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graveyard part 4
 You wake up in an unfamiliar cabin. At first, it almost seems like you're in an entirely different place and that everything had been just a dream. The interior of the cabin looks nothing like the run-down, old-timey shacks that you had been living in before. Everything in here is sleek and modern, from the enormous flat-screen TV mounted on the wall to the fridge and mini-bars stocked with all your favorite foods. There aren't any individual rooms in here, just a common area large enough to house everyone comfortably, no matter how many more people join you...and there will be plenty more people joining you before the week is over. Because if you look outside the window, it quickly becomes clear that not only are you still in Prayer's Pass, but that you are no longer among the realm of the living. Judging from the tombstones directly outside, you're now in what had been the abandoned broken-down cabin in the graveyard. The cabin's not all that changed; the world outside has gone completely grey and everything you see appears to be faded and blurry. The only things that remain sharp and in color are what's inside the cabin, including your fellow ghosts. Occasionally, people who are still alive may enter, but it's clear that what they're seeing is completely different from what you're seeing. The door's unlocked; however, a mysterious force prevents you from stepping beyond the threshold, no matter how hard you may try. After all, this cabin is a cage for the dead - a gilded one, perhaps, but a cage nonetheless. On the flat-screen TV plays everything that is currently happening in the town. It will shut off once night starts...and something else will appear instead. |
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[Glances with narrow eyes from side to side looking for the exits, of which of course there aren't any. For him violence - getting into his part as a wolf - was a coping mechanism... but how does he explain that?]
Not all of us. F--ancy pants Naegi, he thought his hands were clean because he hadn't been on a single kill.
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always beware of the smiling ones]
That's a little ridiculous. Nobody could lay claim to clean hands the moment this game has begun. Speaking of him, he sounds really unpopular within the pack. Are you allowed to say what he's done?
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There is only one thing he ever did and that's try to protect his precious friends. He didn't give a - a darn about anything else in the world. Hell, he's half the reason we converted Kirigiri instead of you, one less friend on the list of potential kills. I don't think he ever put the pieces together that only prey or only wolves can win this stupid game. Practically the only thing he'd ever even do at a meeting is point out we couldn't kill his friends and throw a fit if we tried. I almost think he did the math near the end, figured out more of his friends were prey than wolves, and that's why he turned himself in. Or maybe that's why he claimed to be the convert, so he'd protect Kirgiri. But wolves and prey can't both win. He tried to play both sides and he was just an asshole about it.
And you know what the WORST part is? The kid had a GUN. Sayaka gave him one, of course, nothing surprising there, but he didn't TELL US - he only told the other Hope's Peak students - and he was so stupid he didn't even figure out you could shoot prey with a gun.
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Kirigiri-san was the optimal convert, even I fully acknowledge that. You may not have been able to know at the time, but her Protector role gave her the perfect cover as the convert. Like I said, it was only after getting in touch with Maizono-san after I passed on miss Skye's notes obtained from Luke to Charles and Joshua that they sought her out and asked her about whom she's been arming. We obtained proof of the inconsistency then.
[Her eyes do narrow as he continues, though. That's one thing she held throughout the game and into the afterlife: the stark awareness that wolves and prey are two sides of the same coin, two teams playing for different stakes but still so very similar at the core. It's why she can be as much of a critic as a sympathizer to both teams, and...
Wow???
She'll just be staring at Holden like the boy's grown another pair of arms while rubbing her temple through narrowed eyes.]
Appalling. If I were you, I would have sacrificed him to gain trust from the rest of the town the moment he proved to be a bigger nuisance than he was worth. You could've solidified miss Vessalius' false bloodhound claim, and would have been far better off then. That's something we all noticed too, that Hope's Peak Academy students and nations weren't dying. You lot had a whole list of 'off-limit' preys you all had to begrudgingly agree on, didn't you? [She clicks her tongue with a clear scowl of disapproval.] That must've cost you a great deal. Even before you were made aware of the holder of power roles such as bloodhound and lookout, you should've started by speaking to the prey, getting to know them, and then eliminate every rational thinker that threatened the wolf collective. You're all fighting for something important you wish to see realized, correct? Then you should have resolved from the very start that any price would excuse the end result.
