The Others [IC/PG-16/Accepting]

[Skaia 578]

Carmen was glad at least that Brian hadn't scolded her for wasting their time in what ended up being a fruitless endeavor. The girl then wasn't quite sure what he meant by having six other ways to leave, though only felt her anxiety grow and build into actual physical recoil as he attempted to break the wall with the chair. Startled by his brazenness to find an exit Carmen had immediately started looking every which way above, paranoid about whatever security staff might've been watching (or would watch) what had just happened and wondering how in trouble she was going to get. She could barely afford living in her apartment as was, but having to deal with being sued by some office building on top of that for property damage would certainly put her into financial ruin. Her nerves were only set off even more as Brian then swept off a desk and asked something of her. 

The girl looked between him and the ceiling several times, dumbfounded by the prospect of having to actually go up there and do...something, to find their way out. Carmen had been rooted in place at first, shaking at the idea of having to traverse the internal area of this office by herself. She had seen movies, she knew that nothing good ever came about from crawling up in spaces like that. Of course the more she thought about the more her other options didn't seem really good either. Either Brian was angry with her and she was stuck in the room with an angry Brian, or he decided to try it himself and left her here by herself in the middle of an infinitely looping horror room. So, meekly stepping forward the girl awkwardly hoisted herself onto the desk. It was stable enough to hold her weight though her footing made it feel like she was afraid it was going to collapse at any moment. 

Looking at the hole in the ceiling, the girl gulped nervously before finally managing to reach up to the ceiling and grab onto the ledge. It was a struggle. The amount of upper body strength needed and the amount that she had available were not in good proportion with each other and it was more her floundering and throwing herself upward until finally enough of her body was up in the ceiling that she could pull herself through the roof. 

"Wha-!" The girl let out a surprised yelp as suddenly her upward movement turned to downward movement, and inner working of the ceiling were replaced with the same office room. Flopping onto the floor the girl let out an, "owowow..." as her face buried into the office carpet, wallowing in her moment of failure. Finally, picking herself back up the girl let out a dejected sigh, looking to the side as she mumbled, "sorry...I'll just uh..."

And without really explaining herself the girl went to go back to where Brian had been, opting to make herself useful by cleaning up the mess that had been on the floor and not wanting to leave any mess for the eventual return of people in here who could be angry with it. Grabbing the notebooks, the girl opened them up, flipping through the pages by habit to see that all there had been was several types of innocuous lists such as, "things that are yellow," or "things that are soft," and yet another picture of the devil boss from behind the poster. While the first time she had seen it it had elicited a chuckle from her, the repeat failures on her end only made it feel like the devil was also her own boss silently judging her. Shutting the notebook closed and placing it back on the desk, the girl went to wander about the room aimlessly, checking the other desks in the process.

The desk at the top right of the room was where she wandered to first. While it also had a computer, that wasn't on, it provided a good deal of information to the girl that she didn't realize she had been missing. Such as a humidity checker, stating the room was a bit dry and eliciting a need to get water from Carmen. A thermometer that said it was 65 degrees inside, making her wonder if she were perhaps dressed appropriately for such weather. Two calendars, one a desk calendar and one hung up by geometric shapes, letting Carmen know the exact date in two different ways. And a clock that read 7PM, making her all the more cognizant of the time and growing antsy that they would be trapped here all night. There was also two bottles of hand sanitizer, one mostly empty, but Carmen thought it taboo to use another person's hand sanitizer without permission. 

Meandering about eventually to the exact opposite end of the room to the last desk in the room, the girl's eye immediately focused on the corkboard that had several cat pictures on it. She wondered if their dog owning neighbor and them were friends or bitter rivals. Stacks upon stacks of sticky notes littered the room as well, making her wonder what kind of amount of note taking this man had to do, though it seemed he was also quite busy learning or innovating with the several coding and programming books that littered his desk. Seeing something more colorful on the desk as well, the girl looked over to try and get a closer look, only to immediately back off  with a blush on her face. Seeing a figure of a bikini clad girl from an anime Carmen, wondering what tonight's episode would be like in her own anime she was watching, couldn't help but mutter, "...how brave...." 

