why does mario sometimes jumps and sometimes he fists

[Yugikun]

> be me, Demetri Futscher
> wake up in what feels like a really shitty hotel with a big black lady in bed with me
> probably have a kidney missing
> surprised i wasn’t in a bathtub for like, the max aesthetic
> feel like i slept in a bathtub
> also feel like i lost a kidney, which is honestly like, big mood
> wait no that’s not what 4channers say
> shit
> my ruse has been rused
> may as well show u my TRUE FORM now

Well, last night wasn’t awful, at least.

((Charelle Chernyshyova, continued from LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BOYZ WHERE WE DROPPIN’))

It actually was high-key kinda awful but like, at least it wasn’t as bad as the rest of yesterday? Turned out that sleeping in the same bed as Demetri was… an experience™, but at least Charelle wasn’t sleeping with the fishes like the two dudes still just outside this room? Kinda rude dude way to put it but, like, whatever; this was apparently her way of tryin’ to deal with the fact that there were two dead dudes still just around this room. She… still didn’t really know what she was going to do with ‘em, to be honest. Looking at them had still been hard when she had to drag Yuko out of here and she was pretty sure it was going to be just as hard to look at ‘em when she inevitably got outta this bedroom. As hard as she’d been all night when she and Demetri were in the same bed?

Eh. Not really funny.

...Still probably funnier than that dude on the loudspeakers had been, though.

Because she’d heard him try and do his open mic morning stuff. He, uh, wasn’t really all that great at comedy. Like, yeah obviously the fact that he was talkin’ bout how all her classmates were dead and stuff didn’t exactly make for all that great material but he didn’t really do much with it either? Whatever. Probably wasn’t what she should really talk about but that part was the only part she really had material of her own for. People died and that was lame. People she knew died and that was double lame. Charelle really didn’t really wanna leak more detail than that because she was pretty sure that’s what the fuckos running this game were hopin’ to get from her and she was pretty sure giving them what they wanted went against THE PLAN, and stuff.

...Oh yeah, there was a plan. That was maybe what she should actually be dedicating her headspace to. She turned to Demetri. Found out that he was way out of her line of sight and so moved a bunch so that she could actually be puttin’ the eyes (maybe or maybe not the right kinda eyes, didn’t really matter at this point) on him.

“You doin’ okay, dude?”

[Cicada]

Demetri had been stiff as a board- wrong wording, worst wording ever. He had remained supremely respectful. He had been the perfect gentleman. He had remained perfectly still in place because if he'd moved even one muscle he would have literally vomited spaghetti until he'd died of dehydration. If he'd so much as felt one inch of girl flesh- what the fuck was he even calling it- he might have been arrested and he couldn't have even been arrested on island but he wouldn't have been surprised if like, Lori and Martinek and all the other hyper liberal girls would have held him to a sham court for his sins against the fairer gender- she'd suggested it, Charelle's fault, it had been her idea that Demetri had had to cramp up until his leg muscles had been nothing but a Gordian Knot because it's not like the room had two usable beds or anything as contrived as that.

((Demetri Futscher continued from LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BOYZ WHERE WE DROPPIN’))

"... Eh. Feels like I didn't get any sleep." Not much. He'd been afraid of tossing and turning in his sleep. Tossing salad, that kinda tossing.

And also he'd been dreading this moment. That's what the folks on /sotf/ said, right? First off, why the fuck they had a dedicated board was beyond him, how were there enough sick fucks out there to even warrant a quarantine in the first place? But also, he'd come to understand certain things about the island murder game. Like the fact that they always announced who'd died in the morning. Knowing things in advance, turned out, still didn't really count as being properly prepared though.

It had been so damn many.

