day 005; SH442K; voice

[sharktrash]

Heeey scumbags!

[ As usual, the scratchy voice coming out of the comms is just too loud for comfort, and will probably prompt anyone listening to turn their volume down. As usual, he sounds a little too cheerful for their dire circumstances. ]

Anyone else getting shot at? Kidnapped? C'mon, I'm about to die from boredom here.

If this was really some kinda simulated Battle Royale you'd think the death matches would have started by now, right? 

But noooooo, it's just some fuckers sneakin' around and dronebombing the place.

Terrible vacation, really. Good fuckin' thing I didn't pay for it or I'd want my money back, yeah?

[ ... ]

Hey.

If you're still listening, congratulations, you might not be a fun-hating twat, so you get to hear my actual message.

Found another airplane, or part of airplane, in the mountain range. This really huge-ass fuselage, got "PacAir" printed on the side.

There might be some luggage in the compartments or salvageable electronics behind the boards, but the whole thing hanging in this really fucked up way and nothing on the inside looks sturdy enough to climb. Maybe if anyone's got some rope, someone could descend from above and check it out that way. Maybe enough people would be able to flip it, but I dunno if it's worth that kinda effort.

And there's also -- check this out -- a volcano. Doesn't look like it's been active for a while, there's a mineral water lake in the middle now, but it's weirdly warm. Don't know shit about that so I can't tell you if it could be heated from the sun or if it's coming from below, but hey, that's something to consider. 'Nd animals have been making their way here, so it's not poisonous. Probably. Smells kinda like sulfur though.

Volcanoes are usually in the middle of islands, right? Might not be the case here, but I'd say it's... in the southern part of the mountains? Can't be sure without a map, but there's more further north.

Guess that's it for now. Ya eggheads might be able to make something from this, right?

Oh but I wasn't fucking kiddin' about this place being boring, so if you've got any fun stories ya wanna share, I'm all ears. Only so much jungle noises one can take instead of a normal conversation, yeah? I'm a people person, you know. Honest.

Anyway! Headed toward some sus shit next, wish me luck.

Comments

[sharktrash]

[ Oh no. He's hearing information he doesn't deserve! The audacity! ]

[ Luckily, Squalo has no idea about that. ]

Funny you'd ask that. There's no trace of 'em. Zilch. Kinda creepy, honestly. Like, if animals or bugs picked 'em off, you'd still see some bones around or an arm hanging off a seatbelt, but no. It's like they all just vanished. Or walked off.

[ He sighs, scratching his cheek. ]

'Nd I actually got inside it, but it's standin' vertical against a cliff so you'd need to climb up to check everything. 'Nd the footholds don't look sturdy with all the damages to the floor. Maybe once I feel like starving to death with a broken spine is an improvement over my current situation I'll go back there and try it.

[trialbyliar]

Jeez, you're slow.

[Hey look, here's your favorite person popping in to interrupt.]

There's a pretty obvious answer for what might've happened to the passengers!

[sharktrash]

Uh-huh.

[ Feel free to share with the class before he hangs up, Bolognese Boy. ]

[trialbyliar]

There are mystery people on this island shooting people with arrows, right? And a whole plane's worth of people missing without a trace...? Doesn't it logically track that the people with the arrows are our missing passengers?

[Duh.]

Ooor I guess the arrow people could have kidnapped and eaten all the passengers or something, but these things have gotta be related somehow! Oh, and of course that's all assuming those mystery people aren't just some of us secretly hunting the others down and blaming it on someone off-network.

[sharktrash]

Dunno how many passengers usually survive a plane breaking in midair and smashing into solid rock, but my bet would not be on "most of them".

[trialbyliar]

Mmmaybe it's all set dressing? Like, whoever stuck us here just put the plane there to explain the locals for the show backstory and didn't really worry about the details?

[That makes more sense to him than any kind of supernatural bullshit, anyway. He's not into the weird superpowers/multiverse/whatever nonsense like some people here. Being gaslit into believing some batshit worldbuilding is, unfortunately, more par for the course in his experience.]

[sharktrash]

Didn't look like it. [ He's more inclined to believe some supernatural bullshit, considering it was a thing back home, but ghost ships were still a stretch back there. ] Though I guess whoever has enough funds to pull off something like this might as well have an actual plane or few to sacrifice just laying around.

[salamanca]

Hate to break it to you, kid, but this ain't the kind of thing you can put together "without thinking about the details." This is nothing but details. If somebody went through all the time to put something like this together - and has the resources to do it - they're not just throwing a plane out in the jungle and calling it a day. They've got reasons for why they're doing things the way they do.

Remember, Detective Stick Up His Ass said the plane he found looked like it was in the water for a long time.

[trialbyliar]

[He taps the broadcast button a few time, creating a crackling mess of noise for a few monents.]

Huh?! Sorry, I couldn't quite hear that! You're sticking what up the detective's ass?!

cw: internalized homophobia/biphobia, veiled threats towards a minor

[salamanca]

[ Lalo's demeanor changes on a dime.

Usually, it's easy to dismiss most of what Kokichi says. He's just a kid. Hard to get that upset over what a 16-year-old kid says.

