The Town: Life is Good

[Fraze]

Jensa relayed the experiences of Ene and Victoria to Sampson. It was horrifying. She knew life wasn't good, but even when she stepped up to lead protestors against the Council, she had still thought it was something recent, an imbalance of power that had grown over just a few years. But this, clearly it had been going on for decades. Had she really never noticed before just how deep these problems ran, having been born and raised in that terrible system?

It was also exhausting, since manifesting herself in a tangible form took constant effort. After a while, she let her visible form slip away so that only her voice remained. When she had finished repeating the tales of the other two ghosts, she tried to move and found it difficult. She moved shakily, as though she had just finished a very long, strenuous workout. Standing didn't take any effort, but she nevertheless teetered to the bed and slumped onto it.

Sampson began his broadcast, and when Jensa's own radio sprang into action, Reuben hastily unplugged it and disconnected the battery so as to void a feedback loop.

As Sampson's words washed over her, Jensa began to space out, worn out from the earlier strain. Sampson's voice sounded like honey, but his words were angry and insightful. It was a good speech, or at least it sounded like it. She couldn't focus too well.

Midway through, she was vaguely aware of Ene saying something about needing spiders. "There's a spider behind the toilet," Jensa mumbled as though half asleep. "I put it there to keep the bugs under control. Please don't do anything to it, it's cute and helpful."

Just as Sampson's speech concluded, the snap of a gunshot jolted Jensa back to full consciousness. Sitting upright, she saw the slumped body of Sampson, as well as a terrified-looking Reuben.

"Mr. Thorpe!" Jensa yelped, before realizing that doing so was completely pointless - he couldn't hear her if he was alive (which he wouldn't be, since that was a very big hole in his head), and he would be back soon if he was dead.

She took several deep breaths - another pointless action - and with all of her effort, once again materialized in front of Reuben. She was still spent from the previous effort, so her form flickered and her voice was quiet. "I think maybe you should get away from the door," she said, "Just in case that happens again. Um, maybe you could hide in the bathtub?"

SPOILER: Click to show

Jensa gets caught up with the happenings. Manifesting to the living is tiring, but she relays Ene's (Huntress's) and Victoria's (Liou's) messages to Sampson and Reuben (Thundy). Then when Sampson dies, she suggests Reuben hide somewhere not within sniping range. (Also I yoinked Reuben for totally legitimate purposes upon realizing stuff about technical plotholes.)

[Sporty]

Kahroo seemed to recognize Kree, which it took as a good sign. It knew this human was a friend of its kind in any case, but the sense of familiarity was comforting, and that would surely be helpful in these chaotic times.

Kahroo asked Kree something then, in that odd way of speaking it had -- mimicking shadowkyne pitch, but with human words. Yet Kree could somehow understand the basic meaning behind those words. Humans had such strange powers.

In this case, Kahroo was asking something about Kree's location and the Wall. It wasn't hard to understand what it meant, but before the shadowkyne could explain the mysterious magic that had brought it and Reyaah here, a great burst of light and sound stole both of their attention away.

Fire! Kree hissed and darted behind Kahroo's legs, as though they could protect it from the hungry blaze. The human said something else, something about getting out, and motioned for the shadowkyne to follow it.

Kree didn't need to be asked twice. Quickly it followed Kahroo into the darkened path, thankful for the shadows that helped conceal it without a need for camouflaging.

As the fire disappeared behind them, Kree began to calm down again. After a minute or so, it glanced up at Kahroo and remembered its question from before. It was as good a time as any -- the shadowkyne began to explain as well as it could its meeting with Reyaah and the strange shimmery thing that had taken them back to the town. Hopefully Kahroo could understand Kree's words as well as it could relay them.

Perhaps together, it hoped to itself, they would find a way to escape this maddening place.

SPOILER: Click to show

Kree is happy to see that Tiger seems to recognize it, and understands the meaning of her question through the same weird fish magic that lets Aerona understand it. The fire's start interrupts them, so they leave the area together, but while they're moving Kree tries to explain the weird ghost teleport that had dragged it and Thorn to the town.

[RielCZ]

The younger, hotter sister of Captain Brant sat in her office and looked out at the wreckage from the room's tiny window. There was fear in her eyes.

A destroyed clock tower. Riots. The leader of the council's house on fire.

Heck, even magical manifestations.

This was nothing short of chaotic revolution.

Missy knew change was coming… and she was beginning to fear she was on the wrong side of the tide.

But she had a good, high-paying job; great benefits; and she helped people wherever she could. Honestly. She TRIED to make life better for anyone with the misfortune of falling into her interrogation chamber; she wasn't like other interrogators whose primary goal was to convict and indict as many as possible.

She wouldn't lose that job, that choice, that freedom, right? (Freedom. They say they'll protect our freedom and this is what we get?—)

She shook herself. She would be protected. The council would protect her—

"Oh who am I kidding," she whined softly as she lay her head in her folder arms on top of her mahogany desk. The council's Minister of Propaganda (though she didn't know that at the time) had been hung alongside Ene at the mass execution a few days earlier—gods knows what for—and just now the voice of the Melville had been shot in whatever safety an undisclosed location brings.

She was far less important than either of them.

…Then again, that meant she wouldn't be a direct target for the tide, either.

She rose her head from the table.

Whether the sweeping wave would end up being propagated by the formal resistance or the peaceful leaderless revolution urged by the apparently deceased radio hijacker man—Missy had only seen Edward Melville's ghost (oh yeah, and the man who was the reason this town exists no longer wanting the town to exist is also cause for great concern) but was very aware of the recent surge of ghostly presence—no one really wanted her dead, right? Heck, Miss Brant was sure not even Mayhitch knew her by name.

The younger, hotter sister of Captain Brant rose her head. Events were unfolding so rapidly… but maybe she could end up on the right side of the tide after all.

If she truly wanted that.

***

Carlos returned to where Laurie and Doormat stood. "Pretty good, eh?" he said of his speech before he shot the pair a wink with his good eye.

He snapped and stuck a well-toned finger and pointed at its counterpart in the sky.

"Now to sit back and watch whatever happens happen."

SPOILER: Click to show

Miss Brant has fears about her position high in the interrogation offices and possible subsequent demise in the event of revolution.

The council wouldn't protect her, what having already killed the Minister of Propaganda and letting Thorpe (Thundy) die... then again, not being someone important enough for the council to protect might mean she might not be important enough for the revolution to want dead.

Maybe she could eventually leverage that fact into freedom, worst case scenario.

***

Meanwhile, Carlos returns back to Laurie (Mostly Harmless (flufflepuff)) and Doormat (Thorn). He waits for inevitable events to unfold and watches with his eye in the sky.

[Liou]

A few hesitant, wavering lines had joined Ene's lipstick message in a corner of Jensa's mirror. A bunch of simple triangular flames, several clumsy attempts at rectangles inside the fire, and then Victoria had ragefully dropped the lipstick, leaving a pink mark on the edge of the bathtub. All ghosts were not created equal, and she seemed to have the dexterity of someone wearing invisible oven mitts. She had only caught a glimpse of her dim reflection, noticing her windblown hair, her dark, hollow eyes and the strange stain on her chest.

When the radio was being emitted from just a few feet away, it felt completely different from the vague background noise Victoria often heard. It was almost more of a tactile experience than an auditory one, as her ethereal form was more sensitive to the waves. She lay back in Jensa's bathtub, basking in subtle vibrations instead of water, watching Ene get annoyed at the radio man. How nice it would be if all her particles - or whatever she was made of at the moment - could be blown away by the waves and spread all over the town, carried off by the wind and river, floating in rays of sunlight like dust motes.

She sat bolt upright when the gunshot rang, the old burn in her chest throbbing again.

It had been so close and so sudden this time, disturbing the temporary peace of Jensa's house, unlike all the shots heard during the riots. For a moment Victoria was weighed down and paralysed just like on her final night. Sebastian was gone, she had to remind herself, and there was nothing more for her to lose.

