thecomputer | DEAD 03

[Welcome, Zolf!]

[You regain consciousness in a waiting room of some sort. Something is clearly odd - your entire body is slightly transparent, and everything you were carrying with you aside from your clothes is gone. On the plus side, you seem to be impervious to all harm.]

[There is an end table with two stacks of papers. One is a large area to write in (there is a small assortment of pens next to this), and the other all bear the same message:]

Congratulations! You have died.

Please wait in this area until such time as the exercise is terminated. At that time, you will be transferred to your appropriate afterlife. If you were assigned a Communist role, rest easy knowing that any ultimatum given as part of your motivation was false.

If you have any questions, please shout them into the air, and a representative will get back to you within 5-100,000 business days. If you have any final messages for the living, please write them on form B and submit it into the slot in the south wall. Delivery is not guaranteed.

[Sure enough, there’s a slot. In addition, a hallway connects this room with a much larger room, not unlike a movie theatre. A large screen on the far wall shows various events back in the facility as they unfold in real time. A side alcove provides slightly transparent popcorn and a water cooler, although hunger, thirst and exhaustion don’t seem to exist here.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Understandably so.

[He pauses for a moment, shifting position again, and it seems to take him a moment to settle. The movement is a bit restless, like he isn't sure what he wants to do with himself, he's just pretty sure it isn't whatever he's doing at the moment.]

Look, this is probably going to piss you off again, and you're going to want to yell about how much you hate me and how I shouldn't have killed our friends and all that. And while I'm normally of the opinion that fighting is the most fun thing you can do fully clothed, I'm really not in the mood right now, so just save it until I am and don't think about this shit too much if it's going to make you all upset with me.

But you've been really decent to me here. Really decent. And yes, I know you were really decent before I stabbed you in the back too, but the point is that things have changed and you're still here being...decent. To me. And everything.

[...the...point, he is in the process of completely misplacing the point somehow, hang on - ]

You know I don't do this kind of thing very often. But I've noticed, all right? I know you don't owe me shit, either.

And I...don't know. It's good of you, I guess.

[He watches Kimbley, evenly, like is isn't sure what to say. His frown makes it clear that he wants to yell, and his left eye is twitching.

He bites back whatever it is he's about to say, as though he's decided that now, finally, maybe he shouldn't scream at the other man.

If he hadn't been so confused when everyone had first awoken, he might have been the reason that "don't kill people outside of the rules" rule was added. But he wasn't. So that's... something. He doesn't know what what the hell it means, and he doesn't know why the desire to rip Kimbley in half just isn't there, but it's not.

Sometimes it is, but right now it's gone.]

If rejoining the military was something you wanted even after what they did to you, I would have let you. I'll tell you the full truth, since there's no reason to keep it from you now.

Pride is your Fuhrer. Undermining him, and therefore undermining the master of the homunculi, would have been easier if I had allies on the inside to watch for him.

[He's silent for a while and it almost looks like he's finished speaking before he continues.]

If you hadn't betrayed me you probably would have died the same way Law and Dorochet did.

...Martel's okay.

[There's a good pause before he says it, and another afterwards; he's not sure if he should be talking about it or if he's going the right way to getting his face punched in, but it's easier than trying to navigate the...that. The first half of all of that.

Just the same, his words remain reasonably easy when he speaks.]

She showed up to kick my head in hard enough for all of you. Damn near killed me, too.

[And that...well, it's true and it's not, but he doesn't really need to get into the logistics of how he proceeded to beat her ass after the attempt to kill him, since that's going to start a fight.]

At least she made it out.

[Their entire group whittled down to one member... it's a little pathetic, really. It probably could have been avoided entirely had they never set up shop in Dublith.

Greed will never confess that part of the story, not even now when they're both dead.

He's confident that Kimbley is leaving information out, because there's no way he would respond to an attack by just walking away, but Greed isn't in the mood to fight so he doesn't ask.

He's equally grateful there wasn't a request to clarify what happened to Law and Dorochet because that is something better left unexplained. Greed doesn't even know if it would bother Kimbley for sure.

Now he doesn't know if there's much left to say.]

[Honestly, he doesn't want clarification on what happened, with regards to the others; if he were a better person he would ask anyway, and he would feel appropriately guilty about it, and at the very least he'd offer apologies that aren't ever going to be enough but at least they'd be out there.

But the fact is that he isn't a decent person and so he won't, and he doesn't, and he isn't about to.

Maybe it'll bother him later; it's sort of hard to say what will and what won't. Maybe it'll hit him well after the fact, now that things for the time being have quite simply stopped along with the rest of his life; maybe it'll be like last night, where he was fine until the door locked and then he...wasn't, and he's never going to express exactly how he wasn't both because it's stupid and because he's not sure there's a way to express that in the first place.

There are still...a few things to get out there; they're probably going to lead to fights, but.]

...It wasn't you.

[And that wasn't quite what he meant, but it's a start.]

You didn't do anything, or not do anything, to make me go off the rails like that. I know you would have given me pretty much anything I asked for if I'd come to you about it; whether you would have let me run off to go play soldier again or not isn't the point.

[He'd been expecting that.

It's not like his life had been going anywhere at all before meeting Kimbley. One hundred thirty years alone in a small room with no exit and no escape with nothing but his own thoughts meant that Greed was never going to truly break free, even when the array cracked.]

I should have left you to die.

[Kimbley might have been able take out a few of those soldiers, but just one clean shot and it would have been over and Greed's gang would still have gotten away from the lab. Maybe Greed would still be in Dublith with his gang now, but probably not.]

...Yeah, you should have.

[There's actually nothing bitter behind it, either, nor is there anything self-deprecating; it's just the way it is.]

[Greed had been expecting some sort of argument. His fists clench, but he doesn't strike Kimbley.]

You're a worthless piece of shit.

At least you being dead has spared you doing to that military man what you did to me.

Finally, some fuckin' honesty.

Maybe you'll keep that shit in mind from now on, instead of trying to give me all this "you aren't alone here", "I'll just stay with you, we don't have to say anything" sympathetic bullshit.

[And that is going to be the end of it, if you don't mind; he will be rather abruptly taking his leave by storming right the fuck out.]

DEAD 03

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