towerofanimus | Hitori Kakurenbo

[Posts about performing the first part of the ritual happen here, as well as any spectators who have gotten themselves involved without a bear commenting on the proceedings.]

[Posts about running around turning off all the lights and counting to ten go here.]

[Posts about hiding/getting caught by bears/betraying other peoples' hiding spots go here. This is the main game post.]

Shion had been here long enough to know that been taken by red collared workers into an elevator never ended well. He had taken care of his bear. He was shaken from his recent death, and the fact the sun had not risen today. Neither that nor the fact he had came back from the dead made any sense. He was terrified but tried not to show it as he he cut open the bear and removed the stuffing. He did each step of the ritual as quickly as he could.

"For the first game Shion is going to be it. For the first game Shion is going to be it. For the first game Shion is going to be it," He dropped the bear into the water.

Edited 2012-02-29 18:09 (UTC)

Marceline hated this. Absolutely hated it. She'd just gotten used to having the nappy little bear around, she'd even named him after her old bear that her psycho ex had sold off. She didn't show attachment to anything easily, and so to know that she was going to have to destroy the bear she'd become so fond of (despite the fact that with it had come that 'surprise, you've got the plague!' notice) had her hands shaking as she performed the ritual.

She pretended not to notice how her voice mimicked her hands as she quietly said she was it.

Signless didn't like this. He wasn't really afraid of dying, but after the Midnight Game, he felt that just dealing with the game on its own terms was the best way to survive. He had done what he was told. Though he hadn't nurtured the bear, it felt odd to stab it, maybe because he had cut off the claw on the index finger of his left hand and placed it inside.

He decided, reluctantly, to find a comfortable hiding place to wait it out for the beginning of the game. Then once he decided what was really happening here, he would go out and do his best to protect as many people as possible.

"Is anyone else here?" he called out once the lights were all off. He could still see by the light of the television. "I'm the Signless. If anyone else is in this hivestem, I'll do what I can to protect you. I'm going to hide in the biggest respite block. If you need me, call out."

That done, he headed for the master bedroom closet.

There was something sickening about having to stab her bear when she returned to it - after all, having kept it with her since it arrived, she'd gotten a bit attached to it, wary as she was.

Is.

Still, she followed the instructions, whispering, "Okay, now Bernard is it." Giving it a gently pat on its head, she toed off her shoes and quickly left the elevator, padding through the rooms on silent feet before making it to Unit D. Glancing around her in the eerie light of the static television, she tip-toed through to the bedroom, shutting the door behind her before hiding under the bed, close to the balcony door. She can hear her heart pumping and wonders if maybe a passerby might too.

[ Link was terrified, as the bear found Zelda and herself.

There was no amount of words for the sheer terror on her face. But as the bear leaves, Link lets out a long sigh.

Turning to their partner, Link looks at Zelda and whispers frantically. ]

We must... we must move when we can, or--

[ They'll die. ]

Taiki and Sanshi ran into the kitchen, the cupboards down low seemed as good a place as any to hide. Sanshi disappeared into Taiki's shadow as he crawled into the small cupboard. He was scared and he knew this was going to be really bad.

He tried not to cry as he curled his knees up to his chest. A ghostly hand, Sanshi's came to hold his.

**

After he is spotted the pots fly around the cupboard and the ceiling starts dripping with water. Taiki is still hiding, terrified since the bear is still in the kitchen, he is feeling faintly sick, though not as badly as he has done before.

[There really was no reason for Aradia to even be here. She hadn't been given a bear but when she was invited to join in with the game, how could she possibly refuse?

When she was told to hide, she made her way to the nearest unit and settled behind the television. Perhaps not the best hiding spot but this was just a game, right?

Somehow she avoids detection the first couple of times a bear enters the room and simply has the erratic behaviour of the television to contend with.

Up until hour eight, that is. But that's a long way off just yet.]

[Suzaku is behind the couch, but he can see her behind the television, as well as the weird behavior of the television itself.

Hours pass with bears hunting through the room but finding neither of them. Finally when there are no bears in the room Suzaku speaks.] How are you keeping up?

