We're the new face of failure, prettier and younger but not any better off [W3, Post-Execution]

[zerotohiro]

[He's not sure how long he's sitting on the beach. Time doesn't even mean anything anymore, not when it isn't nine hours of actual hell, nine hours of failure, nine hours of wasted opportunity. So he sits at the beach throwing rocks and shells into the ocean, trying to allow his mind to go blank and finding it impossible.

It's his own curse, in a way. Not being able to shut his brain off.

It's why he constantly talks, constantly questions, constantly moves. It's why he finds himself eventually getting up and heading back toward the main part of the island with the huts and everything and it's how he finds himself noticing someone ahead. He's a bit surprised to see her alone, but he doesn't mind. Instead, he moves in to settle next to her even temporarily.]

...Zuko's going to be fine. [A "hi" would have worked just as well, but.]

Comments

[seaclipsed]

[ at this point, katara is so used to the way hiro talks that she doesn't really blink at the lack of proper greeting. that's just how he is, really ]

It's not just Zuko I'm thinking about.

[ zuko's her main concern, she won't lie about that. they have a lot of history together, although most of it isn't... actually good history. but still. a lot of her friends died today, including the person that she trusted the most besides zuko and her partner.

katara has definitely had better sundays. ]

Do you ever just feel so... overwhelmingly lost?

[zerotohiro]

[He's idly digging his toe into the sand then, hands deep in his pockets.]

You mean besides every Saturday for nine hours a day? Yeah. I do. [He frowns a little more.] This...everything went really, really badly this weekend.

[seaclipsed]

I don't get it. What happened with the Jacks was... horrible, despicable. But we knew that something like that was probably going to end up happening since the Chiefs kept hinting at it. Why didn't people vote for their partner instead?

[ since multiple people kept telling everyone to make sure they do that instead of actually voting for a jack, to be safe. ]

Why can't we just... do things right, for once?

[zerotohiro]

I know. That's what I don't get either. We knew. So why did people still screw up? [He shakes his head.] Maybe they thought that things would be different. Or there are people that are trying to go against everything we've planned because they're one of the roles.

Maybe we can't do things right because some people don't want to.

[seaclipsed]

They're sabotaging the trials?

[ there's a small part of katara that actually prefers that idea over them just being that incompetent tbh. ]

It would make sense. You could also say that one of the reasons everyone keeps getting off track during the trials is because people are purposely making us focus on the wrong thing.

[zerotohiro]

It's totally possible. If we're not supposed to find the Sirens so that they can kill us, how do we know they aren't specifically throwing us off any time we get close to rooting them out?

[Or we just suck, who knows.] It's a pretty solid strategy if that's true.

[seaclipsed]

So... maybe we should try to think of people who have sidetracked discussions a lot? People who keep us focus on specific topics that get us nowhere each time.

[zerotohiro]

Who speaks up at trials a lot? That would probably be the best place to start so we know who's contributing and who could be misleading us. It's just a little too easy to immediately suspect the people who aren't talking.

[seaclipsed]

The two of us.

[ might as well get that out there. ]

Magilou, Prussia, Yona, Zuko, Bellamy, Lief, Jacopo, Lucina, Kirigiri, Vriska, Akira...

[ she's about to say some more, but then realizes that the other people who immediately come to mind just died today. ]

[zerotohiro]

Right. [He knows better than to rule himself out.] The good thing is that Jack said Magilou and Bellamy don't have roles. So we can rule them out from that kind of stuff.

[It's...hard, he thinks, to talk about this stuff still while everything went completely wrong. When their friends are dead and everything feels a little less okay.]

That leaves Prussia, Yona, Zuko, Lief, Jacopo, Lucina, Kyouko, Vriska and Akira and us.

...where do we even start?

[seaclipsed]

I'm obviously biased. Regarding Zuko, I mean.

[ she's quiet for a moment, contemplating what to say next. ]

I'm going to be honest with you. I've only recently become friends with him. We were actually enemies for the majority of the time I've known him. But... we went through something together, and I know that he wouldn't do anything that would make him lose my trust again. If he was up to something, he'd tell me.

[zerotohiro]

...that's a better testimonial than we have for most people. I don't know anybody on this island so I have to take people for their word. [Still, he understands that biases can be dangerous.] Do you think Zuko or anybody else he talks to would go along with a game like this? Now that we kind of know what it all means.

[seaclipsed]

I don't think Zuko would. He wouldn't be able to talk to his uncle again after if he did.

[ which sounds like a silly reason, but... ]

I have a question for you. If you were given a choice of either killing a lot of people, but painlessly and gently, versus just killing one person but very brutally, which would you choose?

[zerotohiro]

...yeah, I get that.

[It's not necessarily a question that surprises him, but at the same time he gives her an unreadable look.]

Counter-question. Is this assuming I don't know that killing them might save them?

[seaclipsed]

Both, if you want. If you didn't, but also if you did.

[zerotohiro]

[There's a stretch of silence.]

...there...are a lot of circumstances that could change things? Like if it was a person I knew that was going around murdering everybody versus just doing it as a job, or even if knowing they'd come back and if it had to be done a certain way, I...

[...huff.] Painlessly and gently, because it's pointless to do it brutally without real proof that they would get the message or proof that it counts in this game more than a painless death. Depending on circumstance, but that would be my answer whether I did or didn't know killing people might save them.

Why?

[seaclipsed]

[ she actually smiles at that. it's small, but it's there. ]

That's another reason why I don't think Zuko's a part of it. His answer would be the same. [ ... ] And so is mine. If there was no other choice, no matter how hard you tried to find an alternative, I wouldn't want them to suffer.