Despite the proximity of the murderer, a morbid sort of curiosity soon drew her to where Sampson Thorpe had fallen. It should have been nothing more than another death to her, one more in the long string of tragedies that had struck this forsaken town; yet the sight of the man who had taken such risks and lived for years with the sword of Mayhitch dangling above his head did something to permeate her wall of cold apathy. She wondered if she had looked anything like this on the night of her death.

Victoria averted her gaze and it fell instead on Reuben's distraught face. Another little pang of grief nagged at her. She refused to imagine that her parents might have made the same face a week ago.

"Come on, man..." she said without thinking, even though he probably couldn't hear, "at least you still have a body!" There was no point in trying to cheer him up, everything was truly terrible.

She noticed Ene looking out of the window, just before she told Jensa that there was no sign of anyone on the street.

"Not even somebody that you used to know?" Victoria whispered, raising her eyebrows. She was quite sure that Ene had reacted to something she recognised. Better not press the matter, though. Victoria did not want to find any spiders crawling down her dress.

"Hold on. Uncle May's place is on fire? His actual house? We can't miss that, can we now, how many times will we have an opportunity to see that?"

She glanced back at Reuben. "I'd try to help you with tea and all but um, I can't really carry things like you do. Sorry, I don't know why. So if you'll excuse me, I'd like to see May..." Her breath caught for a second. She would never have dared to speak of Uncle May so casually before. "... go up in flames!"

She floated nonchalantly out of Jensa's. The killer would certainly be far away by now, but she peered around the streets anyway, just in case.

Victoria reached Uncle May's house just in time to see Cori direct the evacuation of her sisters like a ship's captain, before floating after them. Though the Nix girls' relation to Uncle May had never been officially confirmed, their presence at his house was no surprise. Victoria wondered what could have led him to leave the girls unattended in the house, actually. He must have had absolutely no other choice.

Seeing Cori in control was strangely comforting next to the apocalyptic sight of May's house. So this was what the end of Melville looked like. Victoria had not given it much thought as the conflicts between Council agents and Resistance escalated, but things had happened regardless, and it seemed that they were finally catching up to the members of the Council. Maybe Victoria had some catching up of her own to do.



In the midst of the destruction rampaging around Melville, Councilwoman Kay McGill seemed to have been struck with an odd desire to pamper herself, judging from the number of trips she made to the bathroom. In truth, she simply craved a bit of privacy from the personal bodyguard assigned to watch her constantly, and in the safe but restricted space of her secret bunker, only the bathroom really offered her isolation.

She had received no more news from her fellow Council members after they engaged the emergency protocol and retreated to their own isolated safe rooms. The guard only gave her brief updates on the state of the violence in the streets - no improvement there, on the contrary. Kay couldn't help but wonder what would happen if her fellow Council members did not make it and only she was left. The thought came back when she pushed it away and grew like a weed.

Victoria watched her potter about nervously, enjoying the sight of her cousin out of her element. She had easily found the wall that led into this space, which Kay had privately boasted about back when she was newly appointed and revelling in her new privileges.

After a moment's hesitation, Kay went back to sit in her only chair, near the phone, which was only connected to a small secret network. Victoria gazed at her with all the concentration she could muster, converging all her spite and resent into one beam. Kay's hand slowly inched towards the phone. Just as her hand landed on it, she started and looked up at Victoria, who was seated on the table right next to the device.

Victoria's lips curved into a malicious little smile. If she could actually get Kay to see her, this was going to be even more entertaining. Kay promptly withdrew her hand and leaned as far back as she could in her chair, her mouth wide open.

"Were you worried about me?" Victoria asked in a mockingly gentle tone.

Kay took a breath as if to respond, then looked away and stood up, going over to what looked like a sideboard. Victoria hopped off the table and tiptoed after her. The Councilwoman absently took out a bottle of wine and started to pour herself a glass. Victoria saw her hand shake.

"That's some nice stuff you're hoarding in here."

Kay's wrist slipped and knocked the bottle into the glass, spilling half of the wine. "You're not here. You are dead," she stated very calmly, as if to remind both of them.

Victoria leaned in right next to Kay, propping her hand on the tabletop. "That's right," she admitted, inches from Kay's ear. "That's what happens when the Town's not happy with you."

The side of her arm brushed against Kay, who jumped back with a violent shudder, squinting at Victoria as if her eyes couldn't focus right. "I... I always did my best," she whispered furiously into what she thought was nothing. "We handle things reasonably, but we can't make miracles. It's hardly our fault if they're still not satisfied with all our efforts. All I ever did was help."

"If you want to help, why aren't you out there? So cozy in here, my, some might get jealous if they knew!"

"I tried to help you," Kay recited under her breath, eyes closed, "it's not my fault you couldn't measure up."

"Was it fun putting me down in front of everyone? Do you miss it?" The ghost's words wafted like cold venom into the air between them. "Who will they compare you to now?"

Kay blinked and ran her tongue over her dry lips. Then she turned abruptly and went back into the bathroom, as if she had just remembered something in there. Victoria floated after her and put on a burst of speed to reach the doorway first, resting her hand against the wall. She hadn't realised that her hand was still soaked with the spilled wine.

A bright red hand print appeared on the wall before Kay's eyes. The Councilwoman let out a screech and dived into the bathroom, locking the door behind her and slumping against it. A shrill, wicked cackle still rang in her ears, seeming to come from all directions at once.

"Madam McGill?" came her bodyguard's frantic voice from the other side. "What happened? Please don't lock the door..."

"I... I'm just feeling a little unwell, I won't be long," she replied. "Call me if we get any news!"

Kay took deep breaths, calmed by the safe, enclosed space of the bathroom. The other Council members might not make it through this. She had to keep it together. She opened the mirrored cabinet where some toiletries were already stashed for her, grabbed a comb at random and started to run it through her hair. The gesture was instantly soothing. She reached up again to close the door of the cabinet.

A ghastly face appeared right above her shoulder in the mirror. The comb fell with a clatter and Kay whirled round, but saw nothing behind her.

"G-get away, leave me alone!" She slumped over the washbasin with her face cupped in her hands. "I never wanted to hurt anyone..."

"You know what you signed, Kay," the voice drawled from behind her. "Some were our neighbours, back when we lived in the outskirts. You know their names."

"You would have done it too!" the prostrated woman wailed, "everyone was planning for you to be one of the next members! You would have done it too, in my place!"

Kay slowly lifted her face to peer into the mirror again, catching a glimpse of her haggard eyes between her fingers. Victoria was still there, several feet behind, her cold black glare boring into Kay. The Councilwoman squeezed her eyes shut for a second longer than a blink, taking a deep, shuddering breath. When she opened them again, her dead cousin's face was mere inches from her. She stumbled back with a strangled yelp and fell to the floor, crawling further back on her elbows.

"I'd rather die," Victoria spat. "You thought Life was Good? I can tell you it was so pitiful that death is better." She stepped in front of the door, cutting off Kay's retreat, standing in a relaxed posture at odds with the venom in her voice. "And the people out there? They know death would be better for you, Kay. They understand. They've been waiting for so long. So selfish of you to hole up in here. Come out and play, won't you?"

The Councilwoman lay in a crumpled heap, whimpering under her breath.

"You haven't seen the light?" Victoria continued after a moment's silence. "Pity... can't be helped." She slammed her hand on the lightswitch, leaving Kay in the dark with nothing but the echo of her cackling.

SPOILER: Click to show

GhostVic plays in Fraze's bathroom, reacts to Thundy's death, notices Huntress noticing Mysterious Last Resistance Member, then floats away to enjoy the Mayhitch BBQ party, notices Gelquie evacuating sisters but only notices, and then she goes to haunt and freak out her cousin Kaykay.

[Lizica]

((Collab with The Scrac that Smiles Back!))

Her feet hurt.

