For lastvoyages: Twenty-Seventh Vision [private video+spam]

[can_has_vodka]

(Backdated to Saturday)

 [private to Touko]
Miss Fukawa dear, this is your new Warden checking in on you. I noticed that troubling broadcast earlier and wanted to make certain you were all right.

[spam for pub]
[Arkady is now fussing around with several crockpots' worth of egg nog. She seems determined to fatten everyone up for winter.]

Comments

[syouko]

She isn't here. I would know it. That girl was always so loud, trying to break the rules, I'd have heard her whiny voice by now.

If you think you know me, why pick her to get at me? Why not tell me Byakuya-sama tried to set me up again?

[can_has_vodka]

You'll hear her whiny voice soon enough when she stops being that bear.

[She shakes her head.]

I didn't pick her. And I'm not here to manipulate her. I didn't tell you that anyone else was responsible because that would be a lie.

I won't lie to you, and I'm willing to prove it. Honestly. Ask me any question you want and I shall answer.

[syouko]

[Fine, Arkady. One question.]

...if this isn't another round, what am I really doing here?

[can_has_vodka]

Well, basically it is as I told you, but in your particular case there are things you need that I will try to help you with.

Let's start with the basics. You need a new life, which was taken from you far too young, and you need a chance to start over somewhere that isn't a horrid mess. You need to be able to complete your high school education and decide on college. You need to learn to defend yourself without anyone dying. It's my job to help you get these things.

[syouko]

[When she's taken away from everything that's supposed to matter to her - no career, no Byakuya-sama, not even a hope of this life just ending if she loses - Touko doesn't know what she wants. What she's being offered sounds like maybe enough, but the last part sounds false to her. It's not about her, not the one nobody knows about, when no one could ever connect them. The bear told Arkady, or someone above him, and now that she knows what side she's really on...

But Touko has to play this smart, and by playing dumb she's playing her smartest.]

If it's about the Ogre, you should know I didn't kill her. I didn't even want to, I only tried because I was so afraid she was going to get me first.

[can_has_vodka]

Let's not talk yet about what happened in that horrid place, unless you really want to. Right now my work is to prove to you that I can be trusted, and to help get you thinking about a future you actually want.

I'm assuming you would rather not be dumped back into that nasty spot you were in once you get out of here?

[syouko]

It isn't as if there's anything for me to go back to.

[On her second day at Hope's Peak, they'd all been given little videos of home to watch as inducements for someone to graduate. The things they most loved were torn apart, but the video cut away at the last second to suggest that there might still be hope- if one of them could graduate. She never liked thinking about what she had seen, and even if it hadn't been enough to get her to come up with a plan, nothing was going to be the same back home if she'd gotten out.]

But it couldn't be more obvious there's a trick here. Not with everything I've heard people do.