#woe reblog be upon ye

[baltharino]

The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. 1x15 - "A.K.A. Kansas"

[demigod-of-the-agni]

redraw of the first ever pavitr drawing i did a little over a year ago <3

[syrinq]

is anyone going to tell me why gauss prime has ginormous honkers down there or do i just have to cause everyone whiplash in the wf tag as per usual

[i-am-a-hog]

❗🔆 A SECOND BEAM OF TRANSMASCULINITY HAS JUST HIT THE REMAINING YOUNGER SIBLING 🔆❗

[brucequeensteen]

why do you have a sideblog for the monkees if you still post about them on your main?

ummmmmmmmm. Because i can do whatever i want forever :3

[automatonknight]

image id: a digital redraw of the “sparkle on it’s wednesday” meme with gabriel from ultrakill. he is posing, one leg bent and slightly raised up, he is also raising his right arm up while his other arm rests at his side. with his right hand he is spinning his swords above his head. the background is blue with many small stars and beams of light, there’s also the trans flag behind gabriel’s head. text in front of him reads in blue “sparkle on! it’s wednesday. don’t forget to be yourself!”. end id 

[agnisleftpec]

the fun thing about being a nonshipper who's forcibly desensitized themself to romance so they can actually survive in fandom spaces is i am truly free. nothing can stop me. evryone is dating everyone and no one at once. and i get so much gorgeous art and fanfic

[butchdykekondraki]

for the love of god can someone buy him brown contacts please

[direful]

I have to ask out of curiosity if you feel up to responding! What's the appeal of transformers to you? Has it been something you've enjoyed since you were a kid or is it a more recent thing? I absolutely don't go here, the only transformers media I know about is the cartoons and big movies. I've simply genuinely never seen any other transformers fan content apart from recently because of what you reblog. Are you into mech media in general as well or does transformers simply have something about it you love in particular? What's the appeal? Etc etc :3

It’s been a while since you sent this in, my apologies! I figure I’ll answer it now since it’s the 40th anniversary of the original airdate! I've tried to answer each question roughly in order, but Transformers is one of My Things, so I got a little carried away…

It's really interesting to look at as a franchise. Of the “classic” 80s cartoons that found massive success, I think it's definitely one of the most well-known/perpetually relevant franchises. The original installation of Transformers, like most similar shows of the era, is essentially just a series of long commercials - this has never really gone away, because the main purpose of Transformers is to sell toys - and it's very interesting to me to look at decisions that have been made through that lens and how it's impacted various storylines, usually for the worse. Of course, the toys themselves are also interesting - although I have a few little guys on my shelves I’m not actually big into the collecting aspect, but many people are, and in a massive way. You could probably limit your engagement with the franchise to only learning about the many exclusives, gimmicks, flaws, misprints, knockoffs, etc. and be perfectly happy (if toy production history is your thing).

As Transformers is turning 40 (today!), there's a mountain of media to sift through, nearly all of which builds on some combination of previous elements. Like with lots of long-running franchises with multiple incarnations, it’s cool to see comparatively how early - or how recently! - certain concepts were introduced that have become ubiquitous, and what seems to “stick” vs what seems to get overwritten or forgotten. I think it’s super interesting to look at the current configuration(s) and pick out different elements, or how different versions of characters compare & how their characterization has developed through different iterations. (I find it nice that since the "main" streams of Transformers media often use variations of the same cast, it’s pretty easy to pick up a new series once you've got a passing familiarity.)

I think one of the main ingredients for fandom is a desire to improve upon or delve deeper into the source material, and that's certainly a big component of why Transformers interests me so much. One of the elements I really wish they got into more is, well, what's it like to be a giant alien robot that can turn into a car/plane/gun/cassette tape/spaceship/etc? More recent versions have had some fun with this, but I'm still craving a real deep xenofiction take on Cybertronian (er, the Transformer species) existence. So many iterations have such interesting pre-war worldbuilding (gotta explain where all that conflict comes from!) and I mourn every day that I'll never get a five-season-long Transformers prestige political drama. It’s frustrating how much possibility for interesting worldbuilding gets left on the table since it's a children's franchise and marketability comes before everything else - I find that it invokes the “but what if it was good” effect for me and I want to explore it myself.

I got into Transformers late - when I was 14. Still a child, but teens aren't exactly the main target audience, you know? At the time, I was out of school for a week with the flu and ended up on the couch binge-watching the original cartoon from 1984. I couldn't tell you what the initial appeal was besides my basic tendency to like stuff from the 80s (I’m not actually a huge mecha fan and tend to be picky about sci-fi in general), but it hooked me nonetheless! After watching the original cartoon and the corresponding movie, I bounced around a little before finding my favorite bit of Transformers media, the More Than Meets The Eye comic series published by IDW from 2012-2018. I’m sure part of it is just the fact that I was there as it was being published, so I’m pretty attached, but I do also think a massive part of the appeal to me was that this, yes, this, was one of the first pieces of media I saw myself reflected in. How was it that a Transformers comic book had more canonical gay (and transgender!) characters than anything else I was into I truly don't know, but I'll always love it for that. Also, without spoiling too much, the relationships featured over the course of the series all have very satisfying and well-written narratives (to me).

I’ve been heavily into Transformers for over a decade of my life, I just haven’t centered my blogging habits around it recently. It’s baked into my life now on a level that few other things are - it is definitely one of my interests I’ve been into the longest. A lot of my music taste has been shaped by Transformers (the author of my favorite comic would post a few songs on Twitter as the “soundtrack” for each issue, and I’m goth now in no small part thanks to him). I delved deeper into Transformers whenever I was having a hard time - they’re my emotional support robots. My Discord username has been the same Transformers reference since I made the account in 2016. I could probably hit the character limit continuing to talk about all the aspects of Transformers that appeal to me and why I think it’s genuinely really fun to get into, but we’d be here all day, and I think I’m also at risk of leaving out the real reason that I (and everyone else) likes Transformers:

The main appeal of Transformers is that big robots are cool, and big cars and stuff are cool, and big robots that turn into big cars and stuff and fight each other are the coolest.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

PS. It was a real struggle to write this without evangelizing about Why You (Yes You! Blogger Reading This!), Should Get Into MTMTE, so I’ll include my thoughts on that under the cut:

More Than Meets The Eye has a particularly good reputation: “Critics in wider comic and sci-fi fandom have praised it, with many a gushing article and award nomination. The politics, the plotting, and the gender and sexual politics have all come in for favoured nods. Most of fandom holds up 'season 1' as one of the top Transformers stories ever” (TFwiki.net) - a statement with which I wholeheartedly agree. I read the whole thing pretty much right from when it came out all the way through to when it wrapped up - something I'd never done before and still kind of can't believe I kept up with for that long, but it's really good, and I go back and reread every year or so. I find that it gets the balance of action, humor, & emotional moments just right. It’s also pretty gory, but everyone knows that robot gore doesn’t count.

The main premise is that a bunch of Autobots have set out from their ruined homeworld on An Epic Quest, mostly because now that their four-million-year-long war is over, they don't know what to do with themselves and/or are running away from their problems. The issue with that is no matter where they go, they still bring all their baggage with them…

In addition to the aforementioned gender and sexual politics that made MTMTE stick in my developing brain, there’s also a fairly prominent theme of mental illness and recovery (and what that might look like for different people) that runs throughout the comic. I think it absolutely helps the characters feel more relatable, and I’ll add a quote here from a character with his own struggles who decides that he’d like to spend his time post-war helping others so you can see a snippet of the writing: “It’s not just the labeling - it’s the distancing. It’s this idea that experiencing mental illness marks you out as bad different. Show me someone who hasn’t been affected by all the fighting. Show me someone who’s “normal” and I’ll show you someone who knows how to hide things.”

In between (and sometimes during) the wacky hijinks that come with being in a comic book, they’re dealing with the political and psychological fallout of their civil war - what does it mean to be “the good guys” now that the war is over? What did it mean to be “the good guys” in a war that lasted long enough to screw up pretty much everything their species ever touched, utterly decimated their population, and left them with a ruined shell of a homeworld? What do things look like from the opposite point of view, and what does being “the bad guys” in a post-war universe mean for the Decepticons? There’s definitely a balancing act going on between what the narrative/marketing calls for, what makes an interesting character, and what’s a sensitive/nuanced depiction, but in comparison to previous Transformers stories, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it was groundbreaking.

[transflynnscifo]

Tell me about ur Flynn Scifo thoughts

HI sorry for taking a bit! I decided to take the tangent I caused in my friend's DM's and structure it more coherently

Choc's original question: “Do you think Flynn might get touch starved while hes in the knights? […] I don’t have context, I was just thinking about how Yuri probably gets to casually touch ppl all the time, but Flynn has duties.”

DISCLAIMER this is headcanon-y and self-indulgent. While I give specific examples to support certain ideas, I by no mean intend to act like this is gospel.

This has spoilers for the game too

I assume that because Flynn and Yuri grew up together, they definitely were able to hold hands/hug/nap (and obviously sparred together). The former things probably got dropped as they entered adolescence as a lot of teens tend to be mortified over showing they have any feelings. This is to establish that they have likely always been comfortable around each other. Regardless of how much one may consider side content canon, it is enough to infer from in-game that Yuri’s leaving the knights resulted in their relationship becoming strained. Though Flynn pre-game is stated to have dropped by often enough in the lower quarter, it still shows that they probably barely interacted normally until Capua Nor in Act 1. (and even Capua Nor interactions are something, to say the least)

In my opinion, by the start of the game, Flynn had become good at suppressing a lot of different thoughts and feelings. I’ve already mentioned it in a previous post, but Flynn has a tendency to be quieter in group skits where he isn’t the topic of discussion. Though there is a subtle characterization I enjoy there-- he does react with his portrait changing even whilst not speaking. But even when prompted for an opinion, he struggles to express it, defaulting to saying a general statement that ultimately results in a non-answer on at least one occasion.

This suppression would behave like a sleeper agent. As the game progresses, the player is able to see more of Flynn. His banters get more known, his flaws stick out more, he becomes more closer to a regular man VS the knight paragon that he is expected to be. Those walls could have subtly started crashing around the time he and Yuri started speaking again. Now, I also look at it through a fluri lens. After not having spoken for years, feelings would naturally reignite, and Flynn would become stuck with feelings of longing for more.

That’s where it gets trickier for Flynn. Though he shows signs of opening to the other party members, we are dealing with years’ worth of repression. Though Flynn’s primary character conflict is about where one would draw the lie between crime and justice, there is another that is strongly related to another important theme of the game: choices, and being able to make them on one’s own. This part of Flynn’s character development is most apparent in the second act of the game, especially notable during the part of the game where Estelle is absent. It’s about what he wants to do himself, as opposed to what he should do as a knight. I won’t go too much into it, but the Baction and Heracles dungeons, as well as the scenes before Zaphias castle exemplify what Flynn ends up operating on. Ultimately, he is stuck doing the job he has vowed to take up, as there is no one else to do it. (Much like Yuri choosing things of his own volition, but only because no one else wants to.)

But going back to touch starvation and yearning, this would all come to a head for Flynn until, I presume, post-game. This is because by Aurnion, Yuri and Flynn are finally able to patch things through. The game strongly implies in certain ways that their repaired bond (regardless of whether one sees it as romantic or not) would be stronger than ever, and harder to damage. But even as they become on good terms again, they aren’t able to often see each other. This part is apparent even throughout the game, as Flynn and Yuri are pulled in different directions until their paths cross again. This could be like an odd repeat of the few years they barely interacted, but this would be not because they would be avoiding each other. Rather, this is because they’re finally maintaining the promise over protecting the smiles of people, and making the world a better place.

