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You're not saying Ellery recorded all of that. You're extrapolating. And he was way too early to catch the whole genre of "ripping out your own spine" dreams, not to mention this new snake shit. If it even was snake shit. If you even were dreaming, and didn't wake up just because. (It's not like you were screaming.) Actually, now that you're thinking about it, can you— can you dream inside a dream mansion? Does that make any sense? Should you have actually been listening to Ellery every time he rambled on about things he knew perfectly well you gave no shits about? How are you bringing up Ellery twice in 30 seconds? He's fucking dead to you! You're sick in the head, Madrigal, or more than likely it's 4 AM and you're bleary and you need to lay back down pronto. It's still dark. Just lay back down and don't think about the past or the future or tight spaces or ripping your own spine out or your ex-boyfriend. Or any ex-boyfriend. Just lay...

...

Fuck! What the fuck are you doing? You jolt up again and pound your fist into your thigh to keep yourself awake. Then you scramble off the sofa and stand, arms crossed, in your bare feet on what should be the ice-cold tile. To your unflesh it is eerily neutral. Fine! You don't care about the fucking tile. You have been lazy.

Yeah. Face it. You've been lazy. Going back to sleep? When you didn't mean to go to sleep in the first place? When you're fucking kidnapped? And most importantly— when you've accomplished nothing? Nothing. Let's count. You buttered up a mentally deficient slime-man who proceeded to (badly) manipulate you, then vanished inexplicably. You buttered up your captor, Pat, then threw a tantrum like a bitch and undid all your progress. And you got pretty good at that most fucking useful of life skills, reforming yourself out of a puddle. So you could get under a mystery door, which might contain nothing, and which you haven't even bothered going under yet. That's it. You've thieved nothing, busted into nowhere, discovered nothing of any note except that Pat's fucked the slime-man. One of the slime-men. Oh, and there's maybe a door out in the basement, wherever the fuck that is, and it's fucking locked to Pat specifically so ha ha ha fuck you. Get experimented on. Get released after a week or longer as a blessed fucking act of charity. Madrigal fucking Fitzpatrick, charity case!

(2/4)

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Sure, you can generate excuses. You're great at that. Your brain is cooked from being stuck in a snake. Your brain is cooked from being stuck in a slime mold. You're stressed. You don't know how any of this dream shit works. You don't want to get Pat so pissed she sticks you back in the snake. It's only been two full days. Blah blah blah blah— horseshit! Fuck all that! That's the girl in you talking. The fact is, you should've been out of here by now. It's that simple. Should've been out by this point, should've been able to make Pat watch as you strolled right out the fucking door, should've been able to knock the unctuous pity off straight off her face— should've been able to bend Pat over and ream her in the ass, basically. And by basically you mean metaphorically. (Fucking 4 AM.) Well, unless the freaky shape-changing stuff means she can— no, you can't even entertain this for kicks. Nasty. You're fucking dreaming, anyhow.

...Huh. You're dreaming. But are you dreaming? You've long noticed that your dreaming self is way wussier than you are— you'd never wake yourself up crying or screaming. (You can't remember the last time you've legitimately cried.) But that's the real you. And you're acting awfully wussy. Is the real Madrigal sleeping? Like, unconscious? Are you her half-baked made-up understudy?

You fucking hope so. That'd be a relief. (And not an excuse: an explanation. Fuck you.) You're just going to accept that as fact, you think, and— wow! Look at you, handling this 'lame fake double' thing with approximately infinitely more sense and maturity than Ellery ever—

God, you need to get fucking moving: standing here is doing bad, bad things to you, whoever you are. You have a mystery door. You have a giant tank of water on wheels. You have, in theory, some skill in rapidly un-puddling yourself. You may possibly be a figment of your own imagination, but that doesn't seem to fucking stop anybody, does it? You're going, and you're doing this: no complaints, no take-backs. None of that shit at all.

-

So you go, and you do that. You realize pretty quick that you practiced a shit-ton of un-puddling but basically zero puddling, and also that wheeling a big unlidded tank of water down a narrow hallway would be loud and splashy and immediately obvious to any observers. And you're possibly congenitally wussy, so you do care about this. The good news is, you figure that puddling is basically just un-puddling in reverse, and that you can soak yourself in the tank and still retain enough integrity to shamble over to STORAGE. Granted, you do fall on your face in front of the door. But also granted, you want to be on the ground anyhow.

(3/4)

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You have to re-re-re-re-remind yourself that this is all a dream before you can actually gun for it, though. Which is not a complaint or a take-back, just a necessary step. Because even with that reminder, the process (if it can be called that) is disgusting, with your skin sticking and thinning and ripping and spilling you over the uncold tile. You are blind. All you can do is will yourself forward and hope to god 'forward' is where you think it is, because you are going to be truly fucking pissed if you put in all this fucking effort just to reconstitute yourself three feet to the left.

You're greatly relieved when you heave yourself upward into a darker, damper space, and even more relieved when you flail around against the wall long enough to find a light switch. You're less than pleased to see the door blockage, though. It's nothing simple: no shelf in the way, no wad of gum in the lock, nothing. Why would it be? Why would it be anything except a motherfucking pulsating flesh tendril plastered against the doorframe?

>[Your GRIT is: High]

That's not the only flesh tendril, either. The shit is everywhere: creeping along the floor, coiling up the wire shelves, spilling out of— that must be the source, the floor drain. You haven't been noticed yet, if indeed flesh tendrils can notice. Zero reaction. They're all pointed toward a few shelves in the back, the ones stacked with gunnysacks. Stacked with Lester Food?

There's a lot of other shit on the shelves, too, but you're too rattled to take it all in. It's not a huge room, and it's not decorated at all. The only other notable thing you can spot, halfway hidden behind a big wad of flesh, is a square opening in the wall. With a shelf in it, or some shit, hung by a... cable. A dumbwaiter. To transport things between storage and whatever lies under storage— the basement, maybe. Or wherever these tendrils come from. Or both.

Excellent. Fan-fucking-tastic. A lead! And if you actually normal, actually sane, you'd be squishing yourself straight into there and figuring out where it went. But you're neither and your palms sweat even in comparatively spacious tight spaces and right now just the vague prospect of entering the dumbwaiter makes you want to hurl. Fuck!

>[1] Get the fuck over yourself and use the dumbwaiter. [----Grit]
>[2] Ignore the stupid fucking dumbwaiter and see what shit Pat has stashed in here. Steal it. (What kind of thing are you looking for? Write-in.) [+Item(s)]
>[3] Why did Lester Six want you to go in here? Did he know about the tendrils? Investigate in more detail and hope to hell you don't piss anything off.
>[4] Get the fuck out and go bang on Pat's door. Inform her that her storeroom is infested with horrific fleshy stuff. Either she'll appreciate it, and you'll get kudos, or she won't, and you'll at least look like an honest sort. [+Pat's Trust, Pat wakes up]
>[5] Write-in.

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>Announcements
Welcome back to Drowned Quest Redux! Thread 30, wew. I know I said last time that I'd run extra long, but this time I really do intend on running long, or at least until this dual plotline comes to a conclusion. I don't want the POV switching to overstay its welcome.

Also, I might have something special to post later in the thread. We'll see.

>Schedule
One a day, occasionally more if the first one was short. There may be sporadic half-updates (no options) if I start writing too late in the evening, sorry in advance. I am in the PST timezone.

>Dice
We use a 3d100 roll over degrees of success system with crits. The base DC is 50. Modifiers may be applied to the roll or to the DC as relevant. The # of rolls that match or exceed the DC determine the result. Probabilities may be found in the Dice and Mechanics pastebin.

The degrees are:
0 Passes = Failure
1 Pass = Mitigated Success
2 Passes = Success
3 Passes = Enhanced Success
0/100 = Critical Failure / Critical Success [regardless of other rolls]

>Mechanics
The MC has a pool of 13 Identity ("ID"), which may be considered both HP and the measure of her current sense of self. It may be lost through physical, metaphysical, or emotional damage. It may be regained through write-ins, designated options, and at reasonable narrative points, including sleep. It may be spent on a flat +10 bonus to rolls, as well as on more elaborate metaphysical effects. Dropping to 0 ID is bad.

>Archive
https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=drowned%20quest%20redux

>Twitter
https://twitter.com/BathicQM

>Pastebins
https://pastebin.com/u/BathicQM

>Ask the characters (or the QM), get a drawn response
https://curiouscat.live/BathicQM

>"Redux"?
This quest is a loose sequel to the original Drowned Quest, which ran for eight short threads in 2019. Reading the original may help with context in very early Redux threads, but ultimately is not required.

>I have a question/comment/concern?
Tell me!

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>LAST TIME ON DROWNED QUEST REDUX

Your expedition to rescue Madrigal has gone awry, as you and Gil have found yourselves stuck in a recreation of a religious festival 200 years ago. Separated from the rest of your party, the two of you set off to rehydrate your shrink-dried worm Annie. Then you discover that the sacred waterfall has an 8-hour line.

You send most of Gil off to go stand in the line while you and the rest of Gil investigate the volunteer tents set up by the "liaisons" of the sea gods. To Gil's consternation, you can barely fight the compulsion to murder one of the liaisons, instead invoking the divine 'red stuff' inside you to ultra-commune with him. You wind up underneath(?) the goo ocean, where you have a surprisingly civil and pleasant conversation with "Us," a hivemind of several thousand people who drowned and were rendered into goo. Us tells you that the the festival is a comforting "dream" created from their collective memories, and that you're free to stay or go from it, provided you don't disturb anything. You awaken back inside the "dream" and find Gil missing.

As (most of) Gil, you're pissy about having to stand in line, and have gone off instead to get your divine blessing permanently extracted. You accidentally have a spiritual awakening instead.

As Madrigal, you are very wet and very bemused when Lester Six attempts to trick you into opening the mysteriously blocked STORAGE door. You work on learning how to work your goo body, which pleases Pat. She opens up about her situation-- she's under death threats from the inhuman(?) Management, who also kidnapped the real Lester. You're unsympathetic and blow up on her when she proposes experimenting on you to get the goo snake done faster. Pat gives you the cold shoulder the rest of the night, and you pass out on the couch.

Back as Charlotte, you find Gil, then find... Gil, who is acting all weird and uppity. He magycks you, causing you to cough up what looks awfully like a dead Richard-snake, then prompts you to admit to the whole ritual murder fiasco. He's confused about why you're so upset about it, Richard being Richard, but hugs you supportively when you start ugly crying. You calm down in time to spot a plume of smoke rising from elsewhere in the festival.

Your investigation of the smoke is stopped by some random guy. Pissed off by his audacity, you're overtaken by the red stuff and twist him into being your (and the Wyrm's) mindless servant. You don't snap out of it after, forcing Gil to tackle and magyck you. You commune with the "dream" and convince it the fire-- the *real* fire, almost certainly set by Lucky-- is totally normal and sensical. This works, and you're warped across the festival: you've been arrested on suspect of starting the fire, and Lucky is your interrogator. You snap him out of it, then go find Arledge. Finally reunited, the four of you attempt to rehydrate Annie... except that somebody's been murdered atop the sacred waterfall!

>TO-DO for Charlotte (Completed goals and solved mysteries: https://pastebin.com/3Q3nPDis)

Immediate goals:
- Rehydrate Annie the worm
- Avoid or neutralize the arsonist/murderer/Wyrm cultist(?)
- Power up the door in the temple

Short-term goals:
- Use, extract, or otherwise deal with the Wyrm stuff you got going on
- Work with Gil to break into Ellery's manse
- AS MADRIGAL: Escape Pat's manse

Long-term goals:
- Rescue Madrigal
- Procure permanent, non-melting body for Gil
- Cure your [SUNSTROKE]
- Regain your missing memories (...if possible)
- Find the Gold-Masked Person and their snake; reclaim the Crown
- In the meantime, continue collecting and storing Law (4/16)
- Make friends??? More friends? You don't know if Gil counts now

Mysteries:
- Who or what drove Ellery into self-imposed exile?
- Who or what is Namway Co. and Headspace Corp.'s “Management”? What did they want with the clone of a snake?
- What kind of company(?) did Richard work for? What is its endgame? What does it want with you?
- What was Richard actually like, behind the whole... dad thing?
- What is the meaning of Jesse's spiral tattoo?
- Who is Horse Face investigating, and why?
- Who is the Gold-Masked Person? Why did they want your Crown? Where are they now?
- Why is Ellery going around assassinating people?
- Why was Henry going on like you knew the all the cult GS already?
- Okay, seriously, why is everybody talking about the apocalypse now?
- Is Richard actually dead?

Ongoing assignments:
- Inform Eloise (and the Wind Court?) about anything you discover about Namway Co
- Escort Eloise to Hell (...maybe)

--

Don't forget to scroll up and vote!

>>5478752
>>[2] Ignore the stupid fucking dumbwaiter and see what shit Pat has stashed in here. Steal it. (What kind of thing are you looking for? Write-in.) [+Item(s)]

Some keys or a disguise of sorts would do nicely. That, and perhaps a weapon.

Also welcome back!

>[5] Write-in.

These tendrils are clearly very hungry, seeing how they had the gaul to bloom from it's comfy environment out into this quite drab store. Not to mention most seem to be reaching for the food shelves.

Perhaps giving them a hand with the food could appease them? If Pat complains, then you can blame it on the pest as they were going for it anyways, but if they are satiated, who knows, they might clear the way... or kill you for a more protein rich diet.

Also you should probably look for a tool of some kind on the shelves while you're at it like a wrench in case you do get stuck and need leverage later down the line. You can always return it... hopefully :)

>>5478752
>>5479094
Yes, I also want to feed the tendrils Lester food. What could possibly go wrong?

>>5478764
Thanks for running. I would love to play but holy fuck am I sick and my head hurts too much too think.

>>5479128
Got fantastic news for you, anon, I'll be updating all month. Catch up when you feel better (and feel better soon)!

supporting
>[5] Write-in.

feeeed the tendrils

>>5479094
>>5479126
>>5479261
>[5]

>>5478800
>[2]

Called for the write-in, but you're going to need to find a pointy object to get the sacks open anyhow. Writing.

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>FEEEED ME SEYMOUR

Alright, alright, easy dumbwaiter solution: don't look at the fucking thing. Turn your back on it. There. Better already.

Of course, turning this direction puts a particularly fat crop of flesh tendrils right in your line of sight, so it's not that much of an improvement. Whatever. At least you've gotten over the shock of them— you'll overcome the steady disgust soon enough. It's not like doing anything to you, or anything at all except pulsating gently.

Your actual problem is that they still blanket the exit door, and you've wrung yourself fairly dry: you're not sure you can repeat the puddling trick a second time in a row. And you're not prying the fucking things off with your bare hands, so— a tool. A weapon. Something slicey or stabby or both. There's got to be something in all this shit, right?

-

Well, yeah. There is. You find it nigh-immediately, because the shelves are neatly sorted, alphabetized and hand-labeled. (You knew Pat was a crazy bitch.) It's all the better, because none of the shit on them makes sense: there's M for Mail (moldering salt-smelling envelopes) near M for Mugs (all chipped, none matching); K for Keys (a big bin, different styles— surely not for these doors?) below C for Currency (everything: loose chit, worn-through bills, barter rounds, even one or two pre-Flood conchs) and a whole shelf of C for Clothing. Which— what the fuck? Why didn't she give you any of this shit instead of a jumpsuit? Why does she have an entire shelf of clothes in the storeroom and not her bedroom? Is she a fucking hoarder? They're all nicely folded and for various sizes and sexes.

You're not in need of Mail or Mugs or Keys or Currency or Clothing, though: you beeline for T-for-Tools. (You're enormously tempted by W-for-Weapons, particularly the several[!] fully intact harpoon guns, but you figure getting caught with one of those would be curtains. Tools you can talk your way out of.) It's a weird assortment— no surprise, you guess— consisting mainly of light, handheld thingamabobs: no heavy wrenches or mallets or anything. The only hammer in the bin looks built for shoes, or some shit. You fish around and come up triumphantly with a sturdy-looking paint scraper. The edge isn't razor-sharp, but the tendrils won't need that. And it's small enough to secrete down your top, or maybe even into your arm. Score.

You make to pivot (away from the dumbwaiter) toward the door, but nearly trip over an inconvenient tendril. "Shit," you mumble, and lift your gaze directly to the shelves of Lester Food— and the half-dozen tendrils looped uselessly around the sacks.

(1/2)

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Okay, you have no strategic aim here. You're fucking curious, alright? Wouldn't anybody be curious? That's why you pick your way over to the back shelving and tug one of the sacks up and gash it open with the corner of the paint scraper. You cough as the contents pouf out: it's a fine grey-white powder, like somebody mixed flour with dustpan scrapings. It smells smoky.

The nearest tendril twitches, and you jerk your arm away reflexively. Then you stare. "Hello?"

No response. (Thank god. You think you'd stab the shit on reflex if it started talking.) "Do you eat this shit too?"

Nothing. You take a tiny pinch of Lester Food and sprinkle it onto the tendril. It twitches again, but the Food stays where it is— doesn't get absorbed or anything. Huh. Then why is so much of the stuff trying to—

Fuck! It's water-soluble. That's what Pat said, she dissolves it in... there's no water in here, but you do have a big tank outside. Not that you'd dump a dozen fucking sacks of Lester Food into your water tank and feed that to the flesh tendrils. That'd be stupid as shit. It's 4 fucking AM, and you probably slept like hell, and you're not— there's no way you'd—

Right?

>[1] Yeah. No way. But while there's no *proper* water source in here, there is the shallow puddle you wrung out of you— enough to wet a palmful of Lester Food, which is enough to test the effects. That's all you need to sate your curiosity.
>[2] Find a bucket (under B for Buckets or whatever), fill it, and dump one sack of Lester Food in. Feed that to the tendrils. Make something *happen.*
>[3] FUCK IT. Drag the water tank down the hallway, dump ALL the Lester Food in, and pour the entire fucking thing down the drain. Make *SOMETHING* happen. [...*SOMETHING* will happen.]
>[4] Forget it. Go do something else. (Dumbwaiter? Investigation? Something else? Write-in.)
>[5] Write-in.

i was so excited about [2] and we can probably talk our way out of that one. on the other hand

>[3] FUCK IT.

i NEED to know what something will happen

>>5479917
>[2] Find a bucket (under B for Buckets or whatever), fill it, and dump one sack of Lester Food in. Feed that to the tendrils. Make something *happen.*
I've long learned not to press big red buttons. Only small ones.

>>5479917
>[1] Yeah. No way. But while there's no *proper* water source in here, there is the shallow puddle you wrung out of you— enough to wet a palmful of Lester Food, which is enough to test the effects. That's all you need to sate your curiosity.

