#ch3 afterword

[daedalmirage]

【AFTERWORD 3.4】 THE PUPPET RETURNS.

Actually she may or may not have already appeared again, but she continues on as if nothing is amiss.

“Well, it looks like we’re all on track but — you all look so lost and disappointed like you’ve never heard of ritualistic killing before!”

She laughs a bit, head tilting this way and that as she drums her fingers on the table… or rather pats her mittens on the table.

“Now, you’re probably wondering — so is this an ‘And Then There Were None’ situation? Do we have to keep killing? Misery, why can’t you just light us all up in a house fire and let’s call it a day? Which, obviously I can’t — gotta respect rules and safety around a fireman, you know!”

She shrugs her little shoulders before letting out a yawn.

“I could answer your questions but all in due time — I need a nap, bad. And my back hurts. But if it’s any consolation, you’ve all been doing so well despite a kerfuffle here and there, nothing that can’t be papered over, we’re still getting funding blah blah blah. It’s been a morning, though, don’t you think? So I’ll go ahead and dismiss you now, okay~?”

She snaps her fingers, the path to the exit aligning with the sound of metal grinding to a halt. She watches you all as you file out one by one, until, right as your backs have all turned—

“Oh, and uh… there’s just one more thing.”

Some of you may already be halfway out the door when you hear her say it, maybe realizing too late that this is the first time Misery has stuck around to watch you all leave, that she seems to have forgotten something.

“Ajaraka moukuren tegerettsu no pa!”

Pomf, pomf! Clatter -!

…? It’s a confusing set of words accompanied by a confusing sound effect; and perhaps you don’t think anything of it until you’re all out of the Seventh Domain, not really trying to take a head count but noticing it anyway: that suddenly your ranks have dwindled.

That there seems to be one less of you.

【CHAPTER 3: END】

[coquettedragoon]

the next update for coquette will actually be the start of chapter 4... chapter 3 grew so long i had to split it. where the last update ends is actually the end of the chapter now, and even cutting there chapter 3 is still longer than 2... ill add a proper end scene to ch3 with an afterword etc like the other chapters

so far it looks like this, chapter 4 will probably end up around 40-45k

[spareparts-vn]

the anon from before. just caught up on the ch3 preview, opened the afterword, and the reference to the higurashi afterword knocked me so flat on my ass im laughing so fucking hard i aint even gonna spoil it for ur followers

lmfao thank you, it was like 6 am after a long work night when i wrote that whole thing and i was delirious laughing about it

[hadeanic]

~The Dove Knows Her Friends By Heart~ | {Wakana} | [CH3-TRIAL] | (Re: Shu, Jito, Haruto) | (Attn: Shu, Jito, Everyone, Haruto)

She tried to answer Shu first; really she did.

“Uh… Shu-san, I think you got that a bit wrong-”

She wanted to answer Shu first, but she was stopped when she heard Jito begin to speak. She looked to Jito; and answered him truthfully.

“I did see my video, but it was of someone; my childhood friend who I have not seen since I was about 10 years old… he told me he was proud of me and that he was cheering me on… I have no reason to kill anyone for that video, especially since it was of someone who I have not seen in years, and I have to emphasize; years since I saw him.”

“Were we engaged once? Yes, but I was seven and he was ten around the time it was arranged. Neither him or I harbored any romantic feelings for each other, we were friends and nothing more. When our engagement broke off; we both were relieved for it…”

She sighed.

“The person who I destroyed a video to see mine, I will say gave permission; however I want to speak to that person personally and privately- although I was given permission, I still feel guilt for destroying such a thing; so I want to give them the coins needed to get back the letter that was destroyed. I only have 20 monocoins right now, and I still plan to earn enough coins for the mastermind hint- I want to pay back my dues and help everyone get out of here the right way… not… not by some deaths no one deserves. I said before, and I will say it again; I made a promise to Noel-chan I would find a way to get us all out of here, and I intend to keep that promise.”

She looked to her classmates.

“I will say it again; I have no motive to kill anyone, and I did not kill Komiya-san or Abe-san. If anyone wants to disagree and come up with some sort of motive that involves me killing both of Komiya-san or Abe-san just to see someone who I have not seen in years-”

“And please, I beg you not to use some sort of excuse as ‘well you are in love with him!’ No. Absolutely not. We parted seeing each other as friends and nothing more, to say that I loved him as a child who was forced into a temporary marriage arrangement; I can promise you that I did not love him like that; he was my first and only friend during that time, he was the reason why I got the courage to make new ones.”

Her eyes did not show hesitation.

“He would have never forgiven me if I killed someone; no- he would have hated me entirely if I killed two people just for him, and I would have felt the same way if he had killed someone for me.”

She sighed and looked over to Haruto, then to Azusa, but she does not say anything to them; she looked back to all her peers.

She was begging them; please do not get this wrong.

She still had hope.

Then Haruto started to speak.

