Finally looks up at Red, uncertain what to make of her expression -- he's never been all that good at reading her, but lately it's gotten exponentially worse, and normally he'd still try his luck as best he knows how. But. There are a lot of buts, here. He'd really... thought he'd be angrier, when he saw her, but there's instead just a deep tiredness.
Like all the emotions he's managed to muster up are draining back down to the darkness still simmering quietly at the core of him, waiting to swallow everything. It's a different sort of darkness from the blood-red one he sometimes sees in battle.
He puts it aside and tries to make his eyes focus.]
Asin-manidoo... The stone god. That's what it sounds like.
[He sets his head down against the couch and closes his eyes, since they aren't telling him anything he needs to know, at the moment.]
Why?
[It's too big a question, he knows, but there are too many jumbling up in his head and across the camp at once, like a ravenous swarm of the kittens from the lake pawing at the door and the rafters when the cellar is empty. Everything lately feels like an extension of that question, the part where he understands less and less the more he tries to put things together in an order resembling sense and everything slips through his fingers.
Yeah, so maybe he's not all the way back to rational yet. Give him a bit.]
[Somehow they always come back to this question, and all the various ways of dancing around it. Soma. Lillith. Sayama and Chloe and Talcott and Leon and Mami and there will be more, Lenka knows at the core of him, much as he's still struggling against it. He's no longer denying the very idea of it, because that's impossible now. It curls next to him on the couch, smiling over his shoulder, almost audible with the sound of creaking rock.
He's spent much too long with a zombie in the cabin at this point.]
[A somehow mild reminder that he really has no fucking clue what summer camp is supposed to look like.
But he's at least gotten the idea that it's not supposed to involve earth or water gods or quite this much death and trial by fire. And maybe he shouldn't be meeting any of these people either -- it's a thought that hits him suddenly, the realization that possibly the only way he ever would have met any of them is through this experience of... of dying together. There's something terribly ironic about it, even for him.]
What is it?
[He assumes she's going somewhere with this, though.]
This world, and particularly this region, has some strange things about it. So it is only natural that the locals would find ways to prevent those strange things from acting out and harming people.
[He flares up, just a little, opening his eyes and sitting up to fix her with his stare. There's more frustration there than actual anger, but the principle of it is the same: there are so many of them with so many things to fight for, back home, that even Lenka with his excessively generalized savior complex can't really find it in himself to accept what's happening here.]
Because they're the ones who make the rules. They paid the cost in lives and blood to find the best way to keep a place like this under control, and they now oversee how that is run.
We're not from this world, Lenka. In their eyes, our lives mean nothing. We're not real people to them. So killing a couple dozen teenagers from foreign worlds is a better choice, in their eyes, than killing a couple dozen teenagers from this world.
[She'd warned him, of course, but it's still something else to have it baldly laid out like that. It's not... an unfamiliar feeling. Trade a dozen lives, a hundred lives for thousands and hundreds of thousands; to have the value of your life and your existence determined only by how you were born. Who your parents were.
(He still doesn't know. It doesn't matter now, save when the stone in his head decides to knock against the question.)
He hates it, has always hated it, and there is no third way that saves everyone. Not yet.]
... But they're using you and others, aren't they? To run this place. People like the deliveryman. And Kurotsuchi.
[There's always a structure. Power trickles down, even when those at the top hold it in an iron fist. He doesn't know how many layers there are or what they can do about it. He just... can't stay where he is.]
[He's hedging his bets until he can be sure of how she reacts, though he's not intending to keep any information back. But it seems like the not-really-clown was correct -- Red doesn't like him.]
I don't know how he's connected to the camp, but he was planning experiments on someone. On you.
[That particular thing is something he feels he should offer up front, regardless of anything else.]
