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---Corpse---
The last cycle ended a while ago, but they are still talking about it. about the plan Sykunno and Valkyrae made with Rae saying a codeword to command Sykkuno to kill, the plan wherein Corpse panicked and accidentally killed Rae despite corpse being in the know.
He got to admit, that wasn’t his best moment.
They all spawned in the MIRA HQ, materializing from a cluster of glowing pixels. John and Jodi split off and head out of the launchpad, talking all the while.
“I’m so sorry-“ He doesn’t get to continue as Rae puts a hand on his arm and gives him a reassuring pad.
She smiles at him through the glass of their visors. “No, it’s okay, it’s okay. You can make it up to me, right Corpse?”
He still felt a little flustered from his fuck up and it shows in his reply. “Ah, yeah, it’s, okay.” The others are all talking so he hopes that his stuttering got covered up.
“I don’t have a task here, I don’t have any task. Goodbye.” Ah, Brooke is always reliable. For an archnemesis that is. He waves at her retreating figure and focuses back on the friends that stand with him by the fuel station.
He hears Toast speak up. “Leslie, I need to talk to Leslie.” Toast pulls Leslie into the back corner of launchpad to talk with semi-privacy.
Hmm, that reminds him. “I actually did vent in front of Leslie last round.” He giggled at Tina's indignant shout, "You did?!”
Leslie poked her head around Toast to shout. “yes, he did.” And starts her conversation with Toast up again.
He still shakes with laughter as he continues, “Yeah, and I left her alive.” It’s fun to traumatize your friend in-game sometimes.
There are various versions of “Oh my god Corpse.” And Sykkuno speaks up. “Hey guys I should have gone like last bathroom break, but I kinda need to go to the bathroom.” Corpse watches him fiddle with the neck of his spacesuit and knows that if Sy weren’t wearing that he would be having it in front of his face.
Rae is the first to react. “Okay, go potty Sykkuno, go potty.” Sykkuno and Rae walk around the room together. “I’ll protect you, I’ll protect you.” She calls Sykkuno back as he tries to leave and herds him to the back of the room.
“I’ll be right back, I’ll be really quick.” is the last Sykkuno says before his character falls asleep standing up, head drooping to the side.
Jack speaks up, moving to stand next to Sykkuno. “We’ll make a border around you.”
Rae moves to stand next to Jack, he and Tina do the same. “A border, like a wall of bodies.”
Jack pipes in seconds after. “A wall of simps.” He hears the smile in his voice.
Standing in the back of the room makes the conversation Toast and Leslie are having the center point of attention and Rae steps over to them. “Watcha guys talking about?”
Toast begins to walk away immediately but Leslie responds. “Oh, we’re putting in my ehh, restaurant order-“ Toast turns back around and begins dragging Leslie away.
Rae gasps dramatically as Toast and Leslie leave. “Don’t tell them, Leslie, c’mon let’s go.”
Corpse watches in amusement as Rae follows them to the front of the room while gesturing with her hands. “He’s ordering you food?!” but as soon as they leave turns Rae around and walks back into the room.
---Brooke---
When Brooke sees she has nothing to do in launchpad shouts she a quick farewell and ventures into the big MIRA HC by herself. It is a lot darker when not with her friends. “Anyone in front of me?” she does her best to see in the blinding darkness, squinting a little.
She thought she heard something just now, there! A giggle reaches her hearing. She gasps “hi, who is that?" and as she finally rounds the corner when she sees Jodi. “Hi Jodi, why are you laughing? I’m scared.”
“Oh, hey John.” John walks up to them from the locker room and they walk further into the hallways together, up to the entrance of the north sector.
John is dressed up as a cop and he speaks to her in a gruff voice. “Hall pass.” She thinks it is supposed to be a question, but it comes out as a command.
Brooke thinks quickly and responds. “Oh, oh, my hall-pas, um.” Her hands flap around her as she tries to form a sentence.
John cuts her stammering of. “Do you have a permit to be here?” it still sounds like a command and she still knows that they never even had a hall-pass.
“Eh, I don’t-“ he doesn’t give her time to answer before he continues, stepping towards her.
“You part of this ship? He crowds her against the wall, their visors almost touching.