But this is different; this might start innocuous, but it has the power to get out of hand. Lalo has seen how games of telephone can get out of hand on the island, how one thing can become stated as fact based on only one person's word...

Time to set the record straight, in the most literal way, right now. When Lalo speaks, his voice is still cheery, but it's full of menace and warning. It's not a threat, it's a promise.

Kokichi and he have spent time together; bonded together; Kokichi might still have his panties in a knot because Lalo didn't jump to go rescue him after he got his dumb ass kidnapped, but Lalo still thinks their time together warrants doing Kokichi the kindness of letting him know what he's just triggered. He's just a kid, Lalo tries to tell himself. He doesn't know anything. He can't know anything.

His heart is pounding, though. ]

Hey, kid. Be nice. I'm serious. I'm not a [ Mexican slur for gay men redacted; Kokichi can probably guess what it is from context ]. Don't you ever say shit like that to me again, or you won't like what happens. Got it?

[ Into the walkie, he's smiling, but it's a forced and angry smile. His voice has a quality to it that Kokichi has probably never heard before.

In the back of his mind, Lalo has to swat away the voice saying he knows he knows he knows he knows HE KNOWS like the world's shittiest mosquito, to remind himself that nobody knows anything. And he's going to keep it that way. ]

[aluminumandash]

[ Flat: ] More interested in correct than pretty obvious.

[trialbyliar]

So you just jump straight from "no clue" to "100% correct" with no theories in between? Hmmmm...I'm calling bullshit.

[aluminumandash]

This ain't theorizing. I'm gonna be real polite and call it arrant [ —good luck parsing that with his accent— ] speculation.

[trialbyliar]

[Mock-offended, belied by the soft snickering just barely picked up by the walkie-talkie:]

Well, I'm calling that semantics.

[hyakuoku]

The resort is like that too. Some kind of disaster happened over here, everything all burned away, but there's no bodies, no bones, not even a scrap of burned clothing that I've found so far. Sure, some of the survivors are probably the ones shooting people, but it's ten billion percent unlikely there were no casualties during any of the weird shit that apparently happened here.

So either someone moved the bodies or there weren't any. But there not being any doesn't make any damn sense. There's no logic in that explanation whatsoever. So who moved the bodies and how and why?

[sharktrash]

Huh. Maybe they all got instantly vaporized or something.

[ If only that explained it all! ]

...If there were survivors, they might've moved the rest. To bury them or something.

[ He may be a villain but he's not a savage-- ]

[ Except there are definitely some dark options for that or something, aren't there? ]

[hyakuoku]

Maybe.

[ He doesn't think so, but he doesn't yet have a good theory. ]

They might have, but there's no way they could have gotten everything. In a fire that bad or a plane crash, there would be pieces of people, wouldn't there? Burned bones or something. There's no sign that any people were present at all.

Though maybe it's been long enough they've cleaned it all up.

Or maybe the people weren't in a state when they crashed that would end up like that. Where I came from, if everyone was petrified, they'd just shatter into pieces. But I haven't seen any petrified people either.

This mystery is pretty exciting, isn't it?

[ If you're not at all normal, maybe! ]

[sharktrash]

Yeah, I agree with that.

[ hold on ]

Petrified?

[ He's seen Bester do that. Harmonize the opponent with the concrete they've been standing on, then shatter them with a powerful roar. Does that mean Sky Flames could be behind this?.. Which is... troubling, considering he hasn't felt his own since he got here. ]

[hyakuoku]

[ Ah, right, Squalo isn't the type who has listened to every single thing on the network, is he. ]

Where I come from, every human on Earth was petrified for 3,700 years. But I don't think that's ever happened in this world, so we're probably safe from something like that. I also know how to undo that petrification anyway, but it just seems extremely unlikely. I was just thinking out loud, using an example of something I knew.

[sharktrash]

[ There's just too many damn messages to navigate with one hand! Who has that kind of patience!! ]

Yeah I'm... pretty sure that never happened where I'm from. [ But he's learning to suspend his disbelief at this point. ] But hey. Could be something similar but unique to this place at the same time. We're ought to find out more eventually.

[hyakuoku]

I don't think it happened to anyone else here, which is pretty damn wild from where I'm standing. Some people here think I sound like a lunatic.

[ He DOES, in fact, often sound like a lunatic but not just about petrification. ]

What year are you from, anyway?

[aluminumandash]

You stood down at the bottom? [ He's trying to picture it: the cliff, the torn-up floor, the plane poised on its head. ] Were there, ah, masks—oxygen masks. Had they deployed?

[sharktrash]

Yeah, it was basically standing on it. Damaged enough to get in. [ He frowns as he tries to recall what else he'd seen. ] Yeah -- yeah, they had. Some are still there or in the wreckage, a lot seemed to be missing though.

audio

[salamanca]

Might be for the best to get some people to help you with something like that, eh?

[ Lalo isn't usually one to suggest teamwork, but this doesn't sound like the kind of thing one person should do alone.

Besides, if Squalo dies or breaks his back and can't tell anyone, then Lalo can't reap the benefits of getting whatever info he gets. ]

[sharktrash]

Oh yeah. People and equipment. A long rope, at least. And preferably people savvy with electronics, so they know what's useful and what's junk.

[ Awwww, Lalo, were you worried about him? ]