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".... Alex." Sho sat on the counter, looking across at Alex's face. "You're absolutely s**t at lying." His emotions were in havoc, and the doctor didn't blame him. The best thing was to prescribe a relief from the source of the stress, but that definitely wasn't happening.

He attempted a normal conversation, though he didn't see the point. Everybody knew in this casino, and they were all pretending an air of joviality and fun. "I didn't get to see everything.." Something in Sho's tone told the group he wanted to see more, that his curiosity hasn't even been close to satisfied. But for now, their situation was far more important than his curiosity.

"Did you guys have fuuun~?" He called out to the rest of the group, thinking they might have seen something interesting. Other than the casino and its morbid obsession with death and body parts of course.

Sitting on one of the seats beside their little group, Brie was starting to nod off when Alex and Sho began conversing, snapping her out of it momentarily. "Hmm..?" God, how long have they been playing these games now? It felt like it had been days. But with no real way of telling time, how were they to know?

Brie had seen more than she had wanted to when she first entered the casino, and even more so afterwards. This facility had earned itself a deep loathing from the small girl.

Tiredly turning her gaze to Sho, a little surprised that the good doctor seemed somewhat unfazed by everything they had endured, answering with a simple. "No."

In response to Rook, Sho easily replied: "I believe we've already established the question of my mental sanity, so I'm sure any check would be futile."

He received some strange stares from all of them. And Sho didn't pretend to be surprised, even sounding strange to himself. There was something taking root inside of him -- the need for survival was dimming in response to his curiosity; What was really causing the undead? How badly could humanity fall? Was this really the future of humanity, degrading to the lowest of ranks: lawless bandits, pleasurable cannibalism, human extortion, what next? The bandits, and then the casino, in conjunction with the strange things on the radio - each of these things were adding up. Like pieces on a chess board where nobody knew the goal or intent of the game. If somebody were to ask the doctor if he would choose to save his life, or gain knowledge in exchange for his life -- he didn't know if he could answer with one hundred percent entirety to guarantee his life. However, he didn't reveal this to any of his current friends.

"I guess we're not in a mood to sight see." He let his gaze move about the room. "Or eat for that matter." Seeing the dead bodies had definitely dampened his hunger for the time being as well.

Slowly dozing off again, the girl's head hit the counter with a thud when she fell asleep for all of point two seconds before immediately sitting up straight. "I'm awake!" She shouted out, blinking at everyone sitting around her.

Slumping back in her seat, leaning against Alex's arm, Brie rubbed her eyes before gawking at Rook. "Hey! Don't say that! Sho is a good person!" Of course, she never heard anything that was said to Rook in private by the good doctor, so she was just going on what she knew of him.

"And you're" A loud yawn "a pain." Normally, the argument would have gone on longer, probably with more insults added, but that required energy.

Sho let an interested gaze flick towards Brie and Alex, wondering if they had gotten closer to each other while he wasn't there. Enough to sleep around each other, pet each other.. Friends for now.. but Sho didn't discount something more. Well, that wasn't his business for now.

Brie's defense had Sho giving her a smile. But he didn't refute Rook's claim since Brie was so delightfully oblivious to Sho's true nature. It was funner if one person didn't know after all.

"No offense taken." He said mildly, knowing Alex's words were true. He was well aware that most people would have gone through the usual range of emotions: horror, fear, compassion, sympathy, etc. His job had faced the doctor off constant times with dead.. that he had already begun to move past it towards calculating, towards death as acceptable casualties. But no matter how far his curiosity took him, Sho couldn'y accept the cavalier manner of cannibalism. These people weren't being killed for reasons any reason other than for fun. As a doctor with a scientific mind, he was interested in the exporation of the body, not the mindless consumption of forcefully broken people merely to see their entertainment.

"These people are definitely the creepy ones." The security guards, the waiters and waitresses who seemed so placidly accept it. "Is that what you mean when you refer to me as creepy?" He asked Rook with an amused smile. "Between them or me, who would you prefer to be in a locked room with?" Not that he was going to lock Rook in...... no... he probably wasn't going to...?

She definitely wanted to sleep, but they only had a short time before they needed to get back out there. The clock was ticking! "I'm okay, I'm" another loud yawn "okay."

To be honest, at the moment Brie was so tired that all of their conversation was coming to her in pieces as she zoned in and out. Sho's smile was received with a weary one of her own, while Rook, on the other hand, was swatted from behind. "Seriously? That's an easy pick! Sho is much better then these people!" Yes, if she was stuck with the choice that the doctor gave Rook, she'd choose him over the casino people in a heartbeat.

With Alex making more room for her, she brought her legs up, hugging them to herself, almost using her knees as a pillow.

The doctor was very much enjoying Rook's discomfort -- he was so normal, so expressive, so honest that it definitely appealed to his sadist side. Seriously, it was fun enough for the doctor to wish that Rook was in his faction. Too bad he was in the other faction~ Did it show in his polite smile? When the third, and expected response came in- Sho shook his head. "Nope!" If he had a third choice after all, it wouldn't be such a drastic scenario. Where was the fun in that?

Brie and Alex's whole-hearted support of the doctor almost made Sho laugh. It was .. nice in a sense for a doctor who usually kept people at an arm length's distance. There were some people that refused to keep Sho at that distance, and he might have been grateful to them. Might being the word. Alex who partly knew about his nature, and Brie who Sho kept mostly in the dark. Mainly because it wasn't yet necessary for her to know what type of person the doctor was. Leaning back in his chair, putting his arms behind his head as he tilted the chair back- "C'mon Rook. Let's just say that I'm the better choice," Compared to those in the casino in a relative sense at least, "especially since I've grown fond of you in our short tension-filled acquaintanceship." He nodded to Alex's statement, confirming that the consumption of Rook wouldn't be done, since eating a fellow human being would be the last thing he would do.

Alex's change in topic made the doctor change the course of his conversation, "The restaurant?" The mention of the high-class, and expensive cuisine made Sho's eyes darken contemplatively. "Nope, I haven't. Who has the extra coins for that?"

"Why, is there something I should be concerned about?" Supposedly, when he passed by, they had offered one of the finest meals you would ever taste. While that might be pleasant compared to the rations they had been eating, the cost of the dinner that you could use to save somebody else's life— even the creepy doctor would choose somebody's life. If only for the reason that each faction could use more numbers; the lesser their numbers, the lesser their chance of survival after all.

Though a good question that also popped into his mind was 'When are we going to escape?' Would the casino people let them go, even with their price tags paid?







Just edited to meet word count for the day, nothing in particular is changed about this post!