Day 6: (Ab)normal Days

David felt that elbow and stumbled back a bit. He tried to look hurt, but he had expected it, really.

"Y-yikes, ya could give me a chance t' explain myself before ya hurt me." he muttered, catching his breath. He half-limped over to the bear. 

He figured that if he did something radically against this stupid bear, than maybe Laura would come to her senses a little bit. Or she could think he's absolutely bonkers. Though that wouldn't be that far of a guess. Destroying this bear was his first.

He glanced at Laura. Taking care of her was officially his second order of business. 

He picked up the bear. "Hello," he said cheerfully, smiling.

Adda sat, staring at Duobear intently.  It was quite a lot to take in.  She trembled a bit.

"People think this...is funny?"  She looked down.

"You also mentioned about how he didn't want to completely steal this idea...but from who?  From what?"

Herbert hissed through his teeth, not knowing what to even believe anymore.

"Deapair bug? Are we fuckin' wot, five?" He shook his head.

"An' they knew what set everyone off? How big is this organization anywho? If they know that... and tell us straight if our families are dead or not!"

Laura tried to turn herself as much as she could to see her handiwork on her dreaded classmate. Her eyes twitched with annoyance when he didn't fall down and faint on the spot. "I must be getting weak as hell," she muttered ruefully to herself. How someone so insignificant to her could have pulled off something so heinous was incredibly frustrating to Laura. She wanted to squish the kid like an ant.

When David picked Monobear up, Laura just watched with disdain. His smile made it even worse. "I should have suspected you two were in on this together," she said. "It's always the innocent ones," she added more quietly.

There was a pile of too many new questions and only a small pair of tweezers to pick them out with.

"Despair...bug? Is that what it is? Is that what...that was?!" She motioned in a way she hope vaguely resembled an envelope of photos. Her headache made it more and more difficult to sort through the questions and she only felt herself getting lost. She didn't want to believe any of that stuff about her friend, but she couldn't find any more excuses after that. As if she even knew him! For what, six days?

"Initials won't help right now. What are they? Some lunatic rich people?" She frowned, "If Davey's with them, why are we waiting? They'll let him out." She paused and then came to a sudden realization, "Why are we trusting him with Laura? We should get her!"

The bears sat back and answered questions, looking at the face of the question asker while responding.

They looked to Adda.
"They didn't laugh at it. They watched with googly eyes. Pleasure from other peoples pain, all that stuff. It's d-disgusting, in our educated opinion, but it sells." 

It's vocal processors stopped randomly malfunctioning. The bears sighed in content.

"Oh, he stole the idea from a s-show that happened earlier in the year in Japan. We don't know much about it - it was similar, nearly exactly the same - and it got stellar ratings. Straight 5 stars out of 5." The black bear shook its head. "Despaired critics."

They turned to Herbert. "We don't know anything about your families. We honestly don't. You'll just have to hope - and hope's pretty strong, let me tell you!"

They turned to Eloise. "First, Davey's after your friend. Think of it this way - he could have left with you four, and kicked one of you out. B-but he didn't." They stopped. "We don't know much about them. But their initials, if you were curious were: A. C., A. T., K. G., N. C., and K. H.. There's also a D. H. in the system...for whatever reason. They only appear once. The others...the first five were them."

They shivered. "They did everything. They shut us down. It's their fault."

Adda clenched the bottom of her skirt.

"So, did the things we saw in our folders... and the videos... did they do that, or did they just use that to their advantage?  And how do they know so much about us...?"

The bear yelped as it was picked up. It thrashed in David's arms, looking at him angrily. "I'll blow myself sky high if you don't let go of me, Richmond! You're going against school rules!"

It glared over to Laura and then back at David. "Put me down, or I'll kill her!" it taunted. "Not much of a choice now, huh? Upupupupu!"

"A...show? Like, some Japanese game show?" She squeezed her temple, trying to make sense of the utterly ridiculous idea, "Of course this was all a big show! We've been pranked!" She didn't believe a word of it, but she was just about close to convincing herself to believe it. It would make it all that much easier.
"Oh, and maybe Asher will jump out the door next, sayin' "Surprise!" Maybe even Jaden will show up!"

"Well screw them!" She resigned herself to lean against the wall now. In a way, she did sort of trust Duobear. She would wait.

Laura rolled her eyes as the bear started to make a fuss. She was incredibly upset and frankly not in the mood to see two psychotic criminals bantering back and forth.

"gently caress you two," she said. Then she adjusted her wheelchair and began to roll herself towards the exit of the auditorium. Laura figured it was about time she caught up with Eloise and the others. There would be plenty of opportunities to punch David in the gut later.

Adda glanced over to Eloise.

"I wish I could think that but...we saw that.  That was...that was..." she began to feel uneasy just thinking about some of the things they had seen in these six days.