We van always escalate after testing if we think it's useful. Also plausible deniability for how it happened if we choose not to.

Look how spookily organized Pat is. She'll definitely notice anything large scale like moving a bucket unless we put it back *exactly*. Plus cleaning up the feed.

>>5479917
>[2] Find a bucket (under B for Buckets or whatever), fill it, and dump one sack of Lester Food in. Feed that to the tendrils. Make something *happen.*
reasonable middle ground

>>5479917
>>[3] FUCK IT. Drag the water tank down the hallway, dump ALL the Lester Food in, and pour the entire fucking thing down the drain. Make *SOMETHING* happen. [...*SOMETHING* will happen.]

>[2] Find a pail (under P for Pails or whatever), fill it, and dump one sack of Lester Food in. Feed that to the tendrils. Make something *happen.*

Sorry guys but we aren't charolette so we have to be sensible, even if it means not going down the extremist route

>>5479941
>>5480226
>>5480552
>[2]

>>5480496
>>5479920
>[3]

>>5480198
>[1]

[2] narrowly takes it, but I've spent so long considering what to write for [3] that I may end up making a "what if" bin for it at some point. We'll see.

Writing.

>Sanest woman you know

You spend an uncomfortable amount of time staring blankly at the back wall before you jolt and blink. Shit! Were you considering it? Were you actually considering— no! No, you're not fucking feeding the— the— you are not risking your fucking neck to— it's not like you care about Pat, but you care about not being shot on sight, and— you don't even know what the fuck it'd be good for, it could be good for nothing, it could get you eaten by a fucking flesh abomination, there is zero reason to— to— to—!

Fucking breathe! What is wrong with you! Breathe. Calm down. You are a grown-ass woman fully capable of weighing your courses of action. You're not drunk. You're not incandescently pissed. You're a little sleepy, maybe, but there is a wide fucking gulf between sleepy and mentally fucking defective. You've never been mentally defective in your dreams before, right? (Probably?) So breathe. There was never any chance of you doing something so ludicrously pointless and reckless and stupid. Never. Your common sense is intact.

(You want to believe this very badly. That there was never any chance. That you were never even considering it: when you were staring at the wall you were staring at the wall, not some some sickening maddening void. That there is something fundamentally different between you and the kind of person who'd force-feed a flesh thing on impulse. You're trying not to name names. You're failing. Alright: that there's something fundamentally different between you and the Ellerys of the world. And the Charlottes, when you think about it.)

It's intact. It's intact. Which is why, sensibly speaking, you'd wet a little bit of Lester Food and try that out. See if it even does anything. And you could go from there. You're not doing that, though: you're running your hand along J for Jewelry and I for IDs all the way until— shit. There's no B for Bucket. You search around in Clothing instead until you locate a wide rubbery raincoat, then sling that over your shoulder.

You're going to do a sack. One sack. It is not, necessarily speaking, sensible. But deep down you feel like you have to make a compromise— have to stave off the whatever-it-is that wants to see the world burn. That's what grown-ass adults do, make compromises. And it's not like anybody's watching to judge.

So you painstakingly scrape the tendrils off the doorframe (they plop to the ground unharmed, their underbellies veiny and blueish) and rattle the handle and retreat to I for IDs and jigger the lock until it clicks for you. And you slink out with the raincoat. You walk softly barefoot to the lobby and the water tank and scale the stepstool and inflate the raincoat with water, then tie it into a bundle. You slink back, your payload sloshing. You try not to think about you sloshing earlier.

(1/3)

Three different tendrils are probing the gashed-open sack by the time you return. You bat them off, scoop up the sack, and through complex positioning of knees and elbows and grabbing a sleeve in your teeth manage to pour its contents into the water-laden raincoat without spilling. (Much.) The Lester Food dissolves readily, but there's more of it than there is water, and after stirring with the paint scraper you're left with gloopy grey-white sludge.

Whatever. Not your problem. You scoop up out a glob with the scraper and plop it onto the nearest tendril. It shivers and curls up on itself, as if tasting the glob— then unfurls and shoots out around your ankle.

"Hi... buddy," you say. "I'm just trying to—"

There's a series of squelching sounds. Every tendril is pointed directly at you. You sigh. "The shit's right here, alright? It's for you guys. You can come and get it."

Can the tendrils understand you? Or were they just taking a moment to sniff out the situation? Either way, they peel off the walls and shelves and snake toward the raincoat with surprising agility. You hold it open as they coil against each other, fighting viciously for access. The tendrils that've planted themselves the firmest are swelling and contracting rhythmically— drinking?

Maybe. When you say 'swelling and contracting,' though, you mean more swelling than contracting: the central tendrils are thickening substantially, while the unlucky outer ones are wilting and twining along them. They're merging together, you realize, into a single flabby tentacle. (You've been released, at least. You step back.) The tentacle is hairy and pore-spackled and is easily as big as you are around, if not larger. It contracts one more time, lazily, and withdraws from the emptied raincoat. It sizes you up.

Alright, you don't know that. It hasn't sprouted eyes or anything. But it seems more alert than the individual tendrils did, if not intelligent, and it's standing itself up to match you. You crouch and it curls.

"Uh," you say. "You're welcome?"

>[++LESTER(S)'S TRUST: Maximum]

The tentacle is cold and sticky as it winds around you, and you have to clutch the paint scraper tightly to keep from doing any stabbing. But it unwinds after a moment without incident and plaps you on the shoulder and plaps onto the ground. And again: shoulder, ground.

You process. "I should... go down?"

It touches your knee twice. (..."Yes"? "No"?) Then it whips backward, finds the drain, winds up, and smashes it open. Chunks of tile spray out. The metal drain itself flies off, rolls under a shelf, and totters to a halt.

(2/3)

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There's little tile chips embedded in the tentacle now, which it doesn't seem to mind. (It's not bleeding or anything.) It 'stands up' again in front of you and pulsates hard and—

"Hello?" Pat, unmistakably. Must be from down the hallway. She sounds bleary. "Is somebody—?"

Shit!

>[1] Shit. You need to hide. And there is fucking *nothing* in here except the— except the— FUCKING SUCK IT UP and stick yourself in the dumbwaiter. [----Grit]
>[2] The hole where the drain was is large enough to fit yourself down. You don't particularly like holes, but there's always the chance it'll open into somewhere wider. Or somewhere worse. Who knows? [-? Grit]
>[3] Step out into the hallway and fess up. You can talk your way out of this... right? (Write-in your genius explanation for trespassing/feeding tentacles.) [+?/-? Pat's Trust depending on the explanation's level of genius.]
>[4] Write-in.

>>5480945
>[2] The hole where the drain was is large enough to fit yourself down. You don't particularly like holes, but there's always the chance it'll open into somewhere wider. Or somewhere worse. Who knows? [-? Grit]
But close the door first, if it's open. Remove any trace of us having been here.

>>5480945
>[2] The hole where the drain was is large enough to fit yourself down. You don't particularly like holes, but there's always the chance it'll open into somewhere wider. Or somewhere worse. Who knows? [-? Grit]

Make this goo body work for us!

>>5480945
>2
Even with hours I cannot think of a way to explain this to Pat

>>5480945
>>[2] The hole where the drain was is large enough to fit yourself down. You don't particularly like holes, but there's always the chance it'll open into somewhere wider. Or somewhere worse. Who knows? [-? Grit]

>>5480978
>>5481264
>>5481407
>>5481572
>[2]

Writing.

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>GTFO

Shit, shit, shit. If you'd submitted to the experimenting, really gotten Pat in a good mood, maybe you could've skated by with this. But last she saw you she was ticked off, and that was before you busted into an off-limits room and pilfered a scraper and fed the fucking flesh tendrils— there's no way she doesn't know about the flesh tendrils, right? They don't look new, and she fucking lives here. And there's no way she wants you to know about them, or she would've mentioned them at literally any point.

And it broke the drain. Four strikes. If you were a little less stressed or a little more creative you could probably bluff some gullshit about being sleepwalking or mind-controlled or whatnot but you're blanking hard on specifics and there's footsteps, now. The door's closed. No way you can clean up the water in the hallway, that's a lost cause, but you can dart forward at least to slam the light switch off and—

—as you do, the hall light comes on. It's just barely enough to see by, which is just barely enough to stop you from registering that you're now locked in a tight and windowless box. Or maybe it's just that you're not in a body that can cramp or sweat or itch. Breathe! You're not safe yet. Pat can still stroll in and catch you red-handed, whether you crouch uselessly behind a shelf or not. If you're committing to this— and do you have a choice?— there is exactly one option. You're trying not to look at it.

It doesn't make much of a difference, practically speaking, between being trapped in a big box or a little box. You know this. In your head you know this. But your neck is not turning and your feet are not moving and in the other part of your head you're running through 50 million insane what-if-I-get-stuck, what-if-I-starve-there, what-if-Pat-snaps-the-cord, what-if-I'm-cube-shaped-forever scenarios. You need somebody to take you by the shoulders and give you a good shake and a hard slap. You need this more than anything else in the fucking world. But there's nobody here, and you can't fucking split yourself in two like a worm or a starfish, and you don't have an evil ghost or your own common sense walking around to help. You have a tentacle.

...Can the tentacle... no! It can't. (Why would it? Fucking hell.) It's stopped doing whatever it was going to do and is instead jamming itself down the drainhole: you grasp your wrist and watch numbly until it goes. And then you're alone in the mostly-dark and the footsteps are ever-louder and the door handle rattles and—

(1/3?)

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You realized after some time that it wasn't your door. She was opening some other door near yours. Whoops. In the interim, you were pumped full of so much shaky fear-juice that you probably could've leapt clean into the dumbwaiter. But the drain-hole was closer, and in the split-second you were thinking you figured maybe it'd open up somewhere wider. It really was a split-second. If you'd had any longer, you would've considered where drains usually go, but instead you hurtle feet-first directly into a pipe.

It's big for a pipe, granted, and its walls have been battered even bigger by the retreating tentacle. It's still not big enough for you. Shit shit shit shit. You try to pry yourself out as silently and rapidly as possible, but the handle rattles— your handle rattles— and you, as a grown-ass woman, weigh your courses of action. Either you get caught looking like the guiltiest motherfucker that ever lived, or you jam yourself down the fucking pipe.

You opt for the latter. You'll spare the details (or you really will hurl), but hey. Put it this way. It's the kind of thing that made you understand why you woke up that night screaming.

>[Your GRIT is: Slightly Low]

The pipe is downward-sloping, and after a little while you realize why: it's busted. It dangles open above that sort of sickening maddening void you were chatting about earlier. Being roughly tube-shaped, you have little recourse but to slip down and down and out and you are glad for it— nah, you are motherfucking ecstatic. Because it's not a tube. Even if you die, you're not going to fucking die in a tube.

You are falling, though. It's been a long fucking time since you've fallen a long way— there's not many opportunities underwater, and those you've had have never been worth taking. (Breaking your neck is still a kill, last you checked.) Last time was— yeah. Last time was you making them walk you backwards off the plank, maintaining direct eye contact with the bastard in the back. To intimidate him, and so you didn't have to look at the crowd— you'd already looked at the crowd. No Ashley, no anybody. Figured. They prodded you to the edge and asked for last words and you flipped them the double bird because you couldn't think of shit. You held that all the way down, along with your breath so you wouldn't scream. Or it'd wind up in the papers. You hit the water like a double-stack of cinderblocks.

You don't scream, or Pat would hear. And you're not sure you're sufficiently constituted to scream. You do hit the ground like a double-stack of cinderblocks, though, and go everywhere.

-

(2/3)

You're not dead. So that's something. You don't even hurt. It's more humiliating than anything else, scraping yourself back together, remolding into something at least bipedal. (You're fucking lucky you practiced this.) It smells mildewy down here, wherever here is, and it's fucking dark. Why wouldn't be fucking dark? Your one saving grace is that you think you reformed your eyes too big. Like you've got fucking dinner-plate squid eyes, you mean. (Well, okay. Not that big. Almost.) You're comfortable with this for as long as you can go without spotting Pat or a mirror, because it means you can see okay.

And what you can see are flesh tendrils. And flesh tentacles. All the flesh things, really. (It doesn't seem so bad now, after the pipe.) They're all attached to the great fleshy blob oozing in the metal half-tank in the room's center. And you do mean 'great.' The thing's not house-sized, but it's big as a large shed or small bedroom. You can't tell if it has a face. It does have little hairy vestigial limbs waving around., though. You shake out your own flipper limbs until they thin into fingers, then reach down to prod a fat tentacle. "Hey... pal. Still me. Madrigal? I fed you?"

It must be able to understand you... or it just reacts to the sound of your voice. Whatever. The tentacle you touched lifts and sways and pulsates like it was doing before and to your considerable surprise morphs into the exact form of Lester Six. Just the end of the tentacle, you mean. The rest is still tentacle, and the blob thing is still a blob— but Lester Six dangles before you. Beneath his face his mouth flaps open.

"Hi sweetheart."

>[1] Reactions? Questions?? (Write-in.)

Also, I managed to procrastinate on writing via updating the character pastebin. Here's your bimonthly reminder that the character pastebin exists and contains lots of useful information about pretty much every single person that's ever shown up: https://pastebin.com/4ZHiLzv4

>>5481974
>[1] Which Lester are you?

>>5481974
hey bud uh you know uh any way out of here?

>>5482023
>>5482232
Writing.

>Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeey buddy

You shift your stance. "...How's it hanging?"

"Its hanging darling its hanging. Hanging even better now with some beautiful company." The Lester-tentacle twitches toward you. "It gets lonely down here dont you know?"

Its speech pattern isn't human, still, but it's close. Much more coherent than the garbled Lester Six, even though that is Lester Six right there. Or was? You don't fucking know. "Yeah, yeah, I'd imagine. Pat doesn't send a whole lot of beautiful company your way?"

"That possessive bitch?" The central blob quivers in what you have to assume is amusement. "She doesnt have any hot friends to send me anyways. Or any fuck ugly friends either. Keep telling her shes going to die alone but—"

Your composure weakens, briefly. "What the fuck for?"

"Well it keeps her productive. Anyways babygirl its nice to have you here in my pad sorry its a bit of a mess right now. Can I get you anything?"

"A beer?" A joke.

"Hmm let me take a look around." All the non-Lester tentacles and tendrils go patting about for the clearly nonexistent beer. "Yeah I think I got some."

You watch silently as one of the tendrils flails behind the half-tank, out of sight, and flails back curled around a shiny and unopened bottle of nonexistent beer. It transfers it into Lester Six's hands, and you take it from there. Looks like beer, feels like beer, but no. You refuse. There is no fucking way there happened to be— to be— play it cool, alright? You're dreaming. Try and remember you're dreaming. You clutch the dream-beer gingerly between your thumb and pointer finger and try and look Lester Six in the eyes. "Thanks, bud. Real cool of you. You're rocking that, uh, that look, by the way."

"What look, honeybear?"

Shit. You can't just call it a flesh blob. "The— the hair, you know. I like what you did with it. Looks real different from the last time I saw you."

"You mean my shitwad dupes? Of course they couldnt come anywhere close to imitating me. But thank you cutie Ill take the ego boost."

You jiggle the dream-beer compulsively. "...You mean to say you're Lester? The original one?"

"Oh yeah babe Lester Number One. The real deal. Never topped never even came close. Could tell just from looking at me huh."

Something like that. Except that Pat told you the real Lester was kidnapped. And you thought you remembered meeting a Lester briefly— you and Richard— and he was a guy, not a flesh blob. Be patient. "Yeah, shit, bang on. You really stand out. So you manage Namway all by yourself?"

The Lester-tentacle sways. "Well I used to until that backstabbing cunt stuck me in here. Barely feeds me. Wont even let me fuck her anymore the frigid bitch. Wont even let me leave..."

"Leave your pad?" you say.

(1/2)

"Yeah thats it. I try and get out when I can but its not too easy with this setup. Im sure you can relate cant you. She got you too?"

"Yup."

"Tough shit tough shit. You know I feel like something has to be done doesnt it? Sometimes some people cant get out of a situation all by themselves... they need to work together? Need to... partner up? If you know what I mean?"

Yeah, you know what it means.

>[1] Partner up. You don't exactly have a lot of allies, and Pat has to be on the hunt by now. You can find out the details after. [This will lock you onto the LESTER route of escape.]
>[2] Decline. It's a fucking flesh thing. What is it going to do for you? Is it even safe to let it out of here? It's not like it can follow you— leave and explore wherever you are now. (---Lester(s)'s Trust)
>[3] Write-in.

>>5482956
>>[1] Partner up. You don't exactly have a lot of allies, and Pat has to be on the hunt by now. You can find out the details after. [This will lock you onto the LESTER route of escape.]

>>5482956
>[1] Partner up. You don't exactly have a lot of allies, and Pat has to be on the hunt by now. You can find out the details after. [This will lock you onto the LESTER route of escape.]
we're pretty much softlocked already

>>5482956
> Lie

Tell him we'll partner up, but soak him for info first. Get to know the lay of the land as it were, what's he tried so far.

After all, we can tell he's clearly a mover and shaker, a Player not a pawn. But game recognizes game, and we ain't looking to get Played capisce?

>>5482956
>>5483557
We can talk and escape at the same time. I guess I missed the "no time for details" whoops. Fuck it lets go.

>>5483560
Yeah-- while you don't know for sure if Pat is tracking you down (she may have just turned around and gone back to bed), I don't think Madrigal would feel comfortable staying too long in one spot. You can and will pump as much information out of Lester One as possible, though.

I'll also note that partnering up doesn't make you emotionally tied to the guy, so you're free to use him for all he's worth then betray/abandon/discard him afterward like Charlotte did to Pat :^). The only thing routelocking does is indicate that *this* is how you plan on getting out of here.

>>5483577
Pat retroactively deserved it

>>5483583
None of this ever would've happened if you had just gotten her a new snake like you promised!

>>5483588
Charlotte didn't do anything wrong, it was just low on her priority of sidequests!

>>5483593
I'm pretty sure we did just decide to forget about doing it, like if we stumbled across a new snake by chance lucky us otherwise oh well.

>>5483593
>>5483630
What anon said: the sidequest had an 3-day timer on it, and you guys actively voted in Thread 9 to ditch it rather than find a snake in 3 days (i.e. by coercing it out of Madrigal's leg). It was a choice, not negligence. To be specific you actually voted to turn Pat in to the Wind Court, which you didn't get around to because you got stabbed and Richard possessed you... but which would not have helped Pat's mood even if you did.

>>5483732
Basically our problem as Charlotte is we don't commit.

>>5483307
>>5483327
>>5483560
>[1]
Writing.

