Nip wasn't the only one awake in the unnatural darkness of the night, but it was easy for him to avoid the others. He blended perfectly into the shadows, and there wasn't even moonlight to gleam from unsheathed claws.
He was the only one left.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Genesis… They may not have seen eye to eye, but she was just as trapped in this situation as he was, and her skills had been a valuable asset.
Fiametta… He didn’t understand everything she said about her situation, but he trusted that she was in just as much danger as the rest of them and deferred to her wisdom.
Jen… The young not-quite-human had been a quiet ally. And when they screwed up and he had to watch them be dragged away under the mysterious surface of this prison, it had struck fear into his heart.
He was a
survivor. He outlasted all his allies. But now, he was alone. And that meant he had to make a decision. He would no longer be able to take a passive role. Tonight, he would have to make a hit to survive.
Who could he take out? The sirfetch’d would survive his attack, and then they would all
know. He was certain he could take the charizard, but the raichu would likely guard him. The raichu would be an easy target but… he was the only one he might be able to turn the crowd against, if he was lucky. Tefiren? He feared he was too clever for him.
Espurr? No. Just… no.
The human. The human was his best target. He seemed weaker, with no claws or special weapons to defend himself with. He would do.
--
The dreams are pretty lucid - more lucid than he thinks his real-world dreams ever have been, not that he usually remembers them. Just the ability to ask a question that makes any fucking sense into the void is not exactly regular dream material. But the people in them are always vague and fuzzy, and entirely silent. This time, just as he's trying to concentrate, a crystal-clear voice speaks behind him.
"Hi."
He jolts and whirls around and finds - she's not even the ghost he was trying to reach this time, but honestly he'll take it. Mia stands there plain as day, half of her face a bloody exit wound, looking disinterestedly at him with her remaining eye.
He looks off to the side. "Jesus, Mia. Can't the fucking afterlife
fix that?"
In his peripheral vision she shrugs.
Dave sighs, hears his voice shaking weirdly. "Christ. Mia, I'm... I'm stuck in this fucking
game. It's the second time and the first time there was something pretending to be
you. There are these, these fucking
things, things that are disappearing people and trapping others in these sick murder games. Maybe you're the lucky one. I mean,
apparently there's a fucking afterlife. What are
any of us still doing here?"
Mia tilts her head, her brow furrowed. "That's stupid."
"Yes, yes, I
know it's stupid as shit, but here you are, so unless you want to tell me you're a fucking hallucination, this is where we're at."
He half-expects her to take him up on that (because it's probably true, really), but she just narrows her eyes at him.
"This doesn't make any sense."
"Yeah, congratulations."
She pauses. "Maybe I can kill you. Then we can see properly how the afterlife works."
Something squirms in his stomach. "Uh, I mean, I doubt that's gonna work. You're a ghost in my fucking dream."
She steps forward and experimentally pokes him in the chest - she's solid. She prods him again for good measure, then grabs his hand and raises her other arm, scythe gleaming. "Hey! Mia, n- hold on." He reaches out to stop her. "Can we just..."
He stops, squeezing her hands.
"What?" she says.
"Just... stop."
She gives him a skeptical squint. Maybe he can distract her with some bullshit. Honestly she'd probably enjoy the puzzle of the game. He could tell her about it. Just stand here and talk for a bit, like old times, until whenever the end of the night tears him back. Maybe two minutes into the explanation she's going to immediately identify all the mafia and look at him like he's a fucking dumbass for not figuring it out. That'd be nice.
But just as he's finishing that thought, he starts to realize that something's wrong. There's a crawling, cold, numb sensation in his feet; he looks down and finds them disintegrating, just fucking dissolving into a glitchy distortion that's creeping up his legs.
"Shit," he mumbles.
It's just some weird fucking dream thing, he thinks, but somehow, he knows it's not. "Oh, fuck."
Mia looks down and tries to pull him away, but it's still there. Of course.
He never even got the fucking answer to his question.
"Nononono. Not now. Not
now! You twisted fucking pieces of shit!" He grits his teeth, staring into the void. "What the
fuck did I ever do to you motherfuckers?"
"There's nobody there," Mia says. And... yeah, she's right. His 'guardian angel' isn't actually here, right now, or at least he hasn't heard its voice. But it's not as if it matters if they hear him, anyway, does it? They don't care and they never fucking will.
"I hope you all get fucking bone cancer, you evil shitheads," he snarls. That horrible numbness has spread past his knees, confused nerve endings firing on all cylinders telling him it's
freezing and he needs to get to warmth and shelter. "Fuck all of you. Why don't you just..."
(Is this what happened to the ones he targeted last time? He'd told himself they were getting out of here, but - that wasn't ever true, was it.)
Mia frowns. "Who are you trying to talk to? They aren't here."
"Ffff... go fuck yourselves, you..."
His stomach's dissolving and he's nauseous and this is fucking pathetic, isn't it, just yelling ineffectually at thin air. Mia probably thinks he's lost it.
"Mia?" he starts. He's not sure what he's going to say to her, but his throat is closing up anyway. She looks at him, suspicious. Before he even knows what's happening, he's pulling her closer, half-collapsing into her arms.
He can practically see the look that must be on Mia's face as he start sobbing uncontrollably, but she holds him anyway, and he holds her tightly, hands clutching her bloodstained shirt, as the coldness takes him.
