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late train | open

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teenieterror:

[x]

“I’m Rachel Aberle, as long as we’re getting names out of the way,” Rachel adds, following behind the other girls, her mind busy putting every detail into any possible place she could in her mind. 

In the clinic, she hopped up onto one of the counters and sat there, her legs dangling.

“I suppose the good news is that this place does have about everything you’d need to survive,” Rachel admitted, crossing her arms. “Except for… I dunno, the need to not be killed. But that was obvious.”

It’s been awhile since she was last able to crack a good joke. That wasn’t a good one either. Her eyes flick to Yuki.

“The last thing we can remember before arriving here was leaving on a bus, next thing we knew, we were waking up on the same bus as it was barreling straight for this town.” Rachel explained. “So, can we assume that we’re still in Japan? I mean, not that knowing that this was an international despair project would soothe my nerves any better.”

Yuki follows closely behind the two, glancing nervously around the new surroundings the whole way. She doesn’t sit down inside the clinic. She stands near the doorway, arms wrapped around herself for warmth – she barely understands how Fuu - Kazae? – could stand the cold, especially without shoes like that. Her own feet were freezing. Shouldn’t she be even worse off than she was right now?

She takes a deep breath. Lets it out. Okay. Cool. She was here. In the murder town. Not dead yet. Great. Goal accomplished. What now.

“Um. Which name do you prefer?” she asks first, because she’s not sure whether to just, like… pick one and run with it, or what. She’s in the mood to get warm and then probably sleep for three days straight, not make decisions.

She doesn’t even seem to realize what Rachel said was a joke at all, just nods in acknowledgement. “Uhh – yeah, this is Japan, I was - I couldn’t have gotten across the water on a bike, it’s – this is in the forest, somewhere. What happened to the bus?”

If boarding a bus and plowing it straight through the scarecrow and into the sunset was a viable option, she’s sure they probably would’ve tried it already. But still. She closes her eyes for a moment, thinking.

“Mm… okay, so…” She nods to herself and looks back at the two of them. “I don’t know if this is actually it, but the last place I was out looking for – it was this, um… some kind of tourist place. An abandoned tourist town, I think? This might not be it, though. Like I said, I got lost.”

[lentluck-blog]

late train | open

[teenieterror]

[x]

Rachel doesn’t meet Kazae’s gaze, but follows her lead.

“I suppose it would be better to explain inside,” She agrees, but she can’t help but ask a question reflexively. “But is it really winter already in the outside world?”

She looks at the newcomer.

“The Mayor-” She stops, then shakes her head. “The people that have us trapped here have been influencing the weather- Or at least, that’s what it seems like. How long were you wandering in that forest?”

She stops again. She was hungry for any information on what was going on outside of here, any hints that could help her piece everything together, but she realized that it could wait. Hopefully, when the new person had a chance to rest, she could get those answers.

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She gives Kazae a small, thankful smile at the suggestion. Once they were inside, she seems to relax a little – not quite at ease, but not about to topple over from a stress aneurysm, either.

“You guys have been missing for a while,” she said, in response to Rachel’s question. “And then I got really worried about my brother and started looking and I-” She winced. “I got lost. Really lost. And then it got cold, so I had to have started before that. I think… I think I might’ve passed out at one point? I’m not sure.  I’m not – and I don’t know what the weather was supposed to be like, I didn’t check. It might’ve just been a cold front? I don’t know.”

She starts biting her nails, looking at the floor, feeling completely useless. “I… I really don’t know much, do I. I’m sorry. Everything feels scrambled.” Takehiko would’ve made a stupid joke about that. Scrambled and pan-fried, part of a balanced breakfast. “I wish I could tell you more.”

She sifts through her mind for anything else she could say, something she actually has an answer for, and- “Oh, um. My name is Yuki Saito. I’m Takehiko’s sister, and – you know that, I said that already, didn’t I. But I guess I was… supposed to be here? Almost. Sort of. I got a letter. I was supposed to be the super high school level good luck, but I said no. I was scared.” 

She laughs weakly, looking back up at Rachel and Kazae for the first time in a while. She certainly doesn’t feel very lucky. “I guess it didn’t matter in the end, huh?”

