the word had practically oozed. "You know, every time someone here's tried to chalk up a victory point with the whole 'independent self-preservation' tactic, it usually ends up in them, like... killing another person. Or being the mole. Or doing something that the robots want us to do, and whoever's watching this whole deal is probably screaming at the TV for us not to do. But every time we all come together to solve this stuff — as a team — we do a pretty sweet job. That's got to count for something, right!"
Though technically a question, she somehow managed to punctuate it so enthusiastically that it transcended the realm of questionhood and became an absolute statement. Smiling quite genuinely and widely now, it seemed as though Yasei's (literally) unblinking skepticism had only stoked the fires of pure optimism. Whether or not these fires could ever be extinguished was a matter of debate, best left to the far reaches of whatever scientific community remained in the dubiously extant world beyond the studio. They did, however, subtly calm down a little the moment Yasei posed her next question, phrased as soberingly as it was.
"You say that like it's definitely going to happen again, Y...ita-san," Yara trailed off, unsure whether she had overstepped her boundaries the first time but mortified enough at the possibility that she wasn't about to repeat the experience. "Don't make it a prophecy, dude. Those never go well. I mean, like: for us, the people who haven't killed yet, everything they've thrown at us yet hasn't worked, so why would it now? I'm not feeling more okay with the idea of stabbing someone just because I've watched other people try for a while, and I'm guessing you aren't either." She stated with certainty, as though her refusal to even entertain thoughts of dishonourable self-preservation could hence be extended by good faith to the entire remaining population of the studio.
"And— and." She started abruptly, as though just realising something herself. "If they can show us our families just hanging out like normal or whatever, then that whole thing before with Aihara-san's place getting wrecked must have been fake, right, so the robots must be bluffing about things, so — who knows what else. Sure, fear cuts deeper than swords, but if they don't even have a sword, no point in fear, right? Nobody's got a reason to just... straight-up kill someone when we could figure this all out together."
It was a point of convenient ignorance, it seemed, that the robots' direct power over life and death within the studio was metaphorical sword enough.
long past gone - yara
In contrast to her earlier disastrous behavior at the trial, or before, or ever, Yasei didn’t react or even seem to notice when Yara sat down beside her (with the usual accompaniment of clanking and scraping metal, so this was a two for one in terms of environmental obliviousness.) Even after the Hiya of lore that her eyes didn’t flicker to the side, only barely visible over her arms and half a second delayed as if to say Is that really how you’re choosing to start this. That kind of snarky body language was suitable for Yasei 1.0.
For the Yasei she was right now, the only suitable thing to react to was a direct call-out paired with a first name, the sort of thing she may have one wanted to nail someone to a pew over, but now made her almost want to shrink down and hide her face behind her hair and whisper sorry, sorry, I know over and over again. Fortunately going back to enforced standards of serious business didn’t entail becoming a doormat, and her posture never changed. The perception of her was always more important than what was on the inside, right? Bravery meant doing what you needed to and what you should, even though you were scared.
"…It was." She’d learned her lesson—there was no hint of emotion in her voice, not even surprise or disbelief or the tiniest shred of annoyance, and no hint of gravel or damage either. Her words were as flat as the surface of a pond, and she counted that a victory. (She was never going to stop being appalled at the use of her first name in casual conversation, just because it sounded ridiculous, but she could keep that to herself.) “And controlling myself is entirely the responsibility of myself. Setting aside, that was deplorable and unforgivable conduct. And I’m sorry. Even if you may not think I owe that much to you.”
"And I won’t be making any excuses for my behavior, and I’ll accept…" Her voice awkwardly trailed away, when she realized belatedly that she’d been given the benefit of the doubt and not some cold dismissal or a just as blithe I’m really not sure what I ever saw in you—which wasn’t what anyone would expect of Yara, but losing her shit isn’t what anyone would expect of Yasei, was it? Her thought process now entirely derailed, because that’s where she thought their next interaction would be going, and that’s what she’d expected and prepared for, some pitifully short alliance being put out of its misery, she finally stared at Yara over the tops of her knees as the other girl kept talking. Maybe her face was only so blank because she was too confused to do anything else.
"That’s…" Ridiculous? Endearing, even if it implied a fundamental misunderstanding of Yasei’s priorities some way or another, because she would sooner have gone down swinging in the trial than be wrongly executed, and if that had happened Yara would have bigger things to worry about? Mutual? So stupid, because when had she ever proved her own merit about anything, but also sickeningly good to hear, like sneaking a piece of chocolate even though she knew it was going to wreck her complexion and her metabolism? By now she was even out of joke answers, and could do nothing but blink confusedly like she was desperately trying to stave off tears. That, at least, was beyond her in all honesty right now. She probably wore her tear ducts out from neglect and overuse together.
After about thirty seconds of struggle, she finally said “Good,” and probably at least matched Yara’s levels of self-consciousness, but with the added dimension of wanting to lobotomize herself. But she could at least keep talking, and maybe act like she knew what she was talking about. Yasei 1.0 had relied on that a lot. “…It really was out of our hands, wasn’t it? We got lucky. We could have all died right there. And…plenty of us would have been no great loss, but you—it’s no excuse, but I thought me being wrong had finally ended everything, and you didn’t deserve to just be collateral damage. I’m…glad, too.”
She didn’t smile, but her expressionless gaze seemed to soften. “Do you think people are really coming to save us?” She already knew the answer she’d get, but she just wanted to hear it.
As soon as she had executed said direct call-out, Yara already began to look uncertain about the whole affair, as though not telling someone you had historically established a relationship of trust with when they were being terrible might have been the more knightly option somehow. But she was having her own thoughts about being brave, and given that no particular action of hers had seemed to work as intended up until the previous trial, her bravery levels could only stand to increase.
When Yasei agreed, the look she returned was some bizarre amalgamation of a smile and a wince all at once — she hadn't wanted a personal apology (and was uncomfortable enough with the fact that she had received one that she was tempted to set it entirely aside), but the implicit promise of less terrible behaviour shepherded before it a slow, disorganised wave of relief. Even if she had been severely remiss in recognising potentially terrible tendencies in Yasei beforehand, the differential between her remarks at the trial and now was still vast enough to occasion no other response.
That thirty seconds of silence hardly went unused on Yara's end, either. Slowly, her posture relaxed against the wall, her legs stretched out before her in a way that almost diametrically opposed Yasei's body language. The final I'm glad was enough to make her smile an entirely open one — the first she recalled in a long stretch markedly devoid of what had usually come instinctively.
"Yeah, well, I'm glad you're g—" She started, the side of her head gently resting against the wall beside her as it turned to face Yasei — then she properly processed the rest of her words. Her smile didn't quite invert itself, but it at least flickered into something that markedly less resembled a smile.