It could make the times they spend together both a relief and an incredible pain for Flynn, who is able to spend time with his best friend, but the nature of their roles now means that they are ever so slightly out of reach from one another. Flynn would be happy to be in Yuri’s life again, but would he allow himself the selfish wish of having Yuri around always? When he has knights to lead, and Yuri is free to travel and do as he pleases? (in the “Feelings regarding the knights” skit, Flynn, albeit jokingly, wishes Yuri could still be in the knights, while acknowledging that the freedom he has now suits him better.)

And Flynn’s duties matter too much, that much is true. However, Yuri matters even more. Remember how he used his knightly authority to use ships to look for Yuri’s body post-Zaude?

The worst part of Flynn’s touch starvation is if he is actively pining for Yuri in the romantic sense. Imagine wanting to take Yuri’s hand in the same way like you used to, except you are both too busy and important as people to indulge so simply. That isn’t even acknowledging Yuri’s complexes against Flynn and the manner of which he puts Flynn on a pedestal by the end of the game. I don’t think Flynn would worry that he doesn’t deserve Yuri, though I myself like to entertain the idea that if Flynn had insecurities about being good for Yuri, they would definitely manifest differently. The issue for Flynn would be essentially choosing between his happiness as a person or to jeopardize that because he is the Commandant. And Flynn tends to be characterized as a workaholic due to how serious and dedicated he is to his tasks.

Interestingly, Baction (which is the earliest dungeon of the three), has Flynn behave selfishly in his wish to help save Estelle and inquire Alexei for his motifs. But when Flynn wanted to go with Yuri and the others in Heracles and Deidon hold, he went against those wishes in order to lead the knights who needed a leader. Ultimately, it all ties back to the fact that his duties as a knight, and as a leader, mean that he has to jeopardize his desires. He expresses that he missed traveling in the “Battle maniacs” skit. He enjoys fighting, but he also doesn’t get to do it as much when he isn’t in the party. By extension, he would also miss spending time with Yuri like how they used to. He would be biting down leather with his teeth over this, in private. Unable to have time for what he loves.

Though there is warranted criticisms over certain aspects over Vesperia’s comedy, Flynn is, admittedly, definitely repressing certain thoughts. In skits, if a dialogue/topic with a more suggestive tone comes on, Flynn tends to become embarrassed and quiet about it. Though this is intended with a humorous effect, given Flynn is the designated “spoilsport” in many aspects, it does leave an interesting implication: the one most against suggestive topics gets the most embarrassed about them. I tend to see it as Flynn’s imagination running rampant enough to go down the gutter by itself. So it’s worth to assume that Flynn’s self-imposed repression isn’t even doing that well, given it is fairly easy to generally fluster him. Applying that to the fact he already is strongly guarded, he would probably short-circuit if he received a hug from anyone (and for the sake of this post, likely from Yuri too). It’s a metaphorical imagining of Flynn’s very armor. Does it protect him from attacks? Yes. Does it make it harder to see him under the bulk and to touch the skin of his hand? Absolutely.

Even if he took Yuri’s hand, he wouldn’t feel it under his glove, and Yuri, in turn, wouldn’t feel Flynn through it either.

Yuri acting skittish about his insecurities wouldn’t help either. And that’s what makes it even more compelling for me! In many pairings where one character is a knight, it’s usually the other party that wants to push the knight to accept selfishness. In fluri’s case, Yuri first has to stop thinking he’s going to hell in order to consider wanting to push Flynn into indulging his own wishes!

And then Choc told me they meant general touch deprivation, like even with friends, to which I put my clown nose and honked.

[just-wublrful]

me when i try to convince myself im normal about christianity only to remember who my pfp is

[steve-keychain]

Ghost Light- 18k

“They say that light has been here longer than this theater has.”

Guillermo is an actor, yanked back into the spotlight after a long absence. Nadja and Laszlo are getting divorced, and no one knows why. There is a shy ghost named Nandor that rattles chains and bleeds everywhere he walks.

This is a story about what happens under the glow of a ghost light.

SURPRISE. NEW FIC ALERT!!!!!! I didn’t expect to actually end up publishing anything before VH ended, but here we are!! I am very lucky to have found myself among some of the Greats of this fandom, and we held an exchange for halloweenie!!!  Check out everyone’s work in the WWDITS Halloween Exchange-a-Palooza 2022, we all worked so very hard on all of these gifts and trust me---you don’t wanna miss ANY of this amazing collection!!!  Ghost Light is a gift for the incomparable Phasmama, who has been one of the biggest supporters of my writing in the last year. It was so rewarding to be able to write this gift for her <3 The prompts were theater au/nandermo doing each others makeup, and I ran with that and came up with some fuck shit as usual.  This wasn’t the story I intended on telling, but it’s the one that screamed to be told so here we are!! It’s heavily inspired by gothic lit, and ideas of the sublime and all that--so it’s a bit more poetic in its prose.  I hope you guys enjoy this one!!! It’s been living in my head all month and I’m so happy to finally share <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

[arwen-star]

WOE

UNWANTED GIRLBOT FOLLOWERS BE UPON ME

Seriously?! The morning after I post this too smh 😭

[thefandomcassandra]

Schrödinger's Cat Chapter 2: Dreamland Clocktower (ft. ANRI) — Matthias Harlow

Content Warnings for This Chapter: panic attacks, vomit mention, anesthesia, descriptions of corpses

Like Junpei figured, the kitchen let out on the other side of the metal grate in the B-deck hallway by the cabins. He pulled the map out of the file folder and tried to find where they were. Grand staircase...2nd class cabins...kitchen. "Here!"

Lotus, Santa, and June leaned over the map and looked where he was pointing.

"We don't have a lot of options, do we?" Lotus mused.

Junpei nodded in agreement and gestured along a line. "Here's where we came from, where we went. Here's where the group in door 5 went. And here's where we probably have to go." He tapped the staircase.

"Probably?" Lotus looked unimpressed with his vague statement. "Why not here?" She pointed to an L-shaped room down the hallway.

"The doors are locked. Both sets." Santa huffed, irritated. He had tried only moments before and the sound of rattling was only drowned out by him hissing in pain. His hand hadn't quite recovered from his stove touching incident, it seemed.

"Plus," Junpei pointed to the staircase down the hall, "Do you see anything interesting about this?"

They all looked at the unimpeded staircase, pondering what he meant. Then June let out a soft noise.

"Oh. The gate!"

"Exactly!" There had been a gate across the staircase, cutting off access from it. They'd seen it before they went into the kitchen. Now there wasn't. "I'll bet that the others opened it and are looking around upstairs or wherever."

"So should we go up or down?" June tilted her head at the stairs.

"Isn't 'down' flooded?" Santa asked.

"We are on B-deck," Lotus pointed out. June's eyes widened in realization. "There's at least one un-submerged deck between us and D-deck. Does the stairwell even go up?"

Everyone looked at the curving stairwell, its carpeted steps, its polished railings. No stairs went up. Just down in a lazy curve. Asked and answered.

"Alright, downstairs it is then." Junpei folded the map up and shoved it back in the folder, which he tucked under his arm again. No one objected so they all jogged down the stairs to C-deck. The floor they found themselves on was similar to the one they had just left, a hallway branching to either side, a hallway in front of them, polished floors, dark wood accents, and the emptiness of a haunted house.

Junpei looked down one of the hallways at a near impossibly long series of doors. Right, the doors. The REDs.

It was almost nauseating to get used to remembering—or predicting—things that hadn't happened. What even was going on with him? It wasn't just that he knew what was happening. It was something...more. Worse. If it was memories, remembering, and if he remembered entire conversations, then what did that mean about his death? That moment he coughed like water was in his lungs...was that because it had been? Or would be?

Junpei swallowed heavily and exhaled, long and slow. No bad thoughts, no worries about what was and what will be. Just what is here and now. Here and now.

While he was having a Certified Moment, Santa and Lotus had poked their heads down a floor and seen what the deal was down there. June had stayed with him and was hovering about, almost worried to touch him but still wanting to offer him comfort. Her presence was...it was nice. Comforting, like she wanted it to be.

"No good," Lotus worried at her hair decoration as she looked back at the stairs, "D-deck is still flooded."

"I don't know why we bothered," Santa huffed, "It's not like the water would drain."

"Maybe the ship had sealable bulkheads?" Lotus shrugged at him. "Was worth a shot, anyway, because it let us know the water level didn't rise."

"That way is all doors, I don't know if anything useful is there." Junpei pointed at the hallway to their right with the doors. "The other way looks like it has something bigger?"

June nodded at that then pointed to the left of where they were standing. "There's double doors that way so it's probably a larger area? A conference room?"

"It's not like we can take the elevators." Everyone looked at them with Junpei. They were the same as the floor above, and likely just as locked, though the symbol on the card reader looked a little different from the Saturn one. Mercury, was it? It didn't matter, it's not as if anyone else looked close at it.

"Do you think those go below D-deck?" June asked. She gently drew the Mercury symbol on the floor with water from her shoe. Never mind. June had seen it.

"Doubtful." Santa looked down the hallway June had pointed out. "Anyway, you wanna check out that way?"

"It's not like we have any choice, unless you want to take a dive?" Lotus thumbed the stairs. Nobody volunteered so she started her way towards the double doors. Everyone else followed her. When they finally reached them—a short walk, all things considered—she stopped, unsure. Even though he couldn't see her face, Junpei could read the tension in her back and shoulders. She was worried, scared even.

Ah well, he couldn't die just yet. Junpei opened the double doors to the surprise of everyone.

Was he the only one who knew they weren't locked? Probably.

A large room filled with metal cots stretched out before them. The other double door was there, along the wall to the right, and on the far side were four large metal doors. Three of them were numbered—3, 7, and 8—and the fourth—the one between numbers 3 and 7—was blank. Iron plated sealed windows, the bolts facing inwards like snarling teeth. They were trapped. They were trapped. They were trapped.

Junpei took a deep breath and exhaled. Sighed. They were trapped but he didn't need to dwell on it. They could escape. It's fine. His nightmare about drowning, about being stabbed and falling into the water, wasn't anything more than that. It wasn't premonition. It wasn't something that had happened or would happen, it was a dream.

They were safe right now. Snake was safe, alive. Nobody was dead.

(Except the ninth man.)

"What the hell is this place?" Santa cupped a hand over his eyes and peered at the multitude of beds.

"More numbered doors?" Lotus was more upset about the doors than the eerie haunted hospital vibe of the area or the fact that they were trapped still. Junpei couldn't really blame her. If—when—they got out of here, seeing a door with a number on it—red paint or otherwise—was going to haunt his waking hours.

"Well, it's not a conference room." June mused. "Maybe a hospital room?"

Santa wrinkled his nose, his eyebrows pinching in some vague, unhappy emotion. "Smells like one."

The stench of antiseptic was dry and clinical, bitter and permeating. It made Junpei think about blood and other less...pleasant things. Elevators that went to hell. Electrodes against skin. Fists against red-hot iron, begging to be let out. A snarling lion, claws cutting skin. Scalpels. Eyes watching hungrily. Death.

The four of them looked at the various cabinets around and beds, trying to find something of use. When nothing immediately came to mind—save Junpei finding a few vials of some kind of clear liquid with worn paper labels—Santa and Lotus turned their attention to the numbered doors with grim determination. June was sitting by them on one of the cots by the doors, her face set and pale but not flushed.

"Three, seven, and eight, huh?" Santa looked at the 3 door, barely disguising his sneer. "Lucky us, we get choices."

"It's not like we could open one of these without leaving someone behind anyway," Lotus pointed out. June seemed to startle at this, eyes going wide.

Junpei did some quick math. If it was him, Santa, and Lotus, that made a digital root of seven if you excluded June. June, Santa, and Lotus made eight without him. June, Lotus, and himself was the only combination that didn't produce a proper digital root.

"We're not leaving anyone behind." Junpei had never heard June sound so stern. No, not stern, sure? Firm? Or something tinged with desperation and heat?