Actually, most of everything hurt. It’s just that the feet were newly hurting. But it would be worth it, right, because she might not be able to get another pair of clinic slippers in the future. And she was heading towards smoke again and Joan wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take, let alone her poor good slippers. What even was the time any more, why did it have to be the clock tower and everything that followed, and what was next, what could possibly happen now?

The sounds grew progressively louder as Joan hobblingly sprinted across the Island. Mr. Castell was shouting something in her wake now, but his voice was drowned out by the sounds of chanting, yelling, shattering, explosions, and the overwhelming roar of fire.

They were burning houses. In the high-end district, it seemed? Even Joan had lost her bearings a bit, so much of the vicinity was aflame and in pieces, and the invisible waves of heat distorted the air all around the mob. The places burning probably weren’t major landmarks or attractions, but they still had a good deal of history and oh, people living inside, there were some little girls being led away (was she the one she had recommended the Melville Apple Orchard to?), had they been inside, and EVEN WITHOUT ALL THAT, adding fire to the very thought of the previous clock tower fire was not a great idea, why hadn’t the firemen gotten here yet, had they taken a nap, where were these explosives even coming from, who was making them, how did anyone even have the voice and energy to scream and chant by this point, and everything was so hot and her feet hurt and—

She spotted a man on the crowd’s periphery walking in a different direction and clambered up to him.

“Wh-why is everything on fire again?” she rasped. “I left my brochures, I don’t have a map or my extinguisher, I wish I’d gotten it, did she ever use the coupon I gave her, it was due to expire in two weeks, so she should still have time if—if it’s still—if the orchard isn’t on fire, too, if the orchard is still there, if their recipe library is—Where are these explosions coming from?”

Drale stared down at the woman accosting him, taking a moment to recognize her.
“They’re burning the homes of the council members, showing them the people won’t be extorted and murdered into submission anymore. We should leave, Joan.”

His eyes darted to the direction the Nix sisters had been led.

Joan followed his glance, but she kept looking away again, because giant flames raging into the sky. And belatedly, she realized who she was speaking with—He owned a glass shop in town. He didn’t offer a lot of coupons or sales, but Joan had heard highly complimentary things about his work.

“But you know about fire, right,” she said. “Do you have a fire extinguisher? What if it spreads? If you’re after the council members, has anyone actually even seen them? Can we get the mob fire extinguishers? You can swing them if you have to, but at least then you’ll have them on hand for the fire, right—”

At this point, Sylvester Castell finally caught up with Joan Wrigley, panting heavily, and leaned wobblingly on his thighs, still covered in ash from the previous fires.

Drale recoiled slightly when Sylvester joined them.

"No," he responded to Joan. "I don't think they know where the council members are. That's why they're setting the houses on fire. Until they find the council members and hang them, I don't think there will be peace."

He glanced at Sylvester as he spoke, his next words cautious.

"Unless the council is willing to attempt righting their wrongs and step down?"

Sylvester straightened up, his back creaking a little, and he looked at Drale. “I, uh. I can’t claim to know anything about the Council at this point,” he said uncertainly, still trying to catch his breath. Then to Joan, “And I don’t know there’s much to do about the arsonists—or the Council—so, um, can we please—We should probably—” He jerked his head to direct them out of the area, soundlessly, so that he could swallow. A great shout came from the mob at that point, and another crash, and another explosion. Sylvester choked on his saliva as the street shook; Joan made a noise that in another circumstance would have sounded like a throaty cough, but was not.

"But some of the guards do know," Drale pressed. "Can you talk to them? They can't hide forever, and further oppression will only lead to their doom."

Sylvester looked at the man in mild alarm, or maybe panic. “I, uh—I’m rather low on the totem pole here, and...” When Drale and Joan looked at Sylvester, curious but unconvinced, he added in a rush, “My unit captain gave me this really withering look when I just yawned during patrol last night, and after the clock tower incidents, I don’t know if anyone would listen to anyone, least of all me—...”

"But you can try!" Drale encouraged.

“Just talk really fast,” offered Joan. “That’s what I do, sometimes people listen, sometimes they—would it help to give them coupons while you’re talking, or is that useless, coupons aren’t useless, are they, right—OH, I should have brought my coupon binder for the arsonists—But what if they just burned them because they don’t help—”

Syvester glanced at her and drew a haggard, apprehensive breath to cut across Joan. “I don’t know, maybe, but please, first thing first—Can we please get out of this toxic area? If you want to find guards to convince who are in a higher position, this probably isn’t a good place to do it.”

Drale nodded. "He's right, we should go somewhere else."

And as if to drive this point home, there was yet another deafening crash and yet another whoop from the mob; even as the three of them slipped away, they couldn’t help but watch the rioters and the flames reaching ever higher.

SPOILER: Click to show

Joan and Sylvester run into Drale at the edge of the riot and talk about what’s happening. Drale explains the mob’s motives, then suggests that Sylvester talk to some of the other guards about the town's situation. Sylvester’s a bit unsure of the idea, but at least the three of them manage to leave the riot’s immediate area. ((Also, have a tag, Thorn~))

[Gelquie]

The mob was frantic, and the guards were desperate to try to hold them back. But nearly the entire town was riled up, and they were wondering if it was hopeless.

All this as they knew quite well that the last Resistance member, the one they suspected shot Sampson Thorpe over the radio, was still among them. But that left the question of who it was.

Warren Taylor was determined to find them, and not let his failure with Laurie drag him down.

The guard captain had intended to let him go, to relieve him of duty or reassign him elsewhere. But with the chaos of the city, they needed everyone on hand, and the order was lost among everything else. Warren was intent to redeem himself.

And so he couldn’t help but be suspicious when he saw a woman re-entering the scene, sometime after the radio’s fateful broadcast. She looked nervous, edgey, out of place.

As if they had just returned from a murder.

She was crying over the radio, but it felt so personal to her, and yet she never seemed to be close with Sampson. Was it an act? And it didn’t help that he had never really seen her around, or when he did, she had shown up late, even though the entire town was in a riot.

She was perfect for sneaking around behind the scenes.

He approached her and dragged her to her feet, questioning her. It could be hard to tell how she was feeling through the broken sobs, but she couldn’t quite come up with a clear answer for why she had been gone so long, merely babbled about how she felt she couldn’t go out. But life was safe in the streets of Melville, or at least they had been. So how would she feel not safe going out?

Unless it was because she could be caught as a member of the Resistance.

Eventually, Warren Taylor’s patience ran out, and as she frantically denied her involvement one more time, he pushed her to the ground, putting a gun to her head.

“You can say what you want,” he said. “But I know who you are. And I’ll stop this right now.”

He fired, leaving Fortune Hart dead on the ground, the radio at her side still crackling with static.

The guard walked away thinking it was finally over, that the last of the ones who started this all was finally taken down.

**

It was chaos, and the homes of the Council members were aflame everywhere. But some hours later, the mob had made progress with finding the members of the Council. If they weren’t in their homes, they found them hiding in other places; in the City Hall, their homes, secret rooms in landmarks, the like.

It took them the longest to find Uncle May. Not even the guards--charged to protect him--could find him. His home had since smoldered down to cinders, and a few scattered people had begun poking among the ruins, looking for any sign of him, partly wondering if he had burned to death.

As they poked among the wreckage, they came upon a stone door, lain into the ground. After many efforts, and some work at the complicated lock damaged by the fire, they managed to pry it open, revealing a secret underground tunnel.

“Of course, it’s Uncle May,” a member of the crowd muttered. “What doesn’t he have?”

People began filing in, searching through the tunnel for any sign of him. It didn’t take them too long before they found themselves in a secret room, with numerous amenities. A hideout for Uncle May, protected by the stone.

They searched the chamber carefully, and before long, they found Uncle May, at a desk. He saw them and reached for his soot-covered hand inside his dirtied clothes for a weapon, but the mob got to him first, restraining him.

“You’re all insane,” Uncle May muttered. “You burned my house, with my nieces still inside, and trapped me in here before I could get them out. Those ruthless enough to kill children have no place in this town.”

“Tell that to Rusty!” one of the townspeople cried.

