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

[not_the_last]

"I'm sorry," she says, latching on to the part of that she can follow. "They took all of my things too."

[angrycrabnoises]

Karkat grits his teeth at the mention of Eridan.

For a moment, he is silent.

Then, he says, “I’M KARKAT, DUMBASS. ERIDAN IS DEAD. HE DIED AFTER THE LABYRINTH.”

[gnighteverybody]

Yakko sits himself on the floor and cries real actual tears that gets stuck in his real actual fur.

"I CAN'T EVEN PULL OUT A HANKIE FOR MYSELF," he wails, "I'M LIKE PINOCCHIO BUT WO-OR-SE-"

[not_the_last]

The trust in that offer, and the need; both of them wrench her heart in her chest. And also put a firm stop to any self-indulgent bitterness before it can properly get started, so she doesn't say my ideas have done enough harm already or anything to that effect.

"None yet," she says instead. "Are we all in here? Who can you see?"

[yourexoduslaughing]

[For the first bit while Steve hollars and yells, Flan stays curled up in a ball at the back of her cell, the place she ended up when she woke up in a pure panic because for the first time since she was very small, she can't move at all.

It's only when Steve quiets down that she sound of sobbing can be heard from Flan's cell as she cries out the worst of the feeling of being trapped. All the usual happy-go-lucky cheer is gone without even a roommate to make her feel less stuck.

Still, she finally raises her head and starts trying to wipe her classes clean, voice hiccuping as she finally acknowledges him.] Steve? W-who can you see?

[yournewsidekick]

She draws her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Another awful shudder zips through her as she instinctively tries to change shape, only to have her component parts refuse to be rearranged.

Okay. If -- if Ballister were here, he'd probably say something like that, too. Stay calm; think; take a look around. Nimona's gotta hope he wouldn't just sit in the cell and wait for death like he did the first time. He'd figure it out, if only for Nimona's sake.

Hopefully.

"You," she mumbles. "Um... oh, I think that's Murder Guy across from me." (Someone, once upon a time, glimpsed Nepeta's shipping chart with Max Maximum right at the center and completely misinterpreted it.) "Gwen and Darcy over there. That's it."

[hate_gettin_older]

"It's, uh --" He racks his brain briefly for the Front-looking man's name, comes up empty. "You, what's your name? Dedue's asking."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Ants?" Edgar cranes his neck. "Victor?"

[yournewsidekick]

Nimona grips the bars tight with both hands, but doesn't rattle them this time. Instead, she leans to rest her forehead against them and tries to do what Gwen and Mr. Annoying Person Who Never Let Her Play With Swords say.

It helps, kind of, that she can imagine Ballister saying it, too.

Deep breath in. Out. Her lungs press uncomfortably against the inside of her chest, and she lets out an involuntary sob.

[freedomsuitsme]

"'Murder Guy?' No matter. I'm not sure how Darcy's been affected by whatever's occurred, but see if you can get her attention. I know she has some connection to the dead, so for all I know she might have a different sense of what's going on."

[ossie_oswald]

"Ossie," he doesn't bother with the full pleasantries, "you have my apologies that we weren't better acquainted before now."

He sits up a little straighter in the cell.

"I'll skip asking after his health, but please give him my sympathies. And you ought to have them too- bally miserable situation, the lot of it."

[glassaxolotl]

He looks around.

“Edgar. Wilson.” He doesn’t see Victor because Victor is ants.

He flinches when he makes out who’s in the cell beyond that. “Daisy...”

[ossie_oswald]

"Victor!!!"

Ossie clasps his hands together, "my darling little picnic companion! Oh, what a sight for sore eyes. It looks like he's able to... walk out through the bars?"

Open to: John Watson, Maximilien, Abraham Cook & hall wanderers

[teethoftherisk]

OTA

The last Siffleur remembers, he was with Jack on Friday's desk, the two of them in cat shape enjoying a few last moments together before the inevitable came - whatever that inevitable ended up being.

He didn't picture this. It's very... human. Which is disappointing.

And yet he isn't. That's unexpected too. He tries to change and finds he can't, his bones staying firm and his skin refusing to tear or stretch with a thought. It's very unsettling and he starts to pace back and forth, back and forth, paws moving nearly silently on the concrete as he thinks.

He paces for a very long time, the motion becoming mechanical after a while. There's muffled sounds but they're indistinct. It's strange. He should be able to hear them more clearly than he can...

