petoskeymods | DEADLAND

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deadland

DEADLAND

[Some time after your character dies, they will wake up in their bunk in camp. But something is wrong here, so very wrong.

Venture outside, and you will see that you're still in camp, but it's trapped in a foggy twilight. Time doesn't seem to pass, and it's quiet. Too quiet. No animals, no breeze, nothing.

The only sign of anything living is in the trees, where dozens and dozens of ghostly figures roam. Sometimes they might come into camp, but you'll probably have to go out to meet them if you want to talk to them. They all seem to be watching camp, but are shy and might flicker away if they're approached.

Finally, in the chapel in the lodge, there is a shadowy figure. It looks like a preteen, perhaps? Maybe 11 or 12 or so. But that's about all you can get from it at a glance.

But you're here now, and there are things to do. Where will you start?]

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[ ... why do people always go straight for his hair? He really ought to grow taller so maybe everyone will be less tempted. But it's hard to grow taller when you're dead and you'll probably stay dead forever and ever and ever.

Boa doesn't have any energy to fend that ruffling off. ]

Who would? It's... I just have to deal with it now. Make the best out of it for the others... even if they don't think I will.

[ Richie sure wouldn't believe him even if he got his zombie body to say he's helping them... ]

[Well as long as Boa isn't telling him to knock it off, he's getting ruffled as it's oddly comforting to do it. Reminds Lance of playing around with his siblings. Mercifully he does stop when boa brings up the fall out. It'd been difficult to miss that at the trial.]

They felt betrayed, Boa. It's scary to think you know someone only to find out that you don't know them as well as you think you do. [A beat.] You still want them to forgive you though, huh.

They won't.

[ There is bitter certainty in his voice. It's not that he doesn't understand why they felt betrayed. They thought he could be something that he's not and in the end they were all lying to themselves about that. It was inevitable, maybe. ]

But that doesn't mean I'll let anything happen to them.

[ He doesn't have that kind of power and he knows it, but yet... ]

They might with time.

[He looks up towards the sky which is as always foggy and gloomy here.]

Usually it's forgiving yourself that takes the longest. It's good that you're not focusing on that.

I killed someone. I killed their friend. Usagi may have forgiven me because she's like that [ a total fool ] but they... they won't.

[ They're better people than he is, in the common definition of 'good'. Boa has started to think that's not a bad thing about them. ]

... you're still mad at yourself.

Usagi forgave you, huh.

[There's another wry smile at that; it sounds just like her to do. In some ways that makes it easier, in others ways it doesn't. It strips away all rights he feels he had to be pissed off on her behalf, pissed off that she had her goddamn head sawed off because this kid felt he had to choke her to death to live.

On the other hand, he knows he doesn't have much room for taking the moral high ground on the issue and what happened to Boa -- what he did to Boa because Red made him do it, is still so fresh in his mind that guilt drains so much of the color out of his own feelings. He sighs, leaning forward and resting his chin on his knees.]

Usagi was my friend too, you know. I'm still talking to you.

[The last comment just goes untouched.]

She apologized to me. That's... that's what she did when she woke up. She apologized to me for scaring me.

[ Boa's been doing pretty well in the 'staying calm' department, but his voice raises significantly at that last portion. He's still SO bewildered by Usagi that it borders on despair. ]

She shouldn't be forgiving me either. I chose to kill her. That's just... what I did.

[ pause. ]

And you don't need to talk to me if you don't forgive me either.

[Lance looks over at him wearily. Boa's tone keeps rising into borderline hysterics and in any other context, this might have been funny. Kid throwing a tantrum about being accepted and forgiven by his murder victim. But in his current mood, Lance doesn't see comedy; he sees a brat who needs to be told to be quiet.

Without warning, Lance moves to put Boa in a headlock. He;s getting a noogie.]

Shut up, Mowgli.

Hey--!!

[ Talk about mixed messages?! Telling him to shut up and grabbing him like this seem to suggest anger, but then there's the nickname and Lance told him nicknames are for friends... though to be fair, Lance sure had been using it before they made something like friends. In this context it still feels significant. ]

What are you doing?

[ Boa is struggling to get free! Do you let him go? ]

[The noogie comes to a stop, but he still has Boa in that headlock for now.]

Teaching.

[Plain and simple.]

Look. For someone who's all like :don't forgive me" or whatever, you sure seem to want it a lot anyway.

[But he does let go after that.]

[ That makes Boa's protest die in his mouth and he goes silent for a bit. Lance has hit a nail right on the head that Boa didn't even want to admit existed in the first place. But after that trial... how could he not think about it? In the end, it's why he died. Because he couldn't stand the thought of two people hating him any more than they were already bound to hate him. ]

... it was nice. Being friends with them. I was always told that friends make you weak and I guess I'm dead to prove that point. But it was nice.

I just don't want to wish for anything unrealistic.

Sometimes it does feel a little like that, yeah.

[No point in lying about that. There's no saying how his own trial could have ended if he'd been a little more focused on self preservation no matter what means instead of wondering exactly how others would feel if they'd executed the wrong person for his mistakes. How the other paladins would feel if they knew what extremes he'd gone to in order to survive. Whether or not Blue would still accept him as a paladin. Whether his family would still be proud of him.

Perhaps he'd still have been executed for Kanji's murder even if he had it in him to be more of a convincing liar and a scumbag for the greater good, but perhaps he would still be alive. And perhaps carrying around dark secrets and hating the person he became even more than he already does is worth the price of living.