"Uh, not to say I don't appreciate the overall feel of the thing you're getting at here, but," she started, her eyebrows launching into a brief and very uncertain dance routine at the thought of verbalising what she wanted to verbalise. "Yeah, they would have been a loss. Defs. The fact that we've all gotten to know each other in this whole, like— mutual killing sitch kinda throws things out of order, I guess, but we're all people, and we would have been a class, instead of seeing each other as threats, or in the... useful-not-useful investigation-type binary thing, so— you don't need me to tell you this, I'm guessing. My bad, just... would've felt weird about not saying it, you know?"
At a slight want for oxygen for an unnerving moment, she paused, the breastplate of her armour visibly shifting with the inhale before she, predictably, launched into the rambling again.
"And... whatever would have happened wouldn't have been your fault specifically," she said a little more quietly, trying not to focus on how the element of fault might or might not have pertained to herself. "I think we've all been doing a wicked good job, given... the circumstances. Like you said. Kind of out of our hands, with the whole murder robot thing, so no point in sweating it now, right." Before she could go any further, she glanced up apologetically, cutting herself off before the next tangent could even begin. "I'm... kind of rambling here, aren't I? Sorry. Okay. Question."
It was hardly a question that had escaped her own consideration, and yet voicing the answer to someone else was another matter entirely. Suddenly she looked very vulnerable slumped against the wall, even in full-body armour. She hardly expected Yasei to mercilessly shoot her down, so perhaps her anxiety on the matter was more to do with herself. And that was more self-analysis than she was currently capable of, so back to the rambling it was.
"I think—" Yara started, then stopped, drumming the fingers of her gauntlets audibly on the outside of her thigh. Her next words were delivered with nothing but absolute conviction, but they still required organising, as did everything. "I think that if anyone knows, they're defs on their way. No ifs about it. Kinda abstract to think about from the inside, but it's not like any human could just sit by, right?" A pause — this was the part where she debatably wasn't offering the answer Yasei expected, though it wasn't pessimistic so much as perceptive in a way the Yara of the past's absolute optimism had sometimes (read: always) fettered.
"But also, I've been thinking — they're not here yet, so. I could probably be doing more, and we could all be trying way harder to pull together on this. You know, like some kind of... team." She smiled to the side, almost out of embarrassment; what would a known and noted cynic have to say to that? "You know, I get this feeling like this whole set-up's unravelling mega hard, with the Mifune-san thing and the Ashinano-san thing, and the. Whatever that was last trial, even. If we just kind of push at it, like, together, I seriously think... there's no way this can go on for much longer."
beckoning joy || pre-motive reaction/OPEN!!!
For the whole day, Kanna had sat there watching her family continue their lives normally, cats running around on the yard of the onsen, a litter of white kittens playing amongst themselves, the maneki-nekos in her room dusted by her grandmother, her grandmother eating alone, and so far away, her mother eating alone in her small city apartment, the clock ticking away.
A small maneki-neko beckoned joy on the shelf where Kanna had placed it so many years ago, the paw moving. Her mother had remembered to change the batteries to the awful plastic thing. There was a matching one in her collection, just near to her bed. Her bed looked so comfortable, with two cats perched on top of it.
Kanna was completely exhausted.
She looked at her own bed, not quite registering Monty was telling her something, telling her to get up and leave, the time had passed. The cold metallic claws grabbed her and bodily removed her from the room, someone else walking in. The robot left her alone afterwards, her numb legs nearly shaking as she stumbled forward in a haze.
There was a reason she napped so much, slept long and often, and this was it. Kanna had nearly lost her sense of self, like she was waling beside herself through a thick fog. She had been awake for too long, way too long. Kanna’s thoughts somehow went to her Student ID: she needed to open a door, she knew, which door was it again?..
She walked into something. Someone, to be specific.
It all didn’t really register in her head. She walked into something softer than a wall, instinctively trying to avoid the contact, stumbled against the wall, pushed with her hands and fell to the floor, finding herself sitting on the cold floor with her back against the wall. Her ID bounced along the floor, having slipped from her grasp.
Anyone who had seen her could’ve told she didn’t look like herself, not in the confused look in her eyes, not in the limp form of her body against the wall like she was going to fall asleep right there. She didn’t even try to speak, golden eyes slowly focusing on the other person. Who were they, anyway?
The pre-motive had thrown Yara off; she was hesitant to call any emotion of hers fury, but the trial had brought her righteous objection to the robots to a stuttering boil, and now they were being presented with this. Monty had come forward and given them something positive — no strings attached, seemingly, although the same could be said of Ryou's vote until the strings had swung into sinister animation and attached themselves, and she was snipping this line of thought before it led her somewhere too morbid to handle — and now she was conflicted.
It wasn't as though offering them this improved the robots' moral standing in her eyes. Even Sally Circuits, who for one sparse moment of particular naïveté on Yara's part had seemed like she might have properly opposed Monty, was well beyond hope now. But she had expected worse, and received something better, and known with a flickering cynicism that still seemed entirely too overactive for her, Yara Yukimura, that it was intended to induce something worse, and at the end of the robots' speech her confusion had taken on a quality so incandescent that all she could do was quietly avert herself.
Before she could file out of the room with the rest of the crowd, though, a lingering shadow had caught her eye: of course Kanna would volunteer to see her family, she realised, all of the stoic protection she had shown towards Koya during and beyond the trials coming back in one guilty flash. Guilty because it suddenly struck her that she should have asked; cautious about overstepping her boundaries, she had never done much conversational investigation when it came to anyone's families, nor even discussed her own at length.
While she hadn't forgotten them by any means, consciously weaving them into the story had felt too real. But her tapestry of conscious denial was falling apart at the seams — and if the pre-motive had encouraged one useful thought on her part, it was that very revelation.
Hence, when Kanna exited the room, Yara resolved to wait. The other girl had done that much for her during a far less pleasant room experience; this, at least, she could do in return. When it seemed as though the day's private video screening had ended, Yara paced the corridor, practiced drawing Fierbois a few half-hearted times, and finally settled for intensely staring at the texture of the wall. She registered the sound of footsteps no more rapidly than she registered the vibration of footsteps, as though they were suddenly right next to her— and then they were, and the rest of a person's next body was next to her as well, and by 'next to her' she meant 'slowly crashing into her' in a way that was only debatably softer than a wall.
"Uh—" Yara said automatically, head suddenly swivelling at the typical speed of her reflexes now that someone had definitely crashed into her and fallen over, the plastic skitter of the ID card across the floor a mere afterthought. She took a step forward, her eyes finally fixing herself on Kanna — then took a step back, belatedly reaching for the ID card that had landed by her feet.
"Ah, Kanna—" She said finally, because her optimism was still unfaltering enough to place them irrevocably in the realm of first names now, then flattened her back against the wall next to her and gracelessly slid down into a sitting position again. This was rapidly becoming a theme, but then again, so was the fact that her friends were sitting against walls. Gingerly, she glanced over at Kanna and pressed the ID card into her hands, eyes still focused on how exhausted she looked.