[Aradia looks up and smiles. She'd vaguely noticed the human hiding in the same room as her but she'd been trying to lay low, especially with two hours of bears hunting for them]

I'm okay. This isn't like any game I'm used to but it's sort-of exciting, trying not to be found.

[Suzaku nodded at her, he guessed she perhaps had not been here for long, if she thought any their games were exciting] Just stay hidden, and be careful.

I'm not sure what I need to be careful of but don't worry. I'm sure this isn't as bad as the last game I played.

Romeo stuck with Molly when they ran into the apartment, after the last game they had been made to play Romeo knew this was going to be not much fun and probably very scary.

They ran into unit G and into the bedroom to hide under the bed.

John's first instinct, upon hearing something else come into the room, was to hide and curl under the corner of the bed; this is exactly what he did. Everything is just getting way too much, and by god, he just knows those goddamn bears are coming for him. He knows. When two other figures also slid into his hiding place, he was pretty close to screaming at them to GET OUT -- but then he realized they were humans, and humans he... sort of recognized. So John got himself out of the ball that he had put himself into; the light from the rest of the room caught on his glasses, so maybe he looked like a monster, but...

"W-who's there?"

Nineteen hours had taken it's toll, not to mention the deaths he had seen, the death he had caused. Hearing the screams, watching people he knew, had become friends with die gruesomely. It was a nightmare, and one that stretched on and on. By the nineteenth hour Suzaku was passed caring, his Geass was the only thing keeping him alive, activating every time he tried to crawl out from under the bed and just... end this.

His phone beeped in the nineteenth hour and he looked at it blearily, sleep deprivation had taken it's toll as well. He half expected another death, another final moment. Another moment where people he knew were torn apart in front of his eyes.

But to his surprise it was a message, telling him he had survived. Like he didn't know, like he wasn't hating himself for that very fact. He had survived again. And he had done it by betrayal.

He poured the sake in his mouth, such a strong taste after hours of eating and drinking nothing hit him hard but his lips wouldn't open. His eyes flashing red once as he tried to spit it out.

He was surviving this, like it or not. His limbs were stiff from lying under the bed but he began searching for his bear. It didn't take him long since he made a detour.

He had seen it on the video but he had to see for himself, in person. He walked into the master bedroom and there was Minato's body, and under him was a bear that Suzaku knew automatically was his. Hands trembling he pulled the lance out of Minato's body feeling sick. He tossed it aside and closed his eyes. He couldn't speak because he couldn't open his mouth. He lifted Minato's body carefully and laid it to the side.

He wasn't sure if he had been the one who had killed him, but the timing was just too close, the gap in his memory and then Minato being killed. He stared at the body and then closed his eyes, going back to the bear and spitting the sake onto it.

His voice was empty and hollow. "I win. I win. I win." He picked up the bear and took it back to elevator and burned it. He stared at the flames watching them consume the bear. It didn't feel like any kind of victory.

Francisca honestly couldn't remember the last time she'd been this bone-weary, almost unable to crawl out from the under the partially collapsed bed. She'd made it this far, she decided as she poured the sake into her mouth, resisting the urge to swallow and let the strong alcohol takes it's course through her body, to numb it's aches and pains. She stumbled out of the bedroom, making her way through the unit and into the hallway, glancing up and down the vast area while blearily trying to decide which way to go to start looking. Deciding to go back the way she'd come, she went into Unit B, thinking Bernard might have decided to hide in the kitchen.

Needless to say, she stumbled back out quickly when she saw the skinned corpse on the ground, knowing without a doubt it was Dave. Completely numbed, she took a deep breath through her nose and re-entered the kitchen, searching through the cupboards before turning back to the corpse, kneeling beside it. Tears leaking from her eyes, she gathered the body up and placed him on the table, not wanting him on the floor where someone might step on him.

Hands and feet covered in congealed blood, she didn't even bother to wipe them clean as she moved throughout the Unit, searching through the cupboards, under the beds, in the toilets, and so on, leaving bloody hand and footprints in her wake. Finding nothing, she moved onto the next unit, following the strong smell of blood into the bathroom.