>>5483879
I wouldn't necessarily put it like that, because that implies that it's a consistent thing-- you have followed through with a lot of stuff, like helping Gil out. (Which is why he likes you now.) The takeaway should be that your mouth shouldn't write checks your ass can't cash, or alternately that you shouldn't renege on deals with extremely shady mad scientists.

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Well, I thought I could update real quick after coming back from a banger concert, but I... could not. Fortunately, tomorrow is pretty free, so please expect a daytime update on top of the usually scheduled one. My apologies.

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>[ROUTELOCKED]

You've met the real Lester (or at least a way better copy of him), and he was an unlikable douche. This Lester is not only an unlikable douche but a disgusting monster thing. You have approximately zero desire to talk to or look at it ever again, much less shack up with it. In either sense.

But you've dealt with your fair share of unlikable douches, and you don't put your personal qualms over practical matters if you care about keeping your job. Fact is, you're not exactly rolling in allies. And the thing seems to sincerely like you, or at least your tits and ass. (Whatever works.) You believe it when it says it wants to escape together. How is it going to help you do that? You don't know— it looks pretty damn tank-bound. But surely it knows some stuff. Maybe it has fucking hidden depths. Who cares? Maybe you can use it as a meat-shield when Pat turns up brandishing a gun at you.

That works. "I gotcha, pal," you say, spit on your palm, and stick your hand out. The Lester-tentacle scoots closer, so you grab its wobbly arm and pump vigorously. "Deal's a deal. We'll get out of this dump, both of us."

Well, you will: whether it escapes or not is none of your business. Maybe it'll be convenient, maybe it won't be. It's not like it can tell your smile's glib. "So, partner... what do you know?"

---

>[SOMEWHERE ELSE]

You are Charlotte Fawkins. After tracking down the remaining members of your rescue party, you, Gil, Arledge, and Lucky have finally made it through the gate to the sacred Temple Falls... only to discover a corpse polluting the water.

Gil has begged off and retreated, claiming that his glasses were misting over. Arledge has tied a scarf around his nose and mouth. Lucky, taking no such precautions, has scrambled up the slick rocks and is bent over the corpse. "Woman," he reports. "Mid-late twenties. Wrists slashed, throat slashed, eyes cut out... wounds look recent. I estimate within the last half hour. We may presume this is the murder weapon."

He wraps a tissue around his hand and slides the knife from the corpse's back. "Nice weapon. Looks specially made. Skin around the entry point is puckered and discolored, blade has tarry residue— I'd guess poison. I'd further guess that accounts for the excessive bleeding."

"Or he could've asked me about it." Arledge's hands are clasped tightly behind his back. "Of course it's poison. It's a premonition."

You're hunched over and staring into the red water. "Of?" ("JUDGMENT COMES," the message on the wall screams.) "Oh. ...Of judgment?"

"Of the end of the world, yes. I suppose you know how the Flood happened."

Obviously. "The dumb gods up and died and royally screwed—"

"That's propaganda. They were betrayed and murdered by mankind. Can you guess how?"

You narrow your eyes.

"They were stabbed with poisoned blades and hemorrhaged." Arledge runs a thumb along the wall. "Gods have a lot of blood. Eight of them together have more than you can fathom."

"Uh-huh." You would rather not hear this. "Very cool. So what'd happen if I drank this?"

He doesn't miss a beat. "I can't say I have a lot of experience drinking desecrated water. I'd imagine nothing pleasant, for most. For you I can't say."

"Because I'm special?" (You approve.) "Well, I probably won't drink it. I'm just thinking about Annie..."

"You could describe it as 'special.' The worm?" He turns toward you. "You don't want to—"

"I have to revive her somehow! And it's still water." The SEA-VIPER® lays still in your pocket.

"It's desecrated. Worms are absorbent. You'd be infusing it with—"

"Power? Like we need to open the stupid door? I don't see the issue." You pluck a twig off the ground and toss it into the roiling water. "Unless you have a better—"

"I don't see why the worm needs to be 'revived.'" Lucky has reappeared, murder weapon in hand. "As I see it, we're all better off without an irrational thirty-foot man-eating creature in our midst. Has it died?"

"She's not thirty feet," you say defensively. "And no, she's just dehydrated, but—"

"So it'll return good as new when we're out of hell? Glad to hear it. No need to rush this along." Lucky checks a nonexistent wristwatch. "Speaking of getting out of hell, I doubt any of us are in immediate danger. I strongly suspect it's a single assailant using trickery or stealth. At least one of us is a capable combatant. If we stick together I foresee no issue, so I recommend we proceed as previously—"

"The woman needs to be laid to rest," Arledge says.

"The fictional woman, Mr. Graves? Or, if we're to believe Ms. Fawkins, the already dead woman? I'm all for pomp and ceremony, but not when—"

"She was killed dishonorably for evil purposes. I find it hard to believe—" He looks hard at you. "—that the day was intended to proceed like this. It's the least that can be done."

"The least that can be done is nothing, Mr. Graves. How long will this take?"

Arledge's makeshift mask crinkles. "It depends on if we also purify the waterfall."

"Long." Lucky spreads his hand. "I rest my case. Ms. Fawkins...?"

(Choices next.)

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>[You are at 1/? SV.]

>[A1] Arledge is right: you should give the woman some kind of funeral. It's the right thing to do, and more importantly it should placate Us for a while longer. [Time will pass.]
>[A2] Arledge is right: you should do the funeral, and also let him and the other liaisons purify the waterfall. So you can revive Annie without infecting her with anything. [More time will pass.]
>[A3] Lucky is right: the longer you stall, the more likely the arsonist/murderer will cause trouble elsewhere. You need to strike out and stop them before this escalates further.
>[A4] Lucky is right: you need to get out of here as fast as possible. Start scavenging for the supplies you need to hook Annie up to the door— Gil mentioned "jumpy cables"?
>[A5] Write-in.

(The [B]s are optional.)
>[B1] Hydrate Annie the worm in the desecrated water. [Annie will emerge changed. As MASTER and PREDATOR, you will retain control over her.]
>[B2] Drink some gross blood water. [Regain SV, for all that entails.]
>[B3] Write-in.

>>5484753
>[A3] Lucky is right: the longer you stall, the more likely the arsonist/murderer will cause trouble elsewhere. You need to strike out and stop them before this escalates further.

It would be bad to spend time holding a funeral and then when we're done we find out we need to hold another one. Gotta go for the cause before the symptoms here.

>B3
Neither, SV is nasty and Annie existing will do more to destabilize this place than a hundred murders.

I don't like the idea of calling this update (particularly the [B]s) on a single vote, so I'll be letting this one go overnight unless something changes in the next 15 min or so. Have a great evening, folks.

>>5484753
>a3
>b1
>b2

>>5484753
>[A3] Lucky is right: the longer you stall, the more likely the arsonist/murderer will cause trouble elsewhere. You need to strike out and stop them before this escalates further.
>[B2] Drink some gross blood water. [Regain SV, for all that entails.]
Giving Annie the water might have consequences like accelerating whatever's going on. And who wouldn't want a little god juice, given the chance (and an assurance it wouldn't turn them inside-out).

>>5484753
A1, B1, B2.

Remind Lucky that we're the good guys, and the delay to put the woman to rest is minimal.

As for Annie, she is a force multiplier and an important member of the team who we tamed at great personal cost and we can guarantee no man eating will occur without our approval.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>5484809
>>5485232
>>5485243
>[A3]

>>5485253
>[A1]

>>5485232
>>5485253
>[B1]

>>5485232
>>5485243
>>5485253
>[B2]

>>5484809
>>5485243
>[No B1]

>>5484809
>[No B2]

Wow, you guys came through. Called for [A3], [B2], and flipping between no [B1] and [B1] in that order. Writing soon.

>>5485286
>[B1]
You guys are going balls to the wall. Still writing soon.

>>5484809
>Annie existing will do more to destabilize this place than a hundred murders
Since [B1] won: not necessarily, since it's not like you smuggled her in: she got incorporated into the "dream" same as everybody else. Rehydrating her, even in the cursed blood pool, is totally logical (and even something Claudia would plausibly do, for whatever that's worth). What's going to affect the place is what you do with her afterwards.

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>God mode

You hate to agree with Lucky, but it's not as though Arledge is much better. "Yeah, we can't twiddle our thumbs! What if the guy murders somebody else while the funeral's happening? Then we'll have to have two funerals, and then the guy can kill two more people, and we'll have to have four funerals, and—"

"Got the picture," Arledge says shortly. "But I'm not so sure about that. This wasn't indiscriminate— this was to make a point. And with the point wholly made..."

"Then he could make two points!" you counter. "And then four points, and eight points—"

Lucky raises his hand. "Ms. Fawkins agrees. That's two to one, Mr. Graves."

"Gil hasn't given his input," Arledge says.

"Mr. Wallace has voluntarily removed himself from the proceedings. If he would've liked to give his input, he could have joined us. Now, as far as leaving goes—"

First off: Mr. Wallace? Where'd Lucky pick up the last name? (Is it part of his special security person knowledge?) Second: "Hold on, I never said we were leaving yet! Don't we have to stop the murderer first? So he doesn't go around... murdering more people? That's what I said? Was I not—"

Lucky's face sets. "The fictional murderer, Ms. Fawkins?"

"Y- yes?" Is he complaining? "It's your entire job! I mean, both of your entire jobs! Out of here and in—"

"My entire job," Lucky says coolly, "is to defend ordinary people from the forces of the unnatural. Not to defend the forces of the unnatural from the forces of the unnatural."

"These are ordinary people, Dib. As I understand it they just happen to be—"

"Dead? I'm aware. Life after death is unnatural, Arledge, and furthermore the deceased should not take precedence over a living person in danger. Or have you forgotten about Ms. Fitzpatrick? The entire purpose for—?"

"We're under time dilation. It won't make a practical difference." Arledge folds his arms. "Your cruelty is as needless as usual."

"My cruelty?"

Lucky has hunched and darkened, a little, and you skitter out in front of him before Arledge trips any more warning flags. (You've had plenty of experience with Richard in that regard.) "Ahem! So it sounds like it's a two-one again— right? Arledge? You think we should arrest the dastardly killer?"

"If a funeral is off the table, I have no qualms with that."

You nod vigorously. "Yup, two-one! And it's basically 2.5-.5, since you were investigating the body up there anyhow, Lucky—"

"I was determining if there was any threat posed to us," Lucky says. "There was not. That does not constitute my support of—"

"Basically 2.5-.5. And really 3.5-.5, since Gil always agrees with me, and 4.5-.5 if we throw Annie in there, and that rounds up to five, and bam! It's unanimous! I love it." You clap your hands together. "If only Annie were here to see..."

"Don't," Arledge says firmly.

(1/3?)

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"For once in my lifetime I concur with Mr. Graves." Lucky folds his arms. "What value is the worm intended to add?"

"What value? She's a critical team member! She's our moral support, basically, our— our conscience, our beating heart—"

"The worm."

"And our mascot! She's our mascot! She—" Nobody's convinced. "It just really sucks to see her shrink-dried, alright? She's probably really embarrassed—"

"The worm."

They don't get it. Neither of them get it. And of course they don't: they don't have the boundless noble spirit necessary to tap into the true feelings of worms. "I'd make sure she didn't eat anybody...?"

"We should get going," Lucky says, and Arledge nods. They look at you. You look back.

This continues until you lose: it's two to one, after all. You kick the dirt. "Fine. I can revive her later."

"Later and somewhere else," Arledge says. "This place will be fouled for a long time. But yes, we should go."

So you go. Or, well, they go— you trail behind, growing increasingly petulant. They don't get it. That's the long and short of the matter. They don't get it, and they don't get you, and they're treating you like you're some kind of peer with some kind of stupid-ass equal vote instead of the rightful leader of this expedition. If you want to revive Annie, you should get to revive Annie! If Gil weren't sulking outside you'd be tied in the matter, you're sure of it. If Annie got her God-given vote, it'd be three-two. That's a majority! So you're being cheated, basically, you're—

Arledge has passed through the gate ahead of you, and Lucky's already out. You get an idea. A good idea? You have no idea. (There is nobody to judge you.) But certainly a fair idea, a just idea, a real honest stick-it-to-them idea. If Gil were with you you'd reconsider. He is outside.

They're both well through the gate now. You step forward rapidly, grab the bars of the gate, and slam it shut hard. The snake around your neck constricts, and the lock of the gate clicks.

"Charlotte?" says Arledge, and "Ms. Fawkins," says Lucky, and somewhere from behind the wall comes a "Lottie!"

"Just a minute!" You shake your hair back and re-approach the edge of the pool, pausing to examine your reflection. You knew it wouldn't be yours, but it's one thing to know and another to see your mirror-self's too-sharp chin, too-thin brows, too-narrow eyes. You have no beauty mark and altogether too much eye makeup, though a lot of it is smeared down your cheeks. You pull a face, and the reflection follows along. You pull another. You hook your fingers into the corners of your lips and pull and in the reflection expose rows and rows of needle teeth and stare. You feel with your tongue: normal, human.

(2/3?)

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And from behind the gate Arledge says "Don't drink the water," and maybe it's spite (okay: definitely it's spite) but maybe also you want to disrupt the mirror surface. So you dip your hands in and scoop. It's cold like water. Thin like water. Bright ruby red still. Not the worst thing you've drunk— not even the worst thing you've drunk today. You funnel it down your throat.

Tastes like water— maybe a little metallic. Nothing special. To make extra sure Arledge was watching, you take a second scoop and drink, then rub your dripping hands on your slacks and start rummaging around in your pockets. You can't remember which one you stashed the SEA-VIP—

Your teeth crack open. Down the middle. All of them at once. It can't actually be that loud, but amplified in your skull it's like a gunshot. They crack open again, after a second, into quarters. Tiny chips of enamel litter your tongue. Then again, mechanically. Your gums are throbbing. Your teeth-splinters are grinding together, shaving off even more shards as your mouth rearranges itself. It must be according to some grand plan somewhere, from the synchronicity. It wasn't in yours.

You cough automatically as it grinds to a halt, spewing out a hail of tooth-shards. Your mouth is raw and from the taste of it bleeding, but it doesn't hurt much. You grimace at your reflection and it grimaces back sharply. Sorry, Claudia.

And if it ended there you could've lived with it. Your teeth have been sharpened before. (Although you were anesthetized the last time.) It's just that after you grimace, you cough again, and that's where it goes to hell: either the water is expelled down to meet the red-stuff-in-hiding, or the stuff is launched up from your spleen or toes or wherever. The specifics don't matter. The key point is that they meet somewhere around your midsection, and it's from there that the red stuff takes root and unfurls around your organs and spirals around your spine like a beanpole and sends exploratory shoots up your arms and down your legs and you swear you swear you swear you can see something literally under your skin, growing, but what is there to say to that? When your throat is full of roses? You sway back down to your knees and plant your hands in the mud which is calming, if nothing else. Mud's still there. Inside it's hot spring and you are sweating and shaking and flowering heavily and your nostrils are full of blood and rot. You are staring directly down at the SEA-VIPER® which has fallen out of your pocket into the mud.

Annie, you think vaguely, and reach down with fat fingers and lift the package to your mouth and bite directly through the clamshell enclosure. Annie falls into your hand pale and grey, in striking contrast to your brilliant scarlet, and you find space in yourself for pity. You let her tumble into the lapping edge of the pool.

(3/4)

File: redness 3.jpg (69 KB, 564x846)

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And as Annie blooms you come to fruit. You are ripe. You are ecstatic. You are bowed under the weight until your nose touches dirt, but still you gaze up to watch Annie swell and flex like a violin string. The pool is shrinking away from you: she is absorbing it. Her proportions are changing, becoming lither and more angular. Her jaws are changing, becoming sharper, whiter, set permanently straight. (She won't hunt like she used to. She won't need to.) Her color is changing, too. She is reddening like you are.

You are abundant. You are unsure what to do with yourself. You can't stand like this. You can hardly move. You guess you should think things through: either you can expand, grow like you're meant to, strengthen to carry the weight— or you can unload this somehow. You would like the former. Your purpose is the former. But something is [Stop!] something is holding [What are you doing!] something is holding you [Do you really want to go all giant-lizard-thing with Lucky right there to murder you?!] back. You blink. A shadow falls upon you.

Annie is big. Annie is really big. More than you remembered her being. And there is no more waterfall, only a cliff. She lowers her head to you and rotates it and snaps her jaws as long as you are open and bites you gently, affectionately, in two.

...

Not into two pieces, though it might've looked that way, from all the red stuff pouring from you. It's possible you alone knew it was only pulp. You are set back down, again gently, and you straighten: you are juiced.

Stuff still remains in you, more than before. It pools around your ankles. But at least it's liquid, and not... yeah. Well.

>[+3 SV: 4/?]

You pat Annie on her hardened exterior. There is screaming somewhere, and yelling closer. Something about the gate. Something about Lottie. Something about the end times. You pat Annie some more.

And then the gate bangs open (was it locked that tightly?) and Gil leads the pack of maybe twenty-five blue-robed people plus Lucky plus a smaller band of security types into the little enclosure. As much as they can fit, at least. They're mostly armed. Some of them look at you. Most of them look at Annie, who sways patiently.

>[1] Write-in? (Optional. Real choices in the morning.)

I wonder what was your motivation for drinking the water, anons.

>>5485600
Obviously greet them as you climb aboard your loyal steed.

Someone cried about end times? Excellent, that's specifically what we are all about. Stopping. We're all about stopping the end times, to be clear, not about the end times or stopping separately.

Also probably nobody should drink the water.

>>5485612
You expect us to dunk annie in it without checking it first?

>>5485600
>[1] Ah, crud. Quickly set about rationalizing so all this makes logical sense in the dream. (Like you did with the fire.) If it gets you away from two dozen pointy objects, all the better. [Roll.]
>[2] Uh... cash in your favor with Us and wake the crowd up. This might play better if you can explain it to the source.
>[3] What can they do to you? You are invincible. Your hide is iron. Stand here until they get tired and go home. [-1 SV]
>[4] Attempt to calm everybody down with, uh, words and stuff. (Write-in.) [Difficult roll unless your argument is really good.]
>[5] Write-in.


>>5485612
Seemed pretty healthy and enjoyable to me! And now you can bite things better again!

>>5485815
>as you climb aboard your loyal steed
Might need a stepladder. You'll figure something out.

>Also probably nobody should drink the water.
Fortunately(?), all the water has been absorbed.

>>5485936
>[2] Uh... cash in your favor with Us and wake the crowd up. This might play better if you can explain it to the source.

I guess we're trying to evacuate and stop disturbing the place asap?

>>5485936
>[1] Ah, crud. Quickly set about rationalizing so all this makes logical sense in the dream. (Like you did with the fire.) If it gets you away from two dozen pointy objects, all the better. [Roll.]

