day two - aftermath

[guestcontrol]

dreamland day two 38 players remaining. As the voting period comes to an end, a bell goes off from the ticket machine, and the metal bars blocking the tunnel at the end of the Hall of Mirrors lifts. A voice speaks over the loudspeaker: "Attention, guests! Please make your way onto the ride! For your safety, keep your hands and arms inside and do not attempt to leave your seat!" Through the tunnel, single cars on a track stop and wait for each remaining player to step on. Don't dawdle, or your bracelet will begin to beep a warning. Once in a car, the safety bar locks you tightly inside, unable to move. The car trundles along a dark, twisting track, nearly veering into cartoonish obstacles, but veering away at the last moment. Music and cackling laughter echoes loudly through the ride as you drive faster and faster. Suddenly, your car veers off to the left, through a courtroom, where a towering cartoon judge threatens to bang a gavel. Your car jerks and evades, but somewhere, before one car can pass, the gavel comes down and the car spins off to the side, through a dark doorway. Each car comes to the end of the ride, but doesn't stop, and instead jerks into motion and, even faster, veers through the ride a second time. This time, your car does not enter the courtroom, but the doors to your left nonetheless open, showing instead of a courtroom a red room burning with cartoon flames. Above the flames hangs a corpse in a noose. The body of Levi hangs from a white rope noose, as a cackling voices pronounces: Innocent The ride turns away once more, and comes to a stop. A list of votes has been pinned on the wall for your perusal. You now have the rest of the evening to explore the park, before night comes again. character statuses private conversations graveyard This is a general post-vote mingle encompassing the time from the end of the trial (about 5 PM until the fireworks at 11 PM). You are encouraged and welcome to backtag discussions in this post until the next day post, or to have afternoon private conversations.

Comments

[photonement]

Okay.

[Her assent is still immediate, because all Mahiru thinks about that presumed baseball bat is that it's probably some forced Monokuma-aesthetic style ironic commentary on the way yakuza like to carry out their most brutal teach-a-lesson kills. Peko's confirmed everything Mahiru needs to know if they'll continue; being organized, making the argument that not-completely-deserved murders are an acceptable part of their operations.]

You can do it, Peko-chan. I believe in you. And every one of us. We have... ["tools" might not be the word but] Power, don't we? Not all of it, but if we work hard, it could be enough.

[perfectstrike]

Do you...?

[It's a quiet, barely audible question, and Peko's fingers tighten around her elbows as she stares straight ahead without seeming to see anything.

She'd thought they'd had all the tools at their disposal. She'd checked for evidence. She'd thought she'd done everything right. And then...

But she has to be the protag now. Kuzuryuu wanted to protect their classmates, so that was what she was going to do. Even if she would rather have died in his place than be left with this.]

It will be enough. [She owes them this much already. She can't afford to be weak, not when her classmates need her.] We will gain more information. We will find who did this. And if need be, I will execute them myself to ensure you can all escape freely.

[photonement]

Careful, out-of-turn might not get us MVP or--

[She claps her hand over her mouth. It's been less than 72 hours; why is this reminder already so automatic for her? Mahiru shakes her head.]

Never mind, you already said "If need be."

[She's still not good at this, clinging to her normalcy and domesticity when Peko is the warrior at the head of the team now. Doing things that way gets results of some kind, even if they're as unpleasant as this. Still, Mahiru next nudges the plate awkwardly.]

Lemme know if you really feel so bad you can't eat. I want you to, but... there's eggs in this. It'll go kinda bad in less than an hour.

[perfectstrike]

[She just gives Koizumi a bit of a look, not all that impressed with the start to a warning. But she relaxes when Koizumi reaches the right conclusion anyway, just giving a small nod. That's exactly what Peko had meant. If need be. If it meant that she would die while her classmates were guaranteed their freedom and safety... she would do it without looking back. There's nothing really here for her now except that.]

I... am not hungry. Please eat.

[Thanks for the thought, Koizumi, but Peko's really not going to touch it. Come to think of it, no one would have seen her eat anything all day.]

[photonement]

[Mahiru frowns because at this moment she bascially remembers that fact, yeah. A little self-starvation never hurt anyone; she's had a couple bad busy weekends herself before, and her dad was the same way. (Well. A lot worse.) But this impulse goes beyond Mahiru's mechanical gravitation towards food as comfort, comfort as distraction, distraction as self-treatment. Involuntarily, she thinks of Kuzuryu's injunction against the rides, even though Ibuki's found that self-treatment so effective. Or has she? All four of them ended up more sad about this than they "should" have been.

Mahiru continues looking at Peko's curled form, thinks she sees blueness and shaking in the failing light. All she can imagine is the even weaker moonlight where Peko is fighting those people, not running away, and gets exhausted all the sooner, so Tanak resolves to retrieve her from the afterlife too--]

I ate before. [The small-voiced sentence isn't really a complete thought. Before the trial?] There were some other meals to make, too, you know. I wanted to take care of everything before I found Peko-chan.

[Even herself. Mahiru knows she won't be fine all by herself, of course, not any more than she thinks Peko will be.]