“... Yet that does not answer the question; did you see your video or not. You could have seen it and been just as scared and terrified after watching it, and still have someone destroy it afterwords.”

“Though…”

“I cannot shake the feeling that someone could have lied to throw the both us under the bus…”

[daedalmirage]

the puppet tries to help. | pluto + sonia | trial 3.2

Whatever Pluto and Sonia may be thinking is indecipherable to you all, considering the fact that you can only see Misery. It’s Pluto’s voice that you hear next, though, addressing Ray about the marks:

“Yeah they’re gone. Been gone.”

Misery’s puppet head turns to Gawain.

“Yeah it— why do they want this to happen? It would be easier to just, just have us kill each other in a, a free for all wouldn’t it? But… But Doctor Misery said that.. she needed me killed. In this way..”

There’s a pause, and then Pluto’s voice sounds a bit distracted. Not as focused on you all.

“I… I didn’t know we could? I. We’re on an island? I don’t even know where— where we are. Are we allowed to leave??”

The focus returns, though, as Misery turns to Tezuka.

“Oh— maybe? Like. Um. Wow that would suck though… er… that’s really dark. If, if, the call to um, help find a cure was just— to volunteer ourselves as uh, test subjects…”

Next, Misery nods fervently towards Marigold.

“Yes! Yes that’s her name, Doctor Misery. She’s um. She never said she did all that?. Just, just that she works for a company and she likes her boss, and that Arisu doesn’t work for the same company, she works for Laplace, who gave us to the— to the doctor’s company…”

Misery pauses to look at Benkei, but says nothing to him, leaning back and folding over a bit. Instead, she addresses Joe next:

“We— we can hear you Joe! And yeah we’re in— well we’re in the room that always has— access to view these things? I’ve just um, I’ve, we’ve never tried to communicate with this thing before.”

Her puppet arm gestures at absolutely nothing. She then turns to Shari, looking… well, you can’t really gauge an expression from her, but you can imagine.

“Uh. I’m not… sure… Doctor Misery has been— she hasn’t been super open about everything… but. If we, maybe we can, maybe if we ask her more questions…”

There’s a pause, and Misery’s voice changes to Sonia’s. The concept of a French Misery is one that may haunt you for the rest of your life.

"What gets me is the idea that we were all supposedly hand-picked by Laplace, told we were 'geniuses' in our 'fields'... but now that I think about all this, I wonder if that's the real reason we were picked. If there's something else. There's got to be other suckers out there with Marks who they could've gone for, aren't there? What makes us so special?"

A hum, sounding high-pitched and puppet-y.

"Ahh, well... these are all real good questions. We've got a lot to think about, don't we? We'll do everything we can to get more information on our side, so you all do the same, too."

A pause, and clearing of the throat.

"I'd ask you not to tell Misery we dropped in, but if Mari's right about two of us being secret babysitters, then it won't be long before she finds out from them, will it? Hah— in the meantime, then... take care."

Misery does a little nod, and shifts back to Pluto’s voice.

“Y, yeah, take— OH—”

And without further ado, Misery vanishes.

[daedalmirage]

Through the discussion, a slightly perkier Stormy leans over his table like he’s climbing to add something to a drive-thru order.

“Sony! P! Hey! Mean, uh, J! Hey, hey! J-chan!” Boy, he got excited. All this new information must be getting to him. “We can hear you! Can you hear us! You’re in Doctor Coffee Admin Lady’s room?! You hacked in? That’s so wild!”

He pauses, and in a calmer voice. “Coffee Press… Huh. That like…” But he doesn’t seem to remember.

[daedalmirage]

trial 3-6 | benkei

Benkei – Kaneto – figures he has a high tolerance for weird shit.

His first experience with the supernatural was when his boss told him that, in order to be initiated into the leadership of the Wolves of Tokyo, he would have to undergo a ritual that would change him into a wolfman and give him strange powers like shapeshifting and rapid healing, and Kaneto had leapt at it wholeheartedly because- for many reasons. Something like that was pretty much jumping headfirst into the deepest deep end of a pool. Everything else was gravy. Vampires? Right on. Immortality witchcraft? Why not. Each new thing he learned about the world was an exciting extra layer to an existence he already knew he didn’t know nearly as intimately as he’d once thought he did.

But this… the words that come out of Daisy's mouth, they’re hard to process.

He leans forward as she talks, brows furrowed, watching the black bars on her arms as if they might flinch and accidentally show the text underneath. And then he stays silent for a time, chewing on what he’s just heard, listening to everyone else dissect it around him while he stays quiet. The satisfaction of giving Inkyo the grand fuck-off of a guilty verdict is set aside for now.

The part that really sticks with him, though, is that the mark is caused by someone else extending their own life span. If he’s chewing on the information, then that tidbit is a shard of bone jammed in his gums. It makes him mad. That this tattoo – the only thing that has meaningfully managed to cause him pain in years, that will kill him promptly if he were to walk away from here – is someone else eating his own life. There are very few people in this world Kaneto A— would die for and he’s certain it’s not some LaPlace stranger. Fuck that all the way off.

