Not only can ya sing, but you can dance... You really are a fuckin' super-star

[Cicadan]

- G??? : Continued -

Word on the street was that the art room was so big because it had originally been slated to be another theater room. It had been, apparently, the old headmaster pre-Manchild Panthers

(pretending high school sports had value beyond nostalgia bait for has-been alumni, sheesh)

era of the school, who had been planning to expand a full wing for the school solely for the art department. All they had left were the bits and pieces of what might have been, a door leading to nowhere, which if you asked Lucille was pretty creepy af. Hence, at least a few of her supposed 'peers' probably hung around there during off-hours simmering in their own edginess. Lucille had better shit to do with her time, though she was still spending it an unusual amount of alone.

She was cool with hanging out alone- by the way. Lucille took a certain pride in not being a total simp for her friends and for society.

Graphite flaked onto a child-sized sketchpad, soft-like, as Lucille worked. Strictly from memory, a serene orchard began to take shape as her fingers diligently whittled blank space off the page. A couple of trees, mostly neatly trimmed hedges and the like. Or at least the blocky shapes underlying them. The scritching noise of pencil and the unique stench of high school

(that one, like, the slightly sterile chemical scent of whatever cleaner the janitors in every brickhouse school in Miami seemed to use, poorly masked by Glade pine)

was uniquely cozy honestly. Reminded Lucille a lot of little Lucille, that particular twerp who'd once dreamed of designing Balmain, as opposed to the modern grown-up version of her that had to settle for wearing it. Well. She guessed she could still make it in the industry? If she ever had second thoughts about TV. Sketching, anyways, was a nice way to relax. Her phone was still on and still irregularly pinging for her attention- like, she imagined at least a few of her usual lunch crowd were after her location. No dox though, she wasn't about to give up her cherished free time. Wasn't like she wasn't usually available anyways. It wasn't often she was in the mood to do something like this.

She'd invited one friend over, though. Someone she didn't speak to too often, but she was... eerie. In a cool way. One of the best SOTF minds of Mangrove, sorta like finding the perfect sports coat on sale buried deep in the rack and stealth-moding out with it when no one was looking. A hidden gem, for the most part kept all to herself... Like, as far as Lucille was aware. Not like Rebecca didn't have friends period, but she wasn't exactly swimming on the deep end of society. She was a name and a face, to most in their year. No offense intended, anyways. None of those points were a ding against her.

"Hey." Lucille looked up the moment Rebecca was there, the quiet of the room having been placid and undisturbed like pristine pond water until the door had opened again. "Told ya I can sketch."

Lucille held up the criss-cross of lines forming patterns nigh recognizable, smiling easily.

"Did you catch today's highlights yet? No spoilers, I haven't." Lucille nodded her head at the nearest chair, though there were plenty more to go around in the empty room.

[Irina Ivanov]

The door led to outside. The door led to the amongst the most smallest yards in the school. A barren field of weeds poking through the poorly layed bricks. It was an inferior substitude of a ghost classroom, but nature had tried her very best atoning for the sins of Mangrove's poor architecture.

Rebecca had opened the elegantly designed door, she had thought it was the room she had been looking for. Instead, she had caught the eye of a chestnut-haired junior on her phone. The junior gave her a rather rude look, perhaps she thought this reclusive yard was for herself only.

Rebecca closed the door back again. The illusion of something more behind the door to the closest thing to nothing, reappeared.

Some students complain that the unfinished art wing was terribly scarce and disorienting. Rebecca was just content that the prop doors in the more unfinished areas led to glorified storage rooms, instead of some non-euclidian existence. Mostly. Navigating the school was in general was rather frustrating, espicially on an instruction such as, 'The room we were in two days ago!'

Fortunately, Rebecca had finished her lunch early so even her poor navigation skills today did not matter. Huh. Third time is the charm after all when it comes opening doors. There was finally something of note behind one of these doors that wasn't a classroom.

There she was. Lucille. Rebecca mouthed a "Hey." and went to take a seat.

The art room was one of Rebecca's main school hangouts, second only to the library due to the fact that it was usually filled with students spending their lunchtimes to finish a piece. It was an aesthetically pleasing room, and it was quiet. But Rebecca really did not feel welcome being surrounded by stressed out classmates. Rebecca had always preferred to work at home, but dance lasted the whole afternoon today.

Night time? Night time was for SOTF, and no school project was invading near that grace period. The girl sitting next to her would agree.

Lucille was her art project partner, but Rebecca would say they've become more. Partners don't spend time after school eating pizza, they don't spend whole recesses passionately discussing who would be the first to die this season. Rebecca gave a small smile before reaching into her bag to take out her own supplies.

"I don't remember telling you that you couldn't." Rebecca squinted to see the light lines more, and more detail came into light. She had to admit herself, it was rather impressive. "Your sketches are more detailed then mine. Asides from the trees, but, you're not going to draw cube trees for the final product, are you?"

They've been friends for only a short time. However, they had went from a brief chat about drawing during class to a lunch time spent wth Lucille's friends in a week's time. She predicted she would be invited to a regular SOTF watch group soon. That, Rebecca would gladly accept. It was more progression then she ever had with, for example, Matias.