>>5485936
>[1] Ah, crud. Quickly set about rationalizing so all this makes logical sense in the dream. (Like you did with the fire.) If it gets you away from two dozen pointy objects, all the better. [Roll.]
Any option in Drowned where there are options with and without rolling, it's always smarter to pick the ones with dice.

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>>5485953
>>5485988
>[1]

>>5485950
>[2]

>>5485815
>[4] (effectively)

Called for [1]. I need dice.

>Please roll me 3 1d100s + 9 (+10 Narrative Convenience, +5 Existing Rapport, +3 Claudia, +1 Red Stuff, -10 All Eyes on You) vs. DC 65 (+15 Hard Sell) to smooth over the narrative!

Spend 1 ID for +10 to all rolls? You are at 7/13 ID.
>[1] Y
>[2] N

Rolled 26 + 9 (1d100 + 9)

>>5486280
>Y

Rolled 83 + 9 (1d100 + 9)

>>5486280

>>5486280
Y

File: more red stuff.png (251 KB, 708x661)

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Rolled 77 + 9 (1d100 + 9)

>>5486280
Rolling.

>>5486282
>>5486284
>>5486419
>45, 102, 96 vs. DC 65 -- Success
>Spendy

You're going places. Writing.

File: annie 2.0.png (600 KB, 587x773)

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>Choose Your Own Adventure
>45, 102, 96 vs. DC 65 — Success
>Spendy

Arledge was probably right: things weren't supposed to go like this. Arson? Murder? The end times? It was a nice festival. People were happy here. And then you barged in and— and it's not that you've disrupted it exactly, you haven't, you've really been trying not to, but it's been disrupted around you. In your wake. And now you're here: a worm, a force seething in you, an angry crowd, and no more waterfall.

So goes part of you. The talkative part. The irritating part, to be frank. The bulk of you, squeezed blissfully dry, is content to stand here and continue to pat Annie. People are saying things at you, Gil in particular. You nod politely. Annie indicates in your mind that she is hungry (presumably from all the exertion), so you nudge Gil away from you so you can scan the crowd. Nobody's immediately edible-looking. One of the wimpier security guards, maybe. Annie rears up and over the crowd to do her own scan, and this innocent action throws up further screams and yells and at least five (you count them) guns thrust at your chest. And one beaten-up cleaver. Gil's hand is glowing.

"LOTTIE!" he says, as if from a cave or underwater or somewhere. "YOU HAVE TO—!"

But you have ceased to hear because your throat and your pupils are constricting and your blood is hot in your ears and you are thinking about how easy it'd be to kill him, not with your own hands, but by Annie bending over and snapping him up. What could he possibly do to stop that? What could any of them do? They'd be gone. You chuckle at the thought of that. All that noise, and then pure blessed—

You don't want to murder people! You don't! Not even if Annie does it! Unless they really really deserved it, but nobody here really really deserves it— Lucky only really deserves it. Murdering people is what got you into this mess. Murdering people is not an accidental in-your-wake disruption, it's an big fat active— also, it's wrong! Your moral code might account for a lot of things, but cold-blooded murder isn't in there! And why are you thinking about doing it to Gil again? Why does it hate him so much? You don't hate Gil and you don't want him to be eaten and you're beating your fists against the wall trying to say so trying to work your mouth to say so and you are finding zero purchase. You are deadened to yourself.

(1/TBC)

And nobody is around to— nobody— quit with the cowardice! Richard's corpse is around your neck and it's been a long time and he hasn't come back. If he were here this never would've happened. He would've helped you. Because that was his job. He would've been pissy about it and he would've probably taken you over himself but at least he had the decency to talk to you when he did that. So it wasn't just you and the darkness. And at least you felt it was possible to reason with him: not easy, not common, but if you worked out his weak points and twisted the knife he could—

It occurs to you that you haven't really worked anything out here. You've just been complaining. Do you know that other-you is unreasonable? Isn't she still you, just... icy and bloodless and locked off? (Annie did snap you in half. Maybe too hard.) You think she hears you, you're pretty sure. She called you irritating. And you're calling her a nasty evil snake-whore, so you're even now, but aside from that you—

You've been doing a lot of talking. You don't know how you lived like this. The enormous majority is vapid nonsense, which is consistent with what's being spewed outside your head— multiple people are touching you now, and trying to touch Annie— though you are of superior make, so there's a couple gems. At least you're complimentary of yourself. Yes, you are intelligent. Yes, you are of sound judgment. You know. Yes, you are important. You know that too. You're right, you do wish you got a little more recognition. Annie knows. But these, the masses— they're not bowing or fawning. Yes. You look at them with newfound disgust.

Yes, of course. (The wheedling little voice is making excellent points.) The principal problem with this place was the democracy of it. Every little useless person with their own useless story. No focus. Of course it crumbled. Yes, of course you should be at the center of it. This is demeaning to you. This entire situation. Yes, you should remove yourself promptly. It's nonsensical for you to be here. Unsatisfying. Anticlimatic.

Yes, you're capable of this. It is nothing to you. You already are the center of events: the events just don't know it yet. You do not need to kneel and speak to the dirt to establish this. Ridiculous. You are the heroine— reality's fabric warps subtly around you. (Destiny's burden has a gravitational pull.) The world is open for the taking. So center yourself. Feel your weight. And take it.

>[-1 ID: 6/13]

*

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*

You are not Claudia Fawkins, and neither are you C.R. Fawkins. You may have gone by those names once, even recently, but you have shed both like a skin. You have and need no replacement. There is you, and there is the power in you, and there is Maurice.

Maurice. The one with the mustache. You fail to remember where you got him, only that he's a festival coordinator— gods know how he got there, because his allegiances are red as yours. He set the fire. You killed the Liaison. You make a good pair, except for when he questions you.

"That's the worm?" He's not even bothering to hide the contempt.

You have it in a shoebox. It's about the size of your forearm. "It gets bigger."

"When?"

"When I want it to." You had to get used to the control at first. Now you can't imagine living without it. "You'll see when it happens. Can we go? It's not going to be empty up there for long."

Maurice rises begrudgingly from his squat against a tree. "You're always in a hurry."

You permit yourself a slight smile. (They've gotten much rarer, ever since the teeth changed.) "Listen... world's not going to end itself, is it?"

—

>[TO BE CONTINUED during the day if I can manage it!! check back later]

>>5486537
This is NOT the way I wanted the events rationalized.

>>5486537

Things are getting very spicy... spicy indeed...

>>5486578
well we did vote for more red stuff, the murder our dad for power red stuff, it was gonna be something like this

Continuation still coming, but I may or may not update again tonight. It's taking a lot of time and I still gotta take care of RL stuff. (It's regular update-sized.)

>>5486578
I'm sure it's not how Charlotte wanted those events rationalized either :-)

>>5486537
Just why

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>Continued

"And could you tell me what exactly you saw, Mr. Wallace? In as much detail as possible. Anything could be relevant."

"Um," you say. Your ears ring. "Uh, gimme a—"

"Sir?"

"Gimme a second!" You are Gil Wallace— you don't even have to think about it. Two seconds ago you were staring Not Lottie in her dead shark eyes. Then she reached out and... shit! And did something, the same something she did earlier, with the fire. You'd bet your ass. Because here you are (here Teddy is) outside in the clearing with no cleaver and no deathworm and some clown with a notebook in your face. Wait. You know the clown.

"Hey, Lucky," you say. "Snap out of it."

"Sir, please answer the question. This could be—"

"Lucky, it's Gil Wallace. We're rescuing that lady together? Madrigal?" Nothing. You sigh out your nose. "...I'm the bug guy?"

Lucky's face contorts as you demonstrate your bug-guy credentials. "Sir," he says a little nervously. "Sir— you're advised to cease—"

A couple hours ago, this kind of reaction would've set you off on a humiliating downward spiral, culminating in you huddling against the wall while Charlotte patted your shoulder gingerly. Right now, it's just kind of funny. "Shit," you say. "Is there a law on the books against this? Anti-beetle statute? Sorry about that. Guess I'll just, uh..."

You have nothing to bribe with, unless Lucky wants a roll of fishing twine, a couple empty jars, a pack of cigarettes, a matchbook, or a cleaver that smells powerfully of fish. Damn. You change tacks. "...Well, listen. If you snap out of it right now, I won't make my bugs crawl all over your face. And I won't let them burrow up your ears and nose and stuff. They like doing that." (No they don't. You wouldn't go up Lucky's goddamn nose if he were paying you. But he doesn't have to know that.) "So what about it?"

He's not really responding: he has those glassy halfway-state eyes. If you slapped him that'd just about push him over, but also if you slapped him he'd whoop your ass— Teddy's actually taller than him, which is incredible, but you have zero instincts for a brawl. (And it would be a brawl. The guy's got it out for you.) Yelling at him would draw attention. Leaving him here will piss Lottie off, whenever she exists again. If she exists again. You calculate. You calculate some more.

And then you raise your arm and point, which is strictly unnecessary for your purposes but looks pretty cool. You follow your own lead and propel maybe a third of yourself (buzzing, cartwheeling) into Lucky's face.

You barely make purchase— your fingers curl instinctively— before a great dark shape comes down on you. "Ow!" you say, out of reflex more than pain, and scatter widely. Lucky brushes his face off with his arm. "Keep your filthy bugs off me."

"...Lucky?"

(1/5)

He wipes his hand on his pants and stares balefully up at you. Lucky. "It's neither humorous nor clever. Where is Leftenant Fawkins?"

"Huh?"

"Harrier-Leftenant Fawkins. Charlotte Fawkins. Your—" He makes air quotes. "—'friend.'"

How the hell should you know? And what happened to 'gee, thanks for rescuing me from infinity as some dead guy?' Why did Lottie invite this dickhead? You just don't understand her. "I dunno, where's Arledge? I think things got all jumbled up again—"

"Thank you, Mr. Wallace, as if that needed to be said. I see you are conveniently unaffected."

You're not even sure what he's insinuating. That you're "unnatural"? (Okay.) That you're in cahoots with Lottie? (To accomplish what?) You think maybe, possibly, he's just being a dickhead. "Yeah. So do you want to split up? I can look for Lottie, you can look for— oh, wait, no, I think he's right over there." There's a Liaison guy with a fucked-up face busy conferring with the other ones. "Gimme a sec, alright?"

It's not like Lucky can stop you, so he just presses his lips together and turns his attention to the notebook. You speedwalk across the clearing, cast eerily in the early evening light. The gate to the waterfall is cordoned off, though you still don't hear any waterfall. No sign of a worm. No sign of Lottie. When you get to Arledge it's the same as before: just tapping his shoulder and grabbing his hand and letting the light skewer through you.

He flinches exactly how he did before, and you take a step back. He presses his palm to his forehead. "Again?"

"Uh," you say. "Yeah. She just... uh..."

"Made her escape." Arledge clasps his hands behind his back. "Of course. How is it that somebody like you hangs around a creature like her?"

"She's not a..." You trail off. "Maybe we better get back to Lucky."

-

You've regrouped. You're the only one actually sitting on the bench: Arledge is behind it and leaning over, Lucky is standing rigidly.

"You're the one who got a clear look," he's saying. "Describe exactly what you saw. In as—"

"As much detail as possible? Anything could be relevant?" (Lucky scowls down at you.) "Yeah. Uh, I didn't see anything... useful. She was just dead. Unresponsive, kind of. I mean, she had half a dozen guys sticking their pistols in her face and she didn't even..." You clasp and unclasp your hands. "It was fucked-up. I was yelling at her and she didn't... the only thing she did was laugh a little bit. And it wasn't even in response to anything, she just... I-I don't know. I-I-It was just fucked-up."

(2/5?)

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You're fucked up. The stutter's coming back. From the stress, maybe, from the intense attention of two intense people, but mainly the topic's arousing the worst in you: yourself. Good old Old Gil's lurched from his gutter and has grabbed you by the ankle and is slurring shit like why weren't you supervising her, you asshole? too goddamn scared to go near some red goddamn water? candy-ass needed his smoke break so his hands wouldn't shake? and some other garbage like and then you couldn't even help her? just stood and yelled like a bitch? took your pussy knife out like you'd ever do anything with it? why didn't you fucking magic her, you piece of shit? You're trying to find a way to say that you didn't want to get swallowed whole by a giant worm without sounding, indeed, like a bitch/pussy/candy-ass, but it's not going well.

And all this separate from Lucky interrogating you, which he still is doing. "Did she issue any orders to the worm?"

"No," you say. "She didn't say anything."

"I find it unlikely she'd speak to it," Arledge says matter-of-factly. "If there was communication, it'd be mental. This is supposing that there is a her remaining to communicate with anything, or that there ever was a 'her' at all."

This makes you sit up. "What the hell? Of course—"

"She was reeking of the stuff from the start, Gil. From the start. Before we were ever dumped in here, much less before she drank the water. You said she was hollowed-out?"

"No? I-I said she was unresp—"

"Well, she is." Arledge is sliding a toothpick into his mouth. "That's what exposure to the One does to you— scoops you out. Leaves you cold and empty. And that's if you're lucky."

"What?" Lucky says.

Arledge pauses. "If you're, ah, if you're fortunate. If you're unfortunate, the vacancy fills itself, and then you can't even be qualified as a human being. You're just a big knot of corruption. And if we're unfortunate, that knot bursts."

He's saying all this like it's completely regular and sensible and you have no idea how to respond. "She's— she is human? Though? I-I-I don't know what kind of shit you're smoking, but—"

"I'm surprised you haven't picked up on it yourself, what with the..." Arledge twiddles his fingers. You sink back further into the bench. "I nearly fell over just touching her. She had enough crud in her to kill a horse. Several horses. Judging from her handshake she would've liked to kill me."

"That's just what her handshake's like," you say weakly. "That's kind of just what she's like i-in general..."

(3/5?)

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"It doesn't matter in either case." Lucky sounds tense. "All of this is unprovable garbage. There is no widespread problem of people 'bursting' into 'knots,' or whatever else magicians are doing to their fellow man these days. The matter of concern should be that Leftenant Fawkins has utilized unnatural forces and most likely her personal mutations to double the size of her man-eating worm. She has has then vanished along with said worm. Doubtlessly this was her plan all along, to lure us here and abuse our talents to—"

"I-I-I think she really just wanted to rescue... um..."

"—enter the gate. But it couldn't stop there, could it? She plotted this as a joke on me. An enormous joke. I had not thought about you, Mr. Graves, for years—"

"That's mutual," Arledge says.

"Precisely. And here you are. You, and this walking insult—" He's looking at you! "—and an animal I would under any other circumstance kill on sight. All of that, brought into not any ordinary AUX-space but a perverse and unobtainable mirror of the Wind Court's dearest ideals. Gentlemen." The corner of Lucky's lip is hooked up over his teeth. "This woman has played you for pawns and me for a fool. This is more than intentional: this is a power trip. Do we agree?"

Arledge spits toothpick bits onto the bench next to you. "They're not mutually exclusive."

Lucky looks at you. You stare back. What the fuck is he smoking? What's wrong with these people? Arledge wasn't even Lottie's first pick, you're nearly sure. And she didn't bring the fucking worm as a mockery, or whatever, she brought it because... because she has a hard-on for worms, or something. Again, you can't pretend to understand her, but at least you don't pull things out of your ass? You don't— you don't— "Has she done something to you?" you manage.

"Has Harrier-Leftenant Charlotte Fawkins done something to me?" Lucky scoff-laughs. "How recently are we speaking of? Because recently she broke my nose and left me to die, if that fits your criteria."

You could see that. He is kind of a dickhead. "Anything besides that?"

"Sure, Mr. Wallace. What would we like to discuss? The formation of a strictly outlawed paraorganization? The induction of a great deal of previously loyal Court members? The fomentation of unrest and dissent?" He pauses. "Or maybe you'd prefer to hear about the five murders and suicides and murder-suicides linked to the paraorganization. And about Harrier-Leftenant Fawkins' ignominious desertion shortly after these tragedies came to light, and her subsequent total disappearance. Does that work better?"

"Five is low," Arledge comments. "For that level of infection. Should've considered yourself luc— fortunate she opted to remove herself."

(4/5?)

Shit! Is that real? He seems pretty serious about it, but Charlotte...? Well... with Richard... you could see it happening, actually. Shit. You mean, as long as she doesn't murder you, it's fine? It was just some Wind Court shitheads, anyhow, so they were probably asking for it. You'll just keep an extra eye out for not being stabbed, is all.

But that's not an appropriate response for Lucky, so you make some noncommittal mouth noises instead. He accepts this with a smug nod. "Excellent. Now that that's settled, gentlemen, the path forward is obvious. We locate her and—"

"Put her down," Arledge says slowly. "It's best for everybody. It's best for her, even if she doesn't know it anymore. I was willing to not rock the boat before, but with this new escalation—"

You stare at him now. "You're not going to murder—"

"I concur with Mr. Wallace. I was envisioning a swift capture—" Lucky touches his nose. "—and a solid blow to the face, possibly. But if it comes to execution, I don't have a problem with that."

"We'll see what happens." Arledge's expression is as fixed as usual, but he extends his arm over the bench toward Lucky. "Misery makes strange bedfellows, doesn't it? Dib?"

Lucky hesitates, then takes the hand and pumps it once. "Doesn't it ever, Mr. Graves. Now, I propose we—"

They shook hands right over your shoulder. You mean it, right over your shoulder. Arledge's arm bumped your cheek. And now they're moving on to discussing strategy for tracking down and murdering Lottie, like it's nothing, like this is a sane course of action and not cold-blooded goddamn murder. And maybe that's hypocritical of you, to care about this and not the murder-suicides? And maybe you'll say to that: who gives a crap? You never once claimed to be a shining beacon of goodness. If anything, the sparkly magic woo-woo (Old Gil's got you by more than the ankle) informed you that it was fine and great to be a hypocrite. That you shouldn't worry about it even a little. So you're not. Facts are: you like Lottie. You care about her not getting murdered. You are concerned she might be dead right now, but— well— you've been concerned about that before, and it hasn't panned out. So you're assuming that she's fine, she's just somewhere else, and she'll probably be less fine if you let these guys get to her.

So what are you going to do about it?

(Choices next.)