“Banri and Daisy are right,” he says evenly, so evenly that it’s clear he’s off-balance. He momentarily foregoes the codenames, which he’s been considering as surnames for his Japanese fellows until told otherwise. “If this was just about killing us to get rid of the mark, they could’ve lined us up against a wall and shot us in the head one by one. Instead, they’re yanking us around like – well, like puppets. All this screaming and crying everyone does before and after the trials is probably the point. I don’t know how, but I could make a wild guess or two.”

The thumb of one hand scrapes a shallow groove in the tabletop. “I don’t like this. Not at all. I sure don’t like that we’ve got babysitters, either. Two, you said?” He pauses, gnawing the inside of his cheek. It doesn’t hurt. Pain doesn’t matter, it’ll heal as fast as he can chew it. “Good to know. Good to know.” His voice has a hard edge: he intends to make these two handlers suffer for it.

“Something to work on, right?” He smiles. There’s blood in his teeth. “Breaking a couple mirrors sounds like it’d feel really fucking good.”

[daedalmirage]

rosemary ♥ marigold ♥ r.e: 'misery'

Just like before, Daisy throws her piece out into the room and lets the others scrabble with it; roll it every which way to see what sides they can spot and holes they can poke. Even though it's no longer a story staked on the sincere belief of being a murderer - even if these very points are nearly everything she said she'd do in their time here - she finds little respite in getting the words out there. Perhaps because she knows it's far from the miracle cure the others might have assumed she had, perhaps it's because no matter how Keizo takes to adjusting her she still can't quite look at Manako for more than a second before her expression falls, perhaps its any other number of things.

(Right, Keizo- she doesn't quite know how he can be so responsive to her right now, but she is in turn regardless; curling inward when his tension rises as though that'll help either of them any, even more so when he pulls her in for 'Misery's' appearance.)

When she speaks up next, its a false start- the best she gets out is a 'No-' before she has to cough away some raw upset and exhaustion, then trying again.

"...No, it's not we have to die. That's what, uh, Sonia and Pluto just said, right? Laplace need us to be killed and- and they didn't even say what for, so it could still be just for anything that's not necessarily removing our marks, right?"

She's still alert enough even in the adrenaline come down to sound exasperated, but not fully back in the confidence game yet.

"Though- Doctor Misery, huh? I mean, Doctor Coffee Press is the one who was listed in all the stuff I read, the one who found how to get rid of it back in... '87, and... Admin in the chat room called herself Admin C when Arisu showed up and made things confusing, so... maybe..."

A pause.

And Daisy just groans.

"I... I don't *know* anymore, I'm just... I'm trying to make sense of if I got something useful after all this, but... how are we even meant to find right now..."

She doesn't finish her sentence properly, closing her eyes and turning away again.

[daedalmirage]

astral alley || post trial 3.2 || banri || re: ray, gawain, bella and inkyo a lil bit

“Mind the way the researcher phrased it."

His voice starts, maybe to Keizo, who he does not call Kei for the worry that he’s somehow fucked up that bond already, and maybe to nobody in particular. Maybe to himself, and the rest is bouncing off the trial walls.

“It’s either a removal of the curse’s source, or saving as many people as possible. As many as, is the big thing. I can only guess by that phrasing that, at some point, the slaughter procession stops being effective. If we don’t find the source of the curse, then. Some people get left behind. In here, or, just to die in real life. So anybody with any plans to corral us into the bar and burn it down with, all of us inside, might want to cool it for a bit? Because I doubt this is the entirety of the picture. Again, they wouldn’t give us information they weren’t prepared for us to know. Us having access to this feeds into their plan. Somehow. In some way.”

That’s the problem with good information at a bad time, isn’t it? 

One drop of it into a thirsty mouth is enough, and it gets the mind ravenous. Questions double, triple, they breathe and come alive, each one more ludicrous and starved than the last. If only there was a little bit more, another puzzle to be had, some other abstract clue. Life has taught Banri that asking for more only ever ends in tearful attempts to give that knowledge back. Pandora’s Box can’t be neatly closed back up. Mistakes made can’t be un-fucked. Mirrors can’t be so easily crossed.

Discerning whether he feels ill, miserable, or lightheaded at this point is moot. Likely all three in tandem, with sprinkles of unrelenting terror and dread. His whole body rejects being here, begs him to go to bed and stay there for, weeks, keep the doors closed and let nothing in. He thinks about being watched, observed, unmoving and unstimulating for whatever researcher is assigned to view him. He imagines reaching out from their computer, or mirror, or whatever means they use to manage all this, and pressing his thumbs into the sides of their throat. And he would do that, had he the means or the courage to do so. But lacking any will or hope, he remains idle, dumb, here. All there is to do in this room is speak. Find some power in his words.

