come_sailaway | END GAME: THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

1. [OTA]

Something's changed. The world is wrong, and it makes sense, and it shouldn't.

Macaelius Athatel stirs, and gets to his feet, looking around. For not the first time in his life, he finds himself in a prison cell. This generates a mixture of feelings in him, frustration, concern, nostalgia, and curiosity being chief among them. The high elf who shouldn't be approaches the door, and looks out.

2. [Meta]

He may not be Sheogorath right now, but he still knows what Sheogorath taught him- both the old Sheogorath, and the new. And that means that he knows deep down that nothing makes sense and nothing is real, not really.

The trick to doing anything with that knowledge is bending the world around before the knowledge ties you into knots or snuffs your existence out like a candle flame. Something simple might be worth trying, though. He focuses on his clothes, his empty pockets, the uncomfortable silence in his mind, and the bars in front of his face. All of these things are a change, a shifting of paradigms when reality took a moment to blink. Surely that's a bigger lie, and the realer dream is the one where those bars aren't there.

"You aren't real," he tells the bars, while trying very hard not to think about applying the words to himself. "You'd make much more sense as something else." A lockpick or a knife, preferably, but he's not going to push his luck when even trying to convince the bars away is a long shot.

3. [Friday]

Every time he passes by, he repeats the same mantra, trying to sow a seed in whatever's left of her mind.

"Fire, fire, do I smell something burning?"

He doesn't know a lot about this atronach's construction and bindings, but he knows she's always been diligent when it came to putting out fires.

After a while, a thought pops into his head. He tears off a long strip of cloth from his prison outfit, and starts rubbing it rapidly across one of the bars, letting the friction heat it up. Perhaps with enough time, he'll even get it to smoke a little.

Edited 2024-02-14 04:23 (UTC)

( 1. OTA )

[ Very suddenly, he's not in a bottle in Flan's pocket.

...

Change of plans!

Several of Victor run out between the cell bars and split up to explore. The corridor is open and boring and sucks, so a chunk of the exploration is going to be inside everyone's cells. Say hi as a handful of ants sniff their way into your prison, all wearing matching tiny adorable prison uniforms. He's definitely making a trip to find his best bunker buds, but there are plenty of other cells on the way.

Several more of Victor stay in his own cell to keep an eye on his cellmate, just in case Wilson is upset by the vanishing of his clever stores of food. Victor isn't upset yet; sure the lights are very exposing and the smells are unfriendly and there's nothing good to scuttle behind, but as long as he has a teleporting friend he's sure things will work out... right? ]

Ummmmm, was this supposed to happen?

( 2. Friday )

[ The click-click-click of Friday's heels gets approached swiftly by the patterpatterpatter of Victor's feet. ]

Hello! Hello? Miss Friday ma'am! Um, can it go back to normal now?

It would seem like a nightmare, but for the absence of the sound of that blasted phonograph.

As soon as he realizes he's free to move about his cell, he's scrambling to his feet, running to the bars. Spellbook gone, inventory emptied, and not a lot he can do with his average strength and meager constitution, he doesn't waste his time trying to beat his hands against the walls or struggle or cry. He's got one thing on his mind.

"Higgsbury?!"

Edited 2024-02-14 02:17 (UTC)

As the ants pass by one of the cells closest to the storage room, someone calls out to them, albeit in a hushed and unfamiliar voice.

"Victor! Is that you?"

As Maxwell hovers at the bars, he notices the ants go by. Strange, he didn't think there were any ordinary animals on board the ship- wait.

Didn't Higgsbury say his roommate was a bunch of ants?

"Psst. You there, the ants. Have you seen Higgsbury?"

[she continues her walk, not even showing a single sign that she heard him.]

It's him here! The ants!

"Nope," he announces, waving a few dozen feelers towards Maxwell. "I don't know a Higgsbury! The only person I really talked to yet was my roommate Wilson!"

[ Well that's rude. Which means more ants run up, and the call gets louder and in surround-sound. ]

Hey! Hey! I'm down here! Hey!!

"That's who I mean. Wilson. Wilson Higgsbury. Wilson Higgsbury the self-proclaimed Gentleman Scientist. That one."

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.

"That's my name, don't wear it out!"

Victor would it kill you to take this situation seriously.

in the suburbs, i learned to drive

[ The first... what he guesses is around 8 hours, is a lot of orientation. You know. Checking out what's what, checking out your neighbors. If this is the same as the cabins... was Kolchak always across from him? That refined cat-like man--Giles, right, was he always so near? You'd think a guy like him would remember better. He's absolutely heard the shouty kid's voice coming from nearby, though.

He can hear down the hall, but he can't make it out; he knows his hearing is still intact because he can hear their heartbeats too, so that means there's some kind of muffling crap in place (he hates magic so, so much) or there's something else deeply wrong (he hates magic so fucking much.)

He walks around the place; feels and hears no air from any crack. Ditches the stupid hat and wraps the shirt of the outfit around his waist to show off a white undershirt and so that he looks a little less absolutely fucking dumb.

If Phil Connors is good at one thing, it's boredom.

(Darcy's out there somewhere. That he can't see them, and the idea that they're alone, starts to digest him.) ]

and you told me we'd never survive

[ He has to wait for it to make sense, is the thing. At least he's good at it. Hunger and thirst claws at him, insistent and neverending, but he's good at that too.

