#do2 open

The previous announcement (not a motive in hir head, just a perfectly nonthreatening picture in an envelope) was one thing. The creepy electric shock game was slightly worse, but still manageable. This? What the fuck was sie supposed to do about this?

The water level had already risen to ankles in the lounge--or would have, if sie hadn’t adopted the biggest platform boots in hir wardrobe for the occasion, and had decided ever since the leakages started to only hop over pieces of furniture to get anywhere. The TV had been left on top of the wardrobe, because leaving anything with wires around was just asking for trouble. To supplement it, the scarf wrapped haphazardly around hir face, leaving only a slice of eye visible, had returned. And even with the steady sound of dripping like slow rainfall permeating the dome, sie had taken up a position on top of the bar and out of the reach of water, reclining and maybe even dozing. Everything could become commonplace at some point, and even the possibility of a slow and horrific drowning could always be ignored, at least by the master of distraction!

She’d hovered, unsure, by Hozumi’s unmoving body for a few seconds after it had all ended, then promptly sprinted out of the room, dodging any attempts at interaction on the way. For about half an hour after the unfortunate finale of the talent show, Rei was nowhere to be found. (The female bathroom door, however, had remained locked for the duration of her absence. There was nothing suspicious about that at all.)

As much as she wanted to hide forever and ever until the ocean evaporated and Benjiro or Aiichiro could just punch the way out of the dome for everybody, it just… didn’t make sense. For one, the entire ocean probably wasn’t going to evaporate all at once until the sun exploded, and there was no food in her incredibly clever hiding place, and - she really needed to stop stalling and open the door and get this over with.

Whatever ‘this’ was going to turn out to be, she had little faith in her abilities to handle it well after the last time she had made a decision, which she had spent the last half hour alternating between trying not to think about it and thinking about every possible way she screwed up today in front of everyone. Maybe the break would give them time to cool off a little, or maybe they might be hunting her down with pitchforks or – or maybe just regular forks, she wasn’t sure they had pitchforks here, and she was never going to find out unless she unlocks this stupid door already.

With a final mental push, she ended up shoving the bathroom door open with waaaay more force than necessary. Oops.

White noise. Followed by static. Finally, voices begin to emerge out of the heavy fog that used to be his thoughts, and his sense of hearing. There’s sobbing, frantic mumbled words. People are talking, but he can’t quite make out what they’re saying quite yet. 

Pain. There had been more pain than he’d ever thought possible. Pain... and betrayal. He squeezes his eyes shut more, against both the thought and the lights. That’s... something to think on later. Not right now. He hurts enough now as it is. Putting it out of his mind for now, he begins taking stock of the situation at an agonizingly slow rate. His mind is still incredibly foggy, but he’s definitely conscious now. He... doesn’t hurt. After what he’d just been through, that seems wrong, but sure enough, the only thing that hurts is his head, from where he’d collapsed to the stage. He starts to move, but he can barely lift himself and... ...oh. Moving slowly, Hozumi uses his left arm to gently shift himself to his other side, so that he’s facing the crowd instead of laying with his back to them.

He isn’t sure how long he’s been out, lying on the stage... presumably in front of the others... the others... He doesn’t open his eyes yet, instead squeezing them more tightly shut once again. He... really doesn’t want to know how the others are going to react to this. To him. To--nevermind... Think of something else. Someone else. Someone, perhaps, like the owner of the footsteps approaching him now. 

At last, Hozumi opens his eyes, staring blankly ahead of him at the pair of shoes in front of him. Who...? It isn’t like he had went around memorized who’s shoes were whose. What are those. Etc. It takes him a moment to do so, but he lolls his head back, squinting up against the lights to see who’d approached him. 

If Kei didn’t know better, sie’d figure that Halie was doing all this nice stuff out of the goodness of her circuits for hir specifically! Of all the kind of extra minigames to make the post-shenanigans slog a little more interesting, it had to be this--talent show thingy! And now all the cool music peeps could perform to their heart’s content and everyone could stop flipping out for a second. ...Right. Easy.

Halie had actually been surprisingly fine about lending stuff out, which made hir wonder how much was actually packed up in here, in the domes that they couldn’t see yet or maybe stuff totally disconnected from the place. Maybe they had a prop closet that constantly restocked the gift shop and things like that, and that was where all this shit came from--right now a confetti cannon and a fog machine, which had been asked for mostly tongue-in-cheek, but now definitely were taking up space in the ballroom because that seemed the appropriate place to put it. Not nearly enough spotlights, but, eh, sie had performed on a way worse budget once upon a time, with the star power of hir own self, who needed special effects.

Fiddling with the stuff was kind of nicely reminiscent of working on the head, though, and at least it was a distraction. There were never enough of those lately. Finally everything seemed to be in order--at least until it got fired once and had to be reloaded, but who just used things they got from murder robots without testing them first?

“Mhmm…” The organization aspect of the videos was nice, but that’s where the pleasantness ended. The fact that there were only forty – she double checked the count, marking the tally with wiggles of her toes – movies here on the shelves and that she’d seen them all already did more than a little to frustrate the hell out of her. There wasn’t much else to do when restricted to base in the military but watch movies or tv shows so it was unreasonable of her to expect original content, but still…

Put on something. Anything. She needed to turn her brain off. After that trial, especially, she needed to just not think. It had worked entirely too well. 

