much clout converges

[Sunnybunny]

The steady beat of someone's heart had been replaced by something more... unnatural.

Too bright, too cheery, but this was still too funny to be hell. A dying dream? But the thought of death had always seemed so damn lonely and this wasn't quite that. Sakurako's eyes adjusted to the wrongness and she stood on her own two feet once more. Wiggled her toes, hopped up with a joy that nearly floored her. She felt better than she deserved.

She started to wonder about the island, it's remaining captives, but it didn't matter anymore. The living were for the living, and she was fucking dead.

Trapped, but then free.

Each machine called out to her it's artificial manner, lights and sounds and ticket offers, but she'd always been a bit of a weirdo. Maybe she'd dance later until her intact leg was ground down once more, but for now...

S K E E B A L L

(it hasn't occurred to her to look for anyone else, that she'd be so blessed with anyone's presence)

[Catche Jagger]

So, it turned out that being dead was not as bad as Thomas had feared, nor was it as good as he might have hoped. Turned out that when one died, their soul or consciousness ended up in some Chuck E. Cheese-type limbo. Cool.

Thomas had spent much of his time here thus far looking at screens playing out events on the island and actively avoiding anyone he actually might know. He might be dead but still felt anxiety over conversations that he knew ahead of time might be awkward, uncomfortable, which was just too perfect.

Of course, he couldn’t just hide from them forever, particularly when she finally showed up. Not just on the screens, but dead like he was, right in front of him, in the… well, probably not the flesh… whatever constituted their apparently physical forms.

This was certain to go badly, but he walked up to the skeeball machine and cleared his throat.

“So, uh… are you winning?” He asked.

It was a stupid joke, but that was the way with Sakurako, right? Plus, it was literally the only thing he could think of beyond blurting out some overwrought apology for how he’d left her.

[Sunnybunny]

"Oh, I'm just getting started!"

Indeed, Sakurako's arm was swung back to swing before she put three and five together. It wasn't like she hadn't heard his voice before, even after she'd killed him but that wasn't new. Just delusions. This was hell, until she turned around to her own dream of heaven.

Though she'd hardly been an angel, on Earth.

Of course she freaking cried, but she smiled too, tilting her head at him like it was an ordinary day here.

"Could hardly keep out of trouble at all with you gone."

There was no sign of it now though, shrapnel faded as if it never was. There were a few elephants here, but it was a big room, right?

Reaching for his hand was scary, but if she could touch him it would prove he wasn't repulsed or an apparition. She could take one or the other, but not both.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Upon the end of Lucas Diaz' journey through life, he found himself within an arcade bright, for the straightforward pathway to clout had been lost.

He wasn't sure to make of this. If he had known that this was what was waiting for him on the other side of that jump off the waterfall all those days ago, maybe he would have chosen differently. Maybe he would have flipped Dane the bird. Maybe Lucas would have done a flip himself.

Trying hard to ignore that every personal spiritual belief he had ever held was now immutably proven false, Lucas began to walk the soda stained carpets of purgatory and found himself in front of several Skeeball machines. There was something Lucas wasn't all that bad at. At least he'd probably be better at this than skipping rocks—but, just to be safe in case he did trip and fall again, Lucas scanned the area to see if anyone else was nearby.

And there, he saw her; Sakurako, the girl from the first day, and from the next-to-last. Yes, it had been her, one of the shapes at the bottom of the hill. There was no mistaking her for somebody else now. He could see clearly now that she was here, just a little ways away, not having noticed him yet.

But she's going to notice you eventually, Lucas.

Hopefully she wouldn't recognize him, though. He hadn't stuck around long enough to find out if she had seen, in the world of the living, that Lucas was responsible for instigating the Corpsefall. Perhaps she'd been too distracted by the body to notice the body responsible.

You can't take that chance.

By his side, Lucas' hand balled itself up into a fist. He closed his eyes; the harsh disco light continued to seep in through the flimsy skin of his eyelids, the distant chiming and chirping of arcade games filled his ears like birdsong. It smelled of pizza, faintly. Burnt. Lucas knew this space.