"Can you hear me?" He asks those across from him. "Can you hear the others?"



For John Watson

After a long time passes, he stops moving and sits by the bars, resting his head against them.

He catches John Watson's eye, and says- "I'm sorry about Johnny."

[yournewsidekick]

Nimona draws in a deep breath and nods. Scooting to the opposite side of the bars, she sticks a bruised hand through and tries to flag Darcy down.

"Hey. Hey! Darcy!" Her voice isn't exactly sotto voce, but it's gone hoarse from all the screaming. "Can you, uh..." She wiggles her fingers around, like she's approximating a ghost. "Sense anything dead stuff? I don't know, the fancy guy with the fangs a couple cells down's asking."

[not_the_last]

The name Pinocchio doesn't mean anything to her, and nothing else he says is helping with the bewilderment.

She glances helplessly past the ... boy? let's go with boy ... to where Crabb is sitting with her head in her hands, and doesn't know what to say to either of them.

[saltwaterlungs]

"Judging by the fact that all of the rest of my Manifestations don't work, I don't think I could even if there was. I'm basically a corpse with extra steps right now."

...

"Who- you've got to give me more than that, we have so many fancy dudes on this ship."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Thanks," he says, "same goes. I'm Edgar."

And to Dedue: "It's Ossie, he says to give you his sympathies."

115, 117, 119, and our free travelers.

[abhorrently]

[the first thing she notices when she wakes is how hollow she feels. like the Village but worse, and yet not entirely. she still has her energy, still can move about without feeling like she's going to pass out, but everything is wrong. not a drop or spark of magic to her fingertips, and it makes her want to be sick. again. again. nothing on her, near her. not even a sarcophagus to crawl into.

fury propels Fever forward to the bars, looking as sick and drained as she feels. corpse pale, unsettling in pallor and the brightness of her eyes. for a moment, she just screams, trying to shake the bars loose, a sound that comes more from an injured animal than a woman. it's so fucking unfair. it's so godsdamned fucking unfair that yet again she's been trapped somewhere, without the beating heart of her magic in her, weakened and restrained.

but then, a thought that pierces through all the rest. that if their power wasn't a threat, it wouldn't have been taken away. it was regained before. it can come back again. she's shattered every cage she's been in before. she'll do it again. and she doesn't need magic to be able to kill with a ruthless, savage efficiency. torture is too much effort wasted on whoever she can get her hands on.

it'll take time, but what do they have but that? measuring things in Friday-passage is the only real metric they have, and she'll go by that.

once she's gauged who she can see, which isn't many people, she decides to go over every inch of her cell. every bit of it she can reach is touched, pressed against, tapped, feeling for anything that might be different. every single bar, every bit of the walls, the floor. she'll be at this for a while, but if there's anything that's even the faintest bit different than the rest, any weaker points or bits that could be pried away, she wants to find it. for now, she has to be patient.]

117

[freedomsuitsme]

The scream catches Maxwell's attention. He looks over at Fever's cell, raising an eyebrow.

"Are you quite done?"

[yournewsidekick]

In spite of herself, Nimona lets out a small, tired snort of amusement. Darcy's not wrong; for real, why are there so many fancy people here.

Back to Maxwell: "Nope, nothin'. What's your name?"

[hate_gettin_older]

"Oi, Victor! Over here!"

Edgar's managed to squeeze one hand out through the bars far enough to wave. They've only met once; he's hoping the ants remember him.

[glassaxolotl]

“...Ah,” Dedue says.

It isn’t Dedue that needs sympathy right now, he thinks to himself. Dedue has been through worse; he’ll get through this.

It’s Dimitri that he’s worried about. Dedue can’t see him right now, but he can imagine. Albeit the image in his head looks much more like the dungeons of Fhirdiad than the cells they’ve all currently found themselves in.

“Give Ossie my thanks,” Dedue says. “I assume Giles is also not with him?”

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar laughs aloud. "Yeah! Oi, Victor! Over here --"

And for at least a little bit he's going to be trying to talk to the ants, though of course he'll happily resume conversation with Ossie afterward.

(It's not as though they've got anything better to do.)

[abhorrently]

"Do you own a key to these doors?"

The answer is the same, and she meets his eye with one of hers - piercing, full of murderous intent. It very much is a sensation that if not for the cells, she'd have her hands around his throat...before she goes back to slowly and carefully examining each bar.