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More people were filing on in and no one seemed to want to answer his question or even really acknowledge it. Frowning at that, he let out a sigh and leaned back into the couch and idly listened to everyone. If they wouldn't tell him, then yII would just have to try and figure it out himself.

There was something about a traitor, as well as several pendants floating about. Most likely the pendants were the ones eXIII had before he died. In any case, he figured it was safe to assume that the traitor deal was what landed most of these new dead people in here. What was interesting was that there was also something about a scythe. The last he remembered, the only person using any sort of scythe was the blue cloaked figure.
The disembodied voice he heard earlier did say something about being naked.

"Wait, you guys managed to take the cloaked guy's weapon?" he asked, fairly impressed if that was what gone down.

He also didn't get what the hell yIII was going on about ... Hermione Granger? Why did that name sound so familiar?

"Waitaminute." E-1 said, hands to her temples in an attempt to force her mind to process what they were telling her. "E-10 killed you? On purpose?"

That was ludicrous! E-10 was an Epsilon! Epsilonians stuck together! But, here were E-7 and 5, in Purgatory Central. It wasn't like that had any reason to lie now, did they? E-1 clenched her fists. How dare she!

"I hope it's possible to pummel people in purgatory." she muttered darkly. All that time, and E-10 was the traitor!

Someone else spoke up, and E-1 turned towards him.

"Yeah, the reaper originally had the weapon, and he told us there was a traitor among us. He had us vote, but he ended up being voted the traitor. He gave up the scythe, and let someone kill him! Well, he disappeared, anyway."

That reminded her.

"Has a reaper shown up dead?" she asked. It was something that had been nagging her before the room tried to pack them together like sardines. Scythe + reaper = no body. Scythe + people = body. The math wasn't adding up.

"E-12! I was sad that I didn't get to say goodbye to you guys. That time in the tent seems like the good ol' times right now." E-1 said, when E-12 spoke up.

A12 listened to the conversation with a pounding head. Oh god, it hurt. Both hands rubbed at her temples now, trying to alleviate the neverending pain. But when somebody mentioned that the reaper had come back, A12's eyes opened in wide interest.

Her eyes were: heart _ heart

Go through the door? Remember everything? See the reaper? No return? (NAKED REAPER? : DDDDDD) What were they waiting for? Wasn't it a good deal? They didn't have to come back to this hell hole. But .. A12 thought about it. Did she .. really want to leave them all behind? They had only just come from a room full of mad people-- and it seemed that everybody was finally calming down. Almost like a party.

Did she want to leave the party?

There was something oddly peaceful about death. Eta IV couldn't remember how the scythe had become to cut her to bits, just that it had and that was that. Curtains down on that one. She had no idea what came of the others that had been in the room with her, or the fate of her one ally in this entire mess. Did any of it matter now? She attempted to survive and failed. It was the one thing she knew she was supposed to achieve on this island and it ended in disaster. She was a disaster -- and yet the pressure of dying was off of her shoulders. Been there, done that. Now she just had the long, winding pathway of afterlife to walk down... right?

Perhaps there was a part of her that expected a bright light, or a gentle voice calling to her from the ether when she died. The reality was much simpler than that. One minute she was drenched in blood and fighting to kill-or-be-killed, and the next she was sitting on a bar stool, legs crossed, martini in hand.

She glanced down to the drink balanced gingerly in her gloved fingertips. A frilly toothpick with two green olives speared on it swung lazily to and fro with the shifting of her weight. A drink -- yes. That was what she needed. Eta IV tipped the glass toward her face. It stopped short, blocked by the protective mask of her helmet. Gin and vermouth poured down the clear cover, down the front of her suit, and then pooled in her lap.

Eta IV stared at it for a long time. "This is Hell," she said at last, tossing the empty glass to the floor. All the booze in the world for her to drown her sorrows in, and not a damn way to ingest it. Wonderful.

Turning over her shoulder, Eta IV realized that she was not alone in this lounge. Helmeted faces were dotted across the room, some locked in conversation, others alone like her. She stared at them for a moment and then turned back to the bar. What was the point in talking this out? Dead was dead. They were told to survive, and they had failed. That's all folks. Leave the winning chats to those who were smart enough to not bum rush the girl holding the giant scythe.

Without thinking, Eta IV grabbed enough glass from the bar and poured herself two fingers of whiskey. Fingers brushed the glass, and she lifted it and -- oh right. Couldn't drink. Couldn't survive. Couldn't do anything right. Couldn't even have a proper existential delusion. She failed to be Hermione consistently just as surely as she had failed to stay alive.

A disappointment, really. She was an utter failure.