Rebecca took out most of her art supplies that she needed, although she seemed to have lost her blending pencil. Hopefully, it was at home, prismacolours were quite hard to blend otherwise. She reached deeper into the void of her bag, to get her canteen. She replied to Lucille while doing so.

"Yup. Actually, I watched one of today's deaths live as well. I think it was, hang on."

There was much to talk about, but Rebecca did not want to spoil Lucille on what happened over the first day. This season was going fast, a burst of sudden, violently entertaining action had occurred over the afternoon. Rebecca could talk about Ruiz's amazing play, or Lou Becker, or the death of Lazenby, which she had saw live while sitting out of swimming. However, Lucille had not watched today. The un-swallowable ball of words stayed in her throat like a cat's furball. It made staying quiet rather hard for Rebecca.

"I think you should watch the highlights. After Anthony's death, I'm starting to believe that this will be one of the best seasons, especially with the new rule. It'll create more incentive to kill, so we hopefully won't have much Parkers this time."

[Cicadan]

Honest truth though, Lucille had never really thought of her pencil work as an actual skill that she had? That laugh that was bubbling out of her mouth like a pressurized soda can leaking through the bulging tab was involuntary because she'd been caught a bit off guard. Though of course, she was generally not easily taken down by cheap shots. It was just that it was Rebecca complimenting her, of all people

(of all people to be genuinely flattered by, social pyramid of Mangrove considered)

given that Rebecca was way better at... color composition, perspective, picking dramatic lighting. Whatever the term for art class had been for shadows and stuff, Lucille had forgotten it just in time to miss that question on last week's quiz.

"You know I don't go for that abstract stuff, c'mon." She just about managed to stop giggling like the schoolgirl she actually was technically.

Anyways, Rebecca was just the better artist and Lucille was low-key coasting in their project, no shame in admitting it. Rebecca was like, Lucille's main bitch. In some sense, anyways. They didn't really have that much in common and the energies and vibes were different, but in a way that was kind of the point. It was honestly easier to put up with Rebecca than most of the other fake hypebeast chicks Lucille shared a grade with. Rebecca was up there with like, Seo or Alyssa.

And she actually legit not-in-it-for-the-clout watched SOTF, big key difference.

"I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I'm running treadmill today- ugh- so I have the highlights already on my iPad." Lucille watched her friend actively, sidelining what was going on with her hands as she unconsciously balanced her pad on her now drawn-together knees, the pad bouncing a bit hyperactively as she pulled out paper from her pencil pouch and began to roll it up. "And I mean, I dunno. Ten is a pretty hard play to make, isn't it? I wonder if that number is so high it discourages anyone who wasn't, like, already gonna man up and play in the first place?"

It was a genuine question asked earnestly, because man Lucille liked having someone to actually talk to about SOTF unabridged, like, talk talk. Lucille was finna invite Rebecca around for the next watch party, maybe introduce her to a few other friends if it wouldn't be too awkward.

"Karen though. Two out the fucking gate. Like, first off." She finished rolling her blending stump, began to gesture fancifully with it as she made her spiel. "Crazy how little she talks for someone named Karen, am I right?" Hadn't been that funny but maybe she'd earn a pity laugh, lol. "And also, the multiple bandanna thing is a smart call, right? If she's always gonna be that quick to shoot all she needs is like, half a second of confusion from an enemy to get 'em down."

[Irina Ivanov]

Rebecca's thick sketchbook was old, but well-kept, blackened as to cover the few scratches. Rebecca preferred selecting the exercise book in her classes she had to draw, so it wasn't as filled as it should have been. The many neat, coloured tags she aligned symmetrically on the top, like a puzzle, indicated that it was well used never a less. She opened from the presently undrawn end, to arrive at a sketch she had begun last night, a many ink-black scribbles wild and bestial inscribed methodically.

Rebecca care-freely in her stiff ways, turned the page to a blank paper canvas, so that Lucille could not get a closer look. She did not comment, as she turned to exchange a slight smile or smirk, a shake of her head and a faux-disappointed glance in her eyes. She did not look away from her partner as Lucille replied to her, and Rebecca knew where her mechanical pencil was in her case already, so there was no reason.

Her smile melted back into a safe, listless normal expression, and her vision moved back to the now drawn on paper. Rebecca was not quite sure how to draw someone who had died from internal injuries to the...male reproduction system, and now she was not certain of her abilities to draw even a knife. It was a symptom of not having have drawn such violent imagery for close to two months.

But she kept on going, between listening to Lucille and listening to the own advice in her head. A pair of new eyes upon her art had turned her free sketch into a creation with a desire to please.

"You do have a point. We could end up with half the player base attempting to kill. It doesn't leave much left for story or much else if everyone is trying to do it attempting to become a main character."

Rebecca flipped the page to make sure she wasn't pressing hard. This was watercolour paper, but a sketch isn't much of a sketch if you couldn't see the lineart over the mediocre building blocks, drawn to be desperate to keep it relevant. It looked rather innocuous, but it also did not resemble much yet.

