WEEK 2

[strangerpeople]

WEEK 2

[A week has passed. There's been no body, no investigation, no trial. No deaths. Congratulations!

Now the question is, will it last? At the moment, the Commander seems content with forcing people to do petty and mean-spirited errands in return for a mere shower. On the one hand, it's just for showers. On the other hand, what if the demands start to get more extreme? Would caving in encourage her? Is anyone willing to try and find out?

Honesty, with all the strange dates and information floating around from what's been uncovered, the only one in this place who's probably not worried as the time slips into its next movement is Sir Riprazor McRockfang. That's right, he's a sir. A grumpy sir, yes, but still a sir. No one's going to mess with him, regardless of what his true origins may be. And if they do, beware - he bites. Omnom. Good luck, everyone.


There are fifteen strangers - and one alligator - in this place.]

SUNDAY | MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY

Comments

[backuphero]

"Sensei", that's... it's "professor", or something like that, right? Not a name.

[He's not trying to be cruel with the question, he's just a dumb American who knows maybe six words of Japanese and doesn't understand why that one keeps slipping through whatever's letting them talk to each other.]

I'm sorry.

[theserpentsmiles]

[He nods. But there's a reason it's slipping through - it is a name.] He wasn't our only teacher, we had others.... But sensei was Korosensei. We named him...well, Kayano-chan thought of it.

[backuphero]

So he had a name that nobody could quite say, or...?

[His voice is soft, respectful. This is probably a painful topic, because... nobody just goes around wearing a tie that looks like that.]

[theserpentsmiles]

He didn't have a name. [At all.]

He had a title, but by the time he was our teacher, he wasn't that person anymore.

[backuphero]

So you gave him a name to start over with...

[He's not sure how to proceed. This is definitely delicate territory, but... He has to know, the tie is practically made of unanswered questions as far as Jonathan's concerned.]

So, then... what happened after that?

[theserpentsmiles]

After that....we were told we had one year before the planet would blow up just like the moon did. And we had to keep everything secret, or our memories would be erased.

[He's leaving blanks, but he's still staring at the tie, a little out of focus and absent.]

[backuphero]

And... that was part of why he'd been sent to you, then?

[The level of fixation on the tie is getting more and more worrying as this story slowly unreels... because, again, nobody walks around wearing something beat up like that. Something happened, obviously, but what?]

[theserpentsmiles]

He'd requested to be our teacher. Nobody is going to argue with the planet at stake, and it kept his movements contained and predictable, so the government allowed it. And the principal didn't care.

[backuphero]

So he asked to be assigned to you, with one year until the end of the world - Nagisa, what was he there to teach?

[For that matter, what was their Teach - but he's not asking that, not right now.]

[theserpentsmiles]

Everything, until Karasuma-sensei took over physical education and Bitch-sensei came to teach English. Korosensei still taught math, history, science, home economics... And he was really, really good at all of it, too.

[So...normal school.]

[backuphero]

Wait, your English teacher's name was what?

[He looks at Nagisa, head tilted to one side, visibly sure he's just been pranked out of nowhere.

[theserpentsmiles]

Irina Jelavić. [Apparently that ć is pronounced something like a ch.] V is a sound that doesn't exist in Japanese, b is the closest we have.

...And, well, she's a bitch. [Yet he says it fondly?]

[backuphero]

[That fondness...]

Kind of a drill-sergeant type, then? Makes sense, with the world about to end, I guess. But what happened once you had everyone there and a bunch of teachers? Were they just... "business as usual until everything goes up in smoke", or...?

[theserpentsmiles]

No, drill-sergeant would be...Takaoka-sensei. [Note this one was left off his list of teachers.]

A lot happened. Sensei taught us to fight back against Class E's reputation, and to be proud of ourselves. He refused to give up on us. Even if the government and school saw us as 'acceptable sacrifices', sensei refused to treat us like we were incapable.

[backuphero]

So, then... he taught you how to break a system that was supposed to keep you trapped?

[A smile creeps slowly across his face. He can appreciate that... definitely, definitely, he can appreciate that.]

[theserpentsmiles]

[He nods.] We were all kind of broken down when he came to the class....the teacher we had before, Yukimura-sensei, did her best, but she was just one woman. [Not a weird octopus creature.]

Sensei refused to let us be anything less than our best.

[backuphero]

He sounds like an incredible man.

[Look, you can't expect him to assume things like "tentacle alien".]

And if you're evidence of how well he taught that, he did damn well. But... what happened?

[theserpentsmiles]

A....lot. [He traces the moon again. He....god, he misses him.]

It's been a year since he came to our class. A lot happens, in a year. He...had a student before us, though.

[backuphero]

A year. So, then... the world's not destroyed, or...?

[Aw, hell, that wistful look, the way he's tracing his fingers over the design on the tie... this story's got the ending it seemed like it would, for real, doesn't it.]

[theserpentsmiles]

The deadline was... I don't know. Sometime during the night I arrived here. [He's not sure exactly. Maybe the Spear of the Heavens fired, maybe it didn't. There was nothing left for it to destroy.]

It doesn't matter, since sensei is dead.

[backuphero]

[He can't help an indrawn hissed breath at that. The words sound like dirt on a coffin lid, heavy and hollow.]

I... God, so you don't even know if your world's... still... there?

[theserpentsmiles]

It should be. Sensei was the one who was going to blow it up.

[Except....it's much more complicated than that. Nagisa's voice would be sarcastic if there were more life to it - he's tired of the government's little story, and knows he'll be stuck with the version they want to push forever. No one outside of Class E could possibly understand - no one outside of Class E would be willing to understand.]

It's easier to live with a comforting lie than a complicated truth.

[backuphero]

I won't argue, but... God almighty, the man who taught you to never stop fighting was the same one who....

[He wants to understand. He wants to know why. A world where kids assume identities for revenge, where a beloved teacher can be the same one who would destroy an entire world... what kind of place is Nagisa from?]

Easier, yeah, but not honest. I'm... I'm sorry.

[theserpentsmiles]

Yeah. That was why keeping him contained, as our teacher, was beneficial. A class of kids with no future anyway is easy to write off as an acceptable loss, but he didn't see anything remotely acceptable about losing a single one of us. Not to the idea that we didn't have a chance at success, or to....other things.

He was the first person who really looked at us.

["Jump as many times as you like", he'd said. There's no one to catch them anymore.]

It would be nice if everyone got to choose which they wanted.

[backuphero]

It would be. It really would be.

[To be given up on, by everyone except someone who was expected to destroy his charges... Jonathan can't even imagine it.]

And so in the end, he chose...?