But he shakes his head.]

But I think more than that, friends make you stronger. They believe in you when you can't believe in yourself. They make you want to become better than you are.

[A beat. His voice wavers noticeably.]

A-at least... that's how I feel about my friends.

[ Boa looks at Lance in silence for a moment. It's a surprisingly comprehensive explanation of the term even for Boa's standards. ]

... so that's what it's meant to be? There's always been people who made me want to overcome my limits, but I've never seen them as friends before.

[ Mitsuru... Mitsuru is probably the one who makes him feel all of what Lance described, which is a strange and fluttery realization. Mitsuru lets him fail and then still helps him back up. It's because he wants to help him that Boa managed to face death with even a shred of dignity.

Eddie and Richie are... they make him see that there is something he can never hope to reach. Something purer, even if not necessarily better. Boa's not sure what that means. ]

[Lance nods, relaxing as he looks Boa in the eye.]

Mm, there are friends who are more like shallow acquaintances and maybe won't be there for you. But real friends don't give up on you. Just trust me on this one, the fact that Eddie and Richie got so mad at you is a way better sign than if they'd just ignored you completely.

They're better people than I am by far.

[ Boa just lets that hang in the air for a moment, unsure how to proceed with what he wants to say. ]

I don't really want to be like them? Even if I could, I mean. But maybe it's better if they don't become like me either. Maybe Saturday showed them that, too.

[ And it's sad, but... perhaps it is really for the best. If they stay the kind and fun people Boa met them as, if they don't forgive a murderer. Boa smiles a little, sadly. ]

I might never see them again anyway, not for real.

You don't really know that for sure.

[But that's dangerously close to a platitude, and Lance isn't oblivious to the fact that this is nothing more than a vague hope.]

But if you ask me, what we all saw on Saturday was a kid who made a dumb mistake because he panicked. Because this place makes you think all sorts of crazy things you'd never think if you were left to your own devices.

I'm not saying that this makes you less responsible for Usagi's murder. You'll carry that weight with you for however long we have left in this place.

But I'm saying that it could have easily been Eddie, Richie or any of the others in your shoes. You're not less than them, you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was there, too.

[ Boa didn't really mean the murder, in reality. The murder is just the tip of an iceberg in personality differences that are utterly irreconcilable yet somehow didn't play a role when it came to making friends. But is there a use to correcting that? He figures not. The rest of his self-doubt can remain locked up forever. ]

I think you still fall under actual self defense though.

[ That difference between him and the other two may easily apply to him and Lance as well, though Boa isn't as utterly convinced of it in that case. ]

[Lance goes quiet for a moment, considering this. He's thought about this for a long while, then repressed it to hell and back because it just wasn't pertinent to their immediate survival as it were, but the days are long when you don't need to sleep and there aren't any distractions at nigh.]

I wanted him to back off, He just had so much crazy power behind those punches and he came at me like a berserker. I didn't have to pull a sword on him. It was just... instinct, I guess. To be honest I was relieved at first that the fight was over.

[He runs his fingers through . it's this hair, sighing.]

I didn't tell anyone this at the trial because I was too embarrassed to say it, but... this whole thing might've been avoided if I hadn't been stupid and assumed the guy was a spy for the hunters. I thought that's what he was doing at the RV park.

[He sinks lower, pulling his legs in tight to his chest.]

But then again, he seemed to think I shot that bullet at him with my bayard. The whole thing was just so... avoidable.

Mhm. Avoidable is a good word for what happened to me, too.

[ He may have made the conscious choice to kill Usagi even when there was urgency to act like that at all, but in the end he hadn't sought her out for killing. He wouldn't have sought her out for killing. There was no reason to at all. ]

Anyone really. The only one who had a bright idea at all was Lillith, to be honest.

I wonder about that. Pastor Dan was probably closest to Sol, since he was always weird about his Lord stuff.

[Not that they can do anything about it now, but in retrospect Lance wonders if their overall nonchalance over the guy's murder was a terrible mistake.]

I doubt someone murdering him the first week here did any of us any favors with Sol's fear levels.

[ Boa pauses, caught off guard by this reasoning. Dan and Sol... here's one thing he's never thought about. Dan had just become a footnote in the general swamp of awful that is camp. ]

We'd have died if she hadn't. Unless someone else had done something 'avoidable', of course, but it didn't look like anyone was going to.

Has anyone ever spoken to Sol about Dan though?

No, it's just something I've wondered. I don't want to bring it up now just in case it is a sore spot.

Sol's been.. a little temperamental.

Shouldn't it be fine as long as it's not Lillith bringing it up...? We might gain information from it and it's not like any of us harmed Dan. Even if we didn't mind what happened to him.

[That gets an honest shrug from Lance.]

I'm really not sure what Sol can and can't tolerate honestly. I woke up to Sol screaming about how much they hate all of us... and Sol hasn't been seen since.

Sol's not like Red or Stan where you can ask more or less whatever question you want and fish for potentially useful things. Stickpoking Sol is... I don't know. I just don't think it's worth asking the guy to elaborate on Creepy Dan. Come to think of it though, I"m not sure I've seen Creepy Dan around....

[ Boa frowns at that description of Sol. Why can't they ever have it easy with someone for once? ]

Right, where is he...? Is Sol only retaining souls of the campers and just letting any others go or eating them instantly...?

DEADLAND

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