[radio414 907]

Was it disappointing to see Carmen disappear through the ceiling and immediately reappear coming back through one of the doors to the room? Yes, obviously, but Brian tried not to let it show. He’d thought it was a good idea, and now he was less enthused about his other idea about breaking down the wall. He was running out of good ideas in general, actually, which sucked because he was the one who suggested thinking about the whole thing like an escape room in the first place, and he hated admitting he was wrong. At the same time, Carmen had found a clock that was still ticking away. According to that, it hadn’t been long at all since they’d first entered the room, but Brian could still feel his mortality creeping up on him. The office had water, so there was that necessity, but soon he would require food, and there wasn’t much in the way of leftover congratulatory pizza parties (provided instead of a cash bonus, of course) that he could see.

He sighed. Well, there was one idea left. They were dealing with something supernatural, and they did bring a box of things with them that worked on supernatural things. In his defense, they’d known the room was cursed or whatever from the moment Carmen went through the door, he just thought there was an actual ghost to find like last time. He hopped down from the desk as Carmen went to go pick up all the shit he’d kicked off of it, and grabbed a handful of seals.

The first thing Brian sealed was a door. The far one, the one that had started this mess in the first place when Carmen had gone through it. He stuck one on the other door across the way for good measure too. When he opened the door and stepped through, though, he found nothing had changed. He still immediately popped through to the other door with no time in between.

Brian made a noise like “Hm,” and paced between the door and the box. Nothing else in the room seemed out of the ordinary. It all seemed perfectly mundane. Too mundane, perhaps, but that was just offices in general. He’d been in those. The only thing out of place really, was, well, the people in it: Carmen and himself. It wasn’t their office. He took one of the seals and examined it under one of the humming office lights. Now that he thought about it, the seals were supposed to put ghosts back where they belonged, and right now, they were kind of like that. Brian stuck the seal on his chest.

The next best idea was ripping one in half as part of the solution to the stupidest riddle imaginable (put the halves back together, two halves make a whole, fall out through the hole).

He turned to Carmen and looked her up and down. He couldn’t put one on her chest without running the risk of touching something he wasn’t supposed to so he looked for somewhere more unassuming. He settled on her forehead and closed in.

Carmen leapt back. “Wait wait wait, what are you doing?” she said.

“I dunno, what’s it look like?” Brian said. “Just trying stuff. I’ve got one on and it hasn’t killed me yet. so you shouldn't have to worry about anything bad happening.”

[Skaia 578]

As Brian put on the seal on her forehead, something Carmen couldn't help but feel a bit dissatisfied about but didn't dare any raise objections about having the object placed on her, she followed after the man. The two of them walked through the door and found that...nothing had changed. They came out the other end as before and the room itself seemed to have not changed at all. The girl let out a defeated sigh as it seems that their options to what to do were running low. With her head hung low the girl trotted her way over to a nearby desk, sitting down on it and placing her face against the desk for a moment. The girl looked at the photo of the hound Sherlock, wondering what the great detective mutt would do in this situation. Was it possible that dogs could sniff out ghosts? She would certainly like it if that were the case but she had no intention of owning or caring for a dog to bring on a mission, and the thought of a dog getting the job done faster than her also filled her with a sense of shame.

"Do you think Shiki would hire you instead?" But not so much shame that the girl wouldn't gladly give her position to the dog. 

Trying to make her self feel less pathetic, though, Carmen looked down and saw that there was a drawer to the desk. She had searched everything else thus far but she hadn't actually looked inside one of these yet. Of course she didn't really feel comfortable looking through someone else's personal belongings and she was certain that she was going to get in trouble for doing so, more so then if she had gotten the floor wet from the water cooler, but being at her wits end already the girl steeled her resolve and reached down. With her hand shaking, wondering if some kind of jack in the box surprise was going to pop out at her, and maybe maim her, the girl gulped down before finally opening the desk drawer. Inside she had found...mundane papers and office supplies. Letting out a sigh of relief, the girl looked down and saw something else that caught her attention.

Reaching down and grabbing some of the candy, the girl couldn't deny the temptation. After all, she was going a bit stir crazy from being confined in a singular room that wasn't her own bedroom for so long. And the candy was right there. The girl looked around, knowing that there was only one other person in this room but still feeling the need to look both ways to make sure she wasn't being watched. Well, she was probably being watched by the security cameras and the ghost was always able to judge her for her actions as well. However, the allure of the sweet proved too much for the girl and she ended up grabbing one. 

"Mmm..." The girl let out a satisfied noise as she ate the candy and, ignoring her paranoia about being watched had gone for a second. After getting that, though, she figured that there was still someone still in the room fully capable of judging her actions. Looking over to Brian sheepishly the girl asked, "do uh...do you want some?" 

He sighed. "If you want to just take a break go ahead I'll keep figuring out what to do."

