[week three - sunday]

[ceded]

[ It doesn't take her long to go find him.

Natalie was her immediate priority, for a number of reasons, but Percy was never far from her thoughts. It pains her to even be apart from him right now. The way he looked at the execution, the hysteria he let slip as he and Papika struggled to put out that girl's body....

She has to find him.

Where she finds him both is and isn't where she expected him to be. After all, hadn't she done this enough herself?

Xion won't talk as she levers herself down to sit beside him, looking at the grave they're now both in front of. Annabeth Chase. She honestly just hasn't had the time to spend by Riku's yet, but she probably will. She knows herself well enough to know that.

After a quiet moment, she'll just lean her head on his shoulder. ]

Comments

sparkles

[hydrokinetics]

[He knows it wasn't smart to expel so much on her, but at the same time he feels...a little better? He feels better hearing that she understands, at least, and it's enough that he can dredge up a tiny, sad smile.]

I think you might be right. [They haven't. And:] I hope they never will, but it also makes it much harder to understand and not see the flaws in their ideals.

[He looks down at her clinging to his arm and takes another breath, nodding at the list of names.] Those are people I think we can trust. Shinnosuke's...kind of a jerk, but he's doing his best. The rest are definitely good for us. Level-headed people who we can trust to make a fair choice. We'll have to watch for whatever comes next. But that's still days from now.

[So...what can they do until then?]

[ceded]

[ She can take it. She will take it, for Percy's sake.

Flaws in their ideals... huh....

Xion wonders briefly, to herself, if sacrifice is always necessary to get the best outcome. It's starting to feel that way. If you're not willing to give everything, how can you get anything in return? ]

Shinnosuke isn't so bad, [ she comments quietly, but that's all she'll say about it. Weird, when they seemed to have some kind of spat during the trial, huh? ]

Until then... Percy, we need to learn as much as we can. About the town, the game, and ... everyone else here. [ Her expression, all at once, is hard. ] There's so much we don't know, and every trial we have all these questions. So many of them never get answered. If we have more information to start then maybe it won't be so hard to figure out what's going on!

[hydrokinetics]

[He lifts an eyebrow, but chooses not to ask. If Xion wishes to confide in him later, she can, but he can't pry into who she trusts or why. He can think it's weird though. Just saying. Sorry Shinnosuke.]

The problem is that the people with any kind of information seem to be keeping it to themselves. Look at the Bandits. Look at Nisha being the Coal Miner. If people have roles in this game, they aren't saying anything to anyone which makes it way harder. I almost wish Hal was a little more willing to explain stuff. Or that we could talk to past participants?

[A pause.] Do you believe in ghosts?

[ceded]

I know, [ she sighs, some of the wind leaving her sails. Isn't that part of the problem? Whoever has been assigned a role... would necessarily have to keep quiet about it, or they couldn't really do their job, could they? Especially not the "hurt" roles, like Bandits and the Coal Miner. ]

We can always try asking him things, but it depends on what he's willing to answer, or ... what he thinks we deserve.

[ Defensive of the Sheriff as she's been for so long, it's clear that part nettles her.

The question gets her to look up at him in surprise. ]

Huh? Why wouldn't I?

[ wait. A pause, and Xion huffs sheepishly. ]

I forget how different everyone's worlds can be, sometimes. I've seen ghosts! I know they're real. Why?

[ halloween town is a hell of a place. ]

[hydrokinetics]

It's the whole "deserve" part that gets to me. We don't really have a baseline for what's effort and what we deserve. It's whatever he feels like most of the time and it seems to always change.

[There's a little laugh because yeah, people don't always believe in the weirder parts of his life.] This town and this game have been going for a while. I almost wonder if it's possible to contact ghosts. [...and maybe this is too hopeful, but.] Or, at least, we can find a way to talk to Riku and Annabeth again a lot sooner than whenever this game ends. It's possible to summon ghosts where I'm from, but I don't think I have the power to do it. Maybe Hal does.

[ceded]

Mm. It's really unfair.

[ It's one of the things that bothers her most about the Sheriff. If what they "deserved" was actually based on any kind of merit, even macabre merit like hurting each other, at least it would be comprehensible and also a standard they could try (if they even wanted to) to meet. But their lives often hang just on his whims, and his whims rarely seem charitable.

Xion listens to that seriously, but by the end of his explanation she looks doubtful. ]

Even if he does, do you think he would? If we could talk to their ghosts, they could tell us who killed them, and... I feel like there's no way he'll make it that easy for us.

[ She glances away, sighing through her nose. ]

But it can't hurt to ask.

[hydrokinetics]

There's a failsafe for the bandits, isn't there? What makes you think somehow there isn't a failsafe for our ghosts, too? But it's something we have to look into, I'm done overlooking any resources we might have.

It's...been getting a little easier to ask him for things. Sometimes we're fighting him less. Sometimes he's just as frustrating as ever. But if we don't keep asking and keep engaging with him we're never going to figure out our limits. I don't want us to fail because we didn't push back hard enough.