[That look of panic stays with him, even as she vanishes to who knows where, and there's a brief undercurrent of worry as well because someone acting on that kind of panic can't be thinking all that straight--
But at the same time, there's little he can do. For all he knows she's miles away now, and... there's nothing for it but to wait. He hasn't looked all that much around the room. He's not intending to ransack it, but he might explore in the meantime. He's fast and light-fingered enough for that when moose aren't involved. What's the lowdown on this room layout because I literally have not had the chance to have him look.]
[There's a folding screen dividing the room in half. Red has only had visitors on this side of the screen, so what's on the other side is unknown. But on this side is her computer desk and chair, where she is usually found doing work when people come to talk to her. There's also a mini-fridge against a wall, the futon that's currently folded into a couch, and a door to what looks like a closer. Also, on top of the mini-fridge is a makeup box, because she was painting Ren's nails recently.
So Lenka can check out any of those things, or he can look to the other side of the screen. He probably only has enough time for two searches though, so choose wisely.]
[Hmmm. The computer is intriguing, but the other side of the screen is the more mysterious place, so Lenka's definitely going to try taking a peek over there first. Please don't be a changing room or something, that's how Sakuya's room works and he's had to see her laundry by accident too many times.]
[It's actually a pretty personal space, since it's Red's 'room'-room. Her bed is here, as is her vanity full of the rest of her makeup and stuff. There's pictures tucked into the edge of the mirror, pictures of several different teenagers that Lenka will mostly not recognize. Ryoji is in one of them, as is Steven, but there are at least a dozen more of campers from different years that Lenka would not have seen yet.
The walls back here are plastered with drawings and art in varying stages of yellowing. Lenka will be able to pick out the drawings from week 2 here, Red hung them all up. One of the 'pictures' is a big white piece of paper that says 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY RED' and has messages from 30-ish different campers. Given how full the walls look, Red has probably never thrown away something someone has drawn for her.
There's also a knit sweater on the bed, one that looks handmade. It's orange and has black music notes knit into the front of it. It looks big enough for Red to wear, probably. There's also a yellow scarf hanging off of a hook on the wall.
That's what's visible at a glance, without going through drawers or inspecting any place more closely.]
There's so much here, he knows, years and years and years of campers who are all gone in one way or the next. It's a space that's lived in but not entirely inhabited by the person who claims it -- home to ghosts and memories and people who will never walk in the door again. But as long as they leave their traces here then it's not entirely empty. He fights the urge to go through the papers for names he knows. Faces. Connections, so that what's happening here isn't so isolated and alone.
(There are some faces he no longer remembers, in a world where technology can save hundreds of years of wiped-out history and yet communities and families can vanish off the map like a snuffed out candle with no one the wiser. Trees, falling in a forest with no one to hear them.
There are precious few things he keeps with his hands, but he understands the need to.)
But what Lenka needs to focus on isn't the past, for now; he's spent much too long dragging it behind him, letting it slither across his eyes and into his ears and cloud his judgment. He's going to take a cursory glance over the walls for anything that sticks out before going for the drawers, rifling through them carefully to avoid displacing things that don't need to be looked at more closely. He might have felt guiltier about this, perhaps, earlier in their stay.
But they have so few options, and Red might have very few of her own. It's hard to find where they overlap.]
[Hm. Is there a label? Is the vial full? Does the liquid have any scent? At least he didn't lose that in the Great Sensory Loss of 2kXX. He is also wisely not going to lick this, but as long as it's not strongly scented and if it's possible to extract some of the liquid, he might try soaking it into one of the pieces of note paper in his pocket to see if anything happens.]
He's going to carefully slip it into his sock to hide it -- it seems a safer bet than having it in his pocket at this rate. And yes, he's going to back out of the screened area, considering that it's probably not the best of ideas to be found there, especially. Time to totter his way back to the couch and curl back up there.
He'll be keeping an alert eye out for Red coming back, though. It's a little apprehensive, not because of the snooping but because of the way she left. Hopefully he didn't set off something that couldn't be taken back.]
