DEAD 04

[thecomputer]

[Welcome, Anthy, Sakura and Simon!]

[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.]

Comments

MESSAGES FOR THE LIVING

[thecomputer]

Form B is limit one per Citizen. Be careful - once you submit your message, you cannot change it.
The following participants have already locked in messages:
Greed
Moge-ko

[alchemicals]

[Kimbley had a bad night, and now he has a letter slot and way too much free time on his hands; seems he spent most of today completely covering Form B because of course he did. Was he supposed to be concise or...meaningful in any way with this because oops.]

I knew going into this thing that I'd either have nothing to say to you guys or I'd write you the next...well, I don't know if I'd call it "great," but The Next Sort Of Mediocre Amestrian Novel doesn't have the same ring to it. Either way, I've got a bunch of forms and all the time in the world, and I don't like being bored. (If you ever wanted confirmation that the afterlife is full of paperwork...that is really sad and I sort of question what your life is like but, well, here you go. I'm currently writing all the hell over Form B, and I have no idea what happened to Form A. Bureaucracy!)

I'm not going to pour my heart out to all of you assholes or try to make you all feel better for managing to get me killed - thanks for that, by the way - but I guess I'll start by saying that for once in my life (afterlife? it's confusing) I'm not mad at anyone either. It's like I've been saying from the start, we're all going to get exactly what we deserve in the end. I never put anyone's life above or below my own, and I guess most would see that as my mistake going into this whole thing, but that doesn't change the fact that we're all baseline worthless, every single one of us, and the world doesn't stop for us. It didn't stop for Moge-ko or Greed, it didn't stop for Himemiya or Matou or Keyes, if it stops for Newman (who's probably next to go at the time I actually sat down to write this) I will be vastly fucking surprised, it won't stop for anyone else you send down here, and it sure as hell didn't stop for me, either. So good job on saving your own skins for another few decades, I guess, if any of you last that long - you did it for nothing, and you're not going to be any better off than any of the rest of us. Maybe you'll end up in Paperwork Hell with me, who knows. Friend Computer doesn't seem too prompt when it comes to resolving shit, I'll probably still be down here.

Every single one of us is empty, and we're worthless, but I will point out that that's exactly why you shouldn't regret any of the shit you do. What you do doesn't matter to the world because the world categorically doesn't care about you, so why shouldn't you do exactly what you want? Destroy the people who tried to destroy you. Run away and get married. Set something on fire. Own a puppy. Own six puppies. Kill a guy just to see what it feels like. Learn something new today. (Here, I'll take care of that last one for you - HIMEMIYA HAD SOMETHING HUGE AND METALLIC AND WEIRD IN HER CHEST. DID ANYONE EVER FIND OUT WHAT IT WAS?? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.) The only person who truly cares about what you do is you, so don't waste your time regretting anything.

So congratulations, I guess. I think you're stupid as hell for caring so much about whether you make it out of here alive or not, but as long as you don't regret the shit you did, I can't really complain about how you're coming at it. At least you guys put on a hell of a show for us - we've been seeing it the whole time like the world's most fucking useless guardian angels, only instead of protecting you we've all been sitting back and kind of laughing at you the whole time. (That's what happens when you kill all the nihilistic assholes first.)

Hopefully Friend Computer will actually show you the stupid form I'm writing this on, it's getting sort of ridiculous. I told you at the start that I suck at this sort of thing, but looks like you got another speech out of me after all.

Have a good one, for as long as you're around after this.

- Zolf J Kimbley

[murimurimuri]

[Free movie and popcorn, you say? I think I'll... stay right where I am and stare through my own hands, thanks.]

[ossifragant]

[Hello there, Simon.

Greed never actually spoke to him before, but he might as well do it now. It keeps things from becoming to tense around here.]

You bought Yomiel some time. I don't know how they keep missing, but I'm sure he's thankful.

[murimurimuri]

[Simon is shaking from ghostly head to toe.]

No... no, no, no, nowaynowaynoway! It wasn't supposed to be me!

