camppetoskey | Week 6

WEEK 6

Last week had been pretty brutal, leaving scars on everyone in camp. A murder driven by paranoia-induced visions, committed by and against two of the youngest members of camp, has left everyone reeling. If this is the way murders will go, what's to happen next?

The humidity is dropping off some, but the heat is staying strong. The campers will need to find new ways to beat the heat. A delivery is due this week though, so maybe the camp's deliveryman will have some ice cream?

The WiiU and current games are all here, but there are no new games. Sorry everyone, you're stuck with what you have. Usagi and Boa are now gone from the Mii menu, but that strange faceless Mii is still there, staring as always. His grin seems to have grown though, and the Mii menu music has changed as well. The other Miis seem scared of the grinny Mii, and they are staying far away from him. Now the only selectable Mii is grin-face. How weird.

The counselors have said they need 'more time' to end this, but just how much time do they need? Can the campers really stall long enough for the counselors to finish their plan? And how does that knowledge sit with them, knowing that each delayed week means less campers will make it in the end?

14 CAMPERS REMAIN.

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[having just come out of her own hallucinations, Mitsuru knows exactly what he's talking about]

See who?

[not the lake creatures. definitely not the lake creatures. something or someone else, that wasn't actually in this camp]

Look at me, Utsugi. Try to focus on me.

Everyone.

[He falls silent.

There's one last wrenching surge of everything -- pain and frustration and longing and a million other things -- before his emotions settle again to a lower simmer. His eyes have closed while he tries to listen to her, and there are still tears, little hitches of breath like he's forgotten how that works, but eventually he reaches up to rub at them. When he opens his eyes again he is looking at her, acknowledging her words at least.

Some of the desperate tension is leaching slowly out of his muscles, moving the urge to act further and further away. He doesn't do anything in the wake of it.]

[everyone]

[she doesn't know what that means. but his frustration is so loud it rings like a gong in her heart, and she has to take in a deep, shaky breath to steel herself. her first instinct is to get lost in that emotion, to embrace the despair and fear and pain as she had when her father died. but that wouldn't help either of them]

[so she attempts to keep herself calm. she focuses on him, and on pushing aside her own fears. maybe this will help]

Whatever you're seeing is likely not there. Your mind is playing tricks on you. Please. . . focus.

[before he accidentally drowns himself]

... I know.

[His voice shakes, almost to pieces, but he manages to get the words out.

And in some way, part of him does know -- because he knows just as surely as anything that all the people by him are gone, all of them forever and he has nothing left of them but the cape wrapped around his shoulders: his family, and every last face he knew before he was fifteen, some already slipping through cracks that look exactly like the coral that lives in this lake. Lived in this lake. It doesn't live where he does. Some more recent ones, Soma and the others.

They can see him, he thinks, even if they're not real because he can see them -- they're looking at him from somewhere in that way that they do when they leave, and it's like a hook in his heart dragging him forward even when something more logical is telling him he can't follow. He hasn't done enough. He can't.

Lenka reaches up and clenches his hands into fists in his cape and holds on, like Mitsuru is telling him to. It helps that her presence is there to even things out, to remind him that it's not just him being dragged along.]

Even if they're not here. It's okay. [that's not the word he means in the least, because everything is hilariously not okay, but considering the state of the camp it is indeed the average of how they all are] I just want to see them.

[she's keeping her hands on his shoulders too, in an attempt to ground him, to give him a tether to reality. but there's something about what he says next-- I just want to see them-- that wrenches her heart]

[she's been fortunate. her hallucination had been of an enemy. but now. . . she can't help but wonder if the still fresh wound of Minato's death will start to play tricks on her mind as well]

I understand.

[there's someone she'd like to see, too. just. . . not like this]

We should find a place to sit down.

... The campfire.

[Lenka remembers, vaguely, being there and then being here with Mitsuru holding on to him, and a blur of faces and coral and tears in between. He can feel her reactions and, more clearly, her understanding -- she does understand, in some way, somehow -- and it makes him relax a little further, pliable to moving where they need to go.

He needs to... pull himself together. Somehow. He can't take Mitsuru with him down this rabbit hole. Carefully, he puts the simpler things he needs to do down in front of himself in his mind's eye where hopefully they'll ward off the visions. They don't go away. But they can go.]

All right.

[her grip on him loosens, but she doesn't move her hand entirely. she's going to guide him towards the campfire after all. . . to make sure he makes it there safely, before any other hallucinations can kick in]

. . . I'll keep you company. If there's anything I can get for you, please let me know.

[Lenka lets himself be guided, there's a faint frustration that the state of the world is still so thin and slippery and hard to grasp that he can't do anything else; but if he turns his head there's always something waiting in the corner of his vision, has been for the last week and change. More than the frustration, there's the rising exhaustion and finally -- belatedly -- a small wash of fear at the bottom of it all.

He curls up by the fire; he hasn't been in the lake but there's the occasional shudder through his frame, involuntary, a gentler version of the moments a couple of weeks ago after Talcott had died. It's not cold here, not in the least, but the air sits like the presences around them that don't exist.]

No, just...

[Keep being here, he wants to say, isn't sure how to say -- because she could disappear, or the visions could disappear. He's pretty sure which one will, because they're still linked. There's still that. He just needs... some moments to reorient.]

[he doesn't finish that thought, but Mitsuru seems to understand anyway. Lenka curls up by the fire, and she takes a seat next to him, legs and arms folded as though she's closing herself off. not from Lenka himself, but. . . from his bundle of negative emotions, raw as they are, and the way they vibrate through her entire body like a swarm of bees]

As you wish.

[They stay there for a long time, it feels like, and at some point Lenka closes his eyes and sets his face down against his knees. Not quite burying himself, because the warmth and light is soothing in its own way, but trying to cut himself off in turn. From the world, and what it wants to show him, and from himself and Mitsuru.

He tries to reach for the composure and discipline he's practiced, lately at Fenrir and also a little before that. The ability to pull himself together no matter what else is falling apart; or at least to appear that way. It doesn't close off their link, exactly, but it helps to steady it a little.]

... Sorry. I almost -- almost forgot about the link. I didn't mean to.

[Didn't mean to drag her along, or worry her, perhaps; or just to force her to share any part of what he just shared because he'd gotten caught completely off-guard.]

Week 6

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insert PacRim joke here tbh

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