Demetri hadn't really understood the idea that one's life flashed before their eyes until now. Wasn't even his life that was the one that was ended. Toby with the one-off control decks and Demetri wondering how the fuck a turn could take that long to play through, and the pettiness was what lingered, somehow polluting the moment but also making it more real- and then it was Tirzah, how could someone like that do something like that, who the fuck actively sought to scatter skull fragments like bird seed-? no, now it was Beryl, who could harm a hair on that girl's weird galaxy brain, he remembered the back and forth on Skype one Sophomore evening, wondering, holy shit a girl is talking to me, holy shit her music taste is legit too weird for me to process- and then Dante, man, the sort of bro anybody could get along with, maybe also didn't like the jokes about immigrants so much but gave 'em a fair shake in spite of his human decency, and-

Too much. Demetri's thoughts raced because he was stuck where he was by Charelle's bad leg, he couldn't move because remember that he was the supreme Elliot Rodgers gentleman only with way less shooting and sociopathy and that had been a terrible analogy. He had to stay here for Charelle, couldn't try to work off the restlessness by pretending he was actively achieving a goal.

At least he'd gotten to spend the night with a girl, that totally made up for nine of his classmates being gone from this earth forever, and for him forgetting the prayers he was supposed to have learned in Church long ago. Heaven help him- only, it totally wouldn't.

"You alright?" Seemed like a redundant question, but he needed something to say. Made things come off a bit more normal, which was almost possible to buy as long as a closed door remained between them and Yuko and Felix- he hadn't forgotten them, nope, the announcements had been a totally redundant reprise of his waking nightmares where little spots of darkness on the ceiling had been suspiciously bloodlike in color.

"I'm thinking, like. We should try to keep an eye out on people passing through the area. Stay low mostly, but if we want to run your plan or Yuko's, either way? We need more people." Demetri was at least trying to come up with some means of executing the vague nothing the two of them called plans. He ran over a brief checklist in his head. He had plenty of fresh clothes, was keeping what he hoped was a reasonable pace with his edible supplies. He had a gun. Bulky and he didn't know what happened when it fired even reading the manual front and back twice. But he had something. A deterrent, maybe. Something to put some oomph behind his hot air and non-threatening appearance.

For now the gun stayed far away, in his bag.

As if he could fight off Tyrell, sure, he could pretend. Katrina would sing pop garbage while dancing routines on his gravestone. Heck, he was half imagining even garden gnome bitch Blaise would scoff and then steal Demetri's lunch money before absconding with Charelle to ride off into the sunset with lesbian makeouts aplenty. Was bitch a gender neutral insult? Could Demetri misgender Blaise now that Blaise was human scum? Stay tuned for the next chapter of Demetri's hilarious life.

[Sunnybunny]

((Sakurako A. Jackson continued from Antisocial Darwinism))

She’d promised herself she’d wait until they were alone.

The thought seemed more purposeful than it really was, but truthfully she'd been so quiet for the last hour was because the announcements had rattled her. Not just because people were dying, but that they were killing for reasons she couldn’t even begin to understand. Only one of them had to die every twenty-four hours, didn’t they understand the concept of stalling at all?

Everything felt sticky. The reality of the island, the humidity that was making her skin feel disgusting. She didn’t even want to think about the damage to her hair, except she did, because it was the least of so many evil thoughts. Sakurako wasn't about to go into the details of victims and murderers, not even to keep track of them. It was horrifying that she'd been relieved Yuko wasn't Yuka-chan for a moment, only to remember how sad Yu the Third and her sister Yuki would be about it all. What kind of garbage friend was she?

(Beryl, Dante? Were all the sweethearts in the class being targeted, leaving only the meanest behind? It was enough to make her want to cry.)

Even if they saved everyone left alive on the island somehow, weren't they still too late?

It would really be a mercy to forget all those names, in a way. Just for a little while.