Dave (Dragonfree) has been eliminated. He was innocent.
Meanwhile, Tefiren huddled in his latest hiding place, hating the Archopy-sized empty space he could feel next to him. Every single hiding place he'd made here - he'd had a different one each night, of course - had been the size of
two Archopy, not one. And he'd only just noticed that fact tonight.
He grumbled to himself, trying to will the space to close in and get smaller. It wouldn't. He tried to will it to fill up instead - if he could make things happen just by thinking in this world, then he
should be able to just think Forsira into being there next to him, like she always should have been. But that wouldn't happen either. This world refused to give her back, or to let him out of here, until he either won or lost this stupid game.
His injured crest leaves stung as they pressed against the roof of his enclosure, and it irritated him. This whole game here was supposed to be
just battling - he'd figured that out himself today, and the voice that followed him around had said as much. The mafia - not Them - only vanished people. Just like fainting. No real loss at all.
But he couldn't get rid of the sound of that Raichu's attack roaring in his ears, the way he'd felt in that moment: realising
he'd messed up, he'd let his guard down, if it'd been Them he'd have been--
The wounds in his leaves were healing, but for now, the stinging pain was still there, constantly reminding him of the
stupid mistake he'd normally have never been able to afford.
Idly, he morphed his front wing leaves into glowing blades, and then back again, blades and back again, trying to distract himself from the pain. But each time he did, he felt a familiar tingle of sharpness along their edges.
Not just battling, not for everyone. Maybe the mafia thought that, but apparently the Raichu didn't. No-one had ever
said it was just battling, so there was no reason to follow that rule.
It shouldn't have mattered, should it? The game would end tomorrow, anyway. They'd all come out, someone else would have been vanished (not Tefiren; his hiding places were far too clever for anyone to find him), and then they'd all vote to get rid of the black weasel, the only one left it could possibly be, not for clever reasons but for
boring reasons. That stupid voice might even take over and do the vote for him. That same voice had voted for him
both times they'd actually got rid of a mafia, as if Tefiren was no good at this game and didn't even need to be here. As if all
he'd done in this game was waste his tricks, be wrong about the one thing he'd figured out by himself, and let his guard down like a moron.
No. He was better at this game than that. He was better at
every game than that.
The voice followed him around during the day, but it went away at night. It wasn't here right now. Tefiren could be the one to win this game, tonight,
by himself. And the sooner the better, right? The sooner this game ended, the sooner he'd see Forsira again.
Stealthily - there was no way he was letting his guard down, not
ever again - Tefiren crept out of his hiding place and dashed across the bare ground. The holes in his wing leaves stung in the cold air, but that wasn't enough to stop him from taking off silently into the treeless night sky. Even with his poor night vision, it wouldn't be hard to find where the black weasel was hiding. Everyone in this game but him was so
stupid when it came to choosing good hiding places.
Just to test it, he swiped one of his wings mid-flight and felt the satisfying swish of an air blade shooting towards the ground below, without a sound.
His trick, that he'd figured out all by himself. Usually he used it to fend off Them during his many daring escapes - but it could be more than that. He could use it to attack from a distance, unexpectedly, so his enemy would never see it coming.
He'd never even thought to use his air blades like this before, not in his
real game - but then, that was because They lived on the other side of the island in such great numbers that it'd obviously be foolish to even try. But here, when his enemy was isolated and alone? When the
point of the game was to catch the enemy, and not just escape them? There was no reason not to.
There was
no reason not to.
Tefiren was going to get back to his own game and see Forsira again, using
his tricks. Because he
didn't lose. Not at
any game, not
ever.
He was going to
win, like always.
--
In his haste, distracted by what he had to do, Nip forgot to watch his back.
As he turned away from Dave’s shelter, he tripped, biting back an alarmed cry. And when he tried to push himself up, his front paw began to sink into the ground. Alarmed, he whipped his head around, and caught sight of a figure in the darkness. Tefiren.
“You really are the smart one, aren’t you?” he growled, struggling, managing to pull his paw free. Not that it did much good. As he had twisted and flipped and struggled to pull it out, it had only hastened the sinking, and it was already up to his waist.
“So, this is the way it’s going to be, is it?” He shouted into the darkness. “You’ll turn on me because that’s the only way you can ‘win.’ I was only doing what I had to, to survive, don’t you understand? Maybe some of your innocent friends were alright staying here, flinging distrust at each other until no one was left, content to avoid taking action. But some of us would like to be
free. Some of us had reasons to fight!”
He tried to drag himself forward, but only succeeded in getting his arms stuck.
“I only did what I had to! I’m sick of suffering because of the inaction of others, and I won’t take it anymore!”
Nip was almost fully submerged now, having to tilt his head up to suck in the air for just a bit longer. The feeling of the strange material was uncomfortable, though not painful. Would he be able to breathe once he was pulled under? Or would he drown, as if in water? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to find out. He didn’t want to die.
He didn’t want to die.
The last thing he managed to say was, “I hope Yveltal curses you all,” before succumbing, and all that was left where Nip once stood was a ripple of red.
Nip (windskull) has been eliminated. He was Mafia.
The Innocents win!
(( Various portions of this post were written by windskull, Dragonfree, and elyvorg! ))
