Chapter 1 - Feasting on Despair

Paris had carried the plate with them, already shaking in anticipation of the scene that awaited.  Perhaps the killer would be caught red-handed, and the Librarian would save the day with broken china.

After a minute of searching, they had stumbled into the Dining Hall.  The world blurred and distorted in hues of purple and pink as the Librarian lost their balance, tumbling to the floor.  This time, they did not have the good fortune of falling unconscious.  The image of the dead girl did not melt away, like the nightmares constantly plaguing them.  Penelope lay dead and bloody atop a plate, like...like a meal.  As if God himself had gotten too hungry, and decided tattooed skin was akin to medium-well steak.  It was wrong.

But still, Penelope Baron was gone.  Another life.  Another tragedy.  Another betrayal among them.  Paris dry heaved, the shock sizzling away and leaving nothing but disgust, fear, and sorrow.  This was not right, and it was only the beginning.  Perhaps...no one was coming, after all.  Somewhere deep inside of them, the scream bubbled up and tumbled from Paris' throat.

Tamashi woke up with a raging headache. It was all he could do to not go back to sleep and lay this off like a BAD hangover. The only 2 reasons he didn't was 1, it was late as is, and 2, he knew he couldn't go to sleep now. Otherwise, it'd be suspicious. So he got up and went to the dining hall, you know, like it was a normal life. However, he didn't find a welcoming entree of bacon and eggs. He found the stench of blood and a frenzy of fear.
Penelope Baron, the ultimate tattoo artist, was dead.
He's seen many different corpses, but he felt....attached....to this one in particular. Tamashi just shook his head, and then time seemed to slow down to about 10%. He instantly started taking in the surrounding environment and memorized everything, with an odd, empty look in his eyes. This was why Tamashi was an analyzer.

"N-No mom....I don't want any eggs...are there...any muffins instead....?"

Lucca quietly mumbled in his sleep, obviously affected by the smell from the plate next to him, unaware of the path of fate unwinding in front of him.

Lucca's eyes slowly opened, vision still blurry. He had rolled over in his sleep, and was on his side facing the nightstand. When he had fully regained his vision, his eyes focused on the plate...with food. Without thinking Lucca snatched a piece of bacon and wolfed it down, trying to do anything to relieve the pain in his stomach. It was the best thing he had tasted in a while, well that's probably because it was the first thing he had eaten in a while.

It wasn't until Lucca thought about it really hard, did he realize why the food was there. Someone had died. Lucca quickly shot up from his bed. He stared at the plate, first with disbelief. But then that disbelief turned into fear, fear of who could have died, and who could have killed.

Then suddenly he heard a scream erupt from the dining hall. The scream sounded familiar...Paris. Lucca burst out of his room and sprinted towards the dining hall. "Please Be Safe Please Be Safe Please Be Safe!" And then he heard the announcement of a body discovery. It was true...someone had died. He began to sprint even faster towards the dining hall. But what he saw...he would give anything to unsee it. The SHSL Tattoo Artist, Penelope Baron, had been killed.

Lucca felt the piece of bacon he had eaten start to come up, along with a whole bunch of bile. He ran to the corner to, for lack of a better term, puke. The smell was unbearable, but the fact that someone had died, was even worse. Lucca turned back to the crowd of people, tears streaming down his face. "It can't be true...someone please tell me its not true. Please..."

Slowly Arare began to awake. More and more lately her bed was feeling like the best place to be. Sleeping at least let her ignore the hunger that grew every day. But this morning was different. As she stirred from her slumber this morning though, a strange smell reached her. It was food. Cooked Food. Prepared Food. Sitting up she looked over to the nightstand to see the meal.

If only that food had appeared by chance. If only she was so lucky that the Bear's Absolute Statement about there not being any until someone died had been wrong, but all the luck in the world meant nothing when it came to absolutes. Someone had to die for Arare to eat that that was "The better outcome" for her than dying of starvation herself. Hopefully that meant that there was some reason for her to be there, because it looked a little hopeless at the moment.

"I'm sorry..." She said, grabbing the plate and eating all of the food off the plate and drinking the Orange Juice. It was something on her stomach, anything to get her moving faster. She was the lucky one after all. She had to find something good in this. After all, it was suppose to be favorable to her.

She also couldn't let whoever died have died in vain by dying of starvation herself. The last thing anyone needed right now was more death.

Hearing a scream she got up and made her way to where everyone seemed to be heading, The Dining Hall. There it was. The dead Body. The one left on the losing end of the die roll that landed in Arare's Favor, as always. Penelope Baron.

She only looked briefly, not wanting to lose her breakfast like Lucca had by staring too much. It was probably best to wait for everyone else to show up and get over their initial reactions before doing anything, or at least Jun, the resident detective.

But she had to keep in mind that one of them was the Killer, and they only had a short amount of time to figure it out.

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Asher had the best night’s sleep he had since he had gotten onto this ship. Usually he’d end up wondering around the ship, looking for where the sleeping girl from the first day wound up. Maybe that was how people got off the boat, just pretend that you’re sleeping and everyone gets upset over you and you get to leave because as someone one ship would probably say (Asher wasn’t sure which one it was though) they were ‘killing the good vibes’. For a moment, Asher considered pretending to sleep and not getting up, but then he remembered that everyone would feel sad and miss him a whole bunch, especially the really nice purple haired girl, Penelope.

When Asher had woken up, there was even some breakfast on his nightstand! Asher was so excited, and gobbled down the eggs, before feeling sick. Maybe he had eaten it too fast. That was probably it. He picked up the plate with the bacon on it, and walked out of his room to offer it to someone who was also awake. Asher hadn’t gone into the dining hall or the kitchen yet, looking to see if anyone was on the deck. Nope. Didn’t look like it. Asher looked into the storage room (Whoa, there was food now! It was like magic!), but didn’t see anything until he heard a scream, very lightly as he wasn’t near the dining hall. Oh, someone was probably pretty hungry. He could share his bacon with them.

Asher galloped down under the deck and walked slowly towards the dining hall and the kitchen. Oh, he bet there was food in there! Maybe he could make Penelope something, and hopefully not burn down the whole place.

However, when he arrived, there were already a lot of people. Wow, lots of people woke up pretty fast. This is where they were all hiding. He hoped they weren’t hiding from him. Maybe it was hide and go seek and he didn’t know he was the one who was it, yet. If that were the case, everyone lost. “Ha, ha. I found you all.” There were a couple of people missing, but it was alright, he could find them later. And maybe they weren’t up yet. Maybe they weren’t part of the game.

Asher walked through the crowd, wondering if his best friend was here. No purple hair, no purple hair, purple hair! There she was, though she looked like she had accidentally fallen. Angie was there, so obviously she was as bandaged up as she could be right now, so at least there was that. She probably wasn’t hurting too much. “Oh, hi Penelope! D’you want my bacon?” When she didn’t respond, Asher’s face fell. Hm. She wasn’t trying to get off the ship like the girl from the first day, was she? Nah, she wouldn’t do that to him. “Penelope?” He walked up to her and picked up the bacon from his plate and waved it in front of her face. “There’s food now!” It was almost sing-song. “You can’t be that tired.” Asher sighed and picked up Penelope’s hand and put the bacon in it. “Well, when you wake up, you can have my bacon.” Then, Asher simply walked over the refrigerator and began browsing for food.