Chapter Text
Damon’s room is fucking ass. Shocker.
Turns out that Tozu—or whoever the fuck made the dorm rooms, considering the perpetrators are a group and not a single individual—has a horrible, horrible sense of interior decoration. Who knew?
Okay, to be honest, even the Living Quarters were made like shit: Dizzying hallways and confusing layouts galore. Also the paintings are probably cursed. Whoever was the architect of this mess did a piss-poor job and probably got paid triple for it or someshit. Or, alternatively, not paid whatsoever.
... If they weren’t outright killed for working on the project whose objective was to kidnap like sixteen people and force them to kill each other like the world’s worst Big Brother knockoff. Tozu seems the kind of guy that does not pay his employees, so who the fuck knows?
The bedroom he resides in reminds him of blurry memories of rundown motels beside the road, back in the day, with dad and… Whatever her name was: Soulless rooms without any kind of human charm and the profound smell of chemical wash that makes you think a murder happened on those walls.
Which… Considering what Tozu wants everyone to do, it might as well have been. It would explain whatever the fuck happened to Cara, actually; For them to not be the first in these colorless halls.
Nonetheless, as bed is a bed, despite Damon not using his to actually microdose a coma like he should.
Funny, how being trapped in a killing game with people you actively pissed off would lead to a decrease in sleep and sleep quality. Who knew? You do, dumbass. You asked for this mess, now lay on it.
At five in the morning on the third day, Damon finds himself staring at the ceiling. Again.
It is the third night this happens, and at this point he knows there is nothing he can do about it besides sulking on the sleep deprivation like a child who didn’t get the lollipop they wanted. He is not apologizing for being right, and he doubts that some puny apology will make anyone’s bloodthirst diminish.
So he decides to go to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and, feeling a little risqué, something to eat as well.
What is the worst that can happen? Finding Tozu half naked eating yogurt with only underwear and socks on? At this point, it’s whatever to Damon. He would need to find something truly outlandish to actually get a kick out of him (and he already crossed ‘finding a body’ out of said list of outlandish things) after all of this.
Okay, sure, the worst thing that can happen is himself getting killed for going to the kitchen, but like— … Huh.
There’s opinions he wants to formulate about the prospect of dying such a stupid death... But he finds himself blanking on words. He wants to say he is scared of death, but that sentence by itself feels lacking in a way he cannot pinpoint. All he finds is a “I want to live, but...” dummy text, which he finds himself unable to elaborate onto any further despite his lifetime of intricate theses.
That’s… Probably concerning?
Oh well, five in the morning coffee far outweighs rationality.
Put it in his gravestone, ‘Damon Maitsu, died like a moron getting coffee at dawn, rip.’
It surely would not be the stupidest way a Maitsu died... It wouldn’t be worse than choking on rice, anyhow.
Damon is not a particular fan of black coffee. Too bitter, if he has to be honest. But wasting milk to indulge himself when nobody is sure of food being a certainty makes his stomach tie in knots and make amorphous pretzels.
Milk could be used for making food; What if it runs out and they pin it on him?
He knows he is particularly indulgent with these kinds of things back home, so he prefers to not risk it and makes pitiful black coffee that he’ll have to drink with a grimace. Damn you, socially accepted chemical dependence.
It’s instantaneous, too, because if he does a whole batch with the coffee maker (a Moka Pot kind, to be exact, which he is half sure was selected because it would make a great murder weapon and also to spite his electric coffee maker preference) he won’t be able to finish it all himself, and nobody is suicidal enough to drink something they didn’t see being made. That’s how you get poisoned in a situation like this.
Meaning, more wasted things being his fault and Damon rather fucking die.
So he’s stuck with instantaneous black coffee, which he doesn’t like in any capacity, at five in the morning in a killing game. If you subtract the last bit, this is almost a normal Tuesday morning for him. It's domestic, in an abstract sense.