“That was different, she was Resistance,” Uncle May argued. “My nieces did nothing to you.”

“But Rusty was still a child,” another townsperson said. “Besides, your nieces got out, And we’re getting you out too… But not to them.”

They took him back up and announced what they found before bringing all the Council members together in the City Hall.

“Hold the Hall against the guards,” a member of the crowd said before pointing to the detained Council members. “And secure them somewhere. Somewhere where they can’t escape. That way we can really talk to them.”

“This is treason,” Uncle May snarled.” “Your life was good. It was the Resistance who ruined it all for you. We were trying to root out those merciless killers the same ones trying to tear down the Wall, the only thing keeping you safe from the Outside. They’re the ones who started these murders. You’re only destroying everything we have built to keep you safe.”

“What we want is a better life,” another townsperson spoke. “Not the deaths of all those innocents who died.” The townsperson turned to their fellow townspeople. “Tie them up and lock them in over there. Then we’ll figure out what to do with them all… And what to do from here.”

A member of the crowd watched it all happen and began thinking. What to do from here?

Why, there was already something they could do. And with only a little more work, they would soon see it through…

Fortune Hart was an Innocent Townsperson.

((Stay tuned. For in the upcoming aftermath, more will be revealed.))

SPOILER: Click to show

PFA's Will:

It was so much safer inside...

[Huntress]

Ene came back from the kitchen, holding a cup of tea, and placed it in front of Reuben. Floating teacups weren't probably doing his mental constitution any favors at this point, but Ene supposed there was nothing she could do about that.

""Hold on. Uncle May's place is on fire? His actual house? We can't miss that, can we now, how many times will we have an opportunity to see that?"

"Annual Uncle-May-house-burning festivals would get my vote," Ene noted. "'Burning May Day' is pretty catchy. But it's true, we're missing the show."

She patted Reuben offhandedly on the head and slid out through the door, turning to follow Victoria, and got momentarily distracted by a gunshot echoing weakly somewhere farther away. Another one?

Any such shot could mean the death of a Resistance member. Any such shot could mean that their work was in vain, crushed uncaringly like the attempts before it, like the one that took Theodor.

Ene turned, tried her best to locate the direction of the shot and plunged into the maze of narrow streets.

It was quiet here - whatever the residents were doing, they were doing it elsewhere or staying very quiet in their homes. In her death, Ene had gotten used to walking right in the middle of the street. The living couldn't see her and in death, these streets were hers. So she went on more or less blindly, weaving through narrow streets in search of the newest body, and the ghostly echo of her heels on pavement made those who could faintly hear it hunker deeper into the shadows.

She rounded a corner and came to another mostly empty street, save for a lone rider on horseback heading towards her.

This was curious. Horses were somewhat rare in Melville, but you'd still see them around when farmers came northward to supply the town's more urban parts. But those were strong, heavy horses used for fieldwork and wagons. This one, by the looks of it, was a small elegant beastie, who moved with a sort of dainty prance and altogether looked like it was disapproving of its surroundings. Its rider was wrapped in a simple no-nonsense black cloak, the sort worn by travellers - if Melville had any travellers.

Ene stepped aside.

The horse drew level with her. Wherever it had come from, it was very much real. The woman could see muscles roll under its skin like snakes in oil, the steam rising off of its grey mottled flanks, smell the mix of horse sweat, leather and its warm breath, blended with something else, the smell of something very old and slightly dusty. She looked up at the cloaked rider, who looked back with empty, bottomless eyesockets. A memory stirred.

"Hey, I remember you." she said, feeling slightly stupid for saying it. Sure, the entire town had been at her execution, but this one had definitely been at her execution.

I'M NEVER VERY FAR FROM ANYONE, said Death, his voice rolling into existence like slabs of tombstone falling over in a crypt.

"Yeah, you've been doing overtime, I imagine," Ene commented, raising her hand cautiously to pat the horse. It raised its head to look at Ene mostly with its nostrils, as horses tend to do. "Wait a minute - do you know what's happened to my," the word 'colleagues' rose to surface again, "friends?"

NAMES? Death asked. Ene gave two names.

AERONA TOLBERT IS DEAD, Death said with the finality of, well, death. THE OTHER ONE, he dug somewhere in his black robes and withdrew a small hourglass which seemed to be filled with weightless sand and inspected it, WILL LIVE A MODERATELY LONG LIFE, IT SEEMS.

Ene blinked. "Seriously? Well, that's..." Good news. Unprecedented news, even. Because it meant that... "So we didn't get all rooted out? This means that one of us can still make a difference and all those deaths and riots and fires didn't happen for no outcome at all!"

Death eyesocketed her sternly. THAT'S A TERRIBLE MORAL.

Ene shrugged. "Probably, but in a town where morals ran out ages ago, I'll take it anyway."

She turned to go with renewed vigor when a new rider appeared from somewhere at the end of the street and trotted up to them. The sight of this horse rooted Ene to spot, because it was skin and bones - what looked to be an actual horse skeleton with a black horse hide expertly sewn over it. The rider was a young woman who looked like she'd dedicated her life to matching her horse, with skin stretched taut over high cheekbones and impossibly hollow cheeks, large eyes in dark circles which may or may not have been makeup, and shoulders and collarbones jutting out sharply from rather expensive-looking clothes. But she looked to be an expert rider, handling the reins with ease while clutching a Gucci purse in one hand and a sheaf of leaflets in the other.

"Like, hi!" She waved the leaflet-hand cheerfully at Ene and then turned her attention to Death. "Death, look, I got brochures! This is totally awesome, they have a giant ball off yarn, we totally need to see this before we go, and it turns out that the pillars of the City Hall are named after virtues and I'll want to see those too and the mosaics on the second floor before the riots get to them, if they do." She reined in her restlessly prancing skele-horse and brought the brochures and purse into general forced contact so that one stayed stuffed in the other.

"It really sucks," she explained to Ene as the first convenient person to talk to. "Every time we do an Apocalypse, the place is generally totally on fire by the time we get to it and then we, like, have to do work for a while and by the time there's time to sightsee, all the pretty parts are burned down or looted."

"Oh, you should've visited in spring," Ene said almost automatically, then added as her smalltalk-brain kicked in, "Try the botanical gardens, anyway, they're well out of town and I think their gift shop is doing a two-for-the-price-of-one something deal right now."

The horsewoman beamed at her, said 'totes thanks', smacked the sides of her horse with her heels, which sounded rather like hitting a chair, and broke into gallop, squealing "This is the best town everrrr!"

Ene stared after her.

IT'S HER FIRST TIME HERE, Death said rather defensively.

"Yeah, I could tell by the 'best town ever' part. So, the... Four Horsemen of the...?"

IT'S THE END FOR THIS TOWN, Death said matter-of-factly, nudging his horse into motion. WHAT IT'S GOING TO BECOME NOW IS UP TO THE PEOPLE.

"Well, it could be for the better or worse," Ene said, almost to herself, also turning to head off, "but at least we tried, didn't we?"

She found the body of Fortune Hart some five minutes later next to a crackling radio, not far from where Uncle May's house was cheerfully burning up. There was nobody around, but the back of a guard was still visible walking off farther away. It didn't look like a concerned I-just-found-a-murdered-citizen guard.

"Trigger-happy, aren't we?" Ene muttered, drumming her fingers thoughtfully against her hip. This town still had plenty of haunting potential in it.

SPOILER: Click to show

We interrupt this plot to catch Ene up to speed with the plot by going straight to the source of information.
aka - Ene heads out after Liou but gets herself mostly lost trying to follow the sound of the gunshot that killed PFA. In a side alley, she encounters Death (who tells her that one of the Res members died and the other survived) and Famine (who's mostly in it for the selfies with local landmarks).
She finds Fortune's body a short while later.

(Also, either Lizica just had a thoroughly weird encounter or the Tourism Agency got looted for brochures during her absence. Take your pick.)

