Tonix ran off just mere seconds after Anatox finally died. Akik tried to stop him, but seemed to decide to leave him be. Xerc stared at the scene, biting back the nauseous feeling that was rising in his throat. And also...

He shook his head. What? He didn't know that feeling, that was weird. He shook it away immediately, and simply looked away from the scene.

Monokumadi looked back at them all with her usual grin, tossing the gun lightly in the air. "What, still not exciting? Hm." She stuck the gun barrel-down in her pocket. "When will you guys ever lighten up a bit? You're stuck here! Why won't you just accept it and go along with it?"

No one said a word.

The headmaster shrugged. "Whatever. Go along, go along, live your lives while you still have them."

Xerc's fingers twitched in the pocket of his black jacket. Still not turning his eyes to Anatox's corpse (quite resembling bloody swiss cheese at this point), he turned around and immediately left the room. He didn't know who followed him out - he thought he heard someone yell at Monokumadi again, but he wasn't listening enough to decipher who it was.

Subconsciously his feet carried him to his dorm. He wasn't going to stay there. He just wanted to grab his sketchbook, which was lying on his bed. He grabbed the book and left his dorm, careful to lock the door behind him. Xerc contemplated going to check on Tonix, who was most likely in his dorm and in bad mental shape considering how close he and Anatox were, but he decided to leave him be. Probably for the best, anyway. And besides, he needed to get his feelings out on paper. Better than bottling them up, right?

Xerc liked to walk while he doodled. It was an odd habit of his, and something a lot of people couldn't do, but he liked doing it. He opened the sketchbook, shifted his pencil in his hand, and let the sharp tip guide his fingers across the paper.

He didn't know how long he was at it. Once he was in the zone, there was no pulling him out besides maybe a punch to the throat.

Which just about happened, funny enough.

The wind was knocked out of him when someone plowed straight into him from around a corner, having been running at full speed. Xerc fell to the ground, his pencil rolling to the side and his sketchbook falling open on the ground. Someone apologized quickly, but before Xerc could figure out who it was they were up and running again. The voice sounded female. Addie? Why was she in such a hurry? He turned around to call after her, but she was already gone.

Xerc blinked. How was she so fast? He shook his head, shrugging off the oddity and grabbing his sketchbook to keep walking.

Eventually he made it to the base of the third floor stairs. The bars on the stairwell were gone, as they'd been in the second stairwell after the first execution. Xerc didn't know if anyone had gone up yet, but he decided to check it out anyway - best to know this school as well as possible, seeing that there didn't really appear to be a way out.

Xerc closed his sketchbook, stuck his pencil in his pocket, and walked up the stairs. He went through a hallway on the right first, though he found nothing but two classrooms. No luck with the windows, either - he wasn't surprised to see them bolted shut like every other possible exit in this school. Going the opposite way, he found three more rooms, one of which, to his pleasure, was an art room. At least now there was a place he could do other things besides sketch - even in the few days he's been at the school, he'd filled at least a quarter of what had been left of the blank pages in his sketchbook. He liked to vent his feelings in his art, and there were more than enough of those to go around right about now.

Xerc contemplated going in and maybe finding certain materials, however someone's voice snapped him from his thoughts.

"Hey! Xerc, right?"

Xerc turned around. It was Addie again - she must've wanted to explore the newly opened floor as well. Xerc tightened his fist in his pocket, as he'd been much obliged to exploring alone, but he didn't quite want to seem unfriendly, so he forced a greeting.

"...hi."

"Found the art room, I see?" She said, glancing into the room.

"Uh... yeah," Xerc said. "Guess you've already been here?"

"Yeah. I was doing another loop to see if I'd missed anything." She smiled. Xerc was honestly surprised at how unbothered she was by the fact that the friend she'd been inseparable from this entire time died within the past twenty-four hours. But maybe she was used to loss, or she knew how to hide it. Xerc didn't bother to ask. "It looked like the fourth floor was also unlocked. Wanna check that out with me?"

Xerc contemplated, then sighed. "Alright."

Addie smiled in a friendly manner. "Cool! Come on!"

Addie led a visibly annoyed Xerc down the hall until they were both standing in front of the stairway. The corridor continued to the left, and Xerc asked Addie if she'd checked it out.

"A lab, is my guess," Addie responded. "Probably physics, judging by the stuff inside."

Xerc looked down that hallway for a moment before he spoke again. "Why were you running so fast earlier?"

She tilted her head, ears angled in a way that showed her confusion. "What?"

"You ran straight into- wait, was that not you?" Xerc asked.

"I haven't been in a rush to get anywhere, and I don't remember ever running into you, either," Addie shrugged.

Xerc shook his head. "God, I could've sworn-"

"It's probably nothing," Addie said. "Maybe they just had a more higher-pitched voice. There's no other girl here besides me now, after all." She shrugged, sighing a little. She added in a more sarcastic tone, "Juuust like home."

