[ it's saturday afternoon and todomatsu is in his pink hoodie and jeans, and i will throw them outside the church because that seems like your jam and it's like, the second least creepy building here.

he immediately flips on the charm switch when that pretty long hair enters his line of vision, but then realizes it's just that guy from the haunted house and not a gorgeous girl. ugh.

well he already smiled at him and started to wave, so he guesses he's committing to this. :\ ]

I guess they decided not to go with the cult thing after all.

[UNFORTUNATELY THE CHURCH IS EXACTLY THE JAM OF THE HOUR. Lucas, now dressed in simple black pants and a frilly white shirt, looks like he belongs here, and approaches the building with the sort of comfortable air of someone used to taking refuge on pews.

Totty being trapped in having to be polite is so funny HELP. Lucas, none the wiser, just smiles back and offers a polite little nod in greeting. Then, in a lightly teasing way:]

Are you certain? The - what were they calling it... demonic sigil? The symbol around the fire is still there. Giving us our clothing back could very well be a ploy to get us to drop our guards, don't you think?

Okay, decided not to go with that particular cult thing.

[ because yeah, between the pentagram and the fucking blood ritual to get to their clothes, shit's still shady as hell.

shakes his head. ]

Seriously, though, what are they wanting us to do here? You'd think they could have thrown some kind of explanation letter in with those boxes if they were already going to the trouble of sending them to us.

Many people seem to be under the impression that they're making these choices on purpose, with the rough goal of either a cult ritual or something related to the horror movies you've mentioned. What do you think...?

[Are they going to be ritualistically sacrificed or become the next big Hollywood hit?? Maybe both, damn.]

I'm still leaning more toward the horror movie thing, but they sure haven't given us a lot to go off of plot-wise.

I'd have to defer to those of you who know more about what a movie is, in that case... Though I can't say I know a great deal of the occult, either.

[AND THEN IT WAS A CULT.]

[ outside the church again, where he's squinting at the cursed bible message in the dirt...

he gives a rather unenthusiastic nod instead of the cheerful greeting from last time, but is that because the situation is more dire now or because he didn't mistake lucas for a girl this time......... who knows ]

Well, that's one of the worse things I've been wrong about.

[ todomatsu is sitting somewhere outside the refectory and messing around on his phone in a vain attempt to distract himself from... literally everything.

looks up at lucas when he comes by (did he just see the hair in his peripheral vision and mistake him for a girl again? who's to say) and just kind of raises his eyebrows like "welp" ]

Nice how everything keeps getting worse all the time.

[Running gag of anticipating talking to a cute girl only for it to be Lucas Yet Again.

What a mood, though! He looks tired. He is tired. At least he's not going through it to the level the BG3s and Honkeys are but damn if he doesn't feel like he could sleep a solid week after the last few days.]

This is far from what I expected of this ritual, and yet it fits all too well for a group who would even "cut corners" on summoning a powerful deity. [HE HATES THESE CULTISTS SO DAMN BAD.] ...Are you faring alright? As well as can be expected, at least?

[ he also hates these incompetent cultists, even though if this was happening in his canon they would absolutely be cutting corners and fucking things up in stupid ways too, so he doesn't have nearly as much room to judge as he's deluding himself into thinking he does. ]

...Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I wasn't close to any of them.

[The truest and most importantly funniest form of judgment is the hypocritical kind. He'll just take a seat nearby.]

Even then, the situation we've been placed in isn't an easy one to take in.

[The concern and suspicion that this might happen again had all but been confirmed, after all.]

[ yeah the situation 100% sucks, no argument there. ]

No, and it's a lot worse now than it seemed to be when we thought we had two months to figure this out.

Two months to figure it out, and certainly less direct or indirect interference from the cult itself...

[When you think they're just going to be watching like creeps from afar and then they start doing more WEIRD BULLSHIT CULT THINGS!!!!]

[ shakes his head ]

I'd thought if anything they'd be trying to prevent us from dying before the date of the ritual, but I sure got that wrong.

It seems that what some speculated was correct... That the exact timing of our shed blood doesn't matter within the spread of the next two months.