>[1] These assholes are ignoring you. This isn't uncommon, in your experience, but you're sick and fucking tired of it. And if your new confidence is waning— fine! Go out with a bang. Just **command their attention.** [Roll.]
>[2] Lucky's thing is only maybe factually wrong, but Arledge's is definitely factually wrong. And neither of these idiots have ever bothered even *talking* to Lottie, as far as you're aware. Stand up and defend her honor. (Write-in your passionate Charlotte defense!!!) [Possible roll.]
>[3] Okay, well, screw this. If they're going to do their thing, you're going to do your thing— leaving, finding Lottie, and pleading some sense into her. Then escaping without them, for all you care.
>[4] Write-in.

jesus H christ that took me hours and hours, no further update tonight for hopefully obvious reasons

Why the fuck did I oversleep and not vote against drinking the water?
I don't even know what to vote for

>>5487402
>>5487402
>Why the fuck did I oversleep and not vote against drinking the water?
Voting against [B2] would've changed nothing, since it was 3-1. Don't beat yourself up about it. (Not that the pro-water voters should beat themselves up about it either... it just makes the story more interesting! And all is not lost.)

>I don't even know what to vote for
There's no trap options here.

101.5 degree fever, tested positive for the 'vid. Don't actually feel too awful, so I might go ahead and update tonight anyhow if any votes come in-- just wanted to give a heads up if it gets worse.

>>5487360
>>[3] Okay, well, screw this. If they're going to do their thing, you're going to do your thing— leaving, finding Lottie, and pleading some sense into her. Then escaping without them, for all you care.

We can find Charlotte better and faster than these shitheads.

>>5487802
Feel better and rest easy!

>>5487802
Gimme like 4 hours to finish work.

>>5487360
>1
Assertive Gil

>>5487360
>[1] These assholes are ignoring you. This isn't uncommon, in your experience, but you're sick and fucking tired of it. And if your new confidence is waning— fine! Go out with a bang. Just **command their attention.** [Roll.]
Forcing write-ins doesn't usually work desu.

>>5487897
>>5488158
>[1]

>>5487888
>[3] (nice trips)

Called for [1]. I need rolls.

>Please roll me 3 1d100s + 5 (+20 BLESSED, +10 Pent Up Rage, +7 Beetles, +3 Bigger and Taller, +3 Imprinted, -15 Oh God Oh Fuck, -7 On The Comedown, -5 Risk-Averse) vs. DC 74 (+10 Intense People, +7 Outnumbered, +7 Underestimated) to strike some awe into these shitheads!

>No spendy, you're Gil


>>5487890
can't believe you betrayed me anon </3 jk it's all good life happens

Rolled 97 + 5 (1d100 + 5)

>>5488217

Rolled 89 + 5 (1d100 + 5)

>>5488217

File: 21ebb1a0a76f65f84ed9767ae(...).gif (4.4 MB, 498x384)

4.4 MB GIF

>>5488243
>>5488242

Wow that Gil blessing's coming in clutch

>>5488217

I roll again.

Rolled 37 (1d100)

>>5488296
>>5488217

Rolled 57 + 5 (1d100 + 5)

>>5488217
wow nice rolls
>>5488242
>>5488243

hope I don't ruin them with a 1

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>>5488242
>>5488243
>>5488299 (nice dubs)
>>5488318
>102, 94, (42 or 62 doesn't matter) vs. DC 74 -- Success

I'm feeling crappier (see >>5487802
), so I'm going to take a nap and see how it goes. Writing TBD.

>>5488322
Nap improved things, but it's pretty late rn and I don't think it'd be healthy to push myself to stay up. I'm going to finish up some school stuff then get started, but odds are pretty good I won't get to a decent stopping place. Sorry in advance!

>>5488435
It's alll good. Get some rest!

>>5489497
Ty anon. I actually had to do the school stuff all evening yesterday, so I don't have any kind of head start, plus it's really late rn... again. I'm going to actually write tonight, but this may end up being a COVID mini-hiatus if I don't get it done within the next couple of hours. Sorry ;___;

>>5489637
RIP in advance

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>Go crazy go stupid
>102, 94, 62 vs. DC 74 — Success

Well, go on. Sit on the paint-peeling bench. Think about it systematically. What are your options? You could put up and shut up and try to stop them after you located Lottie. You could stand up and walk off right now and see if they even noticed. Or you could stand up and say something. Could make a convincing case for not murdering Lottie on sight— or skip the 'convincing' part and cow them into submission. Make them do what you—

Yeah, you can't even finish that one— shitty joke. You can barely make your own bodies do what you want them to. (They're inclined to meander off when you're not paying attention.) And it's not as if it's a new development, as much as you'd desperately like to believe that. Sure, you weren't this bad. (It would've been really hard to be this bad.) But you're not a new person, and outside of single shining moments a glib and fearless Gil has never existed. Admit it while you're still capable of doing so: you are at heart a pussy.

Not even in a mean way. Maybe a little in a mean way. But mainly it's just factual: your whole life, you've never met a a force of personality you couldn't bend to or a challenge you wouldn't flee from. Put it nicely— "you have a powerful self-preservation instinct." Cool. But you've never been inclined to put things nicely, or to gas yourself up about stuff. You're a pussy. And that's fine, you guess, that's how you are, you were informed you should be nice to yourself, the world needs pussies, too. Or whatever.

But it doesn't feel good, to sit on some bench ignored by some dickheads plotting to murder your lifeline, and to know objectively that there's nothing real you can do. Not directly. You can sneak around, and that's fine, that's fine, but it's a— a cop-out. Even if you get the same result or better, even if Lottie emerges unscathed, it's a cop-out. Which isn't logical. It's a good thing, to know and work around your own limitations. But...

But she wouldn't agree. If she were here right now she'd be kicking your ankle incessantly until you leaned over 5 degrees and then she'd stage-whisper some stupid plan where you punched both guys at the same time. Or where you stood up on the bench and chanelled ye... ye olde numinouseth... you can't do it. Channeled some made-up magic shit and blew the guys' socks off. And it'd be stupid and it'd get you both killed but you'd look directly into her insane cockeye and find there pure and complete sincerity.

That's what blows your socks off, the sincerity. You've met some people who say crazy shit. Crazier shit than she ever has. But when you looked into their eyes, you always saw... you don't know, some glimmer of motivation. They wanted attention. They wanted a reaction. They didn't actually buy what they were selling, and you and they and everybody knew it. And that was fine!

(1/4? 5?)

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She buys it. She buys it wholesale. You thought she was crazy, at first, and then you thought she was stupid, but now you're starting to think— stupidly, crazily— that things just work different for her. Like the laws of nature go a little melty in her presence. Or like she dropped in from some other universe, one with brighter colors and fewer consequences, one where unconditional trust of strangers is normal, because what else could explain it? You had no face and a stolen voice and a shitty attitude and she still picked you. You've been a sullen and paranoid and twitchy do-nothing and she's done everything and why? If it's not extortion, then why? Lottie believes in you.

It's fucked-up, is what it is. It's dangerously irrational. You're some asshole off the street: you could've screwed her, fleeced her, killed her, anything, and the fact that you haven't yet's no proof. Hasn't she ever heard of the long con? Hasn't she ever had her heart broken? She can't have. She comes from some universe where hearts never are, which is why she believes in Richard and believes in you. Like nobody else ever has. For no damn reason at all.

And while you're in the business of admitting things, here's a doozy: it's infectious, this belief shit. It's a goddamn communicable disease. It's the only reason why you didn't slip away ten minutes ago, and why your legs are falling asleep now: because you might be wrong about you. Because you'd like to be wrong, and you'd like Charlotte and this dumbass god stuff to know better. Maybe there is some human potential scabbed down way inside you. Maybe there is meaning, and purpose, and value, and all that horseshit. You don't know what any of that would look like if it bit you, but maybe that's the point. Or maybe it isn't. You've been wrong about a lot of goddamn things lately.

Or maybe the point is that you've been sitting here silently for an extended period of time thinking and thinking and trying to gin up the nerve to get up on the goddamn bench, something you decided on ten minutes ago. But not even directly ginning up the nerve, just coming at it sideways, hoping to trick yourself into convincing yourself that this really is a good idea. It's not a good idea. But now you have all this stupid motivational stuff wrapped up in it, and you're still half-high off infinite love and whatever, and slinking off now would look stupid. So sit up straight, stop gnawing on the tree branch, and goddamn commit. Think about it systematically.

What advantages do you have? If Arledge and Lucky weren't paying attention to you before, they've clean forgot about you now: the careful planning has devolved into not-that-passive passive-aggressive sniping. (So much for strange bedfellows.) It can't last forever, though, and you reminding them of a common enemy might actually spur progress. So maybe that's not an advantage.

(2/5?)

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Real advantages. You're taller? Than both of them, by a couple inches. Which isn't much, but it never happens— not unless you're in a pack of girls, i.e. it never happens— and sure, alright, you'll cop to it being a confidence booster. Uh. You have... beetles? Is that an advantage? You have... you have... you're trying really hard not to call it 'magic powers'... wait, you have Teddy! Shit, you forgot about Teddy. (Sorry Teddy.) In fairness to you, he's pretty discreet— no questions, no complaining, nothing. Utterly calm about some asshole hijacking his body. Perfectly willing to help when you need it.

You think you need it. An hour ago, you would've been up on that bench immediately— you wouldn't have given a damn, being high as a kite. Now you're only high as a... a something. A low-flying bird. An ornithopter. So it's not cowardice to rouse Teddy gently, to usher him back into your mind's gatehouse, to hand him the levers. Not a cop-out. A shortcut.

Teddy cricks your back, shakes your legs out, and stands. He looks over at Lucky and Arledge, who've paced some measures away, and at the bench. You flash an imaginary thumbs up, and with an air of placid bemusement he swings one of your legs up and then the other. You are standing on the bench.

Mercifully, Arledge hears your banging around and glances over, sparing you (or Teddy) the indignity of having to call out. He looks puzzled. Lucky glances over, too, and looks contemptuous. Neither of them say anything. This wasn't a good idea, was it? Even even if Charlotte were here goading you into it, and especially since she wasn't. You have to say something right now to keep their attention, some powerful opener, and for all that ruminating you didn't even think about that. Teddy has no ideas. You're speechless.

In slow-motion you watch their respective interests wane and their eyes start to flick and right then, driven by sheer adrenaline or impending humiliation or both, you grab your hand away from Teddy and flex your fingers wide open. Which is not a gesture strictly needed to fling all 400ish of your bodies as far away from you as possible, but it's cool. You need cool.

In all probability, though, Lucky and Arledge never saw the gesture. They'd be too distracted by the result: Teddy, rigor mortis on the bench, surrounded by a chainsaw-buzzing 10-by-10-foot beetle-orb. You're a little distracted, too, with your whole center of mass yanked up and stretched to breaking. A little light-headed, a little giddy. You can't feel Teddy anymore, except as one big slow heartbeat in a storm of hundreds, which poses some difficulty: you intended to use his mouth. Aw, well. "YOU GUYS NEED TO SHUT UP!" you say, and it's only a little bit clicky.

(3/5?)

Lucky and Arledge were already shut up, was the issue, so it's not your best work. (You left your brain with Teddy, is all you're saying.) You observe their reactions from above and around and are pleased to see their bodies shift, though it takes a second for Lucky's response to filter up and disperse through you: "So you finally reveal yourself, fiend?"

The problem with pushing to your outer reaches is that it's a struggle to stay this way: you want to be within a comfortable range of yourself. It's like trying to keep a fist full of rubber bands open. This only partially explains your response: "...YES?"

"Grew too impatient? Or couldn't keep yourself restrained?" You see Lucky's marked shift in body language first— the words lag behind. "That's fine. We were just about to see off Leftenant Fawkins, but if you're presenting yourself first—"

Arledge muscles in front of him. "Now's not a good time," he says to Teddy.

You're making do with what you got, you don't say, because you're laboring to concentrate. You may have been a little reckless with the whole self-exploding thing— had never tried it with a body included, much less from that body. You think you cracked something somewhere, is what you mean. It doesn't hurt. But there's a hot spot, and a liquid feeling, and a... a... oh, shit. A glow. Which trickles down through the beetle-orb and into the top of Teddy's head like molten wax and if anybody asked you if you thought you'd ever see your own eyes roll up into your head you'd laugh, but Teddy wobbles and you dart out of formation to catch him. Arledge's hands are clasped. Lucky's are digging for a torch. Teddy's hands are fixed in claws, and catching him was a mistake: something rockets through you.

You were mostly composed of empty space. Now you are mostly composed of something: not the blessing, which glows on, but some neutral invisible force. You can discern almost nothing about it, except that it is in motion, and it bangs and rattles around in you its channeler for an instant before ricocheting out Teddy's open mouth and ripping the face of the world off.

What?

(4/5)

What just happened? Goddamn, you have a head...ache. You have a head. You are mostly composed of blood, or maybe skin. You are sitting on the bench and your beetles are clustered around your shoulders.

This is not what just happened. You have it crystal clear in your memory: stupid blessing, eyes rolling, catching Teddy, unknowable force, unknowable force rips off... rips off... did you see under, for a fraction of a fraction of a second? Did you see strings?

You shouldn't think too hard about it— they do that in the movies, then start scribbling equations on the wall in blood. You're fine knowing just enough to survive. Like: where are you? Why are you sitting down? Why is Lucky not about to murder you?

Actually, though. His eyes are smiley. He's sticking out his hand. You look at it for a long while, then commit to a weak shake. "I'm glad we could come to a conclusion, Mr. Wallace."

You didn't. Does he know you didn't? "Ye... yup. Me too."

"Well, then!" Lucky withdraws and glances between you and Arledge, who appears similarly unpeturbed. "Ms. Fawkins is in need of rescuing from her own self... which I believe is typical of her, so potentially Mr. Wallace may have some insight. If not, then—"

He doesn't want to rescue Lottie. He wants to fucking kill her. Both of them do. Did you do this? Do what? Peel the old reality off and slap a new one on? Don't think too hard about it. Don't. Wasn't this what you wanted?

>[1] Got some insight about where or how to rescue Charlotte? (Write-in. Optional. Real choices tomorrow, do NOT look at what time I posted this)

>>5490763
Would it be metagamey to suggest festival saboteurs? The audience knows, Arledge might know, but I don't think Gil knows.

>>5490763
Sorry about my terrible habit of leaving off options, guys. I really really wanted to push through and update last night, but coming up with sensible and balanced options uses a whole different part of the brain from writing narratively, and if I stay up too late it becomes kind of impossible.

That being said, here we go.

>[1] You don't know how long you have, or if matters will get worse if you wait. Consult with inexplicably-helpful Lucky and Arledge, then set off immediately to wherever's most probable.

>[2] Lottie will show herself soon enough. She's not subtle, and neither is a giant worm. You need to spend some time preparing (rationally, methodically) for the inevitable confrontation. (PICK TWO.)
>>[A] Pick Arledge's brain about this whole god business. Anything to know? Anything to watch out for? Do... *do* you have "water powers"?
>>[B] You don't want to hurt anybody, but you need to take precautions. Find a tank or two of cazeline and douse a fat circle around the danger area: you don't really *want* to box Lottie into a ring of fire, but you might have to.
>>[C] None of you are armed properly-- you've got a fish chopper, Lucky's ax is gone, Arledge has his empty hands. Where the hell is your gun? You don't mean that you're going to shoot Lottie, but if you're going to have to fight a giant worm to get to her, you want real weapons.
>>[D] Lottie informed you that all this is some goo-thing's afterlife. Pretty fucked up. But doesn't that mean it's controlling all this? Can't it lend you a hand? Get in contact, somehow.
>>[E] So you got to this point, somehow. After what? Fifteen slow minutes of rationalizing, then Teddy doing all the hard work? You're not cut out for this. Face it, admit it, then find Arledge or somebody to make you trip balls again.
>>[F] Write-in.

>[3] Write-in.

>>5490866
Thanks for asking. It'd be metagaming to suggest "saboteurs," but it wouldn't be to suggest some kind of divine influence: Charlotte explicitly told him she did some kind of ritual, killed(?) Richard, and got invaded by "magyck" stuff she was barely keeping a handle on. Gil is a smart guy and it's not much of a stretch from there to suspicious water and giant worms.

>>5491446
>2B, D
Wanna minimize interaction with Arledge and Lucky as much as possible to avoid risk of snapping them out of jolly cooperation mode.

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>>5491513
Writing. Hoping this one won't take two days, but I still have COVID so we'll see what happens.

>>5491683
noice beetles. Gil looks ballin'

Feel better

>>5491446
Gonna give an ill-timed vote for 2B and 2D

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>>5491699
Ty anon. I made the excellent time management choice of drawing while I ate an extremely late dinner, so update is ???? but at least you guys have an infographic.

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>Gift horse, maw

Just play it cool, Gil. This is not the weirdest thing that's happened to you, not by a long shot. Look Lucky in his eyes— goddamn, he is oblivious— look at him and give your insight. "Yeah," you say. "Well, I know she, uh..."

-

Trying to explain what you know without setting off Lucky and Arledge's (evidently very delicate) murder sensors is a difficult prospect. You omit the ritual bit and the Richard bit and place heavy, heavy emphasis on none of this being her fault. Which is not strictly true, but you're not working with nuances, here. You also strongly emphasize that little bit after you tackled her: she said she knew what'd happened. Like she was watching the whole time. Meaning she's not some vacant shell, or knot of corruption, or whatever shit Arledge was going on about. She's still in there. So it makes zero sense to murder her, and—

Lucky and Arledge are both a little nonplussed, since nobody suggested murdering her, claims Arledge. Lucky was the one to first bring up purging the unnatural influence from her, claims Lucky. It's the right thing to do, claims Lucky. That's stupid, you don't respond, since when did he care about the right thing to do, this new version of events makes no sense, but instead you nod and nod and say you're just a little on edge from the whole thing. Which is true.

So you get down to brass tacks. The waterfall murder scene is related to you, as is the message on the wall, as is Lucky's security knowledge, and in exchange you add what you know of the reset: surroundings warp, ears ring, you're sucked back in and spat out somewhere else. Typical Type II stuff, which is how you're confidently able to say Lottie's deep under while sketching past the fact you haven't been affected at all. Lucky's face sets at the whole topic, but he points out that she was arrested on suspect of setting the fires, and she was found with heathenous paraphernalia. Ah, Arledge says. So that'd be 'deep under' as...

The three of you arrive at similar conclusions at once. A cultist, you say; a saboteur, Lucky says; one of them, Arledge says, and looks a long way up the shadow-dappled path. She'll be at the temple, he says.

Okay, you say, when?

And isn't that the question? He doesn't know. Maybe now. Maybe an hour from now, at dusk. Lucky wants to beeline for it, and you have to bribe him away with a proposal of finding some caz— caz? (Blank stare.) Cazeline? Uh... naptha? Thick liquid, smells bad, lights on fire really easy? That works. Not that he'd ever admit it, but you suspect Lucky just likes to light things on fire.

