Stacked Deck

[VoltTurtle]

((Richard Smith continued from Life Anew))

There were a lot of reasons for Richard to be angry right now. For one, he was currently stuck in the kind of fresh hell that only a true sadist could possibly dream up, a pizza parlor aimed at children. For two, this goddamn CRT television that he found in one of the supply closets kept going on the fritz and cutting off the feed. For three, he had spent at least three whole hours looking for Quinn and hadn't seen her anywhere in here, and that bitch owed him for damages to his person, plus interest.

Oh and also, he was dead. That fact hardly bothered him compared to everything else, though. After all, it wasn't like there was much he could do about it at this point. Right now all he cared about was who managed to do what he didn't. Go all the way, be the fittest, win the game, however you wanted to put it. He was talking about the survivor, he wanted to know who the survivor would be. Why did he care so much? Because he swore to God, wherever that bastard was hiding in here, that he would personally fucking strangle Him if some bumbling idiot Mr. Magoo'd their way to the end when he didn't.

It took him a while to figure out how to get that information, though. Access to the living world wasn't exactly easy at the best of times in one of these hellholes that they call attractions, let alone when it was an actual hellhole. It didn't look like he was gonna turn into some fanciful poltergeist anytime soon and haunt some dumbass for the insult of still drawing breath, even if he would be totally down for that, so that option was out. Instead he was forced to use his brain—or whatever constituted for a brain when you were an actual fucking ghost—to solve that riddle.

Thankfully, you could call him The Dark Knight, because he was apparently the world's greatest detective. Once he found this old television, he was set. Just pop it down on one of the tables in one of the private rooms that these places always seemed to have, and he had a perfect opportunity to either be mildly satisfied or to bash his skull into the wall until he finally double died in peace.

He briefly wondered where he would go if he actually died again. Would he go to double hell, known only to those who dare speak its name as the bowels of Wood Division VII? Only a true monster would make him experience those horrors first hand, and given where he was now, he was pretty sure whatever asshole god was responsible for him being here fit that description. Probably best to just sit tight until the opportunity to punch said god in the throat presented itself. The holy smiting he would promptly endure would at least be worth it at that point.

Right now, all he needed to do was sit down, relax, and watch. At least, that's what he would be doing, if the television hadn't decided to quit working.

"Stupid fucking thing," he enunciated, banging against the top of it with his fist, "WORK, DAMMIT."

As if responding to his anger, the television flickered back to life, finally re-revealing the live feed of the island below. Above? Whatever, space was bullshit and time was an illusion anyway.

Sitting down in one of the perfectly uncomfortable metal chairs in the private room, Richard began to frantically mash the channel buttons to try and catch a glimpse of some of the ongoing action, not paying any attention to the door that was wide open nearby.

[Jilly]

The door behind Richard opened more and more slight, followed by clacking of boots on the concrete flooring that grew in volume behind Richard.

"Everything good, Holmes? Heard you whacking it something fierce."

The girl stopped in her tracks near the television, running her hand along its black and dusty and kinda weirdly grimy plastic casing. God, this thing was retro. Hadn't seen one of these bad boys since like.............. dunno, 6th grade? Cool shit.

Though, it looked like Dicky over here was having a little trouble getting it going, whatever he was so intent on peeping at.

"Need any help, my guy?" She smirked.

[Sunnybunny]

((Sakurako A. Jackson continued from the various adventures of her less-than-fabulous afterlife)))

Okay so. Feelings had been hashed out, as well as they could be. Good, great and grand. She was sure Sean and Thomas could entertain themselves while she found something to think about that wasn't related to life or death.

The sound of someone smacking something in frustration drew her attention, led her to stick her head in the door of the room. There was Teresa, her vaper-in-arms, and it was oddly surprising to see her again. But the reason she'd peeked made itself apparent. A tv! Maybe it was showing something besides-

Ugh, this.

Making her way in, she tilted her head up at Teresa in greeting, and glanced at Richard, curious on why he'd fixed up a tv just to watch the horrors of the island. A movie seemed like more appropriate viewing.

All dogs go to heaven, right?

"Are you checking in on someone?"

The living belonged to the living. The dead belonged to the dead. She didn't want to wonder about anyone's fate, it shouldn't matter. It didn't matter.

