so if you wash your hands of where you've been until you flood the second floor

[blindluck]

WHO: Nagito, OTA
WHAT: Nagito runs into another of those mist hallucinations. He likes this one a lot less.
WHERE: the walkways near the mangroves, where the mist is thickest
WHEN: sometime before the sleepover
WARNINGS potential for mania, general upsetting Nagito behavior, but it's not a guarantee

[Nagito hasn't done much searching here, after the first incident. The thing is, he suspects most people are avoiding the area for similar reasons. That means that if something is going to be missed, it could very well be in amongst the mangroves. Even when it's acting normal, the mist makes it even easier to conceal things. So he's out here again. He's tied a boat to the edge of the walkway, but he's not in it yet. He's picking his way carefully along the walkways, occasionally prodding at the water with a stick long enough to reach the bottom when he thinks something might be worth dredging up. He's doing that, and he's focusing very hard on doing that, and he's not looking at the girl who dogs his steps. Strawberry blond hair and ice blue eyes, with a perfectly tailored outfit of blacks and reds with just enough white to make everything really pop. She's drifting out over the water, so she has to be a hallucination. He isn't looking at her, except he doesn't dare let her entirely out of his sight, either. He swears he can hear her laughing.

His foot knocks up against a rock. He hardly has to think about it; he's reaching down and throwing it at the girl before he really knows he's moved. The rock sails through her head. But she's still there. He spits his words like he thinks she might be able to hear him somehow.]

You're even more pointless like this. Hateful and hopeless.

[He wishes she'd go away.]

Comments

[urtitan]

[Frieda is wandering out here again, too, though not for as proactive a reason as Nagito. She's once again mulling over her regrets, all the opportunities she let slip through her fingers. Will retracing her steps help her? With regards to matters back home, she's mostly accepted that with the state her mind was in, bound by her ancestor's will, she couldn't have acted much differently... but here, in the afterlife, she should have taken the chance to spend more time with the others, the ones who are gone, while she still had it.

She sees the apparition first, then the flying stone, then Nagito, after hearing his voice. This fog swallows everything. Stepping up to him, but keeping her eyes on the "ghost", she asks:]

Is that her?

[The girl who cast your world into despair? The bored genius? It's hard to believe. She looks so... normal, like any other teenage girl (well, of course her style isn't like anything Frieda has seen before, but she's simply a human being, a young person seemingly like any other). Then again, she once again reminds herself, she also still looked normal while housing a godlike power inside her. Appearances can be all too deceiving.]

[blindluck]

[Nagito jolts when Frieda speaks--normally, he's more aware of his surroundings than that, but even now his eyes seem to need to be dragged away from the apparition as he turns to look at Frieda. He doesn't need to ask for any clarifications about her question; he never does, when the question is about Enoshima Junko.]

Yes. Even an illusion of her is obnoxious, as you can see.

[There's that raw hatred in his voice. It's not as bad as it was during the first Crossing, but it's reminiscent.]

[urtitan]

She's lingering here... do you think she's haunting you?

[That's the wrong question, though, isn't it? Of course she's haunting him. The question is--]

Do you think our minds call forth these ghosts from the fog? Or do you think it's them who choose to appear to us?

[So far, she doesn't feel like this afterlife reflects their minds back at them outside of the memories they give up for the Crossing, so she keeps wondering if there mightn't be an overlap of sorts happening. Going by the responses to Nagito's survey a while ago, not all of the ghosts the others have seen are dead in their world, but perhaps the living might appear when they think of them, keeping a connection alive across realms.]

[blindluck]

[Nagito is always pale, but he gets paler at her words.] It must be something in us. They're hallucinations, after all.

[Not real. That's not really Junko. Nagito wraps his arms around himself and doesn't let her out of his sight even so.]

[urtitan]

[She accepts his stance without argument, but it doesn't seem like it makes her happy.]

It would be nice if we got to see more of our loved ones and less of people who are... troublesome.

[Likewise looking at Junko, she wonders what made her so unsympathetic to her fellow people that she considered their suffering her entertainment. Despite having inherited memories of people not unlike her, despots and tyrants, and having felt their disregard and disdain for all living things as if it were her own, she was never able to fully grasp the root of what made them that way.]

[blindluck]

We can look on the bright side; nobody would follow her into the water.

[He says that, but he knows--she could convince someone. But hallucinations don't talk.]

[urtitan]

[She laughs, just a little, but turns serious again soon enough.]

Has she been on your mind?

[Has he, too, been restlessly ruminating about things he can't change anymore?]

[blindluck]

Who would want to think about her? [It's an immediate disgust reaction, the same as spitting out something poisonously bitter. But, when he thinks about it for even another moment...] ...But I have to admit, I had been asking after the potential for negative hallucinations for a reason.

[He'd been concerned about just the sort of situation he's now in.]

[urtitan]

[She followed his conversations with the others, reading without contributing, and noticed his usual investigative approach... now, seeing just how upset he is to have Junko haunting him (and who could blame him?), it makes sense to her]

Were you anticipating that she might appear to you, then? You must've been hoping to avoid it.