"Calm your tits," Santa waved a hand at her, still staring at the door like he was trying to think of the best way to make Zero eat it, "I wouldn't stay alone in this haunted-ass hospital room if you paid me a king's ransom. Plus they're broken."

"What?" Junpei watched with mild confusion as Lotus closed the distance between her and the number 3 door. She slapped her hand against the RED and swore when there wasn't a beep or an asterisk. "Son of a bitch!"

"They're broken?" June asked. Junpei, too, had closed distance with the numbered doors, sticking close to June in case she started getting feverish again. She pressed her hand against the RED and, when nothing happened, frowned.

"Really? Can't even be assed to keep up the hardware?" Santa kicked the wall next to the 3 door and winced as he obviously hurt himself. He leaned against the door to keep his weight off his injured foot, idly shaking the hand he put on the grill.

Maybe, Junpei thought to himself as Santa started poking at the door frame in an attempt to busy himself, you'd be less mad if you didn't injure yourself every three minutes.

While Santa was trying to see if the numbered doors could be taken off at the hinges, Lotus sat down on one of the hospital beds and sighed, the weight of the Nonary Game settling on her shoulders. She suddenly seemed much older than she looked, her shoulders bowing under the pressure. Everything seemed like it was finally catching up to her. Junpei could understand the feeling. He also felt like he was being run through a pasta press.

June eventually started poking at the RED by door 3 with scrutiny. She ran her hand over the RED and frowned, then turned to Junpei and waved at him. "Here." Junpei walked close and she gestured at the bottom of the RED. "Put your hand here, on the back of it, toward the bottom." He fumbled around for what she might be talking about. When his fingers brushed the right spot he looked at her in surprise.

"That's such a small piece!" It couldn't be any bigger than a credit card, about as thick as a leaflet. "And all the REDs are missing them?"

"Probably." June pulled back and let Seven and Lotus near the RED so Junpei could show them what she had found. "I don't know why though."

"Lazy," Santa hissed.

"Do you really think Zero would have removed that part without a reason to?" Lotus asked.

"Well what reason would they have to gut the REDs?" June wondered. It was a fair question.

Santa rolled his eyes. "To waste our time, of course!"

In all honesty, he was probably right. At the best, this was a way to buy time for Zero. At the worst, it was a way to make them panic. The longer they couldn't progress, the more likely it was tensions were going to rise and the more likely it was someone was going to do something rash.

Not as if Junpei didn't trust the people he was trapped on this murder puzzle ship with. He did, for the most part. But, like the sword of damocles, there was this heavy hanging reminder that death was an imminent possibility at all times. The ninth man had a knife he had threatened Clover with. They all had bombs in their guts that would splatter them across the walls if they didn't play nice. Never mind the constant threat of the ship capsizing—which was especially dangerous because a sinking ship displaced enough water that any life raft or fleeing person close enough to the mass of it would be sucked into the event horizon to be smashed to bits by the water—they could drown just as easily.

Just before the conversation could devolve into another argument between Lotus and Santa—as entertaining as watching her get her energy back by yelling Santa into submission might be—one of the two sets of doors behind them opened. Everyone startled and whipped back to see who it was.

It was Ace, Seven, Snake, and Clover!

They looked confused and surprised to see everyone standing there by more numbered doors. Clover was the first to speak.

"What are you doing here?!" She didn't sound glad to see them, but she didn't sound surprised either.

"Oh, uh, both of our doors lead out to the same general hallway." Junpei began fumbling in his file folder to pull out the map of B-Deck. "We found the gate by the stairs open—"

"That was our doing," Ace interjected.

Junpei nodded and put the map on one of the beds, pointing out what he meant as he continued. "So we came down the stairs to here. The hallway with all the doors looked like a wash."

"It was." This time Clover did sound mad. Snake put a hand on her shoulder and she sighed. "We only looked at one door apiece but they were just...empty. Nothing for the Nonary Game, anyway."

"Why haven't any of you gone into the doors?" Seven waved a large hand at the numbered doors.

"We weren't going to leave anyone behind." Again, June's tone was harsh and strangely stony. Again, Junpei watched her closely.

Ace looked down at the map, fingers brushing the paper as he double-checked Junpei's story. He frowned, brows pulling his face into something that looked strangely harsh. "Well it's good that you decided to wait then."

"Not like we could've gone anyway. Zero ripped parts out of the REDs. They're all broken."

Snake's head turned so he was facing Santa directly, almost staring at him. "Are you certain?"

"You wanna check this yourself?" Santa snapped back.

"We're certain," June intervened. "It's a small card, probably, that's inserted in the bottom of the hardware. Whatever it is might act as a primary power source for the RED, or even the wireless transmitter?"

"Maybe it's like a wireless monitor," Lotus mused.

Junpei looked at everyone as they talked. Seven was by the doors, staring at the numbers as if he was having some kind of epiphany. While June had been talking about the possible nature of the missing pieces, Snake had gone to investigate the REDs himself and seemed to agree with her. Ace had walked off to investigate one of the cabinets as if they had the pieces they needed. Clover was busy glaring at the doors. Lotus was sitting down on one of the beds as she talked, one leg crossed over the other. And June was standing between the numbered doors and the doors to the hallway, hands folded as she thought out loud.

"Anyway, why the hell is this some kind of hospital room in the first place? Many people get their asses kicked on a cruise ship?" Junpei had long lost track of whatever they had been saying, deep in thought, but Santa's loud, bitter snark was a lighthouse beacon that drew him away and out from his mental fog.

"Oh, that's 'coz this is a hospital ship." Everyone stared at Seven. He wilted under their gazes. "What?"

"What do you mean 'this is a hospital ship'?" It would be easy to read Lotus' shrill questioning as furious but she was terrified and confused. Stressed. They all were, really.

"Well, uh, I mean...I think this is the Gigantic?" Seven flinched away from Lotus, logically a little scared of her.

The Gigantic...the Gigantic...why did that sound—? Junpei winced and nearly bit his tongue as pain lanced across the back of his eyes. Right, right. Ow. Don't press that thought apparently.

"What the hell is the Gigantic?"

Seven scratched at his head and pulled his beanie off, wringing it in thought before he answered Lotus. "Well, y'see, the Titanic had two sister ships. Both of 'em were supposed to be passenger liners like the Titanic but, y'know, World War II happened. The Gigantic got made into a British hospital ship and served for a while until she ran aground after hittin' a mine in the Aegean Sea. The Aegean Sea is shallow, right? So she didn't take too much water and retrievin' her wasn't hard." Seven put his beanie back on and waved a large hand around at the room they were in. "After that, some guy named Lord Gordain bought her up and that was that. Something 'bout him having been on the Titanic and survived. Trauma response or whatever. Big Titanic fan, in a way."

"And buying the Titanic wouldn't have been feasible because it was at the bottom of the Atlantic." Junpei added. Everyone stared at him but he nodded his chin at Seven, corroborating his story. "Because the Gigantic had been grounded and retrieved, it's the closest thing he could get."

"Exactly. The Gigantic was identical in design to the Titanic. So Lord Gordain bought it up and here we are."

Santa rolled his eyes. "Yeah, okay, so we're on some hundred year old ship? If so, it's in pretty good shape for something that supposedly sank." He opened his mouth to continue but was cut off.

"Not now, the adults are talking." Lotus waved her hand in front of Santa, her steely gaze locked on Seven. "Where's your proof?"

"My...proof?" Seven blinked at her, obviously confused.

"Proof that this is the Gigantic. Where is it? Or do you only have theories?" Lotus glared at him.

"Uh..." Her pressing left Seven at a loss for words.

Lotus jumped on that opportunity like a hunting dog. "So you have no proof. We just have to take you at your word? Trust your memory?" Okay, that was rude.

Seven winced. "I mean...yeah?"

Lotus snorted and shook her head. "If all you can remember is trivia about boats and rich Englishmen, then we should probably give you more time."

His shoulders slumped and he broke eye-contact with her. The floor became so much more interesting than Lotus. "Yeah...sorry."

Her sharp expression softened and she sighed. Again, it was a noise full of tension and frustration. She hadn't meant to take out her stress on him but, in the end, intentions didn't matter. "It's fine."

Before that conversation could pick up again, the clock in the grand staircase rang out. Junpei—and a few others—counted the bells. "...ten...eleven...twelve..." Silence. Twelve chimes.

"It's midnight." June looked worried. They had already used three of their nine hours.

"We've got six hours left then." The speed at which Clover did the math was impressive. Even though it was incredibly simple, Junpei's first reaction was to tick them off on his fingers, but she did it all in her head.

Seven sighed and looked back at the doors leading to the hallway outside. "We should get moving."

"Moving?" Ace sounded confused. "The REDs are broken, are they not?"

"Well, yeah, but we can try and find the parts, can't we?"

He had a point. "Where though?" Junpei pressed.

"The hallway with all the doors. We already looked at a few of them, so if we split up, dividin' and conquerin' as it were, we can go through the remaining...however many—"

"Forty-eight." Clover supplied.

"Forty-eight rooms. Six each for the eight of us, we should have 'em done in an hour or so." Seven nodded at Clover, glad she had done the math for him.

"So, what, we waste an hour poking around in rooms and then, in the off chance we do find the parts of the RED?" Santa glared at Seven, then the REDs. "What if we don't find them?"

"Well, remember how we were talking about how there's no chance Zero didn't do this on purpose?" Junpei tried to not sound condescending but, really, Santa was proving to be a really dumb guy for all the trivia about gambling and numbers he had rattling 'round in his head.

"Yeah?"

"Oh!" June seemed to have realized what Junpei was trying to say. Her eyes sparkled. "They won't stay broken forever, will they?"

"Probably not," Seven agreed. "Even if we waste time lookin' for the parts, we won't waste any more time than Zero wants. Not by a mile."

"Then let us split up. Six rooms each, you said?" Snake turned to face the area Seven was standing in.

"Yeah. That should cover all of 'em."

"Forty-eight rooms," Lotus groaned.

"Could be worse!" Clover pointed out. Lotus just huffed in response.

"Let us meet up in this room when the clock rings out."

"Call out if anyone finds the parts, okay?" Everyone seemed to agree with Junpei's suggestion and they parted ways to look for the missing RED parts.

As Junpei searched a handful of rooms on the starboard side, he thought about what was going on with him. Not just the Nonary Game—because that was something everyone was dealing with—but the whole...memory issue. Precognition? Deja vu? Whatever.

Thinking about those things, those moments of foresight and understanding, always hurt. It was a pain that burned behind his eyes and dug its claws into the back of his skull, like the worst headache he'd ever had, and yet he couldn't tell when it would strike him. If he could map the pain to a pattern—one that wasn't just 'knowing things he shouldn't'—he could avoid it but...as it was he just had to grin and bear it.

The parts to the RED weren't in his rooms. Strangely enough, upon leaving when the bell rang one, Junpei found Santa, Ace, Clover, June, Seven, and Lotus standing in front of the numbered doors in the hospital room. They were whispering among each other, confused, nervous. The aura of the room was oppressive.

And Junpei was the last person to show up.

Wait— "Where's Snake?"

Clover flinched but remained silent. It was June who answered him. "Jumpy...look." She gestured at door 3's RED.

Oh. It read: VACANT.

"Who found the parts?" Junpei was confused. "Didn't we say we were going to yell out if someone found them, so we could all go through the doors as soon as possible?"

Nobody answered. They all stood there, the air of discomfort and confusion thick and stifling. Nobody knew. Nobody knew who had repaired the REDs or where the parts had been. Like Junpei, they came back to the hospital room and found their path open again. Junpei ran his hand under the bottom of the RED, feeling for the piece that had been missing before. Yep. There it was.

"So nobody knows what the hell happened?" There was no vitriol in his voice, just confusion. He had, after all, been the last one to arrive.