[Draco]

Quentin was overjoyed about what he stumbled into. Stumbled upon? Casually floated up to him? Whatever, he was learning about the history of the town, the wall, magic, and other things, whatever! Before him were two figures who could answer all his questions, if he wasn't so excited and shocked that he couldn't speak...

He just grinned from ear to ear staring at the two talk. Listening he really wished he could jot down some of this information. He longed for his journal, at home, hidden away... He reaches around into his ghostly pockets and luckily finds a small notepad and pen. He wondered if they still worked as a ghost, then wondered how they even appeared, did they die with him? No matter, he shook that thought from his head and began to scribble down what the old ghost and hat were talking about.

He wasn't about to leave them alone either, planning to follow and document all he could.

---

Elsewhere along with everyone else rioting were still the Wall Worshipers. They continued to preach the good word of The Wall, while at the same time lighting fires and other fun rioting jobs. Uncle Brick even started to carry around a brick to smash windows or the occasional guard's hand that tried to stop him. It was becoming pure chaos...

SPOILER: Click to show

Quentin is ecstatic to find both Edward Melville (frazeocity) and now Ciseon (icon) speaking to each other, in front of him! He scribbled down on his ghostly notepad all the info he can gathered, and vowed to follow the two wherever they went to gather more information.

---

Wall Worshippers enjoy rioting.

[Tiger]

The shadowkyne seemed to understand Aerona, and it followed along after her. As they went, Aerona keeping them close to patches of darkness where the Outside beast seemed to almost completely disappear thanks to its dark hide, the shadowkyne actually answered Aerona’s question about how it had gotten into the town.

Aerona could glean the basics; there had been a human - the shadowkyne called them “Reyaah”, which had the same feeling of a name that “Kahroo” had - in some way similar to Aerona’s form now, but not identical. Another ghost? Aerona thought, before being distracted by the shadowkyne explaining that they had somehow just…appeared in the middle of town.

“A ghost with...some kind of teleportation magic?” Had this Reyaah possessed such magic when they were alive? Aerona hadn’t known of many people with magic, and teleportation wasn’t one of the ones she had known about. Of course, any smart person with that kind of power would probably hide it - the Council would be quick to snatch up and use that kind of ability. Although, Aerona admitted to herself, until Sampson’s broadcast, most people had no idea about the secret papers and secret rooms and secret operatives. The idea of being used for her powers hadn’t occurred to Aerona until later; she’d just known fraternizing with Outside creatures would get her into trouble.

Fraternizing with - hold on just a moment!

“Wait - Reyaah is...a friend?” She wasn’t sure that was precisely the right term, but it would hopefully get the general idea across. Someone else who knew about shadowkyne, and that they weren’t bloodthirtsy, merciless, slavering human-hunters the way the Council claimed all Outside beasts were - maybe it was a gross misprioritization or optimism that made Aerona think it, but it occurred to her that if things went a certain way, if the people had a chance to change the way things were done in Melville, she would need to argue in favor of some openness to the Outside. And given the people’s fear of the place, and her own actions, Aerona would probably need backup. An ally who could agree that the shadowkyne, at least, weren’t going to go out of their way to hurt anyone, and who preferably wasn’t Resistance…

...Priorities. “Okay - we still need to get you out of the city. But I’d like to find Reeyah later. Do you know where he - “

There was a crash of breaking glass, followed shortly by the slamming open of a door. Aerona turned, hearing shouting, and among it - “ - last one must be here, couldn’t have gone far - “

The Guard. Biting her lip - a sensation that felt disturbingly watery - Aerona ducked back behind the corner and motioned urgently for Kree to come along. “Hurry - we can’t let them catch us!”

SPOILER: Click to show

Kree (Sporty) tells Aerona about Reyaah/Doormat (Thorn), and Aerona goes “Ohhey, somebody I can drag on the ‘monsters don’t necessarily suck’ train! 8D” She asks Kree if she knows where Reyaah is, but then the Guard show up at a nearby home or businss in serach of the last Resistance member and Aerona suggests they keep moving. (Sporty, feel free to move them/the Guard around as you see fit ^^)

[Thundy]

Sampson didn't hear the shot that killed him. The bullet was moving at super sonic speeds, killing him before his brain could even process the information of pain that would have surely dwarfed any headache he had in his life. The way it appeared to him, there had simply been another power cut. A deep rumbling sound came from below him, and lights faded back on. He noticed he was standing in a long room with rectangular windows, vibrating slightly. Lights flashed past the windows at irregular intervals. A metallic voice crackled into life from a speaker on the wall.

"Welcome aboard this Metaphysical Express to the afterlife, please have all tickets and passes ready for inspection."

Huh. What on earth? Sampson thought to himself. A door at the far end of the carriage opened and a shadowy figure wearing a peaked cap, blue suit, and blue tie.

"Tickets please," he said, approaching Sampson.

"Tickets for what?" He asked. "Where am I? What is this?"

The shadowy figure sighed. He was always having to explain this. He liked it better when the afterlife was a simple border and customs control, but noooo, orders from the top, dead souls have to take the train. Yet more budget cuts.

"You're dead, and on your way to the afterlife. This is the Styx Line. Now, I'll have to see your ticket."

"Dead? How? I was just on the radio in Melville!"

"Ahhh, that explains it, we had a lot of people get on at that station. I'm not sure how you died, but the other passengers here were either shot or hung, so flip a coin, you got a 50% chance of being right," The shadowy ticket inspector said. Sampson just stared open mouthed, questions rattling around in his brain. "However, a bunch of you neglected to purchase tickets, so you'll have to get off at the next station and acquire one. Ah, we should be there now.

"The next station is Ectoplasm Central, change for the Reincarnation line and services to the real world."

There was a screech of metal on metal and the lights flashing past slowed. Sampson felt the deceleration in the pit of his stomach. Eventually the carriage stopped, and a series of doors opened with a blinding light. Sampson stepped forward...

...and found himself back in Jensa's living room, looking at his own dead body.

"Huh, don't see that every day." He said to himself.

Reuben, was crouched over the body, with a mixture of sobbing and yelling.

"SAMPSON! SAMPSON! No no no no!" He grabbed the telephone, "I need a doctor at..." The phone merely remained silent, the infrastructure across the town was failing, and there was no signal. Reuben threw the telephone away, crashing into the wall in a heap of metal, plastic, and wiring. Defeated, he slumped back on his knees. This was turning out to be a bad day for him.

On the other hand, Sampson actually wasn't feeling too bad, despite being dead. His leg had even stopped hurting, and he was walking, well, floating really, without the use of his cane. His conscience was remarkably clear as well.

There were other ghosts in the building, Jensa being one, he turned to her. "What happened exactly? Where are all the other deceased folks? I gathered that there was quite a few around here."

SPOILER: Click to show

Sampson rides the Metaphysical train, and is promptly ejected for fare-dodging. He watches Reuben freak out about his death. And asks Fraze where all the other ghosts have gone.

[PFA]

It happened so fast, it may has well have been the natural progression of things. One moment, she heard that dreaded gunshot echo through the radio, she'd heard Sampson die, and her entire world was shattered. And then it happened all over again, with that guard questioning her and looking at her like a criminal, despite her fervent insistence that she was not Resistance, she would never kill Sampson or Arlie or anyone else, but he didn't believe her, and then there was another gunshot—

And her entire world shattered once again.

It was all over. Fortune would never be able to go back to the simple life, she would never be able to just sit in her chair and listen to the radio again, she wouldn't even get to finish that nice breakfast... life, as good or bad as it may have been, was gone from Fortune altogether. She was dead.

A realization that only intensified when she found herself staring down at her own lifeless body, her precious radio sitting uselessly on the ground beside her. Had she still had a heart, it would have been racing. She didn't know what to do. What could she do? She just wished she could go back in time, back to a time when she was happy and everything hadn't gone horribly wrong, but she knew that was impossible. Even if she went back to her house, it would never be the same again...