"Are they okay?" She blurted out, because that seemed the first pertinent question to Kanna, even if there was a far more obvious one at hand. "Are you okay? Did you— oh, man, did you stay awake the whole time?" Realising how loudly she'd been asking her questions in the heat of the moment, they abruptly decreased in volume, her hand finally beginning to draw back as though in apology for the disturbance.
long past gone - open
The announcement of the pre-motive (this time more of a reward than a punishment, even if you were a tireless cynic like her who assumed that any hint of the outside world could spur the student body into deadly action all over again) was less interesting to Yasei than the announcement over the loudspeakers not so long ago. A new voice after weeks and weeks (was she able to categorize the span of time in months now? She hadn’t been counting the days as well as she should have been) that was supposed to reassure them. The horrors of their reality were in fact being broadcast and all that anyone could do was send kind words.
The thought made her blood boil even now—or at least it did until she thought cold, stern words at herself and forced herself back into some manufactured state of calm. She wasn’t going to give their supposed saviors any credit until she was back outside, surrounded by the media and law enforcement and her fellow students wrapped up in shock blankets or something. Until those people had a tangible influence in their lives, she wasn’t going to think about it any longer.
She could think about her family instead, now—for maybe only the second or third time since they arrived in this godforsaken place. One mother, one father, no siblings, financial station average since she was very small. She didn’t consider herself very close to either of them and knew that if she ended up in that room, it would be more a punishment than anything else. One person, for sure, who wouldn’t be calling dibs. …Still, it almost made a person want to just to take the dubious honor away from the Nekodas. If they ended up trading back and forth every day to watch the same tiring place…she was…not going to do anything. She was much calmer now. There was no reason to be mad at that.
Somehow she found herself in front of the gym again, maybe just waiting for the appearance of a certain someone with a red card, and maybe more concerned with working off her spare energy. That was the only reason why she’d flown into a meaningless rage at the trial, she was positive. She hadn’t been working hard enough. She probably had enough spare frantic energy to beat around a punching bag for six hours. But she also had conversations to start and apologies to make. She might as well multitask. Sitting beside the door, knees drawn up and face half-hidden behind them, it almost looked like she was trying to hide her face all over again, even if her makeup had been exactingly reapplied and there was nary a freckle to be seen.
Familiar paths still seemed less daunting than new paths presented — and while the idea that any part of this studio now felt familiar should have been worrying in and of itself, it was easier to expend her emotional energy on anything but further worry. A strange mixture of relief and determination had washed over her ever since the trial, and perhaps it was more that cathartic amalgamation than any kind of plan or reason that now willed her towards the gym.
Yasei's presence there was unsurprising; they were both physical people, after all. What surprised her more was the long moment for which she said nothing when she noticed her, the hand grasping her ID card falling slowly back to her side. Her presence wasn't unwelcome, by any means, but it was complicated — the kind that called for the summoning of words she was uncertain she still possessed.
"Hiya," she said, in her determination to blurt out some kind of greeting, before it fully hit her how ridiculous the greeting she had just chosen sounded in the circumstances. Raw, earnest, and all but leached of the enthusiasm that had once been an intrinsic part of all of her greetings, it managed to sound not just embarrassing but entirely incongruous with her tone. Hiya. That would probably haunt her for the rest of her life.
Resigned to the fate that was ill-suited greetings, Yara glanced down for a moment, then leaned against the wall and slowly slid down until she was seated beside Yasei. If anything in particular struck her as odd about Yasei sitting here — well, her other best friend in this studio had once conversed with her from the inside of a cardboard box, so it was no stranger ice-breaker than she was accustomed to. Slightly unconventional conversational settings were but a mere patch of shade on her social energies compared to the deep, elongated shadows that the trial still cast.
"...What you said back there was kind of terrible, Yasei," she said with a resolution so sudden it shocked even herself, then instinctively squeezed her eyes shut in regret. That had been so blunt. But it needed to be said, and she'd felt guilty down to the very filaments of her moral fibre about not saying or doing more ever since the trial. Where these drifting unsaid sentiments factored into the sudden use of Yasei's first name, she wasn't sure; but it felt significant on some level that she had automatically come out with it here of all places, without anything resembling a plan or intention to. "...But, uh. If anything's going to bring it out of a person, it's a place that was literally designed to do that. So... I guess what I'm getting at here is that anyone can say non-terrible things, too."
Although she had no reason to suspect the exact extent of Yasei's self-directed skepticism, it seemed appropriate to say something along these lines. Saying harsh things surely didn't reflect your intrinsic levels of altruism, particularly under pressure like this — but it did need to be addressed, and Yara found herself lacking the tact not to address it after all that transpired. Still, addressing that and the more obvious emotional truths at hand were hardly mutually exclusive, and her lack of tact equally ensured that both would be addressed in the same breath.
"...I'm so glad you're alive," she finally glanced back in Yasei's direction — and after all the havoc the trial had brought, that final, careful thread of hope seemed the most earnest thing that one could cling to. There wasn't a single thing she had just said that she didn't feel self-conscious about on some level, and yet it felt as though a great weight had been lifted just by saying them.
No Light | Yara
Suzume regarded both Yara and the sword that she was offering with a wide eyed expression, as though she wasn’t quite sure what to think of the whole predicament. This was mostly true - whilst she was certain that being given the sword was a gesture of goodwill, she wasn’t exactly certain of whether or not she actually wanted to take it. That sword was precious to Yara, wasn’t it? She wasn’t close-minded enough to think that she was the only resident of the studios going through troubled times.
She reached out to take it before shaking her head. “No. That sword’s important to you, right? Keep it. I don’t want it.” The aviculturist had been intending to sound somewhat understanding, but she had the awful feeling that her words just came off as callous. She considered backtracking, but decided against it. She was simply too tired.
"You’re welcome to come in. Just - uh, give me a minute." Suzume flashed a polite smile before closing the door. What followed would only be known to Yara through bumps, thumps and a squeak or two as she rushed frantically around the trailer attempting to make it look like she hadn’t just been living in a dark hole for the past goodness-knows-how-many-days; she chucked all of the blankets into one corner, shoved the furniture into a normal position, parted the curtains (almost hissing at the sudden light that stung her eyes) and opened a window to let some fresh air in - although she supposed that there was no such thing as fresh air, considering that the whole of the studio was inside. It barely did anything to brighten up the gloomy atmosphere of the trailer, but it was the best that she could do.
Suzume returned to the door and opened it wider than before, mustering a smile in an attempt to be welcoming. “Here we are! It’s, uh, nothing special. Wanna take a seat? Sorry I don’t have much here. I should have brought some food or something.”
She was still bustling about - straightening this, sweeping that - with an air of forced cheer that could not have appeared more fake if she had been trying to make it so. When she turned to Yara a smile was frozen on to her face, one that failed to make her seem any less melancholy. “You have something to say, yeah? I’m all ears.”
