[He taps his chin, turning over the information before humming out a little sound.]
I see, I see. Sounds like a tricky job to be handling. [Not like he expected straightforward help...
But also??? The fuck??? THEY KILLED THEIR SHIELD. That part, Wei Wuxian looks a little disgruntled about.]
Can't imagine the guilt that would come from a job like that would have done her well... [Escha seems like the kind of person who'd feel responsible for picking the wrong person to protect, honestly.] But it would have been nice to have had at least a little extra assurance.
...she tried, you know? [And here he looks a little? Guilty?] There's a reason everything seemed to be linked so obviously to Tamamo. It just...didn't work out that way.
[He's not elaborating, but he'll wait to see if Wei Wuxian puts the pieces together.]
Yeah. [Please kill him.] Tamamo had no idea at the time. Those were a part of Escha's rules. She can't tell people she's protecting them. [...] She said it was good we didn't just believe in the evidence blindly and it'd be a bad precedence to follow if we ignored the other evidence. Somehow that doesn't really help with what happened though.
[FUCKIN RIP IN REST YALL. Wei Wuxian also didn't vote but it was by virtue of me, aki, not being here so he'll just nod in silent solidarity and not actually say anything about it.]
She does have a point, but... [Hm. Bitter point, indeed.
He gives Junpei a considering look after trailing off.]
—I went to bring her something to eat later that night. She holds the two of you in high regard, you know? Said that I should entrust any information I find to you both, since you're working hard to get everything sorted.
Edited (i repeated myself twice in one sentence its past midnight,) 2019-10-31 07:37 (UTC)
[That's fair. It sure is a bitter point, and he's not sure what to make of that look until Wei Wuxian continues and his expression shifts to something a little...devastated, maybe.Or at least a little unhappy because wow, they super fucked up in not keeping her alive and yet this sure is a thing.]
...she was a pretty big help with that, too. We've been working on getting everything together for weeks. [A gesture toward one of the walls Wei Wuxian can't see.] Notes are pinned up for reference later. We used to do debriefings before curfew or after the exorcisms. Sometimes both.
[Sometimes you just kill your favorite roommate, it's fine!!
He glances over to said wall when Junpei gestures, even though he can't see it from where he stands, and hums out a little impressed sound.]
Not surprised that you're so meticulous and got such a wide head-start. [Since he just assumes Junpei means "from the start" when he says "we've been working for weeks"...]
She has faith in the two of you. Said that as long as people are willing to try, you're clever enough to figure things out. [A little beat of silence - also considering.] —Well! I don't think she's wrong. Though it's certainly a loss, not having her on this side... I feel like she's determined enough and has enough faith in those left here that it's not quite as bad as it could have been.
[Though, like. It's still bad. And his expression definitely says "this is still bad".]
This...is what I do at home, sort of. Find leads, follow clues, deal with blood and violence. [Just with less demon.] And Dick's smart and Escha helped put things into perspective. It worked pretty well.
[He folds his arms over his chest.] She has a job on the other side anyway, I think. There's an island our lost friends are sent to when they leave this side of things. Pretty sure they're learning more over there that we don't know about here.
It really is a good thing we have someone with the expertise and insight you all offer here, then.
[He's here to help fill in the demon gaps, apparently??
In any case, since there's no need to linger over Escha's loss and the sting it's left behind any more than they already have:]
I'd think that's the case. [That she's got a job over there on their... dead island, apparently.] It usually is - the "other side", whatever that side may be, tends to have access to things that we can't see or experience or understand. ...You haven't managed to figure out a way to contact them yet, have you?
[Does Junpei just know fuckin everything?? He's assuming so unless proven otherwise at this rate.]
Hopefully we don't end up disappointing then. [This was never what he was supposed to be doing with the detective gig, but hey. It works to his benefit. Nice to know WWX's taking dead island in stride.]
I got that impression from Carlos and Polly a few times, too. Not that it does us much good. [But...he nods.] There's someone with a role who can do that, too. Not for very long and only one ghost at a time, but they can do it. It's how we learned about the island in the first place.
[Junpei does not know everything because I don't want that.]
[Yeah he takes pretty much everything related to the dead and demonic in stride, it's bad.
He does, at least, seem intrigued by the idea of a roled medium though. AT LEAST SOMEONE HERE CAN DO SOMETHING.]
Hm! Lucky to have someone like that with us, then. We'll have to make sure not to lose them, if it's the only way we've got to contact the other side...