Maybe it would be best not to be noticed, invisible. Forget about her desires, hide and run until she died. But before that bridge was approached, their efforts to salvage what they could from this place were more important. Because of The Plan, the one that could save them. It had been the reason she hadn’t ditched the group entire, and why Adele was with her now. While she didn’t think the other girl wanted to kill her, the bad vibes hadn’t really abated much since the beach. The possible-Sakurako of possible-tommorrow would let it fester, but it was a safe bet that this was the best off she was ever going to be again in her life. Which stunk for several reasons, not least of them the fact that she hadn’t thought to stop and wash off since they’d arrived on Death Trap Island.

It had been hard enough trying to get to sleep. Harder to think of what they could use from here to get off this rock, nothing they'd found yet seemed sufficient to her, her own lack of creativity cursing her yet again. What they had recovered had been thrown into their bags, and this was the last house they planned on searching before noting what they found and going back to the group. It was last because there was blood on the freaking door, and probably blood on the floor, and now they were all going to do the die-no-saur.

On the very dim side, paper and pen were a part of those things they'd already retrieved. She'd even found a dumb quill, feather limping and clinging to life. But she'd waited to talk, like she promised herself. They'd had several moments of silence between them, and now was to time to bend it, gently.

“Are you annoyed at me because I’m a part of the Itty Bitty Titty Com-?", she said, her hand twisting the doorknob. Opening the door. Stepping in, only to see not one but two corpses that clearly weren't fresh. Recognizing that one of them was a person she'd been relieved was dead, just in a moment of weakness. Stifling a sob and stubbornly biting her lip to keep quiet. Her hand did all of that, or it might as well have as much as the rest of her was reeling.

Maybe they needed another moment of silence after all.

[Somersault]

((Adele Jones, continued from Antisocial Darwinism))

She had paused by the side of the house, just to take in another sip of air. And another sip of water. The shopping cart was gone, gone with the other peeps, and honestly, Adele was starting to miss it.

Each step she took felt like another grain of sand dripping from the hour glass. Each breath she took, another reminder of the thing wrapped around her neck, the life sentence placed on her by a goddamn terrorist organization who saw fit to use her and her classmates' lives as if they were lab rats. This was inhumane. This was atrocious. This couldn't have been sanctioned in any definition of the word sanctioned.

That fact was obvious, obvious as the sun in the sky or the tension written on her face, but Adele felt it was best to continue reminding herself of that. Of how this was wrong, of how she had to stay up and at it. Just like her hair, beginning to frizz up. She had people here, people she had to protect. People she was working with, who counted on her, whose trust she had to pay back, even if their jokes were off-key or their flashes of temper threw her for a tizzy. They were trying, and for now, that was okay. Little specks of light against the dark, a bulwark against brutality.

Thinking about the awfulness of everything as a whole, one big issue, also kept her from separating things into tiny bits. From thinking about the victims and their names, the perpetrators and their names, their faces, the last thoughts that must have run through their mind as they breathed their last. Keeping it to the big, broad tableau meant she wouldn't get bogged down. Just another case to crack. Couldn't look at it from any other way, if she wanted to save the people still breathing.

It was selfish, she knew, but when Adele'd heard the announcements, heard none of her girls on it, she had clutched her cross a little tighter. Just a little sign of thanks, before they went back to the plan. Prayer was powerful, but it wasn't very efficient for actually searching for a way out. God was with them, had to be, pearly white light shedding some source of guidance, but directly appealing that meant more time out of the glass. More time, gone, gone, gone.

Gone off to go wrong, if the blood spatters here had anything to stay about it. Adele clutched the sorta-sharp branch she had found on the way to the village, all-natural wood hopefully possessed with some kind of warding properties, as she cautiously stepped in and-

Breathed. Breathed. Put a hand on 'Rako's shoulder, because if they weren't close before, they sure as heck were now, because nothing drew two people closer together than finding dead bodies.

Asian female, tall, stab wound in abdomen. Caucasian male, multiple gunshot wounds in head and torso. Crime scene report, autopsy, cold, impersonal, but she couldn't afford to get personal. Not when so much was on the line.

