Season 1 / Kaoru - "Reap What You Sow" [The First Trial Projection]

MILGRAM

"Heeeelp, they're strippin' away my human riiights 'n shit! I need a witneeeeessss!"

Kaoru's voice echoes down the hall, more like an announcement than an actual cry for help, lacking any desperation as an exasperated warden stands in front of his cell.

"Yeah yeah, what about the right to remain silent, huh? C'mon, let's get this over with." Bea taps her foot, looking much less pleasant than usual.

There's no smart remark for Bea, just a tight glare as he slowly exits the cell. Despite initial protests and behavior thus far, Kaoru is oddly compliant as he walks to the projection machine, more fidgety than usual, unable to stay still for even a second as they lead him along.

Once seated, he’s grinning up at the wardens. It’s a lazy, contented grin, putting aside the nerves. “I bet whatever they rip outta my head's gonna be fun, y'all ready?”

"I don't suppose there's anything you'd like us to know about your crime before the projection?"

He gets antsier as he's bound in place, legs bouncing and eyes darting around. He starts drumming his pointer finger's nail against the arm rest with what little it can move, tapping with increasing quickness as he's fully secured. If he could think of anything to say, he can't bring it to words. Not like he thinks the wardens are taking anything he says to heart anyway.

---

Despite the promise (implication?) that the rest of you would be free to watch, Bea shoos you away so the chosen prisoner can be guided down the long hallway alone. Once they reach the courtroom, though, the wardens are too occupied having the prisoner sit in the lone chair properly to keep you away.

So a few of you make the trek yourselves, finding the hallway only marginally less lonely with your company. The walls still seem stifling, their silence somehow out of place.

But the courtroom is wide open, if barren, and there's not much to be uncomfortable about until the prisoner of the day is secured in place. A strange...—machine? Somehow enough of it remains in shadow to obscure any useful details—emerges from the wall to hover around the prisoner's head, then everything but you and the wardens is swallowed by utter darkness.

It only lasts a moment, though. Once the shadow subsides, you find yourself seemingly somewhere else...

Kaoru Naito

Your shoes kick up dusty dirt as you stagger onto the side of the road, waking up somewhere else.

{visual of scene as described below; EPIC ART BY AMELIA}

The road ahead bends along the riverside to your right before curving left over the horizon towards, as far as you can tell, the middle of nowhere. The riverbank is lush with tall grass and occasional tall, thin trees. As the sun sets, fireflies start to light up around you, and you can hear the cicadas singing louder than the river's murmur. The setting sun is right at the horizon, casting beautiful, deep shadows over the area and painting the sky rich shades of purple, orange, and red.

Behind you, a beat up green sedan pulls up and parks just on the side of the road, not quite off of it, avoiding the unpaved shoulder. Through the front windshield, you can see all kinds of junk decorating the dashboard and hanging from the rear view mirror. You see the silhouette of a lone man at the driver's seat, hood pulled up, but a mess of hair is identifiable in the darkness as it pokes out in every direction.

The car's headlights shine on the area in front of you, lighting up the cracked, poorly maintained road ahead as well as the trunk of a car that's veered off the road. Something on the road is catching light.

The car that's veered off to the side looks expensive, and a gentle pour of smoke has started to come out of the car's hood. You faintly see the shape of the driver in the seat, bent over the wheel and struggling to rise. Only the back of the car is lit up, the rest is hard to see through the tall grass and deep shadows. There's nothing stopping you from stepping into the shadows to investigate.

As you watch the car pull up, you're all set with a feeling like you're on a time limit. It's like every second that passes feels like a tug at a wire in the base of your skull.

Ellie Carter

Ellie follows Kaoru's voice. Someone's gotta report what happened in a confusing and humorous way, right? She's pulled into the vision and sees a long empty road. She leans down and touches the dirt and the grass. Ain't too different from the sights of home.

Maybe he was driving dumb. He does seem like the sort of guy to go racing.