Rebecca had quite a bit to say, the ball of words unraveled itself to reveal its truly long length.

"Imagine if you were in SOTF though. I think after the first kill, it would be easier for you to do it again. It's a reward to the fittest, so we'll hopefully end up with a good, active winner even if we get a terrible winner like Lucky Lara. I think the best characters are the killers anyways, like Karen. She's really smart, yeah, you can sort of just...feel how she is like, even without her talking. She doesn't have to cater to the audience as if we are watching a literal circus. And Twitter still chirp their uneducated thoughts because they want to see one."

Rebecca's hand tightened around in a worthlessly emotional annoyance at her Twitter. It loosened once she realised that it had left graphite marks, and also the fact that the others had opinions. She stopped in her personal project, and stood up to try and find their co-drawn draft in a cabinet.

"Do you think we should paint it in a more photographic or realistic style then? I think a modern surrealism abstract hyrbid would fit our idea better, since it has to invoke the emotion we picked. But you're not good at that."

Rebecca chuckled, although it sounded like she was breathlessly coughing, an unpleasant genetic trait she had been born into the world with. It was worsened by the fact she did chuckle often.

"And I don't want to draw everything myself."

[Cicadan]

Lucille watched Rebecca's expression in brief, but watched the blank on the paper more intently. The thought in part just had to be, 'actually just what are we going to do?', the bitch-ass part of Lucille's brain that coasted by on being fake-friendly to [insert Mangrove dork, but specifically has to be one of the smart ones] during a class project. Probably friendly to the point of being annoying, even Lucille would admit that.

It was called tactics, duh.

But that instinct to mooch aside, Lucille was interested in what Rebecca was gonna draw. She knew from about a few month's worth of class projects and examples that Rebecca up-and-fleeked the in-class assignments, but this was going to be the first time where Lucille would see something drafted straight out of Rebecca's brain

(like that one funny Spongebob clip, the inner mechanations of Rebecca's mind were a... spilling milk carton... or like, however that metaphor was supposed to work??)

and Lucille didn't really know what happened in there? Besides, obviously, their shared disdain for the whos-who of SOTF lames.

"Hey don't look at me, the Mercy sled thing was the undisputed highlight of thirty-three. We all know what's up," Lucille dryly insisted, taking on the same knife of a tone she put on when planning on a particularly gossipy sort of stabbing. Y'know, the one with the spilled guts in the shape of a kid's most hilariously awkward secrets. "Seasons with boring winners in general lose a lot of charm, I dunno. It's like, they drag everyone down with them because they cheapened the efforts of the actually skilled kids. I dunno."

Bit of a tangent there, but again, Lucille didn't get too many chances to SOTF rant when most of her non-watch friends were also the ones she actually hung out with most of the time. Lucille started to blend, carefully drawling out all the shadows of the sun she'd vaguely marked as being high in the sky, apparently with an ironic smiley face.

Besides, tangents took two to tango, didn't they? Lucille shut up and listened when Rebecca had some wisdom to drop.

"Karen's going to be super controversial, for sure. Half my Twitter is desperately hoping she loses, like, in a day. I think they're the saps who don't appreciate good tactics, lawl."

Lucille smiled when Rebecca giggled. Maybe a bit of a pity laugh?

(also, low blow. Even if that was a definitely accurate appraisal of Lucille's relationship with anything that wasn't landscapes and portraits)

Because damn, Rebecca had the sort of laugh that'd count as a 'natural weapon' advantage on SOTF, as the podcasts sometimes termed kids who had skills that translated to combat advantage.

"Hey I'm not gonna make you do all the work. Who do you think I am?" A wicked grin. "Don't answer that bitch, we know who I am." Lucille totally would make someone do all the work if she could get away with it, dig? "But legit, uh... if we did something more abstract I'd be down to like, maybe make it kinda...? What's that one art movement? With the melting clocks, I mean. I can make normal shapes and in context they can be freaky because of how they're set up, or like... that."

[Irina Ivanov]

There it was, hidden beneath the shadows of twenty, maybe, drafts of others. Had Rebecca was someone else, then she would have made a comment out loud about her classmates were clueless on how to treat others' artwork. Despite being borderline on to adulthood. She wasn't that kind of person, so she just scrunched up her face slightly and carefully slid their diamond in the rough out of the pile of rough sketches. Rebecca placed the draft paper gently on the table, it was miraculously pristine and clean as a jewel, despite its ordeal of smudging and rubbing in the darkness. Graphite structurally rearranged created a diamond after all.

"Surrealism, you mean? Well, hm." Rebecca brought the draft to the table, after having to blow off a few shavings of colour pencils off. It had probably came from a more completed draft that began the colouring process. Their one was rather hard to see, and from a distance, one might think that it was a blank paper. Rebecca had never been one to forcibly rush herself often, especially so early in the project. That had always worked for her.

"Contrasting the subject with a normal art style and a surreal subject and positioning IS surrealism, I think. That could work actually."

