come_sailaway | END GAME: THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

Gwen slides to sit down with her back against the bars, crossing her legs. "She seemed pretty arrogant back when the ship was normal, too. So that checks out. She thinks she's already won. And the second a villain thinks that, they get sloppy."

A nod.

"So... let's go over the specific hurdles. The Captain is acting to stop all threats to Malin, he's... mm. Everything else aside, he can turn weapons immaterial and reverse projectiles, but I don't think he can do that so easily with people. When I hugged him back at camp- I hugged him, back at camp, it was a tactical thing-" that explains everything right.

"-he froze up and then kind of stabbed me. Obviously he's got Malin in his head now so I don't think that'll work, but... hmmm. What worked to free himself last time was losing Amma- ehn, the thing that Friday was modelled on, who was kind of like his mum? But if losing Skully was enough to break it this time, I think he would've already broken it."

There's definitely a raised eyebrow at the idea of a tactical hug, but Gwen does them the grace of not asking for more details on what the hell was going on there.

"Maybe. Except he hasn't really lost Skulduggery, he's still alive and aboard. But actually killing your dad isn't exactly a good plan either, so. Not sure that helps much."

"Omelette, eggs."

If push comes to shove, then they're sure Skully would be the first to put himself on the chopping block for the Captain's freedom.

"But it shouldn't be our first plan either, you're right. Now... Mm. The Captain can order Friday to stop him doing things, and then even he can't stop Friday from stopping him. Long story, but this is direct from the Captain himself. I don't know where Sparkles is or if it has any authority over Friday either, but... probably, right? The collar is on the Captain, maybe Sparkles will be easier to get to, and then Sparkles can take control of Friday and help us that way."

"I am just going to point out that when I said my dad was basically the egg needed to make a omelette, you thought it was messed up. Just. So it's been said."

Their lives are weird. They're so weird.

"What... is Sparkles, exactly? I mean I get it's another jinn, but is that it? Or— okay, you think it can control Friday, so is it connected to the Captain directly?"

"Do you think I don't know that it's fucked up? Besides, Captain's brought him back a bunch of times, I don't think he'd let him stay. Dead-er."

Darcy shakes their head, "not another Jinn. It is the Captain. Somehow. It's- I don't know if Sparkles is a dream or a memory or something, but the Captain put part of himself into the ship to power it, and that's what Sparkles is. Get it?"

"...you guys have had an insane couple years, huh."

Every new bit of information she gets about the time she wasn't here just makes it all more so.

"About as much as I get any of the magic stuff, which is mostly just rolling with it. Okay, so— a piece of the Captain, so if the Captain has control over Friday, then Sparkles should. Yeah, okay, I'm with you. We're just back to the 'getting out of the cell' and 'finding Sparkles' parts of the problem."

"I could not even begin to tell you the half of it."

At the last part of Gwen's comment, they shake their head.

"Think of us like an... escape plan production line. Someone else- probably multiple other people- are right now working out how to get out. But we're going to have exactly one shot at this. We have to know precisely what we're doing, so that as soon as someone busts out, we're ready to go and we don't waste it. This is how my Krewe worked back home- we play to our strengths. I know how the ship works better than most, so I need to come up with where we're going to hit."

Gwen's quiet for a moment, with a little wrinkle in her brow as she processes Darcy's point. It makes sense, of course—play to your individual strengths, set-up the team for success, that's all entirely logical. What it isn't is what Gwen's used to doing.

"Right. Okay. That... makes sense, I guess. Even if it also kind of makes my skin itch."

...

Darcy offers a hand out.

"We don't need to trust any of the rest of them. We just have to have faith. We're like that medieval torture thing where you put a box of starving rats up against a guy and they chew their way through him, ehn. Eventually one of us is going to break skin, because there's nowhere else to go. We just have to be ready to do our part. That's all."

As she takes the offered hand, in that put-on serious tone that quickly becomes a tell for a bad joke when you've known her a while: "Pretty sure Spider-Knave had to deal with that once."

Alright. Just be ready. "Yeah, okay. I mean, I trust you. So it's a good plan. Just different than my usual plans."

"Hold on- stop, pause, you have a medieval spider dude and he's a jester and not like. I don't fucking know- a knight?"

Sorry, has to ask.

That little outburst covered, Darcy sits for a moment. All the thoughts over the last couple of months washing and waning over them. Wishing that someone smarter was there instead of them, the weight of every plan they've had failing.

Well. Not all of them. They talked Jenny out of murder on the island. Pulled Phil back up from the brink. Didn't defeat Vile but got close, even unarmed and alone.

...

"Good. I'll get us through this part. You okay for me to keep going?"

"Hey, you've heard my jokes. Besides, it'd be too easy if someone that was a knight got bitten."