[What can she even say to comfort him? Only the measliest consolation comes to mind:]

Now that it's come to pass, at least the anticipation is over.

[blindluck]

[Nagito hums in agreement.] I had a warning, rather than simply being surprised by her awful face. [He bends down and throws another rock at her. It's at least a little satisfying, even if it's not as satisfying as seeing the rock break her nose would be.]

[urtitan]

What did you come out here to do? Can I lend you a hand? Once you leave, she should stay behind in the mist.

[At least to her knowledge, none of them has seen any spectres near the village centre.]

[blindluck]

I thought it would be good if someone thoroughly explored this area. I think most of us are avoiding it, for... [Nagito's gaze drags, inevitably, back to her.] Obvious reasons.

[urtitan]

[She hesitates - not out of fear of what she, too, might see if they venture deeper into the fog, but moreso because she feels rather resigned regarding their chances of uncovering anything that might help them understand this place and its mysteries.]

Do you think we can find an explanation for what brings forth the apparitions here? Come to think, has anyone in the group experienced anything like this in the other locations?

[hasapoint]

[Need is out looking into the mist and standing very still, not blinking or breathing or shifting her weight. Not as still as she'd like; those tentacled creatures always put an eye above the surface to examine prospective prey before attacking, so she's got to check splashes, and most of them are innocuous.

She hears Nagito's voice. He's someone else who bears watching, so she breaks vigil yet again to do so. Eventually:]

I take it that's someone who'd need broken ribs et cetera?

[Her voice is sardonic, no more so than usual.]

[blindluck]

[Nagito jumps a little, caught off-guard and more than distracted enough to show it. But his answer is near immediate. The hatred is so thick in his tone it's nearly a visible thing.]

She'd deserve worse than that.

[hasapoint]

[Metaphorically, Need turns to a new page in 'figuring out what's up with this kid'. Or to an old page without much in it; she'd been preoccupied during the first Crossing, so had only noted a couple things about Nagito's breakdown.]

All right. Sell me on it.

[Why someone who masks as heavily as he does would hate someone so openly is worth interest.]

[blindluck]

[He doesn't want to talk to her, but he can't stop himself from doing it, either. Every word is bitter on his tongue.]

I've told you about talents before. Hers was despair. She masterminded the Tragedy. A worthless, hopeless, useless girl.

[Maybe it's a surprise the mastermind behind a near-apocalypse was a teenage girl, but only if you don't know teenage girls.]

[hasapoint]

[If he's looking, Nagito could see that Need reacts to 'worthless', just a twitch of her expression before it smooths back out. She is withholding judgement. Kid's world really seems to be one in which people don't have to study or research for very long, let alone go into development etc, to accomplish major things. Maybe that's why he devalues the idea.]

I see. So it isn't just the un-talented who are worthless to you.

[She's not sure how much to ask or say. Nagito's expression and body language are very different from that point in the last Crossing but there's a hectic quality that reminds her of it. He's not as in control of himself as he likes to be.]

[blindluck]

[Nagito wraps his arms around himself, though he doesn't seem quite aware he's doing it.] Pond scum is worth more than her. Talentless people aren't worthless, they're just meant to be used by the talented to increase the amount of hope in the world. Someone whose talent is eliminating hope? That's-- She's the worst.

[hasapoint]

[Need lets her lip curl, just for a moment. Listening to the way Nagito talks about peoples' value... she can accept it referring to an enemy, but with everyday people? Then there are several things she considers saying.

> And you could have stopped her.

> You were close, weren't you?

> How long have you known her?

> You're afraid of her.

Ultimately she is too cautious. She's picked up that Nagito doesn't actually want to be talking. There are a lot of unknowns with him, and while she doesn't think she could make an enemy of him as profoundly here as she could have in the last Crossing, it could still happen.]

Is she the one that set you off in that first Crossing, in the dark?

[blindluck]

[Nagito's gaze drifts to Junko again, inevitably. Not quite looking directly at her, not quite willing to let her out of his sight. He forces himself to look at Need again.]

It's too bad I couldn't forget that entire incident. [Which means yes, she was the cause, and also that he wasn't the one who brought her memory there.] At least this one doesn't talk.

[hasapoint]

[It must have been what's his name's memory. Idol boy. Mako-something.]

Small blessings. [She's folded her arms over her chest, vaguely mirroring, though it's really quite a different gesture from how he's hugging himself.] Do you wish we'd all forget it?

[blindluck]

Not because I want to hide what I am. [He doesn't talk about Junko, but that's not why. (Or at least it's not consciously why.)] Nobody should have to listen to her, even for a little while.

[hasapoint]

[Now why would that be? It's not that she'd say things that would be enraging or sickening, she thinks, that wouldn't make him react this strongly. This is some personal involvement. Something she's done to him? someone he cares about? Need raises her eyebrows, still steady and calm.]

Silver-tongued?

[blindluck]

Unfortunately. She's--she was--very good at analyzing... Everything. People included. [But it's past tense. She's dead, and she's not here. She can't do anything to anyone here. He has to remember that.]