And it'll be easier for Lucille and her as well. Rebecca could do abstract well, of course, but to draw from life rather then from an unreliably shifting vision in one's mind was easier. Rebecca took her seat, and her mechanical pencil. She outlined the draft a shade darker then the three fading layers before, a sort of echo that grew uglier as it grew fainter. She had placed it in the middle of Lucille could make her markings as well.

"I watch SOTF precisely because I DON'T like seeing the same cookie cutter characters play to the audience. I'll rather see some real person acting well, realistically and intelligently, then to see some same old pandering protagonist be doted on by social media. Also,"

Rebecca's voice was normally quite soft, but whenever she talked about SOTF criticism, she seemed to have inherited Lucille's sharp knife-like tone partially. Rebecca preferred to use it to cut through webs of weak and false information, rather then to commit the attempted murder of some person's reputation. She reserved the murders for the canvas.

Rebecca continued making quick firm strokes on her part of the draft, while continuing what she had began to say before.

"Not only that Lucille, but winners are often the only living remnant of their season. The rest are constricted to lines and choreography in a few days of footage. Imagine this great contestant that we're invested in, a fair number of kills, engaging storyline that isn't forced. He dies to...Parker. Parker hid in the trees for most of the games, so we don't have a grasp on who he is. A winner can keep giving and giving as long as they're alive, it's a privilege they've earned over the others. That privilege goes to someone who stood by and never did anything themselves."

The conversation about SOTF had inspired Rebecca, SOTF had always this never ending source of inspiration to her. One can only make allusions of Mad Hatters and Girls With Pearl Earrings for so long, but real people lived and died on SOTF, an eternal supply of eternally complex characters. Rebecca lightly closed a hole in a cloud, and then turned to her sketchbook.

She had an idea. Rebecca wasn't sure wherever she created for herself, Lucille or a passion for SOTF. She hoped that she would know by the time she finished. Now however, she was not focusing on that. She was focusing on her own drawing, fully.

"Lucille, can you continue the drawing for a bit? I won't be long. I have something I want to show you."

A something she had not yet finished, a something that she drew away from the direction of Lucille. Rebecca hoped that her inspiration gave her a physical boost as well as a creative one. She hated to rush her work. A rushed drawing creates a poorer impression forever.

[Cicadan]

"Yeah, that's the word." Lucille felt the weight of her attention drift the moment Rebecca started to talk technical. Almost as mind numbing a salve as boys trying to flirt- outta here with that, y'know? To defend herself and to be fair to herself, Rebecca knew full well that Lucille just did not pay attention in class, being no amount of hero on a zero to hundred scale of caring about what Ms. Cameron happened to think about the paragraph pile-up in their textbook

(no shade intended though, she was one of the chiller teachers)

and anybody could lose the shape and form of Lucille's brainwaves when it came to a nerd-off. Something something 'subject and positioning', Lucille gently shaped the foliage of a few more trees on her pad, Lucille stared half at Rebecca and half at the adjacent wall as if it could inspire her.

She came out of her reverie, her blending stump idling once more. The topic was able to uplift the synapses in Lucille's front lobe, revive long-dead connections. Water her crops, clear her acne,

(that didn't exist, ty god)

so on.

"Well, to be fair like, in a way those two points kinda aren't mutually exclusive I guess." Lucille had noticed, like a week into their starting to hang, that Rebecca had started to kind of talk like her? Seriously, Lucille swore the girl sounded way deadlier, as if she were any other bitch in Mangrove's circuit of gossipy rich chicks that Lucille was the ambassador of to the world at large. It was absurdly cute? Almost kind of intimidating, as if Lucille was ruining some innocent and precious thing by being a little too much herself around someone else.

Lucille, if anything in that moment, sounded like the more reticent one. A bit softer and more contemplative. The wallflower grown from grape vines and Ivy Leagues. "Since it's always the real deal, sometimes shit happens. Just like in real life. Ajo y agua." She shrugged nonchalantly, emphasizing her point as she accepted the transfer of precious payload of half of their midterm grade on a single bit of paper. She balanced the forming work of art atop her sketchpad, tilting her face for like... no reason, she'd just started to do that thing in art class when looking at the teacher's handouts. Call it starting a personal trend.

"Keeping it secret, huh?"

Lucille respected that. Mostly in how she didn't bother to peek, much as the itchy part of her brain started to bother her with the idea of doing exactly that: if there was a secret, this bitch gotta know. Lucille was drinking in what Rebecca had started to etch out. A few angles and? Furniture, or the shapes that constituted stuff like couches and tables. The assignment had been a landscape study, so apparently Rebecca was conjuring a

(pretty swanky and expensive looking)

pad from the depths of her imagination. Unless she lived in a place like this, which Lucille had never actually gotten around to asking about. Lucille started to work on the view- windows, plus what lay beyond them. Light, airy, chicken scratch strokes of her pencil followed.

"All that aside, Parker is of course shit. Like, if you had to be forced to re-watch one season that isn't one of the classics, which would you pick?"