From the moment Suzume retreated into the room to the moment she once again emerged, something at least infrastructurally resembling a smile plastered across her face, Yara stared forward in a mildly horrified silence. While she usually had a healthy sense of optimism regarding people and their general welfare, recent events regarding her own coping mechanisms and revelations pertaining thereto made this all too familiar. Suzume was... twelve, or something, and somehow Yara had failed to watch out for her in the way she had oriented her entire morals around, and now this had happened and it was heartbreaking to see. The inquiry as to whether she had ever emerged for food, not having brought it, died on her lips before it could ever truly form itself — and the louder her pulse began to drum in her ears, the more direly she realised that she needed to apologise.
It was a relief, then, when Suzume finally asked her what she had come to say.
An apology didn't magically accord one forgiveness, just like saying one was a knight didn't magically make one a legitimately helpful presence, and Yara knew that whatever she said next was simply being said to signal her contrition and a desire to improve. For all the efforts she had made to be a protective influence (and perhaps especially because of them), she felt undeserving, in the scheme of things, of anything resembling a forgiving reply.
"Yeah. I just wanted to say... sorry, Aozora-san," she composed herself to the point of saying, too focused on the words to ever take a seat in the way Suzume had suggested. "You asked me to fix things at the trial, and I just kind of stood there and... froze up, in the least helpful way possible. I mean, I like Kita-san a lot, but what she was saying back there wasn't okay, to you, or to— to anyone, and maybe if I hadn't been so hung up on that weird room and what it told me about me, I might have realised that I could change that, or. Or, anything, instead of just."
Yara clenched her jaw tightly, the searing heat and shiver of oncoming tears silencing her for a moment or two. Suzume had talked about flocking together at the trial, and she had lost her best friend. What excuse did Yara have? She had barely been able to do anything about her best friend, let alone for her, and she hardly wanted to consider what would happen if anyone further was lost. It seemed as though all of her anger and fear and disappointment at herself, tightly contained thus far in one suit of armour and a sense of optimism stretched far past its limits, could now gently implode towards this one incident.
And an implosion it was: not the kind she would have dared to show around Kanna or Yasei. Maybe it was just that Suzume represented a host of things she had once seen in herself, and then she had looked so disappointed.
"S—so." Tremulous and low, her voice veered away from its intended course; she was convinced she was going to burst into tears if she attempted to speak with any more evenness. "So if you want to talk about Amane-san, or anyone else, or the fact that this whole, mega screwed-up murder deal is still somehow happening, or if you need— any kind of help, or favour, or thing, like even the food you might not be getting: I'm here. Should've been from the start, really." The contours of her armour somehow exaggerating the way her shoulders now uncontrollably shook, she paused, inhaling gradually through her teeth before she could even attempt to keep speaking. "Man, you... don't have to say you're okay, you lost a friend and you've been so, so strong. This isn't weakness."
Making promises you couldn't keep — now that was weakness.
the north remembers [reaction/open]
For all that had passed, there was one difference between this tragedy and those which came before: Yara Yukimura was not tired.
Melancholy? Yes. Furious? Certainly. Swimming with doubts as to the world and her debatably knightly role therein and the grim prospect that there had never been a shred of earthly good or gallantry to believe in in the first place? At the very least, a little. But in dire times, these things and exhaustion were quite distinct.
It was a mere flicker of a hope, boxed in opaquely and insulated with despair, but it was there and it was true: something of her fatigue had melted back in the fire to leave tempered steel. There was still a brittleness about her resolve, but its edge was sharpened; sharpened enough to take her beyond her own doors, even in the wake of this, but brittle enough to draw her somewhere specific.
The cathedral had been a movie set, a voting booth, and a crime scene, but there was something serene about reclaiming it as just a cathedral. After wading through the fumes of the fire, the warm glow of the torches was a temperate solace, and the edges of her armour reverberated through the silence as she took a pew. She had gone to church in Brazil, with her father — then she had let the act slide after moving to Japan, having been more drawn to it as a cultural refuge than by any particular strength of piety. The thought that she might die young after all had featured more in her thoughts lately than it ever had before, but it hadn't put the fire of religion in her to the point of drawing her here; really, she just missed her family, and the things they had once done together in peace.
She missed Amane and Yukie, too. After all the murderous uses this holy room had been put to, sitting here to remember the lost felt like an act of homage. And after all that had transpired, suspicion was beyond her; after all of that tragedy and catharsis, surely the only real danger was the robots' next move, not their own. As though they weren't still contained in a mutual killing scenario, Yara closed her eyes, reaching for a prayer she had last heard and said when she was very young.
"E perdoai as nossas ofensas," she repeated — and even if she'd forgotten the exact wording of the first part, it seemed more apt to talk of trespasses here. After this, there were to be none; that was less a prayer than a certainty. "Assim como nós perdoamos a quem nos tem ofendido. E não nos deixeis cair em— tentação..." That was the limit of her remembrance, then. Clasping her hands in a manner that was more Buddhist than Catholic, and more in private solace than with reverence for either of her vaguely held spiritualities, her posture gradually relaxed in her seat.
It was hardly the most guarded way to pass one's time here, but what were the odds of two tragedies occurring in a cathedral? Bathed in the gentle flickers of torchlight, she fell silent, and for the first time considered the deaths of her peers without an iota of self-deception.
No Light | Fourth Trial Reaction/Open Starter
Aozora Suzume had retreated.
She had taken off the moment the trial was done - not even sticking around to dry her tears - and had yet to exchange so much as a word with anyone since the event. The girl had taken various blankets and pillows, both from her own room and the several in the horror district (from which she had also taken one of the foam pumpkins) and disappeared into one of the trailers without even glancing at the new map on her ID card.
A day or two passed - she wasn’t monitoring. She wasn’t going to leave her new nest anyway. Suzume had Ringo and Kyuri for company, and since neither of them had ever known life in the first place she could be safe in the knowledge that they would not die by any means, and especially not because of her or her own failure to convince them that their own lives were worth living. No, with her two companions it was straightforward, and Suzume needed straightforward right now.
Which was why, when she heard a knock at the door of her new haven of escapism, Suzume considered not moving from her spot and just waiting until her visitor eventually got bored and left. Her mind instantly conjured up the worst possibility - that it was Kita-san, here to interrogate her some more - but contact with just about anyone seemed unbearable to her at this point. She had already cried enough for a lifetime since the trial, and didn’t want anything to make her do so again. She just wanted to stay in her soft little safe spot until this was all over, or until her own death.
She wasn’t an idiot - slow, maybe, but not an idiot. Suzume had come to realise that she was, overall, useless to the group. What did she contribute? She wasn’t intelligent enough to solve murders, lithe enough to crawl through air vents and investigate obscure nooks and crannies, strong enough to lift what needed lifting. She hadn’t even been a good enough friend to Natsuhiko to recognise that he was planning to kill himself and try to stop it. She was useless and therefore disposable, and it was dawning upon her that her days might very well be numbered.