[Bad! Tiring. This cult can't even stick to schedules.]

Which means they have no incentive to keep us alive even outside of these rituals that affect us.

Nope!

[ soooo he's going to edit the list of potential locations he compiled during the minievent before he gives it to the npcs to take out anything that could end up being interpreted in a deadly way... ugh. ]

The monster thing too... originally they made it sound like that was completely unrelated to the ritual and we could pretty much opt out of it if we wanted. And now it turns out that oh, actually, they can use them to turn us into brainwashed murder machines. Cool.

[COOL!! He presses his lips into a thin line, displeased.]

Being tethered to something that can take control and behave in such a way is... [Bad? Discomforting? Upsetting?? SUPER CREEPY. All of these things and more. He shakes his head, rather than finishing the sentence.]

Moreover, if people do begin to find their partners, the number of dead we could face in a week will rise exponentially...

[ yeah!! all those things!!!! doesn't help that pestilence kept calling it being "infused" with a monster, which just. bleh. ]

Yeah... ugh. I still feel like it's safer not to, but I don't know how many will agree with that.

I agree, at the very least. You have the right idea.

[At least as far as he's concerned... Smashcut to some effect next Monday making life even more difficult for people who don't want to find their partners.]

If the only incentive is a wish provided by the same magic this cult relies on, there's a high chance it won't turn out in the way one might hope, anyway.

[At least he doesn't look as raggedy as some of this crew, but it's clear just by demeanor that they're all having a bad time. Vanishing into the meat dimension only to come back changed......

Lucas approaches carefully, a little pinch of concern in his expression.]

...Hello, dear. Is there anything that I can get you? Water, food, a blanket...?

Oh...

[ he still startles slightly despite the carefulness, and though he smiles, it looks a little uncomfortable. ]

Um, I think I'm okay, but thanks! [ ... ] I mean, unless you already have any of those things on you, haha.

[Meanwhile his ass just looks Concerned. Yall... The things he's heard are wild...]

I don't, but it would be an easy matter to go back to a house and fetch them. ...I assume your injuries have already been tended to, at least?

[ no it's fine he just didn't want to be rude and reject the offer if lucas was literally standing there with a blanket or something.

he nods, holding up his bandaged hand. ]

Daan-san helped me out. I didn't have that many injuries anyway.

[Glancing at his lil bandaged hand and nodding. Thank god for Daan. If he dies they are going to be so screwed please they already lost Nona.]

...What happened to you, exactly...?

...Short version is we got lost in the fog and ended up in what I think was a different world, and had to fight this necromancer who wanted to use one of us as a vessel to escape.

[ this is an insanely abridged version actually ]

[THIS IS SO INSANELY ABRIDGED THAT IT'S NONSENSICAL. But he doesn't question it because this whole place runs on bullshit magic that makes no sense to him.]

Geto mentioned the... necromancer. [GROSS AND WEIRD.] ...He also mentioned that most of you were separated?

[ SOMETIMES YOU DON'T LIKE TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO YOU SO YOU TRY TO SPEED THROUGH WITH AS FEW DETAILS AS POSSIBLE ]

...We were, yeah. For a long time. She was trying to wear us down so we'd be willing to make a bargain with her, I think.

[FAIR HONESTLY HE'D DO THE SAME. Also this sounds exhausting. And confusing. His brow furrows.]

And yet, you were only gone for a short time here... Just yesterday we had that horrible soup.

[TIME BULLSHIT IS SO TIRING.]

You were able to defeat her?

[ YEAH IT'S DISORIENTING AS HELL ]

God, that soup. Yeah, that was like, two months ago? Something like that.

[ rubs his forehead... ]

We did. Destroyed the item that she was getting her power from and everything.

[ "and everything" meaning "and stabbed her" but he doesn't know if he should say that. ]

[Just keeping the stabs a secret... He nods, though, understanding. Life's exhausting! Especially when you're just launched into the necromancy void for two months apparently!]

...I'm sorry that you had to go through such a thing. As if being here isn't enough of a punishment.

[He's so mad at the concept of CYOAs.]