“Uh, yeah! yeah, I am.” Brooke steps aside and creates some distance between the two of them.
John his gruff voice is beginning to weaken, his own voice coming through. “Are you here solely to fix the ship and nothing but the ship?”
“Solely the ship and nothing but the ship.” She repeats quickly.
“Alright, carry on.”
Brooke makes a run for admin, shouting. “Alright, thank you, officer.” Over her shoulder. She sighs when she is out of earshot of john. “We tricked him, didn’t we?”
---Leslie---
As soon as the round began started Toast and her started talking about ordering sushi. Soon that talk was moved into the back corner of the launchpad. And only when she mentioned ordering food to Rae did they relocate again. Toast dragged her away, berating her for saying anything all the while.
“Shit, shit, running, running.” They ran through the hallways together, into the southeast sector. They ran through the cafeteria and into a corner of the balcony. “Down, down, down, here we can talk.”
Toast immediately continues their conversation when they are seated on the floor. “So, what do you think you would order?”
Leslie pulls up her tablet to look at her possible choices. “I would get salmon-“
“Like sashimi?”
Leslie looks up from her tablet. “Like, you know the one with the rice thing, that one is pretty good”
Toast looks up from his own tablet. “You mean the one that is six dollars per piece?”
She does a spit take and burst out laughing.
---John---
John is walking in the north sector, stalking between admin where Jodi is, and admin where Brooke is doing download when Brooke yells. “I’m an idiot, I’m an idiot!”
John runs into admin, sets up his best Corpse voice, and asks. “Who’s an idiot!”
“Me! I’m an idiot,” she responds immediately. “I almost did the whole download and then I clicked it away.”
“Oh, alright just double-checking.”
Brooke laughs “Oh, yeah. Checks out, checks out.”
---Corpse---
They are standing in silence for about a minute when Jack asks. “You think this is a good like, phalanx formation?” Tina hums. “I feel pretty impenetrable here.”
Corpse reacts with a ‘yeah’ and Rae starts talking. “Yeah, I feel- Unless there are two imposters here. That is kinda scary." He yeah’s again.
Tina walks in between Rae and him, standing in front of them. “Well, I think like a proper formation would be three in the front.”
The events of the last round flashed in his mind again. “I’m gonna test something.” Corpse walks in front of everybody, standing at the edge of the view distance from the rest. This could be fun. “Babushka.”
Rae immediately begins pacing the room, making ‘ohh’ sounds while doing so.
Jack begins smiling. “Flashbacks.”
After making a couple of laps around Corpse she sits down next to where he stands. “Oh my god. You see, you see. Last round Sykkuno was imposter and he was like,” Rae puts a hand in front of her mouth of her suit like Sykkuno normally does. “You haven’t had imposter in a while, Rae, let’s have a killer word and I kill for you.” She lets the hand fall from her face and smiles. “And so I went up to John and I was like ‘Babushka!’ that means grandma in Russian and-“ she couldn’t finish talking because Sykkuno was back.
He laughed in panic when Sy yelped a panicked “What’s that?! Babushka!” and stabbed Tina in the back.
Rae screamed, he let out some high-pitched laughs and Jack roared with a laugh deep from his belly. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh god.”
He wheezes in air as Rae mumbled “Okay, okay, okay.” And then killed a laughing Jack in front of him. His knees hid the floor as they lost strength, he was still laughing, choking on air.
Sy yelped an, “Oh Jesus!” and went over to Corpse.
Now was a good time to panic, as a blood-splattered Sykkuno helped him up.
Rae took the lead. “Okay, don’t move, don’t move. Corpse, you owe me, Corpse, you owe me.” Rae paced around with nervous energy, repeating her words. “Sykkuno, Sykkuno I think we stay here-"
Sykkuno cut her off with a rambled. “I heard the codeword, I heard the codeword.”
Rae, in turn, cut Sykkuno of. “-Stay here and camp the bodies. You heart the codeword, yeah you acted very quickly. There were five people here, so u know, we gotta be a little bit more, you know.”
