15strangers | WEEK 4

Entry tags:

*round 4,
*week 4

WEEK 4

WEEK 4

[To say that the mood of the remaining Strangers is...low...is an understatement. The revelations about Eric, and the death of the innocent Zelda, no doubt weighs on everyone's minds, now. It's a terrible blow, and deep down, those who are left probably know it.

That won't be the only thing come morning, however. When everyone wakes up, they will find that their memories have changed once more, as have the rules. More than that, a new floor has opened up-and something is wrong.

Of course something is wrong. Everything is wrong. Everything and everyone is wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. What can you do? Is there anything that can be done? And-will vengeance be taken for Zelda? Eric is now a free kill, after all. Then again, what's to stop Eric from killing again? He's no longer bound to the rules of the murder, after all...

Is there any hope left? Or is it only a matter of time before everyone well and truly snaps?

There are ten strangers left in this place.]

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[Jun approaches Eric, and presses the tip of the knife against the older man’s back. He goes still, before leaning up to whisper into Eric’s ear.]

Now you’re like us. Killing someone to destroy a world. You didn’t do it on purpose, but neither did we, to begin with.

You should die for doing that outside of a game, but dying is easy. Part of the game. You probably still should. Kana won’t let me, though.

[He laughs bitterly, pressing the knife closer.]

Listen to me. I never used to talk like this. I’ve gone nuts from all of this.

... If I have to suffer with what I did. I guess you do, too

[He pulls the knife away and takes a few steps back.]

I wish we had met as pilots.

[Eric almost surprises himself with the bitterness undisguised in his voice.

But it's better this way, isn't it? If Jun hates him, he should be able to do it with no regrets.]

I'd have been younger, then, of course, but... I think you'd still have bested me. The important part is that you'd never have made the mistake of thinking you knew me, that way. You'd never have been able to. You could have died without that regret.

[He is lashing out as blindly as he would have in the cockpit of an engine of destruction at fifteen, unhinged and vicious and desperate and lost. His voice stays steady, somehow, but it's for the best that he's facing away. His voice is steady, but his face is betraying him, a high flush burning his cheekbones as the calm mask he'd affected collapses.

It is best that Jun hates him. He will be safer that way.]

But then, what would I know about any of that? After all, I place stock in so much that doesn't exist, I must be a complete idiot as well as an unhinged murderer....

No. There were pilots from every age. Our group just happened to be mostly young people. Machi was the one who found the cave first.

There were others. Including the woman who gave birth to me before she shot herself to stop Kana from hesitating against the enemy.

[He steps around Eric, to look at him in the face.]

But you are an idiot and a murderer. But I am, too.

[And he lashes out, punching towards Eric's chest and his jaw.]

[Eric doesn't bother to dodge. This is nothing, compared to having a minotaur slam half a column into his chest. It is nothing, compared to catching his chin on the edge of a ledge he just barely missed. He has lived through far worse than this, strong as the boy is. He'll be bruised, but he deserves that and more. It still hurts like hell, and not wholly physically. But he deserves this.

If he really believed it was best to let Jun hate him, he'd be cruel now, he'd just look away, ask "Are you done, then?" and move to walk away -

But he made the mistake of looking at Jun after those blows landed, and he can't. He's lied to him too much already.]

I don't understand you. I don't think I understand anyone here... I try to make you hate me so you can do what you must without regretting it and it doesn't seem to work, why?

Don't misunderstand. I do hate you - but I hate everyone. Everything. The universe that twisted us into murderers, on my world and not. I'm not some person who thinks total peace is possible, don't get me wrong.

Dying's too easy for you, but I want you to, for doing what you did. I'm already a murderer. I could just... throw the spear into you. The right arc and it'll clip through your carotid artery and you'd bleed out. I've never killed someone up close, but I've already killed billions and watched tens of billions die already. I've watched pilots kill themselves and each other. I watched the only family who really cared about me die in front of me after saving an ungrateful world, and the only girl I've ever had even slightly romantic feelings for get a knife to the head and start to die too slowly to participate in a battle, so we had to mercy kill her in the hospital.

[He slips the knife back into his pocket and grabs Eric by the front of the tunic, pulling him down so he can look the man in the eye properly.]

Too many bodies. Too many funerals. I want you to die. I want to kill you. But you got what you wanted, didn't you? What you were promised. Lucky you, they seem to be satisfied. So use it. Make sure someone doesn't die again, or if they do - make it so that there's not another you.

Find the killer. This is not going to be repeated, kouhai.

[The language is strange, but the meaning is clear. 'Junior'.]

["This is the road you might have taken. Aren't you grateful?"