The knocking resounded again and she dragged herself to her feet and made her way over. Her appearance had changed drastically; her bird patterned nightdress was creased due to the fact that she hadn’t changed out of it for a while, her messy hair was loose from its usual buns and there were dark circles under her eyes despite the somewhat excessive amount of sleeping she had been doing. She looked like a wreck, to say the least, and a far cry from the cheerful aviculturist who had thought that their whole predicament was an elaborate bonding exercise
Suzume opened the door a crack, peering at her visitor. “Hello?” And then, after a pause. “Do you need something? Because I think you’ve come to the wrong place.”
What of Yara had stayed afloat after Monty's room and the last three tragedies was now swept under. Not savagely, but with all the systematic crush and splinter of a vessel with the misfortune to be standing in the path of a great wave. It had felt less like a trial than a maelstrom, the waters still sympathetically roiling in memory of its momentum — and if, at the centre of that vortex lay a single, sordid axis line, it had been her own inability to change anything.
Perhaps it was a universal fear here, but framed within the bounds of her knightliness, it seemed a desolate wreck in a sea of negative space. She was the one who had sworn on her sword to protect people, after all. She was the one who had promised virtue. And yet, through all the spleen and tumult of the storm, six words still rung clearest of her failure:
"Yukimura-dono... please ask her to stop..."
Who had she failed? Would that there were one clear answer to that question. She had failed Suzume, whose cry for help, even with Yara's very questionable filtering of Yasei's behaviour, had pierced through the filters with a coruscating anguish. She had failed Yasei, who, even with the unceremonious stripping-back of the filters, had seemed just as bare and desperate in her frenzy as she had unchivalrous. She had failed Amane, who had carved out some esoteric place of empathy and guilt in her heart too retrospectively for her to call herself anything near gallant.
She had stood there in some strange, silent paroxysm and failed everyone— was still failing them now. Every fraught moment harked back to her sword, slipping through absent fingers; Monty's room had been a self-fulfilling prophecy. For all the doubts that currently swam through her mind regarding The Crowning Game, her net intake of fantasy media had still taught her one thing about prophecies: the only thing you could do with a bad one was rewrite it.
"Hey— Aozora-san?" With a little more restraint than usual, Yara tapped the knuckles of her left gauntlet against Suzume's door. "Are you—" She started, but the tentative creak of the door cut her off as though it had been the grand raising of a portcullis. Suzume's eyes lacked the keenness of a hidden archer, but she felt under scrutiny all the same, whatever cover her expression had bound itself into flipping back to reveal all the pages of the book.
"Oh. Oh. Uh— it's wicked understandable that you don't. Want to see me. Or anybody, really," she winced, Suzume's reactions throughout the trial coming back in a flash of empathy. It took all of the willpower and tact she possessed not to somehow point out how disheveled she looked, but the emotive clot of ohs at the sight of her probably said it all quite succinctly. "And if this is the wrong place, I can... vamoose. But. I actually wanted to say something to you. It's not... bad, or anything, just kind of important. Can I— can I come in?"
Realising in another flash of empathy (and what might have even been a rare show of social caution) how suspicion and requests to meet alone in confined spaces generally intermingled, she took a step back — then, as a second thought, unbuckled the sheath of her sword from her belt and presented it horizontally on two open palms to the other girl. It wasn't as though Yara couldn't hypothetically kill a person in other ways, but they were all so unspeakable that she had never even considered them, having struggled to even consider the eventuality that someone else might suspect her of murder in the first place.
If Suzume showed even the slightest sign of hesitation, she nodded towards the sword as though to say 'take it', uncertain how else to make a convincing show of peace. Maybe there wasn't a way anymore, but she would certainly try.
you win or you die [yasei]
…Good. That sounded more like her. Even if she might have contested that doggedly certain statement until the end of the earth—some people, she might have said, were at the very least more deserving, and a whole different swath of people had not one fear to exploit—Yasei’s mouth turned up at the corners, for a second revealing an unbusinesslike smile that thus far no other human being had actually seen. Fondly won, again.
"Honorable mess," she said, not maliciously, and when Yara passed her and stopped, she took the entirely self-indulgent opportunity to loop her arms around Yara’s shoulders from behind, forehead barely touching the back of her gorget, suddenly struck by how cold the whole suit of armor was, as though she’d never considered it before. She’d been planning on saying something else, but the sheer audacity of the action—the hug, Yasei, you were hugging someone—seemed to have erased it.
This lasted about half a second before the flood of more reasonable inferences came back. In light of her earlier rejection, what kind of message was she sending here? What kind of message was she intending to send here—because even if she thought her actions were as free from outside influence as they could be, it wasn’t a blank slate, this was…a loaded question. And why would she assume that physical closeness was anything but the last thing Yara wanted, especially if up until this point they had been purposely avoiding each others’ eyes? What had made her think she was capable of comforting anyone, especially if she had no idea what happened?
As quickly as she’d approached, she detached herself and took her cue to lead the way out of the room. The clicking of her heels was an overwhelming sound, but the swarm of caustic-toned questions, all in her own voice, still took up too much space in her head.
"…To your room, then?" The question mark seemed almost like an afterthought, even though she couldn’t imagine why that wouldn’t be the expected destination. She meant for the statement to be authoritarian, and she kept her face firmly forward at the risk of provoking another don’t worry or I’m fine, but the words got mangled on the way out of her mouth—a sword drawn up not quite the same route it came down. At least this kind of misstep didn’t lead to anyone spitting up blood.
"Or…I don’t…have to come with you, if there’s nothing to worry about, and you don’t need an escort, and if. I’ve overstepped something." She could have sworn she used to be more confident than this. What the hell had this place done to her.
That was unexpected. That was definitely unexpected. If Yasei faced an internal legion of caustic-toned questions, Yara faced deafening mental silence the likes of which she couldn't remember experiencing in years.
Somehow, she felt lighter with Yasei's weight pressed against her back than before, as though the weight of several hours' memories had been temporarily traded out. The gesture undid itself before she could even settle into it, though, and like Yasei, she fixed her gaze ahead until the other girl passed. That was less out of bashfulness than a mixture of shock and exhaustion, though; the shock being at the sudden contact, and also at the fact that Kita Yasei specifically had hugged her, or anyone at all, really, under any circumstances whatsoever.
If the emotional minutiae of the circumstances were equally shocking, that was a matter to be considered at a later date. Really, Yara was far too tired to read into things or clarify or ask for clarification or even remotely engage with the concept that Yasei might be overstepping, because while it wasn't a problem on her end, the very thought that she might see it that way raised a host of questions that were too vast and troublesome for her to consider five minutes after exiting a germanely questionable horror chamber.
