week three - saturday post-trial - nonon

[arockstar]

[The west wing is awfully grim post-trial, but it's a better place to sleep than the school, so Newt finds himself there later in the evening. He's too wound up to sleep even though he's exhausted.

Luckily, Nonon is also here. Cool. He wanted to check in with her.]

Hey. You doing okay?

Comments

[symphonise]

[ Fortune's murder was fucking brutal. Even if Nonon doesn't care for the system the entire competition is built on, that doesn't mean she hates every god. The wings change with every new god that hosts, but she'd like to remember Fortune. ]

Hey. I'm something in between wired and hoping this entire day was a dumb nightmare, but yeah, I'm fine. I'm more worried about some of the others.

[arockstar]

Yeah... Yeah, me too.

[Just. Quiet solidarity.]

Hey, uh, can I ask you something? What'd you make of that handprint those guys found in the school?

[symphonise]

Do you suspect me?

[ It's an honest question. ]

It didn't look like an exact match for any of us, so my best guess is Fortune.

[ That just makes her murder even more brutal. ]

[arockstar]

Not necessarily. One of Ambition's powers got used during the murder, and we never did figure out which. A bloody handprint at the scene would've been pretty incriminating.

[He blows out a breath.]

But what Ambition said has me thinking. Clearly there's someone among us that's capable of that sort of brutality, and we didn't catch them... That's unsettling if it's someone we haven't even considered.

[symphonise]

Every time they say an Ambition power was used, it's hard to deduce which one it is and in what capacity. Even if it was the handprint that was planted, there were those knives.

[ Which is also big yikes? Super big yikes. ]

It's chilling to think about. Disorder made that last comment, too, with the voting results. It's hard to say they'd only stick to going after gods.

[arockstar]

Hm, yeah... I forgot about the knives.

[There was a lot happening in that last five seconds.]

You mean the comment about actors? What I found most troubling there is that it was plural.

[symphonise]

Yeah... it's a lot. [ It's too much. Why couldn't this have been a simple competition and not one full of bloody murder? ]

I'm sure some of us want to hide who we're aligned with, but... does that mean they're acting separately or they're allies?

[arockstar]

It could mean too many things, which is what's freaky about it. But, I mean, look at the spread we've got here. Even the worst of us don't seem like bad people, you know? Even after seeing what happened to Fortune, it's tough to reconcile that with the idea that one of us actually did that.

[...]

I guess maybe four bodies is going to be the norm, if someone like that is lurking behind the scenes.

[symphonise]

God, I do and don't want to know who's that good of an actor.

[ She puts her fingers to her temples, as if she can predict a headache coming on. ]

I really hope four isn't the norm. I don't need that many things to think about every single week until this is done. It's just. Sick.

[arockstar]

I know what you mean.

[It'd be nice to be able to stop the killings, but that involves unmasking one of their own as a diabolical fuck, so... Trade off. A shattered illusion is worth saving some lives, but that doesn't make the consequence easier to stomach.]

Yeah, no kidding. Asking a bunch of amateurs to solve four murders in nine hours is ridiculous. The killers are probably banking on that mass confusion, but that's all the more reason to find them and stop them.

[He sighs.]

Do you think all this is worth it?

[symphonise]

[ That's a good question, and all her annoyance shifts into being pensive. She looks up. ]

It's fighting to the death at home and fighting to the death here. A rose by any other name is still a rose. We just know and can see more of the thorns back home.

[ She sighs, breath leaving her like sails losing wind. ]

If I win, yes. If I don't, no. It'd be all this suffering and headache for what?