They had names, and Adele knew their names, knew their smiles, now knew how they looked cold and vacant, but she wasn't going to think about their names. Had to only think about what made them this way.

[Yugikun]

“I’m doin’ okay, yeah.”

Wait. Typo. Lets, uh, take that back a little.

“Well, doin’ as okay as I can be, really. Dunno if anyone here’d really call themselves okay without, like, lying and stuff.”

Seemed like a good hippo thesis. Didn’t know how long it’d really last now that it was out there and not in the place where everything seemed like, super genius and super smart and stuff, but, like, she didn’t think it was really bad or anything? Like, this place was sorta like all the no-fun places at school. Even the fuckos who were doing really good and killing all the people Charelle used to know and stuff were probably having a bad time. Like, maybe not getting literally boned in all the ways someone could be literally boned but yeah, uh… yeah. She didn’t really have a way of finishing that sentence so she was finishing it like this. Hoping it’d make her look, like, regular dumb instead of totally dumb. Yeah.

“But, uh, yeah. More people seem like a good idea. Any luck it won’t go as bad-”

There were people hollerin’ from the room next to them, talkin’ about… their tits? Seemed like as good a subject as any. Maybe Charelle could show them hers.

“You, uh, wanna get those people first?” Charelle said to Felix. “Like, we have a plan, we may as-”

...Wait. Uh. Backtrack. Charelle shook her head.

“I mean, like, we have a plan,” Charelle said to Demetri. “May as well, like, act on that plan’s ass while it’s a really hot ass, y’know?”

So, uh, Charelle had actual PTSD now?

That sucked.

[Cicada]

Demetri glanced at his bag, still foreboding, loaded with more firepower than Demetri had ever felt he'd need in his virgin life.

He glanced away as quickly.

"Yeah," he nodded. "We gotta be careful with the... ass, I guess." Lube up, Demetri was going in? Something like that. He started for the door with a creeping sensation set on his bones, his ankles kind of hunched up until he was almost tiptoeing around like a ballerina. Reaching for the doorknob was about as artistic a statement as any ballet production could have been- slow, deliberate. To his ears fell the job of details- who were the voices? Why were they apparently bereft of cup size?

He didn't know who they were, and for a moment longer than he had to he lingered, but goddamn did he look like a creep just hovering on the precipice of a closed door listening for girls on the other side.

"Hey." The door opened out of sync with his greetings, because of course he messed it up that badly.

He honestly liked Sakurako. That talent show in ninth grade had been the shit of legends- and it had stopped people talking too loudly about his own fuck up with the Ariana serenade- the Freshman lyricism, cringe. Tanisha... Adele... one of those blimp girls, they all looked sameish. He liked Sakurako's partner significantly less- who actively owned their own slacking on fitness? It was just common sense in terms of health concerns, Christ's sake.

None of that mattered now at all, and Demetri quickly dismissed the errant stereotypes and put on his best neutral face. Looked like he was constipated, it did.

"We're peaceful and friendly, so if you shoot at least give us time to compose our last words." ... He hadn't even tried to say anything to the folks yet. Fuck. "Uh... guess you guys saw Yuko and Felix already." He was doing his damnedest to not see them again, way his eyes were dancing around the room and avoiding literally all pairs of eyeballs present, living or dead. "We were there when they died- uh. I guess. We weren't able to do anything, y'know? I fucked up."

Demetri didn't know what he'd been intending, confessing to strangers, but it certainty didn't help him feel any better. That saying about 'getting shit off your chest' was just a disguised way to approve someone's scat fetish, turned out.

[Sunnybunny]

She wasn't expecting anyone to be in this place besides them, but then out popped a weasel.

If Demetri didn't use his comedy senses for evil, for hanging on Garren's every word... actually, was being a he-man woman-hater as bad as being a follower? She'd wonder about it if this was the time, but it seemed that there was never any more time to think at all. But his awkward presence, even with Yuko and Felix's bodies there, made this such a high school scenario that she let out a choked up giggle.