[lentluck-blog]

late train | open

[lentluck-blog]

teenieterror:

Rachel was completely silent, something that was new to her, but something she’s found herself doing a lot lately as she was pushed to her limits. She wasn’t even aware that she had limits. She didn’t want to know what would happen when she went past it.

But that was neither here nor there. Right now, snow was falling, everyone was on a train, and they were face to face with someone new. It had been a long time since they had seen another person, Rachel realized. And even the people they could see was dwindling in number every day. She couldn’t say it was a good thing, however. She stared passively as the newcomer spoke to them, knowing that, most certainly, she would be forced to kill or be killed, or, like Rachel, be forced with the burden of keeping what this place called justice.

Takehito Saito. Like a spark her mind raced back to the reporter, knowing that he had already perished. She hadn’t been there to see it, but she knew he was dead.

Quietly, she stepped forward from the others, giving the newcomer a somber look.

“I’m sorry,” She said, glancing down. She immediately realized she couldn’t do this, but she pushed that aside because- fuck, someone had to say it. This girl had been waiting god-knows-how long to learn about her brother, no use making her wait longer.

“I’m sorry,” She began again. She tightened her hands into weak fists at her sides, trying to concentrate more on her cold fingertips than on the words she was saying. “But your brother is dead. Has been dead. There was a storm and…”

Rachel trailed off. Would it really be a comfort to tell her ‘but at least he wasn’t killed by someone else’? No, it really wouldn’t.

Her face fell at the first ‘I’m sorry.’ She’d… had a feeling, honestly, from her headcount. These people were from that same class, he should’ve been there with all of them. Wouldn’t have passed up the opportunity to show up if anything remotely interesting was happening.

Still, something in her mind absolutely rejected the idea, because Takehiko? Dead? She laughed nervously. She didn’t think it was a joke, not really, but… god, she’d take a terrible joke over any of this being real.

“A st- a storm? No, you don’t understand, he’s not dead, he can’t be, he doesn’t – he does stupid things all the time, he’s an idiot, but he doesn’t die.” Sound logic. He’s never died before, why should he be dead now? “There’s – how would a storm even–“

And there really weren’t enough people here at all. She didn’t want to think about what that meant, after what had happened to the last two Hope’s Peak classes. Hugging herself even tighter, she almost seemed to shrink in on herself, still shivering. She wasn’t sure how much of it was because she was still so cold and how much was from the sudden terror of the situation.

“…It’s happening again, isn’t it? That’s why… there aren’t enough people here.”

Maybe everyone else was waiting outside of the building and she was just jumping to conclusions, but really? Stepping off a train to meet half of a Hope’s Peak class didn’t give off happy funtime vibes.

[lentluck-blog]

late train | open

She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, exactly. She wasn’t even sure if she’d actually fallen asleep or just passed out as soon as she’d gotten someplace remotely not freezing.

But the feeling of the train stopping, the sounds of voices outside and the door sliding open are enough to rouse her from the dreamless sleep. It meant that she was somewhere, at least, and not dead - and if she was somewhere and not dead, she needed to… something. It’s hard to focus on anything besides how cold she feels, but she forces herself to blink herself awake and get to her feet.

…If it had led up to this, she honestly couldn’t help but regret every decision she’d ever made. Something had to have gone horribly wrong at some point, for her to end up here, half frozen to death on a mystery train in the middle of nowhere. Something had to have gone right for her to have not actually frozen to death out there in the woods, too, but she’s less concerned with that part right now.

More concerning is that she’s here at all, in front of a bunch of people she doesn’t even recogn-oh no, wait, no, she definitely recognizes these people, she thinks. Which was… she’s not… totally sure how she feels about this right now.

One step off of the train is as far as she seems willing to go after she’s on her feet, crossing her arms for warmth. She spends a long moment looking from face to face, not quite meeting anyone’s eyes, before settling on a point on the floor somewhere between her and the group.

“You’re the…” she says, faintly, and then shakes her head. “He’s – that thing is right, I’ve been looking for my brother.” She suddenly stands up straighter as if startled, looks up at them all. “Wait, you’re – if you’re here, have you seen him, he’s – Takehiko Saito, he’s my brother, I came here to find him, find everyone, I just –“ She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head again, hair fanning out with the force of it. “Where is this? What’s happening?” More quietly, “...Where is he?”