Meanwhile, Corpse calms his breathing and stands straight again. “Right. I’ll, I’ll stay here-“
Rae cut him off. “Corpse, stay here, you owe me, you owe me.” Rae points the bloody blade at him, and Corpse quickly throws his hands up in a disarming gesture.
His hands are shaking. “I’ll stay here, and surely they couldn’t think I killed two bodies.”
Sykkuno was saying something about watching the bodies as Rae dragged him from launchpad but Corpse couldn’t make it out over Rae’s muttering. “Stay Corpse, stay, don’t move.”
When Rae and Sykkuno moved to the hall Corpse couldn’t see them anymore but he could still hear them. “Should we just stay here and wait for them to come or…” Rae briefly moves into his line of sight again before she turns around and walks back into the dark, gloomy hallway. He still reacted with a startled noise, but she just ignores him.
He hears Sykkuno deny Rae’s plan. ”No, no, they might hit the button. We gotta babushka them.” Sykkuno’s voice trailed off, he is walking away.
Rae comes back into the room and walks right up to Corpse, she pushes the knife against his black spacesuit. “Corpse don’t! don’t Corpse!” He felt a bit like a scolded dog, his cosmetic ears drooped as she turned and walks away.
“Okay, okay, let’s do this.” Was the last he hears before he is left alone with only the bloody bodies of two of his friends for company.
He crouches down, looking at them. It hits him how, if he weren’t wearing the spacesuit, he would be smelling the overwhelming stench of blood and decay. The smell of his dead friends.
All because he said the codeword.
This was his fault he gets to live with it… or sit with the consequences of it as long if he isn’t killed off.
---Tina---
Tina screams as soon as her ghost pops out of her dead body, the betrayal! They protect Sykkuno while he is gone and he has the gal to backstab her.
Jack is still laughing when he gets stabbed in the chest. His ghost shakes with laughter as he watches Corpse collapse while shaking. “What the fuck!?”
They watch Rae threaten Corpse and, seconds later, Sykkuno, and Rae running off in silence. That was unexpected.
He floats to the diagnostic and pokes at the buttons. “Hey look, my task is ready.”
Tina hugs herself in defeat. “What? In what world is this fair!” she throws her hands in the air.
Jack stops laughing to respond. “I don’t know!”
“I really thought.”
“But you know what.” He puts his hands in front of his face. “It is hilarious.”
They turn to Corpse sitting in front of their cooling bodies. “Why is he still here?”
---Brooke---
Brooke walks around the cafeteria, looking for people to talk to. She hears people walking on the balcony and walks over to them.
She sees Leslie looking at her tablet with hungry eyes. “Oh, also, the yellowtail jalapeno one. That one’s really good. That’s one is twenty-eight dollars.”
Brooke walks into the balcony and begins the clear asteroids task. “You’re ordering or what?”
Toast waves his hands at Brooke. “no, no, no, we're just saying our favorite sushi.”
“we’re just talking about our favorite sushi, random items.”
“Oh, I like chicken tenders.” Brooke stands there, waiting for a response that doesn’t come.
Toast turns away from Brooke and turns back to Leslie. “oh, okay, I see. Yellowtail, twenty-eight dollars, okay.”
“Twenty-eight dollars for yellowtail jalapeno -” Brooke doesn’t hear more as she powers down the task and leaves.
She feels a bit despondent as she walks alone around the ship. “they didn’t seem very excited about the chicken tenders like I was, that’s unfortunate.”
---Jodi---
Jodi hears John growling from the hallway and sighs, here we go again. “Okay, what now, what are you-“
John growls, again. “what task are you doing?”
Jodi turns her back to him and walks to her next task. “What is your goddamn deal. I’m doing leaves.” They walk out of the north sector and to the wires in the locker room.
“Okay, now I’m doing wires. I got my last two tasks in the lab.” Their accents change halfway through, it resembles southern style now. “I’m done did it, you’re not gonna kill me, sheriff, you know you are a cop you- ”
John pipes in with his weird growly voice. “no murder’n in my god damn ship.” They open the door to decontamination and step in. It closes behind them with a whoosh.
---Valkyrae---
Rae and Sykkuno run through the hallways as they talk. “You heard the codeword too fast, I didn’t even know you were back!”
