Though some of you may have noticed sooner than others, a little bit of smoke drifting up into the air wasn't the greatest concern. But when you caught a glimpse of searingly bright flames, you couldn't help but be concerned. If that was in the forest, this whole place could burn down.
And then there was screaming.
At whatever speeds, you all made your way over, but neither of the people already present seemed to be in any danger, even if Matsukaze was clearly having a bad time and R.N.A. almost sounded like they were crying. The fire was more or less safely constrained to the beach—a single palm tree, even. It was already beginning to run out of fuel, but... wasn't there something unusual about the shape of the ashes...?
Oh, that was much more than a pile of ash. A person, too badly burnt for any clothing to clue you in to their identity. Only upon rolling them over to see their face, protected by the sand, could you tell it was Atsuko. Perhaps you should have expected it to be her, given the situation—but hadn't she made it quite clear she knew how to keep herself safe from fires? Could this really have been an accident?
The blood that hadn't burnt away made you feel otherwise.
But as you looked further, you could have sworn there was something in the water that looked like blood, too. Yet Atsuko wasn't close enough to the shoreline for it to be hers. But if it wasn't hers... You paused in trepidation for some version of a head count, only to find one of the taller ones missing.
Where was Fenna?
Not everyone was eager to follow the trail "upstream," and not everyone had noticed it in the first place—but once the first found its source, they easily made enough noise to get the others' attention.
...That wasn't Fenna.
Were you allowed to be relieved? After all, someone still lay there dead, even if that someone wasn't exactly a friend. They weren't... necessarily a foe, either, at least not compared to the one running this sick "game." Surely they didn't deserve to meet their end like this.
No other bodies were stretched along this shore, at least, but you couldn't step away to look for the last member of your party before Neko-Neko appeared.