"I got here first, before anyone else. There was nobody here, nor did anyone leave through the other door." Lotus waved at the two sets of doors, her voice flat. "At that point the REDs were fixed. I could see the lights of the VACANT notification. It was...I don't know."

"Yeah," Santa said in agreement. "Ace and Seven got back before me so I saw them looking at the REDs like they personally offended them. So I asked what the deal was and, well, no luck."

"I was the second to last one to arrive," June continued. "So I know about as much as you do."

Nobody knew who had fixed the REDs. Everyone came back to them being repaired and operable. Everyone was in the dark.

Maybe not everyone. Junpei winced as a lash of pain struck him.

Clover, as she had the entire time they had been talking about the REDs mysterious repair, remained silent. Sullen, even. Or, no, not sullen: scared. Scared and angry.

The first question Junpei had when he entered the hospital room resurfaced. "Where's Snake?" Clover flinched.

"No clue," Santa shrugged.

"Everyone else arrived before you did and we didn't see him. Perhaps he repaired the REDs and went back to find Clover to inform her?" Ace posited.

"I didn't—" Clover started to say, then cut herself off.

"He's gotten himself lost if that's the case." Seven stared at the doors leading to the hallway.

"He's blind. Of course he's gotten lost." Santa's callous remark finally got a reaction from Clover. Unadulterated fury contorted her features. Anguish coated the edges, softening the harsh lines of her frustration. It painted her in sharp tones, all directed at him.

"That's not true!" Her raised voice echoed in the large room, cutting off every other possible conversation as everyone looked at her, all wearing looks of concern and confusion. "My brother might be blind, but his hearing is really good! He can get around as easily as any of you! So he couldn't be lost! He - he couldn't..." She trailed off, folding in on herself. Her fury was burning out, leaving behind only hollow fear. As she stood there, fists clenched, drawn to her full height, she shook slightly.

Junpei didn't know what to do, nor did anyone else. They just stood there, eyes flicking between the distraught Clover and the numbered doors, weighing their options. Stay for Snake and waste time or go now and come back for him. Which was the better choice?

Junpei wanted to look for Snake but it would be futile, wouldn't it? There would be no point in looking for him, just fuel on the fire. He wanted to spare Clover the anguish but...some things were fixed events, like June had said.

Realizing nobody would back her up, Clover snarled, angry tears welling up in her eyes. "Well fine! I'll go look for my brother and you assholes can go ahead and leave! I don't care!" She spun towards the doors leading out and dashed off, her heels beating a rapid pattern on the floor.

"Clover, wait!" June tried to stop her but didn't move fast enough. None of them did. She was gone, the doors slamming shut behind her. Only Lotus and Ace didn't react, their faces furrowed in confusion and thought, but not in concern.

Junpei stared at the doors leading out of the hospital room. Then he sighed and moved to leave as well.

"Hey! What're you doin'?" Seven grabbed him by the arm, halting his progress. Junpei winced in surprise but didn't try to tug free. Seven might be keeping his grip loose but the man was an immovable mountain.

What did it look like? "I'm going to find Clover. I'm not leaving her behind."

"If you're doin' that, we need a plan, like before." Seven let go of Junpei, aware of the discomfort he was expressing at being held in place. "We can't just split up like idiots. We gotta' be smart about it."

"Sure, we'll be smart about wasting more goddamn time." Santa snarled and gestured in the general direction of the main stairwell and the clock that marked their limit with every hourly chime. "I say: fuck her. Fuck both of them. If she wants to run off and find her missing brother, that's her prerogative. I don't wanna die 'coz she got upset."

"Santa!" June wheeled about and glared at him, standing on the balls of her feet so she was at his eye-level.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Even for Santa, even with tensions running as high as they were, that was...

"I'm just saying!" He held his hands up defensively. "I don't plan on dying, do you?"

"Her brother is missing!" June continued to press into Santa's personal space. She was radiating fury and indignation. "She's scared, same as you! We can't just—"

"We can," Lotus pointed out, "But you're right. We shouldn't."

"While Seven does have a point about the dangers of splitting up, considering Snake's disappearance, we should do it." Ace offered up a solution. "So long as we communicate with each other as to where we will be and reconvene here, in front of the numbered doors within a time limit, I believe all should be well."

"It shouldn't take that long to find Clover," Lotus pointed out.

"We should use that time to help her look for Snake too." June wasn't taking any suggestions. She wanted to do this more than she wanted to leave. She wanted to reunite the siblings; wanted Clover to hold her brother again. She needed it.

"Okay," Junpei nodded. "That sounds like a plan."

"I'll stay here in case Snake actually got lost or if Clover gives up." Santa leaned against the wall near the unmarked door. He sounded irritable and more than a little bored.

"I'll take B-deck," Lotus offered. "The only places she could go are the kitchen or that big L-shaped room."

"The casino?" Seven asked. Lotus' eyes glittered.

"A casino. Yeah, I'll go there and see if she tries to backtrack to the main hall, not that she could..." That last bit was muttered under her breath. Seven winced for some reason.

"I will look in the hallway with all the doors. Perhaps one or both of them are still searching there." Ace offered. That was a fairly logical choice.

"June and I will search as many places as we can." Junpei looked to June to see if she was okay with that plan. She was still puffing her cheeks out in frustration, her narrowed eyes locked on Santa as if she could set him on fire with her ire alone. "Is that okay, June?" He asked her, calling her name again in order to get her attention. She jumped a little and looked at him, anger slowly fading.

"Hm? Oh, yeah. I'll go with you, Junpei. That sounds good." She still seemed a little distracted, but she didn't seem like she wasn't willing to search at least.

"Then I'll also do a bit of searching across the ship. I gotta' good eye for things like this." Seven shrugged. "So let's meet up here in, what, thirty? Make a lap and meet up. No wastin' time, alright?" He got nods in response. "Let's go."

Everyone scattered to their respective areas with Santa staying behind, looking irritable but unconcerned. June and Junpei stood in front of the stairs and tried to figure out where they should go. Junpei pulled the map out of the file folder and pressed it against a wall. "So where do you think Clover and Snake might be?"

"Well," June traced the map with one finger, "Lotus is up on B-deck by the casino and the kitchen. Ace is off in the hallway here. Santa is in the hospital room so there's no reason to go back just yet. Maybe up by the 1st class cabins on B-deck, where door 5 went through?"

"You think Seven is going there too?" Junpei asked, folding the map up again to put it into the folder.

"It looked like he was helping Ace search the hallway with all the doors." June tilted her head in that direction. It seemed a logical thought. Junpei nodded at her.

"Then let's go to B-deck and see if Clover might've tried to backtrack." Junpei gestured for June to take the stairs before him and followed her. While his weird premonition headache kept coming and going in waves, the pain latching to his brain like some kind of tick or a furious dog, he was still somehow able to think clearly. His mind was running a million miles a minute, trying to figure out where they could have gone, what could have happened, how everything had gone to shit so fast.

Zero, for all it might be obvious to blame them, couldn't be the problem. The Nonary Game—this whole fucking kidnapping situation—was meant to be a game. It was winnable, albeit dangerous. So far, save for Snake disappearing, the only other human loss was the ninth man, who had done himself in by breaking rules. Snake disappearing was...there was no purpose to it. It was an outlier.

But also...Zero could very well be one of them. There was a possibility, no matter how small, that Zero was a player in the Game in their own right, in some kind of equilibrium or balance. 'It's not fair if only you are putting your lives on the line! I will bet myself on your skills as well, so that I can make a point.' Or something like that.

It was all speculation anyway.

Upon reaching the gate that separated the 2nd and 1st class cabins from each other, Junpei and June caught a flash of bright pink. A sense of relief flooded Junpei's body and they both walked towards her, slowly, leaving space if she wanted to leave. Junpei was reminded of a feral kitten he saw once or maybe even a scared rabbit. He kept his hands up so she could see them. Beside him, he could see June do the same.

"Hey Clover?" Junpei kept his voice even as he could.

"Everyone is looking for you and Snake," June added.

Clover didn't answer—or if she did, it was too quiet for them to hear—and her small frame trembled as she stared at the door leading out of the 1st class cabins. Her shoulders were slumped, hands clasped at her chest, eyes blank and dead. Her cheeks were streaked with tears that ran her makeup. It made her look younger than she already did.

For a moment, Junpei didn't know if he really wanted to talk to her or just leave her be. He caught a glimpse of June's determined expression and that cinched it. He wasn't going to let Clover suffer alone. She didn't deserve to think she wasn't cared for, brother or not.

It would make things harder later if she thought nobody cared.

"Are you alright?" Junpei tried to keep his voice low so as to not startle her.

Clover didn't respond. Her shoulders hunched and she tucked her head down, turning so neither Junpei nor June could see her face.

"Everyone is helping now." It felt...hollow and fake, saying this now. He should have helped earlier. He should have stood up for her. Should should should.

But he didn't and now this girl—Junpei wasn't sure how young she was but she definitely was younger than him—was without her brother. He might be a single child but he wasn't so divorced from reality as to not know the bond between siblings, never-you-mind siblings kidnapped for a puzzle murder game. She was suffering and, while not equivocal, if Junpei found himself without June he might fall apart in a similar way.

"You should...we're going to reconvene in a little bit. You should head back when you've—"

Clover said something. It was inaudible, so quiet he couldn't make it out.

Junpei frowned, as did June, and he asked her, "Huh?"

"—lone..." More of what she said was understandable but it was mostly muffled. She was speaking while facing a wall and all.

"Clover—" June started but she was cut off when Clover whipped around and screamed.

"I said: leave me alone!" She was crying again. While at first glance it might be mistaken for anger, she was genuinely distraught and terrified. She bared her teeth at June and Junpei and waved her hand at them both as if she was going to hit them. "Fuck off! I hate your stupid faces! I don't wanna see you anymore! Go away!"

June flinched but walked back. Junpei did the same, keeping his hands up in a placating gesture.

"Are you ignoring me? I said: fuck off!" Clover continued to yell, stomping her way towards June and Junpei, her finger pointed at them like a knife. Neither of them could bring themselves to speak—June out of confusion, Junpei out of shock—and that seemed to only irritate her further. "If you won't leave then I'll—"

"No, that's alright," Junpei cut in. Clover blinked at him in confusion. "Me 'n June will leave. We just wanted to make sure you were okay and to let you know the plan, alright?"

June nodded. "Yeah. You stay here if you want, okay? We're going to go see what Lotus is up to, right Junpei?"

"Right." Junpei noted the way Clover's stance changed, the fight leaving her body. Her anger was posturing and, without that, she was just scared and tired and scared and terrified and scared. She was scared.

Junpei was too.

June and Junpei turned and left the 1st class cabin hallway and hung a right towards where the casino was. Lotus was leaning against a wall, examining her nails and not at all looking for Snake or Clover. Actually, scratch that last one, she probably saw Clover and did the smart thing by not talking to her.

June frowned. "Lotus!"

Lotus looked up at them, unimpressed. "Hm?"

"What are you doing?" June's tone was harsh, like it had been when Santa had suggested they leave Clover. She was angry, not on her own behalf, but on behalf of Clover and Snake. She was good at being angry on others' behalf. "You said you'd look for Clover and—"

"I found her." Lotus gestured towards where Clover was by the 1st class cabins.

"You're still not looking for Snake though!" June argued.

"You don't know that," Lotus countered. June puffed her cheeks in frustration and stomped her foot. That only seemed to amuse Lotus, who rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I have a thought if you're willing to hear me out?"

Were they willing? Junpei glanced over at June, who was still angry. She met his eyes, brows furrowed, and he tilted his head in a silent question. She didn't say anything in agreement but she didn't say anything in refusal either. She was letting him choose.

Junpei looked back at Lotus and nodded. "Shoot."

"We should make an alliance." She gestured between the three of them.