(1/2)

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And, bonus, you know exactly where to find cazeline. Way down at the harbor, Teddy has a boat parked. With a fucking engine, a— you assume it has to be a big one, to move a boat. And it runs on cazeline, says your head, you've got a tank or two spare for emergencies, but it's not even about the caz. That's the truth. You just want to look at the powered boat before everything goes to hell and back. But Lucky doesn't need to know that, and Lottie will never know it either, and— well— you deserve it, don't you? For going out of your way. You're allowed to look at a boat.

So, anyhow, you were on your way to the harbor. Then you got to ground level and Arledge was accosted by a fellow blue-robe and Lucky muttered something about divided loyalties and slunk after them and now you're... not. On the way to the harbor. Or you're on temporary break. You could just walk there yourself, you guess, get some more quality time with the boat, but knowing your luck it'd reset halfway down. Better to loiter.

...You used to be better at this, the loitering. Could loiter like nobody's business, in bars, in the fringes of conversations. All the hot and happening places. Now it just makes you uneasy: makes your mouth dry up, makes you burrow into your slicker for self-preservation. You fight the rising instinct to hasten after Lucky or to stop a passersby or anything. You're not alone. You're not alone. You've got— you've got—

You've got Teddy! Alright, he isn't very vocal, but company's company. He's present. This alone eases the pressure a smidgeon, and you clutch for a pack of smokes to lighten the rest of it. Does Teddy smoke? Should've asked yourself that earlier, back with the awful mist and cig #1. Cig #2 is the same as that one, longer and slenderer and wrapped different than you're used to, but a smoke is a smoke and you've already got the flimsy lighter out. You strike up and inhale and let a thin stream of smoke leak through your nostrils. Goddamn. You needed this. Your pulse is slowing already.

You're going for your second inhale when it occurs to you: is this rude? Not that you've ever given much of a damn, but you've been gassing up Teddy and calling him a cool guy and all that and you're making him watch you take a smoke. Isn't that sort of cruel and unusual? Shit. You twiddle the cig, think, sigh, and let him have it.

Teddy stares down at your curled hand, then slides the cig back into your mouth. He pushes his glasses up. He leans against the side of a balloon-toss stand. Only then does he inhale deeply— the rush for you is muted— and exhale a stormcloud. "What are you?" your mouth says.

Nobody's around you. Teddy's staring into the evening sky, tracing the vanishing remains of his smoke. He... he has to mean...

"Yeah, you." His voice is a lot deeper than yours. "I'm not mad. I'm just asking."

(Choices next.)

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>You can pick multiple options.

>[1] You're just a regular guy. You're nothing special.
>[2] You're beetles.
>[3] You're a time traveler.
>[4] You didn't mean to hijack him. Sorry about that.
>[5] To be completely real with him, you're pretty sure he can't comprehend what you are.
>[6] Write-in.

>>5491907
>[4]
>[6] you're not sure how to explain. You're a being from outside his world, here basically accidentally on your way from one place to another

>[1] You're just a regular guy. You're nothing special.
>[2] You're beetles.
>[5] To be completely real with him, you're pretty sure he can't comprehend what you are.

You are just a regular? Beetle? Guy? Idk man, it's the best way to explain it to someone. Just a normal man, who happens to be made out of beetles. Yeah, lets go with that.

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Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>5492022
>>5492675
Flipping and writing.

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>Difficult question

You've heard a lot of spelunking tips over the years, but the one that's been beaten the hardest into your skull is this: don't engage with the occupants. Don't chat with them. Don't do errands or favors for them. No matter how convincingly they portray themselves (and some of them are very convincing), they are not real people, and if you forget it you'll get yourself killed or changed.

You don't mean to say it's bad advice, but you followed it to the letter and still wound up beetles. You're also not sure it applies here. Yeah, maybe Lottie was lied to, or misunderstood something... but she's right that this is no everyday locus. There's too much fine detail for the size, and too many occupants for this level of detail. You can read all the signs just by looking at them, for god's sake. This being some memory-afterlife-thing— to your mild surprise, that actually checks out.

And if that checks out, then Teddy's a real guy. A long-dead real guy, granted, but if you count as a real guy (you should count as a real guy) he should too. He deserves the same kind of answer you'd give anybody else: freezing up and tripping over your words. [Um, I-I-I'm just a— a guy. A normal... I-I'm not... I-I-I don't even know why you'd ask that. Um, I-I'm nothing... special.]

It's not your finest moment, but why would he ask that? Of you? Juice you up all you want, you're never getting through that answer without stuttering. Teddy puffs on the cigarette thoughtfully. "Seems pretty special to me."

[Um, that's... you don't have the full context, i-it's really not... i-i-it's just what happens...] This is immediately way more stressful than you envisioned it being. Shit! Is it too late to take the cig back?

"Okay." He sounds unconvinced. "You're in my beetles. Is that normal too?"

[Uh, I-I-I'm not... in your beetles. I am, um, your beetles.] You hesitate. [Which is normal... for me... now?]

Teddy rustles open your slicker and peers at the dozing swarm inside. "So you're talking bugs."

Cool guy, but he's kind of slow. Maybe that's unfair. You're just tired of going over this. [I-I'm a regular guy, I'm just also... bugs. And you. I-it's a little complicated, I don't know if I can fully... I don't know if you'd get it. Even if I tried. All I-I can definitely say is that, um, I don't mean any harm, and—]

"I didn't think you did." He taps ash onto the weedy ground. "Is it because I'm dead?"

Goddammmit! [What? Why would you—]

"You said it earlier." (He could hear you?) "I'd like honesty."

[...Yeah. You are.]

"Thanks." Long inhale. Longer exhale: the faint sea breeze carries the smoke away. "It explains a lot. You're one of those gods, then?"

You definitely shouldn't have given him the cig. [No! No, I-I-I'm just a normal— why would you think that? Oh.] (Your hands are making an 'explosion' gesture.) [That's... the blessing's not... I-I'm not a god.]

(1/3)

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"If you say so." He tilts his head back. "Spirit guide?"

[...I-I'm just a guy, Teddy.]
[I am sorry you're dead, though. That sucks.]

"It's not that bad. Weather's nice." He nods the cig up toward the sky, then takes a puff. "Don't have a lot of regrets. Was it drowning?"

You didn't say that, did you? Lottie mentioned drowning, but... [How did you know?]

"I'm on a boat by myself all day." He leans further back against the stand. "Always thought I'd be a fish, though. Die at sea, come back a big golden one... this isn't bad, but that would've been something."

[I mean... I'm sure you picked this for a reason?]

"Huh?" Teddy says, but you're already kicking yourself for it— you were just trying to find something helpful to say, you've never talked to a dead guy before, you were feeling bad— "Don't think this was up to me."

No, you should be saying, no, no, of course it isn't, but you're nervy from the "what are you" question and from the lack of cigarette and from talking to a dead guy, and your brain-to-mouth filter isn't kicking in while you have no mouth. [I-I-I mean, not you specifically, but your... collective. Or whatever you call it. You know, um, the goo... the goo...]

The cig is slipping from your fingers. [Uh, Teddy?]

It's slipping from your fingers, and you can't move those fingers. You can't get back in. Shit! [Teddy! Teddy? Teddy, I didn't mean to—]

He's bricked. Just completely shut down. You shove yourself into your other bodies instead and cloud around his face and shoulders. "I'm sorry, I fucked up, I shouldn't have said— Teddy? Teddy? Teddy, please wake u—"

"Wake up" isn't out of your mouthparts before Teddy wobbles and slips downward and— it's not that he melts. He doesn't melt. After a moment of thought, you'd probably describe it as 'congealing': his hair thickens into a solid mass and molds onto his forehead, where his glasses are melding with the bridge of his nose; his fingers and his wrist and the cigarette and the sleeve of his slicker all run together; with a suckery noise his back welds to the wall and the soles of his feet to the ground, which is growing rubbery and unnaturally green. Within a six-foot radius, you are the only thing not coagulating with every other thing, and only because (you assume) you're touching none of them.

When it's over, there is still a Teddy and a balloon-toss stand and a weedy patch of turf, and identically there's none of those things. The life is all gone— it's a bad museum diorama, or a bad clay replica of one. You're wondering whether you should cut your losses (is this explainable to Lucky?) when Fake-Mannequin-Teddy shudders— everything in the six-foot radius wobbles— and locks eyes with you. Or the approximate location of "you," which if anything is eerier.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS he says— "he says." Teddy's voice is in there, maybe even the loudest in there, but it's part of such a clamor you don't think you can call this 'Teddy.'

(2/3)

WE WERE HANDLING IT WITH SO MUCH GRACE
WE WERE TRYING SO HARD
WE THOUGHT...

"Sorry," you mumble. "Um, I-I didn't mean to— to do anything. I wasn't—"

MOST OF US HAVE NOT ACCEPTED OUR FATE
AS THOROUGHLY AS THEODORE WALLACE HAS
WE ARE HOPING TO LEARN THAT EQUANAMITY
FOR OURSELVES AT SOME DISTANT POINT
BUT FOR NOW MOST OF US FIND THIS TO BE
A CONFUSING AND DISTRESSING TURN OF EVENTS.

"Sorry," you mumble again.

BUT WE THINK ON IT AND DISCOVER THAT
OUR IDYLLIC PLACE HAS BECOME CONFUSING
AND DISTRESSING AS WELL. ARE YOU THE
PERPETRATOR? OR HAVE WE COMMITTED
IN OUR DEEP SLEEP SELF-VIOLENCE?

Lottie had described the goo-thing she talked to as intelligent and very polite. (You're paraphrasing.) And you'd heard this, and you believed her, but you're not sure you ever fully processed what that meant— that there would be a goo-thing speaking to you in complete and reasoned sentences. You try not to think about how many human minds have been rendered to soup in there. "...Are you asking i-if I killed that woman? Um, I didn't. And I'd really like to make it clear that I woke you up by accident—"

THEN WE HAVE TURNED OUR HANDS AGAINST
OUR VERY OWN HANDS? WE HAVE DRAWN OUR
OWN BLOOD? IS THIS WHERE HUMAN NATURE
INEVITABLY LEADS US? AND IF SO WHY?
WHY DO WE BOTHER? WHEN OUR
MILK SOURS AFTER SO LITTLE TIME?

Is it actually asking you, or is it monologuing? You hate that you have to ask yourself this so often recently. You don't know what's going on at all— the thing hasn't even introduced itself and it's already rambling about milk. (However many human minds in a blender this is, this is maybe too many.) Goddammit. But you can't ignore it, can you? You'd like your body back, and it... alright, if you listen through the cacophony, Teddy's voice is practically mournful. And that does make you feel bad, him being a cool guy and all.

But what do you do?

>[A] You need to cheer this stupid thing up, you guess, if only so it'll give you Teddy back. Figure out a method.
>>[1] Sell Lottie down the river: tell the thing truthfully that she probably killed the woman, not it. Maybe it'll get pissed off at her, but she *is* probably a fucked-up cultist lady right now, so she might deserve it?
>>[2] You'd normally be the last guy to ask about human nature, but you actually dwelled on that quite a bit over the past few months, having precisely fuck-all else to do. Share your own perspective.
>>[3] Magic it. (You have GOT to come up with another word for this.)
>>[4] Write-in.

>[B] Once you have it cheered up (you will have it cheered up... right?), what do you do?
>>[1] Ask it for help with the cornering and exorcising of Lottie. (In what way? Write-in.)
>>[2] Consider yourself lucky it didn't eat you, ask for Teddy back, and leave. Don't dig *another* hole under yourself, Gil!
>>[3] Ask for something else? (Write-in.)

This brings our count of "vote for something innocuous and land in deep shit" to how many?

>>5493208
You're not in deep shit. There's no rolls here. You guys **explicitly** voted to talk to Us right here >>5491513, and this is the follow-through. It would've happened last update if I was a faster writer.

>but they're SAD we didn't vote to make them SAD
They told you last thread that waking them up makes them sad. Talking to them means waking them up. They aren't pissed at you, nothing's exploding, and next update you will use one of three riskless options (or a write-in) to make them less sad and get on with your business. After you ask them for help, or bitch out, you will get Teddy back and go about your day.

I need you to look me in the eyes through your computer screen, anon, and realize that as far as QMs go I am a pretty damn lenient and forgiving one. I am not a sadist. I do not inflict permanent consequences for one-off choices. If you feel like the results of a choice are disproportionately punishing, you need to *trust* me that:

>The bad thing that happens is more interesting (narratively or descriptively) than the better thing that could've happened if I was a little nicer.
>There is a way out from the bad thing. As a matter of fact, it might not be as bad as it looks on your first knee-jerk reaction.

These apply to every single choice you (I assume it's you) have passive-aggressively bitched about, including murdering Richard. I am not your enemy: I am trying to tell a meaningful story with you, which by necessity is going to include danger and conflict, and *particularly* so when you're messing with evil evil nasty bad snake powers. (Do I have to call them that to let you guys know they're bad for you?) There is no character growth without something to grow about, and there is no climatic and triumphant ending without an uphill climb and something to triumph over. So let me do my job as the QM and [i]chill out.[/i]

>But my complaint is actually about something else, like--
Then please address it to me directly like an adult rather than bitching and withholding your vote. Thank you.

>>5493096
>>[3] Magic it. (You have GOT to come up with another word for this.)
>>[1] Ask it for help with the cornering and exorcising of Lottie. (In what way? Write-in.)

>>5493398
>In what way? Write-in.
You guys can go broad about this ("make sure she doesn't escape!" or whatnot), but I need at least some idea.

>>5493403

Hmmm…. If we can get some (noncoagulated) people to restrain her somehow, would that be viable.

Either that, or we use our Gil-powers, for whatever that may entail.

If any anon has a smarter idea than me, I’m all ears.

>>5493096
>[2] You'd normally be the last guy to ask about human nature, but you actually dwelled on that quite a bit over the past few months, having precisely fuck-all else to do. Share your own perspective.

>>5493921
Support

A2 B1

Ask the entity if it would be possible to set aside space for the ritual to take place. If the idea is to restrain her rope for pleasure or punishment will do. If it can act as support through the process, that would be a major help, even if you are the current embodiment of some kind of holiness. As for tools, a bat could be useful if things get too out of hand, and a grapefruit spoon for good measure could go a long way.

>>5493398
>[A3]

>>5493921
>>5493928
>>5493940
>[A2]

>>5493413
>Bondage

>>5493940
>Foreplay and bondage

Writing.

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Alright. Update is coming together very slowly, and I have half a mind to scrap what I have and start over. And between my

>Lingering COVID
>Early afternoon final tomorrow
>Generally low morale

and given the fact that votes are trickling in very slowly, if at all, I'm not enthusiastic about staying up until 5 AM finishing. Tomorrow I'll be sleeping early for a morning final, and then I have a flight the next day. So here's the deal:

>Today's update MIGHT get posted on Tuesday or Wednesday, or it might not. If it doesn't, it'll be posted along with a switch to Madrigal POV on Thursday, and updates will continue daily after that.

Hopefully I'll still have a playerbase on Thursday. See you then.

>>5494114
Feel better, man! And good luck on those finals!

>>5493956
I was late to the vote, but since we're giving Gils perspective maybe we can share Charlottes infectious BELIEF with the Gooplord. I mean we know someone who might objectively choose the worst options and be the worst person, and they're out there genuinely trying to help out and believe in people while being the most unlikeable giant asshole.

Oh my god.

I just realized this quest is the absolute inverse of Snake Quest for character development.

This quest is so fucking underrated it's criminal.

>>5493096
I return with a totally on time vote that is not late at all

>A2 with a little bit of 1, suggest that this iteration can't be counted because of the outside interference of your group, and you're really sorry about that and you're trying to evac asap but it's tough.

B1
were is she rite now
we wanna throw a surprise party

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>>5494796
>>5494838
Thanks for sliding in late, guys... but, like, unironically. I have a terrible habit of taking vote droughts personally, so coming in late to the party helps remind me that it's just a busy time of year and I need to chill out. The good(?) news is that I think I've settled on fully scrapping and rewriting, so I'll be able to take both of these into account anyhow.

Tentatively writing some more tonight, but even if I publish the update sooner vs. later the POV switch means that options won't be up until Thursday regardless.

>>5494796
>maybe we can share Charlottes infectious BELIEF with the Gooplord
This in particular is helpful. I was struggling last night to be true to Gil as a miserable bastard while also expressing stuff that lies at the center of the quest, and I think you've really hit on something.

>I just realized this quest is the absolute inverse of Snake Quest for character development.
Kinda, yeah. I guess that's what you get when your talking snake deuteragonist is as unfuckable as possible... you get tempted out of evil?

>This quest is so fucking underrated it's criminal.
Heh, thanks. I look at things like Space Monke, though, and I think what we've got going on here is pretty decent. Feel free to shill to your friends, though :^)

>>5494931
> I guess that's what you get when your talking snake deuteragonist is as unfuckable as possible

Lol you sure about that.

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>>5495521
Even after all this time, we have not fully plumbed the depths of Richard's unfuckability. I'm pretty sure. Even if you went for it he'd never consent to copulating with a filthy ape anyhow

>>5495615
It's usually a cliche, but that's okay. We can change him.

Sorry, was that too dark? I know dark humor is like clean water, not everybody gets it.

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>>5495831
Unfortunately, you changing him is making him LESS fuckable, not more fuckable

>>5495834
But . . . Who's our Daddy?

IDK, I kind of regret saying this but I'm typing it out, going through a captcha, and pressing post anyways.

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>>5496334
Well, I admire your commitment :^) But nevertheless, I stand by my original statement that

>Even after all this time, we have not fully plumbed the depths of Richard's unfuckability.

I am willing to believe that there's an untapped market of horny teenage girls with daddy issues ready to jump the bones of an emotionless asexual reptile and/or a horrible abusive also asexual reptileman, provided that the reptileman is DILFy and wears dapper suits sometimes. What I'm saying is that you guys haven't seen anything yet. If you still want a Dick inside you after (check notes) another 8-12 threads or so, then we can talk.

>>5496363
I want to know if it's the COVID fueling this Richard-themed madness. Asking for a friend.

Even so, isn't Richard rather old, aside from the fact that he's more-or-less an echo of Charlotte's dad?

Also don't sell your soul to the fujos. DO NOT.

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>>5496334

Anon, you and I both know there is only one thing in this world that truly deserves Charlotte-- and it is the crown and definitely not anyone who has been saving her ass indirectly.

Anyhow Charlotte can fabricate any husbando she wants with her newfound powers once she powers it up.

>>5496395
Listen here, I am an INNOCENT VICTIM of this guy >>5495521... I was just making an innocent comment comparing this to Snakecatcher and he VICIOUSLY ENTRAPPED me in this conversation... I don't spend that much time thinking about this... ;__;

>isn't Richard rather old
Yes.

>aside from the fact that he's more-or-less an echo of Charlotte's dad?
Also yes.