Emily Lewenhock

While the yelling is hard to miss with all of one cell and a hallway between them, Emily only briefly looks out from her cell to see it's that giant troublemaker guy, not currently being assaulted. She can't really say she expected otherwise.

But then the context comes a little clearer, and, well—one data point has an awful margin of error. If it's time for another projection, maybe Emily could get a better idea of what exactly the breadth of these things is.

The big guy's comment isn't particularly heartening, but also nothing she wouldn't expect from him. Whether it was grandstanding or real can only be determined by sticking around.

And… Oh. Were all projections this dusty? At least it's prettier.

And with more moving cars, maybe let's stay out of the way of that. And a time limit… Hmm. Interesting. But Andrew's didn't take too long, so as long as they're reasonably efficient, especially splitting up between four of them (the other Kaoru doesn't count, right?)… it should be fine.

Erin | Vincent Churchwell

Vincent had been going about his boring prison day, when- Ah, yep, that was definitely Kaoru, and given their conversation about a week(? what was time) or so ago, Vincent's PRETTY sure he knows what that means.

And so, without further ado, Vincent makes his way to the Projection Courtroom, just in time to see Kaoru being marched into the room, and despite any Warden attempts to keep him out, this time he very pointedly makes his intention to walk in whether they like it or not apparent. After all, Kaoru had wanted him here for some reason, a witness of something as his screams might indicate. And so, he simply gives a nod to Kaoru before things start up. Whoever else that may be coming in too was not his personal concern, hopefully it would all be fine.

And as for what happens when the world around them shifts-

….Huh. Vincent doesn't know in the least what he was expecting to happen, but this does make him blink as his eyes adjust to his new surroundings and his body gets its bearings. Ah, so Ellie, Emily, and Robert were here too, huh?

"I see quite a few of us have made it into here. What's… Hm?" Vincent says as he squints first at the beat up green sedan and it's driver. That seems like a Kaoru sort of color, and is that a Kaoru sort of hair??

Kaoru Naito

Erin | Vincent Churchwell

Vincent says as he squints first at the beat up green sedan and it’s driver.

Robert McCay

he’s gonna stick with Vincent for now and help look over the green sedan.

As the two approach the car, it's like you're all pulled from the present moment regardless if you had walked up to the car yourself or not, eyes snapping shut in a momentary haze.

Suddenly, you're in a cheap motel, the only light in the room at first coming in from the streetlights through the cheap blinds on the window. Someone's banging on the motel door hard enough to make the door keen inwards, shining light in through the crack where the lock fails to keep it closed.

There's someone behind you on the bed curled up in the blankets, making themself small. The anger you feel is streaked with annoyance: standing up and grabbing a familiar bat from under the bed, you raise a leg to kick the front door back into place so you can slide the chain lock open to swing the door open yourself, swinging it open and bounding outside while shouting in a very familiar voice by now, "I told you motherfucker's t' get off my ass!!"

The car is quiet and peaceful when you see the present again, edges taking a moment to blur back into focus. It feels warm compared to the cool night outside. In your peripheral, it feels like every dark shape is crawling until you look straight at it. Optical illusions. The time lost pulls at your temples.

The man who had just parked his car is no longer in the driver's seat, now out of the car and approaching the crashed car, flashlight in hand casting a beam of light ahead of him. Now standing, you can see how ridiculously tall he is, taller than any of you, which might help you assume who this is if you weren't already sold one way or the other. He's in the dark, almost unnaturally silhouetted so long as he isn't in the light, but it's a distinctly Kaoru-like shape. The occlusion probably isn't to hide his identity. He reaches up to pull out just one of his headphones while advancing, letting it dangle.

His light makes the crashed expensive car easier to see, as well as the tall grass around it. Half of the car's still in darkness, while the driver's side is cast in light.