“What do you mean ‘you heart the codeword too fast. You said it three times” Sykkuno tries to split off into the locker room, but she called him back.
“No, no, no, we need to go to the button” As they ran past the corridor to the north sector, they heard Brooke but they ran too fast.
They acknowledge the person they ran past way too late, they are already in the cafeteria when it dawns on Rae. “Oh my god, Brooke! Wait, oh god, oh my god.”
---Brooke---
“Any chicken tender fans up here?” Brooke is still walking alone when she hears Sykunno and Rae yelling about pushing the button.
They run past just as she gets to the end of the corridor. “why are they pushing the button, wonder what for”
Brooke enters decontamination and continues her search for people who like chicken tenders.
---Toast---
They are still ordering sushi when a panicked Sykkuno walks into the balcony. “Somebody help! Leslie! Toast! Leslie and Toast-”
Leslie looked up from her tablet and shrieks back. “what happened! What happened!?”
Toast cast Sykkuno a look and deems whatever has Sykunno worked up not important. “eh, ignore him.”
Leslie cast Sykkuno one last look, then focusses back on the sushi. “yeah, okay. So, salmon-”
Toast shoots Sykkuno a look as he is still standing in the doorway. “Go away Sykkuno, I’m busy!” Sykkuno leaves for a moment but he is back soon.
“Oh! No, no, no! need for ceviche, I don’t even actually know what ceviche is.” the automatic doors open again.
The cosmetic leaf on Sykkuno’s helmet is drooping when he enters again. “Guys, I’m a little lonely.”
Toast must be firm if he doesn’t want Sykkuno hanging around for the rest of the round. “No, no, Sykkuno this is a private affair” Toast walks up to Sykkuno and begins pushing him to the door. “Please leave, please leave, please-”
“But, but, um.” Sykkuno looks like a kicked puppy as Toast escorts him out the door. “You don’t wanna, don’t wanna hang out?” Leslie looks like she feels bad for Sykkuno, she lets out a little ‘oh no’ sound at the scene.
With one last, firm. “please leave” they were alone again.
---John---
John and Jodi are just entering labs when he stops Jodi from entering “I’m going to check the ship for you ma’am” he investigates the reactor and laboratory, no one is in here. “left side clear, right side clear. Alright, carry on ma’am.”
Jodi immediately begins doing tasks, John follows suit. “We’re gonna lose because we’re just sitting here and nobody’s over here.”
“I’m just, uhh, doing my job ma’am.” Damn, Simon-says is always the worst task to do when talking.
Jodi looks him over, eyes lingering on the fake badge on his chest. “What’s your job, what’s your job, he.”
John chuckles, he doesn’t know either. “I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know.”
There is a shout from the entrance to reactor. “Hello? Any chicken tender fans in here?”
“What?” “hay.”
Brooke enters as soon as they answer. “yeah, you guys like chicken tenders?”
Jodi and John shared a look astonishment. “umm, I mean I, yeah I like them.” Jodi answered tensely.
A smile overtakes Brooke’s face. “great!”
Jodi shakes her head and heads for the exit. “anyone has to go to launchpad?”
John let the deep voice go and continued to talk as normal. “but Brooke, you can’t say you like chicken tenders when you’ve, you haven’t tried any food right? ”
Brooke giggles. “Right, exactly.”
Jodi speaks up at that. “That’s true Brooke has the appetite of a seven-year-old.”
“you need to expand your palled okay.” John waves to Jodi as she says she’s leaving. Jodi leaves them with a quick goodbye and heads to launchpad alone.
“but it’s really difficult to eat more things tho.”
---Valkyrae---
This is an insane round. It all started with Corpse saying the codeword, Sykunno killing, and Corpse ended up with where he belongs, surrounded by corpses.
And now she is running through the hallways of the MIRA HQ. yelling her lungs out. “Babushka!” No one is in the hallways, she thinks she saw Brooke go to decontamination when she ran past some time ago. “Okay, okay, okay, Brooke!”
She hasn’t checked on Corpse in a while, has she? “Brooke!” she should check on him.
Rae is still yelling when she enters launchpad. “Corpse!” she skids to a stop at the entrance and takes in the scene.