"What?"

She blinked. "Oh. Sorry, nothing. I lived with two brothers at home before this, this is... not the first time I've been singled out gender-wise."

"Ah."

They walked up the stairs, finally finding the fourth floor. Xerc hoped there wasn't a fifth, these stairs were starting to get on his nerves. There was a hall only to the left, some bathrooms being the first of the rooms to pass before the rest of the hallway was revealed. It branched off to the left first, where a large music hall could be found.

"Wouldn't it be cool if we put on a production here?" Addie said, admiring the room. "This place is huge, I bet a lot could be done with this stage."

"Mhm." Xerc was not interested. He'd never been on a stage before, much less acted on a stage, but he wasn't really up to try. Plus, who would even come? This place was a prison - no one comes in, no one goes out.

They kept going straight and took a right, finding a few classrooms and another... different room, next to a mysterious locked door.

"Is this the security room?" Addie looked around the room and at the big wall of screens seen immediately as they walked through the door.

"Monokumadi watches us relentlessly, I feel like she'd be here if this was the security room," Xerc pointed out, leaning against the doorframe with his hand fidgeting with his pencil in his pocket.x

"Hm... weird."

Seeing that there was no way to really figure out what the room was, they left the room, passed the classrooms, and found what looked like another lab. Cabinets labeled with different chemicals and elements Xerc didn't even recognize sat around the room behind glass doors. He tried to recall the last chemistry class he'd taken, but he must've been drawing, because he didn't remember anything.

"Maybe we could go get Tonix later," Addie said. "He'd probably like this."

"Mhm." Xerc zoned out for a moment as Addie looked around the room before coming back out. This didn't seem too noteworthy, just like everything else in this school.

To his dismay, there was yet another stairwell down the hallway, but it was barred off. God forbid someone else die and make us climb a thousand more stairs. I swear, when it's open I'm not even bothering to explore, I'll just ask someone what's up there.

However, another turn later, there was actually something interesting. One side of the corridor included the faculty office (empty, unfortunately), and the end contained the headmaster's office. There was no headmaster in the office, no surprise there. But Xerc would think that this would be where Monokumadi stayed. And that the door would be locked.

"This is interesting..." Addie said, mostly to herself as she looked at a framed picture on the headmaster's desk. It was, presumably, of the former headmaster. The top half where her face would be was torn off, obviously intentionally, but curly, dirty blonde hair could be seen falling onto the shoulders of a black blazer, a bright blue shirt underneath. "Wonder what happened to her."

"You think she's behind all this?" Xerc searched the top of the desk for a sort of name plate, anything to identify the headmaster, but there was nothing.

"It's plausible," Addie shrugged. She put the picture back on the desk.

"Oh, hey, guys."

Xerc turned around at the voice. Akik and Spade stood at the door, Fabian hiding behind them. Tonix was not with them, presumably down in his dorm still, and neither was Gradient, which was probably not a good sign, in Xerc's opinion. He decided to keep his guard up in case the serial killer decided he wanted out of this hellhole.

"Guess you got up here before us," Spade said, looking around. "Anything of interest?"

"This is the headmaster's office, as far as I can tell," Addie shrugged. "Haven't quite found anything, but we haven't really looked around, either."

"Is Monokumadi not up here?" Akik asked, stepping into the room. Fabian immediately started exploring more, as he does, observing every little crevice in the room.

"No, I don't think she goes up here, really," Addie shrugged. "This is the old headmaster's office."

"Well, she was a horror fan," Fabian said from where he stood. He was going through the books on the bookshelf. "Paranormal stuff, too. By all means, she seems feasible as the mastermind merely by her choice of genres."

Xerc opened a drawer as they all talked. Nothing. Another two were locked, but the fourth had papers inside. Curious, he pulled the papers out and observed. They were filed, each displaying a name on the yellowish folder. The top one had a smear of red on the paper.

Serovil, Ava. Ultimate Martial Artist.

Xerc opened the file curiously, as he didn't recognize the name, but one look at the picture of Anatox's overkill, bullet-filled corpse, and he decided that was enough peeking in that drawer. He threw the papers back and closed the drawer, not wanting to reminisce on the past any more than he needed to.

The intercom crackled to life as Monokumadi's voice came over the intercom. Akik looked in visible pain as it squeaked a little, putting his hands over his ears and squeezing his eyes shut. Guess the concussion hasn't quite left him yet.

"Hello, students! If you would please report to the gym for a quick pep assembly, that would be lovely! Thank you~!"

Her voice disappeared as quickly as it'd spoken.

Everyone exchanged uncertain glances.

"What do you think it is this time?" Akik sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he regained his bearings.

"What is there left to threaten?" Spade exhaled with a shrug. "She's taken all she can from us. Not like there's much more she can do to make us turn against each other."

One of Addie's ears twitched. "Something tells me she'll find a way."

-

2025 words

Hmmmmm