[Irina Ivanov]

The living room that Rebecca had created with Lucille had dull origins, in anti-climatic reality. She had constructed the lifelessly lifelike room by bricks of pictures and images found, perhaps, fifteen pages in Google Images. Complied into an industrial mood board befitting of the actual boards Rebecca had seen from her mother. Rebecca was more inclined to focus on a personal project over studies of unconventional art styles.

Unlike Rebecca's careful white grey etches onto the art assignment, she allowed the chaos she had observed from a sterile school bathroom to run. The little steps of 4B black aligned itself in their assigned place. From the distance that Rebecca looked over, hunched, they resembled little more then mechanical patterns.

"That's true, that's true. I don't mind most contestants, some people are just...heroic. Somehow. If it happens that this season's winner is unlikable." Rebecca shrugged her shoulders, while up righting her posture. "Que Sera, Sera..?" Rebecca wasn't sure if she used it correctly, but she attempted to use the saying, a reply to "Garlic and Water."

The face was obscured by the frightening presence of black ink. It was everywhere, leaving no area on the canvas a clear safe space, devoid of inky violation. Rebecca found difficulty in portraying faces, especially after so long without drawing one. So it was by Grace of Gore that Rebecca did not have to draw most of that perverted and disturbing expression of death. The black blood pouring from the head of the figure obscured it, Rebecca could compare the dark corruption of the blood, of the various horror illustrations and stories of Zalgo. She sure, hoped, that her writing and illustrations rose above the hundreds of horrible horror stories though.

Rebecca put down the pen onto the page, and reached to grab a lighter pencil. She closed the sketchpad and turned her chair to the sketched pad. The contrast in subject and style was jarring, even for Rebecca. The transfer from a dark subject to an artificial one kept even Rebecca still for a moment, to readjust.

Both were just drawings. They were lifeless either way. There wasn't much point in readjusting, once Rebecca thought about it.

"Can...I rub out that edge of the table? It's rather crowded in the center, and we're getting marked on composition."

As Rebecca carefully moved in closer to Lucille to erase the intruding table, she thought about what her friend had just said. Rebecca felt a new ball of words insidiously crawl together, Rebecca had so much to say. She could provide the fact that some of the seasons shunned into the shadows are just as good, if not better then the classics. She could provide an analysis on just how sound Season 30 was. Rebecca could provide reasoning on why she thought Elliot Rakowski's season was well made in so numerous ways that she sometimes wondered why she did write English essays on SOTF.

"Season 9, definitely."

Hm. Rebecca could not take that statement back once it tumbled out, as if there was no place it wanted to be less then Rebecca's mouth. She was not sure why she had said it to start with. She rose up from her erasing of obsolete lines to let Lucille return to drawing. Or perhaps to question her on 'Why?' , that would be expected.

"Um, so. What about you then, Luci?"

Rebecca prayed her own illustration, once she had finished the rest of it, redeemed her. It would not be long.

[Cicadan]

Rebecca's vision, characteristically possessing a zephyr of motion despite being lines on paper, was whittled with graphite suggesting texture, weight, the way the sun leaked in through a window with... maybe curtains? Lucille added the impression of them, but vague enough that it could have been made avant and edgy at will.

"... Dude, actually not sure what you just said." Ooh, brain teaser. Not among Lucille's favorite past times, tb-fucking-h. "'What be'... is it, uh, supposed to be a question?" Lucille shrugged. She'd learned a long time ago, being the baby in a Spanish-speaking household that had collectively never bothered to help her learn, that knowing what was being said and being able to respond correctly were pretty dramatically different skills. 'What it is', maybe? Technically made sense, but she'd had to think about it a moment. Kind of like in her actual Spanish classes. Which were supposed to be 'easy' but where she somehow still only pulled mediocre grades despite being 110% Puerto Rican with no margin for error.

Lucille shrugged again- to emphasize the first shrug, of course. Dutifully shrunk back a bit, so Rebecca had the space to work.

Huh, she'd been expecting more of a rant honestly. Kinda disappointing.

"Wait, was that the one with the contestant who got killed after? Tina something. I remember she killed... like, a lot of people." Something about some giggly awkward chick gunning someone down in cold blood, maybe it'd been on a Twitter best-kills ranking she'd retweeted? Rebecca had actually picked one that was legitimately hard to remember, apparently. Definitely underrated when Lucille had mostly forgotten how to rate it.

"Ooof, embarrassing. Gonna have to find a re-stream and rewatch that one."

She had to think a bit about her answer, leaving the sketch balanced atop her thighs abandoned.

"Seventeen," Lucille tentatively said, drawing out the 'ee' of teen as if about ready to take it back. "I mean. Maybe biased because Ryan's my bias and I'd jump straight into his podcast when I win my season. Deena's annoying like all edgelord contestants but at least she's interesting about it? Clint's interesting too, like, in an endearing cute and dumb kinda way. I rewatch the second half of the season sometimes, I think it's that good. I dunno."