It cannot be Alucard, if it is so cutting about a child being used as an indiscriminate weapon. (He cannot imagine the loss - cannot imagine seeing family die, cannot imagine losing a love any younger than he did. It will pull him over the cliff if he tries.) The voice is not real, cannot be real, even though it sounds as though it was hissed in his ear. His knees are water - it only means they hit the ground with force as Jun yanks him down. Whence this strength? The boy was little more than bones - ]

That... that last, I understand perfectly. There should be nothing like me after this.

[He nods, once, and does not move to try to remove Jun's hands from his clothing.]

I can't go back. Wherever it is from here, if I live, I can not go home. So... forward, then. Forward, and stop the next one.

... If you make it through here... if you really don’t want to go home... go somewhere else that needs it.

I’ve already paid the price for my actions. You’re lucky enough that you’ll live to do more good. And you have to, now.

Why are you so sure that you won't continue to live, having been revived by the masters of this place?

[As calmly as Eric asks that question, his face - brows close-knit and eyes ablaze above a tense frown - betrays how heavily it's been weighing upon him.]

You've been given a chance to do more, too.

Because if one of the pilots lives, don't you think it should be the youngest?

[His eyes narrow as he meets Eric's gaze. It's not like he hasn't thought of it, too.]

We are outside of that frame of reference, now. Tell me - why are you convinced that you cannot leave here alive?

[This isn't how you're meant to treat someone with a persistent delusion, but... he's frustrated, and sickened by the things he's done, and disgusted that his mind even tries to compare that to the horror of being so young and forced to massacre untold millions.]

Because people are better off without me.

[He barks it out, body held tight with tension, before looking away.]

I beat my sister up for years, blaming her for something she didn't have anything to do with. She's dead. The mother I didn't know I had - she's dead. My adopted mother? She's also dead. I don't know who my birth father is or was - he clearly didn't want anything to do with me. My adopted father treated me like a student my whole life and is already mourning me. The person I had feelings for? Dead. My classmates? Dead.

Even if I did go home, I killed a planet. I did it to survive, I did it because of what could arguably be called a war, but I still made innocents suffer. I was already messed up and hallucinating when I got here, and I'm even worse now. I keep slipping and calling Emma 'Kana'. It's only a matter of time before I get worse.

There's no place for me. No one wants me.

Edited 2019-05-16 18:40 (UTC)

Usted es un gilipollas....

Do not presume to speak for the rest of us! Do you think everyone here has hands clean of blood? Perhaps you have won in terms of quantity, but it is not a damned contest. Do you think any of us would tried so hard to keep your blood from being added to that already on our hands if your life wasn't worth saving?!

[He still refuses to stand, even as everything in him and that familiar low voice from without screams to do it, screams to grab the boy and shake him - that's this place screaming at him, he knows better, he was taught better.]

So everyone in your past is dead, but for a man who thinks you are. You cannot change that, I cannot change that - it is hell, to live with that, but it is what it is. The past is always dead. Do you think any of them would have wanted you to give up a second chance at living? If you cannot go home - well, there are plainly other worlds than this.

... With how damaged I am? ... I'm not an idiot.

There are people who can heal such damage. It is a new science, yes, but - there are other times, too, not just other worlds. If the year here is twelve hundred and... and something, and I left home in April of 1918, then imagine seven hundred years from there, where they will be at then. Don't charge me with staying alive and stopping a killer and then just give up yourself, damn it!

[His eyes narrow and there's a growl in his throat.]

I haven't given up! If I gave up I would have run like a coward like Kako did, and he got his throat slashed so he didn't screw it up for everyone else!

Zearth uses life force to move. That's an absolute fact, proven over and over again. If I'm not dead at home that means the last fight can't take place, and the last fight is our last fight and I want it to be over. We won our battles but at the cost of a lot of destruction and civilian deaths, and I want it to be done.

Perhaps let me rephrase something I have said, then. Why do you think that you, who can say something like that with no trace of regret or fear, are not deserving of a resurrection? You didn't run. You were almost certain you had died, and... that you had won. Why can't both "you won and died" and "you are alive here, for whatever reason" both be true?

Because... if I'm alive... and they're not... it makes it cheap. I... I know there's people who needed to finish things more than me. Family that wants them back. It's not fair if I live, and they don't. And I know it.

Chance, fate... "God" or whatever you wish to call it, it is rarely ever "fair". If I've been granted a chance to atone, perhaps you have, too. Or perhaps whatever it is wants to stack the deck, and you're a useful card. We can only see one timeline each, can't we?

[There is a voice screaming about impertinence and punishment and what he should be doing, and even as his heart races Eric shoves its suggestions and orders away. If one person had talked to him when he needed to hear it, then... or if he'd listened to one of his ancestors after a fight, perhaps....]

There's no such thing as any of those things. ... No one's stacked a deck. The only thing that's ever stacked is the magazine for the robot.

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WEEK 4

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cw: suicide and guns

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cw: death and graphic injury description

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so this took days to phrase right, gah

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cw: child death

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