Corpse is standing with his back to her, crouched in front of the bloodied bodies of Jack and Tina. He slowly stands up and turns to her, he looks a little out of it, she hears his labored breathing from here. “Oh god! You’re still here” her voice was nothing more than a shriek. “Oh my god, Corpse you’re still here. I thought Brooke found you!”
Rea closed in on Corpse and pulled him into a quick hug, he didn’t resist but he didn’t hug back. “are you okay? You okay?” she feels Corpse shiver and notices she is smearing dried blood unto him, oops.
Corpse stuttered a reply. “They’re, they are not going to think I would kill two bodies, right?” Rae let him go and looks at Corpse carefully, his one visible eye is dilated, and she felt the shivers running through him when they hugged.
“No, no, no, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t.” Rae shakes her head furiously, her hair shifting under the helmet. “Absolutely not! You’re AFK, you’re AFK. Stay there.” She begins to leave when she figures she should say something extra, she walks back to Corpse. “Corpse, you are really making it up to me right now, I appreciate it.”
Corpse replies with a hoarse “Yeah, yeah.” He is seriously lacking energy right now, meanwhile, she is almost jumping on the walls from her anxious energy.
Rea stands by the doorway and replies. “Yeah, okay, okay.” Rae walks closer to Corpse again. Not ready to leave. Because of this, she doesn’t hear Jodi humming a melody as she approaches. “If you, if you see another dead body near you it- no-“ Jodi enters launchpad and immediately stops humming.
Jodi points to the bodies and begins to speak. “What the fu-” but she can’t finish because Rae is plunging a knife in her chest.
Rae screams when she sees Jodi and stabs her as soon as she is in range. “Ah! Okay, okay, I just killed another!”
Rae approaches Corpse with the bloodied knife still in hand. “Don’t be scared, don’t be scared” Corpse flinches back from her bloodied form, placing his back to the wall. “Okay.”
---Brooke---
Brooke looks around the greenhouse, only she and John are in here. “We haven’t seen a couple of people in a while, I wonder where they are?”
John looks around the quiet ship. “True.”
---Leslie---
“I want the salmon new’s-” Leslie quickly looks up from her tablet. “What’s my price limit?”
Toast looks at her with a grin. “Oh, there’s not-”
Leslie yells a “Yess!” and jumps in excitement.
---Sykkuno---
Sykkuno is traveling the vents when he hears Rae’s voice float up above him. “Why am I so nervous?” He pops the vent open and begins climbing out.
Corpse looks over from a pacing Rae to where Sykkuno is climbing out of the vent and waves. Rae, on the other hand, shrieks when she turns around and sees him. “Oh Jesus! Sykkuno! don’t do that!”
Sykkuno walks over to Rae, stopping dead when he spots the white spacesuit, a pool of blood forming under it. “Oh my god! Someone’s dead.”
Rae takes his hand and drags him out of launchpad, he hears Corpse mutter a “Bye, I guess.” As he gets left behind again. Corpse trails behind them, stopping at the entrance of launchpad, where Jodi’s body is.
“Yeah, yeah, I had to get her, I had to kill her.” they stop at the oxygen pad and Rae points to it. “Okay, okay, I have an idea. we call this thingy. We call O2 and then we kill them when they come here.” She grabs her tablet and sabotages oxygen.
Sykkuno nods, that is a sound plan. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” They both walk away from the pad while they wait.
“How many more kills do we need, we have three.” Oh, that required thinking. His brain has been fried since he heard the first babushka.
Let's try anyway. “Eh, how many have we got? Three, five-”
Rae shakes her head. “I can’t count I can’t count.”
They split up and Rae goes after John, who just passed them to go to oxygen.
---John---
When the Oxygen alarm goes off John and Brooke split up, Brooke stays there and he goes and turns the alarm off.
When he arrives in the hallway he sees Rae and Sykkuno running past, decidedly not doing the critical task that had the whole ship blaring with alarms. “Rae and Sykkuno were walking past O2!” he yells and does the task that saves the ship from shutting down.
Rae follows him and shushes him. “Shh, shh, John, don’t talk.”
As soon as he is finished does he turn around. “This is the police! Ahh!”