"Trigger-happy, aren't we?" came a voice, distracting Fortune from her thoughts. Suddenly, she realized there was someone else here—a woman with long black hair, who didn't appear to be among the living, either. So there were other spirits here? She supposed it made sense; the whole town seemed so restless, and there were so many weird things she couldn't explain...

"I-it wasn't me," Fortune whimpered, fiddling with her now ethereal shawl. "I would never, I wouldn't..."

Her eyes drifted once again to the radio, remembering the incident from just earlier. She would never be able to forget that horrible sound, the gunshot that ended Sampson's life. It was so awful, so horrifying... but then came a thought, like a glimmer of light in an otherwise dark cave. If the spirits of the departed were still here... would Sampson be here? Would Arlie?

"I have to find them," Fortune determined, taking a shaky step forward, only to realize that she was still floating lifelessly in the air. Even moving was going to be hard to get used to, it seemed. But if there was any chance she would be able to see the ones she'd lost again, it was all she could ever ask for.

SPOILER: Click to show

Fortune reacts to being dead. She also reacts briefly to Huntress being near her body, before realizing that maybe she can have a touching ghost reunion with Thundy and/or Coaster, and sets off to find them.

[Gelquie]

_{Aftermath: Resistance and Regrowth}

The townspeople had gathered in City Hall, talking amongst each other concerning what to do with the Council members that they now had with them. There were still guards outside to be concerned about, but a few of the guards had come inside to take the townsfolks' side anyway, feeling ill content with the jobs they had performed in the last week and throughout their lives. That or they had decided to settle with taking the winning side. The Hall was still barred to keep the pro-Council guards out.

“What do we do with them?” one of the townsfolk asked, staring at the group of Councilmembers in the room, bound, gagged, and glaring as they waited for their fates.

“I say we just kill them,” another member of the town grumbled. “Like they'd done to us. They'd never done anything good for us anyway.”

“But then the guards out here would kill us.”

“They wouldn't kill the whole town, would they? And we outnumber them.”

“Why don't we try negotiating with the Council first?” another member of the town suggested. “See if we can come to an agreement.”

“With Uncle May at the lead? Don't be ridiculous.”

“Mayhitch Frinkett isn't the only Councilmember. There are others.”

“I don't want to deal with any of them as Councilmembers anymore.”

“I don't think any of us do. But we have to do something with them, and figure something out.”

“Well, talking to them and seeing what comes of it can’t hurt anything at this point.”

“...I guess you’re right. And we have some time.. We have the Council members, and some of the guards here seem to be on our side, or at least they’re not scrambling to detain us.”

“Hang on though,” one townsperson spoke up. “The Council was right about one thing. And that's the Resistance. They've caused so much damage, too, and started this whole mess. And we know there's at least one left. We need to deal with them for the town to truly be at peace.”

“Easier said than done,” another townsperson said. “We don't want to kill innocent people like the Council had.”

“But it has to be someone...”

The townspeople trailed off for some time, pondering, until one of the townspeople turned their gaze towards a woman. A doctor.

“Where has she been all this time?” the townsperson asked.

“What? What are you saying?” the doctor—Pansy Livington—replied, quivering in fear.

“She never was around much,” the townsperson replied. “Always absent when the murders were occurring. And we know now that your wife was Resistance; who's to say you weren't too?”

“What—no! I wasn't! Catalina... Catalina...”

It was too late; they were upon her. Some townspeople were cheering them on, others were urging them to stop, to detain her. Some were shaking. The woman began fighting back, trying to fend them off. Somewhere in the escalation, it got violent. A knife was brought out, there was a struggle, and then...

The doctor fell to the ground, bleeding, taking her last gasps.

“Catalina...”

Some of the townspeople went down to try to tend the wounds of the dying woman while the rest stepped back, staring at each other.

“What have you done? We can't be like the Council!” one of them cried.

“There's no way she wouldn't have known her wife was Resistance without her being Resistance!” the one who killed her argued. “They would have found out much sooner. And she was gone, no alibi. I'm really sure it was her.”

One person among them stayed silent, their legs quivering, their hands shaking.

“How do we know for sure? There has to be a way to know for sure.”

“...We could find their meeting spots.”

“And maybe the Council's records could prove useful in giving us clues. If we can find where they're hidden.”

“We could’ve looked into it before stabbing her!”

“She was fighting back, okay?!”

“Where would they be anyway? The clocktower's records were burned, and the homes of the Councilmembers were burned. What if there's nothing left?”

“Did you know,” came a voice in the crowd, “that City Hall itself has an intricate web of secret rooms hidden in its architectural infrastructure?”

A pause fell over the discussion as the voice went on. “In the same way that the pillars here were intended to be named after virtues, and similar to how the chair’s office was placed at the building’s heart to emphasize his importance, the small, hidden rooms in City Hall were originally built to represent the town’s smaller joys and oft overlooked smaller needs, but not long after the building’s inception, the rooms became of little use to the Council and so were relegated to secret storage and quiet meetings, because they were well-suited to these needs, and the publicly known archives were deemed too open and thus dangerous for keeping information that would be best kept under wraps. The building is exceedingly well-built, and the rooms exceedingly difficult to locate, especially after the renovations that took place about a century ago, did you know that hidden alcoves are littered all across the city, as backups in case anything should ever happen to the City Hall’s reserves, and there’s so much that they’ve squirreled away down there, and so much misinformation they’ve spread for generations, and misinformation is the worst kind of information, it’s truly insidious, and--and--d-don’t get any closer, I--I--”

The speaker had realized that everyone was staring at them--at her, and that she was the only one talking. The woman was trembling, her eyes wide as she stared back at the crowd, her unkempt curly blonde hair hanging loosely over her shoulders. The manic look in her eyes only intensified when she saw some of the townspeople moving closer, and she stepped back, reaching into her soot-covered bathrobes and pulling out a gun. She held it firmly in her shaking hands as she stared at the people around her, begging them to back off. The townspeople could only stare in shock, their eyes occasionally veering towards the gun in her hands, ready to point at anyone at any time. No one dared to breathe too loud.

An equally soot-covered man in a uniform nearby was the first to muster a verbal response.

“M-Miss Wrigley,” Sylvester Castell said. “P-put the gun down. This--this isn’t going to help.”

“Of course it won’t!” Joan burst out in a noise that was half a sob and half a shriek. “Of course it won’t help, nothing helps, tourism didn’t help, my friends are dead, my clients are dead, and--and I--I--and some of them I killed myself, and everything is wrong, the clock tower is gone, and they’re dead, and you burned down so many historically crucial places, did no one stop to consider the discounts, and now they’re gone, and if you had just visited more places, everyone would have been able to see what’s wrong, but also what’s right, but you didn’t, do you know why the Council wouldn’t let me send the schoolchildren to the aluminum foil and packaging center, because the working conditions are terrible, and they didn’t want kids to see, but you have to see to understand, but nothing helps, and everything is gone, and--”

As she gesticulated wildly, she accidentally shot off the gun into the air with a crack, and the bullet rebounded off one of the Pillars of Virtue and embedded itself into the wall just behind Uncle May’s head.

“--And this gun is a priceless antique!” choked Joan, still waving it furiously. “It needs to go in an exhibit at the history museum, that’s where it should be, but nothing’s where it should be--except maybe the Council tied up--We never meant to cause so much death, we just wanted to cause a stir that would help everyone understand what wasn’t good and get them to rethink--We had so many ideas, we just wanted--I just wanted--...” She trailed off.

When the townspeople weren’t staring warily at Joan and the gun in her hand, they were giving side glances at each other, conflicted on how to respond, and what to do with Joan.

“...Well, if you wanted to create a stir, it worked,” a stern-looking townsperson said. “You’re right, there is so much wrong, and the Council has done us much wrong. But you’re still responsible for the murders. And then there’s the murders the Council made trying to find you and your allies. You must answer for those.” He gave a wary glare.

“You could give her a fair trial and a proper jail sentence,” Sylvester suggested hesitantly.