“This is still an experiment. Still using us, geniuses, for whatever purpose they first assembled us for. The torture, the memory loss, every moment that’s been spent here, wondering if fighting to live is even worth it after so many weeks where it’s nothing but death. It’s on purpose, isn’t it? We’re parameters to them before we’re people. Else, why not make this apparent from the beginning? Why go through the effort of, all the obfuscation? Why drop in agents just to make sure that everything goes according to plan? It’s not money, it’s not, deliberate maniacal choice. The real answer’s obvious.”

“It’s because they don’t actually know as much about the mark as we think they might. Think of every time something here’s surprised them, for a group that’s been controlling the world around us from the start. Every time we’ve set them off course with some well kept secret or trick of ours. Doctor, or nurse, or even their boss. That’s why they’re not just putting us through the motions of removing it. They can’t. If we’re up a creek without a paddle, they’re aimlessly kicking their legs in the water in some half-brained attempt to be the rudder in the water. They need us. They need us to trip over ourselves and die.”

The whole city’s burning down. Nobody can find a bucket for some water. Damage control, up and down, damage control, saving face. A train, hurtling towards nowhere. Not to nowhere, that’s not quite fair. But some dark unknowable. The hole at the center of everything. The great ancestor of the emptiness inside some people’s hearts. Banri’s own, for sure. It’s all just tumbling down. Tumbling into that bottomless pit.

A blood taste in his mouth from how hard he’s been breathing just to stay upright. He heard once that it was actually from the lungs, not the actual mouth, and does not remember where he read that or who told him it. His anger simmers too hot.

“Think about it. Laplace and ENDRO are saving us? Laplace and ENDRO would’ve already saved us if they cared about that. If it was their priority. But they’re beholden to their research project first and foremost, not to our well being. I’d rather choke before I take the word of any two-bit organization who’s taken every opportunity to make our lives a, living-dying hell, that they’ve really been batting for us all along. So long as their real aim’s unknown. So long as that’s the case, the only thing that I’ll believe’s capable of saving us is ourselves. The people who’ve survived this long and continued to care and. Kept strong.”

At the end of everything, hold onto anything.

Even if it's a room full of the world's saddest, most average, most spectacular people here. They're all that he has. They're the best people in the world, and the best people available.

“Mirrors shatter,” he echoes from their Captain, oh Captain. “So if there’s a curse, we make it kneel. That’s that.”

[daedalmirage]

POST-TRIAL 3.2 | “ LIVIN' ON SOMEONE ELSE'S PAGE ! ” | SIR GAWAIN | 🚒 |

He's quiet, for a long time.

Perhaps characteristically quiet, perhaps not. His gaze one more of observation -- Gawain's usual lightness evaporated for something much more-- Dutiful.

Like how he dutifully shifts, every so often, as Marigold speaks -- to let her look at them more, to turn her to face those she would prefer to address. His breathing matching hers.

And how he dutifully listens to the rest of them -- positing theories that he, believes, Inkyo is trying to shoot down--

(All of it so incomprehensible--)

Ultimately, his gaze only slightly widens when Misery comes back in -- but not to drag Inkyo to a punishment; not to stop this explanation that--

It's when she speaks that he starts -- gripping Marigold tighter -- pulling her in with deep distrust. Before....

(So they had always had to die -- but it--) (He almost feels embarrassed -- as if he should feel bad to have taken this seriously-- because--) (....)

(...He supposes he can't get too upset. Not with how today was going --)

He lets it sit for a while, Ray taking the plunge in trying to untangle any of this -- and giving, at least, some kind of help. Though he still has questions -- and it would be a waste to not speak--

The first thing he says is a stall. It's meant to buy him time:

"Anyone else startin' t'feel a little like a rat in a cage...? Guess this is what we get for bettin' on a miracle cure, twice... almost feel like I should apologize."

A hard swallow. His eyebrows furrow -- his chin resting on Marigold's hair -- a twitch to his mouth -- once, twice.

"...."

He doesn't know where to start. He doesn't know how to address this. It feels a race to a shining beacon -- a finish line -- their salvation -- but the path there is muddy and unclear and the paths diverge and mesh and force him up the cliff and down a hill and into the sea and he doesn't even know if he can reach it--

(They want to help the rest of them -- but how? He highly doubts--)

Maybe it's best to voice his confusion. His eyes casting around all of them:

"...I mean, two people are babysittin' us. But-- I mean-- what does that mean? Why do we gotta be babysat? All we're supposed t'do is kill each other. We die here, we end up on th'other side fine -- marks off, as Rayster said -- as Ms. Pluto an' Ms. Sonia can corroborate. So what's with all th'delayin'? You'd think someone would have just put us into a Battle Royale by now...."

His tone remains calm, level headed. But Marigold can feel his muscles twitch -- how his fingers dig into the hold -- his heart beat rapid.

