~ Tнє Pαяα∂σχ Hσυѕє ~ now back to regularly scheduled chaos

Archie || Paintball Arena || mintedstar/fur

It startled him quite a bit when someone else did actually blink in, least of all his newest dhampire friend. "Adrian!" he gasped, immediately halting his frantic rolling about the ground and grinning at him. It was very kind of him to worry, he noticed, even though it was generally misplaced since he was basically impenetrable. Mostly. 
He lifted a hand to set on his shoulder, giving him a few pats and shaking his head. "Oh no, I'm quite alright. Just messing around a bit until someone else blinked in to play," he explained, moving his hand from his shoulder to the ground and pushing himself up into a sitting position. 

He noticed just then that Adrian didn't appear to have a gun and tilted his head, frowning curiously. How the devil could you play paint ball without a gun? Adrian was far too small to be used as a meat shield, and he wasn't even dead yet! So logically he couldn't properly be one. It was immediately following this thought that he insisted he clarify he would not use Adrian as a meat shield, in any case. Absolutely not. He didn't use friends as meat shields.... especially the kid ones. 

But, all of this might be solved with a question; "Wheres your gun? This is a game room, you see. Generally, you need a gun to be able to play right," he explained to him, grinning happily and already thrilled over the fun they might have. If he didn't have a gun, perhaps they could find one. Or the house might manifest him one. Either way. 

Hook - Lodge Somewhere

It was always exciting when he got to hear Shade talk about her world, though this experience was particularly rewarding. Not only was he being granted with the ability to ease back into comfortable conversation with her - but he was actually getting the opportunity to see the faces of people from her home. Sure, they belonged to people she’d inevitably take the life of, but who better to see to further his understanding of what she dealt with everyday. 

He glanced towards as he heard her quiet huff of laughter, lifting his hand away as she started to thumb through the pages. “What?” He said with a grin, getting the sense she was making fun of him for something. He looked back down as she closed the book and began to put it away, staying patient as she seemed to be intent with whatever she was doing. His eyebrows raised as she pulled out an older looking book, one of similar side and similar promise for interesting content. 

While she answered his question he nodded in consideration, seeming to be familiar with the type of transaction she was describing. He chuckled as she called attention to the similarities to their dealings, shrugging modestly. “There’s plenty of the type out there to know,” he agreed with a smirk. “Y’know, some folk with payment worth workin’ for in my world would probably tell you that a man of my travels is a - uh - bastard that knows too much to be trusted with.” He grinned, looking for her reaction as he waited for her to open the new book. “Guess I better watch my neck or someone scary like you is going to come after me,” he mused, mostly joking despite the probable truth to his words. 

mintedstar/fur

Eises was convinced that whenever it was time for Myrnin to come out, he would try to spook her with a yell and some snow-ball attack. Was he the type to tackle her down? It was something her friends back home would try to do. A tackle with a large snowball landing on her face. Her shoulders then tensed for a second as the mound lifted itself into the air with its arms raised. She was half-expecting it to be Myrnin, and half a different creature entirely. A snow monster?

The familiar hue of green that came from its upper face and the voice further cleared her suspicions. She lifted back and laughed; she knew he was up to something, but he still managed to take her by surprise. Eises then smirked with furrowed brows, her eyes twinkling, "Begone, beast!" She lifted her hand with her palm up and twitched her fingers upwards. A flurry of snowballs flew from the ground and onto the already snow-covered Myrnin.

Archie's explanation of a gun didn't really get many places with Adrian other than the fact that he now knew what the other blinker was talking about.
"Oh that," he said, sounding a bit relieved that it wasn't something too complicated. He turned, walking several paces away from Archie, and found the gun he'd dropped.
"And it shoots paint ... odd. You did mention it was a game though." The boy sounded a bit more focused than the last time he'd blinked in. He didn't really look older, but he spoke a bit older.
He held the gun up for Archie to look, as if he was displaying some sort of prize. He'd seen Archie shoot, but he wasn't sure how to do it himself. He tried to hold the paintball gun in the same way, but it felt awkward and bulky. It took him a second to realize it was probably upside-down.
"Like this?" he asked.
He looked at Archie for guidance, a small smile on his lips. He was fine with learning games from the odd blinker. It seemed fairly safe.

