Week 5 - After The Massacre

[dolleyed]

[ Silence has settled in the resort, but the lack of auditory input hardly seems to matter when there is an overwhelming stench of death hanging in the air of the third floor. Burned flesh, the iron stench of blood, burned hair... guts and decay. All everywhere.

No staff appears to clean the mess. There's only yourselves now and the remnants of what used to be your friends. ]

Comments

[dolleyed]

[ Kohaku can be found in the courtyard by the burning bodies. He's got his violin out (which means the 5m radius around him is b/w and devoid of other sound) and he's playing a sorrowful tune.

He might not have cared much for those who died, he might entirely too used for death... but he can still pay his respects when there is time for it.

After that, you can meet him exploring the resort. He's looking for staff or anything off. He stops by the rats and just sits and watches them quietly, eventually. ]

exploring;

[13thpromise]

[ Roxas would've probably met him in the courtyard if it weren't for him probably not... in the mood for seeing any burning bodies. He appreciates the attempt Kohaku and the rest of the body crew have given, but you know...

So he'll approach him when he's exploring the resort. ]

...Looking for something?

[dolleyed]

[ Kohaku nods and stops in his walk to be able to properly have a chat with Roxas. ]

Yeah... staff, or what's left of them, maybe. Damage assessment or whatever.

[ He's not actually sure if he has any knowledge that would help him properly assess anything at all, but he likes keeping in movement and trying. ]

[13thpromise]

I haven't seen any of them around, but...it doesn't mean there isn't something of them, maybe.

[ Roxas considers peering underneath one of the lounge couches, but that sounded so silly... ]

[dolleyed]

Exactly. I just... if we want to get out of here, we need to figure out what's going on. And one thing's for sure, nobody else is going to be telling us anymore.

[ Not that people telling them anything has been very useful up to now anyway. ]

[13thpromise]

...Yeah. And even if we don't find anything of them, maybe we can find something else--like that last box.

[ Roxas is sure that'll help them out somehow--when all of them were activated and such. It was one of the few leads they seemed to have in this place. ]

[dolleyed]

Is it me or is there a disproportionate amount of problems caused or solved via boxes in this place?

[ Maybe they should have just given the tiger a box to sit in, too. Maybe that'd just have fixed the issue on the spot. ]

[13thpromise]

It is kind of weird. Maybe this place is just a fan of square-shaped things.

[ Or a multi-dimensional universal constant for a place like this. ]

rats

[rosebridled]

[ She'll sit down here too. She hasn't spent as much time with the rats lately.

Chu-Chu is also here, after being blissfully absent from everything that happened earlier. He seems a little wary of interacting with the rats. They're probably judging him. ]

[dolleyed]

[ For a long while, Kohaku's just content to be sitting silently here. Watching Chu-Chu on top of the rats is appreciated additional entertainment and Anthy's presence is a nice tangible confirmation that they both really made it through the day.

Eventually he does speak up though. ]

... the little shits have been snacking on our corpses for so long, but I'm actually starting to feel sorry for them.

[rosebridled]

I don't think we can fault them for that in the first place. They're scavengers by nature, so they wouldn't have any reason to turn down food that was offered to them.

[ She thinks it was kind of nice that no one's remains were going to waste, too.

Meanwhile, Chu-Chu just seems EXTRA UNSURE now... ]

I wonder how much they know about what happened to the Resort.

[dolleyed]

If they're really a kind of entity married to it, it stands to reason that they can communicate. And I mean, I don't know shit about rats, but they don't seem too excited right now.

[ Watching them huddle together is kind of pitiful. They're just as stuck here as everyone else and they haven't even been doing anything wrong like... murder, or make people murder. Probably. Who knows what's going on in that marriage. ]

[rosebridled]

They really do seem upset... I feel sorry for them too.

[ Though it's less pity and more empathy, really. She wonders if they're angry about it at all.

She'll hold out a hand to offer to pet them if any want to come close enough. ]

[dolleyed]

We can take them with us if we manage to get out, but that's probably a very small consolation.

[ Losing who you love and your home in one swoop is pretty rough, even Kohaku can understand that much. ]

[rosebridled]

Mm... I wonder if they'd even want to leave.

[ Whenever a rat gets close enough for Chu-Chu to notice how sad it is, he'll nicely offer it a half-eaten cracker (almost entirely out of guilt). ]

[dolleyed]

The alternative is death.

[ ... ]

Don't know if I'm the out one out for losing my whole life like... 3 times, then dying another few dozens times and... still kind of not wanting to be gone, though.

[rosebridled]

Not everyone wants to keep existing if the one they love is gone.

[ Gently stroking a rat's head... ]

I think that's just the type of person you are. We're different that way.

[dolleyed]

[ Kohaku wonders if it really has anything to do with being a specific type of person or if this is just that he's had to take the leap before and got used to going on. Then again, 'his whole life' had never quite equaled 'love' at any point. Maybe there's a different here that he couldn't understand if he tried.

More importantly... ]

We are? Then that means there's someone you need to go back to, huh...?

[ He's just going to assume Anthy doesn't love anybody in this place. ]

[rosebridled]

Ah...

[ Somehow, that wasn't the question she would have expected, and there's a hesitation in her response, as if she isn't entirely sure of the answer herself. ]

Well, I suppose so.

[ If only because "need" is a much more fitting word than "want" would have been. ]

[dolleyed]

Mhm.

[ Kohaku doesn't like to pry. More than anyone he knows that there are dark secrets lingering behind people's facades that aren't fun to share. He doesn't need to know every detail of a person to work with them, so long as they are clear on the matters that are relevant to their cooperation.

So while he can't deny that he wants to know more, he's not going to ask if Anthy doesn't want to elaborate out of her own accord. ]

Then that's twice as much reason to get our butts out of here. Sorry for getting reckless at the trial, by the way.

[rosebridled]

[ There are some things she might be more willing to elaborate on here than she would have back home, at this point. Or... well, maybe it's not so much a matter of her own willingness (though it's certainly a factor), but that there are a few people here who actually express interest in hearing about her experiences and why she feels the way she does, instead of being content to use her as a prop in their own stories.

Which... is new. And strange.

The conversation makes a shift before she gets there this time, though. ]

I do appreciate that, but maybe you could just try to avoid doing it again? I think we'd both prefer it if you didn't die here.

[ She'll look up from the rats to give him a smile with that, at least. ]

Some of the ghosts seem a little annoying.