[Irina Ivanov]

Rebecca remained silent for a time after Lucille had spoken. Her drawing was nearly complete, shading was left. She had to focus, hone her dexterity to the detriment of all other skills. A drawing with rough lines and extreme colours such as this one had to rely on the perfect use of shadow and light to convey the subject to its fullest. A subject who did not have a full body, but a subject nonetheless. She could not let any of her attention leak from her hand, into monstrous ink blots and lines. Rebecca could not let herself fail this part.

She was correct. Rebecca, if she not had been accustomed to it, and had she been the emotional type, of which she was not, would have felt a sense of overjoy at the sight. The sight of an extra layer of reality gently laying onto an image of brutal realism. She did not feel it. It was a technical piece drawn to invoke emotion, that was it.

It was not until Rebecca finished the basic shading that she placed her pen down. It was then, that she took in all of Lucille's words, and found matching responses, although they were fleeting ghosts that attempt to escape her. She forcibly hammered them down by her tongue.

"Season seventeen? Oh, right, that one. Actually, I think Deena was one of the better examples of a psycho. That is to say that she's the smartest blonde in a slasher film. But she played her worn out role of the violent madwoman as best as she could, espicially during the endgame. Her scythe combined with her attitude also makes for some interesting art. Oh, Ryan's a really good winner, but it tells something of the season that I wouldn't have minded anyone but Deena and Emily in the last quarter to have won. Mostly Ryan, he's wonderfully smart. I might re-watch it.

Rebecca was turned completely to Lucille, her sketchpad was besides her. Her default expression, the one that someone once told her was a 'resting bitch face', slightly darkened in an unreadable, cloudy confusion. She knew of Lucille's...unrealistic ambitions, but she never heard of them much before. Did not want to. Dark clouds of thought flew....approached her. She kept her face stoic. Rebecca's thoughts cleared up again. It was gone.

"When you win your season? Do you mean on SOTF? By playing, or what?"

There was a useless compulsion to further add 'Sorry, I'm not understanding what you're saying, I'm not that smart or good at listening!", woven by an amiably manipulative angel on her left shoulder. Rebecca picked up her pen once again, and began focusing on finishing the artwork, and as her shoulders moved to create broad strokes with upmost thoughts, the angel fell from it. It didn't matter much if Lucille took Rebecca the wrong way, so it was pointless.

As Rebecca finished, she was quiet. Thought about what was said before.

It was said with eyes focusing on nothing. A clinical recital.

"Tina Jones, yes. Fans disliked her due to her unapologetic violence and betrayals. Her victory was due to Kevin's actions, and Kevin's not a well-liked contestant at all. She killed the easy ones, so she couldn't even be compared to other players who fought harder for their life. It was the first season I ever watched."

Rebecca gazed back down onto the drawing, with a smile blooming onto her warming expression. She placed the sketchpad cautiously onto her chest, smudging was a huge risk with light graphite pencils. She had hoped the action would let Lucille realise that she had finished, and that she wished to show it. Rebecca moved to cradle the art piece, as if it was a baby that she wanted to show off to the world. Except the world was Lucille, and the baby was an extension of a part of Rebecca.

"Maybe, we can re-watch them during the boring or sleeping moments this season. On the weekend perhaps, at your watch group?"

[Cicadan]

Like, maaaaybe Rebecca wasn't giving Emily enough credit? The dynamic of the escape group had been pretty unwieldy, but Lucille had always thought the bounce back from unintentionally taking a kill into allying for a win had taken a decent amount of spunk. Far worse things the losers and runners' up gallery of the TV-verse had done when they'd been forced to man up and take their first blood. Like, if you asked Lucille. Wasn't like their opinions had to line up on anything, was it? Rebecca remained galaxy brain with her takes where it counted- Deena was legit one of the better psycho turn arcs of a version, got a lot done, kills that weren't boring and one-dimensional, though like, Lucille had never actually gotten around to watching any of them?

(she wasn't the best at catching up on her to-do list of 'actually watching top kills of a version', was she? Low key poser alert)

And huh, Rebecca's first was Nine. Looked like Lucille would have to consider a full rewatch, even if it was one of those 'even the highlights need a tl;dr seasons', wasn't it? Rebecca was probably ridic. amounts of biased, but there was a pretty strong nostalgia for the first ever season you watched when innocent and fresh-eyed

(and having yet to have deep dived into the shipping tags on Ao3)

and Lucille did totally get it... had been a long time since she'd ever thought about the first season she'd ever watched, too. Long time ago, with an old friend.

The memory was slippery, kinda. Evasive. Okay, she was kind of trying to not think about it. This wasn't the time or place to remember him.

Like, she'd noticed the granite chisel of Rebecca's lip. 'When you win your season', question that didn't really need an answer, did it? Lucille had patiently listened, politely not interrupting... maybe a bit too lost in her own thoughts, maybe trying to remember precise season details so she didn't accidentally sound like an idiot opening her own mouth. It being hard to remember stupid little details about everything just like the freaks like Ivan could... well, that aside, ugh. Lucille had noticed that odd moment in their conversation, off like the first sip of milk just far enough past its expiration date that Lucille would have to call up the driver and ask for a new cartoon within the hour. It had passed though. Probably just Rebecca being her odd self.