L | Jenga Room | mintedstar/fur

L watched Myrnin closely, his wide dark eyes never leaving the vampire’s face, his expression. Myrnin was nothing if not difficult to read, he mused, and he thought back to his own actions in the Arena Room.
Because that, really, was what he was talking about. The Murder Mystery Room had come second, and even then he knew it had stemmed from what happened in the Arena. Not that the Murder Room hadn’t had its own issues to be resolved, of course it had, and L still wanted nothing more than to know who had been responsible for that man’s death. But maybe it was better to tackle one seemingly insurmountable problem at a time.
I’m truth, L hadn’t done much other than die in that room. He had blinked in after most of the mayhem had occurred. He wondered, sometimes, whether the House had blinked him in merely to give Myrnin someone else to kill.
It would make sense. The House had probably been thrilled to see the vampire do so much damage so quickly.
He listened, careful not to miss a single word, as Myrnin began to speak. He was right, of course. The House was not something that was easy to anticipate, any more than any other killer was easy to guess at. The problem with the House was that it was as powerful as it was clever, and it usually had a pretty good idea of how to hit you where it hurt the most. The problem, he thought, gazing into Myrnin’s green eyes, was that it was smarter than them.
More specifically, smarter than him.
“No one can predict the House’s actions completely.” He conceded. “Not you, and not me. But that’s all the more reason to do the best we can to minimize damage. I thought you were guilty in the Murder Mystery Room because I knew you were guilty in the Arena. I suppose that was a flaw in my reasoning. I apologize for my mistake.”
And now they were talking about good. It was an odd concept to discuss, the detective mused, still staring at Myrnin with unblinking dark eyes. As someone who believed in justice, and therefore injustice, L knew he was at odds with plenty of other people who thought those concepts were mere human imagination at work, but he still wasn’t used to discussing those topics. The people who came to him generally believed in justice enough to think he had a chance in making it happen, and those who didn’t agree didn’t typically have a say in the matter. Criminals, for example, who didn’t think they’d done anything wrong, were not consulted.
Myrnin wasn’t a criminal, though.
Was he?
“There are two kinds of rooms.” L answered, voice steady. His feet rubbed together slowly as he spoke, as though trying to get warm. “The ones that take over your mind, and the ones that don’t. The ones that take over your mind are inescapable as far as I can tell, or rather, we don’t know how to escape them. Those ones are the House’s fault.”
He didn’t blink. “But the Arena Room wasn’t like that. It didn’t take over your mind, Myrnin. It tricked you, and it tried to manipulate you, and it succeeded. You have to take responsibility for your actions, even if your choices were extremely limited.”
He flinched as the block flew past him, expecting it to hit him. It didn’t, and he didn’t turn, didn’t glance behind him to see where it had landed. All he could see was a Myrnin, sitting in front of him. Crouched where he was, and talking faster.
He didn’t say anything as the vampire continued, and he could feel his whole body, tense and ready like he expected a fight.
He didn’t, though. He didn’t think Myrnin was going to do anything. The only reason his heart was beating rapidly now was the things Myrnin was saying.
He wanted to say something, but for the first time since they’d entered this room, he didn’t know what. His eyes finally flicked away from Myrnin’s, resting on the block tower as though it might hold the answers he was looking for.
“I know why you did it.” He said finally, choosing his words with meticulous care. “And I know you were trying to do the right thing in a situation with no good answer. I know that. But it’s like you said. You can’t predict the House like that. You decided that the only way out was to kill the weakest blinkers before they could kill anyone themselves, and you took a risk, gambling that they would come back. I can’t tell you you did the right thing, Myrnin.”
He reached out for a block on the tower, then stopped, fingers hovering less than an inch from the wood. Then he pulled back without touching it.