"We gotta be executed? Just do it all at once. What's th'point of all these punishments an' leavin' us alone f'a month? What's th'point of makin' us kill each other -- slowly, takin' fuckin' months? Makin' alliances an' likin' each other an' hatin' each other an' drinkin' an' partyin' an' fightin' an' whatever else?  It's torture.  What's the point?"

....

"An' -- don't mind me askin', Ms. Pluto, Ms. Sonia -- I know neither one of ya can be my biggest fans -- but why th'fuck are they keepin' y'all around? Your curse is gone. Why do you need t'just hang out? Why can't y'go home?"

A tsking noise. He shifts Marigold in the hold.

"...Y'know. There's been somethin' that's botherin' me this whole time...."

....

"An' maybe it's nothin'. But y'know, guys like me, we think of shit like this. The money. Why th'fuck is the money s'good for us t'be here? Eradicatin' in batches, yeah? ENDRO knows th'cure, but Laplace brought us here. ENDRO's finally lettin' us in on it. Y'don't think...."

...But he ultimately lets that sit.  Something tugging at his neurons, something giving him an icy chill. He prefers not to speak it.

"But, y'know. I ain't exactly th'guy people key into th'bigger picture, so I ain't real good at spottin' a conspiracy. Maybe a smarter guy can point us in a better direction...."

[daedalmirage]

post 3.1 | ray | i will wait forever

From her face alone, it’s hard to judge much at all about how Ray’s feeling.  Votes stack for her and for Inkyo.  She doesn’t say who she’s choosing to condemn -- if anyone -- and she doesn’t stir the silt that’s settled over her voice to defend, to convince, or to struggle.

It wouldn’t be strange to wonder if she were processing much at all, but she gives away that she is a handful of times.  Next to her, Shari starts to sob, and Ray jolts back towards where Nina would be, had none of these happenstances snowballed how they did.  She keeps that distance as she gives a pained smile towards Gawain -- no full circles here indeed -- and still as her features soften to something like pity towards Marigold, Inkyo.

Gawain will find her hand clammy but comforting when she presses it to his, both of them resting on her shoulder for a couple of moments.  She keeps him there, whatever deepheld thing that her getting him means coming out in how her shoulders finally relax, how her eye shuts and her forehead doesn’t crease alongside it.  It isn’t long before she tilts her head towards Marigold, an insistence in the jut of her jaw.  There’s something unspoken -- like I know or I care, too -- in how she lets him go.

  She takes Marigold’s news with her usual stony silence.  It slots into that same uncertainty again, if she’s processing much at all, but after Tezuka and Bella and Inkyo all pick it up and turn it around, Ray reaches for it, too.  But like touching a hot stove, she shrinks back quickly as Misery animates again -- something like resignation creeping on her face -- and then stares, her mouth slightly parted.  It’s stolen her voice from her, this double-speaking puppet, and it takes a while longer for her to wrestle it back.

“This place is wrong.”

It’s as resounding as a finely struck bell, a gaunt pull in her features.

“There should be no place that works like how you say this place does.  If this is true, our curse is meant for someone else.  Not us.  …What did you call this.  A mirror world.”

Her head tilts just slightly towards Marigold.

“Mirrors shatter.  There has to be a way to shatter this place.  Get ourselves out.  Keep anyone from giving this curse to anyone ever again.”  She looks to Tezuka, giving him a shallow nod.  “Whatever we find out, we’ll use.”

A thumb helping make up one of her fists swirls by her knuckles as she watches Bella and Inkyo, and then more as she drags her attention back to Misery.  Her eye stays there as she speaks.

“I can’t tell what these babysitters want.  But.  Something bothers me about this.  Might be nothing.”

Her hands unfurl to rest on her knees.

“The dead.  Both of you.  …All of you,” a more obvious tilt to her blind side, some hesitation before she speaks again.  “You’re no longer marked.  I’ve seen it.  Your bodies are, but not you as you are now.  Don’t know what to make of it with all of this.”

[daedalmirage]

the puppet participates. | misery… ? | trial 3.1

Misery appears with a POMF.

Perhaps you feel a jolt of dread when you see her. What’s going to happen? Another execution? Why does it feel so wrong, like you were supposed to have more time, surely you have more time—

But when she vocalizes, it’s not to laugh, or to deride. Instead, it’s to clear her throat, the sound far meeker than you might have expected from her. And when she speaks…

“Hello? Can you hear me guys? Um??”

It’s not Misery. It’s high-pitched, and it’s cartoonish, but it’s not Misery.

In fact, it sounds far more like a muppet version of someone else—

“It’s— it’s me, Pluto— Joohee? Um. Hi? Uh. This. Is this does this sound— “ 

Someone whose voice you have never heard in this room. Someone who has already died.

Someone who addresses you nevertheless.

“Um. Hi. We— oh god I don’t know how long we can do this she stepped away for just a bit I don’t know when she’s going to be back—“

Even as she floats there, Misery seems meek.