“You don’t have to kill me, I could be a good inmate,” said Joan, still with a slight crack in her voice, but with a twinge of hope. “Just--just give me some newspapers to clip coupons from, I can give them to you when you come to ask me for advice, you need my advice, right, I can help you rebuild, I know about all this misinformation and about all the landmarks, and I can still make great travel plans, and you could do something more with the Outside, you could even set up proper elections for the Council positions, except it should be called something else new, maybe something that doesn’t have to be capitalized under pain of death--”

The townspeople stared at each other. “She has a point… She knew all about this building. Maybe she knows more about the others, and where we can find other information the Council kept from us…”

But the stern-looking townsperson never stopped staring at Joan. “That’s if she can be trusted…”

“She’s turning herself in,” another townsperson retorted. “She can’t do much damage there. We can double-check what she says easily. We have to give her a fair chance, just as Jensa would want, or we’ll be no better than the Council.”

Silence hung in the air, but there were still eyes on Joan’s gun, and the look in her eyes.

“Okay--Miss Wrigley,” Sylvester Castell said slowly. “If--if you’re serious, then please just--put the gun down now and put your hands in the air.”

“Can--W-will you all promise to stop burning things?” Joan asked the rest of the crowd, her voice high, her frenzied gaze looking at them just as warily.

“We promise. We have the Council anyway, so we don’t need to,” one said.

“I never liked the burnings anyway,” another said. “I still smell the smoke in the air…”

“And it’s terrible,” Joan agreed, her voice still tremulous, but she cast her eyes around at the crowd and gave a hard glance at the restrained Council--and finally she shakily handed her antique gun to Sylvester Castell. Then, suddenly, another horrified, panicked look struck her, and for a moment the townspeople were afraid she was going to turn on them once more--

“If I’m incarcerated, do you think I’ll still be able to buy my jigsaw puzzles from the Melville History Museum for my free mug?” she asked. And after the briefest of pauses--“Did you know that on Saturdays they have free admission for children under twelve and for seniors over--”

“We know,” several people said at once.

With the gun holstered and Joan in the process of being restrained, eyes looked back down to the body of Pansy below them. The ones involved in the struggle found that they couldn’t look even when the body was being covered, now that they knew their grave error. Inwardly, they knew that they may not be safe from incarceration themselves.

But then they turned to the Council again before looking at each other.

“I guess it’s only fair to jail them, too,” another townsperson said.

“Well, they’ll surely be condemned in the trial,” another townsperson grumbled.

“But at least it’ll be fair,” another townsperson spoke up.

“So at least if you’re in jail, you might have some company?” Sylvester Castell halfheartedly offered Joan Wrigley, whose face still looked slightly wild and lost, but at this, it brightened just a touch, very, very slightly, in a strange way that was not entirely friendly.

“You’ll probably want a vacation, I’m sure,” she said directly to the Council members. “And I can tell you all about them.”

The Council members only looked annoyed, giving sterns looks at Joan, dreading the opportunity of sharing a jail with the woman. They were certain that from then on, life for them would not be good at all.

SPOILER: Click to show

Pansy Livington was an Innocent Townsperson.
Joan Wrigley is Resistance.

The Resistance has won, and their ideas will help fuel the future of the town of Melville.

The aftermath round will last a few days before it will shift to an epilogue, happening about a year later.

(Special thanks to Lizica for writing this with me!)

SPOILER: Click to show

Pixie's will:

Please stay safe. We are lost to the tides of change. At least now, I reunite with my Catalina.

[Gelquie]

Cori had followed the guard and her sisters quite some way to ensure that her sisters were safe. As relatives of the Councilmember, especially one of the most hated ones right now, she wanted to be sure the mob wasn't going after them. Thankfully, no one did, and the girls were transferred to a secure location, away from the direction of the mob. Content, Cori flew away and outside. Whatever antics Cara would stir up... She supposed the guard would deal with it. Not like Cori could do much besides rattle latches.

Besides, she wanted to see what was happening with the mob. And she only felt mortified when she saw the Council members being rounded up.. And then worse when they had found Uncle May. What he was doing down there, Cori couldn't tell, but it seemed to save him from the fire somehow. But she couldn't help but wring her hands. She had seen how bloodthirsty the mob could be, just by starting the fire in the first place.

They were going to kill Uncle May. She was sure of it.

She followed them into the City Hall and floated around Uncle May, watching as he was tied up and gagged along with the other Council members. She knew the Council had done bad things in the past week, but she didn't want them dead for it. Besides, if Uncle May died, then her sisters would be doomed.

As the townspeople quarreled, she floated down and tried to see if she could interact with Uncle May's bonds. All she could do was nudge them slightly; she still didn't have the hang of interacting with material objects. But if they were about to kill Uncle May...

She couldn't stomach that.

But then she overheard them talking about maybe not killing Uncle May. Of course, not long after that, they killed one of the doctors in town. Was there no stopping the mob?

Cori lapsed into silence as well as she heard a woman's rambles. Normally, she would only vaguely listen to them. She didn't know the woman well, but she didn't mind being given coupons when she did talk to her. Some of them were useless, but some of them helped her save on money, for which she was grateful. But... Her, the last member of the Resistance? But how else would she know all these things? But... She had still killed people. Even if she looked reluctant and... No, she looked unstable.

Cori couldn't help but flinch as the gun accidentally went off. She hadn't realized where it was hit until it passed by her, nearly hitting Uncle May, something that caused both of them to flinch. That was too close.

Miraculously, Miss Wrigley decided to turn herself in, and had given the gun to a nearby guard. Thank goodness. At least something had gone right. And it only got better when the townspeople decided to stop the fighting, and to jail and try the Council members. Sure, they wouldn't be leading, but at least they'd be alive. Alive and able to...

...Except no. Uncle May wouldn't be able to look after her sisters. Not while he was in jail, possibly for a very long time.

...That meant they were on their own.

Cori shook. No. Her sisters couldn't be left on their own! They had no other family, and the only family friend they had had betrayed them. ...Speaking of which, those kids were on their own too, weren't they? What were they doing?

...Aaaah no, Cara would probably take it upon herself to watch over Rosemary, and potentially those other kids. She'd always insisted on being the guardian. But Cori knew better. She knew what had happened to her after their parents' death. How much she had changed.

She knew full well that Cara could not take care of herself, much less Rosemary or other children.

She began searching frantically among the townsfolk, looking for someone she could trust. But after what had happened, with the murders and the mobs, she found this very hard to do.

“Is anyone going to think about the orphans out there?” Cori fumed aloud. “Anyone? Or are they just going to be allowed to roam around and get themselves hurt with no one to stop them? Is that what's going to happen?”

SPOILER: Click to show

After ensuring that her sisters are somewhere safe, Cori follows the crowd to the City Hall and worries about May's fate, and witnesses what happens. She realizes that her sisters are homeless, and she doesn't have many options for them. She's very concerned about leaving Cara to raise her sister and herself. She then rants loud, going “Think of the children, won't someone PLEASE think of the children?!”.

[Thorn]

Not a half hour earlier...

Prace Dewall didn't much care about the actual purpose of the riots.
Sure, it would be nice to have a less oppressive government. Sure, it hadn't exactly been convenient, having to leave her garden untended and her children scared and alone multiple days in a row, just to go into City Hall and be interrogated about events she knew nothing of. But rioting, in and of itself, was just so much fun.

(Besides, these people weren't going to listen to the glorious words of the Wall without some serious coercion. Heathens).

She pulled off one heavy work boot, smashed in a window, and snatched up the book which had until then been resting quite peacefully on display. It had the most beautifully ornate cover, adorned with stars and abstract patterns in a multitude of colours, with a pair of gracefully intertwined dragons taking pride of place, their lilac scales tinged with gold by the fires of Melville. A trailing red ribbon was neatly pressed between two pages. It should have cost her a fortune.

Prace flipped the book open, tore out a handful of pages, and hastily scribbled a few lines onto each.