Like he could lie to himself to say everything is okay and this is just a normal night for him in his new dorm in Eden’s Garden Academy. As if he is not trapped with total strangers he purposefully pissed off in a Death Game orchestrated by the world’s craziest theater kid who may or may not be affiliated to that same school he more or less sold his soul to.
It is... Calm, almost. In the same way you would shrug off severely concerning matters, like noise at night, to continue sleeping. (See, see, such comparison is meant be humorous because he hasn’t slept in days)
The debater is scared too tired to check for something easy to eat in the dispense, so Damon counts his spoons and decides to give up on the idea of eating for now. He’ll eat later. When he is less tired. He will never become less tired, will he?
After a long beat of silence, only accompanied by the faint murmur of his teaspoon hitting the ceramic coffee cup while he stirs the repugnant mixture, Damon hears footsteps in the hallway. They even fucked the acoustic padding of this place, it seems. (How do they expect a murder to take place with this amount of shitty sound control?)
They don’t sound… Angry, Damon doesn't think? But at the same time, he is acutely aware of his lack of knowledge of his classmates, so better be safe than sorry. He goes tense.
Oh, also: The steps are Akire’s.
Damon knows because he uses a relatively fancy kind of formal wear shoes that probably are a pain in the ass for prolonged use. They sound softer than the regular kinds of shoes the others have. Or less hollow, because the child uses getas.
The debater quietly places the spoon onto the table and in an inexplicable hurry that he doesn't understand, downs half the contents of the cup like a shot — Almost choking in the process.
Huh.
Ooookay...? Uhm. That was a thing that just happened. Why did he feel compelled to do that? I am not wasting! I am NOT wasting! I am just waiting for it to cool dow— Dad, please, I swear— Oh, whatever. If he thinks too hard about it he might get a headache, and the debater isn’t certain if there are any painkillers here, so no thank you.
Out of his peripheral vision, Damon sees the man finally arrive (And hey, if it turns out that he needs to battle for his life, he has a spoon! Surely that would help him in such a predicament, right?). Wait, thinking about it... Yeah, it checks out. If he is to run on assumptions based solely in purposeless biases, Akire definitely looks like the type of guy to wake up at five in the morning like some kind of freak with his life together.
“Oh, mister Maitsu.” The lawyer merely addresses, and Damon already wants to volt.
Nobody referring to him by ‘Mister’ or his last name are to be trusted, rule of thumb.
For the sake of his faltering ego Akire is blocking the door, good fucking luck running away like that, Damon keeps his ice-cold composure and instead disinterestedly glances at the insane man using a whole ass suit at the creak of dawn what the actual fuck. Does he sleep with that thing on?? Even Damon has the decency to refrain from using his uniform this late!
The debater, well, debates over the prospect of either mustering a passing greeting or waving, but both of those ideas seem too awkward. So instead, he blinks twice at the tall man (He is almost as tall as the door, Damon registers sluggishly, trying to not feel threatened) and then glances back at his horrid, insipid, half-drank coffee and pretends that the former doesn’t exist.
Amazing job Damon, truly, the king of social interaction. Dad would be proud. No, he wouldn’t. No, he wouldn’t.
“Fortunate timing, I was going to try to reach you in the morning.” He musters in some way that reminds Damon of a telemarketer, and the younger isn’t sure why. Uh… Maybe the soulless corporate hypocrisy? Yeah. Probably that. “There is an important matter that I would like to discuss with you about our current situation, since you missed our last class meeting.” And the one before that. And the previous to that one, too — Just fucking say that Damon has been avoiding everyone, asshat; It would at least be honest.
Because he has. He doesn't find it worth his time to be insulted for his mere existence, just because he was honest on the class trial. Being a martyr grows tiresome after almost two decades, could you blame him? He rather not subject himself to unnecessary headaches if he can avoid it.
“I suppose this means that you are going to pester me about it even if I tell you to fuck off,” Damon replies with disdain. Or tiredness. He can't tell, nor does he care.