"Huh?" Was she suggesting what he thought she was suggesting?

"The three of us should go through one of the numbered doors."

"Without everyone else?" June was angry again.

Lotus huffed and rolled her eyes. "Yes, of course. If the last set of doors was any indication, it's very likely that all the numbered doors meet up somewhere. Us going ahead won't ruin anything, it'll just give us an advantage to finding the 9 door."

Junpei did some math. Between the three of them, their digital root was one, which left a group of four with a digital root of seven. The remaining group could go through a door and they wouldn't be able to. That's not even taking into account the 9 door or Snake.

"We physically couldn't go into a door with just the three of us, never mind morally." June pointed that fact out for him. "Our digital root is one. The doors we have access to at the moment are 3, 7, and 8. We'd need one more person, even if we were going to betray everyone and do what you want."

"Betray is such a harsh word," Lotus sighed, "But yes, you're right. We'd have to add Seven to go through the 8 door."

"And leave everyone else. They'd have a remaining digital root of eight, which is the door we'd be occupying. If they find Snake, they'd have a digital root of one. If we go through a door without them, we leave them behind regardless."

"You sound like you're morally opposed to escaping."

"I'm morally opposed to sacrificing people for my own safety!" Why was June so upset about this? It was puzzling to even Junpei, who figured he knew her pretty well. Righteous anger was more his deal than hers, unless things had changed in the past nine years, but she had always had a strong sense of justice. She also was more likely to plan things out for fairness' sake than anything else. Lotus' suggestion was not only unfair, but also more than a little morally ambiguous. Their safety and freedom for everyone else's. But also...

"We couldn't escape even if we did bring in Seven." Lotus and June looked at Junpei so he continued on with his thought. "With Seven, we have a digital root of eight, sure, but that's not nine. If we wanted to escape then, we'd have to sacrifice one more person: you."

Lotus gaped at him but she was smart. She was doing the math, figuring the odds. If she was so willing to sacrifice others, she should take into account that others would sacrifice her too. Really, it was a scare tactic on Junpei's part. He, like June, didn't want to leave anyone behind, but he knew Lotus' fear was manifesting as cold logic with no room for feeling. He, like June, wanted to prove to her it was a bad idea to discard morality like that.

Also, to be fair, it wasn't nice and, yeah, it might be childish, but he wanted to scare Lotus a little.

"Fine." Lotus conceded. "Fine. It wouldn't work. You can't blame a girl for trying."

You very much can, Junpei thought but he wisely kept that to himself.

"Jumpy and I are going to go see if Ace and Seven found Snake and tell them where Clover is." June was still a little angry with Lotus. She probably didn't want to be around her at this time and, frankly, Junpei couldn't blame her. He understood Lotus' thought process but it still felt...bad to say out loud. "Please make sure Clover shows up by the numbered doors in a few minutes." She wasn't asking.

Lotus seemed to know that because she nodded. "Understood."

Junpei and June left the area by the casino and slipped down the stairs, hanging a right into the hallway with all the doors. June was still huffy.

"The nerve of her!" She stomped her foot again. "Suggesting we leave someone behind—multiple someones! And then she backs down when you point out that she'd have to be left behind for the group to open the 9 door!"

"She's scared, just like Clover." Junpei tried to point out.

"Well it doesn't excuse her actions! People aren't pawns in a game. They're living beings!" Something about that seemed...personal. Or, maybe in the nine years between elementary school and now, June had gotten more passionate? Who knows.

"Yeah, but I think she got the point." Junpei acquiesced.

June continued to fume. "Even if we did get out, even if we did get the cops or the authorities or whatever, we have five hours as of now. It's incredibly unlikely that we'd be able to come back and save everyone else."

"True." Junpei hummed in thought. Then something occurred to him. Something horrifying that sent his stomach deep into his feet. "Only five people can actually leave."

"Huh?"

"Only three to five people can go through a numbered door. Even the 9 door is subject to those rules, I'm sure."

June's eyes went wide and she stopped walking. Junpei stopped as well and stared at her, worried he had upset her. When she finally spoke, her voice was thin, as if she was using every ounce of strength she had in her body to not cry or scream. "Even if we all got to door 9, we..."

They would have to leave behind two or more people to escape.

What the hell?

Junpei chose to speak first. "I'm sure there's another way." He was lying, trying to placate June. She probably knew it as well but...can't blame him for trying.

She gave him a thin smile. "Y-yeah. There has to be." She tugged on her hair, eyes downcast. "Let's go find Ace. See if he or Seven managed to find Snake."

Down the hallway, they both saw Ace leave one of the rooms and move down the hall to another. They started jogging forward and waved at him. "Ace!"

He turned back to look at them, brows furrowed, but stopped walking so they could catch up.

Huffing, June and Junpei stopped in front of Ace and took a moment to catch their breath. Ace gave them both a smile. "Hello there. Have you had any luck locating Snake or Clover?"

"We found Clover," June said. She was disguising her prior discomfort and anger with her delight at having actually found Clover. "No luck with Snake though. Lotus hasn't found him either. How about you?"

"I have been looking best as I am able but nothing yet. Seven and I have crossed paths on occasion but if he had found Snake, I would know before anyone else." Ace put his hands in his pants pockets, his coat fluttering out slightly. "I assume Clover knows to meet back in the hospital room?"

"Yeah. She's really worried." June tugged on her hair again, eyes downcast. "She misses her brother."

Something occurred to Junpei in that moment. "Hey, do you think it's weird?" Ace and June both looked at him. They were confused by his sudden non sequitur. "Clover and Snake, I mean. Are they really siblings?"

"They could be half-siblings or step-siblings," June offered as an explanation.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean?" Ace frowned, his face more lined than usual. "They said they are siblings, so they're siblings, are they not?"

"Well, I mean, they look nothing alike." Snake was tall and thin, pale, with dusty brown hair that looked almost ashen. Clover, on the other hand, was shorter and, while her pink hair might be dyed, the odds of her having Snake's hair color naturally was low. They looked so different and acted so differently. How could they be related? Why was Ace so willing to accept that when June had to come up with an explanation.

"Clover also dyes her hair and might even use color contacts." June added to her explanation.

"True."

Something strange and confused passed across Ace's face then was buried under a thoughtful frown. "I suppose...now that you mention it: it certainly is strange."

Now? Now he's confused? Why now? Junpei stared at him, trying to figure out what he was thinking.

June, however, had less reservations about Ace's statement. "Yeah! There are loads of siblings who look nothing alike! Plus I think Clover is pretty fashionable. She probably spends a lot of time on her hair and makeup and clothes to stand out. Not sure if Snake always dresses like that but he's a little..." She paused, then waved her hand in a roundabout gesture. "Regal? Like one of those handsome capture targets in dating sims."

Junpei blinked at her in confusion. "Wh—dating sims?"

"What, can't a girl have hobbies?" June giggled.

"I just didn't...expect that." From you.

"Shows what you know." She bounced in place, amused. Her mood had taken an upswing, which was nice. "But, no, they're not my personal favorite. I just know someone who likes them a lot."

Ace seemed almost amused by the whole exchange. "Regardless, we should find him as soon as we can. Even if we do reconvene and enter the numbered doors, being without Snake will leave us disadvantaged."

"Yeah..." Junpei didn't know what else to say. "We're running out of time."

"I will continue to search over here until the specified time. If I see Seven again, I will inform him about Clover." Ace placed his hand on the doorknob of the door he was heading to.

"Thank you, Ace." Junpei turned back to June. "Shall we?"

"Mmhmm," June nodded and started back to the large hospital room while Junpei mulled over his thoughts.

Why was he filled with such unending dread? What about searching for Snake was making him so nervous? Why did he feel like all of this was - was futile? Why was he so certain, deep in his heart, that they weren't going to find Snake? Not yet, anyway...

His head hurt but he pushed through that to clutch at whatever premonition about Snake lay behind the burning blinding pain of it all. Snake was...Snake was...a door. A door and Snake was—

"Are you okay?" June's question startled him out of his deep thoughts. He let out a little squeak of surprise and, while she did stifle a snort, she didn't pull away from him. "You look sick."

"I mean, I did throw up earlier," Junpei admitted, "But also you had a fever. I guess you and I are destined to be sick today."

"I hope not." June broke eye-contact and stared at the doors to the large hospital room. Her shoulders were tense again. Junpei had upset her.

"I'm fine. Don't worry. I'm just...worried." That wasn't a full lie. "Why don't we see how ol' Krampus is doing."

"You think he kidnaps naughty children?" June asked, her eyes glittering with amusement.

"I think he's more mean than Santa Claus has any right to be." That made her laugh so it was worth it. They push open the doors.

Santa was standing by the 3 door. He was frowning so hard Junpei thought he might hurt himself. He didn't even turn when they opened the doors and walked in. He did, however, speak without looking at them. "Hey, you said that Zero wouldn't do something without a reason, right?"

"Hm?"

"Junpei. You said 'there's no chance Zero didn't do this on purpose'." Santa mocked Junpei's tone and way of speaking. He still was staring at door 3.

"...yeah? I did, didn't I?" He wasn't sure if that was exactly what he said and how he said it but...that seemed about right. "What about it?"

"So you think Zero is the one who put the REDs back together?"

Junpei frowned. What was he getting at? "I...guess?"

"You 'guess'? Can't be more sure of yourself?" Santa sneered.

"Look—! It's...it's been a rough day, okay?" He didn't mean to sound defensive but, really, he felt attacked. Or, not attacked, prodded at, like a kid poking at a pillbug or centipede to see what it'll do. Treated like a joke and toyed with. It set his hackles up.

"Sure. Rough day." Santa sounded weary, like he, too, was struggling beneath the weight of memories that burned at the touch. He took a deep, loud breath then exhaled out his nose, almost frustrated. "But really: who do you think put the REDs back together?"

Junpei looked at June to see if she had some kind of thoughts about this line of questioning. Her eyebrows were invisible beneath her bangs, eyes wide like she was the one being put on the spot.

He looked back at Santa. "Well, Zero, obviously?"

Santa snorted. "Yeah? What makes you so sure, hotshot?"

Good question. "Like I said back in the hallway by the 2nd class cabins: if the Nonary Game wasn't fair, we wouldn't be alive. There's a reason, a pattern to this whole deal, right? Not just nines but puzzles in puzzles. Solutions that give keys that solve other puzzles and so on. The kitchen gave us a keycard for the elevators by the grand staircase which means we have to be able to go back there. Something in the door 5 area gave them the key to open the gate to the stairwell in the shared hallway. There are no accidents insofar as the game design is concerned."

Junpei wasn't sure why he felt so strongly about this but he did. The Nonary Game, no matter how fucked up and awful and filled with math it was, was a game. A fair game. No dead ends in a labyrinth, no unsolvable puzzles in a good game.

Undeterred and with nobody stopping him, Junpei continued. "The REDs missing parts is suspicious, sure, but not unheard of or impossible. The REDs near the hallway with all those doors was probably planned. We needed to waste time to force us to...to..." He paused and frowned, a wave of pain licking at the back of his eyes, clawing at the meaty parts of his brain. "To..." He gasped, breaths coming in panicked, weird bursts.

"Junpei?" June asked. He could barely hear her. His ears were full of water. The pain in his back hurt less than the pain in his heart. He couldn't breathe through the iron-and-salt in his mouth.

"So that we..." He tried again. He knew why the RED was broken, didn't he? He knew what the time wasting was for, didn't he? It was to put pressure on them and to obfuscate that—

"Junpei?" Santa this time. Why was he worried? His body was laying on the stairs in a pool of blood with everyone else. Everyone but Junpei. Everyone was dead. Everyone was—

The next thing Junpei could remember—aside from the feeling of a plume of fire venting out from a point in his back and ice water filling his lungs—was the sound of June and Santa holding some kind of muffled conversation. He could feel June's voice reverberate through his body, starting at his skull. What was—?

