a. all the lengthening hours in the refinery, belching fire into the sky [You'd think that someone like Gudako would spend most of her off hours aimlessly roaming the school, maybe halfheartedly studying or putting some work into investigating the horrorshow that she's trapped it.
But instead, she's basically set up camp in the shop, doing... something. Maybe you've come here because you're getting tired of the constant whirring and grinding of the machines disrupting your sleep. Maybe you have your own shop project you want to work on after the "normal" students have departed.
Whatever the case, once you enter the workshop, you're confronted with a baffling sight: a massive pile of screws, wood fasteners, and other pieces of scrap metal arranged in a loose tower on one of the tables, next to a spiral-bound notebook full of furious scribbles in near-illegible handwriting. On the table across from it are a pile of... stones? Are those the stones the shrines were made out of?
Ritsuka herself is crouched down, rummaging through a few drawers in evident search of... something.]
Oh, hey! [she says without turning around.] If you have the time, do you think you could do me a favor? There should be at least a few more packs of nuts and bolts somewhere around here but I can't find them; could you help me look?
[What in the blazes is going on here.]
b. we do our best vampire routines as we suck the dying hours dry [Is there anything as shifty as getting tapped on the shoulder in the middle of the crowd?
Well, it's significantly less shifty if it's someone with such an overbearingly optimistic face as Ritsuka, but still. Once the school's been cleared, she taps one of her fellow transfer students on the shoulder, and while her wide grin is somewhat reassuring there's an undercurrent of genuine seriousness in her voice when she says,] Can you follow me to the clock tower? I found something... important. And it might make our lives a lot easier.
Or, er, not easier, but it'll at least give us one less thing to be paranoid about.
c. the fire engines cry [Really, it's Ritsuka's fault for buying it. "The Seven Mysteries" are already a tired tradition and stuff like "the piano plays itself" is an even more tired variation on one of them. But Ritsuka doesn't exactly have a lot of leads and it's the most overtly supernatural thing here and what else is she supposed to do sit on her hands and draw more magic circles? With her teeth, presumably, because she can't use her hands?
But still, it's kinda frustrating to just... sit in the piano room for hours on end, glaring at the thing and daring it to play itself, only to get nothing. With no other path forward, Ritsuka crawls under it, opening it up, and-
Begins coughing like a terminal patient as a torrent of dust is released on her lungs, hacking up her entire esophagus as she flails around on the floor.
This would be an embarrassing thing to walk in on for sure.]
Ritsuka "Gudako" Fujimaru | Fate/Grand Order (Cosmos in the Lostbelt)
[You'd think that someone like Gudako would spend most of her off hours aimlessly roaming the school, maybe halfheartedly studying or putting some work into investigating the horrorshow that she's trapped it.
But instead, she's basically set up camp in the shop, doing... something. Maybe you've come here because you're getting tired of the constant whirring and grinding of the machines disrupting your sleep. Maybe you have your own shop project you want to work on after the "normal" students have departed.
Whatever the case, once you enter the workshop, you're confronted with a baffling sight: a massive pile of screws, wood fasteners, and other pieces of scrap metal arranged in a loose tower on one of the tables, next to a spiral-bound notebook full of furious scribbles in near-illegible handwriting. On the table across from it are a pile of... stones? Are those the stones the shrines were made out of?
Ritsuka herself is crouched down, rummaging through a few drawers in evident search of... something.]
Oh, hey! [she says without turning around.] If you have the time, do you think you could do me a favor? There should be at least a few more packs of nuts and bolts somewhere around here but I can't find them; could you help me look?
[What in the blazes is going on here.]
b. we do our best vampire routines as we suck the dying hours dry
[Is there anything as shifty as getting tapped on the shoulder in the middle of the crowd?
Well, it's significantly less shifty if it's someone with such an overbearingly optimistic face as Ritsuka, but still. Once the school's been cleared, she taps one of her fellow transfer students on the shoulder, and while her wide grin is somewhat reassuring there's an undercurrent of genuine seriousness in her voice when she says,] Can you follow me to the clock tower? I found something... important. And it might make our lives a lot easier.
Or, er, not easier, but it'll at least give us one less thing to be paranoid about.
c. the fire engines cry
[Really, it's Ritsuka's fault for buying it. "The Seven Mysteries" are already a tired tradition and stuff like "the piano plays itself" is an even more tired variation on one of them. But Ritsuka doesn't exactly have a lot of leads and it's the most overtly supernatural thing here and what else is she supposed to do sit on her hands and draw more magic circles? With her teeth, presumably, because she can't use her hands?
But still, it's kinda frustrating to just... sit in the piano room for hours on end, glaring at the thing and daring it to play itself, only to get nothing. With no other path forward, Ritsuka crawls under it, opening it up, and-
Begins coughing like a terminal patient as a torrent of dust is released on her lungs, hacking up her entire esophagus as she flails around on the floor.
This would be an embarrassing thing to walk in on for sure.]