[The final investigation goes much the same as it does in any world. There are the hand-drawn pamphlets, each a short comic detailing the history of despair, style not immediately distinctive but not wholly unfamiliar, either. There's a child's bedroom, hardly slept in and sparsely decorated but for the photo wall of Enoshima Junko; instead of the stuffed Monobears, though, there's a puppet on the bed wearing a pigtailed wig, its glass eyes as blue as bright as hers.
Where Monaka had a library, though, there is instead a second media room, though this one has clearly only been furnished for one to enjoy. Shelves of homemade DVDs line the walls, but a set of twenty have been pulled out; pulled out and cracked, each lying in two neatly-snapped halves, each bearing the name of a student trapped here, living or dead.
Significant, then, maybe, that the clip left playing on loop on the high-def projector is of no one they can recognize. The situation is familiar, though: it's an execution, and the pajamas the dark-haired boy wears are the same vivid shade of blue that was so important in the hotel's very first trial.
And where there was an operating gallery, in another universe, there are simply four walls, a ceiling, and floor, all covered from seam to seam in multi-colored text, frantically scrawled, hardly any of it making coherent sense save BUT I DON'T WANT TO DIE i dont want you to die 1M 4FR41D TO NOT 3X1ST
arent you?
It shouldn't take too long, once reinstated in the courtroom, for the survivors to reach the obvious conclusion.
Dave sighs, and the breath seems to take physical shape in the suddenly quiet room. An invisible, but palpable energy that leaves him with the last of his fight.]
Kind of took you long enough.
[Suddenly, he isn't there at all, and the impenetrable blackness bounding the courtroom shatters like glass on impact. The cracks glow in a kaleidoscope of color, pulsing with terrific energy, but it's in the thick panes of darkness that remain that the real horror lies: writhing tentacles, gnashing beaks, mouths open in screams.
And the faces of their dead. The dreamers bear witness, too, and though they cannot make a sound, their eyes know terror. Horror. They press their hands against the barrier but they cannot get out. Can't be reached.
Dave reappears before the throne with both hands on the pommel of an ornate sword. As he speaks, color seems to lift from his skin. He is white, dead white, and then grey--and the cherry red evaporates from his clothes until Time's gear is split black and white on charcoal, slashed through only with a jagged, diagonal rip of crimson like Monobear's eye.
He isn't wearing his cape, but shadow drips from his shoulders like a cowl, writhing and wraithlike as if stirred by a fey wind.
Bun Hutchinson hops over to Dave's feet, and both his eyes are red, now. The horrorterrors continue to undulate in the shattered space around them, whispering unknowable things at the edges of every mind. Dave doesn't sit.]
All that shit you decided about time travel and alternate dimensions and coming back from the dead, and not a single one of you thought to look at the guy practiced in all of them.
no subject
Where Monaka had a library, though, there is instead a second media room, though this one has clearly only been furnished for one to enjoy. Shelves of homemade DVDs line the walls, but a set of twenty have been pulled out; pulled out and cracked, each lying in two neatly-snapped halves, each bearing the name of a student trapped here, living or dead.
Significant, then, maybe, that the clip left playing on loop on the high-def projector is of no one they can recognize. The situation is familiar, though: it's an execution, and the pajamas the dark-haired boy wears are the same vivid shade of blue that was so important in the hotel's very first trial.
And where there was an operating gallery, in another universe, there are simply four walls, a ceiling, and floor, all covered from seam to seam in multi-colored text, frantically scrawled, hardly any of it making coherent sense save BUT I DON'T WANT TO DIE i dont want you to die 1M 4FR41D TO NOT 3X1ST
arent you?
It shouldn't take too long, once reinstated in the courtroom, for the survivors to reach the obvious conclusion.
Dave sighs, and the breath seems to take physical shape in the suddenly quiet room. An invisible, but palpable energy that leaves him with the last of his fight.]
Kind of took you long enough.
[Suddenly, he isn't there at all, and the impenetrable blackness bounding the courtroom shatters like glass on impact. The cracks glow in a kaleidoscope of color, pulsing with terrific energy, but it's in the thick panes of darkness that remain that the real horror lies: writhing tentacles, gnashing beaks, mouths open in screams.
And the faces of their dead. The dreamers bear witness, too, and though they cannot make a sound, their eyes know terror. Horror. They press their hands against the barrier but they cannot get out. Can't be reached.
Dave reappears before the throne with both hands on the pommel of an ornate sword. As he speaks, color seems to lift from his skin. He is white, dead white, and then grey--and the cherry red evaporates from his clothes until Time's gear is split black and white on charcoal, slashed through only with a jagged, diagonal rip of crimson like Monobear's eye.
He isn't wearing his cape, but shadow drips from his shoulders like a cowl, writhing and wraithlike as if stirred by a fey wind.
Bun Hutchinson hops over to Dave's feet, and both his eyes are red, now. The horrorterrors continue to undulate in the shattered space around them, whispering unknowable things at the edges of every mind. Dave doesn't sit.]
All that shit you decided about time travel and alternate dimensions and coming back from the dead, and not a single one of you thought to look at the guy practiced in all of them.