Her eyes widened at the generosity the man was providing as she eagerly nodded saying, "oh, uh sure. I'll do just that." Leaving the thinking to him now the girl attempted to turn the computer on several times once more but found no luck. The girl frowned before turning to the modern personal computer; her phone. It turned on without issue and, while she had no idea what password for the wifi this building had, she was able to connect to the internet via data easily enough. The girl pondered how that worked but didn't seem to care to think much beyond it as she browsed through her phone on her break. 

Edited March 13 by Skaia

[radio414 907]

Carmen was still flailing around. She stammered a few times through a couple different beginnings of sentences before she finally managed, “B-b-but it’s still only ‘yet!’ Who knows what could happen? Maybe you stick a broken one on me and it catches fire or something!”

Brian took another step forward. “Well, if it catches fire, there's a water cooler over there,” he said. “I’ll even say a prayer so it’s holy water or whatever. Put the seal on, Carmen.”

Her eyes were still as big as dinner plates, but Carmen relented. “Well, okay…” she said. “But let me put one on myself. You’re looking sorta…” She seemed to realize she was about to say something impolite and wisely decided not to say anything.

It was something Brian could ignore. He relaxed a bit -- though only a bit -- went back to the box of seals, lifted the whole thing up, and carried it back to Carmen. “Take your pick,” he said.

Carmen hesitated again. She reached into the box, then took her hand back out as though she was somehow choosing for her life instead of picking one out of identical pieces of paper. She went back and forth a few times like this, eyes darting back and forth before she finally snatched up a seal and stuck it to her arm, bracing with her eyes closed like either she or the seal was going to explode.

No explosions came. Not in the physical sense, anyway. But Brian had had enough of this. He grabbed a seal himself. “Grow up, Carmen,” he said. “God, you were fine handling these things yesterday. I even felt okay letting you take care of yourself for half the night. It’s the same fucking box. They didn’t suddenly become a different sort of magic bullshit.”

But before Brian could slap the seal on Carmen’s forehead, her eyes snapped back open. “Ahh!” she screamed. “Assault! Assault!” She ran through one of the doors and came back in through the other one again, still running. Brian walked after her, but Carmen grabbed the garbage can and started throwing garbage at him. When she ran out of garbage, she threw the whole can at him too, though it was a weak throw that barely even reached him.

“Hey, Carmen,” Brian said, “did you ever see the movie They Live? John Carpenter? Nineteen Eighty-Eight? It’s known for two things. Thing the first: the phrase ‘I’m here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I’m all out of bubble gum.’ Rowdy Roddy Piper came up with that line. Absolute legend. Thing the second: In the middle of the movie, Roddy and Keith David get into a ten-minute fight over whether or not Keith is going to put on some magic sunglasses. It’s stupid, both people know it’s stupid, but they fight on anyway. I’m going to stick this seal on your forehead, Carmen, and so help me Christ, I don’t think you're going to be able to stop me.”

Carmen waffled, looking like she was going to say something, but Brian stayed firm, and when it looked like she realized that, her face went entirely expressionless, and she lunged at him.

“Fucking knew it,” Brian said even though he didn’t. He dug in his heels, grabbed Carmen’s wrists, and pushed back.

[Skaia 578]

It didn't take long for Carmen to realize that her phone was a poor distraction to her environment. There wasn't anything particularly going on at this hour for one, and for another she was also reminded that the less she paid attention to her surroundings the worse it got. After all, she knew what to be afraid of if she could see the danger. She had no idea what to be afraid of if she was looking elsewhere or had her eyes closed, and that was all the more frightening. Putting her phone down the girl looked up and asked, "s-so uh...have you um...found anything?"

He sighed, annoyed. "No, nothing. Maybe there's nothing to find..." he picked up the trash can and looked under it and shook his head.

"Ughhhh," the girl whined as she placed her chin on the table, defeated. Looking at the dog picture she grumbled, "we're both just Watsons..." The girl made her joke and complaint to herself and the dog picture, but then she thought of something. Why did she make that joke? It was because the dog was named Sherlock, of course, but how did she know that? Looking at the dog, squinting and leaning forward closer she was positive that there was something that told her its name until she thought back. Remembering that there was a name tag on the dog, she looked and found no such thing on the dog anymore. "Eh? Huh?" There were two possibilities here. One, Carmen had made the whole thing up and just assumed based on the dog picture. This could not have been the case though as Carmen had always believed her own irrationally paranoid mind to be correct when it came to such inconsistencies. Which lead to only one other option. 