Instead, she considered it for what it was: a gesture of comfort from a person she liked and trusted dearly.
By the time Yasei had pulled away, something like a ghost of a smile tugged at Yara's lips, not powerful enough a poltergeist to rearrange her features out of her spent configuration but definitely growing in power, like it might soon be possessing a metaphorical small child or else making the cutlery fly with apomb around the metaphorical kitchen. By all accounts, she still felt terrible — and following Yasei into the corridor after a pause was a draining affair in and of itself, let alone navigating her latest not-quite-a-question — but a little concern went a long way. Not to mention being called honourable, when the concern that she had done nothing of use still managed to gnaw at her even after volunteering herself.
"There is nothing to worry about," Yara reiterated again, just in case Yasei had missed that absolutely true fact, which stood in convincing assertion for a whole two seconds. "...But an escort would be nice."
Hoping that that implicitly answered the segment of the not-quite-a-question about their destination, she then closed the difference between the two of them so that Yara finally walked beside and not behind her again. Did it implicitly answer the part about overstepping? She wasn't entirely sure. Scraping up the right words from the bottom of the internal monologue pan was still a struggle, but she scraped hard, not wanting to leave any part of the statement ambiguously unanswered despite herself.
"...You're not overstepping," Yara said conclusively, not only glancing over at Yasei but earnestly meeting her eyes. She was still nowhere close to her usual level of rambling, but the words began to come a little more readily as the memory of Monty's room seeped from present into past. "And... thanks. For waiting, and... this." Readiness hardly equaled fluidity, though, and the longer her efforts stretched out the more it became apparent that her capacity for socialisation was far from sustainable — for once in her life.
you win or you die [yasei]
That was possibly the most awful answer she could receive. A real thousand-yard stare, and then a temporary shutdown like Yasei had been speaking the ancient and awful language of Cthulhu, causing temporary insanity. The silence was so deafening it almost stopped her where she was, but the surge of anger that followed left her without a stumble—at Monty and Sally, at the sick bastard in charge, and at the legions of suspects that had voted for this outcome, which was at the forefront of her mind mostly because she couldn’t visualize herself strangling an ominous mastermind silhouette.
But if she couldn’t imagine herself systematically nailing every other still-living student to a wall, she was going to have to focus on the missing fingers. And after visibly flaring up five seconds ago, that reaction, too, was like dumping a bucket of cold water on her, without even the saving grace of raising awareness for charity. When she finally stopped cold it was only because she’d reached the stage, and following Yara up to it seemed like the worst idea in the history of bad ideas, since no sane person would stay in here longer than they had to after—whatever that was that happened. (She wasn’t going to ask—that was maybe the second-worst idea in the history of bad ideas.)
"That’s…" Certainly a trauma revolving around the previous mysterious absence of two fingers. Her eyes flicked unavoidably between the gauntlet and the glove and then back to the bare hand—considering, oddly enough, a late-night excursion to the infirmary what felt like years ago—before her gaze dropped to her shoes. "I understand. I’m sorry." More for her botched reaction to everything thus far than the fingers, because entirely unrelated people apologizing for entirely unrelated things probably got old after a while.
"…But as for volunteering yourself,” she added a beat later, finally realizing what the hell she’d meant to say all this time. Would she actually get through everything she meant to say before being overcome with guilt at beating this dead and honorable horse. As it turns out her resolve deflated even faster than a balloon someone tried to make out of a paper bag. “I’m not actually going to berate you because you look like you’ve been through hell and back, but rest assured, that was so, so stupid. Please reaffirm that you were not actually physically damaged as a direct result of those circumstances, because before that threshold is crossed I see no reason not to worry.”
Judging by Yara’s reaction she had no idea whether any of this would actually be comprehended or responded to, but she had to do something to provoke a response, because this new taciturn Yara was so upsetting she wanted to scream. Whether any of it was responded to or not, she held out a hand, and automatically aborted the gesture by grabbing her opposite wrist. Subtle as all hell. “Alright. Come on, neither of us should be staying a second longer in here.”
It was at times like these that the difference between a hero complex and a martyr complex began to manifest itself. She was scarcely offended that Yasei didn’t approve — and had maybe expected it in the same way that her own inevitable nomination was expected by Yasei (namely, if any conscious thought whatsoever had been directed towards the matter) — but the disapproval of her actions, and implicitly, her ideals, stung. It wasn’t something she could quite literally voice immediately, however, and assuring Yasei of the exact nature of the situation before conclusions were reasonably jumped to seemed to be the priority.
"Don't worry," Yara repeated far too rapidly, then winced when she realised she had replied with exactly the same phrase. In an attempt to voice the sentiment without taking on all the least charming qualities of a broken record, she mustered up the wherewithal for another vague phrase that barely sounded convinced of its own semantic assertion. "I'm— fine.”
In all fairness, Yara really was telling the truth (at least, with respect to Yasei's actual question). Her hand had begun to lightly bleed at one point, as a result of performing the same futile action in the hopes that something different might have happened, but she supposed that actually inflicting substantial physical harm was a hard limit when it came to Monty's room. Not that passively losing her fingers would be nearly as low as the mere reminder of what had occurred, but it was still a relief that whatever ordeals the next person faced would be limited to the domain of the mostly psychological.
This entire internal monologue might have been relocated to her speech were she capable of it, but instead she simply relocated her gaze from Yasei to every feature of the room that was not Yasei. Her conviction in having staged the world's most morbid voting campaign was probably the strongest feeling she could still consistently hold, somehow, but that didn't make looking at the other girl any easier when she clearly thought otherwise. Not to mention all of the residual strangeness that still lingered when it came to Monty's choice in highly symbolic mannequins.
Not feeling up to looking at her and not wanting to defend her position, though, were entirely different things, as far as sentiments that she very much wanted to voice but temporarily lacked the ability to went. Of course it had been an impulsive decision, but that was very different from a wrong decision, and preventing the harm of another was about as far from wrong as a decision could be. After having experienced that room from herself, Yara was firmer than ever on the fact that she should have been the one to suffer it, if it meant sparing another. Firm enough to hazard making the point in response to Yasei's not-quite-berating, even now.
"Better me than them," she said abruptly and yet very weakly and yet still with a hidden force, brow knitted with an air of such seriousness that had some omniscient, omnipotent authority been authoring her life up to this point, even they might have been a little surprised. Her shoulders still slumped and there was still a look of distant exhaustion to her entire being, but she had never sounded more doggedly certain. ”I wouldn't take that back. Not now. Not ever.”
