endless_june | June 14, 1999 After School/Location Unknown

Investigating was the name of the game; Maya and Haruhi had discussed it at length the night prior. To their shock and alarm, neither of them really knew what to do, but somehow they'd managed a plan. They would split up, question everyone, and eventually meet up... somewhere. She could recall that Hiroshi's Home Ec class had popped up in conversation at least, so that was where she was heading!

She had reached the door by the time she noticed that something was unusual. It was the smell in the air; it was sticky and hot and awful. She'd never smelled anything like it.

"Yuck, what's going on in here? Smells like someone..."

And then she saw what was inside. The stench hit her twice as hard, seemingly more because she knew what it was, without a doubt. Even with the top half of the body burned to almost a crisp, there was no mistaking the form as the friend she'd vowed to help.

And all Maya could do was scream.

"SUZUMIYA!!"

As if the smell alone wouldn't draw the school nurse's attention. When dealing with chemicals, a keen and unobstructed sense of smell was important. That stench, already wafting down the halls, was the first thing that caught the nurse's attention. And she investigated.

A shout. Whose voice was that? Ms. Fey's, wasn't it? She hurried.

When she entered the classroom itself, though, she had to pause a moment. To fully take in the scene. Definitely Ms. Fey. She was standing over.... Suzumiya. Visible parts of the body were charred, third degree easily. It matched the stench.

"Maya." Her voice came out half teacher, half simple shock. What exactly was she supposed to make of all of this?

Naps were happy and full of warm fuzzy feelings. Today Osaka was enjoying a bouncy house with everyone. Maya, Maria, Minako, and Nui were all happily jumping and bouncing around. Alice seemed reluctant but Nui and Minako started chasing her around and she started having fun too. Chiyoko seemed pretty tired, but Osaka and Maria grabbed her hands and started jumping around. Eventually, Chiyoko started getting into it too. It took some doing, but Souji, Minako, and Maya managed to convince Hiroshi to close his book and join in. And Miss Bubblegum was outside, happily dumping chemicals into the generator to keep that bouncy house going.

Then there was the scream. At first, Osaka thought Maya fell out of the house and through the floor, as ghosts often did. But then the world turned fuzzy and Osaka found her face planted on a desk. The scream continued, despite the fact she was already forgetting the dream. Her feet moved themselves as Osaka stepped out into the hall. Is that Bubblegum over there? Adults always knew what to do. They had it all figured out. She trailed behind the teacher, who was moving surprisingly fast. Couldn't she slow down?

Then Bubblegum stopped. How nice of her. Now she could finally catch up. Osaka smiled as she reached the teacher. The face turned to that of confusion. Bubblegum was all sorts of confident and self-assured. The expression of shock on her face... its.... discomforting. Her gaze slowly turns as she enters the classroom.

This wasn't right. This was a normal happy school with normal happy friends. And yet...

Osaka's feet trembled as she stepped backward into one of the lab tables. The jolt of the unexpected object doesn't even register as she tried to process the horror before her.

Something sits unplesantly in Chiyoko's stomach that day -- a tight knot of anxiety and edginess that keeps her from settling on anything. She's twitchy and jumpy and she knows for a fact the others must have noticed. So she attributes it to lack of sleep (which isn't technically a lie) and hopes that no one thinks too deeply about the issue.

So she's distressed, frightened, jolted into an overdrive of adrenaline and sickened to her stomach -- but not at all surprised when she hears Maya scream.

She comes bolting, staggering, tripping, running out of the clubroom, and comes skidding up the corridor towards the door. There's a stench of something thick and cloying, sweet and nauseatingly bitter hanging heavy in the air and she feels herself cough thickly, in her throat.

Without even thinking, she shoves her way past Osaka into the room -- and only has to take a few steps forward before she sees.

Her chest hitches and she feels herself heave and she staggers back a few steps, unsure of what to say or do -- except stand there in blank shock and horror, with an overwhelming sense of failure abruptly dumping itself into the pit of her stomach.

[BGM: Scars etched by flames]

The screaming had gone on and on, slowly ending as she ran out of air to scream with, leaving Maya with only choked sobs. Legs moved numbly, almost unnoticed as she was brought to her friend's side.

The smell in the air was the most concentrated here, hanging like a cloud of death above Haruhi; it made Maya's stomach turn, and she wanted nothing more to look away. This couldn't be actually happening. It was a joke being pulled on her. She could accept it being a joke. She could not accept this!

Tears blurred her vision. She would have welcomed it, but someone -- a cold feeling in her chest, told her she couldn't look away from this.

Somehow, Bonni managed to tear Maya's attention from the... the corpse. "H-haru.... Har.. uhi..." Maya tried to speak, but a shuddering, uncontrollable sob stopped that.

Edited 2015-03-07 01:33 (UTC)

The nurse makes her way past Maya, to the body. A quick a deft hand takes the pulse - obviously gone - and feels the warmth of the body. Hmm.

"One of you, go get the police. Tell them that Ms. Suzumiya has been killed." A few of Maya's friends had come in right after Bubblegum, after all. Her tone is harsh, but in the way an adult's should be when taking control of a situation. She needs them to listen, not panic.