Robert McCay

Here came the last of the horrible projections… and it was Kaoru, no less, judging by the hollering from the hallway. Robert had no great desire to go to any more of these, but despite first impressions, this guy had actually been pretty nice to him, especially around the subject of his own projection and the revelations following that. Least he could do was return the favor.

More urgently, though, the thing that made Robert get up and follow him into the Courtroom was seeing Bow-Wow headed that direction himself. He pulled him back by the shoulder and whispered.

"Listen, I-- I got a feelin' y'don't wanna be in this one. Just take it easy, okay? I'll go keep an eye on him."

The boy sighed but complied, and Robert stepped into the Courtroom just as the machine activated…

He found himself outside at night on the side of a dusty highway. Fireflies and tall, tall grass, a lazy river and rolling hills in the distance… It looked awfully familiar?

"This is… hill country, ain't it?"

The white car catches his eye, but he's gonna stick with Vincent for now and help look over the green sedan.

Ellie Carter

Ellie can see the others— and what a group we've got here!— going for the sedan and decides to get that sparkly thing in the road.

Kaoru Naito

Ellie Carter

Ellie decides to get that sparkly thing in the road.

The road is the sort of desolate road that rarely sees maintenance, cracks and grooves deep enough to stick your finger down into. Taking a closer look, you find scattered felt nails and crumpled, torn lengths of shed roofing with more nails driven through it. Not good to drive over. It's torn up as if, after being ran over, it rolled with the car for a distance before finally coming off of the wheel.

The points of the nails and twisted aluminum holds her attention. The dark of the road and the bright reflections of the headlights become like static and you mentally sink into it, everyone dragged into the intrusion again.

You think you're in a crowd, cheering and goading on two boys in the center of it. Amidst indistinct shapes and crass, blurred words, the two in the center are somewhat clearer: there's the shaky form of the silhouetted kid, mess of hair even worse in the past, and the vague shapes of the shorter, broader boy across from him, outlined and highlighted like a target.

It's obvious to you that the shadowy boy’s fist is clenched so tightly around the wrapped scrap of metal it’s hiding that it shakes. When the crowd finishes an off-sync count down and lets go of him, he swings high at the other boy’s face with a wrathful scream.

The spray of blood splashes over your face and blinds you as you stagger back. His scream turns to laughter while the rest of their cheers turn to screams. All the noise fades, scattering in different directions.

Blinking back into the moment, all of you touch your pocket in a thoughtless gesture. You feel small stray nails inside, just like those on the road. Resourceful. Oddly comforting.

Emily Lewenhock

She nods at Vincent before squinting at Robert.

"Hill country?"

Ah, more of this… out-of-body flashback thing. Another one about rent, even. Or, well. Similar vibe, at least?

She watches the Kaoru(?), but he at least doesn't seem to react to her presence. Not as much as the shadows, at least. Eugh. The special effects in these things were excessive, really.

The blood spray makes her flinch retroactively once that part is through, and…

"Great. C. tetani for Christmas. You shouldn't have."

Robert McCay

Emily Lewenhock “Hill country?”

"Yes, miss, I believe we're in Texas-- shit!"

Robert hasn't been in one of these projections with the flashbacks before, and the disorientation nearly makes him lose his balance.

"Jesus christ! D-did mine do this too--"

A second flashback hits him like a train, this one even more upsetting than the last. Never mind Bow-Wow, maybe HE shouldn't have gone in this projection. As soon as he finds his footing, he steadies himself against the hood of the sedan, then looks over to Vincent frantically.

"Mr. Churchwell, check the sedan, I'll see if I can…"

He trails off. What can he do? As if he can stop it… Nevertheless, he bolts after Ellie, past the tall, tall shadow, towards the expensive car.

Erin | Vincent Churchwell

A glance to Robert, before he glances around again. "Ah, you're right, this… could be hill country, yeah." It was at the very least reminiscent of it.