"I'm sorry you had to see that go down."

If he was still being lame, he was still himself, which was nice. The crime of being a wannabe redpill was minor in Murder World. Wiping tears from her eyes, she nodded, not confirming or denying his fuck up with her own feelings about their dearly departed here. But he'd said "we", right? Though she doubted a million times that this was an ambush, it was better for her to address it before Adele laid down the proverbial law. Okay. Doing this now.

"Do you mind having your friend here with us so everything is on the level? We're all about the peace and l- respect too, you have my word. I'm tired of dickwaving contests, I just want to have a nice chat without a gun in my face for once."

Sakurako glanced at her partner, trying to read the room in her eyes. She could guess a little of how the other girl felt, and just knew her next stunt was going to put her back in the doghouse, but perhaps that was where she belonged. Lifting her voice a little, she called out to the door that Demetri had come in the room through.

"Hi, it's Sakurako! How are you doing in there? It all sucks out here, but I'd like to see you anyway if you don't mind."

She couldn't help but wonder how this would have been had the other two still been alive. The thought kept making her cry, though it at least it was just tears now with no extra sound.

[Somersault]

Joy. Of. Joys. Another figure was coming out of the woodwork now, and it took all of the God-given patience within Adele to avoid giving that figure some stank-eye. Instead, she settled for flipping her ponytail back onto her shoulder.

Caucasian male (like the last one), late teens (like the last one), alive (okay, different), and so, so annoying. Demetri was honestly someone she could have gone her entire life without seeing again, desperate incel trash that he was, but he wasn't actively trying to kill her or 'Rako right now, so she supposed it would be best to be civil right here and right now. Maybe it would've been better for her to offer some kinda sympathy, be the hand on a shoulder, but honestly? Adele was kind of tired of having done that business for like four whole years. Big sisters had to let their little sibs grow up, after all.

In any case, she was certainly not interesting in shouldering this white man's burden, because she definitely was Not The One, but then 'Rako started crying and Adele knew that meant she'd have to run some kind of damage control. She disinterestedly twirled her branch around like a wand, and looked right up at Demetri, raised eyebrows and pursed smile.

"Well, yeah, we know you fucked up real good." See? New and improved Adele, more honest, just as virtuous. She had not gotten accepted to Vandy to deal with idiots for another four years, after all, and she hadn't ever really played nice with Demetri before so he really should've just been prepared for it. "It's 'kay, though, this is quite shitty."

There, see? Nice.

Still, there was another person in the room he'd come from, and although she wasn't really expecting the best, 'cause who would willingly spend time with Demetri, she still hoped. Just a little.

"Yep, it's Adele, and I'm here too," she called out, backing up her partner for whatever that meant. "We got plans! Sorta."

[Yugikun]

There was a hangout happening outside and Charelle just, like, SHOWED UP to it. Went from the bedroom to the shitty not-bedroom like boom. Maybe there was more she could say about this because hey, she hadn't seen either of these bitches in a while until as of rn and both of these bitches had a couple things that Charelle could live putting some brainpower towards but for the most part they were just bitches? They seemed, like, pretty cool bitches who weren’t going to take their kidneys? No real need to like, act as if this were the SATs or anything like that ‘cause-

Man, remember the days when everybody here was like ‘oh man, oh man, SATs are gonna be SO HARD (in a non-sexual way)?’ Those were the fuckin’ days, man.

“It is me,” she said. “I have officially become here.”

...Didn’t really work all that well. Should’ve just said hi like a non-weird dude.

“But yeah, uh, hi,” she said. “We got plans too? Dunno for sure.”

[Cicada]

Demetri nodded. He didn't know when someone had welded a lead weight to his chin.

"Just had to put it out there." He hadn't expected much sympathy. Side effect of the whole 'murmuring bad comebacks at people when they had stopped paying attention' thing, he was pretty used to the whole lot of nothing that followed when he tried to engage with people, he guessed. God, watching Sakurako cry was so unbearably uncomfortable. Like, every single fiber of his shirt had suddenly become briar. Heaven forbid he force a shirtless scene on the world for no reason.