There's two of them. [Casually throwing that out there.] Not sure if the other one that shares the title can do the same thing as the one I know, but it's likely there's some kind of overlap there. I won't know until I come across them somehow.
[Because at this rate it's bound to happen. There aren't that many people left on this stupid-ass ship.]
[Said in a gentle teasing tone... But also, he absolutely wouldn't be surprised if Junpei actually managed to do that at the rate he's just rapidly uncovering shit.]
But good - good! I was wondering why there was overlap between roles, but if it's for something like that, I can understand it.
[Insurance against their BUNGLING STUPIDITY as they kill off all their useful roles, maybe.]
[A flicker of an amused look. God, here's hoping but also god let's hope they aren't actually dead, we really don't know.]
There are thirteen of them, and all but two of them have multiple people filling in. The ones that I've talked to that share the same title have similar methods but different goals and areas of influence. Not sure why. But, while I think it's important to find them, it's also important to protect them. There's a reason I'm not telling that many people what I'm actually trying to do here.
[Escha meeting the second medium in the graveyard like OH BOY.......
In any case, he mentally chews over that new information, too. This is a lot of stuff happening in this conversation alone?? He can see now why Junpei just dragged him off and had a frantic tinhat moment.]
Larger sphere of influence, maybe? Or just to serve two different end goals? [A little shrug... But he ends up flashing Junpei a bit of a punkass grin at that.]
Haha, I'm flattered you've chosen to tell me, then! It does my heart good. [Still a gremlin even now.] If there's anything that I can do to help you protect any of them, let me know, would you? Though I'm not really sure what that would look like right now, honestly...
[What can a lone Wei Wuxian do to keep people safe?? NOT MUCH. But boy is he determined.]
It's possible. At this point, unfortunately, anything is possible.
[Thanks for that.] I think the best is keeping quiet unless you have a reason to suspect them. Turns out they can only confirm if you have a reason to suspect them and say so, but then you have to play guessing games to figure out what they can do.
...I do want to show you something else. [And he's disappearing to the bedroom, coming back with a notebook that he's flipping through.] Last week, Tamamo, Izuminokami and Grune broke into a security office. They all saw a pretty weird vision, but Izuminokami also let me copy his notes that they found.
[The two pages of the open notebook say:
DAY 20 SPOKE TO: █████, █████████, NE██A, M█████
- Did not find th████████ shoes - Task still pending for A. Where the fuck am I going t███████████████████████ - ██████████████████████ █V██████████████████████ - M███████████████ moron who cannot stop breaking into places. This is the last time I pop his arm back in its socket!!!!
██y 49 ███████████████████████████████████████ORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I want to █████████████████████████████████████████████ Why aren't I dead why why why why why wh█████████ I███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████]
[There's a withering look because yeah, this is Suffering.] I've been getting better at it.
We actually only have twenty two left if this is really a countdown. They found this information a week ago, and counting backwards that was twenty days from the first day we got here. Coincidentally, Tamamo's shoulder was dislocated on the twentieth day.
[He's flipping to another page with both Hizamaru's note, and also a note that says "Dick & Aizawa E-Room." The note reads: "Hard to look at him in the eyes knowing it might be there. It's a reminder: don't trust anyone. Sorry my friend."]
Dick and Aizawa found this in a waterlogged notebook in the electricity room on the first floor. We keep finding rooms with blood and scratches, plus some other less than great things.
[Just meets that look with a BRIGHT OL' GRIN, though it doesn't last very long since there's... puzzling over these BAD THINGS to do.]
Mm - not a fan of that coincidence. [He would actually like to avoid any similarities between their run and the previous one! Bad! Also twenty-two days is not a lot of time at all, considering how fast the first twenty-plus (over twenty, already??) have gone... But he'll leave that concern unsaid for now, instead focusing on the second note.]
--Referring to the demon? [It's the obvious guess, at least.] Wonder why the rooms are like that, anyway. It sounds like the ghosts aren't our biggest fans. Maybe that "the ship is its own entity" really does hold some water?
Either the ship is its own entity, our narrator is still around and setting stuff up, or the ghosts and messing with us even worse than we thought. The fact that it can be any of those is what exhausts me. [Ugggh.]
I'm not big on coincidence either, because it means something worse is coming. Four weeks is only twenty-eight days. We're approaching that timeline pretty fast.
