snowblindrpg | [network] @TW; Video; Day 12 [open, cw for corpses and horrible]

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[network] @TW; Video; Day 12 [open, cw for corpses and horrible]

My voice is back.

[ Though for those who've heard Tim's voice before, it sounds much more hoarse than usual. Still, any voice is better than no voice! ]

I'm gonna - [cough cough] - I'm going to upload a video in a second. Some stuff I found yesterday. Kids shouldn't watch it. People who're already - you know, already freaked out by everything shouldn't watch either. It's not... I mean, it's. It isn't anything good, is what I'm saying. So.

[ He could try and filter the video away from those parties, but the thought doesn't sit well with him. The last time he tried to hide secret video footage from someone it kind of backfired spectactularly and people got killed and Tim got sent here by Tall McDarkandfaceless and everything was awful. He'd rather not repeat that, thanks. ]

[ When the promised video begins, it doesn't look very interesting. The camera is trained on the ground, where someone has been digging at the snow and dirt to reveal a layer of smooth pebbles. The cameraman - Tim, obviously, though he can't be seen - kneels in the snow, picks up a handful of the pebbles and brings them closer to the tablet. It's a little hard to make out since they're covered in dirt, but each of the stones is speckled in something that looks very much like dried blood.

The tablet is then propped up against something on the ground, showing a better view of the surroundings: a park complete with playground equipment. Tim walks back into shot, crouches, and resumes digging. After a minute or two he stops, a puzzled expression on his face, and pulls at something in the hole to get a better look at it.

There's a strangled gasp of breath that might have been an attempt at a scream, and Tim drops the thing like it's on fire. People with sharp eyes (or who pause the footage) will see that it was a human arm, dismembered just above the elbow. Tim scrambles out of view and the video briefly goes black as he turns off the tablet.

When the video resumes, it seems Tim has been busy. The view is panning across the ground again, revealing several patches that have been dug up to reveal frozen corpses. Some are bloody and horribly wounded, while others appear to have died less violently - the only thing they seem to have in common is that they're all remarkably well-preserved. And remarkably dead. That too.

Also worth noting is that the video is distorted badly. It's warped and stretched as if it's being tugged on at the edges, and there's a large amount of visual tearing evident in the footage. There isn't exactly a lot to be heard - wind noises and muted, huffy coughs - but the little audio that's there sounds tinny and distorted as well. It doesn't really make the fact that there's a mass grave in the fucking park any less horrifying, unfortunately.

After half a minute or so, the video cuts out. Mercifully. ]

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[ Tim offers one of those looks that quite clearly says "uHHHHHH." He lets it sink in for a good few seconds so that it achieves maximum uHHHHH-itude. It's beautiful. ]

You're, uh. You're asking if I'm suddenly feeling hot... in snow hell.

No.

I'm-- it's. It's pretty brisk.

[ SO MUCH JUDGING ]

[Okay, he can appreciate a good judge-y look, and that is pretty damn impressive, good job Tim.]

Yeah, hot in the I've-suddenly-caught-an-incurable-illness-and-have-a-fever way, not in the wow-we're-in-Hawaii way, dude, you were coughing. A lot. Right after digging up corpses that may or may not have died because of a mystery illness.

[So judge all you want, but this is serious, or at least probably should be, unless you want to, you know, not consider that at all and then keel over the next second. Which he'd rather avoid.]

[ Oh. ]

Oh.

[ Oh.

His eyes flick sideways for a second as he fishes something out of the pocket of his shitty flannel shirt. A mostly-empty packet of cigarettes! Golly. ]

Smoker's cough. 'Cause, uh. I smoke.

[ It invites fewer questions than "oh np bro that's just one of the symptoms of my pre-existing incurable supernatural bullshit illness, nbd" okay ]

[Yeah, oh sounds about right.

... also, yeah, okay, smoking-- that could explain it, if Stiles wasn't hard-wired from years of being surrounded by supernatural shit and maybe getting a serious case of anxiety-ridden hypervigilance to doubt everything and everyone. But he does have a pack of cigarettes, and what is the likelihood of the guy just coming across one here to use it as an excuse... so, the benefit of doubt, maybe.]

... Right. Well, okay, great, that means you're probably not going to infect us all with the hypothetical Mystery Illness! Dying of lung cancer twenty years from now's a much better option.

Haha, yeah. That's the plan.

[ He tucks the cigarettes back into his pocket, coughing a few more times for good measure. ]

Plus I don't-- I mean, don't people, like. Burn bodies when there are plagues? So someone can't just dig them out of the snow like, uh. Like an idiot?

[... you're crap at making plans, Tim.]

Yeah, they do, but have you seen an abundance of firewood around here? Or fire-making supplies?

[Yeah, no, neither has he, and in the absence of those, is there any other option than to bury the bodies in the snow?]

Nnnnope. But I haven't seen any electronics or signposts or vehicles, either, and - I mean - it's pretty obvious there used to be those around. So just 'cause we don't have something doesn't mean they didn't, right?

[................. point.]

Okay, true, but what if they didn't have time to build some kind of funeral pyre for all of those who died? What if they died around the same time as everything went to hell in here, I mean, half the houses are in ruins, obviously that happened at some point, too. I'm pretty sure whatever made that happen, the biggest concern for people right then wouldn't have been to burn the bodies.