When he opened his eyes, who else did Lucas Diaz see but fucking Thomas, standing off to the side, trying to get Sakurako's attention. He'd been there too, that day. It was clicking in his head, now, that one of the other two shapes down there was probably Sean. The fourth, he could not remember, but he'd run into them soon enough. There would probably be others, too, but there wasn't any time to think—if they were both present, and they both had a corpse rolled at them, then they both deserved an apology.

Even if Thomas did stick a gun in Lucas' face.

He took a few steps toward the two of them (not a pair yet in his mind, just two separate coincidental beings) before he opened his mouth.

"Uhh, excuse mEEEE," Lucas said, his voice cracking under the pressure. He stopped himself for a moment, surprised that such a sound could still come from his post-pubescent throat, then continued.

"I think I might have rolled a corpse at y'all, the other day? And I figured I should probably uh, apologize for that?"

Sometimes in his life, Lucas found that the only way to address the elephant in the room was to shoot it. He now found himself hoping that the same was true in death.

[Catche Jagger]

He almost laughed when she didn’t recognize him at first. Now that would have been a good joke, for this all to turn out to be some cruel little Twilight Zone thing where he was allowed to know Sakurako, but she didn’t know Thomas.

Of course, then she turned to him and there were tears. He felt a few of his own come to his eyes.

“Yeah… I could see. There’s a couple screens, and stuff.” He did laugh there, feeling tongue tied as he tried to explain the obvious.

Her hand reached out and he for a moment he just wanted to embrace her again, just hold her close in the moment, but there were things to discuss… better to take it one step at a time.

Thomas didn’t hesitate to take her hand in his.

“I…”

And then Lucas showed up. Lucas Diaz, whom Thomas had threatened and pointed a gun at. He quickly tried to wipe away signs of his crying.

“Uh… hi Lucas… w-what?” He asked, rather caught off-guard by the sudden interruption as well as the apology for something that was miles away from Thomas’s mind.

[Sunnybunny]

They were holding hands again! Ah!

There were screens... he saw her... AAAAAAAAAAA-

"Minecraft!" Sakurako hardly missed a beat, happy for see Lucas and grateful for the excuse not to think about what her boyfriend might have seen. There was a softness to her expression then, as she realized this was really it for all of them. Still, she stuck her tongue out at the newcomer, as ever. She was dead, not... wait, there had to be another way to say that.

"Hell of a time for bowling, you think? But it's okay, it got Violet's dander up but you didn't hit any of us. No harm, no foul." Well, a little harm. Some foul. Speaking of apologies, though. "Sorry you got got though, I was rooting for ya."

Double speaking of, she gently squeezed Thomas's hand in reminder. Something something, he'd pointed a gun at Lucas's face. She'd be doing the same if they were all alive.

"I would ask how you are, but hell, 'm not quite sure how I am either. You play Skeeball?"

Her free hand gestured to the row of machines, with a flourish.

[MethodicalSlacker]

"You heard me," Lucas said, "I yote a corpse at y'all. Down from the temple. It was stinking up the place and we needed to get rid of it so I rolled it down the hill. I'm really sorry it hit you guys, I wasn't strong enough to get it to the cliff into the ocean."

His eyes shot downwards at some movement in the corner of his eye, then quickly away once he realized what was going on. Thomas and Sakurako were doing a thing with their hands. Interesting.

Well, nevermind. He didn't want to ask. If anything, he was happy for them. Happy for himself, too, since the person he wanted to run into later had one less person she could potentially be preoccupied with. Lucas liked where this was going.

Ask if she's part of the Clout Gang.

Lucas would, if he knew that Thomas kept the name going. Thomas wouldn't know that Lucas kept the name going with a different group afterward, either. How would he feel about that? Probably not the best, but also not the worst. On the one hand, Lucas had decided not to dwell on the past and moved on to a different group. On the other hand, he kind of caused a schism, a disturbance in the Clou—

Minecraft!

"That's me!" Lucas said, perking up. So she did remember who he was! That made Lucas feel a lot better. Thomas sort of disappeared, for the time being, the gun-in-face thing to be sorted out later on. File under "awkward conversations to play the Jurassic Park light gun game to," Secretary.