The fact that Akire, without any permission nor warning, goes to sit on the table—in the seat in front of Damon’s, no less—despite being told off is enough proof for the debater’s claim.
(This information is then accordingly filed as citable footnote as to why Akire sucks fucking ass at personal boundaries. For a man honoring himself a gentleman like he seems to be, he sure doesn’t know how to take a fucking no, huh? Maybe he’s sexist. Wouldn't be surprising)
The man chuckles awkwardly, like he finds Damon's words humorous. It makes the debater want to punch him. “I will abbreviate this for the sake of your time, mister Maitsu.” he says sweetly, like he means it, but the glint of amusement in his eyes says otherwise. He is mocking. “We—as a group, in the meeting—have devised a system to hopefully topple any future attempts against someone’s life...”
He then proceeds to not value the debater’s time and give a long-winded, unnecessary explanation of whatever miracle cure they bunch have concocted for the irreparable issues of trust and seeds of doubt festering in the class, planted with care by Tozu and fertilized by his own hand. Damon half-heartedly fakes to pay attention to the speech just so it ends faster.
Some kind of buddy-buddy system, where people share rooms and become like partners of some kind; looking out for each other in the process... What a joke.
Absent-mindedly, Damon knows he would laugh. If this wasn’t a kill game, if it wasn't five in the morning, if he wasn't two steps away from passing out from sleep deprivation — He would be laughing his ass off at the lawyer’s words, barking laughter so loud it would wake up the death by its sheer volume. Maybe say hi to Cara while at it.
But he’s tired, and he simply blinks again.
He swallows the groan bubbling in his throat. “Sounds fun.” he mutters plainly because he has nothing to say, but knows better than to remain silent. He is expected to talk, to respond; he knows THAT much about social interaction, thank you very much.
“You have been assigned with mister Delamer,” Akire supplies amicably, as if the guy in front of him actually gives a shit. Damon actually has to put effort to remember who Delamer even fucking is. “This decision was taken at random, and no, asking for another person is not permitted. Apologies.”
The debater only hears half of those words, choosing to focus on a single detail instead:
‘At random’ Damon’s ass.
“It depends,” An opposing party argued years ago. They effortlessly gave Damon one of the best debates he ever had, because didn’t feel like he was wasting his time going on circles breaking down fallacies. He remembers their words from time to time, like a broken clock twice a day; Food for thought he chews like a dog. “Is the roll of dice ever truly a game of chance? The spin of a gun’s barrel, the flip of a coin? No, they are not, for they share one common fact: Human intervention. True randomness is impossible in the hands of people, no matter the intentions they bear…”
Okay, focus. Why Jean? What qualities does he have that would warrant pairing Damon with the ship captain?
Right, okay, for starters he is ripped: Dude literally has half his chest exposed twenty four seven and, to be fair, it makes eye contact with the man fucking awkward when Damon feels like a creep for accidentally staring at the man’s voluptuous chest.
He also seems dependable, maybe? An older-brother kind of vibe, perhaps. Nobody actually knows how he really is, more-so in a situation like this, so Damon takes first impressions with a grain of salt, but so far he seems reliable enough. The kind of person who people would enjoy to have around, most likely, even if such concept feels foreign to Damon himself.
Uh, he also has spoken multiple times about protecting the grouuuuu...
Akire you fucking Bastard.
Okay, okay, shit. Facts before feelings, Damon. Check your hypothesis before cursing out.
How does he prove this? Who else would Akire want to fuck over?
Uh... Eva is the first person that comes to mind (she, the only other person with braincells on this shitshow that has gained some respect out of him despite her... Unorthodox talent) that fits such criteria, and Damon, too sleep deprived to overthink results, runs with it.
He finds something that aligns with his theory, and decides to test it to prove his conclusion, almost hoping to be wrong just by virtue of being too tired to deal with this shit:
“Mmhm,” Damon hums into his coffee cup, loud enough for the older man to hear, yet masking his intentions in case his voice wavers (It doesn’t, but one could never be too careful). He takes a relatively long sip of the drink, despite the watered-down bitterness. Then, he replies with the utmost performative casualness, “Let me guess, Ingrid is with Eva?”
