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

[yourexoduslaughing]

"oh my god you don't know flat stanley..." Flan feels another tear rolling out of her eye, but she focuses on carefully tugging April through. Can't go too fast, don't want to rip off anything, especially now! "he's this kid who got squished by a bulletin board his parents had above his bed and he could slip under doorways and like, in preschool we read the book and we cut out our own flat stanleys so we could send him in the mail to our grandparents!"

[tempingainteasy]

Oh, thank god; any more stolen hockey trophy valour and April may have burst into flames.

(it is also very, very weird to see Flan crying. Yeesh.)

Fortunately, while April may be made of paper, they ain't made of tissue paper. Bar-passing is steady progress.

"That's-" Stupid? Cruel on the children's part for mailing paper people? Problematic enough to bring to HR?

... Actually, since Flan's not doing too great, April maybe chooses tact for once- "-probably not the weirdest thing people have done with paper dolls."

A beat.

"Oh, Yakko's 3D too, so he got, uh, whatever the opposite of Flat-Stanley-ing is?" April reports.

[yourexoduslaughing]

"oh my god not Yakko!! ooohhhhh that's so awful! he can't do any good jokes that way!" Flan feels so bad for Yakko. She feels bad for herself too because this is unfair and awful and miserable but also like, you can't do that to Yakko! You're ruining his ability to make punchlines, which is like, everything to him!

She finally manages to get April through and then starts unfolding them. "god this blows so hard, it's like, miserable! and was it too much to ask for them to just like, crack the bubble or whatever open enough for us to get out? like come on, we're not cut out for this shit! Victor's doing okay though, thank god, little trooper that he is."

[tempingainteasy]

"Right? It's like seeing an eagle with its wings clipped." April says solemnly, flopping what's approximating for their head.

"Oh nooo Flan, she had to just collect 'em all! Had to keep all us magical copies for, I don't know, Cloney Island or whatever!" April tips their head in a way they hope Flan realizes is the rolling-eyes-thing. "Shit like this is exactly why I pick on the fucking Victorians. The whole, 'oooh I simply must 'ave this!' fucking attitude and the goddamn sense of superiority about it all. Yeah, alright, step into my fucking portrait booth and I'll show you an Exposition Universalle."

Customer service... Customer service never changes...

"Oh yeah. When nuclear fallout happens, there's going to just be cockroaches, rats, and Victor, and that's going to last however long it takes for Victor to assimilate the roaches and eat the rats." April says this not unlike the way they complain about the impossibility of keeping him out of the staff fridge, but somehow that makes it sound affectionate anyway. Life's weird when you're suddenly perceivable and in jail!

[yourexoduslaughing]

She pats April's back, careful not to pat too hard since it'll just cause them to fold right up. "it's all the same, it sucks so bad. I should have known going for a job with her wouldn't work. there was no chance she didn't hate the irish..." Flan's Canadian of course, but she's got redhair and freckles, and that's enough for most Victorians to make a judgment call.

Flan manages to smile, nodding along. "yeah... oh he's going to do so good in an irradiated world. I hope he gets big as the ants in Them, makes himself an anthill out of like, Sleeping Giant or somewhere else nearby."

[tempingainteasy]

"Plus, you're past your prime. You're like six feet and past puberty, much too big to get crushed rummaging around active machinery or small coal mine shafts." April adds. "Would have had better luck offering Fio, she's got the saddest Victorian orphan vibes."

Hey, a smile, that's a step closer to normal, thank christ.

"You know what? Fuck it, next place we get to, we release him into one of those mega colonies the size of a city. I don't give a fuck, little man's earned it."

[yourexoduslaughing]

"oh god doesn't she just? she totally is just the saddest Victorian orphan! I keep trying to encourage her to be bad but she's just like, no, I gotta be the best girl ever and it's like no! no, be bad! eat the whipping cream straight from the can!!"

Hey look at that, a raised voice! What a concept.

She starts smoothing out the worst of the wrinkles on April's right hand. "oh my god yeah like, we gotta, he deserves it, he's been so good! he deserves to be the biggest version of himself! we gotta get him a sugar refinery or something."

[tempingainteasy]

"We get him a mega-colony, and he'll have the sugar refinery and every grocery store in the city." April says. "I'm just saying, the NDP had their shot, it's time for our true socialist party to rise up: the Victor King Party."

The raised voice is a promising sign, enough for April to make a decision. They wiggle their hand free from Flan's, first.

"Hey, don't get too precious about it, I'm not a real photo." April says, shaking their hand out. "Plus, it'll be easier to origami my way back through the bars if they're still creased. Speaking of, folks have been trying to kick messages up and down the hall, like, now I know what a passed note feels like."

[yourexoduslaughing]

Flan can't help but laugh again. "The Victor King Party! I'd vote for him!"

She awwws a little when April takes her hand away but they're right, they're not a real photo no matter how they look right now. "Fiiiiiiine... also oh my god, I wish I had like, a pencil. I'd write a note on you and send it everywhere!"

[tempingainteasy]

April has a reaction to that that is immediate and tells a story, the kind of shit Flan loves to hear about undoubtedly:

"Oh christ, not you too."

[yourexoduslaughing]

"Who else?!" Flan has to know, she has to know if someone else here was lamenting about not writing on April, or if there's someone in April's past who was dreaming of the forbidden note.

[tempingainteasy]

"Who do you think? He's probably the only guy in the world who'd work 'baja blast' into a sonnet. You two fell out of the same truck, I swear to god-"

[yourexoduslaughing]

"PRAAAATTTTTTT!" She shrieks, and there's Flan back (mostly), giving April a hug. "Oh my god he's the one I wanted to write a note to too! And he's doing it, he's writing the poooooem!"

Flan grips April's shoulders. "We gotta bring him with us when we escape, we gotta April, he's gonna love our world!"

[tempingainteasy]

Theeeeere's their girl!

April squawks and wobbles like bristol board, but under the fluster they're relieved to hear Flan's enthusiasm and volume again. Talk about uncanny wrongness - things feel a little more like it'll be fine now, with this one thing back to normal.

Okay, they're maybe being a little dramatic here since they're all in jail indefinitely, but it's a start.

"Yeah of course we gotta, I wouldn't want to part you from your starcrossed soulmate." April says between the bristol wobbling sound - "Plus would you really put Tommy on a timeshare? Anyway we can just release him into a provincial park and he can go get high with bigfoot somewhere. Dream environment for him I'm sure."

[yourexoduslaughing]

"Oh my god he'd love it, he could be his own version of Bigfoot! I gotta have him and Tommy meet, it's going to be like, the most meeting of the minds ever! We won't even have to go to the ER 'cause Tommy will be there and his to-go bag always has the best stuff in it!" She gives April a few more pats, though she doesn't try too hard to uncrinkle them.

They gotta get out of here. It's imperative. She needs her powers back or she's going to go crazy-crazy and chew someone's face off.

"Okay okay okay, what's our plan? You think you could do that thing again like you did with uhhhh what's the guy? The guy you killed at last-last Halloween?" Flan gives April's patched up arm a little poke. It's not really made for killing like this but who knows, April's always been capable of giving a lethal papercut when she wanted to. "Maybe you could sneak up and slit whatsherface's throat?"