ass ; kate

[toxicate]

dusty..............

Comments

Week 4, Saturday

[sootprints]

[ after the trial. ]

... It felt like we were really close. To figuring out Maya's, I mean.

[toxicate]

[ there's little of the careful, but nevertheless generally present, openness he usually takes with her. he's clipped, frustrated. ]

There were few options remaining. [ frowns. ] What did you think? Honestly.

[sootprints]

... Some of the evidence had to be fabricated. So perhaps it's a matter of figuring out which was and wasn't.

[toxicate]

Fabricated, or exaggerated. [ nodding. ] It seemed to me like some of this was pre-planned, almost.

[sootprints]

Until now, there's always been one possessed killer each week...

If that was Strohl this time, then most likely, Maya and Shouki's killers acted of their own volition. They might have planned ahead.

[toxicate]

There was a theory that Shouki had killed Maya before meeting his own fate, wasn't there? And then the generic weaponry, the misleading evidence... the dramatic fall and his crushed phone.

[ closes his eyes. ]

I am suspecting he planned his death.

[sootprints]

Y, you think so?

[toxicate]

...yes.

[ there's a very slight hesitance in his tone. ]

I had a conversation with him this week that was less than pleasant. He expressed insistence that those of us here should be focusing on achievements and how he didn't care about winning, as well as how he viewed those who died as "fine anyway". If he thought such a stunt would get him what he wanted, he's cunning enough to pull it off.

[sootprints]

Ah... Yes, that sounds like him.

He isn't entirely wrong... In a place where the dead still speak to us, when we've been promised that they'll return... then one has to ask, what are the true "stakes" in all of this?

[toxicate]

There was quite a point made about that in Key Nueve. Death is cheap, but inevitable... yet, here we still are. The same could be said for nearly every participant here, I should think.

[ glances at her. then, slightly more kindly; ]

Do you have something you're striving for here, Kate? Or simply the will to return home?

[sootprints]

... I need to go home. There are people who need me there.

And... I want to protect everyone else's "endings," too.

[toxicate]

...you're a very smart kid, Kate. You'd make a good Shadow Paladin.

[sootprints]

That sounds like very high praise, from you.