[He sits up a little more when she returns, a little relief on his face as well -- other than that, the rest of him is pretty relaxed, which is also just partly a result of being a bit of a noodle thanks to the receding sense of touch going on.]
... I just thought you should know. I didn't know...
[Well, obviously he didn't know she was going to literally fly off the handle.]
I don't know why we were shown Kurotsuchi. Or why the hunters are related to him.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 05:56 am (UTC)Finally looks up at Red, uncertain what to make of her expression -- he's never been all that good at reading her, but lately it's gotten exponentially worse, and normally he'd still try his luck as best he knows how. But. There are a lot of buts, here. He'd really... thought he'd be angrier, when he saw her, but there's instead just a deep tiredness.
Like all the emotions he's managed to muster up are draining back down to the darkness still simmering quietly at the core of him, waiting to swallow everything. It's a different sort of darkness from the blood-red one he sometimes sees in battle.
He puts it aside and tries to make his eyes focus.]
Do you know what the voice is, now?
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 05:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:11 am (UTC)[He sets his head down against the couch and closes his eyes, since they aren't telling him anything he needs to know, at the moment.]
Why?
[It's too big a question, he knows, but there are too many jumbling up in his head and across the camp at once, like a ravenous swarm of the kittens from the lake pawing at the door and the rafters when the cellar is empty. Everything lately feels like an extension of that question, the part where he understands less and less the more he tries to put things together in an order resembling sense and everything slips through his fingers.
Yeah, so maybe he's not all the way back to rational yet. Give him a bit.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:15 am (UTC)Because it has to be done.
[She must have said it a million times by now, but that's the only answer she really has to give.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:21 am (UTC)[Somehow they always come back to this question, and all the various ways of dancing around it. Soma. Lillith. Sayama and Chloe and Talcott and Leon and Mami and there will be more, Lenka knows at the core of him, much as he's still struggling against it. He's no longer denying the very idea of it, because that's impossible now. It curls next to him on the couch, smiling over his shoulder, almost audible with the sound of creaking rock.
He's spent much too long with a zombie in the cabin at this point.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:28 am (UTC)You have noticed the strange things here at camp, yes?
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:42 am (UTC)[A somehow mild reminder that he really has no fucking clue what summer camp is supposed to look like.
But he's at least gotten the idea that it's not supposed to involve earth or water gods or quite this much death and trial by fire. And maybe he shouldn't be meeting any of these people either -- it's a thought that hits him suddenly, the realization that possibly the only way he ever would have met any of them is through this experience of... of dying together. There's something terribly ironic about it, even for him.]
What is it?
[He assumes she's going somewhere with this, though.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 05:30 pm (UTC)Sometimes, those 'ways' involve death.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:00 pm (UTC)[He flares up, just a little, opening his eyes and sitting up to fix her with his stare. There's more frustration there than actual anger, but the principle of it is the same: there are so many of them with so many things to fight for, back home, that even Lenka with his excessively generalized savior complex can't really find it in himself to accept what's happening here.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:09 pm (UTC)We're not from this world, Lenka. In their eyes, our lives mean nothing. We're not real people to them. So killing a couple dozen teenagers from foreign worlds is a better choice, in their eyes, than killing a couple dozen teenagers from this world.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:23 pm (UTC)[She'd warned him, of course, but it's still something else to have it baldly laid out like that. It's not... an unfamiliar feeling. Trade a dozen lives, a hundred lives for thousands and hundreds of thousands; to have the value of your life and your existence determined only by how you were born. Who your parents were.
(He still doesn't know. It doesn't matter now, save when the stone in his head decides to knock against the question.)
He hates it, has always hated it, and there is no third way that saves everyone. Not yet.]
... But they're using you and others, aren't they? To run this place. People like the deliveryman. And Kurotsuchi.
[There's always a structure. Power trickles down, even when those at the top hold it in an iron fist. He doesn't know how many layers there are or what they can do about it. He just... can't stay where he is.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:24 pm (UTC)Where did you hear that name?