After a moment of silence, she nodded at Yasei and took a step forward, as though to follow her advice on them leaving — then, as soon as she started, stopped in her tracks and glanced back. The mere question of where took several less words and effort than any kind of painful moral stand just taken, but it suddenly seemed like far too much again to even think about, so she looked helplessly again at Yasei as though willing her to lead the way.
you win or you die [kanna]
Just like after Amane had been admitted into the room of terrors and misery, Kanna lounged around the area nonchalantly, her face frozen in a look of disinterest. She leaned against the wall and slid down it, ending up sitting on the floor with her knees bent, resting her chin on her knees when nobody could see. It was good that it had not been Koya, but it wasn’t good that it had been Yara either. Briefly, her face was covered by her hands as she pressed them gingerly against her carefully makeupped face and pressed the pads of her fingers against her forehead, golden eyes falling wearily closed.
The hours passed by all too slow, but then -finally- the wait was over, Yara appearing on the main stage, Kanna rising to her feet with all the grace and elegance she could muster, and it was plenty. Her face was fixed in the perfect look of disinterest like before, but her eyes had a sharp, intent gaze, following Yara’s slow movements down the stage. As soon as the other’s feet were on the steps, Kanna was taking her flexible long strides into Yara’s direction, and as soon as she was on level ground with her, Kanna was there to stand right in front of her, looking up to those tired purple eyes.
For a moment, she was silent, her eyes flying over the details of Yara’s face before she shook her head, her eyes falling closed.
"…That was a stupid, stupid thing to do,” Kanna informed Yara then, no matter how ragged and exhausted she looked and how clear it was to Kanna, but this was the way she was trying to make sure Yara would absolutely not try anything like that ever again. That being general martyrdom with infuriating speeches and trying her best to accumulate the biggest amount of votes. For once, she was again the one doing the talking, and the tone was not quite as calm and pleasant as it had formerly been. “Was it anything else than playing by the rules of the robots?” Kanna didn’t wait for an answer, nor did she need one. “No, and you will stop.”
The jeweller’s golden eyes flew open, again focusing her gaze on Yara all too menacingly. This certainly was not the friendly welcome the swordsmith deserved, but lately Kanna felt as if she was grasping at straws and that mere ignoring was failing her, forcing her to speak up, to act, to do something— She didn’t know what that something was yet, and she found herself to not to be so good with words, either, and it somehow caught her off guard like she hadn’t been aware of it before.
While she looked surprisingly demanding and aggressive, her words were a slap enough, and with a slight bow to her head, she focused her gaze to the side and away from Yara, a slight pout to her ruby-red lips. As it happens, Kanna’s eyes focused on Yara’s bloodied fingers and one could see her jaw clench as she bit her teeth together. Lifting her head and shaking off all that undignified speech, she merely reached to Yara’s arm, lifted it, looking from Yara to the hand and back, leaving her gaze to pierce Yara’s soul instead of paying any further attention to the fingers.
Kanna’s stare was demanding, and what she demanded was answers. One could almost imagine seeing a faint ghost of a scared frown on her features, but it must’ve been a slight of mind instead of a genuine happenstance. Again, she had fallen silent, like was comfortable for her, and she thought she was being perfectly clear about her questions, which followed as such: how did this happen, why did this happen, are you still in physical pain, how are you so calm, should you lay down?
All Yara was offered was a demanding stare, however, and the rest was left up to interpretation.
Kanna’s words did come as a slap, and the look on Yara’s face as she delivered them was akin to physical pain itself. Quietly, she clenched her jaw and looked off to the side, feeling the harsh beginnings of tears prickle at her eyes until her whole skull buzzed with the heat. In a way, it pierced the numbness she had felt until now, serving as some strange sort of catharsis for all the tears she had refrained from crying over the last few hours. Distinct from the emotion was a clear conceptual objection to Kanna’s words, but Yara was hardly equipped to discern between the two, and the whole feeling swept over her as a single deluge.
Thoughts constructed themselves haphazardly in her mind, disjointed and so conceptually true that they had eluded verbalisation until now. Nobody else could come to harm — that truth was ironclad — and breaking the rules of the robots as opposed to somewhat playing by them was likely to result in the sort of honourable but futile struggle Iori had faced. If a number of people sufficient to nominate her had resorted to voting for her, they clearly felt desperate enough that they might have killed or become a mole for the sake of their own safety had Yara not volunteered herself. And the only real alternative was an unwilling nominee, and the choice had been before her, and what else could she do?
“What else could I do?” Yara finally asked, all references and adjectives and expressions of uncertainty and warm smiles utterly excised from her words to leave one stark question. At this point, she was hardly certain herself whether it was rhetorical and solely for the sake of point-making or really did bear answering.
What had she done since arriving at the studio? She had watched eight of her classmates die and done little use in most trials and stood by while hatreds blossomed and ferried a corpse out of naïveté — and after all that, still dared to trivially swear that she would and could make any kind of difference in this hellhole. This was what Sanra Lark must have felt like. The thought struck her coldly, in clinical defiance of everything a reference should have been. Even the one honourable choice she had had the power to make was not enough, maybe, and it was difficult to believe in the whole concept of honour when that was the case.
While she still did not cry, her shoulders began to discernibly tremble, her eyes stubbornly evading Kanna’s own gaze of their own accord. Concern she understood, but the disapproval of her choice still stung, for whatever reason it was raised. At this point, she was hardly capable of investing her energy into reading people, and the raw emotional sum of the whole ordeal swept over whatever specific rationale Kanna had for admonishing her. It was only when Yara felt her hand on her arm, gently lifting it in some sort of inspection, that she raised her gaze reluctantly back to the other girl’s face.
While Kanna’s specific questions were lost on her, the sheer intensity of the look she offered said more than enough. If Yara could have returned a look that offered as many answers, she might have, but psychic communication to that extent was sadly nonexistent — and its mundane counterpart, being efficient at expressing things sans words, was just as arcane a thought to her at any given time, let alone this one.
"It's from before," she said, low and slightly halting, then once again repeated the mantra she seemed to be voicing quite liberally now that it existed on a level apart from her subconscious. Padded out with an eerie lack of references, at that. "My fault. Don't worry, Kanna."
There was even a fair amount of conviction behind her words, given the circumstances. Hopefully the two very sparse sentences would make it clear that the only slightly bleeding points of severance were from a much older time, though how (apart from before) and why (which would require more than two sentences to express) and her current pain levels (still fairly high, in one way if not another) and her need to lie down (just as the previous answer) remained questions unanswered from the moment.
you win or you die [yasei]
It wasn’t like she hadn’t expected this. Not that Yara inevitably would volunteer herself, necessarily, but that anyone who did would end up on the chopping block because everyone had their own little cliques but unifying distrust was harder than it looked and unifying people who thought they were being fairer was easier. Maybe if she thought about it harder—she’d been doing a good job of not thinking about this motive in relation to anyone but herself—it would have been obvious.