“But I can’t tell you you did the wrong thing either. The House has, once again, created a situation with little to no solutions.”
He breathed out. Flashes of the bodies he’d seen shot through his mind like light on water. How could he say that slaughtering the weak and defenseless could ever be the right thing to do? How could he say it was right to let them become killers?
Damn you, House.
Myrnin’s voice as he continued was nearly enough to shatter L. He sounded so lost, so alone, and the detective couldn’t look away from him, even if he’d wanted to. He couldn’t stop looking at those green eyes, and when Myrnin closed them, L closed his, too. For only a second.
Then they snapped open and he stared at the vampire, face gone even paler than usual, leaving him paper white. Twenty? A thousand? More? What was he talking about? It was true that L had killed people, indirectly. He had caught criminals who’d died because of it, and he’d failed to catch others, causing more victims to fall. He’d failed A, one of the first children in Wammy’s after himself, and that had caused a death. BB was more than enough to be on that list. So he understood that killing was more complicated than it might seem.
But thousands? He stared at Myrnin, trying to scan him and break open his thoughts. Trying to see what he meant, because there was the distinct sense that the vampire was leaving something out of the equation.
“Tell me why.” He said softly, and leaned forward, not back. As though he was trying to prove to himself that the much older blinker wasn’t a monster, that he couldn’t be a monster. “Tell me why you killed them. Because I’ve killed before, too. Maybe not thousands. But it’s possible - no, likely - that I’ve indirectly caused the deaths of hundreds.”
He reached for the block again. The same one as before. But he still didn’t touch it. His fingers were close enough to lightly brush the edges, but that was all.
“You don’t know that for sure.” He told Myrnin, settling back into his usual crouch. “I’ve heard that sometimes, people here do stay dead. You can’t say you knew they would come back. You thought they would, and you were right as far as I know, but you didn’t know.”
He hadn’t known the child would come back. L didn’t even know the boy’s name, but he had seen the way Myrnin had looked at the small body, and he knew the vampire had killed him.
A child learning to kill.
Memories rose behind L’s eyes unbidden, flashes he didn’t want to see. He knew all too well what a child who knew how to kill looked like. He knew a small, desperate face when he saw it, and he never wanted to see it again. Maybe if he’d seen more of the Arena, his perspective would have been different. Maybe he would have had a different opinion.
He didn’t know, he didn’t know, he just didn’t know.
“The House is the culprit. But that doesn’t make our choices go away.” He answered, and his voice wasn’t calm anymore. It shook slightly. He didn’t like thinking about this, and not because he had died. No, it was more than that, far more.
“A crime scene.” He answered, almost distractedly. “I would have treated it as a crime scene, from start to finish. That’s my job, that’s who I am. I can’t just turn it off.”
He sounded like he wished he could.
His pale fingers closed around the block, and he slid it free.
And the tower came crashing down.
L watched it fall. Then, still staring at the remains of the game, he said softly, “you were the more selfless of the two of us. You still killed innocent people. I can see that that tortures you more than you can say.”
And then he looked up and his dark eyes were bright with something difficult to read. “I wanted to blame you, just like you wanted me to blame you. But I can’t, Myrnin. Because in your position...I may have made the same decision.”

(Speaking of extremely long posts...)

"Yes," said Sam. "Well, maybe legends can be real somewhere. And if that were something you could believe, why not this?"
He waved both hands out at the stone. "They're large stones. They're a place just like this in another world. This place ... mimics ... the other worlds. It takes things from them and makes them its own."
It was a very familiar concept.
"So," Sam continued, "things like this aren't really unusual. It's what the people within the rooms decide to do with the situation. What would you like to do?"