"A-aaaaaaaahhhhh!" The girl shouted as she immediately back away, the chair rolling away from the desk as she shoved herself away from it. 

Brian turned towards her. "Can you be quiet I'm trying to figure this out."

"B-b-but I think it's haunted!" She emphatically pointed at the dog picture.

Brian made his way over and looked, then looked at Carmen. "Are you sure you're alright? Maybe you should, I don't know, take a nap or something."

"Eh?" A mortified look crossed her face at the thought, shaking her head violently to reject the idea. "Taking a nap here?! No no no no, I don't want to close my eyes in a haunted building that'd be the worst! And," the girl gave Brian a side eye, nervously taking a step back and shaking her head. "...I definitely can't sleep here..." Her last mission made her well aware of what kind of man she was dealing with. 

"You might as well, not like you're doing anything else." He gestured around, "and obviously I'm not going anywhere."

His insistence only proved to her more and more that falling asleep in such a place would be the end of her, in a sense. Shaking her head violently still, the girl made her way over to the seal box and, in an attempt to be useful and do something else. Slapping the seal on the picture of the dog, nothing seemed to happen. 

Brian rolled his eyes and wandered off, "whatever."

The girl gulped, knowing that she had just failed to do anything useful but continued to start looking around for anything else in the room that would be haunted. 

[radio414 907]

The thing that wasn’t Carmen (unless Carmen was even more of a weirdo than Brian had estimated) didn’t offer much resistance as Brian pushed into her center of mass. Oh, she struggled as he grabbed her wrists, sure, but one solid push sent Carmen’s legs buckling and she collapsed to the floor. She actually offered less resistance than Brian had expected, and he toppled over her, landing on his stomach by the box of seals. Carmen was quicker to get up than he was, flying to on top of his back to keep him down, though she was light enough that Brian could still stand up with only a bit of effort.

Not that that stopped the Carmen thing from thrashing at his back or throttling at his neck or any other sort of move that a child might do when throwing a tantrum. But she wasn’t a child, and Brian knew that. There was no reason to just stand there and take it. Instead, he fell backward on top of her, crushing Carmen against the ground.

Brian popped back up and wheeled around, glaring at “Carmen” as she struggled to get back up herself. It wasn’t something he was about to let happen. He snatched another seal out of the box and fell again, this time on top of her. Carmen grabbed wherever she could, but Brian maintained the pin and held the seal up.

It seized Brian’s wrists. He could tell the thing was desperate now. But it wasn’t even close to the strongest ghost Brian had wrestled with in even the last forty-eight hours, and he kept his hand moving forward, sticking the Carmen right in the forehead, just as he said he would.

Carmen burst into flames. They didn’t hurt even though Brian had been right on top of her, but they sure consumed ghost Carmen right quick, leaving nothing behind. “Fucking dork,” Brian said. “Stupid tricks, can’t put up a fight, can’t even burn right.” Nothing else about the room changed, except that he was alone in it. Part of Brian hoped the Real Carmen was okay, wherever she ended up, but he wouldn’t admit that to himself. Even so, got up, grabbed the box of seals, and went to the door. Surely it would work this time.

[Skaia 578]

With her first failure finished, Carmen frantically searched the room for anything that seemed as off as Sherlock's picture did. Her first instinct was to check the clock in the room, as that was something that required the least amount of digging through to find. Looking at her phone and looking at the clock, the girl checked several more times before she could definitively say that they were different times being displayed. Gulping as she found yet another discrepancy between what she figured to be reality, the girl froze in place before suddenly moving into a frenzy. Looking under the poster where she had originally seen the drawing of the boss she noticed that there was no longer anything there. "Gone..." the girl muttered. Rushing then to the notebook she had found earlier, she flipped through it only to realize that the picture she was looking for was nowhere to be found again. 

"G-gone...gone gone gone!" Looking to Brian with a pathetic look on her face the girl whimpered, "this place is really haunted."

"Well duh that's what we're here for what are you freaking out about now?" He got closer. "You having some sort of episode or something?"

"This! Th-this whole room is - ahhh, everything's all different in here! No wait  maybe..." The girl trailed off as she started to think about what was going on. The collar and pictures both had just vanished. Paling at what that could mean the girl said, "maybe we'll just vanish if we stay in here for too long..." looking as if everything was doomed, the girl looked towards the door like she wanted to make a break for it but gave up before trying.

"Are you kidding me? Nothing is different, it's the same damn room isn't that the whole problem? Did you not get any sleep and now you're hallucinating?"