[ katara looks at her hands. ]

I can see what they might be thinking. If it's people who truly don't want to do this, and are only killing because it's to... save us... then killing multiple people a week might be hard for them. But I think what they've chosen to do is worse than trying to keep the body count low. Not only are they killing them, but it's like torture. Their hands aren't any less bloody just because they only killed one person per week versus five.

[zerotohiro]

Just because they're making people suffer doesn't mean we have to do the same. [Unless they deserve it, and unless they could feel it. He's still a little unsure of what does and doesn't count, but for the most part he's on the side of "let's not really brutally kill people."]

But I agree with that, and that's why I can't support what they're doing even if it's technically going to save all of us. There's always another way and if they can't figure it out, then we have to figure it out for them. It'd be a lot easier to have an idea who our other Sirens are.

It also goes back to the profiles though, Katara. "Sacrificed for." We still don't know why we're getting sacrificed, right?

[seaclipsed]

[ i realize i typed hands in that last tag and had to take a moment to laugh quietly to myself ]

... that's right. Even if we go by what the reasons that are listed say, they're all over the place. Some say really horrible things, and others don't, so the inconsistency there doesn't make too much sense if you're trying to figure out why we were chosen specifically.

What did Battler's say, anyway?

[zerotohiro]

[oh my god stop this]

Maybe they really don't mean anything. I mean I know why mine were written the way they were, but other people...[A half-smile.] It'd be pretty dumb for you to get killed because of feminism. And totally unfair. The motivational speeches though? [At least it's also a teasing tone.

But like that, he immediately rattles off an answer.] Partial responsibility for the Rokkenjima massacre, broken promises, and incompetence. I don't know where Rokkenjima is, probably somewhere from his world. When I first met him though he told me he was playing a game where he had to prove a series of murders weren't committed by a witch. But it's hard to say what methods he took even back there, you know?

[seaclipsed]

Right... [ listen. "feminism" isn't a thing where she's from, or at least, it isn't a thing that has a name like that. so katara has mostly just been squinting at that in her profile while assuming she knows what it's talking about based on what it sounds like and everyone telling her it's a good thing. ]

You'll get speeched at and you'll like it, buddy. [ it's also said as a joke. ]

Based on that, and also based on conversations you've had on him, did he ever strike you as someone who would choose to give people a painful death? I mean, obviously he probably wouldn't have while you were talking to him, but in hindsight?

[zerotohiro]

[Surprisingly, the smile slips into something that looks a little more wistful. Or nostalgic. One of the two, and while he doesn't say anything about it there's a nod.]

Save it for the people who really need it, Katara. There's still 23 other people on this island.

As for Battler...I don't know. He always struck me as someone that wanted to win. So if winning meant delivering a painful death, then sure, maybe I could buy it. But the thing is that just because he's a Siren doesn't mean he actually acted on any of the kills. There's five of them. We have four other people who're likely to be just as brutal, so...we should be looking for people who would either want to break the cycle, break the game, or break themselves. I think.

[seaclipsed]

Even if he didn't do any of the kills, he probably has at least agreed to the method. It's a group, so they've probably all discuss who to attack Thursday night as a collective. It makes more sense for them to do it that way, anyway.

[ although, "break the game" brings up one person in particular considering what happened at the execution. ]

Vriska?

[zerotohiro]

He did mention they had meetings about stuff, so...yeah. It's an accomplice case I think since you can plan and be responsible even if you don't do the act yourself. It's why we need to find the others. The good thing is Hal said he doesn't replace roles so...we don't have to worry about someone else getting caught up in that mess.

[But there's a sharp nod.] Vriska. She's been talking about it since I met her and...Vriska knows things she shouldn't know. I don't know how she knows, but it's something to wonder about and be worried about. If we don't know how she's getting her information then there's a chance it's going to come back and bite us.

I know she was close to Battler. I think any of us could see that. Is that proof she's a Siren, too? Not exactly, but there are definitely things I'm taking a second look at just to rule her out.

[seaclipsed]

Even if she isn't a Siren, there's a good chance she at least has some sort of role. [ ... ] She asked me to help with taking the game apart. I actually want to.

[ she mostly wants to hurt hal and pal, but that's second to sending everyone back home, safe. ]

But the way she talks about it makes it seem like she does have an idea on what to do already... you're right.

[zerotohiro]

I want to give her a day or two to cool off before approaching her, but I hope we're right. If we have enough people on this side that maybe have roles and want to end this...that's better for us. Even if her role is one of the "bad ones."

[seaclipsed]

That's true... since it's not like they chose the rules themselves, right?

[ they were given them, whether they wanted it or not, as far as katara is aware. ]

[zerotohiro]

Exactly! And you know Vriska. Do you really think she's the kind of person to quietly follow the rules of anything just because she's told to? How many other people on this island are just like that? It's a solid plan to start working at that angle.

[seaclipsed]

I think most people here are, honestly. We... I don't want to say we're a temperamental bunch, but...

[ they're a temperamental bunch..... ]

[zerotohiro]

People are pretty...something. [Temperamental is a great word.]

It's the first place I'll start. Anybody else you think we should keep an eye on?

[seaclipsed]

Bellamy and Lief. Not that they're super suspicious, but both of them have been very involved in keeping an eye on others? So they probably have a lot of relationships here, so if anything they might know something.

[zerotohiro]

I don't think they're suspicious either, but we can try talking to them and seeing what happens.

[seaclipsed]

Even if they can give us any information at all, it'll be better than nothing.

[zerotohiro]

I'll see what I can find out over the next week or something. Thanks, Katara.