Close Circle

[KungFuCutbug]

"thought I mentioned it pretty early on yesterday? yeah, I was in one of these before. and, uh, died. forcefed cyanide by some star man in Wild West sheriff getup. not making this up. admittedly, though, that was on me—I made the dumb mistake of revealing the ability I had waaay too early, and that made me a prime target. ...as far as I can tell, though, the guy who killed me was the only member of that particular group of killers that was a cop or cop-adjacent. one of them was an anthro-cat who was a game developer, one was... an incomprehensible eldritch abomination whose name I dare not speak, and I think I might be missing another one but I can't remember."

[Pizzabug sighs.] "thankfully, I was able to get resurrected. ...about four months or so after the fact, but whatever. that's how I'm still standing here today... but, yeah, long story short, there've been plenty of these types of scenarios. plenty. the difference between this one and pretty much all of the other ones I know about, though, is that Carmello didn't intentionally bring the cops in to murder us all one by one. hell, he doesn't even seem like that bad of a guy, especially compared to the bastard who ran the game I was in. plus, most of us had a vague idea of what we were getting into—we went into this willingly instead of just getting plucked from whatever dimensions we're all from, stuck in a room all together and told to kill. and, like I said earlier, the main difference is that a lot of the shit here seems to be left up to practically completely random chance, and Lady Luck has a hateboner for us or something. at the carnival, evidence was either there or it wasn't. made finding the killers a lot easier. here, you've got people locking themselves in closets, setting shit on fire, and constantly tripping over themselves like it's a Super Smash Bros. Brawl match. that's the irritating part, for me. we have so much less to go off of because of our own clumsiness. so..."

[Here, they pull the brim of their hat down, over their eyes.] "I guess that means we need to be a lot more careful in the future. and a lot more observant, too. can't just rely on the evidence, since apparently it can easily just go away in an instant. you have to be observant. you have to pay attention to how people act, what they say, what they do, and you've gotta make theories. this is more of a game of mafia than that Timeline Master guy could've ever hoped for—and I'm not saying that just because we're in the mafia. I'm saying this because we're in a game of social deduction, one where you can only truly rely on your own damn intuition, above all else." [A pause. Then, another sigh.] "...sorry for rambling. guess I just... had a lot that I needed to get off my chest here."