Mission: Burying the Past in Zompania

[lucetimods]

Who: Anyone who volunteered
What: A very special mission that will bring you honor. Or maybe just traumatic memories. Whatever.
When: July 20th - July 24th
Where: Zompania, or what's left of it
Summary: Mission detailed here. There are graves to dig and buildings to raze, and plenty more for the volunteers to stay busy with.
Rating: PG-13 for probable mentions of gore and other sad things

Direct further questions here!

Comments

oh my favorite SMTN kid :3

[onifukuchou]

[Digging holes is something Hijikata can do, and as the days go by, he gets pretty good at it. The bodies are a more familiar kind of horror, and he's numb enough to that that he's got no problem being the one to haul bodies to the holes others are digging]

:3

[musubi]

[In the four years Isamu has been here, this is probably the most morbid task he's had - and he's not even handling the bodies himself.

He looks away as Hijikata brings this one in, leaning up against his shovel. As the one with the tool, he'd have to cover it back up after. Still, the less he stared at the corpse the better.

The man is an unfamiliar face, but their suits didn't always make telling people apart easy to begin with. He keeps his focus on him for now, since that's by far the best option.]

Many more to go?

[It's a pointless question, really. He knows they're nowhere near done.]

[onifukuchou]

[Hijikata gets close enough to the grave that he can drop the body, and roll it in. He tries not to think too much about the wet thump it makes hitting the bottom]

Yeah - too many, it feels like. Don't know where we're going to find room for them all.

[musubi]

I suppose we could always build up... or down. Catacombs used to be popular, right?

[Not even light-hearted, and this really isn't the time for making quips.

So... yeah. On that awkward note, he'll just start dumping dirt on top.]

[onifukuchou]

[There's an amused snort. That's how he likes his humor - black as night] Awful lot of work. Cremation would be simpler.

[musubi]

Exactly! Guess maybe they're trying to be respectful, or maybe there's still some chance they can come back.

[Though he really hates to think about how life and death works here.]

The Malnosso have their reasons for everything, I'm sure.

[onifukuchou]

Or maybe their beliefs are different, here. I dunno.

[musubi]

Oh I'm sure they're all over the place.

[He glances briefly at the body he's still covering and regrets it, focusing his attention back on the dirt.]

This enclosure was kinda like ours, right?

[onifukuchou]

I guess so - I arrived recently, though, so I don't really know any details.

[musubi]

From what I've seen and heard, there's several the Malnosso run. They do different experiments and whatnot in some of them.

It's just scary, you know? Thinking something like this could happen in Luceti.

[onifukuchou]

Yeah, that's what I've heard - this is the first one I've seen.

I'd like to think we could fight back... but from what I've heard, they tried here, too.

[musubi]

I'd like to not think about it at all, honestly.

Though I can't help but wonder why they call on us for stuff like this in particular. Like I said, we aren't the only enclosure here.

[onifukuchou]

Who's to say? Maybe we're simply the closest, and somewhere, far away, there are other people we don't know doing the same thing.

[It's not like the Malnosso are fond of giving them any more information than necessary, after all]

[musubi]

... I guess I should have thought of that.

If they have other places like this far away from any of the ones they tell us about, why would they feel the need to share that information? They only tell us what we need to know as is.

[The next couple shovels are done with some small amount of irritation.]

[onifukuchou]

Yeah. People who have been here for a while might know more about other areas, but... [he shrugs] I don't know how much they'd share.

[musubi]

You gotta hit up the private channels if you want to hear any of that.

I've been here years and I haven't heard of any aside from the ones we've met up with.

[onifukuchou]

I know someone who's been here for a while, but he's never said anything.

Then again, he's not the sort to pry too hard. [Nosy? Yes. An effective spy? Not so much]

[musubi]

Yeah, there's a surprising number of people who've been here a long time, even with all the ones always coming and going. Only a few of them are the information gathering type, though.

I'm not. Not like them, anyway. [He might have been, at one point, if the information would have helped him. There were other things for him to worry about when he arrived, so he never ended up getting involved.]

It's not like we're any closer to getting out, no matter what we've learned.

[onifukuchou]

I left, and then came back - two years here, a few weeks to me. Everything from the first time is kind of... fuzzy.

[musubi]

Two years? Damn.

I see people leave and then return later all the time, but two years is the longest I've heard of so far.

[onifukuchou]

Really? Wish I knew what that meant about me. Or about here.

[musubi]

Could mean nothing for all I know.

[He shrugs.]

Sometimes it feels like there's some great reason for it all and sometimes it all feels like a load of bullshit.

[onifukuchou]

[That gets an amused snort out of Hijikata]

I think life's like that no matter where we are.

[musubi]

Heh. You got me there.

[He dumps one last shovel full of dirt onto the pile and then sighs, leaning against the handle again.]

Guess we better pat this down and move on.

[onifukuchou]

[Hijikata nods]

Plenty more to go, from the looks of it.