“Huh,” Akire breathes, and that by itself is a confirmation for Damon. “Indeed, how did you know?”
There it is, the point of this whole pretty-sounding plan of his.
Fucking. Bastard.
“Oh, call it debater’s intuition,” the debater mocks the words he spoke on the trial, feeling stupid for ever stuttering them to begin with — No matter how he only did so to get everyone to shut the fuck up and stop going in circles. His back still hurts for carrying that trial. “I am amazing at noticing hypocrisy.”
Akire blinks, taken aback, because he is stupid. Or faking to be stupid, which in turn makes him double stupid for even bothering. “Pardon?”
“The two people who actively spoke against your shit ideology of being buddies with everyone get paired up with both of the strongest, seemingly most reliable people in this hell,” Damon lists off, and he feels like he is debating back home. It sends unhelpful mania through his veins in a way it almost makes his hands shake. He ignores it, Akire doesn’t even deserve such effort. “How fucking stupid do you think I am to not notice you’re doing this to keep tabs on us?”
Akire’s poker face is impressive, but Damon has seen through enough pretentious assholes to know when they have been caught in their lies and fallacy-ridden arguments. The miniscule raise of the lawyer’s brow at his words is confirmation enough.
The man shakes his head softly, mocking the debater yet again, and continues spouting on about his holy grail like the failing preacher of a cult: “As I said before, this method was voted on by everyone. It brings the most favorable outcom—”
Asshole.
Midway into Akire’s ‘I am going on circles ‘cause I don’t actually have an argument’ speech, Damon takes a big breath in to steady himself and not actually commit aggravated assault against the lawyer.
He blames the exhaustion as to why he is so easy to anger, but he knows the actual reason all too well.
The debater grows far too tired of the conversation, deciding to shut the lawyer up with a simple misdirection approach, in effort to prove his point concisely and in a timely manner to spare his braincells of further intellectual suicide:
“Oh no, I agree. It is a rather efficient plan to minimize deaths,” Damon purposefully interrupts—and he knows that either someone will find a loophole or the masterminds will stop this plan on its tracks, sooner or later. But for what it is? Sure, probably it’ll work for a week or two, whatever—the spiteful smirk on his face never faltering. He is so tired. “I just find it funny how easily you yield.” That should do the trick, probably? Now he will say
“I have not given up,” Akire argues, finally addressing the debater’s point but refusing to admit the truth to pitifully cling to his sinking ship, like a musician in the Titanic: Dying moronically for no actual reason. “I still believe in everyone. This is just a precaution that we, as a group, have come out with.” Yuup. There it is.
Oh, how easily predictable his puny moral high ground is. Wonder how stubborn he would be in a religious debacle? Would he claim moral righteousness against all sinners? Yes, of course, someone who puts soooo much trust in their beloved classmates not killing would definitely encourage a plan to avoid murders happening whatsoever, sure.
Fucking hypocrite.
Damon scoffs to not laugh. “Call it whatever you wish,” he takes a sip of his coffee, uncaring. “A precaution, a contingency plan, it is the same: You have proven my point for me.”
The debater’s smile feels bitter in his lips, and he isn’t sure if it is the caffeine or the spite-infused mania keeping him awake. “You do not trust them,” He informs: And it is the truth, not a statement to refute. “And neither do I.” Nor does Eva, nor does anyone else.
They shunned him the devil, yet they languish the sacrificial blood.
Akire looks like he wants to retort, to make his case and reiterate his boring standpoint like the perfect man he is. Believe in others, help one another, thou shall not kill — God’s boring poster child that would not hurt a damn fly. His trials are probably tedious as hell, listening to him ramble over trivial matters like it holds any actual value against the cold facts and evidence. He definitely reeks of logical fallacies.