>Also don't sell your soul to the fujos.
Hey, whoa, the fujos would want... uh... Richard to kiss Gil? Is that how it works? The horny teenager girls I'm going to heavily cater Redux to now are all too heterosexual for that!

>>5496405
>the Crown, who led her on then ruthlessly cucked her
>not the loyal and faithful childhood friend The Sword
NGMI

>spoilers
:^)

>Anyhow Charlotte can fabricate any husbando she wants with her newfound powers once she powers it up.
That's the plan!

>Commiseration

You don't know what to do. You're tired. You desperately need a cigarette. And, worst of all, you can't even bring yourself to disagree. "That's life, I-I guess. You eat shit 'till you die, and then you... keep doing it after you die, in your case... sorry about that. That's the one thing dying's supposed to be good for, not eating—"

SO THIS WAS INEVITABLE

There's something leaden in you, in all of you, as if shreds of buckshot got wedged under each of your carapaces. You ignore it. "...Kind of? I-I-I mean, people are shit, and you've got a lot of people in here. I'm surprised nobody shanked anybody before this—"

SO THIS WAS A MISTAKE
AND WE WERE GREAT FOOLS
TO THINK WE COULD DEFEAT
LIFE'S UNSHAKABLE CRUELTY.

You are drifting steadily closer to the ground. "I-I don't know if I'd call you fools, but..."

SO WE ARE BETTER OFF DEAD.

There's a distinctive pitchiness to the voices that puts you in mind of earlier— of great gasping breaths, of a damp patch on your slicker. You are too much of a coward to say anything. You shutter your wings, instead, and fall like rain to the black ground.

And then there is silence. You need a cigarette. Ahead of you the future splits again and again, and in almost every one (you are imagining this obsessively) the ground will wobble and the sky will darken and this noise will leak out of every crack and crevice of the world, this inhuman keening like whalesong, and Lucky will come sprinting back over looking for a fight, and you, Bug Man, pinned to the ground at the noise's epicenter, will be forced to admit that all that's happened is that you've made a horrible goo thing cry—

And then a second or two passes, the future collapses into a whalesongless present, and you're caught totally off-guard when Us re-fixes its weighted gaze on you and says merely:

WHY IS IT THAT YOU YET LIVE

Why is it that you yet live?

Does it realize that you've asked yourself this before? It's always come down to this. You've had okay answers before: for your family's sake, for the business's sake. Because there were starving orphans out there, for god's sake, and you had clothes and food and a roof over your head and so forth. (Because you never wanted to do anything your old man did, ha ha. Go fuck yourself.)

Why is it that you yet live?

You ran out of okay answers around the time you drowned. Nobody you met had a real explanation for their miraculous survival— and you mean a real explanation, not gullshit. Closest you ever got is that you lived because you were always going to; drowning was never fatal. An elaborate misconception. That you could accept (people who didn't accept it didn't last long), and you moved on with your life. And you had a life! A real one, lived on your own terms, shadowed or burdened by nobody, surrounded by people who you thought accepted or respected or gave a singular damn about you—

(1/6)

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That's how you lived through the initial shock of it, you think. Past the screaming and the overstimulation, the jagged motion and the clawing feeling you'd been blown to pieces, you had this maxim tattooed into you: calm down. Calm down. This happens sometimes. Loci fuck you up. Your real body's fine (your real body isn't lying thin and loose on the ground), and as soon as somebody swings by to grab you you'll be out of here. You'd been told all this a million times, you believed it in the core of your being, and so you clung bitterly on. Because how goddamn embarrassing would it be for you to kick it on your first real solo outing? For Phin or Neal or somebody to waltz in to check up on you and find dying equipment and an empty skin?

You were sure they'd waltz in. For weeks you were sure. But as the terror wore off and the tedium set in, the odds of rescue began to slip from definitely to probably to maybe to nil. You huddled listlessly. You beat yourself against the walls. You hallucinated off and on and eventually more on than off. At some point— you don't know how far in— you realized that you were going to die there. That all you were doing was prolonging your suffering. That the rational thing to do would be to give in. That's what you told yourself, it was the rational thing. Anybody in your position would do the same.

Anybody in your position except you.

Why is it that you yet live?

Because you were scared of death? It's the most obvious explanation, except that you didn't see a way death could be any worse. You didn't believe in hell, not really, and the infinite void would've been a borderline improvement.

Because you were scared of dying? Sure, except all you would've had to do was relax. Struggling on as yourself required concentration, pathetic mantras (you are Gil Wallace, one 'l' in Gil, two in Wallace, age 25...), scrubbing back and forth through your memories until you wore holes in them. You could've just stopped, could've just gone to sleep, fully, all at once, and consciousness would've lifted from you like a fine mist. It would've been complete. It would've been painless. It might've even been dignified. It was probably the best you ever could've hoped for.

And you still didn't do it. Because you were special? No. Because you didn't deserve it? You were a shitty person and you knew it. Because somebody out there would care if you dissolved into beetles? Apparently not. Because you had intrinsic meaning, and value, and purpose? Because you had some kind of destiny not to die? You didn't believe in any of that shit. If you had a conviction, any conviction, it was this: life was a crapshoot, and you rolled snake eyes every time.

(2/6)

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...Goddamn, what a miserable bastard you were. What a whiny, depressing piece of shit. What a victim. You thought like this? You don't mean recently, you mean... always? No wonder nobody bothered to rescue you— count yourself lucky you were too fried to say much when Lottie showed up! Shit, this is disturbing. Have you changed this much in this little time? Is your entire goddamn worldview actually this plastic? And if it is... who does that make you? (You aren't real, Beetles, said Richard snidely. You're nothing. You're a cardboard standee of a person. You're a lump of clay, and you're surprised at being *molded*?)

Not a different person, at least, because here comes all the old defensiveness welling back up: miserable bastard? Depressing piece of shit? Go fuck yourself, you smug god-drugged asshole, acting like there was no good reason for being a drag, like you hadn't observed with your own two eyes that the world was shit and the people in it were shit and that you in particular were dealt a two and a goddamn seven, that— and on and on, like a leaky tap, about all the logical conclusions you'd painstakingly drawn. The same logical conclusions you helpfully provided Teddy with. The ones that are lodged in you like buckshot even now. They're painful, sure, but the blunt truth is always painful...

...says Old Gil, who shoved his hand up your gullet way back there. You never expected the goo thing to get all mopey and philosophical on you, is the truth of the matter, and in your blind panic to reply you spouted the first thing that came to you— your canned response to everything. Pretty pathetic. You didn't even bother to ask yourself if you believed any of it anymore, deep down, and here you are in the dirt dragging out a simple response to a—

WE DO NOT MEAN TO CAUSE YOU DISTRESS
OR RATHER, TO POISON YOU WITH OURS
WE APOLOGIZE

Shit. You jerk yourself into the air. "No! No, I-I-I— sorry, I-I-I— I should apologize. I-I didn't mean to say any of that crap, and I didn't even mean it when I-I— when I did say it. Can we start over?"

WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND
ARE YOU ADMITTING DISHONESTY TO US

"I..." The wind whistles through you. "...Yeah, but I-I wasn't... I-I-I was gullshitting myself, not you. I-I-I don't know if that makes any sense. I used to think that way, but now I— don't, or don't entirely, or—"

THEN WE ARE NOT THAT DIFFERENT
...WE LIE TO OURSELVES AS WELL
YOU MAY BEGIN AGAIN

"...Okay," you say. "What I-I meant was that— that I think you're right. I think it is human nature to kill, and it's human nature to betray and steal and abandon and destroy, too. People are shit."

THIS IS
THIS IS WHAT YOU SAID BEFORE

(3/6)

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"I-I wasn't done." You are twisting into yourself, rising and falling and rising and falling. "That's only half of it. People are shit. People are monsters. But they're not— they're not animals, you know? I-I-It's also human nature to... to throw big stupid parties. And to rescue people who need rescuing, even i-if they hardly know them. And to— to help people in general, even if it's dangerous, and that person didn't do anything to earn it, and that person's an ungrateful dick in return all the time..." You trail off. "And I-I-I-I guess it has to be human nature, to love something that doesn't love you back."

LIKE WHAT

"Like a worm!" you say. "Like a— like a stupid worm— loving a worm— that's what I-I-I-I-I meant! Like a... I don't think one worm could love a— a— I-I don't think a worm can love anything, but I don't know, ask Lottie, she's the worm expert—"

WE SEE
IT IS A NICE SENTIMENT
THAT AT LEAST HALF OF US IS GOOD

"No!" you say. "That's not what I... I-I-I meant that everybody's good. At least a little bit. And everybody's the worst fucking person you've ever met, or one bad day away from being that. Most people are more one than the other... I-I-I-I'm probably more shit than good. Probably way more. But I-I-I'm not perfectly shit, any more than anybody could ever be perfect the other way around. I-I don't think you'd be human anymore, if you were perfect. You'd be... some other kind of thing."

WE ARE SOME OTHER KIND OF THING
AS ARE YOU, NO OFFENSE MEANT

"I-I'm human," you say possessively. "And if I am, you are— you're more than most people are, really. You've got a couple thousand people tangled up in there, from the sound of it, so really you're... you're human on scale. Most people only get little swirls of pure good and pure shittiness, probably, while you've got wholeass murderers and saints and whatever else all running together. I-I-It probably all balances out in the end. Do you feel evil, or whatever?"

WE FEEL...
...COMPLICATED

"Okay, then. That's life." You hesitate. "Though... I-I-I do think things are going worse than usual. I-I am surprised someone got shanked, actually, I don't know why I said I wasn't. Um. I-I-I think that's probably our fault."

WE SEE

"Not on purpose," you add hastily. "Just that, um, I-I-I think maybe we've tipped the scales just by being here. You had things set up real nice, then we came in and— I mean— I-I don't think you can judge based on this. Maybe we brought in diseases or something."

WE SUPPOSE THIS IS A POSSIBILITY

"It definitely is. And, um, I-I think..." You're not sure how to phrase it delicately. "...I think one of us was definitely infected with something before she got in here. Not that she meant to spread anything, or— but i-i-it's really fucking her up. I-I mean at the moment, it's... and if we don't do anything about it, she could really hurt herself. And you."

(4/6)

WHO

"...Lottie," you say. "Um, Charlotte Fawkins. I think she talked to you before."

YES
WE ARE SADDENED TO HEAR OF THIS ILLNESS
AS SHE WAS KIND TO US ONCE, THOUGH WE WERE CRUEL
WHAT CAN WE OFFER FOR HER TREATMENT

It was that easy? It's never that easy. You swirl in mild confusion. "Uh... let me think..."

You have no shortage of options, and when you run each of them by the goo thing it agrees readily to each of them. Trouble is, it's reticent to do more than one— it doesn't want to awaken more of itself than necessary, it says. It asks you to choose.

>[1] Have Us awaken a small phalanx of people— preferably armed people— and send them with you as backup. With that goddamn worm, you think you'll need it.
>[2] Have Us prepare the... you don't want to call it a battlefield. That's inauspicious. Prepare the *location where Lottie is* to advantage you and disadvantage her. Maybe it can infuse it with divine energy or whatnot?
>[3] Have Us warp you (and Lucky and Arledge) directly to Lottie's location on your signal. Getting the drop on her could be important, and saving the time it'll take to locate and travel to her could be important too.

You choose, and it agrees once more. Incredible. If you weren't swearing off being a miserable bastard, you'd be doubting its motives, but it really would be one hell of a performance to put on. (And Teddy wouldn't be evil, right?) You're about to thank it and start edging toward the topic of "could I have my body back" when it cuts you off.

BEFORE WE ATTEMPT TO RESETTLE INTO SLEEP
WE SINCERELY AND OUT OF CURIOSITY WOULD
LIKE TO ASK YOU AGAIN: HOW HAVE YOU LIVED?
AND WHY? WE CAN FEEL YOU CLING ON LIKE WE DO

Shit. You don't know. You still, after all these years and after that embarrassingly long period of rumination, don't know. Which isn't to say you're not glad to be alive— you unambiguously are— just that you weren't always, and how you got from here to there is a blur. You open your mouths to say something like that, "I don't know" with a "sorry" tacked on, and something else comes out instead.

"Um," you say. "I-I-I don't know if you know, but I was in a real shitty spot for a long time. And I-I could've died really easily, if I wanted to, and—"

WE ARE AWARE OF THE OUTLINE OF THINGS
GIL WALLACE
YOUR MIND HAS TOUCHED ONE OF OURS

"Oh." (Teddy snitched on you?) "Uh... well... I-I-I guess I never died because it would've been embarrassing."

SORRY?

Do you have to spell it out? "Embarrassing? Come on, I-I-I's not that hard to— look, I'm 25 years old, and I-I haven't accomplished anything. I-I-I cooked the books for a couple of years and then I got executed because I couldn't hack it. Then I-I lived and got a job for a year and a half and then I got beetled— are you seeing the pattern? I-I would've been a joke if I died, and that's if anybody remembered I-I ever lived in the first place—"

SO YOU HAD HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

"Um, no," you say carefully, "I-I didn't—"

(5/6)

YOU BELIEVED THAT YOU COULD MAKE
SOMETHING MORE OF YOURSELF
THAN WHAT YOU ALREADY HAD

"Um, I-I..." You didn't. You really didn't. Your hope for the future was snuffed out years prior (nine, to be particular), and any belief in yourself was caught newly from Lottie. "That's a really low bar, so I-I don't think it..."

YOU CARED ABOUT THE MANNER
IN WHICH YOU WOULD BE REMEMBERED

You eye Teddy's waxlike mug with suspicion. "And who doesn't? I-I-I don't know what you're trying to get at, but I think you better—"

WE APOLOGIZE
ALL WE MEAN TO SAY
IS THAT IT SEEMS TO US THAT YOU MIGHT BE
LESS "SHITTY" THAN YOU CLAIM YOU ARE

You don't say anything.

IN ANY CASE
WE WISH YOU LUCK
WE HOPE WE WILL HAVE
NO NEED TO SPEAK AGAIN
BE CAREFUL PLEASE

That's the last thing the goo thing says— you're getting your mouths around a goodbye when the congealing begins to reverse. Grass springs apart into blades, pebbles roughen into rocks, and Teddy— god bless 'em— Teddy is sharpening and clarifying back into something recognizably human. Even before he's finished, he coughs wetly and peers down at the half-ash cigarette sunk into his hand. "...What..."

"Teddy," you say urgently. "Teddy. I-I need your goddamn body back, alright? Lucky's going to kill me if I show up beetles, I mean literally— I mean he's going to set me on fire, alright? I-I've been decent to you, haven't I? You're a cool guy. We're buddies. I-I-I just need you to give me permission to—"

Teddy sort of opens and closes his mouth. You can't tell if he's confused because he can't remember shit, or because he can remember shit. "You're... bugs."

He's out of it. Whatever. Forgiveness, not permission. "Yeah, Teddy. Now hold still, please, i-it'll be less complicated if you—"

You prepared yourself to ram straight into him, enduring the brief squicky feeling of phasing right through somebody, but instead you ram into something sticky and invisible directly around him. (Dumbass is covered in magic cobwebs?) You struggle against it, the motion causing your arms to involuntarily... twitch. Your arms. You lift them, then thump your skull a couple times to unstick your vision. Your glasses come loose, and you shove them back on. What a miracle, to have hands. What a pleasure.

And what a miracle and pleasure it is to have a cig only half-smoked in your fingers. You crack your shoulders, then take a long and deliberate drag. What a day.

—

>Choices are in the previous post.

Obviously I meant for a Madrigal POV switch to be here, but this update is already what I'd deem "stupid long" and already took me half of last night and literally all of today (day and night) to write. We will pick up with her next update.

>>5498960
>[2]

>>5498960
>[2] Have Us prepare the... you don't want to call it a battlefield. That's inauspicious. Prepare the *location where Lottie is* to advantage you and disadvantage her. Maybe it can infuse it with divine energy or whatnot?
best red stuff countermeasure

>>5498960
>>[2] Have Us prepare the... you don't want to call it a battlefield. That's inauspicious. Prepare the *location where Lottie is* to advantage you and disadvantage her. Maybe it can infuse it with divine energy or whatnot?

>>5498961
2, always pick the place of confrontation.

>>5498973
>>5499214
>>5499240
>>5499507
>[2]
This'll kick in when we return to Gil. Writing.

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>[SOMEWHERE ELSE]

You are Madrigal Fitzpatrick. After feeding a roomful of horrible flesh tendrils and falling down a drainhole, you have allied yourself with horrible failed clone/flesh abomination Lester One in hopes of collectively escaping the dream-mansion-prison you're both stuck in. And that's one sentence you'd never thought you'd ever think of, much less live through—

—but you've got to work with what you've got, don't you? There's no such thing as "picky" when you're kidnapped, and particularly not when your kidnapper is 1) awake and 2) aware you're not where you're supposed to be. There's an extremely real chance you're on a tight time limit—

—which you're not sure Lester One understands. After you sealed your questionable partnership with a handshake, you prompted it to tell you what it knew— all quick-like, or so you intended. Instead, it's been rambling at you without interruption for the last several minutes. You should've fucking expected this, since this happens every single time you try and be polite or make small-talk or whatever else. Your clients don't have basic social skills, see, so when you ask how their day went they fucking tell you. And then they tell you their stupid fucking grievances or decade-old grudges or rattle off their kill list and it takes twenty useless minutes before they just hand you the chit and leave— but not before telling you what a good listener you are. Your exes were exactly the same. Have you just got one of those faces? It can't be your charming and approachable demeanor, surely, so it's got to be that or the tits. God dammit. This is why you like Branwen; she knows when to shut up.

At least it's not all bad: Lester One doesn't seem to care if you respond to it, so you've been passively absorbing the rambling while you work out how to escape this room. The door is thick and metal and locked from the outside, and you see no obvious grates or hatches. Why would you see obvious grates or hatches? When is life fucking easy for you? Blah blah sweetheart blah, says Lester One, from its gross central fishtank. Blah darling blah blah are you listening blah blah— "Sure am," you say, after a beat. "You need me to repeat it back to you, or something?"

Then, without waiting for a response, you rattle back a broad summary of what it told you. Alright, a really broad summary. But you hit everything important, as far as you're concerned:

-> It talks a big game, but it doesn't know a hell of a lot. The flesh lump part of it has been stuck in the tank since Pat put it here, only able to escape via its... various tendrils. However, it's been able to maintain some kind of link with the other Lesters, so it knows what they know too...

(1/3)

-> ...Which is still not a hell of a lot, because the other Lesters are stupid. But it claims to know the layout of the place, along with some ways to get into lower-security areas. None of the Lesters have clearance to actually leave, though— Pat either appears and vanishes inexplicably, or takes a door in the basement that's keyed to her and her alone.