The sound of the door to the cinema’s projector room opening didn’t surprise her  given that it was only reasonable for the other dome occupants to be exploring as well, but Kozue didn’t turn around at the sound—simply began speaking into the open air, addressing the neatly stacked movies just as much as she was talking to the newcomer. “Full metal jacket is a classic I recommend.” Jocular war classics. Her fucking favorite. “Watching anything like… Ponyo or Titanic or Atlantis or even the Great Gatsby seems awfully kitschy given that we’re trapped underwater in the roaring 20’s. Battle Royale is just too fucking tongue in cheek and after I leave here I’ll probably go <light it on fire or something>. Fight club is… pretty good. I might watch that and you’re welcome to join me if you’d like because it’s getting played regardless and if you stay in the room then that’s that. But we can’t talk about it if we do, deal?” She tugged the movie from its spot on the wall and turned, only managing to muster a very discouraging grimace in place of what might have been a smile. “I’d offer we could just sit there and like… talk about our feelings over some popcorn, but I don’t think hot off that experience we should. I haven’t ever seen a…” She hesitated. What was the polite way to refer to the recently impaled? “That before. And I don’t want to talk about that either.”

She was intensely subdued compared to her normal flair, anger drained from her due to exhaustion and her visible skin sporting a mottling of bruises and shallow cuts from her two fights (one more effective than the other). Frankly speaking, Kozue Shizuka looked like absolute hell and felt it too; she wasn’t at all in the mood to be yelling at much of anyone. In fact, her hands shook slightly where she gripped the film a bit too tight and her stance was a bit overly wide to keep her balance, and she wouldn’t (couldn’t) make eye contact. Her lower lip, split open from the fight, trembled. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably.

Really, she’d prefer to be alone but that was a commodity this place absolutely did not allow.

Ah, what a trial! Cornelius had done all he could towards the cause, and in the end, it was the fashion designer that got the short end of the stick. A shame - he and Michi had both looked interesting from afar. But all that was gone, lost in the ceaseless river of the past.

It looked like their sacrifices weren't entirely in vain, though, because the students were soon granted a new area! To Cornelius, who'd already gotten bored of the first dome after investigating all over, this was an excellent development. He sprinted into Dome Kavka, quietly noting the interesting little name meaning behind it, and was greeted by a beautiful ballroom. What an amazing area! He was going to see all of the conjoined rooms straightaway. The ballroom itself could be looked at at a later time, since it was the gateway to everywhere else.

As luck would have it, it was the Games Room he arrived in first. His eyes didn’t believe what they saw. Mahogany, ivory, and marble tables... a place to play pool... decks of cards...! But oh, those weren’t the best part! He feasted his eyes on the main attractions - the boardgames stocked within. He skipped over the mass-produced behemoths on the table to look at the ones that were far more interesting. These beautiful, amazing sets of Scrabble and backgammon and everything else caused him to have to close his eyes and regain composure.

“...”

But when his eyes opened up again, there was a clear glint to them.

The very first thing Suki Ishibashi did upon seeing an envelope on the table was crush it in her hands. Malice said it was photographs, everything would be okay if she just crumbled it up and never looked at it? She held it in a ball, aiming for the trashcan in the room but something in her gut stopped her. Right when she swung, she didn’t let go of the papers and photographs. She was curious, but she really didn’t want to see what would be held inside the envelope.

Slowly lowering her hand, she let it drop onto the floor and stepped on it. Making it more wrinkled, she stopped once she found it to be completely destroyed. Pacing around the room, she wiped the sweat off of her forehead, occasionally glancing to the envelope on the floor. She eventually gave once she saw the envelope tore a little and revealed a corner of a photograph. 

The moment she realized who was in the photographs, she shoved them back into the envelope and into her pockets. Her hands started to feel sweaty, her face felt flushed and warm, she needed to release stress somehow. Suki didn’t want to express her emotions though, she never did. So the next reliable thing was to do it in the old fashioned way.

Repeatedly slam her face into the wall. 

She placed her hand on the wall before literally slamming her face on it over and over again. Once it appeared she had released all of her feelings of anxiety and stress, she decided to go sit in one of her panic holes. Opening the door with a shaky hand, she stepped out into the hall and slowly edged her way over to the kitchen. 

Things seemed to be going well, for once it appeared she wasn’t seeing anyone else around so she didn’t need to talk to anyone in the messy state she was in. She looked away for a split second, turned and bumped into someone. “Oh-- s..sorry..!” She backed up a bit to let this person have some room and some blood dripped down her nose.

A nightmare? A hoax?

No, Benjiro had never been one for denial. He’d been given suitable proof and this thing, whatever it was, clearly had power. Best to consider the worst possible scenario and figure out where to go from there. Ironically this was likely the first time he had agreed with the AI or whatever it was. This did require some thinking; a lot of it. Before he decided on anything he needed some clarity. If they were getting Mio involved then... that was unacceptable. It just was. But apparently violent urges weren’t limited to him... as someone had already had their head lumped in. Alive, yes, but the sentiment remained. People had it in them to go that far. Nothing he was worried about, of course, he would love to see someone try. It was more an issue... a question about tactics. And how far he should go and how far, in turn, others would go. He wasn’t the type to rely on others but if people were going to fall upon themselves he wasn’t going to stick around to help them. He’d use it to his advantage, of course, who wouldn’t?

Hm, well... staying holed up in his room wasn’t good for his head. He hardly liked being inside as it was. He liked being away from people, yes, and being inside helped him to that end, but he much preferred being outdoors, to enjoy the fresh air and grass. Underwater though that seemed... well, a bit like a distant dream. Still, he needed some form of clarity -- someone who didn’t know him well might call it a distraction but rather than that it was a way to broaden his horizon. What was it? Well, it was art of course.

Not having your tools could crimp anyone’s intention but thankfully Benjiro was a creative soul and used to interesting shortcuts. So he headed to the lounge and immediately set to work on supplies, grabbing several of the drinks before heading back to the kitchen area. Heat this flour, mix it with this drink... coffee, orange juice, if you were creative you could make something out of all of them. And he did just that, soon having a small collection all nestled into fancy glasses. Not ideal but good enough. He had something to do now at the very least.