Guess we'll have to keep looking to see if we can get anything that points us in any particular direction. Though honestly, depending on what the answer is, that shoe note is even more alarming.
[He says this far too lightly but when in doubt, laugh it off?? IT'S FINE. They're fine... They're doing just great.]
So, then - less than four weeks left to figure out what's going on with this ship, all while dealing with rampaging demons, the possibility of two curses shifting into a more covert form, ghosts that don't want anything to do with us, twelve people with roles to protect, and an island full of secrets that we have barely a thread of access to. [...] Haha, well. Can't say we don't have our work cut out for us?
Do you think "day 49" or thereabouts is the point in time that our previous friends ended up losing one of their final thirteen, then? To be honest, I'd been assuming this would end in our loss if everyone was killed, but if we need all of those roles in play...
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I see, I see. Sounds like a tricky job to be handling. [Not like he expected straightforward help...
But also??? The fuck??? THEY KILLED THEIR SHIELD. That part, Wei Wuxian looks a little disgruntled about.]
Can't imagine the guilt that would come from a job like that would have done her well... [Escha seems like the kind of person who'd feel responsible for picking the wrong person to protect, honestly.] But it would have been nice to have had at least a little extra assurance.
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[He's not elaborating, but he'll wait to see if Wei Wuxian puts the pieces together.]
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Because she'd chosen to protect Tamamo from the exorcism that week, hm?
[But
y'all.]
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But Dick and I didn't vote this week.
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She does have a point, but... [Hm. Bitter point, indeed.
He gives Junpei a considering look after trailing off.]
—I went to bring her something to eat later that night. She holds the two of you in high regard, you know? Said that I should entrust any information I find to you both, since you're working hard to get everything sorted.
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...she was a pretty big help with that, too. We've been working on getting everything together for weeks. [A gesture toward one of the walls Wei Wuxian can't see.] Notes are pinned up for reference later. We used to do debriefings before curfew or after the exorcisms. Sometimes both.
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He glances over to said wall when Junpei gestures, even though he can't see it from where he stands, and hums out a little impressed sound.]
Not surprised that you're so meticulous and got such a wide head-start. [Since he just assumes Junpei means "from the start" when he says "we've been working for weeks"...]
She has faith in the two of you. Said that as long as people are willing to try, you're clever enough to figure things out. [A little beat of silence - also considering.] —Well! I don't think she's wrong. Though it's certainly a loss, not having her on this side... I feel like she's determined enough and has enough faith in those left here that it's not quite as bad as it could have been.
[Though, like. It's still bad. And his expression definitely says "this is still bad".]
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[He folds his arms over his chest.] She has a job on the other side anyway, I think. There's an island our lost friends are sent to when they leave this side of things. Pretty sure they're learning more over there that we don't know about here.
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[He's here to help fill in the demon gaps, apparently??
In any case, since there's no need to linger over Escha's loss and the sting it's left behind any more than they already have:]
I'd think that's the case. [That she's got a job over there on their... dead island, apparently.] It usually is - the "other side", whatever that side may be, tends to have access to things that we can't see or experience or understand. ...You haven't managed to figure out a way to contact them yet, have you?
[Does Junpei just know fuckin everything?? He's assuming so unless proven otherwise at this rate.]
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I got that impression from Carlos and Polly a few times, too. Not that it does us much good. [But...he nods.] There's someone with a role who can do that, too. Not for very long and only one ghost at a time, but they can do it. It's how we learned about the island in the first place.
[Junpei does not know everything because I don't want that.]
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He does, at least, seem intrigued by the idea of a roled medium though. AT LEAST SOMEONE HERE CAN DO SOMETHING.]
Hm! Lucky to have someone like that with us, then. We'll have to make sure not to lose them, if it's the only way we've got to contact the other side...
[Please no one kill their spirit telephone.]
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[Because at this rate it's bound to happen. There aren't that many people left on this stupid-ass ship.]
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[Said in a gentle teasing tone... But also, he absolutely wouldn't be surprised if Junpei actually managed to do that at the rate he's just rapidly uncovering shit.]
But good - good! I was wondering why there was overlap between roles, but if it's for something like that, I can understand it.
[Insurance against their BUNGLING STUPIDITY as they kill off all their useful roles, maybe.]
