[ i will ensure that your injuries heal properly if you would like to hold onto it, she had said, just last night. those around us so often refuse to let us suffer in our pains, least of all alone, she'd told vi.

and there she had been, lifeless, trapped in debris. possibly even attacked, if the apparent scissors were anything to go by. would encouraging her to use it have helped her survive whatever encounter she had had, last night? vi was a clear fighter, or at least deeply aware of how to handle herself, so surely... surely some signs are out there, somewhere - at least if the damned robots don't clean it all up, first.

and what of megumi - hulkenberg is familiar, unfortunately, with the weight of a person's skull. the force it takes to remove it from the body. but the one that would do it to a child is always the most reprehensible sort - ]

The theatre in the Otium Biome was collapsed, all the way to the lighting that once stood above the stage. [ tense, voice low. ] When we arrived, the green-haired elda and I, we discovered Vi in the rubble. A rabbit akin to the ones during that explosive display that took out that man and the star-shaped being ran by, and dropped a block of damned cheese when caught that turned into the Megumi boy's head in my hands.

... 'twas not an accident, at least in part for Vi. It could not have been - she had scissors driven into her neck.