A long, scathing sigh escaped her lips. What did any of this mean? The only true memory she thought she had was of a classroom, a classroom where someone told her she had asked for this. Asked to be slaughtered? Asked to be demoralized? Asked to be driven to the brink of sanity, sinking like a stone into a delusion just to feel something? Why would she do that?

Eta IV had no idea who she was, but she had a hard time believing she would have agreed to any of this without reason. The open door in the room hung like a noose just over her shoulder. She turned to stare at it, one finger thumping against the glass of whiskey. Her eyes locked there on the swirling darkness inside of it, and she wondered quietly what her own swirling darkness might contain, what it could give her.

She just wanted a reason to care about living, so that she could have a reason to be sad about dying.

Watching all the commotion going on and the new flow of dead members pooling in to the room, E8 frowned as he saw more of his team members appear in the room. At the rate their team was falling there was no way the rest could stand strong unless they made some kind of pact with other teams.

Giving a sad smile, he waved at E7, E5 and E1. "Heh, hey guys. While it's nice to see all of you again I don't think this is how we would want to meet..."

He made his way back to his spot by the wall he was at earlier and silently listened to their talk about the game that was going on in the world of the living.

It angered him to think that one of their own would turn against them, but it was no surprise; This was a game of survival and if that meant killing off your own team he was sure some were more than happy to do so.

"Come on now E1, while it is possible to still hurt others here I don't think you want to cause a seen here, do you? You have to remember some people are more than willing to turn against their own team if that means they have a better chance at winning... It's just how things go."

((Z3's entering from Last Man Standing, ohohoho~))

Was all of this a dream? Zeta Three would probably believe anything at that point, sitting all by his lonesome on a chair he didn't remember, in a place he couldn't recall, without a clue of how he'd gotten there. Bits and pieces of the slaughter remained fresh in his memory-- mostly scrambled fragments of sight and sound he couldn't process entirely-- but near the end, in the seconds that mattered most, it all dissolved to a gray, senseless mess.

There were other people present, and a lot of them, but at that point he didn't care to socialize. Coming to the realization that he was, in fact, dead, seemed to defeat the point of camaraderie... and besides, he was too busy in his own miserable introspection to think beyond his own mask.

The fact that they suddenly had leisure time to reflect back on their lives seemed like some horrible joke to him, and worse still was the thought that passing on would be a voluntary process. All of this time, he'd been so hellbent on surviving at any cost and playing the game to its end and now... God, now he was nothing but a ghost--... no, worse than that. He was between a phantom and a man, caught in transit, dead, but still not wanting to die.

With a soft, faintly shaking sigh, the defeated strategist leaned his head absently against a pillow, staring blankly into the polished, distant walls. His slumped silhouette seemed like a pitiful version of its confident former self, and he just didn't care enough to correct it.

He'd lost more than just the fight, at the end of it all. He'd lost his composure, his will, his dignity, his allies, his everything... and all at the hand of some mindless, psychotic ape wielding his own weapon against him.

(( A1 entering from Last Man Standing~ ))

A-One opened his eyes and blinked. He was faintly astonished that he was actually capable of blinking. Had he just woken up, or just fallen asleep? He thought he remembered dying. Already, his mind was blocking out the memory of the pain, protecting itself; he could recall easily enough that there had been pain, but that was an abstract knowledge. He couldn't remember what it had felt like. He didn't really want to, either.

A look around told him more. He could see helmets with familiar numbers on them among the unfamiliar heads, and the forms in armor looked about right. He remembered some of them dying, too. Others - well. They must have died after he did. He was taking this pretty well, he thought. Probably shock. Save the post-traumatic stress hallucinations and hysteria for later.

Z-Eight was here, and Z-Four, and A-Twelve. He hesitated, then walked over to seat himself beside Z-Eight, not speaking. He'd gone a little weird there at the end, and he wasn't sure if he was proud or ashamed. But he still didn't really remember much of anything; the only thing he still had was the alliance he'd promised to, and he'd stick with that.

They could remember, if they went through the door? A-One looked to the door, contemplating the void it stood open on. ... No, he wasn't quite ready yet. He needed a break.

Even more people were showing up, and it was starting to feel slightly crowded in this lounge.

"Holy crap. Just how many of you were there?" he asked with a frown, not that anyone could see it. Though, they might guess from the tone yII used while speaking, "Were you all killed by this E-10 person?"

If that was the case... Gamma Two would have to give them some props for managing to clear out as many people as they did. This had to be the biggest body count caused by any one person so far. At the same time, it was a little disconcerting to think that one person would be able to kill ten or so people singlehandedly, even with an amazing weapon. Not just due to their prowess but because they were mentally capable of doing such a feat.