[alchemicals]

[Well, when he's not writing his...fucking manifesto up there, Kimbley can be found discovering that it is really hard to avoid people when you have all of two rooms to do it in. He doesn't seem like he's going to be saying too much to anyone today, mostly through having nothing to say, and he's mostly hanging toward the back of that room with the screen when he's not otherwise occupied; at the same time, he's not exactly going to complain if you want to join him.

...Granted, he seems to be finding at least part of the morning's proceedings way funnier than it has any right to be, um.]

I can't fucking believe...

[murimurimuri]

[Once Simon has gotten the ol' mortality wig-out out of his system, he quietly trudges into the theater and takes a seat in the back, one row in front of Kimbley and one seat to the side.]

The kid is desperate.

[alchemicals]

I pegged her for one the night I died. Told your friend about it, too.

[His words are easy, despite the fact that physically he's tensing up a bit; at least it's at Newman, not you.]

Looks like we both bought Yomiel some time, didn't we?

[ossifragant]

[It's basically impossible to avoid people in this place, and that's why Greed is hanging in the back with Kimbley. He's not paying attention to him, and there's that who... ignoring but not actually ignoring at all thing going on between the two of them.]

Dammit, Yomiel, that was risky as hell.

[It was cool as hell, but what a bluff. That could very easily have backfired completely, holy shit.]

[alchemicals]

[...Oh. It's you.]

Does it matter? The point is that it worked, and he's promptly shooting it all to hell by screaming about being the Loyalty Officer now.

[respring]

[ SAKURA, ON THE OTHER HAND, is looking content to sit in the theater room with her hands in her lap, watching silently. ]

Neesan...

[alchemicals]

Hey.

[To his credit, Kimbley actually doesn't look annoyed with her, Communist or not; who knows if she'll want to say anything, but.]

Can I ask you something?

[respring]

[ She looks up very, very slowly, trying to gauge his reason for approaching her. If he felt like berating her or getting violent she would nope out of this room so fast. ]

...what is it?

[dictator_ko]

How does it feel to kill for a lie?

[respring]

[ Ha. Hahahahahaha. Like hell she's entertaining Moge-ko. Sakura says absolutely nothing. ]

POPCORNING THE TRIAL

[murimurimuri]

[Simon is flicking his ghost popcorn at the screen like the most mature poltergeist.]

Tch, like anybody cares if you're a girl! Just shut up and die already!

[ossifragant]

[You're really bloodthirsty, Keyes.

He kind of likes this.]

She's not too good at lying, is she? I wonder if she'll get anyone to believe her.

[absolutejustice]

I hope that those incinerators are nice and painful.

[murimurimuri]

I'd be impressed she's even trying if she didn't freaking murder me. But no, I'd like to think the only one who'd fall for that steaming load of crap is Mukuro, assuming Mukuro isn't a commie herself.

[ossifragant]

[It's not like he particularly cares which of the communists bite it tonight, but...]

...She's pretty damn dumb, isn't she?

[respring]

[ frowning

f r o w n i n g in the most passive-aggressive way possible that is her friend you dickbag ]

[alchemicals]

I don't know, I'm actually with your little friend in this case - they need to go after Fulbright, not Newman.

Not like I don't agree about Newman derailing the trial with her tits, mind you.

[dictator_ko]

Moge-ko thinks this trial is very funny. ♪

[alchemicals]

[You know, he is perfectly okay watching this shitshow go down because drag them, Yomiel; at the same time, there are...a couple of things that aren't hitting him right, and they're making him kind of twitchy and no one really needs him just sitting here getting pissed off (much less him, primarily because he can't beat the shit out of someone and have it hurt and for some reason he really wants to punch pretty much everyone in the face right now).

So! He will be...taking his leave though not going terribly far because we only have two rooms, fucking hell, why.]

Let me know if the cop burns.

[ossifragant]

[Greed stays for maybe a minute after the execution before he goes to look for Kimbley. He's half tempted to do nothing and let him find out for himself, but Kimbley asked, so...

If this is going to continue to be as awkward as it has been that's perfectly fine with him. It's not like it's really possible for any of them to actually avoid each other here. The two of them have already learned that.]

Kimbley.

[Approaching Kimbley when he's very likely to attack is stupid as hell, but then, Greed never did learn from his last few mistakes.]