She sat down in a chair near Richard anyway, glancing at the screen that had clearly seen better days.

[Cicada]

He'd been settling for watching the extent of the American Idol-similar 'I really don't want to see any of these people make it off this island' out in the buffet area like a good little sheeple. He'd not been particularly thrilled with the entertainment, but he'd also been significantly more leery of the idea of having to talk to any of the others. Bad enough that he couldn't even die to get away from his litany of high school embarrassments. The part of him that had allowed himself to hope he might end up talking to someone while coming off like he didn't want to talk to any of them- something something alpha power dynamics- had paradoxically gotten louder the more and more it had been left to flounder. He'd started out vaguely miffed, and by now he was very much craving an excuse to open his mouth that wasn't the metaphorical swallowing dick he'd be doing for the rest of his afterlife because he hadn't exactly died on the best terms and wasn't particularly on board with the whole 'fuck I'm still the same person on the other side and I haven't become even marginally happier or more attractive in God's Pizzagate kingdom, this is a total rip off'.

So of course the white knight in him had reared it's ugly neckbeard head and he'd sidestepped on over to try and fail to say hello to the first familiar face that had shown up.

((Demetri Futscher theoretically non-canonically continued from his death thread))

And of course the first thing he could do was promptly not greet either of the girls in the room like a normal person, because they unfortunately happened to have soft eyes and tits. One of them had even taken his kiss virginity and he was still apparently fundamentally incapable of understanding that she was a human being like he was. He'd pretty much meandered into the room with a very affected 'I came here on accident' tread and then he'd realized he had nothing to do but sit down and that'd make it look like he'd come here on purpose. So here he was, standing vacantly in the doorway. Demetri, being a member of the Aryan master race, realized then and there that all the propaganda of the American fashies was totally off-center (literally, etc).

Some genes of the white man were just inherently inferior, the ones that had ended up in his bony ass.

Nothing happening on the TV was particularly new news, given that he'd watched all the rest of his friends die so far- nice reminder that had been, that he'd been incapable of helping them as they got beaten, collar detonated, got killed by being accidentally shot by an ally, as if Demetri's own death couldn't have been the most egregiously unfair. He'd absolutely enjoyed watching them all die and was positively thrilled absolutely none of them seemed to be interested in stopping by to at least say hi before they went off to heaven and he was dragged down to hell where he belonged.

He kind of wished the TVs could show what had happened off-island, even a bit. He guessed he wanted to see what Dad had done with the room. Maybe they'd boarded it up, figuring his dependent ass would keep mooching off their charity for the rest of eternity as an undead ghost. He wondered how the people who hadn't gone were going to react. How what little non-existent respect for him Ming and Jordan and Aleks had had would drain away when they saw the blooper reel called the conclusion to his mortality.

Oh shit he'd almost accidentally looked at Sakurako. Just had to keep his eyes to himself until he could safely slink away. Also, who was the dude? Imagine having to care about some NPC like him in and among all the tragedy of the massacre of the class of 2018. Demetri was kind of starting to get how the women of his generation could get sick and tired of generic ass white guys.

[VoltTurtle]

This was happening now, apparently.

If Richard had known that leaving the door open would invite a parade of assclowns into his room with him, he would've been made sure to shut it. He thought that it was obvious enough that he wanted to be left alone, given that he was trying to watch this shit on the oldest, shittiest TV in the whole of the hellish dimension that he had been flung into rather than using the much better TVs available in more public venues. Apparently he was wrong to think that, though, and now he had a mess of people to deal with.

He scanned the room silently, analyzing exactly who was with him, trying to remember who they were, and what he had seen each of them do.

The first person to disturb his peace and quiet was Teresa Rojas. Party girl, hedonist, mascot slayer, and witch hunter. Of the three people in front of him, she definitely struck him as the type to be most likely to stick her nose where it didn't belong. You know, like a pile of cocaine. See that observation was funny because- never mind. She was pretty cute at least, definitely the type of girl that Richard would be interested in. Not that it mattered now, given that they were both motherfucking ghosts and also because Richard never had a chance to begin with. Even ignoring his charitably described as surly demeanor, Teresa struck him as the type to be a size queen, and he knew all too well how blessed he was in that department.