But seriously, he only thought crying could be that poignantly soundless in movies only, with the audio editor's blessing and permission only. Demetri felt like he should have looked away, but he just kept on staring right at her. That bit about staring, at least, was very much on brand.

"So..."

Needed something to break the sudden uncomfortable silence. Anything. Demetri took a half step backward, awkwardly bumping Charelle's shoulder to make the wrong amount of room for her to show up and now they both just kinda crammed into the doorway there.

"Anyone actually going to talk about any of these plans?"

And yeah, that's what he picked to say. Of all things, he guessed.

[Sunnybunny]

It was so weird, watching Demetri watch her like this. It was like a wide-open door to her actual feelings, and it made her think of the cameras watching them all. A nasty cycle of voyeurism, on a stage she didn't have a hand in building. It made her a little sick, and angry deep inside. No consent form for this once in her lifetime show. Pulling herself together a little, she blinked her tears away and tilted her head to the side, staring back at him with the most owl-like expression she could muster. Hoot hoot, she mouthed at him.

One, two, three-

"You don't talk about the plans, silly. I'd much rather talk about how Charelle won you over to the side of making plans with girls. I mean, we've always been awesome but you never thought that, you know? It's nice to know the end of the world can change things, even just a little."

Taking on the air of a reporter, Sakurako pulled out a pen and the map, wrote something on the back of it and stepped forward, handing both objects to the other girl. Charelle had always the chillest of chill, only going with the flow, so for her to be taking some kind of initiative meant things were dire indeed. But then, this was it. Everything that would define everyone's lives here would happen in the next week or so, escape or no.

"We'll have to head back to base soon, so please tell me all your secrets in charming the red-pilled or no-pilled, anything you can give."

While she privately hoped they picked up what she was actually putting down, she moved to get a brush and some lotion out of the back of it. Styling her hair would give her something to do besides glance at bodily remains or stress about The Plan Two: The Album. She would have offered to help with Adele's first, but she'd need something left to do back with the group to occupy her mind. For now, her hands moved through tresses as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

[Somersault]

Adele blinked. She blinked again, mascara-enhanced eyelashes going up and down because okurr, that's who Demetri was in bed with. Charelle fricking Chernyshyova. Party girl, DJ girl, not that parties were bad, not that DJs were bad, nah, but her? That girl, the one wearing the Adventure Time dog hat and speaking as if she still somehow managed to smuggle weed in here?

Maybe she was just trying to be a decent Christian, but Adele generally didn't think too fondly is people who were dealing with stuff prohibited under Tennessee criminal law. Here, though, okay, whatever, smoking some of that was nowhere near as bad as well, murdering someone, torturing someone, all kinds of manners of things that could go wrong, but it still certainly remained as something that got her goat. Again, tempting to walk out, because of course Demetri had to act as if he had the biggest man-tool in the room, which of course, no, he did not, but all she did was stand next to 'Rako and try to seem like she was really backing up her...not her girl, no, but her collaborator. Yeah, that was as decent a word choice she was going to get to describe their relationship for now.

She kept her arms crossed, looked over at the other pair, gaze softening just a little. So, fine, okay. They had seen some pretty screwed-up stuff, that was true, and maybe she shouldn't have been begrudging them so much for being their natural annoying selves. They too were trying, even if it wasn't good, but love your neighbors like brothers, all in that good book, and so Adele tried to speak just a few words of encouragement, voice more like how she usually talked back in the hallways.

"Seriously, just go write down what you want, okay? No judging."

Maybe she shouldn't have kept her eyebrow quirked like that, but really, there it was. She could help a bish. Did it.

[Yugikun]

“Uh, alright.”

