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

CORPSE DISPOSAL ?

[dolleyed]

[ Kohaku only waits very little time after the trial ended, before he steps out of the room briefly to look around for staff. Finding nobody leads to his quick return. ]

I'm going to burn these.

[ Just an announcement in case anyone has any more weird moral concerns. ]

Leaving them to rot is even more fucked up and unhealthy on top of it.

[enter_the_darkness]

[ He glances to the side, briefly. ]

I'll help.

[latebluemer]

[She has to put down that tablet eventually, and she looks up and then down at the ground again. Yeah, they sure have probably been climbing over corpses to cast votes. There's something distant about her gaze, like she'd like to look through them, but... Aoi stands, and moves over.

Her whip is still out.

She raises a hand, and her D-board appears, weird and too pristine in the carnage.]

... You can use this.

[dolleyed]

Thanks. Carrying them all alone would be annoying.

[ He'd have done it without question had nobody volunteered, but... ]

Courtyard seems like the reasonable place to do this in.

[dolleyed]

[ There's... a lot of things that need to be said between them and Kohaku doesn't know how to say or compute any of them. So instead he'll just nod seriously. ]

That'll help a lot. I'll clean it off for you after.

[ As awkward as matters are now, he doesn't really need Aoi to be any more inconvenienced. ]

[whirlingmace]

[ And Cinque is Miss Not Appearing at the moment. Maybe later she'll be there? ]

[enter_the_darkness]

Agreed.

[ Both things! He's nodding as he starts moving, clearly ready to just get it over with. It'll be a little bit after that... ]

... Still surprised I didn't die.

[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. ]

[enter_the_darkness]

[ After corpse disposal, he will be... trying to make food and coffee.

Keyword being: trying

It doesn't last long, honestly. After screwing up with yet another cup of coffee, he's suddenly flinging a cup at the door. The look in his eyes as he glances around the room afterward? Implies he might not be stopping there... ]

[latebluemer]

[It's over, and there's an endless, endless amount of things to do.

Maybe it will never be over, and they'll be trapped in this Resort as it dies, or worse. Who knows. She's running very much on autopilot now; everything is overloaded after Speedrun Massacre 2.0: The Resortvengeance, and thoughts will connect later when something different happens. Her eyes are dry, if red as hell, and she's moving with a careful sort of mechanical movement that only pauses if she realizes she can't get around a corpse without stepping over it.

...

She starts moving the corpses out of the way and up to the D-board, using her whip to shift them.]

It's all right. I know how to clean things here.

[latebluemer]

[Okay, so:

She's not trying to do anything, but here she is opening the door at the exact wrong moment and depending on the force with which Vanitas flung the cup, it may just.... shatter when it hits her. It might leave a bruise later, maybe? She just sort of. Stares at the mug on the floor and then looks up at him without any change in expression.

Ball's in Vanitas' court, still.]

[dolleyed]

[ Kohaku is good with just working in silence. Aoi and her D-board help transport a lot at the very least. They're surprisingly efficient at this, as if they'd all been doing this many times before. ]

Well, I'm glad for it.

[ He's not usually one for unmasked positive sentiments, but lately it's seeming like there's no point hiding anything much. ]

Cleaning you up from the floor would be even less fun than this.

[enter_the_darkness]

[ Ah.

That's not what he expected to happen. It's definitely with enough force to at least leave a nasty bruise. And he actually looks... like he's briefly the tiniest bit startled. ]

... I wasn't expecting anyone to open the door.

[ AN AWKWARD PAUSE LATER... ]

You get one free swing.

[dolleyed]

... you don't need to be doing this at all.

[ Watching her like this, so determined yet so fragile... Well, it's making Kohaku understand exactly what he's always seen in her and why he's followed her this far along the way. She's not from a world like his, she's not known the same kind of hardships, but regardless of anything thrown in her way, she'll get up and find meaning.

Even if her meaning might not be compatible with Kohaku's anymore, he can still see this strength. See it, admire its brightness, and yet also notice how close to snapping it all seems.

He'll place a hand on her shoulder. ]

Go rest. I've seen more bodies than I could ever count, let me handle this.

[rosebridled]

[ That announcement is somewhat jarring in the daze of everything that just happened, and Anthy just blinks for a moment before her gaze turns back toward the dead bodies on the floor. ]

Oh...

[ It's not like she didn't already know well how many there were, but it really does seem like a lot looking at them like this. ]

That probably makes sense. I could go get some flowers...

[latebluemer]

[She doesn't seem particularly upset about it, but then she doesn't seem to really react in any visible way besides looking from the cup and back to him again. Then there's the smallest shrug of her shoulders.]

I've been wanting to do that for a while.

[Just. Casually. She's not usually the violent sort, but she's also not usually the sort who has to watch an eight-people massacre before breakfast. Which is definitely not happening at this point.]

But I don't feel like having all of us die even faster.

[rosebridled]

[ judging frown ]

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?

[13thpromise]

...What're you thinking of doing?

[ Roxas approaches him with some warm hot chocolate, looking at the shattered pieces of that cup on the floor. ]

[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. ]

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.

[latebluemer]

... I think we owe it to them. To do this properly.

[She's always been someone whose world is very, very small.

The amount of people who mean something to her have always been counted on a single hand. Others exist, and insofar as society dictates she should concern herself with them she does. The number of survivors here is still more people than she's been truly connected to her whole life. The number of people here is much, much more than she's been used to dealing with.

Living with, laughing with, sharing memories with, willingly or no.

It should feel less like limbs and bits and pieces of herself have been cut off, now that they've sent so many away. This is still more than she's ever had. She could always go on, as long as she had someone. Even one person. But...]

I was... talking to Inaba-san about setting up a shrine.

[At this rate, it won't be a New Year's shrine.]

[dolleyed]

There's nothing proper about hauling bodies to burn in a pile, but it's the best we can do.

[ So if it can't be done properly at all, then Aoi really shouldn't need to be doing it. But he's not going to argue further than this. She can make her own choices. The out has been given, not taking it is her own responsibility. ]

Shrine's... definitely more proper.

[ He thinks it over in silence for a second, then nods to himself. ]

... yeah, sounds good. There's already enough people out there who don't get real graves. Why make the numbers grow?

[enter_the_darkness]

[ WELL, NOW HE JUST DOESN'T WANT TO, WHAT THE HELL. ]

... What.