"I hate to think there were others who had to go through this too..."

He listened to the bear, then shrugged. "Okay, I'll put you down." He proceeded to punt the bear across the room, knocking it square against the back wall. It sizzled, and then exploded. Of course the explosion wasn't nearly as bad as the earlier one - David made a point to recognize which Monobears had different sized bombs when they were making them. This one had a blast radius of a yard, maybe, but the explosion was enough to feel from where he stood. 

"Good riddance!" he said. He walked back to Laura with a smile on his face.

He took out his student ID and saw the message his friends sent him - they were waiting, apparently. That made everything a bit simpler. He opened a blank page - a note taking app - something the students didn't have access to. He quickly typed out a message and showed it to Laura. 

"Me and Insaneobear might have both been causes for this bullshit, but I ain't on his side. I know how to get out. The other four are already on their way. You're all that's left. Lemme help you."

"Who the gently caress is even inspired by some... game show? A Japanese one even?" Herbert's voice rose, almost incredulously questioning everything. 

"Goddamnit is this some fuckin' nightmare?"

The bear watched them all react and sighed. "Japan came up with the idea first. Kill kids, get good ratings, make money. No sense required, just needed to make 'despair'. Which is silly."

They looked at Herbert in particular. "Is this a nightmare? Of course it is. This entire experience is designed to be a nightmare."

They stood up and walked over to the door, peeking into the main office. "Maybe this is the part where the five of you wake up."

Adda stood up, still staying against the wall.

"Can we do anything to help other than sit here and wait?  We've been in this together the whole time... to stay hidden now feels kinda wrong..."

Laura was shocked when the Monobear figure exploded, but that was probably just because she had grown a little bit afraid of the power of explosions over the past couple days. When David showed her the message, she at first turned her head and looked away.

Eventually, she sighed and read the text quickly. "Ha! Like I'd trust you to do that. But hell, if we're both going the same place, let's head out already. Lead the way, murderer."

"Five? Is this why.... the bear was dragging Jaden's body? Are the bodies being moved or something?" Herbert gritted his teeth, scowling. "Ah ain't going nowhere with a body!"

Eloise stood in silence. It took everything she had to believe in the truth, she desperately wanted and needed the entire thing to be a show. The words "wake up" echoed in her head and she gritted her teeth.

"Well, if we don't stay hidden we get caught. And if we get caught we can't exit stage left!" She was looking at Adda now, "We can't blow it all now. I'm giving them three more minutes!"

"Is there anything we can do? Anything at all?" She sighed. "We can't leave yet...but there's got to be some way that we can help David out. As much as I don't want to."

She sighed at leaned against the wall - there were a lot of emotions going through her head - especially that box. If they left, she'd never find out what's in it, and she didn't see it on the main office desk...

Maybe she'd just...hope they were okay, even though they probably weren't.

"...I can't wait to be rid of this place." she said to herself.

Adda nodded.

"I know it'd be stupid to go run out guns blazing or something... I don't even know why I feel we should go out there at all."  She tried to smile like before.

"You're right.  Three minutes."

She then turned to Marci.

"Will we ever really be rid of it, though...?"

He grinned and nodded, taking back his ID. He wasn't sure if Laura needed him to wheel the chair or something, but he didn't really have the time to be courteous at the moment (which irked him immensely) so he grabbed the two handle thingies and wheeled her to the main office quickly.

He'd have to face his two friends - prior, he'd say his two only friends, but things had changed - again, he realized. He gulped. He really hoped they didn't hate him for everything.

He wasn't proud of it, either.

She shrugged. "Probably never completely rid of it, no. But I can rid myself of not knowing. I can find some answers." She looked at Adda. "Aren't there some you want too? Don't you all want some?"

She sighed. "I guess getting out is a bigger priority than answers after we're out there."

"Of course I want answers... why we're here, why we never got to go to high school, why the world is, as Duobear is implying, insane...why Oscar and my family had to die..."

She tensed.

"And if there's something we can do out there to help.  But you're right, first thing's first- we get out."

Laura gasped as David took control of her wheelchair, and almost elbowed the boy a second time. She still hadn't forgiven him, and her desire for some kind of revenge bubbled inside her.

But for now, all Laura could do was grumble angrily to herself until the two of them finally made it through the door and into the main office.

"Alright great, we've been here already. No one found anything, what's so important?" Then she noticed the door, still slightly open. "Okay I know that wasn't there the last time you all came in here." She began wheeling herself away from David, and into the next room. She was surprised to see the rest of the students in there as well. "H- hey!"

Eloise turned now to see Laura. "Laura!" She exclaimed, happy to see her back after the big hassle. She chose to blissfully ignore David for now, and walked over to the wheelchair.

She then turned to the rest of the waiting students, "That's it then? We can all leave?" She trailed off. Something David said didn't make it sound like "all".