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

[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...?

[theserpentsmiles]

He didn't get a choice.

[Korosensei was the only one who never got a choice, none at all. It isn't fair.

It never is, that's why they learned to fight.]

They weren't going to let him live, even though.... Even though we found out he didn't have to die.

[backuphero]

But that's - !

Nagisa, I'm so sorry.

[There is nothing else he can say to that. It's as though his heart has just been replaced with a lump of frozen lead, the way it feels like something in his chest just went shattering-cold and fell through him to the floor.

He reaches up, not hesitant this time, and grips Nagisa's arm. All he knows of consoling grief he learned from other people's versions of his grandfather, and fumbling attempts by people who didn't know him well enough not to try.]

Losing someone who cared about you like that... God. God, I can't even imagine it. I'm sorry that you have to know it.

[theserpentsmiles]

[It never sank in as real, that killing him meant losing him forever. Even though they all knew from the start: people die when they're killed.

Except the way they'd learned to learn and kill - 'killing' wasn't the same as 'taking a life'. Nagisa had thoroughly killed Takaoka, twice even, but left the man still breathing.]

At least....we got to sing him happy birthday first.... [It was such a small thing. But-- But it was important.]