He stirred and felt a weight lift off his head. The conversation stopped and he tried to make sense of his surroundings.

Junpei was lying on one of the thin hospital beds with his head on June's lap. She had been stroking his hair. She looked like she was going to cry and, for all they might not get along, Santa looked concerned too.

"You said you were feeling better!" June puffed out her cheeks in frustration. By the tears in her eyes she was worried for him. He had made her worry.

"Sorry." Junpei sat up and ran his hand through his hair. There was a dull ache there, physical, like he had bruised something. "I'm sorry, what happened?"

"You spaced out then passed out. Smacked your head on the RED, of all things." Santa—who had been standing by the bed Junpei was laying on—waved a hand at the offending device. "Thankfully you didn't break skin or anything. June screamed loud enough as it was. If you started bleeding I think I might've needed to wear earplugs."

"I was worried!" June chided. She hadn't moved since Junpei sat up, playing with her hair as she watched him—probably for any kind of indication he was in danger of passing out again. "Forgive me for screaming but he collapsed. I didn't know what the problem was since he puked earlier!"

"Maybe he's got brain damage." Santa still seemed like he was unaffected by—or even completely unbothered by—Junpei's accident but...something about his guarded posture made Junpei think otherwise. "Maybe the puking is a concussion thing."

"Aren't you not supposed to let someone with a concussion sleep? Because they might die?" June's eyes widened in horror.

"You're supposed to monitor them. The whole thing about not sleeping is an old wive's tale because they'd conk out with red flag symptoms and not wake up." Junpei rubbed at his eyes to try and chase away the worst of the pain. It didn't work. "Besides: I'm fine."

"You stopped making sense after going on a weird rant about the Nonary Game being fair and then passed out. That's not fucking fine." Santa actually reacted to that.

Junpei blinked in surprise. He hadn't expected him to be so upset. Huh...

"Besides, everyone is on their way back anyway. We've wasted all our extra time." He waved his hand at the doors leading out to the hallway. "I can hear Lotus and Seven fighting from here." They couldn't but the point stood regardless. Junpei passing out had wasted what precious searching time they had left. Good going...

All because of the damn REDs.

Junpei glared at the door 3 RED for a moment, then looked back at Santa. "Hey, uh, about your question?"

"What?" He looked uncomfortable.

"Why did you ask? Not that it matters or anything, I'm just...curious." And he was, though it sure did matter to him. There had to have been a reason why Santa had asked. Everything these days had a fucking reason and he was sick of being in the dark.

"Oh, uh...," Santa looked at the floor, his posture shifting from casual to defensive. His shoulders tensed and he shoved his hands in his pants pockets. "It was about...trust, mostly."

"Trust?" Junpei didn't know what the hell he was on about.

"You said Zero repaired the REDs, I was gonna' say it was one of us, maybe Snake. And in that case, they didn't say shit, right?" Santa continued, seemingly not sure of what he was saying after Junpei had collapsed. Like the point didn't matter any more. "I wanted to point out that you can't trust anyone right now, no matter how well you think you know them."

"And I ran my mouth about how I trusted Zero to run a good game, huh?" Foot in mouth. "Man, I'm such a jackass."

"You're not feeling well—!" June tried to argue.

Junpei didn't care. "I'm not saying it to be self-deprecating or anything. I just made a jackass of myself there. Nothing more."

Neither of them said anything as everyone else filed into the hospital room in pairs. Ace and Seven, Lotus and Clover. They all stared at the three standing and sitting near door 3.

Seven spoke up first. "You guys okay?"

"Yeah, uh, I just...hit my head is all." Junpei didn't want to worry them. There was no need to worry them. They had more worrying things to deal with than his possible brain injury or precognition or whatever was going on with him. The ghost of ocean water clawed at his lungs and he stifled a cough into his elbow. It brought tears to his eyes. "Sorry."

Nobody said a word for a moment, then Ace spoke up. "In the end, I couldn't find Snake."

"Me neither." Seven wrung his beanie.

"No luck on my end." Lotus didn't sound too put-off but she was tapping her fingers on her leg, a strange tell or self-soothing motion for the woman.

Clover said nothing. What was there for her to say? Her brother was missing and she had to be drowning in despair. The fact that she was walking and, to some extent, talking was a miracle. If someone close to Junpei—if Akane died—he wouldn't be this put together. He would fall apart like a puppet whose strings were cut. Like a doll whose thread was coming undone.

Clover was immeasurably strong in comparison.

A heavy silence blanketed the room again before Lotus cleared her throat and waved a hand at the numbered doors. "So let's stop wasting time, huh? Who's staying behind?"

"What?" Seven bristled. June and Junpei, who had already considered the door options and various digital root breakdowns of the current group, were less surprised. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"We have very few options regarding who goes through which numbered door with our current bracelet combinations. With one, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight, we have a total digital root of seven while the doors here have a digital root of nine. There's no way for all of us to go through these doors. Either we leave behind three people or we leave behind four people." Sometime between when June and Junpei had talked with Lotus and now she had given a lot of thought to the doors and who all could enter them. Hearing her logic was interesting, however.

Getting the digital root of the total group and comparing it to the digital root of the doors they had access to was an unorthodox way to quickly calculate how this would work.

If we had Snake, we'd have a digital root of nine, which means nobody would be left behind. Junpei must have made some kind of face because Lotus' eyes narrowed and she nodded towards him.

"Like some of you have realized: without Snake here, we can't all go through the doors. But we can minimize the quote-unquote 'casualties' by choosing to leave one person behind so that the remaining six can split between two of these three doors."

June was, as before, not happy about the idea of leaving anyone behind. "I already said we aren't going to—"

"I don't think we have a choice!" Lotus cut her off, her tone steel-edged. "I've been doing the math and we can't all go through the doors. Either some of us make it or none of us make it. If we leave behind one person, we can open the number 9 door and at least some of us can escape."

Santa pointed at June with an accusatory finger. "You can't keep going on with this righteous tirade every time we try to minimize the damage. I'm not a huge math nerd or anything but the hag is—" Lotus made a sharp noise of protest but Santa continued, refusing to wait for her to get genuinely angry at him, "—and if she says there's no damn way all of us can go through then there's no damn way all of us can go through."

"She's being pragmatic," Ace seconded Santa's point. "If we can minimize the amount of losses—"

"We can all escape! I know we can!" June protested. Junpei wanted to tell her she was right but...

She wasn't and that was the worst of it. He wanted her to be right but the math didn't work out. With Snake dead gone it was pointless to try and save everyone. And it's not as if whoever was staying would even be in any danger anyway.

He winced and swallowed the noise of pain that wanted to escape through his teeth. He had only just gotten back up. Being hurt in any way might make them choose him to stay behind and he couldn't—

As Junpei tried to collect himself again, everyone else was arguing. June was adamant that everyone could make it through a door while Lotus, Ace, and Santa were certain they wouldn't. Seven was quiet, opting to stay out, and Clover was silent like a roiling storm. Junpei was the last vote in this matter to push it to a majority.

"June," she turned to look at him, frustration evident by the way she was pulling on her hair, "Lotus is right. We can't all go but—" he cut her off before she could interrupt him, "—I don't think that we won't see each other again. I'm pretty sure things loop around."

"What do you mean?" Everyone turned to look at him in confusion. Had they not figured it out either?

"The unmarked door?"

"What about it?" Santa looked back and forth between the door and Junpei.

"What do you think it's supposed to be for?"

"Does everything have to have a meaning?" Santa's derision was palpable but beneath that was a weird hint of confusion and curiosity. Maybe he wasn't half as dense as he pretended to be.

"Door 4 and 5 both lead into the same hallway that gave us access to C-deck, right? Why give us elevators to nowhere and doors that can't be opened from either side? The 2nd class cabin doors were bolted shut with plates and yet this door isn't altered in any way. It probably opens from the other side like how the numbered doors only open from our side." Junpei walked to the unmarked door and knocked on it. It rattled and made the same sound as the numbered doors did. "So my theory is that the doors here all dump into the area behind this unmarked door. Inside those numbered doors are keys and keycards for all the places we couldn't access at the start. No dead ends."

"That's an impressive theory," Ace said slowly, "but why does that matter when it comes to who stays here? True, if the doors do loop back around, there's no worry about leaving anyone behind in the long run, but it does mean that one person will be forced to wait out the entirety of the second group of numbered doors. What do they do then?"

Junpei shrugged. "Iunno. Whatever they want. Take a nap even." God knows I could use one.

"I still—" June started but she bit down on the thought. Her jaw worked while she figured out what she really wanted to say. She settled on, "Lotus, what do you think is the best option for who stays?"

Lotus tapped her fingers on her legs as she thought it over. "You, Junpei, or Ace."

So their options were:

June stayed behind; Santa, Junpei, and Clover went through door 3 while Lotus, Seven, and Ace went through door 7 or Ace, Santa, and Lotus went through door 3 while Clover, Junpei, and Seven went through door 7

Junpei stayed behind; Ace, Santa, and Clover went through door 8 while June, Seven, and Lotus went through door 3 or Ace, Santa, and Lotus went through door 3 while Clover, June, and Seven went through door 8

Ace stayed behind; Santa, June, and Seven went through door 7 while Junpei, Clover, and Lotus went through door 8 or Santa, June, and Lotus went through door 8 while Junpei, Clover, and Seven went through door 7

Six total permutations. No matter who decided to stay behind, one of the three numbered doors couldn't be opened. It all depended on who wanted to stay as to where the rest would be going.

"I volunteer." Ace didn't give anyone time to discuss it among themselves. The moment that the option came up, he spoke. No question. Or, rather, no question from anyone aside from June.

"No, I will!"

Ace smiled at June. For a moment, Junpei was filled with a sort of dread that he couldn't name, but it passed as Ace refuted June's offer. "June, I am old and my body is not as used to running around like you might be. Let me be the one to stay back. As Junpei said: I can take a moment of rest."

"Ace—"

Ace's face hardened and his hand moved quickly, something in his grip. Lotus yelped and moved away from him but whatever he had done, he had done to himself. June let out a sharp cry as he sat down on one of the beds, wobbling slightly. His breathing hitched and he placed something on the bed next to him; whatever he had been holding.

An empty syringe and a small glass vial.

"What the hell?" Santa and Seven both put themselves between June and Ace but she shoved past them.

"Ace!" She knelt down beside him, horrified and confused by his actions.

Ace gave a wan smile. "There. Argument solved."

"What the fuck did you do?" Santa snapped the vial up and stared at the label. Then his furious gaze turned back on Ace. "Soporil-Beta?"

"It's a generalized anesthetic. I found some..." Ace gestured at the shelves. "I figured it might have a use. Just not this one."

The idea of Ace carrying around a syringe of what was obviously a rather fast acting intravenous anesthetic made Junpei feel slightly ill.

"So you fucking shoot up and take a nap? What is wrong with you?" Santa remained standing over Ace, even as he yelled. June, still sitting next to him, pulled on her hair, nearly crying in frustration and worry.

"We don't have forever," Ace pointed out. His speaking was slowing, words becoming syrup in his mouth. His blinking stuttered and desynced and he seemed as though he was losing vision, confusion evident. "With myself out of the running, the rest of you can go through the numbered doors. If Junpei is correct, I will simply sleep off the Soporil and you will come back to me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. If Junpei isn't..."

June was scowling so hard that she looked like she might develop a tension headache. Still, her frustration seemed more worried than angry.

"If I'm wrong," Junpei offered, his voice more sure than he felt, "then we'll make sure to come back for you without our bracelets. I promise."

June moved as if she was going to clutch at Ace's jacket but drew back. Ace gave her a soft smile, his breathing slowing and evening out. "Exactly. I look forward...to seeing you...again." Then he was asleep.

