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

Open to: April, Dedue, Crichton, Arthur, Crabb, Yakko, and anyone who can leave their cell

[not_the_last]

Cassandra has woken up in worse ways, but not many. At least there's neither immediate pain nor (as far as she can tell) immediate danger; at least she can move her arms and legs and head. At least the cell is bigger than a coffin.

She pulls herself to her feet, takes stock of the little room.

The little cell.

(It helps that the lights are bright, and not dim and smoky. It helps that the walls and floors are sterile, and not thick with grime and strewn with filthy straw, that it smells of nothing and not of old blood and stale urine and worse. It helps; still, her heart thuds in her chest, not rapid but painfully hard.)

Slowly, making herself move slowly, she approaches the bars and looks out.

[gnighteverybody]

There is some sort of puppy dog rabbit thing actively trying to fit his face in between the bars sufficiently to get his teeth around one.

[not_the_last]

She's seen him -- it? -- him around the ship before, hasn't she?

"Are you," she starts to ask, and hesitates. All right seems like a foolish way to end that question.

[gnighteverybody]

"I am! And that's the problem! Look at this-"

Yakko tugs on his own ears, which do not stretch any further than they could reasonably be assumed to.

"They took everything out of my pants! I can't even move the camera! Is this how the rest of you live?!"

[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."

[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 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.

[gnighteverybody]

He just kinda. Looks over at Cass.

"I'M LIKE PINOCCHIO BUT WO-OR-SE-"

Maybe she didn't hear the joke? It is kind of noisy in here what with all the wailing.

[glassaxolotl]

Dedue has hardly moved in his cell since arriving. He sits statue-like and focuses on his breathing.

One might look at him and assume he is not really present. Except that when Cass approaches the bars, Dedue’s green eyes immediately dart in her direction.

[not_the_last]

"Dedue," she says, low but pitched to carry.

She doesn't know what else to say.

[glassaxolotl]

“Do you have any ideas?” he asks. “I will carry out whatever is needed.”

[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?"

[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...”

[not_the_last]

If it weren't for that flinch she'd ask him to pass a message to Daisy, but she sees it and holds her peace.

"I can see you, Crichton and Arthur -- they're in the same cell -- and on the other side, Crabb and ... a boy I've seen before, but I don't think I know his name. Not human. Not one of the trolls either."

[gnighteverybody]

"Who, me?" Yakko asks, temporarily interrupted from his despair, "I'm Yakko! I'm a Warner Brother, Toonius Animationaamus if you want to be specific!"

[tempingainteasy]

So, what is April without their strange familiarity and the stranger inability for their memory to stick? What does the manifestation of that creepy feeling looking at a photography that developed wrong look like?

Apparently, like a life-sized papercraft person. A very basic person shape, with features printed in a terribly low resolution, a deep crease across the arm they had reattached over a year ago now, and various unbent folds from when they had been briefly reshaped back in December.

And despite how they had never once in their 200 years outright looked like this, this is unmistakably - to anyone looking at them - April, the person who'd been day drinking regularly on this ship, part-time podcast host, co-manager of Flan's artifact storage, and that guy who by proximity alone was almost certainly responsible for the Serena Eterna Year-end popularity vote.

Oh, and most pertinently, Cassandra's roommate.

"Hey, can I ask you a few things?" they say, their moiréd newsprint eyes fixed on Cassandra. Their mouth, looking like it was pasted in from a separate picture, does not move. "How good are you at folding paper, and: how squeamish are you?"

[not_the_last]

Cassandra ... stares.

"You're April," she says eventually, in a faint voice that's almost a croak. "I know you. How..."

And she shakes her head sharply. "I'm sorry. Folding -- I can do that. Squeamish?"

[tempingainteasy]

"Yes, you and everyone else and I cannot begin to express how repulsive that is to me as a concept, but there's a lot of shit we all have to just deal with right now, like this:"

April holds up one hand and uses the other to fold it back until their knuckles touch the back of their forearm.

They'll give it a second to see if Cass is good or if she's still caught on the 'remembering' thing, or if the paper anatomy is going to get her next. It's fine, there's a lot going on.

[not_the_last]

Her eyes go wider, white showing all around the blue, but that and a visible swallow is all the outward reaction the paper anatomy gets.

"You want me to fold you."

[tempingainteasy]

April nobly bites back on any sass, despite how much better they'd feel by taking the edge off this irritation through being a total dick.

"Got it in one." they say instead, letting go of their hand. Having only been folded, not creased, the bend slowly uncurls towards something more normal, revealing part of the problem here: making some of the needed creases is going to be a two-handed job.

"Fold me thin enough and I can slide right through the bars." they continue, just to make it clear this isn't just for enrichment.

[not_the_last]

Her expression shifts, becomes intent. "Yes. All right. Can you -- will you be able to unfold once you're out? I don't think I can reach through very far to help you, but if you stay close I might."

After getting broken out

[mistertwister]

The first thing Okie does when he's out is look for someone else. Which, one cell away, means he isn't looking for long.

"Holy shit, Cass," he says, immediately going to the bars. "Are you fine, are you okay?"

[not_the_last]

"Okie?"

It comes out like a question, her voice going high and unsteady mid-syllable. She flattens a hand against the bars, trying to swallow down the mess of emotions rising in her throat.

"I'm all right, I -- how did you get out? Can you do it for the rest of us?"

[mistertwister]

"I'm out 'cause I got put in a cell with Bastion, and they're strong enough to bend the bars. So the bad news is who gets out isn't up to me, but the good news is I'm not alone out here, an' me an' whoever else gets out can try to look for a way to open everything."

He reaches through, puts a hand on her arm. A small assurance for the both of them that this is real.

"I don't got any shinin' armour on me, but could you wait for this knight anyway?"

[not_the_last]

She wants to clutch at his hand as though it'll keep her from drowning. As though it'll keep him from leaving her here.

(All she can see is Percy's face, through the green glass wall of the trap she'd led them into, meeting her eyes with a determined smile. It's all right. See you soon.)

She meets Okie's eyes, and makes herself smile, and presses his hand. "Yes," she tells him, and her voice doesn't shake, and her hand doesn't tighten on his in a desperate grasp, and she doesn't know how long she can keep this up -- "I'm going to be fine. Go."