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There are thirteen of them, and all but two of them have multiple people filling in. The ones that I've talked to that share the same title have similar methods but different goals and areas of influence. Not sure why. But, while I think it's important to find them, it's also important to protect them. There's a reason I'm not telling that many people what I'm actually trying to do here.
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In any case, he mentally chews over that new information, too. This is a lot of stuff happening in this conversation alone?? He can see now why Junpei just dragged him off and had a frantic tinhat moment.]
Larger sphere of influence, maybe? Or just to serve two different end goals? [A little shrug... But he ends up flashing Junpei a bit of a punkass grin at that.]
Haha, I'm flattered you've chosen to tell me, then! It does my heart good. [Still a gremlin even now.] If there's anything that I can do to help you protect any of them, let me know, would you? Though I'm not really sure what that would look like right now, honestly...
[What can a lone Wei Wuxian do to keep people safe?? NOT MUCH. But boy is he determined.]
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[Thanks for that.] I think the best is keeping quiet unless you have a reason to suspect them. Turns out they can only confirm if you have a reason to suspect them and say so, but then you have to play guessing games to figure out what they can do.
...I do want to show you something else. [And he's disappearing to the bedroom, coming back with a notebook that he's flipping through.] Last week, Tamamo, Izuminokami and Grune broke into a security office. They all saw a pretty weird vision, but Izuminokami also let me copy his notes that they found.
[The two pages of the open notebook say:
DAY 20
SPOKE TO: █████, █████████, NE██A, M█████
- Did not find th████████ shoes
- Task still pending for A. Where the fuck am I going t███████████████████████
- ██████████████████████ █V██████████████████████
- M███████████████ moron who cannot stop breaking into places. This is the last time I pop his arm back in its socket!!!!
██y 49
███████████████████████████████████████ORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry
I'm so sorry
I'm so sorry
I want to █████████████████████████████████████████████
Why aren't I dead why why why why why wh█████████
I███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████]
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Mm, got it, got it. They really are bound by some annoying rules, aren't they? Haha, you must be tired.
[Since he's just assuming Junpei's had to jump through these hoops for like. Every one of the nine people he knows, or at least close to it...
ANYWAY, NEAT, MORE BREAK-IN STUFF. He's trotting over to take a look! And then yeah literally making this face.]
Ah... [UM.] Twenty-nine days is a long time and a lot of things can happen, I suppose, but I can't say this is any sort of comforting.
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We actually only have twenty two left if this is really a countdown. They found this information a week ago, and counting backwards that was twenty days from the first day we got here. Coincidentally, Tamamo's shoulder was dislocated on the twentieth day.
[He's flipping to another page with both Hizamaru's note, and also a note that says "Dick & Aizawa E-Room." The note reads: "Hard to look at him in the eyes knowing it might be there. It's a reminder: don't trust anyone. Sorry my friend."]
Dick and Aizawa found this in a waterlogged notebook in the electricity room on the first floor. We keep finding rooms with blood and scratches, plus some other less than great things.
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Mm - not a fan of that coincidence. [He would actually like to avoid any similarities between their run and the previous one! Bad! Also twenty-two days is not a lot of time at all, considering how fast the first twenty-plus (over twenty, already??) have gone... But he'll leave that concern unsaid for now, instead focusing on the second note.]
--Referring to the demon? [It's the obvious guess, at least.] Wonder why the rooms are like that, anyway. It sounds like the ghosts aren't our biggest fans. Maybe that "the ship is its own entity" really does hold some water?
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I'm not big on coincidence either, because it means something worse is coming. Four weeks is only twenty-eight days. We're approaching that timeline pretty fast.
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[He says this far too lightly but when in doubt, laugh it off?? IT'S FINE. They're fine... They're doing just great.]
So, then - less than four weeks left to figure out what's going on with this ship, all while dealing with rampaging demons, the possibility of two curses shifting into a more covert form, ghosts that don't want anything to do with us, twelve people with roles to protect, and an island full of secrets that we have barely a thread of access to. [...] Haha, well. Can't say we don't have our work cut out for us?
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Thirteen people still, actually. Did I forget to mention that the roles really do shift when someone dies?
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Ah - haha, you did! [GOOD TO... KNOW. WHAT THE FUCK. Though after a second, he blinks.] —Like a hydra, was it?
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Do you think "day 49" or thereabouts is the point in time that our previous friends ended up losing one of their final thirteen, then? To be honest, I'd been assuming this would end in our loss if everyone was killed, but if we need all of those roles in play...
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