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WINTER COMMON ROOM - WEEK 2
common room.
Similar to the rest of the architecture, the common room in the Winter Dorm is almost more reminiscent of a tea room or parlor that you would find in a manor. A chandelier hangs above, everything in the room glistening in the light that is both welcoming and just a tinge cold. Seating is available for a number of people to gather, adjusting each week to seemingly accommodate a little bit over the number of people assigned to the dorm. A piano doesn't sit too far, and sometimes when the room isn't too full, it's almost like a beautiful classical melody will begin to play itself to make up for the empty space.
Or... is that a showtune...?
Who can say?
This week, your requested revisions seem to be done. Exciting! Welcome to Kainé's Housé.
specialty room.
However on the first floor, there's an oddity amidst the serene architecture. One of the rooms opens to a Gaming Lounge, complete with screens that stretch across the entirety of one wall length-wise. Incredible comfortable chairs and couches sit opposite the screen, comfortable enough to steal you away from the outside world for hours upon hours. A series of gaming systems are hooked up to the screens, and a small tower of handhelds sit on a bookcase nearby. Every game you can think of is downloaded and programmed onto each device, though every time you start one up it seems to immediately pull up an otome game or farming simulator. The lighting system changes between a rainbow of colors, and one wall is lined with snacks that are a little less decadent but still just as delicious. The room will adjust based on the needs of the game you play, a wall spinning out to roll out DDR dance pads, virtual reality goggles, or whatever you could need for the ultimate gaming experience.
No, it isn't incredibly reminiscent of Dude Perfect's Game Time Lounge. You're imagining it. (But really, click the link for a better idea of what the room looks like.)
Please use this as an open post for members of Winter Dorm. You may post top-levels whenever you'd like and go wild. A new post will go up at the start of each week.
w2, tuesday
it's kon, this time. he only has one hand that can work, he can't use crow's method from yesterday, so sue him. ]
Hey guys. So, for as much as I want to keep talking about pranks we can pull - and the revenge we can take - we sort of. Have something else to talk about.
Yesterday, since Crow got that bullshit script and I'd already promised to do it, I told Viola about what happened to me, Alphinaud, Bradley, and Manwol when we were gone on Thursday. After that, she said that it would be in our best interests to pool together our information. Whatever we have to share, whatever will help, she wants us to be prepared in case another trip like that happens again, or if we find ourselves targeted after curfew rolls in. And I agree with her, especially since there could be some commonality between what we've experienced or learned since we got here.
So, even if you've already gone over it before, it doesn't hurt to share with the class. And trust me when I say I'm not going to be happy about repeating what happened, personally, so if you're hesitant... don't be. For all you know, it could save someone's life. We might not be so lucky the next time we have a surprise field trip, if people don't know what we're looking at here.
[ and so begins the dorm-wide infoshare! this is being posted now so that everybody can participate throughout the day, so don't worry about being early/late/etc - feel free to add a sublevel with whatever info you want to share, but obviously sharing isn't mandatory. ]
cyoa: unpleasantville
... the last thing I remember on Thursday before shit hit the fan, I was leaving the cafeteria to head to one of the class buildings. The next thing, all four of us went from being at different locations across campus, to being in the same location very suddenly as if we'd just stepped through to it: in front of a house in an isolated neighborhood. Bradley's attempt to leave the neighborhood resulted in looping back to the same point, just like when we try to leave campus. All four of us had keys to this house, and felt the sense of "home" from it. Despite being in a neighborhood, there... weren't any people outside that we could see.
When we went inside, Bradley went upstairs while Alphinaud, Manwol, and I stayed downstairs. In the kitchen there was a cake burning in the oven, filled with what would later be the same acid that we were attacked with - as well as a fridge full of rotting meat and dead insects and worms. In the garage were two cars with dusty boxes and broken miscellaneous equipment - Manwol found a box of rotting meat inside one of the cars. Alphinaud found a cell phone with messages from Sakyou, Nier, and someone that I know from my time before Wiwaldi. I'm not sure what Bradley found upstairs, besides a loaded pistol.
[ mm ] The entire time, we had the sense of an influence encouraging us to sleep and giving us the feeling of belonging, that the things we were seeing were normal. I succumbed to it when I went upstairs to find the charger for the phone, because it died in the middle of a call where a voice none of us recognized repeated "am I next? are you going to get me next? am I next?" I fell asleep after that in a room that was "mine," and it didn't feel right - until it very suddenly was, and I was asleep.
Waking up the second day, we weren't ourselves. We were - different. A version that had lived in that house for years, together. We were a family that did trips and shit like that together. And we spent those years - [ here, he takes a deep breath before continuing. ] - killing people. I don't know how many, due to sheer numbers, but we were a group of serial killers. We massacred people on a bus, burnt down a mall, left an infestation of bugs from that rotten meat...
There were - [ fuck, this was easier to do over email to viola. kon shakes his head, skips out on the finer details. ] There were people there that we recognized, whether from here or from "home" for us. We'd killed them.
We had a plan of killing people at a barbeque next door, after we had scoped it out for days beforehand. And when I checked the phone again, the same voice from the first day said "tomorrow. next. tomorrow. see you tomorrow. sleep." We set the house on fire and caused a gas explosion, and then we went home and slept as if nothing was wrong.