Finding the blonde woman's disembowled body in the bathtub was... surprisingly easier to handle than Dave's skinned body. Perhaps because Francisca was familiar with disembowlment, moreso than skinning children.

Recognizing Bernard nestled in the woman's open chest cavity, Francisca's eyes became blank with fatigue, shakey legs stepping forward. She spat the sake over the bear, saying an internal apology to the woman for spraying her in the process, before saying quietly, "I won, I won, I won."

When she tried to pull the bear out, one of its limbs got caught between the corpse's ribs and Francisca reached down with both hands, easily snapping the ribs apart like twigs, the same dead expression on her face as she lifted the bloodied bear out with her equally red hands. Before leaving, she took a moment to run her fingers down the woman's face, closing her staring eyes.

Reaching the elevator, Francisca dropped the bear into the fire, slumping down to her knees beside the warm blaze and watching the toy eventually vanish into ashes, eyes closing as she let her head drop back against the cold metal wall.

What was that game? [He was actually interested, and it would fill in time.]

[Heck, Aradia's never opposed to anything that fills in time]

It was called Sgrub. It led to the destruction of my world and the near extinction of our species, but we won. We created the human world. There was a bit of a problem when it came to claiming our prize but there wasn't much we could have done about that.

After being found a second time and almost dying, Vriska had moved under the bed; that had been some hours ago. As time had ticked down and the silence fell she'd grown bold, had crawled out from under the bed to relax on top of it. It was a display of certain cockiness, but right now she didn't care. She'd spent hours crammed in a bathtub and then a closet and all that had happened was that she'd almost drowned in blood and been faced with death. Hers or someone else's, and that hadn't been a hard choice for her to make.

When her cell phone indicated the message, she all but leapt from the bed, revived despite the long hours of nothingness having tired her. This was it. This was the last stretch and then she would have won. And nothing spurred her on better than a glimpse of victory.

She took the sake into her mouth, barely aware of the way it burned. True, it was stronger than anything she'd drunk before but this was her ticket to winning and she was not going to mess it up. That meant finding her bear, wherever it may be.

After an initial sweep of unit B she'd seen several bears with corpses to match but no sign of her own. Which was when it hit her - perhaps hers lay with the ones she had sacrificed. That narrowed her search a little - she knew it was a bedroom, it was just a case of finding which one. She began making her way through the units, quickly but methodically checking each bed of each bedroom and barely flinching at the increasing number of corpses she saw. Mostly she was just annoyed that none of the bears she saw was hers.

Eventually she reached Unit G and the second she peeked under the bed in the master bedroom, she knew. There, surrounded by corpses, lay a bear she knew to be hers, rather fittingly crawling with spiders. She dragged it from under the bed and spat the sake at it, her expression triumphant as she gloated, "I won, I won, I won."

She then headed for the elevator, bear held before her as some warped form of trophy before she cast it into the flames and stood, watching it burn and allowing the thrill of the win to spread through her.

Romeo blinked, at first scared a bear had got there before them. But when he spoke Romeo realised it was someone from the tower.

"It's Romeo and Molly, can we hide here?" They were running out of time.

Sgrub? [Signless hadn't mentioned his world being destroyed by a game. Though Suzaku guessed this troll might not be from the same world as his roommates.] You created a human world?

[She nods]

Of course, then something from their session crossed into ours and everything started going wrong but we made them.

Thirteen hours into the 'game', Ψiioniic came crashing wildly into the large respite block. "SS?" he panted, blue and red sparks crackling all around him as he panicked. "Oh god, SS, please be in here, please still be okay..."

The bear in the dining room hadn't seen him as he'd slipped past it, but he didn't know what might draw their attention, whether his voice would bring it in here to find him. He didn't think a second encounter would end well.

Hitori Kakurenbo

ELEVATOR

APARTMENT COMPLEX PART ONE

APARTMENT COMPLEX PART TWO

Re: ELEVATOR

Re: ELEVATOR

Unit I

Unit C Bedroom 3

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Unit C, kitchen

Unit A, living room

hour five ish

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Under the bed party!

Re: Under the bed party!

Let's end this!

19th Hour

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Victory

Re: Under the bed party!

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Unit I