-> In theory you could take her hostage and force her to open the door for you. Or you could sneak up on her, "sample her fluids" (said Lester, not you), and use them to... become her...? You don't fully understand. You could also convince her to open it willingly, but that's a tall order by now.

-> You're in the basement right now. The door is sort of hard to find, but the Lesters know where it is. You just have to navigate there, then get it open.

-> Also, it's dark in the basement. Really dark. The lights only go on when Pat wants them on. Setting your own hang-ups aside, this is never great news: weird fucking things happen in the dark. So far things have been pretty coherent, by dream standards, but this'll... you'll see, you guess.

And before Lester One can offer its inevitable critique of your summary, you reach up and rattle your find— the base of a ladder, hung far too high to climb. "By the way, pal, could you give me a boost?"

"Anything for such a good listener," the flesh lump coos back at you, and you suppress a powerful desire to murder something before a tendril coils around your legs. And higher than your legs. You shut your eyes tightly as you're lifted and dumped onto a cold metal catwalk, though not before the tendril delivers you a palpable squeeze.

"Fucking classy," you mutter, and haul yourself to a standing position. The catwalk, to your artificially large eyes, appears to run a long, long ways. Ladders jut down from it at various points, presumably leading into different rooms— it's too dark to see down into them. You'll be trial-and-erroring it, then? Fantastic. "Thanks," you yell down belatedly. "Uh, I don't think I can— I can bring you up here, so I'll be back to pick you up once I—"

"So eager to let me go, love muffin? We're in this together!" You sigh out your nose as a particularly thick tentacle flops onto the edge of the catwalk. "I'll be with you the whole way."

That doesn't even make sense. "Can you see out of that thing? I, uh, I appreciate the sentiment, but there's no fucking way—"

(2/3)

File: fleshy 2.jpg (17 KB, 272x347)

17 KB JPG

"More than see." You scramble backwards ("What the fuck!") as the tentacle bulges and shifts, developing— fucking shit— eyes and a mouth, all lopsided. "We're prepared for anything together, honeybunches," says the fucking tentacle, which is fucking looking at you— you fucking take back the "pretty coherent by dream standards," you take it all back, this is— "not picky" your fucking ass, surely you can do better than this? Than a toothy ass-squeezing man-tentacle? But you have made and laid all over your bed at this point, so you grit your teeth and say "Sure are" and set off along the catwalk.

It's not precisely what makes you squirm, but a narrow, swaying band of metal hung over the infinite fucking void is doing you no favors. Would it actually kill Pat to spruce up the fucking place? Are you actually going to pick a random fucking ladder? Fuck that. You stop in place, grip the sides of the catwalk, and try to focus. Is there anything different?

Yeah. There is.

>[Your GRIT is: Slightly Low]

>[1] Descend the ladder that leads to the loud gurgling, like something liquid.
>[2] Descend the ladder that leads to the rattling noise, like something mechanical.
>[3] Descend the ladder that leads to the horrible fucking stench, like you don't even know what— like something fucking dying, you guess.
>[4] Ask— (urrrrgh)— ask Lester One to just tell you where the closest ladder to the fucking door is. It's going to lord this over your head, but it beats getting lost and ambushed by Pat. [-Grit]

>>5500127
>[2]

>>5500127
>[2] Descend the ladder that leads to the rattling noise, like something mechanical.
Oh shit it's Madrigal time

>>5500127
>[2] Descend the ladder that leads to the rattling noise, like something mechanical.

>>5500127
>>[2] Descend the ladder that leads to the rattling noise, like something mechanical.

>>5500127
>[1] Descend the ladder that leads to the loud gurgling, like something liquid.

mmmm goo

>>5500209
>>5500264
>>5500342
>>5500419
>[2]

>>5500444 (nice trips)
>[1]

Called for [2] and writing.

File: you discovered THE ELEVATOR.jpg (265 KB, 3840x2560)

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>Second best

Incredible what you can perceive when you just stop for a minute, and double-incredible that none of it's good. Ominous gurgling? The stench of death? You've already dropped in on one abomination, so what the fuck else is down here? Well, you shouldn't think about it too long— don't want to give the dark any ideas. The weird rattling noise to your right seems least likely to be hitched to something horrific. Go with that.

You feel your way over to the associated ladder, hook your legs over, and descend without a word to the Lester-tentacle. (You're not going to encourage the fucker to follow you around, alright.) Your climb down is uncomfortably noisy, but not enough to drown out the rattling, which pervades from nowhere in particular— is something built into the walls? Something with a couple loose screws? You've never been all that savvy when it comes to machines, particularly if they're busted, so if you have to turn fucking repairwoman...

You're not that lucky. Down at ground level, the darkness is thick as tar, and you have to prod the floor with your foot a couple times to be sure you're not going to tumble straight through it. (You've had enough long falls for today.) Eventually you take a tentative step off the ladder. The rattling stops. Something screeches, metal against metal.

Then you swear and recoil: yellow light, like a punch to the face, pours suddenly from a far wall. Your squid eyes seize, swivel, and slam down to the size of pinpricks, turning the remaining darkness into fucking solid asphalt— but at least you can see through the light, which is being emanated by a large rectangle. Like a broom closet, if broom closets tended to rattle and screech, which'd—

There's a figure stepping out of the light. And you can't see all that well, still, but it doesn't take a fucking genius to guess who around here 1) is shaped like a human person and 2) might be exiting mystery rectangles at this time of night. Fuck!

The rectangle isn't directly in front of you or the ladder, it's down a ways— so you can't have been seen yet. Emphasis "yet." The yellow light has illuminated a cone-shaped area around the rectangle, but outside that darkness remains.

(Choices next.)

File: pat - @pyloncats.jpg (255 KB, 1674x1388)

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>[1] Stay *stock fucking still.* You don't know what she's here for, or if she'll even head in your direction. It's completely possible nothing will happen.
>[2] Stay *stock fucking still.* Stay so still, in fact, that your internal bits explode under the pressure and melt you into a puddle. (It's so dark that it doesn't matter if this is realistic or not.) Then wait for Pat to move on, scrape yourself back up, and carry on in the opposite direction. [--Grit]
>[3] As [2], but after puddling/un-puddling, go investigate the rectangle Pat came from. If it got her in, maybe it can get you out of the basement...? [--Grit]
>[4] Who says this is a bad thing? You need Pat to open the door, an unsuspecting Pat is *right there,* and she doesn't strike you as the hand-to-hand combat type. Bumrush her with your paint scraper. [You will enter combat.]
>[5] Write-in.

>>5501206
>[3]
Our Grit is pretty low, but if this works we're out.

>>5501465
(To clarify, [3] would take you back to the main level, not back to reality... unless you really soup up that elevator, I guess. You would still need to return to the basement to get out, not least because you've routelocked yourself into relying on Lester, but this would allow you to confuse and potentially trick Pat about where you've been.)

>>5501206
3 sure I'm honestly not super invested in the Madrigal arc.

>>5501206
>>[3] As [2], but after puddling/un-puddling, go investigate the rectangle Pat came from. If it got her in, maybe it can get you out of the basement...? [--Grit]

>>5501697
>I'm honestly not super invested in the Madrigal arc.
This is completely understandable: to an extent I feel the same way, since it's going way longer than I originally envisioned. (As is Charlotte's half, but at least that has enough content to support it, imo.) I've tried offering some ways to speed past things, namely letting Pat experiment on you directly, but you guys haven't bitten. Because you feel this way, I'm going to offer a personal recommendation to vote for anything except [3], not because it's unviable but because that's what's going to drag things out the longest. In particular, [4] is neither a free ticket out nor a autoloss, but it's going to be your fastest (albeit riskiest) way to escape. Give it a think.

>>5501206
>>5501731

Changing >>5501731
to [4]

>>5501731
I'm not going to let my personal feelings about this part make me vote to rush through if other people are enjoying it.

Butsince >>5501738 changed then sure let's do 4.

>>5501738
>>5502085
>[4]

>>5501711
>[3]

Called for [4] and writing. I may do some quick combat updates throughout the day tomorrow-- won't make hard promises now, but check back just in case.

>>5502085
I admire your moral fortitude, anon!

>FIGHT!

"Madrigal?" the figure says— Pat says. She's not yelling, or even speaking particularly loudly, but her voice echoes around the space. "I know you're in here, champ. If you come out right now, I'll consider mercy. I don't want to hurt you."

You're a good listener. You stay absolutely silent.

"I don't want to stick you back in the snake— I'm the one who got you out, didn't I? Got you a body? Got you a place to sleep? Gave you very reasonable rules? I'm a nice person, Madrigal. I'm not a monster. I'm not Management. I'm nice and I'm reasonable and I have pushed myself to the absolute limit trying to be upfront about the horrible situation we are both in. Because I thought you'd be reasonable about it too."

She's standing still in the doorway(?) while she vents all this shit. You're vividly imagining her practicing it under her breath on the way down.

"That's the problem with me, Madrigal. I keep assuming that other people are like me, when time after time after time every single other person I meet is a vicious two-faced cunt. Do you understand? Every time I extend a friendly hand, it gets gouged open and pissed on. So excuse me if I'm a little disappointed by your behavior."

Definitely practiced under her breath. Fucking whatever— you've heard way better speeches than this.

"For some reason, though, I remain reasonable. And I'd like to think some part of you is reasonable too, Madrigal. So I'm going to give you a generous countdown, and if you show up before it ends we can talk things over. If you opt not to show up, that's fine. That's the choice you've made. I will find you, I will rip you out of your waste-of-materials body, and if I'm feeling nice at that point you're going back in the snake. If I'm not— and I'm really not at the moment—" (You don't know why she needs to draw it out. She's audibly fucking furious.) "—then I'll consider some more creative locations. Are we all clear?"

It's just not that menacing when she spells it all out, but she probably wouldn't take well to "angry monologue" tips. Oh well. You've accomplished what you needed to: slowly, very slowly, secreting the paint scraper back into your hand.

"Great," says Pat. "Then I expect to see you in 20...19..."

How fucking big is the basement? Does she (hypothetically) expect you to teleport? Or is the countdown all a flimsy front of "reasonableness," thereby justifying her in her own mind to lose her fucking shit? You know what your guess is, but it doesn't matter, because you are in fact less than twenty seconds away. At your full-blown sprint, it takes—

"...18— AUGH!"

(1/2)

—about three before you've bowled her over. She hits the concrete ground with a wet thump, and you land bodily atop her, pinning her flailing limbs down with your knees and elbows. You press the paint scraper to her throat, and her eyes are crazed and terrible in the yellow light, but you're not paying much attention to that: you are sizing up your advantages as rapidly as possible. You're about the same size as her, physically, but probably fitter. You're taking a wild guess that you've fought more than she has. You have her vulnerable for now, but you're not strong enough to keep her down in a real struggle. She has way more experience with horrific goo shit than you do. She might have a gun.

"Hiya," you say flippantly, and might've continued in that vein if Pat's entire body hadn't bucked and rippled under you— it's less that she throws you off and more that she sort of oozes to the left and to her feet. You roll up yourself, paint scraper in hand, and stare down the barrel of a gun.

"Hiya," Pat says, dead serious. "Well, this works, doesn't it."

What's in there? If it's bullets, aren't you... immune? You wouldn't like to be shot full of holes, but you wouldn't be dead. And if it's water, that's dodgable. And not an instant effect, in any case. It's not nearly as threatening as she wants it to be.

You have no joints to crack, but you crack them anyhow.

>[1] She's fresh from her bedroom, isn't she? And she sleeps in a water tank of her own, doesn't she? She's more liquid on the inside than she is on the outside, you fucking guarantee it. Start by slashing her open. [Roll.]
>[2] Your physical advantage here is far too slim for your liking. Good thing this is a dream body, isn't it? Start by bulking the fuck up. [BODY FACILITY roll.]
>[3] You're not alone here, for better or worse. Start by calling for backup. Preferably several long... uhh... girthy... backups. [No roll to summon Lester, but it'll roll for effectiveness.]
>[4] Keep it simple, stupid: she has a gun. You don't. Start by getting the fucking gun, or at least leveling the playing field. [Roll.]
>[5] Write-in.

>>5502211
>4
If she has more goo experience she wouldn't bother with a useless gun. Maybe it has like, dehydration bullets or something.

>>5502211
>>[4] Keep it simple, stupid: she has a gun. You don't. Start by getting the fucking gun, or at least leveling the playing field. [Roll.]

>>5502345
>>5502556
>[4]

I need dice!

>Please roll me 3 1d100s + 10 (+5 Gotten Into Scraps, +3 Paint Scraper, +2 Unfazed) vs. DC 70 (+30 Horrific Goo Shit, -7 NEEERD, -3 Fazed) to level the playing field!

Pat will do her own rolls after I get these in!

Rolled 99 + 10 (1d100 + 10)

>>5502707
BAAAAM

Rolled 96 + 10 (1d100 + 10)

>>5502707
DICE TIME
>>5502709
SHEEIT

>>5502707

Rolled 22 + 10 (1d100 + 10)

>>5502707
She's in the wrong business for reasonable. Besides, she stole Branwens snake first.

Are her employers reasonable?

Was shooting Gil reasonable?

Kidnapping Maddie, was that reasonable?

Honestly she should either find a different job or admit she's one of the cunts. Even Lester doesn't buy her shit, although he's happy to manipulate her with it. Who does she think has been helping us out.

>>5502730
>>5502709
Well I'm glad these at least went well.

Rolled 74, 69, 34 + 8 = 185 (3d100 + 8)

>>5502709
>>5502730
>>5502809

>109, 106, 32 vs. DC 70 -- Success

Man, so close to greatness. A Success is pretty good, though.

Rolling for Pat.

3 1d100s + 8 (+15 Enraged, +10 Desperate, -10 Gunless, -7 NEEERD) vs. DC 65 (+10 Dirty Fighter, +5 Flexible) to get one over on you!

>>5502802
kek

>>5502915
>82, 77, 42 vs. DC 65 -- Success

You win the tiebreaker by dint of your higher modifier (+10 vs. +8), but she's not down for the count. Writing shortly.

File: pat - @geeswest.jpg (2.31 MB, 2183x2817)

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>Go for the gun!
>109, 106, 32 vs. DC 70 -- Success
>Pat: 82, 77, 42 vs. DC 65 -- Success

"Nice gun," you say, and step sideways casually. "Where'd you learn to shoot it?"

Pat's hand tracks you. "Shut up."

"It's just a fucking question, tightass." You step sideways again. "I never learned to shoot one, see, so I'm curious. That the one you kidnapped me with? Took that guy hostage, shot him in cold blood... real reasonable stuff."

"Shut the hell up." Then, after a moment: "Blame it on Charlotte. I warned her what I'd—"

"You can say fuck, Pat," you say encouragingly, and take another step. "It's alright. I give you permission. Do you want to practice with me? We can say 'shut the fuck up' together. Come on. We'll say it in three, in two, in—"

One more step and you're essentially behind her: she's only been swiveling her shoulder to track you, and to get a bead on you now she's going to have to physically turn around. She does, as quickly as she can manage, but you're already lunging.

"Fuck you!" she shrieks, as you grab her gun hand and wrench it downward— something with a decent chance to shoot you in the foot, so you yank the gun to point past you and knee Pat in the chest for good measure. With her free hand she scrabbles at your face, but it's not particularly effective, so you ignore it as you attempt to extricate the gun from her grasp.

It's not working. You're trying to waggle it out, but it's not working. You're trying to shove your own fingers into the gap between the grip and her palm, but there's no gap: the gun and her hand are joined by seamless flesh. Fuck!

Your frustration must be visible, because Pat's eyes crinkle smugly. With a glorp, the gun vanishes into her hand, and for a split second you feel her other hand curl and twist and

fall to the ground. You stare, and so does she: you had swung the paint scraper around in a frenzied attempt to knock the half-formed gun away from your face, not expecting it to slice clean through her wrist. Pat's wrist-stump is pale blue and glistening, and her expression is flat. Her gun hand twitches against the concrete, and you lift your foot and stamp hard on it. It squishes flat and stops twitching.

(1/2)

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"Ew." You wipe the sole of your shoe on the ground. When you look up, Pat has backed away several paces. "What?" you say. "Trying to get out of—"

"Shut the fuck up." She's hunched over oddly, her stump dangling. "I don't like doing this, Madrigal. I'd like to be clear about that. I don't like this, and I have no real desire to put myself through this. You have pushed me to this."

You wipe the paint scraper against your leg. "Pushed you to fucking what. Could you use your—"

She levels a death-stare at you. "Okay, whatever," you say. "Come on, then. I want a fucking challenge, not some pussy-ass poindex..."

Pat has shut one eye. Her shoulders thrust back. She begins to... warp.

"...shit," you finish, and tap the paint scraper against your leg. You're talking a bigger game than you feel, quite frankly. You've already realized that scenes like this one tend to show up mainly in your nightmares.


>[1] Okay, fucking focus. Who cares about the nightmare shit: she's just *standing* there, like a total fucking moron! If you can rush her before anything super fucked-up happens, you'll have her vulnerable for real. [Roll.]

>[2] This isn't a nightmare, though: you are fully fucking aware of what's going on, and you are going to ride that as hard as you can. Stay there and mock the fucking shit out Pat, the sensitive soul, until she's demoralized enough to give up or furious enough to present an obvious opening. [Roll.]

>[3] You know what? You're not going to stop her- she can do her stupid shit. You're just going to turn around, walk a little ways into the darkness, and do your *own* stupid shit to match. Like...
>>[A] Nothing fancy. You just want your fucking spear back, and in *this* dark all you've got to do is reach out and take it. Easy.
>>[B] Something fancy. You love the Fitz, but you need a weapon held together by more than string and willpower. Focus and grab yourself the most kickass polearm you can. [Easier roll.]
>>[C] Something very fancy. This is a fucking dream mansion. You might not like to, or have any real desire to do so, but if it means *getting out*— you're sure you can cook something insane up. [Roll.]
>>[D] Write-in.

>[4] Write-in.

>>5503179
>[3C]

>>5503179
>1
is probably the smartest choice

but if that has no support
>3C
has the highest potential for badassery

>>5503179
>[3C]
Here goes something...

>>5503179
>3C

>>5503329
>>5503437
>>5503462
>>5503515
>[3C]

Not sure what I expected, top kek. I need dice!

>Please roll me 3 1d100s - 10 (+10 Darkness, +10 BODY FACILITY, -10 Claustrophobic, -20 What The Fuck Are You Doing?!?) vs. DC 60 (+10 Not Your Head) to go sicko mode!

Rolled 76 + 10 (1d100 + 10)

>>5503601
I hope we summon Charlotte.

>>5503630
Well I messed up the format but 66 ain't bad. In fact I would say it's good!