On the third day, we returned to normal, but with the memories of the years that had been overwritten onto us. And we knew that there was something waiting for us downstairs. In the kitchen, the monster was what was waiting for us "tomorrow" - made up of rotting meat and the bodies of the people we'd killed. When we escaped, after it tried with borderline success to kill us, the neighborhood outside was so bright it was blinding, so I'm not sure which direction we ran in. The monster managed to get out and followed, but exploded, and we made it into the woods where we found the redacted reports and the piece of the map.
That's - it. [ don't call him out on looking queasy and uneasy, please, he obviously hates this. ]
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[ shaking his head aaaaa all of this is awful no wonder kon was in a mood last week ]
Wish you hadn't gone through all that. But, uh - thanks? For telling us? I'm glad you all got out alive, even if... you know.
[ rot monster acid............ ]
So you were being controlled. No sign of what caused it, though? Just some kind of compulsion?
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I'll take being burnt and bruised but alive over the alternative. [ even with the trauma! haha! ]
No sign of what caused it. I don't know if it was the monster, or an outside source. But I think it has a lot to do with how the people who participate in expulsions seem to be controlled, nevermind the possibility of murderers and - [ his gaze flicks up to the ceiling, indicating the third floor, then back to leo. ] - being overwritten, too.
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[ leo huffs a little laugh, but there's no humor in it, and his eyes stay deliberately focused on anything but kon. in fact, he flops into a seat and pulls out some nuts and bolts to fiddle with, keeping his hands busy. ]
Yeah. That would make sense, wouldn't it? [ haha. great. ] Makes the video game theory sound more likely, honestly. And if you guys were controlled and made to kill like that, it tracks that Kaoruko and whoever killed Lan Wangji probably are, too.
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Video game, shitty TV drama, whatever media this shithole wants us to play out. [ mm, displeasure. ] And here we are, having to figure it all out.
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[ he shakes his head. ]
...But I don't have the vouchers for it, and even if I did, we'd still have to know where to look. And we can't just - sit around and watch the cycle keep repeating.
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My ability to extract memories would cost 6 vouchers with her knocking the price down for a once-a-week use. My own ability to overwrite would probably be even more limited, and she said I could maybe haggle it down from 8. If I had it, though, maybe - I don't know. Maybe we could do something.
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ichiro's got his arms folded, leaning against the wall while kon's talking, his expression pulling into a darker and darker frown. ]
... The details make that theory seem even more legit. [ he says, eventually, quietly - and then to the other people around, a little louder. ] Based on that, I think whoever's killing people might be controlled, too. I was so pissed trying to figure out the reason for Kaoruko's, and now I don't think there was one at all.
[ his hand curls into a fist, and bumps against the side of the wall, knuckles white with the pressure. ] It fits with the 'expulsions', too.
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whatever complicated feelings kon has, he's got them smashed down besides his anger and unease. ]
Yamato said he talked to her, and she said she did it because she thought Hiyori was annoying. [ that's for everybody - ichiro's already heard that from him. ] But she didn't seem to have any remorse for it, at the end, so I don't know how far the compulsion and control would go.
[ he rubs the pads of his fingers against the edge of his burns on his neck. ]
But with Crow's script, I think we're being made to act out "roles."
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Caleb said when he talked to her he felt like she wasn't being truthful about why she did it. [sniff.] He said it seemed more like she was just trying to make it seem like she was the bad guy, so we wouldn't feel bad. And she was really insistent about all of us playing along. Being less confrontational.
... He felt sorry for her, and Caleb isn't the type of guy to just blindly forgive people, so. I'm inclined to think she's playing a role, especially after seeing the people at the expulsions be unable to stop themselves from killing each other.
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... if she had no choice but to play along, and she was already accustomed to filling a role, then it does check out with everything else we have so far.
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So, I guess we have to figure out what kind of roles they want us to play - and how many of us might just be extras.
[ that "am i next" from kon's story is sticking with him, in the worst possible way. ]
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... they've got their school AU. [ hate that, how fucking hilarious in the worst way. ] And their good little students.
Whoever's running this shitshow obviously has a schedule in place, so if we really do wind up with two weeks in each season... [ :') eight weeks? of playing this game? ]
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If - If it's anything like when I was controlled by the eidolons back home, then you can't tell it's happening. Whatever they want you to do, it feels like it was your idea, that it's something you want. It might as well have been your plan all along, not like what you guys felt last week.
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... yeah. There's - I think there's something like that at home, too. I know somebody who might've been fucked up by it.
[ sasara had said it - he didn't know why he had the falling out that destroyed mad comic dialogue. it makes ichiro's stomach twist up in a knot to think about, about - about kuko, but he can't think about that right now. ] And I wonder if they can't talk about it after, either. [ esp re: kaoruko. ]
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It could be that, or maybe it like it was with me. I didn't know about it until later, and... [ his grip tightens on the nuts and bolts he's been playing with. ] I couldn't get rid of it on my own, either. So they might need help, too.
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Day two it was like that. It was all us, as far as we were concerned.
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But then you were just yourselves again, right? I wonder if...
[ voice trailing off, he pulls out his phone to text ]
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...That's horrible. I - I'm so sorry you had to go through that.
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It wasn't great, but we made it out alive. And we don't know if it'll happen again to someone else - even in a different way, like how Catra's experience was different - so I want to make sure no one's caught totally off guard.
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Yeah. It must have been hard to talk about or to think about again, even, so - thank you.
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Worse than I thought. [she mutters.]
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behind her back, his fingers fist in her shirt a little more tightly than his expression and tone would give away. ]
I was trying to undersell it pretty hardcore, to be honest.