Moving on.

Next up was Sakurako Jackson. She was a people pleaser, and a pretty funny one at that. She didn't strike him as the type to take charge in most situations though, if anything she seemed like often or not she'd just go with the flow. Losing herself to the whims of the tide, steadily waiting for the end of the ride. Impromptu shitty bars aside, it made sense that she would follow Teresa into the room. She probably wouldn't have wandered in on her own, given what he knew about her. Also, while he was thinking about it, Sakurako was also Richard's type. Though, if he allowed himself to be honest for a second, given how he was almost as much of an incel as Demetri (don't worry, Richard was getting to him), he was pretty sure that nearly every girl in George Hunter would qualify as his type.

Whatever, she wasn't his real focus anyway.

That finally brought him to this asshole sitting only a little bit away from him, Demetri Futscher. Richard could almost feel the sniveling beta male energy radiating off of Demetri as he oozed into the room after the two girls. He couldn't be more extraordinarily pathetic if he tried. He went through all the effort of joining the party of shitbirds coming in to disturb Richard's peace and quiet, but he didn't even have the courage to utter a single goddamn word to any of them. Richard knew why too, given that Sakurako and Teresa were in the same room as them and Demetri was possibly the prime example of what a cuck looked and acted like. Richard might have trouble talking to cute girls too, but at least he wasn't so much of a giant pussy as to not even say hello.

In fact, he had a lot to say, to each of them.

Abruptly, Richard stood up, placing one foot upon the cold metallic chair that he had been sitting in and leaning his arm and weight onto his leg, his steely gaze cast across the whole of the room. When he spoke, he did so with an almost dramatic flair behind his normally bored sounding voice.

"Behold the gaggle of idiots that have decided to so rudely intrude upon my goddamn peace and quiet," he began, briefly raising his arms in the air like a preacher giving a sermon. "Let's analyze who we have here, huh?"

"First we have Teresa," he said, gesturing to her. "A girl who could put Scarface to shame with how much coke she ingested over the course of her short life. The singular brain cell that had managed to survive her drug induced purges somehow kept her afloat for far longer than it reasonably should have, only for her to get picked off from afar while she was losing a debate to a corpse."

"Then we have Sakurako," he continued, gesturing again, in turn. "Someone who was so brilliant that, after being blown the fuck up by the biggest pussy in our entire class, decided to have a conversation with Justin of all people. This ended how everyone else but her probably expected it to, but at least she got a final, touching moment with her new boyfriend. You know, the one she got immediately after killing her ex, who also bailed on her when she got blown up. Nice going, by the way, excellent taste in men."

"Finally, we have the miserable sack of shit known as Demetri," he said, turning in the boy's direction, not giving him the courtesy of pointing to him. "Who's probably the biggest loser in the room, which is saying something, because I'm here. This guy stuck his neck out and tried to take on Erika of all people, and what did he accomplish? Absolutely fucking nothing. He died, one of the triplets died, another random fucktard died. The only person who survived that shit was Yuka, and I'm pretty sure she only lived because she was doing her best impression of a corpse the whole time. Then he died alone, the one person who knew he was there leaving his ass behind. Cucked from the moment of birth to the moment of death, as he should."

A shit-eating grin was plastered across his face by this point. This was his time, he was in his element, but it wouldn't be a real roast from him without a good amount of self-deprecation as a cherry on top.

"Hey, but before you think I'm one to talk, remember that I'm here with you dumbfucks too. There I was, dick supreme, thinking I was going to go all the way, make it out. Then in my first real fight Quinn fed me my own nuts so fast that I'm still coughing up spunk to this day. I died before any of you, because I am a fucking retard."

He stepped down from his perch.

"Yessir, we have a mighty fine collection of losers here, if I do say so myself," he said, his grin having grown wider still. "To answer your questions, no I don't need any help, and I'm not checking in on anyone in particular. I just want to know which idiot of the ten we have left will be the one that actually makes it out of there."

[Jilly]

The girl opened her mouth to speak after Tricky Dicky. But uh...oh, gross. Demetri was here. Nevermind.

She flashed a peace sign and disappeared into the ether.