"Hey, I mean, I got got, but, Erika got shot—"

—he shot Thomas a look, dead in the eyes, for just a second—

"—even if I didn't kill her, I got a lot closer than I thought I would. Though, truth be told, if this I knew about this place I'd probably not have even tried."

The picture at the bottom of the hill was clear. Violet, Sean, Sakurako, and Thomas. He rolled Kyle at them. Violet killed Kyle. Maybe his fears weren't so unfounded after all. What happened that stopped her from coming up and ending him right then?

Another question for another time.

"Heck yeah I play skeeball," Lucas said with a nod, "I could go for some skeeball right now, I think. Skeeball sound good, Thomas? You look like you could use some skeeball."

[Catche Jagger]

The expression on Sakurako’s face right before her attention snapped to Lucas told him that she knew already that they had a couple big issues to address eventually: Thomas pressuring her into killing him, and the ensuing Ace business.

What an exciting afterlife they had to look forward to.

“I mean, yeah. It really wasn’t a big deal. Kind of popped tensions there for a second, but no one really got that hurt or anything.” Thomas shrugged as Lucas further explained his strange apology.

Then, Sakurako squeezed his hand, and he was reminded that he probably should give Lucas the apology he’d owed, even if Lucas’s self-congratulatory attitude about failing to kill Erika while dying in the exact way Thomas had thought he would since the moment the boy left the Infirmary was kind of off-putting.

“Hey… I’m uh… sorry too. About the whole threatening to kill you thing. I wasn’t in a great place in the moment and probably could have dealt with that whole thing better. So, I’m sorry for doing that.” He nodded slowly, deciding not to comment on his apparent feat of shooting (but not killing) Erika.

Very cool, Lucas. Good job.

Thomas sighed as Sakurako and Lucas started discussing skeeball. He’d hoped to get some of the deeper talk with Sakurako out of the way before they did anything else, but with Lucas here…

“Yeah, I’m down.” He replied. He and Sakurako were dead, so they had plenty of time to speak honestly with one another, right?

[Ohm]

"Damn! You two about to kiss and make up? Now I've seen everything!" Sean stepped forward towards the trio and offered them a smile.

Death has not been an exactly enlightening experience for him. It had taken him a while to get here in the first place, Justin hadn't been thorough in getting rid of him and with the durian no less.

It had left him in darkness with memories alone to keep him company. There were some pleasant ones for sure. Thomas and Saku alone had ensured that he had some, but there were so many unpleasant experiences and feeling left over. His thoughts spilled over to regrets and what if's, how he handled Zach and how it had spilled over to his friends.

Once he was fully here, Sean tried to keep up with events, but it was all so morose and seeing Saku the way she was and what happened with Tom... He couldn't. They deserved better than what happened to them.

A chucke E's though? There could be worse places to end up, he supposed. Like a Hooters, well, maybe for some. At least here they had games.

[Shiola]

"Diaz! I didn't think I'd get the chance to say this, but uhh - I fuckin' told you that would happen."

A smile spread across Ty's now scar-free face, as he stopped near the skeeball machines and surveyed the small group that had assembled. A few of them he didn't recognize well, but he guessed that they were part of Lucas' original Clout Gang. Or Cloud Gang, he wasn't sure which one it was supposed to be.

The way things are going for us, Cloud Gang seems to make more sense.

He shuffled awkwardly at the edge of the group, painfully aware of the reputation he might've continued to carry into this place, and the absence of Princess and Katelynne who were the only two other members of this group that really knew him as part of it. Briefly making eye contact with a few of them, he offered a halfhearted wave before turning back to Lucas.

"You didn't uhh, hear any of the things I said to your dead body, did ya? It was kinda mushy and embarrassing and I was counting on you being too dead to hear it."

[Sunnybunny]

Sakurako smiled in a way some unkind people would call vicious.

"Oh, so you capped her one? Good! That might save a life someday..."

Not theirs, of course. But someone's. Luckily, she wasn't fit, and no longer had to survive anything. She'd failed at Thomas's last wish and how could she regret it when he was within arm's reach and not hating her?

"We're skeeballing then! Take your places, start your engines."