But Damon is not letting this idiot have another fucking fit. “A man who trusts would enable a plan for something he does not believe possible?” he tilts his head, for effect, like he is asking — Which he is not. This conversation has been going on fucking circles. “Cut the shit, Akire. Don’t claim to be better than me. You don't trust, neither does anyone else. We are not in a show where the consequences are null; Trust is not something we can spare.”
That leaves the lawyer without words, and a rotten sense of pride dwells in his chest in the same way he hates to love seeing his adversaries cry on their stands. It is only after a solid minute or two of snide silence where they only stare impassibly that Akire finally has the balls to speak again.
“I think further engaging in this discussion would not be productive,” Akire relents, like a sore loser not wanting to admit he just lost. Just say Damon is right, you fucking idiot. Does that cost too much for his lame ego? “You said that you are not opposed to this idea, correct?”
“I am not,” Damon confirms. And because that doesn’t sound spiteful enough for his taste, he then adds a “Go for your pity party, I’m sure it will be fun.” just to make sure his stance is clear.
And then the lawyer’s charade of calm apathy downright crumbles and he frowns Why is Damon happy about making him mad? in disapproval of the debater’s hostility, but ultimately doesn’t humor Damon’s taunts any further.
Great, because the debater is far too fucking tired to humor another one-sided discussion. He didn’t even want the debater’s opinion, how is that fucking fair? ‘Hey Damon we are forcing you to do this pointless trust exercise that is going to end badly, no we don’t care for your opinion or human autonomy: We made the choice for you. Shut up and bear it because we said so. Xoxo.’ Of course he wouldn’t want to. Who would be delusional enough to accept a fate that would lead them to certain death?
Instead, Akire elegantly rises from the table and turns for the door, like a fucking coward that cannot bear the loss. “The system will be implemented tonight, after dinner.” Just as easily as he breaks out of it, he is back to his soft-spoken, honeyed lies. It makes the debater’s skin crawl.
“Good night, mister Maitsu. Rest well.” And then he is gone.
Damon waits a few minutes to make sure he isn't returning or are any surprise addendums. Triple sure of his departure and in a daze of anger and exhaustion, Damon’s façade crumbles away as the shaking takes on, full force.
He leaves his cup on the table—terrified of breaking it and that counting as property damage, fucking vague ass rules, fucking Eden’s ass Academy, fucking pathetic planetoid and his doomed fucking soul—and his hands find his face in a effort to hide any crack of weakness in his porcelain being.
The residue of the coffee’s warmth somewhat relieves the pounding of his chest; filled with spiteful mania and cynical hate which he doesn’t know how to filter out. His blood boils and bubbles beneath his skin like a concoction of venom and bile.
Taking a shaky breath, he recoils onto himself at the table, silently trying to sort through the treacherous, puny feelings that shouldn’t be there to begin with. Did he actually get riled up so fucking easily?
Don’t be a fucking baby, Damon, he did not even hit you. It would be easier to hate him if he did.
Oh, stop fucking whining! We have better things to worry about right now – Where the fuck would Delamer even sleep?
Not in our bed, that’s for sure! Maybe the basement has…?
He tries to will himself as unbreakable and unbeatable, deluding onto charades of grandeur to avoid feeling so ridiculously small in his helpless husk of a mortal shell. Even as a ultimate, supposedly a beacon of hope for humanity and the greatest amongst men, he is nothing more than a child playing pretend; Those who worked less to stand beside him, composed and seamless and whole, see him as no less than a copy of something Greater, underestimating his whole profession and self on the same breath.
They look down upon him with their simple talents and callously smirk to themselves, believing—no, knowing—they are better despite all that The Ultimate Debater has ever lost to get here.
It simply isn’t fair.
What would they know, they with their holy wings, about Damon’s struggles against every single odd thriving for his downfall?
Is this how Lucifer felt, forsaken by his Creator and disconnected from his brethren?
A choked sob escapes the debater’s dry throat, like the many that come after it.
Damon is so fucked.