“Hey, um, Dr. Misery told us that we had to die, or not just that they needed us to die but that they needed us to be killed, or, or… lethally punished?”

A pause, and then, she speaks… quieter. But with more energy, somehow. Difficult to hear. As if she is far away.

As if she is… French?

"Tell them Doc is Misery is Admin—"

That is definitely a French accent, a puppet version of someone else who has died here. Misery’s form flails a bit, and shifts back into the other voice— Pluto’s voice.

“ALSO MISERY IS— Misery is Doctor Misery who’s Admin? Can you hear me say that??” 

Sonia again, far away:

"And she doesn't know she's Misery, either, it all just sounds like her own name instead of Misery over on this side, THAT’S why she doesn't know who Misery is—"

Pluto:

“Yeah!”

Finally, Sonia, sounding a little closer, thank God:

"We don't know when she's coming back, but until then, we want to try to help!"

A reassuring sentiment, maybe.

Would be a lot more reassuring if their voices weren’t coming from Misery’s body.

[daedalmirage]

INKYO || afterword 3.1「 yotaro 」

All she has left in her is a small shake of her head.

No, Franz, there’s nothing you can do for me. No, Johann, I’m not scared, but I feel pretty guilty. No, Marigold, it wasn’t your fault. No, Shari, I won’t stay, I can’t.

Her death will be quick and insignificant, no more dramatic than blowing out candles on a birthday cake. It dignifies no verbal response, no grand acknowledgement. 

Really, the ones who will be most frustrated with her passing aren’t even here. One of them dead for years, the other old enough to brush this off as a minor inconvenience, a shame, a non-major setback.

The one who was currently alive would just have to start from scratch. The one who was dead couldn’t complain that it wasn’t worth his remaining years of life.

Just -- a mistake no more egregious than buying concert tickets for the wrong date or wasting time at a movie you didn’t end up liking.

That’s all her life amounts to in the end: years that added up and up and came out to zero.

So she simply turns her attention to the topic of discussion.

“I was a participant of the ENDRO-II program for a short time. While this concerns a matter that can hardly be considered scientific, the researchers of the program pride themselves on legitimacy. So I am inclined to believe that this is true information, that they are letting us have it because it has been what we have been doing all along.”

She stops herself short. A corpse is talking, after all; what she thinks, what she believes -- weigh about as much as they did when her doom wasn’t impending.

Nonetheless.

“If you all were to be fodder for another person’s life... they would have left you on the other side.”

She shrugs and wonders which song they might have forced others to sing in order to summon her -- ... it would have been funny to make Johann sing Nakamori Akina’s Desire. 

[daedalmirage]

uncommon enemy | lauren | post trial 4.2

"Well, isn't this all a right crock of shit."

Lauren states suddenly, her voice louder than it's been all this time. With a wince, she rubs at her shoulder, still angry and gnarled and half-immobile, forever scarred as her healing factor battles with an obstacle it doesn't know how to face. She'd always thought it was magic. Here, faced with real magic, she feels a lot like her enzymes must right now. The unflappable has been defeated. There is no normalcy anymore. It's a little laughable to think there ever was any to begin with.

She'd struggled her entire life to stay alive, so she has more trouble than others might faulting someone for putting a death curse on two dozen people to do so themselves. She wonders if they wonder about her. She wonders about them. And she...laughs.

"So two of our merry band of misfits have been trying to get the others killed this whole time, hm? Not very neighborly, but I can't say I really blame you. To throw others into the wretched pits of hell, to watch the skin rot from their skeletons, their bodies return to dust....if you're desperate to live, even if you'd like to think you'd do the right thing, would you, really?"

The chef shrugs, with the shoulder that works, and waves a hand.

"As they say, no man is a hero underwater. If you're in the weeds and want to survive, and people are clinging to you, desperately struggling to pull themselves up alongside you, and they're instead merely dragging you down? There's no thought to it. There's only action. Animal instinct takes over. It's your survival, or theirs."

Pausing, she rolls her eyes, adjusting her hearing aids idly.

"....Not that I expect anyone to be a huge fan of being thrown into a situation like this just so someone else can take a few million more breaths before falling into a grave - inevitably. I hope everyone's allowed to be angry. But I'd like to be informed, too. Our villains aren't likely to be anyone dead, am I correct? Why go through all the trouble just to die yourself? I suppose it could be a ruse, but it'd be a hell of a one. However, speaking of which, those that died here...are they dead outside of this dimension, as well? If we're in the mirror world, there's still the us that exists out there, unless we were dragged in here wholly. And, if that's the case, the mirror us should exist, too. So perhaps all is not yet lost for our fallen cohort."

Lauren glances to Jesse, next to her, trying to follow along with his notes and Banri's attempts at deduction beyond him. Wondering with some amusement, some fascination, if he believes her capable of this. If he wonders if she believes it of him.

(She does. But that isn't the point.)