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[Holden thinks about this with a muted, hard sound; his hunting cap casts shadows on his face. Then he speaks with a recitational tone--]
"There will be times it is in the interests of the hunters at a whole to sacrifice your life. The others might be willing to do this, but if you do, you won't get the prize."
[A dismissive grunt.] That was at the start of my journal. Back then, we didn't think like that, we did the math and - we thought that if we played well we wouldn't have to kill anyone we knew. That's why Sunderland and Winchester dropped off the face of the earth so early, wouldn't diminish prey's morale as Madoka or someone like her... [After all, look at what people think of Holden for his treatment of Sayaka.] Part of it with the nations was that they had this idea they could be a block, that they'd try to just make it out with any wolf nations instead of try to win. Critter put a stop to that with pointing out that was cheating, though. --and do you remember Tony Stark? He and Ms. Carter were trying to protect the people who came with them, too, they're just luckier that those people ended up not being threats at all.
Only person I protected was Beat. So I kinda lied to him at the trial when I said I wasn't... but it was a white lie. See, I came here alone, and he was a boy my own age who seemed to like me, and I liked him, and he wasn't much of a threat either, so I thought, you know what, it'll be good to not kill him for now, there's no good reason, he can wait until we outnumber everybody. But it was a strategic thing, I wasn't going to try to keep us from trying to kill him if he had turned out to be the caregiver or something. [UNCONSCIOUSLY GLANCING BORDERLINE GLARING IN ENGLAND'S DIRECTION...]
Being so reasonable on my part is what got Akane poisoned, incidentally, but what can you do about that now.
I got kind of off track there, didn't I? My point is that Naegi put Owie, Mondo, Kirigiri, Touko, and Sayaka on the list.
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I won't chastise you over it now, but that turned out to be a mistake, didn't it? [She stares at him for a beat.] Though if you put it like that, it's all the more surprising that you haven't started targeting the three of us until today. [Nodding here.] We figured, yes. That's why we've spoken at length in private about pushing for nations execution, and how we deduced Sharon Carter to be a wolf: she knew Tony Stark, but he only mentioned Bucky Barnes, Peggy Carter, and Steve Rogers before his noble turn-in.
[She chuckles.]
Of course, that's sound at least. And I see he was a good pick to receive Maizono-san's gun tonight, provided that it goes out before her death. [Tilting her head there.] England? You shouldn't begrudge him there. I first thought the game was stacked in our favor, but that's looking to be less the case now. You had strings on both the caretaker and the defender; that's a considerable amount of power. If the pack was willing to go further and coordinated better, we could be facing a very different outcome right now. ...Well, what's done is done, but your lot really had a chance before you squandered it.
[She shakes her head.]
That's fine, it explained a lot. I wondered throughout the game what inspired the wolves to make some of the decisions we've witnessed, this does answer it at least partially, now.
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[He rolls his eyes with crossed arms.] Hey, Critter handed Kirigiri both Robin and Mr. H on a silver platter, and brought Hanekoma back as the bloodhound, and eliminated two abstaining hunters. AND the lookout got to pass on her role! Our tracker didn't get to do that, our tracker was Mr. H. And Sayaka was biased for the prey when she was supposed to be neutral... I'm not gonna pretend we never messed up. In fact I'm not gonna pretend we weren't screwed over by smarts and sentiments, not just numbers from the very start.
See, the thing was that as the game got along, we realized we'd have to lynch people too, and not just kill them. So we thought we could lynch you as the convert. Joshua and Charles even believed that for a long time, too. We just never really made it happen.
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I asked Beat to do that to not make you feel cornered and lower your odds of using the gun, since you two did seem to get along well. We were also going to accuse Spain to take fire off of him as the new lookout. Alas, with my death and Lithuania's stunt, the original plan had to be scrapped, so you had to face Charles in his full vindictive self.