And then… the disorientation of being in a memory(?) before being suddenly back where he'd been in the projection is a little jarring and leaves his heart beating a bit faster, and Vincent has to take a moment to process just what he just saw- But what he just saw and what he was NOW seeing were both surely important, and so he follows the probably-Kaoru as he sees him walking towards that crashed expensive car, though he's dragging a bit behind, and also glancing at the others here to both see what they're doing and also gauge if they Also just saw what he did.

"You all saw that too, yes? A… vision, of sorts?" Someone at the door coming for him and someone else…? A bat, the feelings, kicking the door- Who was it that was coming for him? "What was-"

But there's NO time to finish thinking about that, as suddenly there's Yet Another vision, this time clearly from something else being looked at it would seem-

And this time, there's blood, and screaming, putting Vincent once more on high alert as he's brought back to reality, eyes darting around.

"…Another one. I think they'll keep happening as we look at things. But looking will likely be inevitable." ….Nails. Vincent glances from the thing in the road to the nails in the pocket. Hm. Any further thoughts he has, they're being kept to himself for now.

Ellie Carter

Normal guy who went through some normal shit. Yeah, sure, that's what Ellie will call it. She gets hit with the vision from the car before she gets hit with the vision from the items on the ground, a back-to-back dizzying experience.

On the run. It's a familiar sort of motel. The sort Ellie had seen a dozen of in the weeks leading up to her murder. She wonders if that's Iwao. And then before she can process it much, she triggers the next one. This time she's part of the crowd. Yeah, he looks like he could have done this thing before. It all makes a sort of sense to Ellie, though he looked awfully young in that second one. She wipes off her face even though nothing remained. He's kind of hardcore.

"Hahh… This is probably his life, yeah? Think it's telling us a fucked upbringing was behind the murder? Fuck it, I'm gonna check that car!"

She jogs over to the more expensive car.

Kaoru Naito

Ellie Carter

She jogs over to the more expensive car.

Robert McCay

He bolts after Ellie, past the tall, tall shadow, towards the expensive car.

The silhouetted Kaoru walks slowly, not in a hurry to get where he's going, creeping quietly. He's watching where he steps as he moves into the grass.

The crashed car is a white luxury SUV, a Porsche Cayenne for those who would be able to recognize it. Besides the new mars from crashing, it looks like it was in pristine condition. The wheels on the right side are deflated, nails still caught in the tires if you look for them, while the ones on the left are undamaged. There's something hanging front the trunk you can't quite see from so far, and there's shadow over the passenger's side and the front of the car, and the driver is still face down, moving but not sat up yet.

Erin | Vincent Churchwell

Right, right, the sedan, he could… check that too, Vincent processes slowly, though he's also a bit concerned by Robert's reaction to things too. Right, they were… probably in similar boats, huh?

Seeing both Robert and Ellie head for the expensive car that's crashed, though, first, Vincent braces himself both mentally and physically for whatever will happen because of that, trying his best to get ahead of the curve and be able to withstand this as well as he can-

But nothing's happening yet. That was a bit uneasy in and of itself, really.

Fine. First things first, then. With a mumble of something unintelligible, he'll look Closer at the green sedan, including inside of it for anything going on in there.

Kaoru Naito

Erin | Vincent Churchwell

He’ll look Closer at the green sedan, including inside of it for anything going on in there.

The car itself is, despite general wear, as well kept as it can be, upholstery wiped clean and everything seeming to function, engine sounding good for a car this old. The cigarette lighter has been torn out and left open and an extension cord is visibly running into the front of the car from there.

Now, the car itself is well kept— which is impressive, because the general interior is full of trash and tossed around personal possessions. The passenger's side has a carpet of trash, along the ground of it, empty glass bottles, crushed cans, torn up wrappers, and ditched cigarette boxes piled a few inches high. Something lights up and beeps in the mess. If that’s his phone, his ring tone for text messages sounds like lead pipe noise. Who knows who’s phone that could be.