"Doesn't it strike you as odd? Why would they want us to know anything at all? To keep us active? To give us a bit of hope to fight for? If so, why give us correct information? I find it peculiar. Hm, but I find a great deal of things peculiar. Most people find me peculiar, but I find me quite normal. Perhaps it's the same for them."

[daedalmirage]

serial experiments lain || dossier reaction || banri

If something exists in this world, it operates on principles. It can be studied, it can be understood, that is the meaning of a thing being known. If we can’t believe even in our own ability to observe, to trust our experience of the universe, then we have nothing at all. Gravity, electricity, objects that belong to a world alien to our own, have faith that the veil of the unknown can be pierced and rendered comprehensible. It is for this reason I continue on. It is for this reason that I devote myself to this study.

Log #96 | 04/25/1991

A thing he had written at a younger, more tender age. One which allowed the belief that sufficient doggedness and a bright enough spark guaranteed a man that which he was owed by karmic forces in the world, forces whose tribute was paid in time and hard work. Calibrations, repetitions, controls and standard deviations, the ways in which coincidence can be distinguished from pattern. Empirical as it was, it always required a virtuous level of piety; a devotion to results that a researcher believes must inevitably come, but are in no way guaranteed. 

And so if the mark was to be understood, by any investigatory body, by any team, by any document, then it was of this world. It possessed that which could be studied, observable qualities: a predictable pattern of behavior, rules by which it operates , a purpose fulfilled by it. A material thing, with a material condition, and thus it could be beat, it could be sundered, it could be known. More than that, it was not an omen of deserved atonement; he hated that explanation that had floated around the most, that they accumulated some sin of living for simply being. No, there was a logic. Mirror world was not what he had initially envisioned, though Banri did throw out in that chat of theirs sometime, half joking and half serious, that they may be in some sort of limbo state, some place of the already dead. It’s not the most absurd thing that’s in the report which Daisy reads. Nor the most concerning.

Though he has no right to address anyone at the moment, Banri nonetheless feels compelled to speak.

“The story of that Ada woman. It lines up to the pictures over by the golf course, doesn’t it? When you arranged them in proper order, it was about a woman who disappears into a mirror after receiving some news. If that’s the case, then. The team running this’s been planting deliberate clues about the truth the whole time. They have some means of controlling the mirror world we’re in from the real one. From the sky, to how far we’re allowed to go out, to the very buildings around us. All the tools are in their hands, on the other side.”

How the executions are run. How the motives are conducted. How the world keeps shifting. How heinous would that be, if they were all just buttons on some lackey’s desk, if human suffering was an executable file, a thing to be handed in by five before your shift ends? It’s hard to think of anything crueler. It’s hard to think of anything crueler than this, pain made routine.

“Everybody just throwing themselves to die here isn’t an option, which means. That the way to remove our marks here is to eliminate the source of the curse. If the original set of marks were created by Ada prolonging her lifespan, then ending the curse means finding whoever’s doing the same here, right? Finding the two that are aiding and abetting the program, or, whoever they’re doing it for. Doing that, then, looking for whatever method they’re using to get the people who die here out from the mirror world. If we can do that, we can get rid of all our marks without anybody else having to die. In here, or in. Real life, I guess.”

Is there, then, a Banri sleeping soundly somewhere on the other side of the glass, whose reality here is but a bad dream? Or is this it? A nightmare world where this is as good as it gets? When Manako dies here, will she get to see the answer herself? One can only hope. One can only hope that life has more than this. More than a sword and a world of troubles.

“If the two from the program haven’t revealed themselves yet, I can’t. I can’t imagine whatever they’re doing could possibly be for our benefit. If they’re keeping us here, they’re no different from Misery and the rest of the admins. If they let us know this, it’s information they feel like they can let us know without much consequence to their plan. We're being kept in place.”

And so thirteen, soon to be twelve, becomes ten against two and a team of prison wardens. The odds ever dwindle.

[daedalmirage]

chamomile ♥ marigold ♥ attn: all

Once upon a time in a small small town next to a big big city, there was a girl named Daisy.

Daisy was a nice girl, but she had never been the most well behaved. Every time she pulled her little sister back home from playing in the mud that Daisy had sent them into, their mother would call Daisy strong minded and tut that she'd gotten that from her father, but then she'd always brush out her sister's hair and tell her next time she just needed better boots. When Daisy's father had to come and pick her up from school for pulling another girl's hair until she cried for being in her friend's spot, he would call her fearless and sigh that she'd gotten that from her mother. And when she was a little older and it was just her and her little sister waiting around odd new words like divorce and custody and nasty words that she would tell her friends in the playground the next day, they would run away to that big city and Daisy would tell her sister as the night switched on around them I love it here. I might just stay.