"I'm not hallucinating!" The girl emphatically yelled, before moving away from him. She knew what was real and wouldn't doubt her memory when it came to this. She knew what was originally here and what no longer was. Though, the clock didn't vanish it was just different. Could it mean that everything around her was just different and made to look the same... Everything? The girl thought about it more and more as her mind raced with everything that had happened and could happen, feeling that her life was growing ever more and more in danger. Calming herself from simply hysterical, the girl's voice shook tremendously as she tried to test something. "M-maybe you're right...maybe I just...need to calm down and like, eat something...I-I could r-really use the, ugh, McDonalds from last night..."

"Or maybe you just need to sleep so I can figure this out without you shouting nonsense at me."

The response caused the girl to freeze in place. She figured she was seconds away from being stabbed by some kind of ghost or demon or djinn and that there was only two options now. She, of course, always wanted to run away from the danger if she could. She would just book it out of the building and never return. But she was trapped. She couldn't run anywhere, no matter how fast or how far she moved it would always lead back to here. So there was only one other option. Her hand reached up to the seal and then in an instant, pounced. 

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" The girl hysterically shouted as she jumped "Brian" trying to force the seal onto the man's body. He put up his hands to fight back and force her away, but she only felt more correct in her guess and more feral in her attack as the man's strength wasn't nearly enough to keep her at bay. This was not the person who ripped the flashlight from her hands so easily. This was not the man who would just brush past something that was obviously wrong with what she said. This was not the man that told her to actually fight the ghosts instead of just bury her head in a table. This was probably a ghost. Or demon. Or djinn. All the same the girl shouted, "diiiiiiiiiiiiiie!" in a panicked frenzy as she finally placed the seal on the man's body. In an instant both the body and seal burst into flames, leaving nothing remaining when it was over. 

The girl stared at the place where her foe just was, hyperventilating and processing that she indeed had just won against the haunt. "I-I I did it...It's...gone?" Slowing her breathing the girl felt immense relief only to be filled with immense dread as she realized that she still had no idea what actually happened to Brian and whether this was the only ghost or not waiting to shank her. Hastily putting on a seal on herself the girl ran out the door to see if anything would change this time. 

Exiting into the same room as before, Carmen immediately saw someone at the opposite end of the room. Another look of relief appeared as she shouted, "B-Brian!?" As she was happy to see that her partner was in fact alive, what had just happened was still fresh in her mind and thus panic set in once again. "Aaa-aah!" The girl shouted as she took a very sloppy fighting stance, hastily backing up and tripping over her own poor footing into the room she had just come from. However, instead of ending up in a new room she had found herself in a hall. The hall that she had seen at the very start of this whole debacle. Unfortunately she could only let out an, "ow, ow, ow," as she tried to pick herself back up.  

[LordCowCow 840]

The duo would find that they were back in a plain room with their plain partner. Whatever entity had existed in this place seemed to be gone now and they were free to leave.

In fact after they got their bearings they would both get sent a text message from Shiki telling them to come outside when they were done.

Once they did they would find Shiki in the driver's seat of the van. Staring, as much as they could with the paper over their face, straight ahead. They would notice that despite looking at their side profile they still could not make out any of Shiki's features behind the paper.

They wouldn't say anything at all and simply waited until the two of them entered the vehicle. At which point Shiki would state. "We ARE Shiki." The way they said this made it seem like they were trying to reassure them that they, in fact, were the person that they knew. The implication that Shiki understood what had happened was clear though they did not elaborate further.

In fact they went silent unless spoken to directly, and even when spoken to depending on what was said, and simply sat there with their hands on the wheel looking straight ahead.

The duo would also notice that everything in the van seemed normal except that there was a large pile, shaped like a pyramid, of still wrapped McDonald's cheeseburgers sitting on a counter.

[radio414 907]

Brian didn’t do anything to the new Carmen that appeared in front of him -- she just fell over on her own. There was a part of him that wondered if he was supposed to test this new person in front of him, like, get her to say something that only the real Carmen would know or whatever, but two things stopped him. The first was he didn’t want to get too paranoid. A password just set the point of failure back a bit. Who was to say what someone could and couldn’t figure out? And if he went down that road, well, then he’d just be back where he started. The second reason, though, and the more important one in his eyes, was there was no way something trying to copy Carmen could ever be as dopey as the real thing. The fake Carmen had tried, but it had to give up the ghost eventually.