But they had time to bury them?

[ Not exactly super deep, but... they were well-hidden under that layer of playground gravel. And snow, but even Tim isn't at the point of paranoia necessary to think that the snowfall was deliberately engineered all this time to keep the bodies covered.

YET. ]

I'm - I'm kind of thinking, uh. They were hidden from the admin, maybe. So they couldn't be revived? Possibly, uh - possibly by choice.

Wait, so- you think whoever buried them did it so the one who brought us here and keeps making us die and come back again wouldn't be able to bring them back?

[That. makes a surprising amount of sense, the more he thinks about it.] And they couldn't find them so they did the next best thing, brought a bunch of people from different places here, great, so if that theory's right, then it's the fault of whoever nicely buried all those bodies that we're even here.

... do they look, uh, you know, revivable? [Just asking. For curiosity. Not at all because Stiles is quietly starting to wonder whether this is going to become the coldest zombie apocalypse the world has ever seen.]

[ He thinks about that for, ooh. All of five seconds. ]

...I-- how do you even tell if they look revivable. We, uh, don't know what limitations the admin has, so...

I mean, some were cut up. So maybe not those. But like - I mean, I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have been revivable and it brought me back.

[That is, in fact, a good question, and one that Stiles would at any other time give serious thought for, because knowing which bodies are revivable and which are not is something they should think about... except his attention goes to something else here.]

Wait, you? As in, you froze to death and it brought you back? Because that's happened to a lot of people, so why shouldn't you have been, you know, the same? ["Sorry you died"? Proper etiquette when talking about the death of the one you're talking to? WHAT IS THAT.]

No, I just - I mean, no corpse is usually revivable. I was - I was talking generally. Not insinuating that I was different, or... I dunno, that I cut my own head off or something.

[ Urgrhhrhr. Gross. Gross gross gross. ]

I wonder if that would... If that would even work. If the admin could bring back someone with a wound like that, I mean.

[ Because holy shit that would be fucking horrifying. WHY IS EVERYTHING SO MORBID AND GROSS WHAT IS LIFE ANY MORE ]

[.......................... uhhhh. Uhhhhh.]

... yeah, okay, I wasn't thinking you cut off your own head, but it's great to know that's the conclusion you drew from this. Awesome. And yeah, well, in my experience, it's usually the corpses nobody wants revived that somehow come back to life, but that's back home and not here, here it's a lot more egalitarian.

[And, hm, well, the admin seems to be able to bring back anyone who's died, so it stands to reason they'd be able to bring back even those who are... dead in more unconventional ways.]

Well, I mean, why not? I don't think what they're doing depends on how you've died or how much of you is intact. Either the admin brings back everyone, full stop, and since nobody's had any blue toes or fingers missing from frostbite or anything, I'm guessing the admin sort of... makes us revert back to how we were? But if someone was missing a head and was brought back, that'd probably be more like a zombie, like, the living dead kinda thing, because if you were actually alive and missing a head, there wouldn't be much point in bringing you back because you'd just die immediately again. [Did you say morbid? Stiles lives on morbid. Or more like ignores morbid for the science...]

[ Tim's turn to uhhhhhhhh. Out loud. ]

Uhhhhhhhh...

[ SEE? ]

Wait, wait - I - wait. Wait. Where you come from, uh - people come back from death there, too?

[ 'Cause the only other universe he's aware of that happening in is Al's, and Stiles doesn't seem like he's about to start crying and flailing about sacrifices and alchemy and unnaturalness and blah blah blah. ]

[That was a very good "uhhhhhh", Tim, 10 points, A for effort, all that jazz.]

Yeah? No? I mean, it's not like a regular thing, more like sinister rituals used by sinister people to bring themselves back to life? [He still sounds somewhat uncertain, as he's not totally sure what the point here is -- but, hey. He'll explain if it makes you feel better.]

So it's not like here, where somebody's bringing us back to life one by one, but some sort of magic rituals or something, so far I know of exactly two people who're back, one of them is a psychotic maniac killer who somehow managed to control one of my friends to help him bring him back, and the other is another psychotic maniac killer who, incidentally, was killed by the first psychotic maniac killer, and I have no idea how she's back. [Probably something to do with her were....somethingness (werejaguar? who even invented something like that), but he's wise enough not to drop that bit into regular conversation.]

[ There's an absurdly long silence on Tim's end. ]

[ TOLD YOU IT WAS LONG. ]

I guess you, uh. You know some pretty interesting people.

[ Because seriously dude what the fuck was that. What the fuck is you. Who is you fuck. Fuck is you who. ]

[Tim. Tim are u ok. Did you accidentally die.

... oh, okay, no, you still live.]

Uh, yeah, you could say that. I mean, in this case, it's not exactly voluntary, I'd rather someone killed them both again. [Which. is probably very reassuring to hear.]

I... right.

[ Tim really isn't in a position to judge, since he's killed someone.

But he's going to judge a little anyway because you'rE NOT THE BOSS OF HIM ]

Well, maybe you should write to Santa about that. Or you know what they say - if you want something done, do it yourself.

[ He's joking HE'S JOKING ]

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[network] @TW; Video; Day 12 [open, cw for corpses and horrible]

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