END GAME: THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

[sailmods]

[the prisoners wake up on cold, hard floors.

the lights are bright, glaring, a sterile cell with sterile bars facing a sterile hall. the prisoners with you, across from you, and no one else. no rocking of a ship in waves, nothing. just the prisoner and their prison.

time passes, one assumes. the rhythmic click of Friday’s heels down the hall. it’s almost like the ticking of a clock.]

Comments

[inhairently]

ADDITIONALLY please feel free to handwave Steve passing any information down the hall if needed

gagtag lmfao

[light_mischief]

"I mean...."

R

[light_mischief]

- Skulduggery will validate this theory by pointing out the following:
-- Jenny and her brothers have weather/storm powers
-- Malin implied she had seen Jenny around; she may have taken her brothers (hopefully making Malin a more pressing target than the Captain)
-- There's a whole song about Pirate Jenny and her ship, 🎶the black freighter🎶 which he believes is a totally valid deduction to make

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy suggests a push-up competition

[fonomena]

An incidental middleman between Pratt's brainstorming and Aiden's desperate attempted contributions, Jade stirs a bit from his thoughtful bout of emotionally dissociative contemplation and supposes he may as well be a bridge for the cause.

"One of the young men on your right is very urgently suggesting 'munch', deputy."

Like, this is probably as valid a way to pass the time as any, at this point. Sure. Why not.

.......

"I suppose there is also 'bunch'. You have several options all around. Are we making up a song about some sort of food, here?"

[inhairently]

Ugh, Steve agrees with Darcy.

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy makes it very clear that she will 'smoke his ass' with her capacity to do push-ups.

[littlefairytale]

"I-I mean I've been better, but I've also been a lot worse? This... isn't the worst situation we've been stuck in. I don't think. It doesn't seem like anyone's really paying attention to us, for one."

Which is definitely a good thing, if they're going to make any kind of plan to get out of here.

[inhairently]

Steve says yeah okay we'll see about that but requests his response not get passed along thank you

[be_seeing_you]

"To talk, yes, but we need to do more than that." There's an urgency in his tone that belies exactly how terrified he is at this moment. He's been in tough spots before, they all have, but none have ever made him feel this helpless. Not even The Village. For Ava's sake, he's keeping as calm as he can. But his fingers dance wildly against the bars and there's nothing he can do to control them.

"It won't matter how any of us are doing soon. What can the ants bring us? There must be something."

[be_seeing_you]

He grips her fingers, grimacing as he rubs his thumb over her knuckles and doesn't brush past a ring. Their rings. They couldn't even be spared that?

"You aren't flickering, Pumpkin. I think your abilities may be muted."

[inhairently]

Yeah. ( he's a touch curt, but for what it's worth he's not yelling anymore. ) And you're Ruby.

( he remembers — the girl he'd had to say some stupid thing about a puppy to once, a long time ago, in that game of truth or dare. )

Hey, at least I'm trying something.

( is it something that's likely to get results? no, he knows that. maybe it's more that he doesn't want to feel as if he's just sitting quietly, waiting for whatever awful things are in store for them. )

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar takes one and sends back thanks, and "Tell her I owe her something good when we get a chance."

[myagic]

[She's subsequently busy getting an earful of a rant from Skulduggery, which suddenly makes Steve's reaction here a big mood she can agree on. In a tired, dry groan of her own, she answers-]

How did you ever guess? You even managed to sum it all up way faster than he did.

[kingoftheanthill]

"I like this guy!" Victor says to April, pleased. Victor has never once read the room and he is sure as hell not about to start now.

[not_the_last]

Cassandra would like one please, and sends back "Tell him I said: we've gotten out of worse."

[be_seeing_you]

Number 6 turns around to look at his wife with one eyebrow hump lifted very high, but the look isn't a reproachful one at all. Frankly, he's never been so impressed with her. He doesn't know if he could have said it better himself.

"This is why I love you, Ava," he says softly.

Now, he turns back to Clarke, his expression once again hard. "I would like to know what you did expect, Clarke? Did you expect us all to simply perish?"

[kingoftheanthill]

"Oh yeah, yeah!" says Victor, as if he totally knew that all along. "He's here and okay but pretty sad about not having any of his stuff, and like, that's super understandable, it's super rude to take away people's stuff just because they might try to shoot you with guns some more? People like stuff." He says this with the declarative expertise of A Person, who knows What People Like.

[kingoftheanthill]

Hey! You're being super rude right now!

[ Presently, it becomes clear that Friday is not going to answer him, and that... well, that is just impolite as hell.

But the stakes are high, and two can play at being impolite. And maybe wherever she's going there's someone else who won't ignore him, or a box that all their powers got squashed into, or a big 'open cell doors' lever, or similar. So when Friday's heels click on the floor, an ant, then two, then a dozen, then many, many dozen more begin to climb.

Congrats, Friday, you get ant stockings! ]

[kingoftheanthill]

Hello! That's me!

[ This particular collection of Victor swarms towards the bars, pleased that once again his fame has preceded him. His little eyes aren't really up to picking up unshed tears, but all the same, he asks: ]

Are you okay in there?

[ ...because any friend of Flan's is a friend of his.

Also-- she's king of little as far as humans and human-adjacent things go, and she's got the sort of voice and face that thinking beings describe as cute, so a bell rings-- ]

Oh! Oh! Are you, um, Fio?

[kingoftheanthill]

My name's Victor!

[ Most important things first. ]

Victor King!

[ And don't forget it! ]

...and yeah, totally, no problem.

[kingoftheanthill]

Hurrah: the ants remember him! It helps that Flan's stories of conquest have kept Edgar fresh in Victor's memory.

"Oh hi! Hi! Hi! How have you been?"

[hate_gettin_older]

"Not even junk to make a bed. Not even fuckin shelves ..."

He paces down the length of the bars as he speaks, and back again.

"Hope you were right on the first guess and it's cause we're not gonna be here that long."

[kingoftheanthill]

[ The group of ants talking to Steve is large; then it's half as big, because the other half has split neatly off to carry on a completely separate conversation with Natsuno. It's cool, it's all good, his attention span might suffer but he's still in big enough groups to compute cognitively.

In a proud whisper: ]

I'm following Friday right now! But I can't know everything I'm doing at once right now, which feels super weird by the way, so I won't know what I found until I come back and tell me!

i

[be_seeing_you]

[He moves close, letting her draw him in. There's a wary expression at watching her rip a part of her own braided hair, but as soon as she's tying it around his finger, he understands.

His right hand reaches to cup her face. He smiles for her with all the depth of his love, then glances down at her still bare finger.]

Darling, I don't think my hair is long enough to braid in return.