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:33 pm (UTC)[He's hedging his bets until he can be sure of how she reacts, though he's not intending to keep any information back. But it seems like the not-really-clown was correct -- Red doesn't like him.]
I don't know how he's connected to the camp, but he was planning experiments on someone. On you.
[That particular thing is something he feels he should offer up front, regardless of anything else.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:35 pm (UTC)Guess what Lenka: you have free reign of her room for about 30 seconds. Use that time wisely, and don't get caught snooping.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:40 pm (UTC)But at the same time, there's little he can do. For all he knows she's miles away now, and... there's nothing for it but to wait. He hasn't looked all that much around the room. He's not intending to ransack it, but he might explore in the meantime. He's fast and light-fingered enough for that when moose aren't involved. What's the lowdown on this room layout because I literally have not had the chance to have him look.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:44 pm (UTC)So Lenka can check out any of those things, or he can look to the other side of the screen. He probably only has enough time for two searches though, so choose wisely.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 06:56 pm (UTC)The walls back here are plastered with drawings and art in varying stages of yellowing. Lenka will be able to pick out the drawings from week 2 here, Red hung them all up. One of the 'pictures' is a big white piece of paper that says 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY RED' and has messages from 30-ish different campers. Given how full the walls look, Red has probably never thrown away something someone has drawn for her.
There's also a knit sweater on the bed, one that looks handmade. It's orange and has black music notes knit into the front of it. It looks big enough for Red to wear, probably. There's also a yellow scarf hanging off of a hook on the wall.
That's what's visible at a glance, without going through drawers or inspecting any place more closely.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 07:27 pm (UTC)There's so much here, he knows, years and years and years of campers who are all gone in one way or the next. It's a space that's lived in but not entirely inhabited by the person who claims it -- home to ghosts and memories and people who will never walk in the door again. But as long as they leave their traces here then it's not entirely empty. He fights the urge to go through the papers for names he knows. Faces. Connections, so that what's happening here isn't so isolated and alone.
(There are some faces he no longer remembers, in a world where technology can save hundreds of years of wiped-out history and yet communities and families can vanish off the map like a snuffed out candle with no one the wiser. Trees, falling in a forest with no one to hear them.
There are precious few things he keeps with his hands, but he understands the need to.)
But what Lenka needs to focus on isn't the past, for now; he's spent much too long dragging it behind him, letting it slither across his eyes and into his ears and cloud his judgment. He's going to take a cursory glance over the walls for anything that sticks out before going for the drawers, rifling through them carefully to avoid displacing things that don't need to be looked at more closely. He might have felt guiltier about this, perhaps, earlier in their stay.
But they have so few options, and Red might have very few of her own. It's hard to find where they overlap.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 07:59 pm (UTC)Inside Red's vanity he will find a bunch of odds and ends you would expect from a woman, and then there's also this small black case.
If he opens it, he'll find a syringe and a vial of clear liquid.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-22 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-23 04:28 am (UTC)But Red has been gone for a long time, so it might be a good idea to pocket that shit and go sit back on the couch.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-23 04:36 am (UTC)He's going to carefully slip it into his sock to hide it -- it seems a safer bet than having it in his pocket at this rate. And yes, he's going to back out of the screened area, considering that it's probably not the best of ideas to be found there, especially. Time to totter his way back to the couch and curl back up there.
He'll be keeping an alert eye out for Red coming back, though. It's a little apprehensive, not because of the snooping but because of the way she left. Hopefully he didn't set off something that couldn't be taken back.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-23 04:48 am (UTC)You certainly know how to upset a lady.
[She's a bit miffed, but honestly she sounds relieved. Whatever she disappeared to do, it wasn't as bad as she thought.]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-23 05:00 am (UTC)... I just thought you should know. I didn't know...
[Well, obviously he didn't know she was going to literally fly off the handle.]
I don't know why we were shown Kurotsuchi. Or why the hunters are related to him.
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