She mouthed the words proud of you to Thomas, and was going to say more when Sean popped up as if he'd never been hurt at all. Just like she remembered exactly how it felt to shoot Tom in the head, she remembered the moment she'd seen Sean's dead body on the floor. By himself, blood pooling from the back of his head.

Odd and lingering sentiments be damned, she pulled Tomtom with her as she hugged Sean tightly, stifling a sob that came straight from her heart.

"Sorry, I just... rack us up?" To Lucas. "I..." To Thomas.

Just get so excited about skeeball?

"You deserved better than that."

That was for Sean, obviously. The new-newcomer got a wave, with a puzzled face and a crooked smile. Of course she was aware of what Ty had done, but that stone would remain uncasted. Judging was for the sinless, at least, judging in this case.

"It's mean to say I told you so. Didn't know you two knew each other but really, what do I know?"

[Kermit]

Michael's head exploded.

Now he was here. Leaning forwards with his elbows resting on the glass of a pinball machine.

He was laughing a little, and crying a little. Mostly crying.

He was so fucking tired. Of having to think. Of having to be.

There wasn't supposed to be an afterlife. There wasn't supposed to be a hell.

This was hell. He could tell, since he was here, and he wasn't the kind of person who was supposed to go to heaven.

He supposed he didn't deserve the relief of dying for good.

He wondered if he was still diabetic.

He wondered if Beryl was here. He hoped she wasn't. He knew he wouldn't be able to look the real her in the eye. She didn't deserve to have to deal with his bullshit.

He came from the land of shame; blood and guts were all he claimed.

It was a minor comfort that his mental state was still fucked beyond belief.

He hoped Arizona felt better now.


He had to stop thinking.

So he blankly stared through the glass, and into the blinding light of an LED. The conversation from the nearby skeeball congregation began to drown out his mind.

[Jilly]

A balled fist pounded Michael's back. Or, like, touched. Love tapped. You know what she meant.

"Whaddup, Mikey-boy?"

PIZZA GI-... ok screw it, she couldn't do this script again.

Teresa took a bite out of the greasy pizza pooling up in the middle of the garish paper plate and turning it turgid mess of blues and reds and God knows what other fucking colors haven't been invented yet. Not gonna lie, pizza kinda hit different now, though a lot did but that kinda went without saying.

She set the plate down and leaned against the offensively neon pinball machine next to Michael.

"You can't ditch me that easily," she winked at him and clicked her teeth. "But uh, yeah... why you looking so blue, My Guy? Don't'cha know it's a party?"

[Maraoone]

DJMax had been Yuka's favorite game at the start. The bright colors, loud noises appealed to a childlike part of her that still existed, surprisingly. She'd tired of that eventually, was playing Beatmania. It had a retro sort of appeal about it. She wondered when she would tire of that too. Of everything here.

The games were good at eclipsing thought of any kind. She wanted to see her sisters desperately, of course, but she hadn't seen them around. She couldn't say if they'd gone to some other sort of heaven, like she'd wished, or if they just hadn't shown up yet. She hadn't seen Beryl around, or Tristan, or any of the early deaths that allegedly mattered to her, but Sakurako showed up near immediately after her death. She missed Sakurako. She'd been hoping to talk to her, but she had company. She wanted her to herself. She'd have her time.

A familiarly skinny person was hunched over a nearby pinball stand, obscured by a familiarly small girl. Blood rushed through her head. The emotion was pointless now, but so was everything else. It was best not thought about. She still liked the anger, and she still wanted to indulge it.

Yuka had always idly wondered what would happen if she fired the salt gun at Michael. He had a frog-like aura about him, and frogs didn't like salt. The salt gun hadn't come with her to wherever, whatever this place was, so she had to make do with the salt shaker.

Some white flakes began to coat the blond head of hair.

"Maybe he just needs something to spice him up a little," she said in a monotone voice to Teresa. The joke made more sense in her head. Whatever.

[Melusine]

The letters on the fridge assembled themselves. It was quite annoying, to be honest. There were only the 26's regular letters and most words reused them.

L U C A S, the fridge said, or rather, spelled, H E Y

The ghost slash the alive slash the girl in the other dimension signed the message with a simple, O P H