come_sailaway | END GAME: THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

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END GAME: THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

[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.]

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"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."

"And her banter was so shit. I got two really good ones off on her and she just- what, went 'hm' and then like, did something else. Like c'mon. Make an effort. I get you don't respect us or anything but banter is sacred."

"It's absolutely sacred! Even my most boring or annoying villains at least give a little back. Like. Do better. C'mon."

"I would've taken a 'shut up'. Or like, anything. Most of the Captain's banter sucks but at least he does it."

Huffs. This was a good decompression, to help thaw some of the edges around Darcy freezing over. They feel a little more like theirself now.

"I think we have enough here to go off. We should pass it on, see if we have any ideas or other suggestions from everyone else."

Gwen stretches out, as she'll end up doing many times throughout their confinement thanks to feeling oddly stiff without her powers, and nods. "Sounds like getting it much further than a couple people down's going to be... uh. Hard mode? But I guess we've just... gotta make it work."

"Not like we have much choice. We'll make it work."

And Darcy makes their way over to the bars.

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END GAME: THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

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cw suicide mention

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