"And Maya, I'm going to need to ask you to stay here." A moment of pause, and she places a hand on Maya's shoulder. It's not comforting, though. Restraining, more like. "Don't try anything." Her voice is colder, now. A little accusing, perhaps.

Edited 2015-03-07 01:50 (UTC)

"Killed? Someone was killed?!"

Alice is out in the hallway, here trying to figure out where the rest of the club went. She hasn't seen the crime scene yet, instead standing frozen on the spot. Please, please let her have misheard that.

Miss Bubblegum's words floated into the air in front of Osaka before the brain processed the words. Right. Police. On tv, police knew how to help everybody. And Bubblegum was a Smart Adult who knew Smart things. So she's gotta have the right idea about how to handle this.

"R-right..." She slowly stumbles back out into the hall. The office has a phone, right? She could contact the police and- and everything will be fine because adults have it all figured out.

She dumbly pats Alice, for reasons she wasn't really sure of. "Hi Alice. I gotta.... office police phone... you know." The words aren't forming the way she wants them to but she's having a hard time focusing. Maybe Alice can figure it out. She's smart and mature and so much more together. So Osaka just keeps patting Alice dumbly as she passes her by, even patting the air once she's out of reach.

"... ...Stay?" The word left Maya's lips before she fully realized what it meant. The tightening grip on Maya's shoulder snapped her out of it quickly.

She looked bewildered, just now having discovered her dead friend. And now... "Wait... I-I didn't do this!" She shook in the grip, imploring eyes staring up at Bubblegum. Pleading. "I didn't do this!"

Peebs doesn't seem moved. But she does seem to have a heavy heart, if just because of this situation's magnitude. "Don't do anything rash, Ma..." No. "...Ms. Fey. This is for the police to sort out."

Something like a scream rises up from the pit of Chiyoko's belly and she has to swallow hard enough to hurt to chase it back down again. She doesn't know what to do -- keeping an eye on Hiroshi and Osaka was supposed to stop all this happening, neither of them had been acting weird or irrational -- but there's Haruhi, poor Haruhi, deader than dead again, and all Chiyoko can do is stand and stare and feel sick to her stomach again.

"... was she... was she alive?" she manages to ask, thickly. "When they burned her?"

The question of the hour, then, is how much do they deserve to know, and how much does she want to spare them? Would telling them the truth (such as she saw it) be a cruelness or a kindness?

She casts a glance at Maya. Hard to think a girl like this would be capable of such inhumanity.

But still, these girls would be finding out one way or another. Perhaps it best to get it out of the way now. "...Yes."

A gasp escaped Maya at that moment. Haruhi, a good friend, was burned alive. She had suffered for her investigation, and it left her nauseous at the thought.

"Please...." Maya's more emotional side was taking over fast. The strength to shake off PB's grip was fading fast. Already, the spirit medium was reduced to a shuddering mess. "I didn't kill her! T-there has to be evidence that says I didn't!"

Edited 2015-03-07 21:40 (UTC)

"Wait, wait, it should be the opposite! Nobody should assume you did anything unless there's evidence that you DID do it!"

This has to be a mistake. It was some kind of accident. She can't imagine any of her friends killing someone, let alone Maya.

Funny thing about burnt human skin. For someone who has, fortunately, never had to smell it before this moment in time, it's awfully distinctive. Someone was burned. Badly. Instantly, Nui thinks of her conversation with Chiyoko.

Well, let me know if you find your scissors. And I'll look for them, too.

She'd seen Osaka run past as she'd glanced out of the classroom doorway, but that wasn't enough to judge the situation proper. Besides, maybe someone just...burned their hand...right? When Nui approaches the mob spilling out in the hallway, her smile falters, becoming more plastic than usual.

"Are we having a party out here, or something?"

Chiyoko has to swallow hard again before she can speak and she looks from Maya to Bubblegum and then finally makes herself look at Haruhi. Maya's reaction, her choking sobs, her horror, lined up with her perfectly normal behaviour the last few days...

There's been no strangeness from Maya. No delusions. Maybe she hadn't been looking close enough, but...

She sucks in a deep breath and shakes her head.

"Maya didn't do this," she says softly, starting to chew the inside of her mouth. "It was someone else. But it wasn't Maya."

"Girls, it's all right. The police will get to the bottom of this. You have to have faith in their work." Peebs, you are such a hypocrite oh my glob.

Now where were they? There should still be some near the school, investigating the disappearance of Souji. It shouldn't take them long to arrive.

Souji... best not to think about him. There was definitely a connection - there's no way they couldn't be connected, especially since the only reason Suzumiya would be...

No, that's getting ahead of herself. She wasn't the one who needed to piece everything together. Best leave that line of thought to others.

"That's what I meant! There's no evidence!" Maya continued to plead, her voice obviously falling on deaf ears but still she tried.

"I didn't kill her!! I was talking to Minako and Osaka, and then I headed over here to meet with Haruhi! She was going to interview Hiroshi!"

Another sob. Maya looked as though she was about to fall to her knees, unable to support herself any longer. Bubblegum's iron grip kept her where she was, though, stuck in that one spot, the smell of death lingering all around her.

"I-I couldn't..."

June 14, 1999 After School/Location Unknown

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

slides in here..........if we're just going in any random order

no subject

no subject

no subject