She stabs him in the chest, and he falls through the floor. Coming up as a ghost, he sees the ghost of Jodi.
She floats in front of him with her arms crossed. “Well, you remember when I told you I needed to go to launchpad?”
John hiccups a laugh. “Yeah”
“And then you didn’t follow me?”
The ghost of Jack floats towards them. “Hey guys, welcome to being dead.”
“Come, there is something I need to show you.” Jodi floats towards the entrance of launchpad.
Jack laughs at the sight in front of them. “There is a fucking trail of bodies!”
John’s mouth falls open. “Oh… I see.”
---Brooke---
Brooke stays standing there, watching John jog away. She turns back as soon as she doesn’t see him anymore.
"Is anyone up here?” She hears his voice before she sees him, it sounds a little… off. “Oh, Brooke” Sykkuno comes out of the dark.
Sykkono looks the same as always, it was probably nothing. “Oh, hey Sykkuno.”
Sykkuno stands next to her and they enter the greenhouse together. “Brooke, Brooke, John went down there with Rae, if John dies-”
Sykkuno leads Brooke to the back of the greenhouse, where a vent lies, hidden behind a thank of greenery. Brooke follows him till she stands onto the vent and Sykkuno stops his sentence. “Why would you follow me?” he says as he snaps her neck.
Her body crumbles to the ground and her ghost floats above it. Tina floats next to her. “Ohh, wait! I wasn’t expecting that. I don’t know why I stood right there.”
Tina puts a hand on her shoulder and smiles at her.
---Valkyrae---
Rae runs around the ship, looking for people to kill. She can’t find anyone. “Sykkuno! BABUSHKA!”
---Tina---
Tina floats through the walls and leads Brooke to the pile of bodies, where Corpse still sits, what a loyal guy. “I’ve returned to the scene of the crime guys.”
She sees Jodi talk to John, who has his face in his hands. “You are the worst cop in existence.”
John pulls at his hair. “I’m a mall cop Jodi!”
Tina sees the trail of bodies and gapes, Sykkuno and Rae have been busy.
---Sykkuno---
After he kills Brooke, he jumps into the vent and pops out in the locker room. The sound of Rae screaming “Babushka” leads him to where she is.
“Come, Rae, Rae, over here” he leads her through the cafeteria and to the balcony. This is it, these are their las two victims. “Hurry, hurry, babushka.”
Leslie and Toast don’t suspect a thing, they are still talking about sushi when Rae and him enter. “Where, where, Babushka!”
---Toast---
Leslie is really taking her time ordering. “I’ll guess I’ll also get the prime steak, that looks pretty good.”
Toast looks up at Leslie. “You are getting prime steak from a sushi place.”
Leslie makes a face. “Okay your right, shrew that.”
---Sykkuno---
They enter the balcony while screaming. “Down here, down here. Babushka!”
Rae kills Toast and he kills Leslie.
That’s it. They’ve won.
Rae, him, and Corpse.
Oh, he almost forgot about Corpse!
---Corpse---
Corpse is sitting with his back to the wall. Waiting for his incoming demise when the blaring alarms of oxygen depletion stop. He looks up, huh, it’s not going to be a lack of air that will kill him.
He had hoped that he wouldn’t be killed by his friend’s hands. Seems like he isn’t in luck today.
The first thing he hears is echoed laughter. Then he hears footsteps and shuffling. He prepares himself for his death, he doesn't really feel anything at the thought. He feels empty after being surrounded by the bodies of his friends for however long he was here. All his emotions are used up.
Rae and Sykkuno enter the room via the vent, they are laughing and happy. A stark contrast to his gloomy figure.
They walk towards him and, to his surprise, they sit on either side of him and lean into him. “Oh my god! We did it Corpse!”
Rae throws an arm around him, he is getting covered in blood again. ” You’re the only one left Corpse.” She sounds really happy “That was the best round ever.”
Sy pipes up with a happy voice. “We killed them all before there was a meeting.”
Corpse feels sick. “Not. One. Vote.”
Corpse looks forward and he sees nothing. “All my friends are dead.”
Sy and Rae burst out laughing and drape themselves across him.
He doesn’t know why they’re laughing.