June's breathing hitched too, caught, stuttered, then returned to normal again. She stood up and stared at the numbered doors like they offended her personally. "Fine." She sounded frustrated and, really, Junpei could hardly blame her but...they needed to keep moving. Altruism, heroism, that was all well and good when you had all the time in the world. They didn't, so they had to make difficult decisions and choose selfish options.

"So who's going where?" Santa asked.

"I can only go through door 8 while Seven can only go through door 7," Lotus said. She, like Junpei, had already done the math. Clover and Junpei's digital root was nine as were Santa and June's. One of those pairs had to choose who they wanted to spend that room with. Only one.

"Clover?" Junpei looked at her to see if she had any opinion but she wasn't speaking. She was standing by Ace's sleeping body, looking down on him with an unidentifiable look on her face. After a few moments, he turned to June and Santa instead. "Either of you have a favorite?"

"I'm fine either way." June didn't sound fine but maybe it was more that she was upset about Ace than being forced to pick her poison.

"I've spent enough time with Lotus to know I shouldn't hang out with her again." Santa, however, did have an opinion. "Bad for my health." Lotus glared at him but he flashed her an amused and cheeky grin. "Prove me wrong."

"Junpei?" Lotus chose to, instead of engaging with Santa's nonsense, ask him. "What about you?"

What about him? Door 8 felt...familiar and familiar thus far was good. He could only go through a door with Clover and either Lotus or Seven so it's not as if there was more complicated math to do. It was a binary choice. Door 8 and Lotus or door 7 and Seven.

Junpei...Junpei liked Lotus. She might be loud and easy to anger, she might not take anyone's shit, she might be a little violent at times, but she was honest. She wasn't hiding anything about who she was, what she wanted, and why she didn't want to be here. She didn't lock them into the freezer, despite it being an easy way to eliminate people. She even went so far as to reconsider her stance on leaving people behind—or at least softening her word choice—when June got upset about calling it a 'sacrifice'.

"If it's alright with you, I'll go through door 8 with Lotus. Clover?" He looked over at her for confirmation but she was still standing there, looking at the floor, so tense she looked like she might fall to pieces if he so much as touched her. "Clover?"

"...don't care..." She muttered. Junpei noticed how Lotus frowned but neither of them said a word about it.

"Santa, June, and I are goin' through door 7," Seven recounted, making sure everyone else was in agreement.

"While Junpei, Clover, and I are going through door 8," Lotus finished. Nobody said anything to the contrary. Everyone was fine with the plan.

Santa looked at June, scratched the back of his head, then nodded at Junpei. "Don't die."

"Santa!" June chided but Junpei could only laugh.

"That's the third time someone's said that to me today." It felt silly, all things considered, but it was comforting.

"Well then don't die then, dumbass." He was concerned. Santa was worried and, in his own right, he was showing concern for Junpei.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll try my best. You too, okay?" Junpei watched Santa's face to see if there was any reaction. For a moment—a brief moment so quick that if he wasn't paying close attention, he would have missed it—Santa smiled. It was soft and fleeting, a bit like a baby bird, but it softened his face and made him seem younger.

June nodded at Junpei too, her own expression more serious than usual. "We'll do our best!" Seven nodded in agreement as well.

With that said, Junpei turned to Lotus and Clover, gesturing at the number 8 door. "Ready?"

"Yes." Lotus authenticated her bracelet and stepped aside so Junpei and Clover could.

Clover, still silent and grieving her missing brother, authenticated next. The RED display showed two asterisks. Two numbers. Junpei's was the last. He authenticated and pulled the lever. Door 8 swung open, screaming for them to abandon hope and enter. Junpei caught one last look at June before they would be separated for a while.

Fear, frustration, and hope. Things would be alright, but at a cost. June ducked in her door and Junpei did the same. Door 8 swung closed behind him with a thunderous noise.

"Eighty-one seconds!" Lotus reminded them as she tore down the hall and swung left, disappearing around the corner.

Clover staggered into a run behind her and Junpei followed suit. With every beep of the detonator, Junpei was reminded of the death of the ninth man. The blood. The viscera. The smell. The idea of it happening to one of them now made it hard to breathe. Beep. Beep. Beep. Like a death knell.

Where the hell is the DEAD?

Clover, like Lotus, flew despite her heels. She moved like she was being hunted, like the specter of death was just behind her with its scythe. As the two of them rounded the corner, they saw Lotus standing at the end of the long hallway, placing her hand on the DEAD. The sound of verification was like an angel's choir.

She turned to face them and stepped to the side, waving them to hurry. "Found it!"

Clover managed to get there before Junpei and quickly verified, then Junpei placed his own hand on the scanner panel. The third asterisk appeared, the third electronic noise sounded, and Junpei hurriedly yanked the lever down. The skull on their bracelet display faded, the ominous warning of the detonator fading into the hungry silence of the ship.

Junpei gasped as he tried to catch his breath. Lotus and Clover also panted, though not as audibly.

"That was...such a long run," Junpei griped.

"You didn't have to do it in heels."

He rolled his eyes at Lotus, who was smirking at him. "And you still...got to the DEAD first."

"I've had practice running in them, obviously."

"Obviously."

Clover remained silent, though the veil of grief had not lifted yet. The adrenaline lightened it a little, her expression less despondent and more angry, but she was still mostly unresponsive. While Lotus and Junpei were trading verbal barbs, she didn't speak.

When she did, her voice was barely audible, her words like globs of molten lead falling from her mouth to the floor. "Let's go."

"Uh, right." Junpei swallowed a lump of guilt and sympathy. "Yeah."

Near the DEAD was a set of large double doors labeled 'Laboratory' leading into what was probably the puzzle room. Clover, without waiting for either Lotus or Junpei, stepped into the laboratory beyond the doors. The two left behind exchanged heavy and pointed looks.

"She's—" Junpei didn't know how to explain his feelings on Clover's behavior. She was grieving for her brother, even if they might meet again. She was worried she might be in danger too. She was...angry and had every right to be.

"I know." Lotus' expression was something new to Junpei. He had seen her be angry and defensive and even manipulative. He had seen Lotus exasperated and delighted and prideful. Now she was...she seemed worried, yes, but something more personal. She looked like a mother watching a child suffering, unable to fix it. "We just have to be patient with her. Even if—"

Even if Snake is dead, she didn't say, but Junpei knew. He was thinking about it too.

He swallowed heavily. "Yeah." They were on the same page here; Clover came first. Together, they entered the laboratory.

What awaited them behind the clinical, almost elevator-esque doors, was something even more clinical. A large metal room, a quarter-circle of it partitioned off by glass and metal walls that made some kind of viewing chamber. Outside of the sectioned-off area is filled with old and chunky computer systems as well as sets of lockers. From where Junpei was standing, he could barely see the inside of the viewing room and what he could see seemed to be more clunky machinery.

"It's some kind of...experiment room?" Junpei wondered as he stared at that section of the laboratory. He moved so he could see into the viewing chamber easier and startled at the sight of a human figure lying on an examination table of some sort. He must have made some kind of startled noise because Clover looked at him. Her expression was still dull and sour but she had reacted.

"...yeah. See the mannequin?" She pointed one finger at the human figure on the examination table. It was, in fact, a mannequin. Its wooden head was riddled with electrodes, the wires leading back to one of the large machines. "It's meant to be like an EEG. They were experimenting on it."

Poor Science Boy.

Where had that thought come from?

"Well, we can't just stand around with our mouths gaping," Lotus clapped her hands once, the sharp noise drawing Junpei and Clover's attention to her. "Split up and start solving."

"Why should I listen to you?" Clover snapped at her. While this was the first time she had expressed any strong emotion since they decided to enter the numbered doors, the vitriol and anger was surprising. Or, no, maybe not. Maybe this was just a long time coming. She had been biting her tongue for almost an hour now. "What did you ever do for me aside from stand in a hallway and clean your nails?"

"I—" Lotus didn't have an answer for her. Of course, she was already aware that she hadn't done much to try and find Snake but it didn't mean she didn't care. Not that Clover knew that, however. To her, Lotus' lack of care in the search was as damning as if she had shoved Snake into a numbered door herself.

"Clover—" Junpei tried to mediate but she was having none of it.

"No, shut the hell up!" Clover turned to snap at him too. She was like an agitated dog, cornered and willing to bite anyone who tried to pity or comfort her. "I don't wanna hear it! She didn't look for Snake, she doesn't care about anyone but herself! I heard you yelling! I know what she wanted to do! If June hadn't told you off you would have taken Seven and—!"

Lotus flinched. Her mouth opened, then closed, as if she was trying to say something but was unable to put it into words. She couldn't refute what Clover was saying. She had wanted to leave everyone behind to leave. She had to be told it wasn't possible on top of being wrong before she dropped it.

And Clover had heard the whole conversation.

"Why the hell should I do anything you say? You probably...and I'll—!" Clover struggled to express herself. Tears gathered in her eyes as she shouted at Lotus. "Stay away from me! If you come near me again I'll—!" Unable to finish her thought, she dashed into the viewing room to put distance between herself and Lotus.

Junpei didn't have time to warn her.

The metal grate slammed down, the portcullis locking her inside the viewing room with Science Boy. She turned on her heel to see what the noise was, fury melting into terror as she realized she was trapped. Finally, she started crying. She slammed herself against the bars and shrieked in horror, choking silent sobs.

"Clover, calm down!" Junpei was the one who moved to comfort her. He reached out to grab her hand through the bars and, as his fingers brushed hers, he could feel how cold they were. She drew back, clutching at her face and hair in fear as she leaned against the wall for support. "Clover. Clover, listen to me, okay? We're going to solve the puzzle here and get you out of there, okay? Just...just calm down. You have to be strong, okay? You're going to get out of there. I promise." He tried to keep his voice from shaking, relying on the weird niggling thought in the back of his head that said it would be okay. He needed to be strong for her. He needed to be calm so she would be calm. If she didn't trust Lotus, she could trust him.

Clover swallowed and nodded, staggering away from the wall to grab Junpei's hand. She was shaking but Junpei squeezed her hand once and held eye contact. He nodded back at her, slowly, and took a breath.

"Can you be our eyes and hands inside there?" He asked. He hoped she couldn't hear how terrified he was, how genuinely not okay he was in this moment. She nodded at him. "Okay. Lotus and I are going to solve the puzzle out here, alright?" She didn't let go of his hand. Her eyes widened and flicked to look at Lotus. She didn't trust Lotus to do anything. Alright. "I'll solve the puzzle out here. Better?" She let go and pulled back. "You can sit down to rest. Don't worry about being too active. I'll call out if I need you to do something. Just...breathe."

Junpei stepped back and looked around their side of the room, heart hammering. Lotus was leaning against a series of lockers, her face pinched with worry. Junpei tilted his head towards what had to be the exit from the room, trying to communicate that he wanted her to go there so they could talk. She picked up what he was saying and made her way over.

Clover wouldn't be able to see them there. Not if she was sitting down on the stairs. They could have a talk while she collected herself.

Lotus radiated guilt. It wasn't too hard to realize that what Clover said had gotten to her. She wasn't wrong, obviously, but it didn't make it easier to hear. Fear made people act selfishly and this place thrived on fear. Lotus had only been more...overt in her selfishness—her fear.

"She doesn't trust me." She kept her voice low so Clover couldn't overhear them.

"She's scared." It wasn't an excuse but—

"I just...are you going to be okay doing everything?" A pivot. She didn't want to talk about it. Understandable.

"Yeah. Not the first time." Junpei didn't want to talk about how, like everything else that had happened today, this room felt eerily familiar. "I'm pretty smart."

"If you get stuck, I'm here." Lotus leaned against the door, obscuring the red light indicating it was locked, and waved her hand at herself. "Just...hurry."

Junpei nodded and walked back towards the center of the room. It was time to solve this puzzle.