"Hey, you lot!" she yelled, ducking by a guard to reach those who would be more receptive to her message. "For too long have we let ourselves succumb to the allure of worldly possessions, but no longer! We've seen the dead rise to walk these streets, now wreathed in smoke and flame, and yet the mighty Wall rises above it all unfazed! Join us as we usher in a new tomorrow, or rather a return to an old one, with the Wall's promise available to all! Praise the Wall! Here, have these."

As she passed out the untidily scrawled messages, Prace frowned disapprovingly at one young woman- who appeared to be muttering under her breath the most heinous things about Prace's work and, therefore, about the great and benevolent Wall! Her book, even with those pages missing, was still plenty solid. The preacher raised it and gave the woman a good thwack about the ear.

"You have no place speaking like that!" she exclaimed, disgusted, as the younger woman cried out and stumbled. "Where would you be without the Wall? It has protected you from the terrors of the outside, given you everything! You will want for nothing so long as the Wall is allowed to once more assume its rightful place, foremost in our hearts and minds."

SPOILER: Click to show

With permission from Draco, have another Worshipper of the Wall! Random tangential interlude that I was originally just going to post in my journal but I figured; well, there aren't that many posts here, so it's not like I'm going to mess anything up. =P
And also I wanted to make an NPC with a punny name, like all the cool kidz.

Free for general use. If you need a non-Brick Wall worshipper for roleplay purposes, go ahead.

Prace Dewall, having joined the Wall Worshippers during the recent increase in preaching, embarks upon her quest to convert anyone and everyone in the immediate vicinity. Her arguments are not necessarily very well-reasoned, she just says things which she thinks sound good; but nonetheless she manages to get a few converts.

Though that one young lady over there...that heathen, she says such horrible things about the Wall! However, a quick thwack about the head with a solid book and a good old verbal scolding should set her straight.

[Huntress]

Ene climbed up a pile of clock tower rubble for a better view. The gallows were still there, of course, offering its grim heightened vantage point for anyone bold enough to accept it, but she supposed that if she kept going back to this platform, she really would develop some sort of unhealthy fixation, and in any case it was a miracle that the mob hadn’t set the gallows on fire yet. As things to set on fire during a revolution went, you couldn’t beat this particular opportunity for symbolism.

So she steadied herself and cast a look around while the wind picked up and tugged cheerfully at her hair and dress. The blackened carcass of the clock tower was still there, largely forgotten in the excitement of the riots, various councilmembers’ houses around the square were still burning and window-broken to various degrees and the crowds seemed to be gathering in the overall vicinity of the mostly-untouched City Hall with the impeccable logic that this is where things would be happening in tumultuous times.

Her attention shifted as a door to one of the council houses flew open. It was Councilwoman Daniela Schuler’s house, battered and Molotov-cocktailed like the rest of them. The family looked to have been hiding in a panic room and it looked to have been an experience they weren’t keen to relive. All four members of the family stumbled into the acrid-smelling daylight of the town with wild eyes and messy hair, clinging to each other like their lives depended on it.

“Please,” Ene heard Daniela croak as they staggered past, “please no more, no more voices, no more whispers, no more names, please…!”

Correctly interpreting this as someone having a spot of fun in the afterlife, Ene slid off her rockpile and headed towards the house while the Councilwoman’s family caught the interest of a nearby group of townspeople and was quickly apprehended. Their house was left behind for empty and none of the living saw a tall blonde man appear in the doorway, grin smugly while looking after the family and the mob that took them, then notice Ene and come over with the sort of loping gait seen mostly in large dogs and tall people.

“Hey, love,” he said, giving Ene a quick drive-by kiss on the forehead. “Figured I’d find you where the trouble was.”

“Trouble is everywhere right now,” Ene said, absentmindedly patting her husband on the shoulder. “Any idea what’s going on?”

Theodor didn’t have a full overview, having mostly wandered from councilhouse to councilhouse doing some curious sightseeing after a few decades of largely staying in his house, but he’d gotten the impression that times were indeed changing and the entire Council looked to be apprehended, save for Uncle May who was also being hunted at the moment. In other words-

“…I think the work of the Resistance is done here,” he finished his patchy account. “Successfully. So I guess you did finish what I started – too bad you had to die for it.”

“Eh,” Ene said dismissively, not really listening. She was looking around the square, currently in shambles and on fire, and in her mind’s eye saw new buildings, new people, a new life for the town. She’d died for it, of course, but something something for the greater good. Inbetween having Theodor, not having to worry about her life all the time and being able to shift appearance at will, she figured she’d be stupid to complain.

“Mh?” she said, realizing that her husband had still been talking and had ended with a question she hadn’t paid attention to.

“I said,” Theodor said patiently, “that this means that our work is done here and we don’t have to worry about the fates of the living any more. Which we shouldn’t have done in the first place, but when I died, I didn’t want to leave you behind, and then you didn’t want to leave your work behind, and I think we’ve both been hanging on for too long now.”

Ene reflected on that. This was true. All this time spent with the Resistance somewhere in the back of her mind wherever she went, never forgetting the cause, never stopping the fight, and now the fight was over. This was an oddly… empty feeling.

“So I asked,” her husband continued, hugging Ene gently, “if this might be the time for both of us to move-“

“Oh man, we should start a pub!” Ene exclaimed.

“-what.”

“I never had the time to do anything with my life other than work,” his wife said excitedly. “Heck, everything to do with the Resistance mostly happened at the expense of sleeptime, for all the time management tips Sebastian gave us all – in fact, that took up fifteen minutes of each session, which says something about our time management. Point being.” She looked around the square, saw a familiar dead face and clattered off, Theodor in tow. “Point being, we can finally do that. Grandpa had a recipe for making moonshine out of moonshine. Who’da thought that it’d come in handy?”

“What,” Theodor managed, barely keeping pace and wondering how exactly women manage to move so fast on high heels. A new interrogative finally muscled itself to his tongue. “Where? How?”

“In our house.”

“What- we’re using that house!”

“No we’re not,” Ene said sensibly, “we’re dead.”

“And who’s going to pay you? Ghosts are, well, dead, aptly noted, and you know how they say that shrouds don’t come with pockets?”

“I told you to change that tailor,” said Ene, whose dress came with a rather nifty cigarette pocket. “In any case, moonshine is free so we can just redistribute. Oi! Coriander.”

She’d drawn level with the dead girl, who was ranting about the children and the thinking thereof, and clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Want a job? Yes you do. Will get your mind off your troubles. You can mix drinks, right? Everyone can mix drinks, you’re hired, hop-hop.”

“Did you join the Communist Resistance?” Theodor asked suspiciously, catching up and still caught on the redistribution.

“Good grief, no, they got disbanded shortly after you died and the fracturing didn’t do anyone any good,” Ene said absentmindedly, counting off checklist points in her head. “Wait – are they already running a ghost pub? Because if so, I’ll need a few burly guys to hm, go and negotiate with them. What happened to that radio guy? He’ll be out of a job now and he was formerly a guard, I remember.”

“No ghost pubs in town, no,” Theodor said wearily and mouthed ‘tact issues’ to Cori, which earned him a whack.

“More’s the pity, you had no business sitting at home as a ghost for the past twenty years,” Ene pointed out. “Where did Vicky go? She didn’t look like she’s worked a day in her life and some good old elbow grease should do her some good.”

“She was haunting the sanity out of McGill last I checked,” said Theodor, who’s sauntered through Kay’s panic room wall at one point on his Council-sightseeing tour and spent five interested minutes watching the dynamics.

“Did she? Good for her. Knew there was potential in her and she’s been wasting most of it.”

A shot rang out through the open windows of the City Hall.

“And whoever that was, they can join too,” Ene said.

SPOILER: Click to show

Show is over, time to party! =D

Ene meets up with her husband who's been doing some casual Council-haunting and decides that now that her Resistance days can be considered over, she can start a ghost pub, because why the heck not. She tracks down Gelquie and offers her a job in the freshly existing afterlife recreation business, and if you currently happen to be a) dead and b) otherwise not engaged in anything, she'll hire you too.