So Daisy worked and dreamed and ignored the evil step parents who didn't feel like battling to keep her locked away and Daisy moved to that big city all on her own. She met a prince from a cold land far away and they were the best of friends, and Daisy continued to misbehave but with her prince lifting her up rather than telling her to stop, until he and Daisy realised they couldn't spend their lives misbehaving in their own home and they went back to Daisy and Tyler, not DaisyAndTyler, and they lived happily ever after as friends until their university lease was up.

Once upon a time in a small small town next to a big big void, there was a woman named Marigold.

All of the townspeople and all of the world knew that Marigold was bad news, that Marigold might laugh and flirt and show you fun but no-one was ever around her for too long. She'd humiliated her prince in front of their nation and turned them all against the girl named Daisy all for the sake of wanting to be famous, and she'd never seemed to care about what she thought, not even when she fell to a terrible curse. And even while she searched for a way to snatch a cure for her curse under the committee's nose Marigold never seemed to stop, smiling and nodding without a care as she talked to people about mutual destruction and was told there's nothing nice at your core and skated a little too close to murder until she tripped and pushed someone else into the arms of death instead.

She had started joking recently about being the human protagonist thrust into a supernatural story; a world that always seemed to be hovering at the edge of her life finally pulling her into friends coming back from the dead a little bit different and sealed promises of if either of us speak of this we both get killed and haunted dolls that magically tugged them around into situations to overcome.

But protagonist was clearly wrong, no matter how tired she was. Perhaps she should have known better than to try be a hero.

It's Daisy - or maybe even Goldie, or Didi - that Keizo picks up when he reaches her seat. He faces no fuss in doing so, perhaps the biggest response he's gotten from her all day- reaching up to hold on around his neck, turning her face away from whatever shame might be playing out for a time.

Until she's addressed- finally, in a different context from discussing whether she's the one that should die.

"...No, I'll do it now."

It's muffled as she turns her face back to the group a little - impossible really to look at them at large, but enough to indicate - and so she repeats herself after a cough.

"I'll do it now. I dunno if Misery's gonna go for another... double accomplice special or something."

And she sits up just a little in Keizo's arms, stretching to whisper a moment ('please keep an eye out for Misery, I dunno if she'll like this' as though anything could be done if their overseer should reappear) before tilting herself back to the group.

(The whole time she'd been here, she had always thought about being able to snatch away Laplace's information for herself. But if you told her she'd be delivering that information at the end of a murder trial, in someone's arms, she might've laughed.)

"Though, I... I dunno this is gonna be the magic info you guys were looking for. Funnily enough, some names and other stuff were already censored for me when I got there? Honestly I dunno if I should even be telling everyone what I know, or just people I... cleared."

(Odd word to use.)

"But it- it does change a lot, and I need you guys to listen, because I dunno how Laplace is gonna take this coming out and how much time we'll have after. So..."

She tips her head to read, and begins to speak.

"Uh, the mark was caused by a woman I'm guessing is Ada finding a way to cheat death, cause she found a way to get into some... mirror dimension using mirrors? And in there, you could find out the date and time of your death. But if you stayed in the mirror dimension past that death time in reality, you wouldn't die. Didn't work out entirely though, cause when you came back into reality, the death mark followed kinda like a virus, it'd just... latch on to people around you and... claim their lives to sustain the 'immortal' person's life."

Immortal out of stubbornness and spite, she guesses.

"Then uh, ages later Laplace rediscovered this whole mirror world thing and caused mark incidents again, but that ENDRO doctor found a way to get rid of the mark. People who have the mark need to go into the mirror dimension and... fulfill their death there, it said, but then it says one death isn't enough. Ideally you want groups of... fifteen to twenty to die, it's- it's something about collective lifespans? But that was censored even for me, and even then 'batch removals' might not remove the source of the curse. There was a quote from the doctor that was mostly censored already, but she wanted to find the curse root or save as many people as possible, maybe with enough deaths here - cause I'm guessing we're in that mirror world - we'll see less cases, but... yeah, censored, so I dunno."

She pauses, but it's to glance around the room. The feeling is there that she's not finished yet- and her expression is settling into something harsher.

(Keizo would be able to feel her shaking a little.)

"So it almost sounds to me like someone's shoved a bunch of us in here to try get rid of their own mark only, right? Which is why I didn't know about telling you guys. Because that doctor passage also said that for this program, she or I guess ENDRO paired up with Laplace, and... and there were..."

Daisy takes a breath. Tightens her hold on Keizo a little more.

"There were hints that two of us here are babysitting us from their program, so I reckon they're the ones that shoved us in here. So I don't want anyone telling me 'oh okay, so we just have to die here?' even if I guess Pluto and Sonia and now Nina - but maybe we should also check if she's in the same place as Pluto and Nina - even if they maybe got spirited away to the real world on the side of the office team running this program. Because I don't think we're guaranteed to be okay and not just- not just lifespan fodder for those two who knew all about this the whole time. I;m guessing they're not gonna tell us who they are, but I wanna hear how they expect to solve this for us or anyone- if they even do."