The rear view mirror has dirty fuzzy dice hanging from it, the air vents have little horns that are starting to peel stuck to them, and the dashboard itself has a collection of little objects, including rubber duckies, felt rats, weird nonsense creatures, and a lot of bunny plushies and rubber spiders piled up where they won't block the view of the road too much.

The glovebox has a lock that looks like it was added on, but it's currently unlocked and hanging slightly open.

The back seats of the car more resemble a nest than anything, blankets and pillows piled up onto one side. Nested between the two front seats is a TV inside a milk crate, fastened into place by ratchet straps around the crate's holes that go to the head rests of the front two seats and to the undersides of the seat. It's hooked in pretty securely. An extension cord runs from the front of the car to the back, one of the plugs currently plugged into the TV.

The back doors are locked, and the locks in the car don't seem to do anything to change that. You're only able to inspect the front of the car in depth for now.

Ellie Carter

Nice car. People who drive cars like this are usually obnoxious jackasses, but she'll be damned if she doesn't want one too. Ellie pauses, suddenly deciding to hang back and see what this Kaoru silhouette does. Is this…?

Emily Lewenhock

Oh, Texas. …Is that still a country? Questions not relevant to the task at hand.

"Seems unlikely we'll uncover much without looking, yeah." Never impossible! But, y'know.

She's not sure how much danger they're in, but she might as well stick with Vincent. Pair up, give everyone someone to hide behind, or something. Life hacks.

Does the glovebox seem safe to examine? Maybe it's a mimic. Who knows.

Kaoru Naito

Emily Lewenhock

Does the glovebox seem safe to examine? Maybe it’s a mimic. Who knows.

Inside is a messy stack of CDs, magazines that don't catch your eye, and a pistol. Staring at it pulls all your vision black again, some cognition as to why it's happening even if you weren't the one looking at the gun.

(cw: vague drugs)

You stumble into the car, so dizzy you can't stand straight, laughing and pressing your face into your arm as you try to orient to face forwards in the seat. You lean your face up over your arm and open your mouth as the person with you reaches over to give you something and light it— doesn't really matter what, you close your eyes and lay your head back, holding it in your teeth.

The voice from the driver's seat says with a laugh, "You can't drive for shit like this, man, let's swing by my place."

Amidst the daze, there's a rising anxiety and resignation as the car starts up all tinged with a bitter paranoia. Unlock the lockbox and kick up a leg, block their view. Just in case.

You have to catch your balance when you come back to the moment. Looking at the gun, Emily knows it's loaded, she doesn't 't have to check. What would be the point if it wasn't?

Robert McCay

"A Porsche, huh?" He says as if the word is one syllable, then mutters under his breath. "…They probably had it comin'."

Somehow that makes him feel slightly less bad about the inevitability of the whole thing, but he still feels obligated to check the shadows and see if he can get a look at the driver.

Kaoru Naito

Robert McCay He still feels obligated to check the shadows and see if he can get a look at the driver.

Ellie Carter She feels like Robert is gonna get in some trouble, so she follows not far behind him.

The flashlight's beam isn't there yet, so the driver's side is still in the shade. Stepping in the darkness, everyone can hear there's a rattling of metal clinking against metal, like the relatively recognizable sound of chains being dragged along the ground.

When they step too far, they both spot light-reflecting eyes staring at you from the brush. For a second, you think you see them: chains around the area, hanging from the sky. Then, they fall backwards, pulled to the ground as a choking feeling comes over them both, pulled through sensations with no grounding— they hear the barking and howling of coyotes, they hear the sound of gunshots, they feel the phantom feeling of someone cradled in your arms and hear a woman's scream, shrill and agonized, they feel the baring heat of blinding lights, they feel the hot scrape of wet asphalt—

When they open your eyes, they're standing back in the middle of the road in the headlights beams, unharmed.

To the other two by the sedan, it looked like they both just stepped out of sight, then there was the sound of chains, then they were gone for a moment before suddenly stumbling back into the road to collect themselves. They didn't experience any of the rest.