But of course everyone had grasped at the opportunity to save themselves by any means necessary, even if it meant offering up the least deserving person they had. Surely that said more about their inherent selfishness than it would have if they’d ignored Yara completely and picked Hoshi Haruka or her or maybe Atieno from a totally random chance instead. Maybe Yara would think about that when she came out. If she wasn’t…entirely traumatized by her ordeals or something. Yasei still had no idea what kind of punishment awaited anyone in there, and it wasn’t like Natsuhiko was likely to answer her anyway, nor was his answer likely to be similar to Yara’s at all. She could wait.
And wait she did. What else was there to do in the studio but marinate in your own distrust and fear while the one person was under the effect of the motive. The entire studio had become that waiting game, and she didn’t have any illusions about its effectiveness anymore. Someone was going to die as a result of this no matter how many supposedly heroic sacrifices happened first. Assuming the area just beyond the stage was still open for business, that was where she stayed, first standing and shooting withering glares at any passers-by—like she was threatening to send a nail to the throat of anyone who admitted casting a vote in Yara’s favor—until they cleared out, and then leaning against the wall, then sitting, then dozing with her head in one hand. She was going to be the first one to talk to Yara after her stupid self-imposed ordeal if it killed her. And no matter how bad of an idea it was. They were friends.
The quiet shifting of curtains and the louder shifting of metal made her perk up, who knows how many hours later, snapping right out of her daydream and shooting to her feet. After thinking for exactly that many hours about the first thing she would say—she’d resolved it would be something belligerently worried, like “Why the hell would you ever think that was a good idea, you stupidly honorable disaster” (it was still in production, alright)—she found herself unable to talk at all. The look on Yara’s face was the worst part of it, like…well, like someone had been wedged in a chamber of horrors they were unprepared for for a a couple hours. And then of course she had to seek something else to look at as she approached the bottom of the stage at a power-walk, and then of course the first thing her eyes fell on was Yara’s hand.
…She’d imagined that losing a few fingers would be scary for someone with a talent like Yara’s, but this went far beyond everything she expected about this motive. So they were just going to hack people to pieces until they gave up and killed, was that it? “Did they—”, with the most appalled face possible, ended up being the first thing she blurted out after their last disastrous encouter. After all her scripting.
Somewhere in Yara's mind it resonated that she must have waited, or else had fortuitously entered the room housing the main stage at exactly the right time and situated herself conveniently far from the doors for no apparent reason, but the much more pressing thought was that it was Yasei herself. An unknown, potent feeling coursed through her with such force that all she could do was stand there, stare forward, and finally squeeze her eyes shut — as one might under the anguishing circumstances if they were completely alone.
Yasei's presence was hardly a negative, objectively speaking. But part of her still wanted to retreat for her room and sleep for a thousand years, like a hibernating dragon who— no, she didn't have the heart or energy to even finish that simile, she just dearly wanted to lie down and place herself at the mercy of dreams that were hopefully more pleasant than an unremitting cycle of mockery at her inability to protect anyone in this studio, let alone the people she cared about most. And, far more alarmingly than her fatigue in and of itself, that very cycle and that very blue-haired mannequin and all of the associations that came therewith were still burned into the back of her mind, and any efforts to fully heal the fact seemed as though they would take a lot of metaphorical salve.
When Yara finally remembered to open her eyes, she seemed to visibly lurch, as though she might have emptied the contents of her stomach right there or simply collapsed on the spot. As pressed for words as Yasei might have been, she still had the distinct advantage (if one could really call it that) of being able to verbalise two more words than Yara. Instead, in response, she slowly lifted the hand in question, baring the clean absence of two fingers as if to indicate that they had been gone for a very long time. And then she recalled the cleaning of Amane's injuries in record time and realised that the lack of dire bleeding meant very little in the scheme of things and in a last-ditch effort not to have to talk — because suddenly and uncharacteristically the very concept felt daunting and impossible — she glanced with emphasis towards the empty prosthetic glove and her other gauntleted hand and hoped that the logical sum of their joint existence indicated something more long-term than a spontaneous amputation.
And then she attempted to speak anyway, run ragged as she was, because she was Yara Yukimura, and in the face of all trauma misunderstandings were still terrifying enough to warrant constant clarification. Particularly with Yasei, but also particularly given the look on her face now.
"No, Kita-san— don't worry," she said finally, less intending her words than passively hearing them emerge, their edges shifting distortedly like those of underwater objects viewed from above.
you win or you die [reaction/open]
Yara Yukimura was exhausted.
In lieu of hitting her in waves, the fact rolled in as one vast tidal sheet, so grey and endlessly broad in its reaches that it blotted the horizon out seamlessly. Everything from her first speech to her impromptu self-sabotage in the voting booth had owed to a mixture of impulsiveness and her own vision of good morals, but it was now all but impossible to tell where the former ended and the latter began in the grand shade of consequence.
She was exhausted, and it showed — every quiet repression of fatigue now seemed etched on her face in full. Neither her smile nor her ostensibly endless reserves of energy had ever been a lie, but they had certainly been a coping mechanism whose vast machinery operated and now stuttered to a halt in ways beyond her ken. The epiphany was quiet, almost understated, but it shone clear through the rest like a single ray: Yara had been less emotionally equipped to handle this than she had ever herself reckoned.
Staggering out from the stage's impermeable curtains, her armour now restored and her absent sword replaced, it would be easy to dismiss the past few hours as one did with a particularly unpleasant dream. That was all it was, really; all Monty's room had given her (apart from the eerie cycle of mannequin-Yasei death) was the slight sting of drawn blood above the first two knuckles of her right hand. But a part of Yara that was not so easily dismissed outright insisted that she did not let the incident slip her mind so easily.
On an obvious and objective level, it was no mystery why the scenario had affected her. Her desire to react nobly notwithstanding, the very idea of Monty going to that conceptual place almost made her seethe. But beyond that, perhaps her prior way of dealing with things had done her little good, and perhaps it was all crashing down because she had never been a knight, and this was one elaborate proof thereof, and perhaps the best she could do now was cling to the fact that it had been her and nobody else, because even if that was the bare minimum of knightliness and shoddily performed, it was honestly the very last solace she could cling to.
And perhaps— perhaps she might have verbalised all of this better if her mind didn't continue to focus on how profoundly exhausted she was.
The glove for her prosthetic fingers (like her sword, and her original armour, and possibly everything but the stolen shreds of her dignity) had been returned with an artificial grace as soon as she'd left the room's confines, but it still hung limply from the grasp of her left hand as she descended from the stage. Stripped of its once-omnipresent gauntlet, the other hand was draped at her side with all the same slackness, the absence of forefinger and middle finger silhouetted sharply against the stage lights. It was hardly as though the thin patina of blood that now caked them warranted immediate medical attention, and after all that transpired, she was tempted to aggressively ignore that area of herself for as long as was humanly possible.
Instead, Yara focused on each step that brought her down the stairs and towards the foot of the main stage, her weariness nearly palpable from her manner if not her breath, and her armour suddenly feeling far too heavy for the body slumped beneath it.