She'd been about to answer, with any one of the things she desperately needed to say to make sure she, Lucille, made it clear that she had strong opinions on things. Gotta do it for the clout, so on.

"Hold up though, what exactly have you been drawing? Bitch you're- badly- faking modesty right now, just show off already so we can be done with it lol." Lucille smiled.

Cheeky, impish. Infinitely frozen on her lips when she saw what it was Rebecca had drawn.

Because Rebecca was absurdly good at carving the real out of paper and canvas. Dimensions where none existed. Texture that one could be lulled into reaching out and trying to touch and hold.

Sirens' song.

Lucille's eyes drawn too deep into it. Drowning in inky mass.

Blood wasn't that black. Blood wasn't that real. A human being looked small when they were dead or dying, the whites of their eyes hollow like egg spilling out of the cracks in the shell.

Camera quality. Lucille falling right into it. Unprepared, unready. She wasn't removed from the spectacle. She wasn't a girl watching a television show with friends. She was a human being, flesh and blood as brittle as the thing Rebecca had killed over her canvas. She was a witness.

She didn't recognize him,

(lou becker, season 65)

but she recognized the shadow falling over the portly blob Rebecca had warped the canvas into. A corpse familiar, washed ashore in the sea of lead, of a photorealistic skull splitting open into sloppy bone and trickling, cleanly defining each roll of neck fat it pooled into and runneth over.

Black and white, the world had been black and white. Lucille and her slag body, melting in the summer sun, watching a friend die.

He'd been looking right at her, when he'd gone. Corpse's eyes followed the living.
she'd been too late
she hadn't saved him
she hadn't been there for him
they'd watch her from every dark corner that she didn't stare right into
the dead were waiting for her
she belonged with them
blood for blood
the blood under her skin belonged to them
belonged on the other side of her body
goodbye demarcus
i'm sorry and i don't deserve forgiveness
The ungodly hush of static.







(it's okay. Lucille. you can cry if you want to. c'mon, snap out of it. you're cooler than this)

Uncomfortable second after second, Lucille's eyes almost empty, glaring straight through the paper Rebecca had showed her, the timid tremble that had taken over her body barely even bouncing the pad still on her knee.

[Irina Ivanov]

Rebecca's tremor of a smile mimicked much of Lucille's. She tilted her head, hopelessly hoping she could catch the soft change of expression once Lucille saw the piece. Rebecca immediately recognized what she was feeling, and let her lips rest into a frozen curve of marble that displayed nothing but the most superficial of emotions. Gone was the unnecessary grin, or likely smirk of an artist's pride, and an eternally still statue of an expression came upon her. Strange, her mind did not come to a rest with the body, dopamine and adrenaline oozed into every part of her, begging for a relief that was Lucille's reaction.

Lucille remained as unmovable as Rebecca was. Her reaction never came.

"What d.."

Did perfect sculptures made of alabaster have a changing heart? Did they feel cold? Do they feel a caterpillar crawl on their back, or feel rain soak them? Her hands felt heavier and colder by the minute as the realization came that, that girl was not frozen in a state of joy like the exterior suggested. Even someone like her could realise something like that. especially for a friend rebecca really cared for enough that she had drawn for her no rebecca had drawn for herself



Lucille shook unpredictably. It appeared that she found the drawing deeply unpleasant. There was no clear apparent reason. SOTF was violent, but most if not all discussed earlier was decidedly more so. Art could not imitate real life, a replica in ink would not provoke this reaction. Lucille had always watched with a watch group. Perhaps that could be it.

"Lu-luci? It's just a drawing, it's just a drawing, why are so scared. You watch SOTF, right?"

The reply that was given was in-adequate, emotional to the harm of a reasonable response. A deep breath. There was no need to raise the volume to this extent. There was no need to speak in such a quick manner.

"Lucille? Do you want me to bring you a glass of water? Here,"

Her hand reached to the book belonging to her. They did not shake, they didn't. A light movement. The hands turned to a paper that was filled in. Of which the subject was lighter, it could be described as humorous. It comprised of a Shun Young in the center as shadowed figures in the background engaged in what is implied to be a melodramatic demonic summoning. There was no death present. There was nothing particularly detailed, asides from Shun's stoic expression. It did not show any correlations with the seven or so drawings behind it, which were darker in nature.

"Is there something wrong. How do you feel."

[Cicadan]

Just a drawing.






(it's okay. take your time. you got this.)

It was just a drawing.





it will be your reality, the culmination of your life, the payback for your promises

... Yeah, like. Lucille didn't forget the voice of a friend. Ever. Sometimes she lost the specifics of the syllables that they tried to shape with their lips and tongue and all the other meaty gristly things but...

She always remembered what they had to say, honest. Even if she didn't comment.

still remembering that they'd all been screaming for her while she'd been running, except for him of course, he couldn't scream for her, and she'd never hear his voice again

Still, she stared at Rebecca for a long moment like she didn't know who it was that name belonged to. Rebecca-something. They shared an art class or something. They were friends, or something. Lucille's head had only jerked Rebecca's way the same a cat would startled, sudden, scornful. Still wide eyes seeing before comprehending, adrenaline the color of the iris.

