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

[murimurimuri]

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

[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

[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...

[respring]

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

Neesan...

[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.]

[murimurimuri]

He can thank us tomorrow.

[Simon is just the opposite: slumped and speaking flatly, like he's just plain out of shits to give.]

[alchemicals]

You know he will, too, because he's a morbid bastard like that.

[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.

[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]

Ugh. Like it's not already bad enough having to watch the Self-Absorbed Drama Queen Pity Party Hour over there.

[Waves his hand vaguely in the direction of Yomiel and Knightley yelling at each other over his body.]

[ossifragant]

[If he could watch the action without being around you at all, he would.

...as it is, he's not looking at Kimbley when he speaks.]

When he shows up here tomorrow morning, I'm punching him in the face.

[murimurimuri]

[Simon is shaking from ghostly head to toe.]

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

[alchemicals]

[ahahaha holy shit]

...Well. Looks like you've actually got some bite to you after all.

If it makes you feel any better, Yomiel spent some time talking to my corpse like a well-adjusted person. At least he's yelling at something alive today.

[alchemicals]

Really. Are you going to actually do it this time?

[...Kimbley, this is not an argument you want to provoke.]

[ossifragant]

Just like it wasn't supposed to be me?

[...he's really not the best at this comforting thing, sorry.]

Call it bad luck if you'd like. Most of us were here to be canon fodder.

[ossifragant]

[That gets Greed to look at him, his expression tense.]

You aren't worth the effort.

[alchemicals]

And you are full of shit, but whatever turns you on.

[ossifragant]

[That's the wrong thing to say, or maybe the right thing, because a moment later Greed's right up in Kimbley's face.

He's barely able to stop himself from grabbing Kimbley's collar.]

Do you want me to snap you in half, is that it?

Dead or not, I don't give a damn, I'll do it.

[alchemicals]

[Well, hello there, Greed. Really, he seems more interested in where this is going than intimidated.]

Do you see me stopping you?

[ossifragant]

I'll fucking do it!

[murimurimuri]

Clearly not enough.

To be fair, yours still had a head. It's a lot easier to project your feelings onto something with a face.

[alchemicals]

Do you see me stopping you.

[It's decidedly less of a question than before, rhetorical or not; he's waiting.]