Being a knight would be too cool. Most Spiders are underdogs, they have to learn to fight from scratch and make their own way. It means it's... hard, really, relying on other people to pull you out of the fire when things start burning, but if Gwen was still a solo act she'd have died back on the deck when she slipped from the tower.

So maybe it's a good thing. Even if it's scary.

"...yeah. You can keep going."

"I thought that jesters that weren't funny got executed."

Alright. Darcy nods.

"Now onto our unknowns- we don't know if Malin has a proper crew or not. No- I don't know that, I didn't get a chance to look. We should pass word up, see if anyone got a look at the freighter. Mm... She... said something about a fog that noticed the Captain. I wonder if that's like her version of the Erda?"

... hm.

Darcy lifts their arm up to their mouth and bites their sleeve for just a moment.

"Fh fhlnd."

Spits the sleeve out.

"On the island- okay I really should've done like a powerpoint to catch you up before now- there was an Island that Jenny was trying to stop Malin from getting to because of something that belonged to the Captain there, and when we got to the temple with the thing, there was this like- purple fog thing. Like what was in Malin's eye."

They do get an elbow in the ribs for the dunk, but it's undermined by the fact she's trying not to laugh.

"Honestly this isn't any worse than the average mission assignment." When your work begins to involve hopping around multiple realities with different time periods, rules of physics and more, you have to get good at processing a lot of new information very quickly. "Okay, island, weird magic-y artifact stuff I'm guessing, fog— did the fog like, do something?"

"Fucked with our heads. Made Jenny kill herself."

Gestures, "try to, anyway. I think- one minute she was fine and the next-" Darcy makes a hglck sound and mimes stabbing theirself in the throat, "it was a whole thing. Was the reason she was stuck aboard with us for a while actually- the Captain saved her by trapping her again, basically, so she'd wake up fine like we do."

More gesturing.

"Again, it's been a nuts couple of years. That was like... a bit over halfway through our first year. This is why I've been keeping notes."

Gwen blinks. "Jesus christ no kidding! I knew if the few months I've been here were nuts the rest had to be worse but..."

She gestures vaguely. There's always even more to it than she expected.

"Okay so— do you think Malin can do that to people, with the stuff in her eye? I guess the smart thing is to assume yes."

"This was all before he stopped trying to murder us on excursions too, so like, just keep in mind that this was immediately after we went to a murder diner and got chased by zombies."

Back on topic.

"I mean yeah, we should definitely be assuming that. To be honest, no fucking idea what it is or does beyond 'bad' but I think we can like... safely assume that when we hit Malin, we don't want her to see it coming. Which- trust me, I know, 'the element of surprise' is the most vague unhelpful thing you could ever pin a plan on, but the point is that we don't want to be fighting her outright if we can help it. The dream would be to work out how to break the Captain's bindings and then he just fucks her up for us, but that's a big question mark right now too, obviously."

...

"Have you met Bahamanuel?"

"Hokay even I haven't had to deal with zombies and I've been to universes of like, every genre."

No one tell her about Marvel: Zombies. There's a reason they don't go to those universes.

"Oh believe me element of surprise is one of my old reliables, no matter how vague and unhelpful it is." She shakes her head. "And I never actually ended up meeting Bahamanuel but you told me enough that you can probably make your point anyway."

"Ehn, you've killed one you've killed them all. They're like people but with no ability for tactics and there's a lot of them. There was a car chase, Dimitri rode on a dinosaur, I'll tell you the whole thing when we get out."

Darcy steeples her fingers.

"Bahamanuel is unkillable. Trust me, I've hunted it like a hundred times and it always comes back. If we work out how to make it hunt Malin, then that's another point in our favour. And it has babies. Maybe we could even see if Yamaha can get in on it, if they're both still aboard."

"Okay so that's a good thought but now I'm just imagining Bahamanuel, its babies, and the murderous piano in individual cells somewhere down the hall."

...

Darcy immediately goes to the bars to call out down the hallway before they remember that their voice doesn't carry that far and gently thumps the bars.

"No way to check that, really. I feel like if they were somewhere next to us, someone would've passed on that bit of information already."

...

"Bahamanuel is also like. Fabric. And his babies are things like individual socks so I don't think bars would be able to hold him, anyway."

"Hm, yeah, we'd probably have learned pretttty quickly if they were around and able to get out... it'd be so much funnier if they were in the cells, though. Man Malin's got no style at all. At least my villains commit."

She's only half joking.

"I'd bet they're still somewhere, though. If she was the type to just... throw annoying acquisitions away we wouldn't all be alive."

"Literally what I'm saying, right? C'mon. This is like- you know in video games where someone's just copy-pasted like a generic level. That's this, it sucks. I want the Captain back if only because he has some fucking drama and panache."

"Right, exactly! This is literally just default assets over and over without any personal touches. That biiiig dramatic entrance and then... poof. Nothing. It's honestly disappointing."

END GAME: THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

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