His phone buzzed. Brian’s first reaction to the news was, “Holy shit, we spent how long trapped in there?” But he didn’t want to think about it, so he just let the expression hang in the air while he read the notification. “Yeah, okay, we’re done.” He grabbed the box of seals and a flashlight in one hand and offered the other hand out to Carmen. Unless she picked herself up, Brian dragged her along out of the building.

It was relieving to see Shiki, if only because it meant he didn’t have to drive this time, especially this late at night. Becoming aware of the time made Brian’s brain realize how tired it was supposed to be, even with a sleep schedule as weird as his was. That inner paranoia bubbled up again in a “How could he be sure anything was real anymore?” sort of way, but Shiki seemed to know exactly what Brian was thinking. “We ARE Shiki,” they said.

In fairness, Brian thought, nothing could be as weird as Shiki was for the same reason nothing would ever be able to replicate Carmen. But he didn’t let that get in the way of a good snark. “Well, you’re welcome, I guess,” Brian said. “Had to deal with a worse version of Carmen that I think was about to eat me, but the seals are still working, so I guess that’s good. Do we have to go apologize to this ghost too? Oh thank god, you got McDonald’s.”

Not that he was a particular fan of hamburgers -- there was a reason he took Carmen to tacos the night they’d met -- but just as he had only just now realized how tired he was, the missing hours had not negated his growing hunger. He snatched the top burger in the stack and unwrapped it messily. He grimaced after one bite. “Get them without pickles next time,” Brian said, but he kept eating.

[Skaia 578]

It took Carmen a moment to realize that she hadn't just looped back into the previous room. Only when Brian mentioned the time did she look at her own phone again. She had used it as evidence to figure out that she was in some kind of fake room but she didn't even realize how long the whole thing had gone on for. It was at this moment that Brian started taking a step towards her and the girl's instinctive response was to back away, though on the floor she could only hope to shuffle her position without moving very far. As the man reached down and grabbed for her hand, the girl's terror that the monster was coming for her again was soon abated as she realized he was just dragging her through the building. With the man's forceful nature pushing the both of them forward the girl let out a sigh of relief, knowing that if he were a fake he would've asked anything about her well being or need to take a break first. 

Wordlessly following along, the girl's silence was only broken with a small, "geh," in surprise as she saw Shiki. As it turned out her night wasn't over yet, though that was clear enough from how the last mission she and Brian had been on ended. As Shiki introduced themselves, Carmen's eyes widened as she pointed to herself saying loudly, "I- I'm Carmen!" She looked back and forth between Shiki and Brian as if too say, "you have to believe me," before her attention turned to the burgers. 

The girl's face lit up with excitement at the sight of the fast food, only to then drop and blink several times. She was positive she had just mentioned McDonalds not a moment ago...the girl looked back towards the driver's seat, before looking back to the burgers. Oh well, it was free food. The girl's hunger was enough to at least keep her paranoia from getting in the way, as she grabbed a burger and began to eat. After a brief period of choking, having eaten her first burger at an alarming speed, the girl looked back to the driver's seat and said, "u-um...thanks...." After a moment longer the girl then asked, "do you uh, think it was a ghost or demon?" To the both of them. 

[LordCowCow 840]

“Get them without pickles next time,”

"We will make note of that." Shiki said. "Do you also have a hatred for pickled food, Carmen?" Shiki asked. "We still do not know of your preferences so it may take some time for us to get it correct."

Shiki started up the vehicle and began to very slowly drive away. They didn't look back at them even as they asked questions but replied just the same.

"do you uh, think it was a ghost or demon?"

"It is difficult to say with certainty." Shiki said after a while. "We do not believe it is a 'ghost'. The entire building was under the effects of this entity. If it were a 'demon' you would have had a much harder time. They are powerful physical creatures. I do not believe you would have returned unscathed if that were the case." The way Shiki spoke the words gave emphasis to them but it was not clear why.

"We believe that this entity was not anything physical nor was it something that ever was physical. It would appear to have only existed as an entity when it took over the building you were in. Whatever categorization of entity it was you were able to dispatch it quite well. We believe that we were correct in having you work together." Shiki was silent for some time again as they drove through the city.

"Has your Relationship Values risen yet? I believe that they should have after experiencing two events together."

[radio414 907]

Brian was in the middle of peeling off the pickles on his second burger, considering between throwing them in the sink or yanking open the door and throwing them onto the open road, when Carmen asked her question. Was whatever was in that building a ghost or a demon? It wasn’t any sort of ghost that Brian had heard of, so the answer was obviously the latter. Besides, it sure seemed like the whole building had been possessed, which sure seemed like something a demon would do. Once he was satisfied his burger was pickle-free, he opened his mouth to respond and set the record-

“If it were a demon, you would have had a much harder time.”