None of the machines in the room were responsive. One of the computers—what appeared to be some kind of central control system—needed some kind of key to activate it. That was fine. He could find the key later. The lockers...half of them were locked and the other half contained...some rubbing alcohol?

What the hell could they need rubbing alcohol for?

By the lockers was a computer monitor and keyboard but no computer. When Junpei poked around, he realized the monitor didn't have a cord. Where had he—? Oh! Right. There was a power cord by the central control system. Junpei pocketed the rubbing alcohol and jogged over to grab the power cord. It was a thick, black cord with three prongs which...didn't fit the monitor. "Of course." Junpei sighed and put the cord in another pocket, then moved so he could see Clover sitting down on the stairs. She had stopped crying, her eyes and nose red, and was staring despondently out at Science Boy. Her mouth was pinched and frustrated but a lot of the vitriol was gone. She was tired. They were all tired.

"Hey, Clover?" Even though Junpei tried to be quiet, she jumped. She must have been deep in thought. "Sorry."

She stood up and walked over to the grate. "Yeah?" Her voice was crackly from crying and once again quiet. The fight had left her at last.

"I need you to look around in that room. Can you do that for me?" He didn't want to make her do anything she didn't want to but...if she wanted to escape there—if she wanted to escape the Game—they needed to move. Thankfully, she nodded at him in agreement. "Thank you."

Junpei walked to the viewing window and watched as Clover poked around in the experiment area. She toggled switches on the machinery attached to the electrodes coming out of Science Boy's head but nothing happened. Next to the operating table was a table that had some surgical instruments and something that caught Clover's attention. She peered at it, leaning over the table in a way that made it hard for Junpei to see what she was doing.

"What's up?" Junpei shouted so Clover could hear him.

"There's some kind of...writing? Marker? It's on this table," Clover shouted back. "It's a bit smudged but...I think there's something else written beneath that? Like they covered up something."

"I have some rubbing alcohol if you want to try and remove it?" Junpei held up the bottle so she could see it. "Looks like there's a rag nearby so maybe that's the solution?"

"Yeah...maybe." Clover moved to the grate and Junpei met her there, handing her the bottle of rubbing alcohol. She lingered there for a moment, as if she wanted to ask Junpei something, but chose not to. That was fine. Whenever she was ready. Clover disappeared out of sight and, presumably, scrubbed the table. Then, from somewhere out of sight, she called out, "Do you have something to write with?"

"Yeah, uh, I have a notebook and a pen I found in the third class cabins." Junpei pulled them out of his hoodie pocket and offered them through the grate. Clover took them and disappeared again, then came back with them in her hand. On the paper, she had written down a tic-tac-toe style grid with the numbers one through four in a few grids. "Huh."

"I dunno what that's supposed to mean but..." Clover trailed off.

"Thanks." Junpei gave her a soft smile. "Uh, while you were in there, did you see any power cords? There's a monitor out here but the one I have has the wrong number of prongs."

"Uh...I think one of the machines wasn't plugged in. I can check that?" For all that it was bad they were separated, apparently it was doing wonders for Clover's mood in some ways. She was becoming more talkative, even if it was only in a puzzle solving way.

"Yeah, I'd appreciate it." Junpei followed her this time, walking his way to the viewing window. In his peripheral vision, Lotus was still standing there, concern evident. Junpei gave her a smile to ease her nerves as best he could and tilted his head toward the room, trying to communicate that it was okay. She seemed to pick up on that.

Clover knelt down and struggled with the cord then yelped and fell back on her butt. In her hand was a small black object. When she stood up again and turned to face the viewing window, she brandished the object at Junpei. "It came off!"

"Is it an adapter?" It looked to be the right size.

"Uh...I think so? The one you put things in has three prongs and the one you put into things has two." She frowned at the object.

"Yeah that's what I need." Junpei and Clover met at the grate again and she passed the adapter to him. He slotted it into the prongs of the cable, satisfied that it did its job. "That should let me power up the monitor. Thank you, Clover. You should be good to sit down for a bit. Maybe chat up Science Boy?"

"Science Boy?" Clover blinked at him, put off by what appeared to her as a non sequitur.

"The, uh, mannequin?" Junpei realized he might be blushing. His face felt warm for sure. "I - I named it."

Against all odds, Clover laughed. It wasn't mean-spirited, more startled and delighted. It was nice to hear after...everything.

"Hey!" He couldn't help but feel a little defensive about it. "Don't make fun of Science Boy!"

"I'm not making fun of Science Boy," Clover giggled. He'd take her laughing at him if it meant she was laughing.

"Don't make fun of me either." Junpei huffed, only slightly put off. Hearing her happy, even at his expense, really was wondrous. She deserved happiness. She deserved it all because—

Junpei winced. Clover's laughter trailed off. "Are you—"

"I've been fighting a headache all night," Junpei waved her concern off, not wanting to get into it. "It comes and goes. If I'm lucky, we can leave this room before I hurl. Now go sit down while I mess with this computer. You wanna borrow my notepad?" So you're not bored. She didn't move to sit down so Junpei passed her the notebook and pen after tearing the page Clover wrote on out and stuffing it in his pants pocket. She took it and sat down, immediately scribbling something on the paper, her face screwed in concentration.

Junpei plugged the monitor in and tapped a key on the keyboard. The monitor lit up and a string of numbers and letters scrolled across it in some sort of booting process. From where she was standing behind him, Lotus made a noise of interest. Junpei waved her to come over and she closed distance quickly, leaning over the keyboard to peer at the monitor with a strange intensity.

"You good with computers?" Junpei asked her.

"You could say that." Lotus continued to stare as the characters stopped scrolling and left only a single truncated word and a blinking cursor. "There we go. Password."

"Password?" Junpei stared at the monitor. Computers weren't his forte. All things considered, he was pretty bad with them. But if a computer was asking for a password they didn't have...

"Well the bad news about this is that I don't think we have any way to figure the password out the easy way." Lotus pulled out the chair in front of the monitor and keyboard. "The good news is that I'm here so we don't have to."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Junpei was about to continue asking her what she was on about but suddenly her fingers started flying across the keyboard. The sudden motion startled him into silence. What else was he to say to a woman who could hack. "Ah."

"Like I said," Lotus preened, "You could say I'm good with computers."

"'Good' is an understatement."

"Well it doesn't do anyone any good to brag about this kind of skill." She continued to type as she talked, undeterred by any external stimuli.

"So, what, you're hacking the computer?"

"Close enough. I'm building a program to crack the password. We don't have time to manually try every possible iteration of characters—especially considering we don't know the length of the password—so I'm making the computer do all the work for me. As any good gentleman should for a lady like myself." She was deflecting in a way.

Junpei didn't blame her. He was putting on a brave face too.

Something occurred to him at that moment that he hadn't asked about yet. "Hey, so, this monitor is wireless, right? Same with the keyboard?" Lotus gave him a dry look. "Alright, stupid question. I'll go chat with Clover then. Leave you to it."

"Thank you." It wasn't just for her benefit, really. She wanted him to make sure Clover was alright in the same way that she wanted to crack the password. "I'll call you when it's done."

Junpei walked over to the grate and knocked on it. Clover jumped a little and glared at him, scrubbing away frightened tears. He gave her a moment to collect herself while he listened to Lotus tap away at the keyboard. "How're you doing, Clover?" No response save a flat look. "Fair enough. Lotus is busy cracking the password so I thought I'd come and say hi, since you're all alone."

"It's only been a few minutes." She sniffed.

"Yeah, but still...," Junpei shrugged. "Figured I'd ask since you're in science jail." The withering glare she gave him made him chuckle. "So how have you been spending your time?"

"Math." Probably door math.

"Couldn't be me."

"Yeah, well, it's that or strike up a conversation with Science Boy, which is just sad." She rolled her eyes at him.

"Now you're being mean." Of course, he wasn't upset or anything, but the point remained. "But really: how are you?"

Clover gave it a long period of thought before she answered him. Her expression was rather unreadable, her tone as devoid of emotion as she could make it while sounding conversational. "How do you think?"

Good question. Fair. "I think you're worried about Snake, among other things. You're upset and angry. You have every right to be, of course, but you...trust me for some reason."

"Aren't you some kind of therapist?" She tried to affect bitterness, a sharp edge to her words, but Junpei wasn't buying it.

"I'm just making an educated guess." What else could he do? "I'm scared too, so that's not a reach. If I had a sibling—or if June went missing—I'd be angry too. Angry at Zero, angry at anyone who didn't take my concerns seriously. Worried is a given. I still don't know why you trust me though."

It looked as though Clover was going to answer his question when Lotus let out a triumphant shout. She clammed up immediately and warily looked at where Lotus was sitting. Junpei shook his head in amusement.

"I'll be back. You think you can hold on a little longer?"

Clover snorted and moved back to the stairs. "I'm not nine. I can be patient."

"Alright." With that said, he walked back to Lotus. "Got it?"

She grinned at him and pointed at the monitor, which now displayed a three-by-three grid of squares. "Done and done. Nothing to it."

"If you say so." Junpei peered at the grid. It looked...familiar. More familiar than simple deja vu. Wait, the thing Clover wrote down. He fished the note out of his pants pocket and clicked the squares in the order they were labeled in. One, two, three, four. All nine of them were green. Something to the side clicked.

The other set of lockers—the ones that were lit with red before, indicating they were locked—were now unlocked. Inside were two things: a small metal key marked with the symbol for Earth and a small key for some kind of electronic device. Junpei put the Earth key in his pocket, balled up and tossed the note Clover made, and inserted the second key into the keyhole in the control center. It turned without issue and the monitor on the control center lit up.

"Power restored to experimental device." Junpei read aloud. "Emergency system will activate in the event of abnormal subject behavior." What the hell did 'abnormal subject behavior' even mean? Well, if the control center was on, then that meant the machines in the experiment room should be working. He turned around and rapped his knuckles on the glass of the viewing window. "Clover?"

"What?" Clover stood up quickly and popped into view. She shoved the notebook and pen in her jacket, worried.

"The main control system is on now. Try messing with the machine hooked up to Science Boy again." It felt silly to say that name out loud, where Lotus could hear, but it worked. She moved to the knobs and fiddled with one. Nothing happened.

Her shoulders tensed and she looked back at Junpei through the window. "Nothing! I'm gonna try max voltage!" Before Junpei could warn her against that, she twisted the knob as far as it would go. The electrodes on Science Boy's head sparked dangerously, then caught fire. In fact, all of Science Boy's head caught fire. Clover shrieked.

So did Lotus as the fire alarm in the room shrieked. Through the viewing window, smoke began to obscure everything. Clover ducked down and kept her sleeve in front of her nose and mouth so she didn't inhale too much smoke. Junpei looked at the exits, trying to see if this was considered 'abnormal subject behavior'. Judging by the way the system informed them the emergency system was activated, it was likely.

The lights on the doors—both the one leading out of the room and the one that linked the experiment room to the viewing chamber—were green. Unlocked.

"Clover! The other door!" She looked at him through the glass then her gaze flicked to the door he was talking about. "It's unlocked! Head that way and we'll open it."

Lotus was way ahead of him. She grabbed the doorknob and threw it open, stepping to the side as Clover stumbled out, coughing. It swung closed as Clover got out of the way and Lotus opened the exit, holding the door for her as they filed out one after the other, free to breathe fresh air at last.

[justablah56]

here's probably my most favorite one of these last four drawings, it is soooo beloved to me, so here's a moth that my friend sent me a picture of and told me to make it a furry

[emsiecat]

I am about to reblog SO MUCH Garashir art that I've found and liked whilst scrolling tumblr in my COVID induced haze since last week. Just pre-warning you all, because it's going to be a vertiable reblog avalanche for the next hour or so with no rhyme or reason to my usually quite carefully constructed reblogging/posting style. For this, I apologise!