All the more reason for you to give it your all! Critter eliminated a number of preys too, don't forget. I would have chided your pack for your cumbersome list, you could have turned things around if you shot a few preys during day in secret so that their true cause of death would never be found. But water under the bridge, hm?
[Her smile... brightens there...]
I was betting on that myself. Joshua and Charles went through a great deal of trouble clearing me since they suspected me the most, were you aware? I did buy the pack time, haha. But once that was done, I was spoken to and asked input for their discussion. It was at my insistence that Prussia was investigated; wolf suspicion mostly revolved around you, Mayu, and Sharon Carter before that point. In fact, a strategy we seriously considered was setting up a voting block in secret while pretending that everyone was going to vote for me. I've always been wolf sympathetic, and giving you the false hope and sense of security that I would be lynched in trial would again have you save your shot. It would've been a sound plan, wouldn't it? Pity I never got to pull it off myself, but from an exclusively prey perspective, taking out Kirigiri-san in quiet was worth it even at the expense of my own life. My only regret is that I'm not out there for Charles right now.
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You know, England proposed once that we shoot someone and then use the lighter fluid to burn the body. I don't know how we never did that. [He scowls.] I'm just never going to get over the nations or Naegi being so d--espicably selfish. I'm really not. Just... starting out thinking some people were special...
But Naegi was the worst. He really was. England and Kirigiri limited themselves to the caregiver and defender, at least. Naegi was just a waste of a slot. Just--
[He groans and sinks deeper into his chair.] I tried really hard, you know, to not be biased or anything and come up with strategies. To be useful so they wouldn't see the lone wolf as a threat to themselves. I guess I did it too much so people could tell I was a wolf no matter what. But I'm sick of it, I really am. I'm just no good at this stuff. The best contribution I could make was actually pulling a gun on Spain and beating up Sayaka so badly people suspected it was personal. I wish nobody bought the nations' crazy talk and Nygma did whatever it was the alpha was supposed to.
There's not much wishing does when you're dead, though, is there, Miss Ciel.
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[Her tone is surprisingly quiet there, but the softness fades as the discussion goes back on the game proper.]
That could've worked to send a message, if you leave the charred corpse in front of the town hall. I would just dispose of it quietly, bury it beneath the snow or leave it somewhere no one goes to anymore - the hospital, for one.
Your tongue was too loose, true, but you already have the approval of many within the pack, haha. Kirigiri-san remarked that she owes you a kiss. Did you claim that yet? [She chuckles brightly before continuing.] You did well with Miki-san though, but it was less conductive when it just redirected suspicion back on the nations.
Hmm... As for that, it depends. Have you spoken to the others yet? Many seems to still cling onto hope, that the preys may solve Prayer's Pass' mystery in time and save everyone. A bit overly idealistic for my personal taste, I admit, but if you've nothing to lose at this point, why not join them in that?
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[He turns away modestly... on the one hand he is proud that he came through for the pack. On the other he's not sure there's any point to that anymore and hearing that from the prey... Not to mention the complex politics of Kirigiri giving him a smooch. Hahahahaha.]
All I did was not get taken in by Charles. That's more something I didn't screw up than something I really got right, you know?
I'll see about this mystery stuff. I never really understood it when I was alive except for the last part of Abby's diary - that about the wolves, it really spoke to me. There are quite a few people left trying to solve it... We'll see tomorrow how all these clues at once get received.
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Burning flesh smells quite strongly, and a human body is composed of roughly 50% water. It's more difficult and time-consuming to burn a freshly killed corpse than you'd see in books or movies, you know? If your goal is to do it quietly without anyone noticing, I'll maintain my standpoint that hiding the body would be a quicker and cleaner way of going at it. It'll likely vanish on its own after a day anyway, as how it goes with every other corpse this town's seen since our collective arrival.
[gold star, holden.]
I'm biased so I'll always root for Charles, but you could ask your fellow wolves how you did. Besides, it's as you've said: the dead doesn't need to continue being so hard on themselves, hm?
Miss Mayu did raise an interesting theory, about Critter being the spirit of the wolf mother possessing Abigail's body. Critter appeared to chide you all during Joshua's kill last night too, didn't it? I suppose we'll wait and see, at this point; the dead must make sacrifices to give the living clues, but we can witness the politics to that ourselves tonight soon enough.