…and thankfully he was in a position to eat some of his burger instead of his words. “That’s what I was going to say,” Brian said in between mouthfuls. Thankfully, Shiki kept talking before anyone had time to interrogate that.

Not that the follow-up question was any better, though. What the fuck was a “Relationship Value?” “What the fuck is a Relationship Value?” Brian said, still chewing. His focus shifted between Shiki and Carmen, trying to determine any further clues as to what was going on. “Like, have I gotten to know Carmen better? Shiki, until like ten minutes ago, I was dealing with a fake Carmen, and she with, well, I don’t know if Carmen was dealing with a fake me or not, but I assume she was. You think I know Carmen any better because I had to wrestle a demon version of her to the ground tonight?”

He sized the real Carmen up. “It was even weaker than you are,” he said. Having said that, and looking at Carmen more closely. If she had been stuck in that room with a demon or whatever it was, she did manage to get out of it all by herself. She’d even managed to get out at about the same time Brian had, like, yeah, he’d spent a lot of time going through some really stupid potential solutions that went nowhere, but he hadn’t taken that long, had he? And like he’d told the fake Carmen, hell, like he'd told Shiki late last night, she’d been almost okay when they were dealing with the school. Two times in a row reduced the chances of a fluke significantly.

It was some measure of respect. Some. It still had to be couched in, you know, the rest of her whole deal, though, and he wasn't about to admit anything out loud anyway. “I don’t know,” Brian said. “I don’t hate her, I guess. Somehow, despite watching whatever that was in that building dance around in her body.”

[Skaia 578]

"Eh? I- I see..." Carmen trailed off, now certain that she never wanted to meet a demon if she could help it. Of course, the thought of what the building was didn't really sit well with her either. A ghost haunting a building was simple enough to understand, it came from a dead person so all she had to do was avoid places where people died or try not to do specific things to anger it. A cursed object? Sure she didn't know where those things came from but if she saw some grotesque looking severed monkey hand lying around she just had to be sure to never speak any of her desires around it and leave it be. A demon? Simple, avoid Hell. But buildings could just become possessed for no particular reason. The girl shuddered at the thought that at any moment her very living space could turn into an infinite corridor of which she'd never be able to reach the bathroom and then kill her with some apparition of her disapproving mother. 

The girl was snapped out of the thought spiral as Shiki asked their question. Relationship value? Event? "Eh..." The girl was certain that every dialogue choice that she had picked with Brian so far only served to lower his opinion of her. And what they were doing was more akin to a main story, after all it wasn't like they went out shopping together or bumped into each other on the side of the road while it was raining and desperately needed to share an umbrella or anything like that. Unless this was just the common route. Did Shiki plan on bringing more men to go aid the two of them? The mere thought nearly sent Carmen into shock, she was already terrible at dealing with strangers and men more especially and having all three of them pay any amount of attention to her and force a spotlight on her made her feel as if she would just wither and die immediately. She already had a hard enough time dealing with Brian but she wasn't sure if she could deal with someone aggressively nice either. In fact she was sure they'd be just as forceful but try to spin it as "for her own good" while also making her go down roller coasters that could derail and fly off into the ground at any time or give her food that she didn't ask for - well Shiki just did and she liked that so perhaps that wouldn't be too bad - but the sheer radiance of a person like that would only serve to drive her further into her home base. And then some kind of smug rich know it all would only remind her of her poor status and general inability to accomplish anything, making her wonder if perhaps entering society at all had ever been a mistake.

Or maybe Shiki was planning the opposite? Two other girls would certainly be more welcome. After all that would get the attention from Brian off her and they would be able to do more in her place. Besides she was always better at talking with other girls after all. Though if one of them were the sporty athletic type she knew she'd only be reminded of her past in school and see the social divide between the two of them even more. And those kinds of girls were always looking down on others that weren't her type so Carmen knew that if such a woman were around she'd have to tip toe around every line of dialogue she tossed out lest she be socially murdered for all to see. But if it were a cute and innocent type of girl perhaps it'd be easier to get along with them. Though she was a gloomy and utterly creepy creature so she was certain that she'd call the police on herself just for being in that kind of girl's presence. Actually, was she even better at talking to females?

