⚡ accidental video | backdated to morning of the 22 | midnight express follow-up

[overreached]

[ The device lands on the floor violently, like it's been hit across the floor, which in fact it was. When it skids to a halt the screen flickers to reveal Light, sitting up, hand to her forehead and then lowering to the center of her chest -- where her l'Cie brand is of course but you don't see that since it's a profile shot at best. There's the

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[audio]

[windsorknot]

[ It's not like watching someone die is particularly new to Arthur. He's seen his fair share of gruesome deaths in dreams, his own included - more often than not at the hands of projections. That doesn't make this situation any less bizarre, though. ]

You're back. [ The surprise is still evident in his voice, despite his best effort to sound neutral. ]

[audio]

[overreached]

In one piece, too. [ Her tone is, if anything, more deadpan than usual. When people say 'neutral', this is probably what they mean. ]

[audio]

[windsorknot]

What's the last thing you remember? [ No point in dancing around the topic, he figures. ]

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[overreached]

Pain. [She shrugs though not audibly of course.] Before that, it was more interesting. [Though you can't tell from her voice.] Everything went dark for a while. Maybe it wanted me to panic. [Which is stupid, she thinks, but there's that.]

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[windsorknot]

Probably. I'm sure whatever killed you was trying to catch you completely off guard. The confined space of a train doesn't help, either.

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[overreached]

Trains I can deal with. [Lol...] It felt more like a decision than an attempt. Like shooting someone in the head--a decision, no take backs, no escape routes. [Planned.]

And the dark had a... sounds weird but it felt like it was pulsing.

[Now, the parallel she is drawing is being inside the stomach of something living but that is still not quite it. Rhythmic though. She remembers. And her l'Cie brand burnt. Maybe it was cold too, or hot, or both. The air felt oppressive.]

The sticker I woke up was for donors. [No guesses as to what kind of donor really.]

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[windsorknot]

Like you'd walked into a trap? [ Sounds like something out of a horror film, which doesn't really surprise him at this point. ] That would explain the precise timing behind the deaths, at least...

Donors? [ And then realization hits. ] That's got to be the worst joke I've heard since I got here.

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[overreached]

More or less. And yeah, it would. Six hour separations.

[ She scowls, pauses. Somewhere in here there's an irrelevant 'I sacrificed my blood and all I got was this lousy sticker' joke but those jokes are terrible too and Light wouldn't know of them anyway, more the better probably. ]

Bad jokes are par for the course here, I guess. [ A mutter, indecipherable really, maybe an expletive. ] Word is there were twelve of us in total.

[There also seemed to be twelve distinct assaults at once on her in the dark, but she hasn't got the scars to confirm it so she leaves that out.]

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[windsorknot]

All that for blood. [ He shakes his head. ] You'd think it'd be more use to them in a container rather than spilled all over a train compartment. It's possible that the number twelve is meant to symbolize something, too. There just might be something behind this bad joke.

[ He pauses to consider something. ]

So how are you feeling? I've heard there's side effects to dying while here.

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[overreached]

Maybe. What comes in twelves?

[ A short sigh. ]

Apparently there's been an exception. The way the dead exist here -- without a pulse, no heat to the body, no need for food or drink -- didn't happen.

Mostly, I feel the same. [ The brand having progressed is the only evidence, concrete evidence, she has that anything happened at all. Memory is unreliable here considering people can be duped into all manner of things, not that she's questioning it right now. ]

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[windsorknot]

The hours of the day. Months of the year. Twelve signs of the Zodiac. It could be anything. Considering the clock that's rumored to be under the City, though, I'm thinking it has something to do with that. Beyond that is anyone's guess.

[ So he was right. Either way, dying sounds like something he'll still want to avoid. He can't help but wonder if this is an unintended effect of the sedative or something else entirely. Of course, if these people really are all projections, it could very well work differently for him. Something to keep in mind for the future, in any case. ]

An exception? So it's almost like you never died in the first place, is what you're saying.

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Clockwork. [ She wishes she had been able to garner more from the pulse of the darkness but she can't be sure of the count, so again she keeps that thought to herself. ] That does seem more likely. Everything seems connected to the clock -- everyone, considering the ticking and just because you stop hearing it in company doesn't mean it's stopped.

[ A pause. ]

The only change I've noticed is something that would happen anyway.

No scars, no rotting, nothing. I might as well have been asleep and had a nightmare.

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[windsorknot]

It could very well be the key to understanding this place. If you could get to it, that is. I know it's under the City, which means it should technically be possible to get to it from the Underground? Probably easier said than done.

[ Asleep. Funny way to put it, he thinks to himself. ]

Sounds like you got out lucky in spite of everything. [ Not that he likes to attribute things to luck to begin with. ]

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I don't think it was luck.

They organized this. But I wonder what the point was in reviving us. They let other people walk around, dead but aware.

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[windsorknot]

The mention of donating blood. As ridiculous as it sounds, it might not have just been a joke. They take something from you and in return you're rewarded? The deities have already shown themselves to work on a strange kind of logic.

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It's possible. [ Though her tone says Skeptic like only the word itself will do. ] But they've taken things from citizens before without any kind of compensation.

This could be different, I guess, depending on what the blood was for.

[ Specifically what it was for, that is. ]