"... Fine. I'm fine."

Spoken hastily. Lucille got her thoughts together. Had a lot of them, if she had to tell the truth. Most of them burned in a bad way, similar to fossil fuels, similar to asphyxiation. They were hot under her collar and on her face and, yeah, Lucille knew the taste of humiliation well enough but that was usually a friendlier feeling, pain that could charm the same sort of way an injured animal did, sympathy became empathy became affection. This wasn't that feeling? This was something far worse, and it had been...

Too long, that she didn't even remember what it had meant the last time.

But she was herself, of course. Holding up her hands, trying to smile and gesture as if warding off what had just happened. A bit stiff, really. Rare Lucille wasn't as natural at pretending as she was oblivious of the truth behind the lie.

"It is just a drawing yeah, it's just... Almost too realistic, y'know. Startled me!"

It had been an actual minute passed, on the clock sleepily ticking above head. Lucille forcibly smiled down at the next thing on the paper... hah. She'd liked that season, honest.

[Irina Ivanov]

She did not change her expression as it was heard. A clear, unemotional mind could detect a lie exceptionally well. She was unemotional, she WAS thinking clearly. She was. Eyes focused ahead a thousand yards, past Lucille, past the room, past the ticking clock. Past around her little world, back into her mind. They nestled and bred in the amygdala. It felt like a centipede.

She was not entitled to the truth. So what if Lucille was lying. There was no need for bitterness to fester from nothing. If Lucille was lying. She must be keeping the truth secret for a reason.

Don't ask. A commander's command to herself.

"...."

Guilt was useless.

"...Sorry about that, I...am sometimes not, fully aware of how drawings can impact others."

Guilt was useless. Go away.

Smiling was even more so, so Rebecca remained a perfect, ethereal sculpture of a person. Her eyes gazed on ahead into nothing, her expression and movement unaffected, an untouchable and distant simulacrum of Lucille's friend. She turned away from Lucille, and looked at the project they were working on. This was dry, lifeless, and for now, safe. Not a single 'passionate' stroke was on it. Rebecca took a pencil with an eraser, and artfully replaced deviant strokes with scarred whiteness and rubber residue.

"We made good progress on the draft. Lunch's ending soon, so I will take it home to finish tonight. Okay?"

If what she was saying was nothing more then an in prompt tu recital, why did Rebecca feel like an organ would be coughed out if she said 'Lucille?' She couldn't say the final two syllables for that reason. It was a word. Just a word, it had no emotional connotations. No, of course not.

Rebecca stood up, and mechanically collected her writing utensils. Although she had left the draft on the table, as a way to invite her friend to take it home if she wanted, she did not collect her sketchpad. She was not looking at Lucille, even if she did not feel any animosity against her, so it seems Rebecca had forgotten it was still on Lucille's lap. Turn a few pages, and Death still would be there, still forcefully taking a boy away with a hatchet.

[Cicadan]

Guilt was useless. It was a rote emotion, as default no-filter an image of herself as... like, a default no-filter image of herself. Y'know, uh...

(took 'em all the time didn't she? Casual and not-trying was sometimes the best look of all)

The word for it escaped her. Maybe she didn't know that one. The word she called it when she didn't know was just as empty and distant an echo in her head.

"Hey, it's no big deal."

Lucille's smile was the real deal again. The common refrain, actually, was that Lucille had an idiot grin, honest as much as it was patently ridiculous. Her gal pals, the ones who weren't cowards, informed her on the semi-regular that a real smile was the good and expensive kind of plastic surgery- only people who could notice it was fake were close friends and irrelevant haters. Lucille owned that shit, and she was of course the type to wear everything she owned. When she really smiled she really meant it. Goofiness and all.

She could remember what had just happened, but she could remember the excuse for why it had happened a bit louder.

(keep telling yourself that, sure, fine)

Hard to hear herself think, sometimes. She guessed that's why it was called 'killer instinct'.

"Look, I'm just..." No hesitation, merely a pause. Lucille knew well enough what she wanted to say. "Queasy around gore. I've always been the sort who gets light-headed around blood." She also stood up, just long enough to scoop up the sketch for class between fingers. But then she sat back down, contemplating Rebecca's body language through the typical lens of her searching gaze. Intrusive, because clothes protected the skin underneath. They could handle the abuse. Lunch wasn't over, just yet.

"Honestly part of the reason I'm into SOTF is because I'm trying to overcome that aspect of myself. If that makes sense? It sounds a bit melodramatic saying it out loud, but like... I usually watch with others, and that's why." Lucille's confession was easy as it was simple. Lucille herself, easy as she was simple. She didn't bother to shy away- she'd done enough of that for one lifetime, the past two sustained minutes of her public freakout. Rebecca deserved... Lucille didn't know. Someone who didn't do things like that in front of them.

"I should've said something sooner, but. I hadn't gotten around to inviting you to the watch parties yet?" She shook her head, a brief tisk, as if apologizing without saying the words. "It'd come up naturally then."