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Anyway, Critter showing up on the video...? Reason it did that is because we were worried about how long it would take him to die on the stake. And we were thinking, what if we just kill him with these nails, like slit his throat or something? And it showed up and said no, no cheating. It wears a wolf mask at our meetings, you know, that's why it didn't look like a rabbit on the video. It's Critter that decides the methods though. Like it gets us a cauldron, or a bottle of milk, or whatever. So if we just nailed Joshua through the throat it wouldn't have counted as crucifixion.
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[just... smiles peacefully back at him as she keeps going. are you sure you want to know, holden........
at least it'll fade at the mention of vanishing bodies, though.]
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I see, that's what I thought too. It seems like I was partially right: it chooses the method, but the wolves carry it out. Did you see the video, though? The twisting of the shapes for Critter's silhouette is most peculiar. Has the pack any idea too, of just exactly what Critter may actually be?
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STARES FAINTLY HORRIFIED AT THAT DESCRIPTION OF BODY BURNING AND WAS GRATEFUL FOR THE TEMPERATURE TRANSLATIONthinks for a while about how to answer her.] I don't think we have more information than you do except what I just told you about wearing a wolf mask sometimes. Of course there's the thing that you know from how it greets us every day, that we're not allowed to tell you prey - I don't think that has anything to do with what Critter really is, though. What it really wants, maybe, but no surface physical or historical information if you catch my meaning. ...It's hard to talk around it, I know - my point is I'm pretty sure we don't have any especially good idea.What you saw on the video was probably part of how it makes all of us shadows. You know, I've been wondering why it played audio more and more in the later tapes when at the start there was barely even any lip-reading. Thinks it's trying to make things even easier for you guys than they already were?
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SOME OF US WOULD'VE MADE BETTER WOLVES THAN OTHERS, THIS IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE]I see, so the wolves are equally left in the dark.
...
Wait, but if it wears a bunny mask during day to greet prey, and a wolf mask to greet wolves at night, then that means its true identity could really be something else entirely! [Her frown deepens.] It'd be strange and wouldn't fit to think Critter has any relations to the starving wolf mother, if it made crystal clear that it doesn't want the wolves to win. It did declare clearly it hates humans, but among the people it brought to Prayer's Pass, some weren't human at all until they were forcibly humanized. That means a 'human' in the literal sense wouldn't apply, but if that's the case, just what is it, and what motivates it?
[Rubbing her temple, she follows along.]
Hmm, well... Was anything significant ever said between you and your chosen kills, at the start? Tension did escalate as the kills grew more and more personal.
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Kanaya and Rikku and the Doctor and Charles are all saying they're not human. Even the nations if you believe them. But the nations are clearly [C R A Z Y] a clue. They say they're not human but they sure act like it. Lithuania and Spain proved that today. Reading Abigail's diary... the humans who hunted the wolf - they said "oh, it's different because wolves don't have souls like us men do". So maybe here a human is... someone who can talk and think and vote and use weapon and that sort of thing.
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[She nods firmly.] I know full well Charles isn't human, I've seen others of miss Kanaya's kind elsewhere. They're not lying, and if we're to believe the nations as true embodiment of countries, then their claims do make sense: no human can live for centuries and live with the experiences that they must've gone through. [amen to that though holden, AMEN] Not all humans believe that, however. I've an nonhuman acquaintance who loves animals far more than he loves humans, he would treat bugs kinder than a human child. He could still look perfectly human, of course, but the criteria must be wider than that...
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It thinks this is a good game for humans to play, you know? I can't remember now if it said that at a pack meeting or a trial. But obviously this also applies to aliens and whatever.
What's weird is how Critter's clearly not an alien... is it human by its own rules or not?
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Or so it says, yes. I remember quite clearly. It speaks like a child and has no concerns for morality, as far as I can tell. Sometimes, what you see is also what you get. Does it matter whether it's human or not? It doesn't see itself as human, and that's likely all that matters to it.