“I don’t know,” Brian said. “I don’t hate her, I guess. Somehow, despite watching whatever that was in that building dance around in her body.”

Brian speaking up, using a rather disturbing turn of phrase, had once more pulled out of her spiral as she thought on his words. The girl didn't realize she had gotten to the point of not being hated, unless his loathing of her somehow transcended the word hate and he just couldn't figure out how to put it to words. As for her opinion of him.

 

---

"Eh?" A mortified look crossed her face at the thought, shaking her head violently to reject the idea. "Taking a nap here?! No no no no, I don't want to close my eyes in a haunted building that'd be the worst! And," the girl gave Brian a side eye, nervously taking a step back and shaking her head. "...I definitely can't sleep here..." Her last mission made her well aware of what kind of man she was dealing with. 

---

As the man reached down and grabbed for her hand, the girl's terror that the monster was coming for her again was soon abated as she realized he was just dragging her through the building. With the man's forceful nature pushing the both of them forward the girl let out a sigh of relief, knowing that if he were a fake he would've asked anything about her well being or need to take a break first. 

---

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Diiiiiiiiiiiiiie!"

---

Sweat on her brow, wide eyed yet not looking directly at either of them she said, "I um...I think...we're um, maybe near our next rank...ehehe"

Edited April 17 by Skaia

[LordCowCow 840]

Shiki listened silently as they drove while Brian and Carmen answered. Only after they both had finished speaking did they say anything. First they answered Brian's own question.

"Relationship Values are generally hidden numbers that reflect how much party members, npcs, or love interests like you. These values can be altered by various means included but not limited to choices made, events, gift giving, and actions during combat."

Once more Shiki grew silent for a few moments as they took a turn. "We are glad to know that the value is raising. Bonds between people is sure to help when more difficult entities begin to appear." More silence, another turn. "Be careful not to raise it too high and trigger the confession event." Another brief silence and another turn. "Unless that is your goal."

The next silence was longer and, as Shiki took another turn, the duo might realize something.

They had been driving in circles this entire time. If asked why Shiki would simply reply, "we were not asked to go anywhere in specific."

---

Eventually they would arrive at whatever destination they wanted and, before the first of them got out, Shiki would tell them that they would not be messaging tomorrow, "unless a world ending calamity falls on us" and to make sure to have a nice day.

[radio414 907]

“Next rank.” God, why was Carmen going along with this? Maybe it had to do with the stuff Shiki was talking about, but that sounded like some sort of video game and not whatever the hell his life had become since accepting this job. “Confession Event?” More like “Confusion Event.” It was a dumb enough joke to get Brian to smirk as he finished up the rest of his second burger.

Brian licked his fingers and wiped them off with a burger napkin. “I already told you my goal, Shiki,” he said. “I’m not here to make friends or whatever, I’m here because…” Was this too vulnerable to say out loud? Well, it was just Carmen, right? “I’m here because you saved me and I’m repaying that. And because you can’t really go back from experiences like that anyway. I’m not going to think about what the alternatives are.”

He let that simmer there in the van for as long as it was comfortable to do so, which wasn’t long. Brian almost considered grabbing another burger, but he knew that if he did that he’d guarantee some sort of burger dream when he did eventually collapse into bed that night. Now that he thought about it, though, it was taking a long while for Shiki to get back to either of their houses. He’d had to drive to Carmen’s to pick her up first, so maybe Shiki was taking some weird “shortcut” to his house and driving as slow as Shiki normally drove, but Marinton wasn’t that big. “Hey, Shiki,” Brian eventually said, “Where are you taking us?”

“We were not asked to go anywhere in specific.”

Brian nearly threw a burger at the driver but settled for spiking it on the ground. “Fucking hell. I would like to sleep in my own bed tonight if that’s alright with you.” He was sure Carmen wanted to too, but they weren’t there yet -- “Relationship Levels” or whatever -- for him to say that out loud.

He became aware of just what time it was. Like, he’d checked before because of the time fuckery, but now the exhaustion was really hitting Brian. When Shiki finally started driving everyone home, it still felt like forever before he was allowed to sleep.

He awoke the next day later than he normally did, which wasn’t great for his gym schedule, but he forced himself at least to be moving, which was almost the same thing. After some stretches, Brian decided to walk to the nearest coffee shop, whereupon he bought a medium latte, a scone, and however much table space a medium latte and a scone would get him for his laptop. Shiki told them they wouldn’t be contacted. Probably. And as long as that “probably” hung in the air, he intended to get some goddamn work done.