After that, he paces, crouches. He doesn't mutter to himself, that's just gauche. But he does wander. Scratches vaguely at himself (his hands feel weird without the talons now, but at least he doesn't need to worry about them anymore--although in this case he wish they'd have stayed--so the Erda is gone? He's pretty sure the Erda can't really be tamed, from what Skully's told him, so maybe Malin just cut some kind of deal with it. Well. "Deal").

His fingers card through his wings, pulling more than preening. Feathers drift around the floor of his cell.

Man. Cell.

Very slowly, over the course of the whole day, the feathers--the quills--begin to pile. ]

grab your mother's keys, we're leaving

[ After that, he apologizes to his neighbors before he starts slamming his head into the bars. ]

you always seemed so sure that we'd end up in a suburban war (wildcard)

(( plot at me >:] ))

Edited 2024-02-14 02:50 (UTC)

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.

"Do you have any idea what's happening out there? Have you seen Fever?" There's really nothing familiar about this man- not the golden skin, not the pointed ears, even the sound and intonation of his voice are that of a complete stranger. But he's speaking to Victor as if he knows him with absolute genuineness.

She hit the deck as a wolf. She wakes up on the concrete as a human.

Groggily, Nimona pushes herself upright, rubbing her head. "Owwww," she groans under her breath. Through the pain, she tries to take stock of her surroundings. The last thing she remembers, she was lunging for the Captain to try and rip that collar off his neck. How did...?

The wooziness snaps into an aching sharp clarity once she spots the bars. Okay, yikes, but no problem, she'll just -- she sucks in a quick breath and --

Nothing. No sparks. No change. Nothing but the itch slowly crawling up her ribcage, like sandpaper scraping her bones raw.

"No," she whispers; whimpers, really, as she drags herself to her feet. "No, no, no no nonononono -- "

It's the tourney all over again, but there's no way out this time -- she grabs at the bars, rattles them -- "Nonononononono please -- " tries to climb higher and slips the moment she can't shift her muscles and her balance into the right spots -- "NO -- "

And screaming, raw-throated and feral, Nimona starts attacking the bars. Fists, legs, teeth, her whole soft squishy defenseless human body: they're the only weapon she has anymore.

Wilson peels himself off the floor. "What happened? Where's Maxwell?"

Getting knocked out during a boss fight isn't unprecedented (the contagious yawn of the Bearger is very, very potent) but this time it feels like the boss fight didn't even start.

"Hey, where's my stuff?!" He sticks his hands out in front of himself. He's wearing a prison uniform and his arm warmers are gone. "What happened to my clothes?"

( steve's sitting on the floor at the front of the cell, watching the hallway while he takes a short break from trying to find a way to break out. he almost doesn't notice the ants at first but when he does his face contorts with disgust. it's probably the general shock of what's going on but in this moment he doesn't remember that these same little dudes once offered him pastries. he just sees insects and assumes it's another facet of their new prison's charm. )

Eugh. This place has bugs? ( what next, prison rats? ) Gross.

( and that's that. he stands and goes back to pacing, thinking, trying not to totally freak out. )

"They don't budge."

A familiar French accent, sounding significantly steadier and calmer than their last meeting.

"All you'll do is hurt yourself. Take a breath."

Bugs? Where?

[ you'd think Victor was doing a bit, and yet....... ]

Despite the horribleness of the situation, Maxwell doesn't have a lot of patience for emotional breakdowns. Actually, it might be because of the horribleness of the situation that he's especially focused on keeping dapper.

"Could you not?" he hisses, and suddenly he realizes he's without his glamour, pointed teeth and gnarled claws out for the world to see. So that's why his feet hurt, they're no longer convinced that they fit into shoes fit for a human being. Immediately, he bends down and starts working to remove his shoes to alleviate the crushing pain, though he's still trying to lock eyes with the panicking person across the hall.

"Flailing around until you're a bloody pulp isn't going to help you get to whoever did this, you know."

"Karkat?"

Nepeta is pressed up against the front of her cell, struggling to reach through, to claw at the bars with the pale stubby fingernails that are all she has to claw with.

"Siffleur? Nimona? Can anynyan hear me?"

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.

"Ants go marching one by one, hurrah... hurrah..." Ava mumbles with her cheek pressed to the cold floor, waving her pinky finger as little Victors pass by.

Nimona snarls, like she's trying to match Maxwell's fangs with her own, and slams her body against the bars for the umpteenth time. Bruises are already starting to rise, but she doesn't notice.

"Oh fuck you," she snaps. "I can't -- " Her chest rises and falls in a few rapid crests as her panic overtakes the rage again. "I can't do anything to anybody unless I get OUT -- "

Edited 2024-02-14 03:02 (UTC)

"So, okay, the lady with the huge bird did that I think--"

This establishes in one go two very important facts: one, that Victor knows what is going on always, and two, this totally wasn't his fault.

"Because the ass guy tried to shoot her, and that's the last thing Flan said about (I was in her pocket and she told me what was going on), so she magicked us all into cells so no-one could shoot her any more, and she took your stuff away in case there was more guns in it." Said with absolute confidence that he is correct.

END GAME: THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

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