Thread:Shanethefilmmaker/@comment-397235-20140829052131/@comment-397235-20140901020734

Well, the third year, something a little bit worse does happen.

One of the first people to die is the Extra, meaning Holly, as teacher's assistant, doesn't know who the Dead one is, something she inwardly panics about as people are still clearly dying due to what seems to be the Curse. It turns out the Nonexistent student that year has been using the Calamity as an excuse to settle accounts with his classmates. He kills several people from the current class 319, as well as at least three people who'd survived the previous two years while the main characters are trying to burn the school down, as they believe that will solve things. It all comes out there's not been an Extra all this time (obviously, no one remembers that student being killed) and the Nonexistent student sees himself as Death's personal arbiter...and then he gets killed by what almost has to be the Curse, which they've just realized wasn't active in the first place.

The first story takes place in 2008, so for 2009 I'd planned to make some major changes. For one thing, the Countermeasures head is kind of a jerk (as in he's really stupid) and doesn't take things seriously (there is no Nonexistent student that year, for example). Isabel flips shit on him over his flippancy and tells him he needs to buckle down and take things seriously, which results in the exact opposite and doesn't improve things. This doesn't please Isabel any better, but...well, I've already told you what happens to Isabel earlier. The Curse gets very out of hand very quickly after this, so the class takes what amounts to a month long trip (maybe two weeks; I've not decided how plausible this is, though I think a certain degree of suspended disbelief is required for any of this to work in the first place) hoping this will break the Curse. Instead, it just makes it...hungry. As a result of this, the 2010-2011 year takes Countermeasures very seriously (though that year's Head is actually a really nice person, and brings Holly into her decisions as much as she can).

Your idea about there being a sickly person is good, since chronologically the first person Mei saw the Color of Death on was her terminally ill sister...I just don't know how to use it yet. I do plan to use this idea in another scene in 2008: when Isabel attacks Holly at the Inn, Holly sees the Color of Death on her, but since Isabel isn't visibly wounded, deduces she's about to suffer a fatal accident and saves her...sort of, since Isabel ends up pinned underneath rubble, with one of her legs broken. In 2011, the Nonexistent student, who'd already told Holly he wouldn't kill her, still fights back when she tries to protect her friends. He tells her he thinks he'll leave her brain dead, before trying to strangle her, and Holly starts to see the Color of Death on herself.

Another thing I wasn't sure how to work out, but I figured absolutely the most sadistic thing I could do to Holly would be to have Jordan come back as the Extra one year.