night one; hunters

[gamehead]

Through the night, the wind howls and a blizzard rages, but everyone is safe and warm locked inside their cabins. Everyone, that is, except you. At 11 PM precisely, the door from your bedroom to the outside world creaks open. If you were sleeping, you will find yourself stir to the sound.

Outside, despite the sounds of a blizzard and the whiteout blocking the views from your window, the world is still and calm. The ground and trees are blanketed in thick snow, but no snow is falling and the wind is no longer blowing.

You find yourself drawn out into the snow, unable to feel tired or cold despite the freezing temperature and the late hour. It is impossible to resist the call you feel to journey out into the dark woods, past the old graveyard, to where the trees meet the cliffs and caves at the edge of the mountains.

Here, you and fourteen others gather. There is a feeling in the air as though you are being watched, but besides the other visitors, you're all alone. For now, you don't know what has brought you here, but you can't bring yourselves to leave.

((OOC: Just a note on how threads with Critter will work! There will be several 'stages' to Critter's explanations, which I'll be accomplishing by posting various subthreads. You can tag into any stage assuming your character has heard the rest, or you can tag earlier on and we can thread until you reach the next stage.

So, for example, in Critter's arrival, when you reach the point of needing to know the rules, your conversation progresses to the next subthread directly below the arrival. You can then reply to that subthread to continue the conversation if you want. I may stall on replying to you if your reply is getting to a subthread I don't want to post quite so quickly.

I know this is confusing, but this is so I can thread with all of you as much as you want without having to get into weird thread orders and so everyone hears all the relevant info.))

Comments

[gamehead]

Of course she hasn't. She's prey. This isn't very hard, you know.

It's not like you wouldn't kill her yourself. I already know you would.

[yajackass]

Then you don't know me as well as you're pretending to. I'd never kill anyone, for any reason.

[gamehead]

What if someone here was going to kill that girl. Would you kill them to stop her from dying?

[yajackass]

Of course I wouldn't. I'd make sure that they're knocked out so I could help the girl escape. It's that easy.

[gamehead]

And if that wasn't a choice? Or...what if it was Ranma there, tied up, about to be killed. What then?

[yajackass]

[Ukyo's eyes widen, and as if a coil in her had snapped, she yells out right back.]

Leave him out of this! This has nothing to do with him!

[gamehead]

What if you could let this little girl die, and Ranma wouldn't have to take her place?

What would you choose?

[yajackass]

....[Ukyo's expression softens, and she starts shaking. That wasn't fair. On one hand, she couldn't let this little girl just die. But on the other hand, it was Ran-chan... he definitely couldn't die.

A thought, for an instant, crept into her mind. "I don't know this girl." She immediately shook her head; because it was a terrible thing to think. Damn this kid.]

...I can't let Ran-chan die. But I can't... [she trails off.]

[gamehead]

You said you'd never kill her, but you're thinking about it.

[yajackass]

There... there's a difference between thinking something and actually doing it!

[gamehead]

You were thinking it because Ranma isn't here right now. But...if he was, you'd do it! So it really is the same.

[yajackass]

If he was here, we'd find a way to... [At least, he would. Faced with the decision, she knows that Ranma comes before everyone else.]

[gamehead]

You're lying to yourself.

But I can tell what you decided. Okay, in that case...I'll kill her instead of Ranma.