Little bit less than alright. Kinda awkward, actually. Like, nothin’ against the absolutely fine young ladies and Demetri all ‘round here, but thinking about it maybe it wasn’t the best idea for Charelle to actually say what her plan was? Like, whole point of it was to keep it on the DL, make sure the eyes that weren’t supposed to see it didn’t even know there was a thing to see, y’know? It was pretty fine, though. She just had to like, play the puppetmaster card and shit. Do all the high IQ social engineering she was totally bred for. Yeah. Yeah. She could do this. Just had to do the massive deflect, like:

“Your plan’s probably gonna be the better sell,” Charelle said, turning her face (but not her ass) to Demetri. “Need any paper?”

And herein laid the ultimate troll. Charelle had no pen. She also had no paper. It was totally foolproof.

[Cicada]

"Why do we have to write things down exactly? I'm not that bad at talking like a normal human being." Was he missing something? Why the need for paper- maybe it was like, ghetto slang and implying shit he didn't know the meaning of. Was this part of Charelle's 'if we don't know what we're doing how can the enemy know what we're doing' idea? Demetri was still unsure about that plan in its entirety. It was entirely possible and totally likely that he was still trying to dodge responsibility by not assuming the manly and proper position of leading people to their deaths, as opposed to sitting on the sidelines walking to his death behind someone else rallying the troops.

Yuko had, with her final, painfully drawn, bloody breath entrusted him with a job. Barely the next morning and he was already shitting the bed. Laying in the mess.

Evasively, dodging himself as much as he was the sudden influx of female attention that he was receiving just when he didn't want it for once in his life, he backtracked at a predictably awkward timing, when the conversation had already been through rounds otherwise.

"Charelle convinced me to not spaghetti myself off a cliff by sleeping with me. You know how it goes."

Technically true.

"Yuko," he tried. "Asked me to." Make sure they could survive to rescue. Kill people, if he had to. He didn't know. Not like he'd been paying that much attention to her until it had been too late. Out of fear of actually having to have a conversation with her, heaven forbid.

"Find her sisters. The still living ones. Protect them and... tell them, I guess. Clear the air, for all the few seconds before they decide it was my fault and kill me in revenge." All this awkward body languages. Soft eyes and tugging at hair. Demetri picked at his pockets, positive they were probably still as clean as they'd been when he'd woken up.

[Sunnybunny]

"It's not you, it's... just find some for yourself, just in case you want to pass love notes."

If she wasn't finishing up her hair, she would have been tempted to facepalm, but it wasn't the end of the world. It was enough to know that they were all trying to think up a solution. Maybe even more people were, across the island. So far they'd collectively been useless.

Sakurako couldn't help but feel that failure as her very own, even she'd already known going in that she wasn't smart enough to solve the collar problem. But keeping that train of thought would just make her want to jump off something, and then Cherelle would have to sleep with her, and then the cycle would continue until Charelle-

Was that the life cycle, or its opposite?

"I think I should look for Yuka-chan and her sister too, so if I see them before you do I'll watch their backs and keep them off yours. Being a screwup doesn't make you a killer."

That, she felt with all her heart.

Her hands got a little less steady in her hair as she thought about the rest of their troupe. Zee had gone off to... Neverland? Elvis's place? One of those quirky landmarks, and thank goodness for that but everyone else...

"We're staying some houses down from here if you guys want more company. Don't be strangers, and stay safe."

Although she hadn't considered them at all before they'd walked in here, the idea of hearing their names on the announcements didn't sit well with her at all.

Finishing up her messily braided pigtails, Sakurako gathered up her things and put then in her bag. Adele had already opened the door to leave, and she was soon to follow but...

Before she left, she saddled up to Demetri and gave him a kiss on the cheek. It was the closest thing to comfort she could give, and for some odd reason she'd felt compelled to offer it.

"See you crazy kids later!"

((Minor godmodding approved by handler. Sakurako A. Jackson and Adele Jones continued in My Lucifer is Lonely))