Chapter Text
Fran stares blankly at Fuuta as the other man tries to hold in his laughter, lips wobbling from the pressure it’s holding back.
“You couldn’t wait to kill me off, could you?” Fran drawls, slamming his fist onto the table just for the melodrama, the action contrasting with his typical lack of expression.
Fuuta lets a few giggles slip and tries to smother the rest with a hand. “Who said you’re dead, homie?” he asks, quirking his eyebrow purposefully.
“First, don’t say ‘homie’, it makes me lose my will to live. Second, where am I?”
“Well, let’s see.” Fuuta fiddles with his computer for a moment. The yellow dot meant to represent Fran on the map blips out of existence. Then the map grows smaller, sliding to the left to make room for another, separate map that the yellow dot reappears on.
Like the original map, most of this new map is blacked out with only the square the yellow circle is on changing to a bluish-gray color just a bit darker than the squares of the original map. Fuuta grins as Fran blinks at his screen, almost vibrating with amusement. “There you are.”
Lambo lets out a soap opera level gasp, slapping a hand to his chest in shock for flare. After an appropriately dramatic pause, he utters, “...He teleported you!”
“Actually you - Vive and Zorak - look where he was right before he vanished and see that he actually teleported himself somewhere. On the ground where Fran once stood, you can see a panel built into the ground, covered in dirt and dust in an attempt to hide it. You can assume that that is what, uh, made Fran go bye-bye.”
“Does it still work?” I-Pin asks. She’s twirling the end of one of her pigtails in thought. “Is it going to warp us if we step on it too?”
Fuuta folds his hands neatly together and smiles sweetly at her. “I’m going to need you to do an investigation - intelligence - check for me to answer that.”
“Nothing’s free in your world, huh?” I-Pin huffs, pouting a bit as she picks up her die, rattling it in her hand. She casts the die and sucks in a sharp breath at the result. “That’s a 7 plus... 1?”
“You look down and the panel is still there.” Fuuta shrugs. “And that’s it.”
“Dang it.”
“Can I try?” Lambo asks, already rolling his dice. He looks at the result before glancing at his screen. “I don’t have anything to add to it, but I got a 17.”
“Okay so you - Lambo-slash-Zorak - see something. You notice that the panel is... cracked? Like it’s made out of glass or some polycarbonate material? And it’s just shattered - like you can see thick cracks running all across it? - and it’s steaming. There is some thin, black smoke rising up from the cracks. And you can determine that these cracks were recently made, and that the panel is most likely broken.”
“Okay. I move onto the panel and say, Look, it’s not doing anything. I guess it can only bloop someone once. ”
“I move on the panel too.” I-Pin says.
All three of the markers on the first map move to the left, a black skull appearing underneath them.
“While these visual aids are A1, I’d really like to know where the fuck I am.” Fran says, drumming his fingers on the table to feign impatience.
“I’m getting to you, hold your horses.” Fuuta rolls a die under the table where Fran can’t see.
A smile worms its way on his lips.
Fran stumbles a couple more steps forward before finding he feels completely displaced.
The torch lined cave backdrop that once surrounded him flips and changes before he can understand how. The torches with their blue flames disappear, casting the cave into total darkness, darkvision his only means to combat this shift. He turns around to speculate about what had just happened with his companions and notices that they aren’t there.
Looking around, Fran notices he’s been moved, somehow, into what seems to be a different part of the cave. The walls and flooring match the rough, rocky interior of the walkways he and his party had been traversing. Out the corner of his eye to the left, he even sees the same type of false wall he and his friends had passed through moments ago, though he couldn’t see another indentation hiding a switch like last time. He figures that the moving walls - or at least, the walls he’s come across so far - are one-way portals. He crosses it off as a means of escape, meaning he can only move forward into the darkness.
“Well, fuck.” he mutters. Or, at least, he intended to.
Wherever he is, the place has a lot of reverb.
Those two simple words ricochet around the room, growing in volume as the echoes create even more echoes. Well, fuck. ’s fly in from every direction, making Fran feel as if he’s surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands, of invisible beings that have stolen his voice. His ears begin to ring as the voices begin to overlap, fighting for dominance. A warm trail of fluid begins to run down his neck as the cacophony reaches peak decibel levels. He reaches up and touches the trail, the fluid sticking to his finger tips. He looks at his hand.
Even in the darkness he can recognize blood.
When the echoing stops after a couple minutes, Fran doesn’t notice. A ringing fills his ears as he wipes the blood away with his sleeves, staining his cuffs red and smearing his neck and jaw. Preoccupied with a futile attempt at cleaning himself, he doesn’t notice the shrill chorus of chirps emanating from the cave ceiling overhead.
He is caught unaware when a swarm of bats descend upon him, three getting the opportunity to tear into his arms and legs with their teeth.
He realizes he’s been thrown into combat only after a good chunk of his forearm has been ripped off.
“So you’re gonna take 3 points of damage and you’re deafened, meaning you can’t hear anything for...” Fuuta rolls his d20. “5 rounds, or 5 minutes, if you manage to finish this fight quickly, which I don’t think you will.”
“Is this revenge for making your little honeys walk into a trap?” Fran asks, marking his damage and flipping through his digital character sheets, wondering where to mark his deafened status. “Because - if I remember correctly - I said sorry for that.”
“No, I don’t think you’re remembering correctly at all.” I-Pin says, a pleased smile on her face, obviously happy karma bit her friend in the ass.
“And it’s not revenge.” Fuuta adds, holding up a die he’d been hiding under the table. It’s a blue die, color matching the set he’s playing with, that looks a little bigger than a golf ball. Little white numbers are etched all over its bumpy surface. “I’ve been rolling random encounters with this the whole time. You’re just really unlucky.”
“Even in a stupid make believe game, I can’t catch a break.” Fran murmurs, propping his head up with his arm and slouching forward. “And how do I perish, O’ Prince of Games?”
“You’re not dying yet, you big baby.” Fuuta says, gently swatting him in the face with his folder. “We’ll get to your bat problem in a second, let’s let I-Pin and Lambo do something before they lose interest.”
“They can’t lose what they never had.”
Fran earns himself another swat to the face, this one not nearly as gentle, but if his nose is stinging a bit, he’s not showing it.
“Okay.” Fuuta says, focusing his attention on his little siblings. “It’s your turn. What’s your game plan?”
“Well - since this is obviously a death maze - we’re going to check for traps and secret doors around us before we start walking anywhere.” I-Pin says, snatching up the leadership responsibilities of their half of the split party. Then, after a moment, she looks at Lambo, remembering that - sometimes - he has opinions on things. “Unless you want to go walking blindly? Maybe that’s a thing your character would do or something?”
“No, I don’t think he’d go rushing anywhere after he just saw Fran disappear or get obliterated or something.” He looks at Fuuta. “Do we think Fran is dead or do we know he just got moved or what?”
“Uh... I think you know that the panel made him disappear, but whether he’s dead or alive is up in the air for you.” Fuuta says before chewing on his lip in thought, drumming his fingers against his laptop. “So you guys both want to search for stuff around you then?”
Their Yep! and Yessir. overlap and he waves at their d20’s. “Roll for it.”
I-Pin winces at her roll. “2 plus 2. 4...”
Lambo rolls then immediately throws his hands up in defeat. “8, and I’m a huge dumbass so I have nothing to add to it.”
“You don’t see anything.” Fuuta says. “Just a normal cave pathway. Since you looked around, I’ll tell you that - from what you can see - there’s only one way to go besides the way you came.”
“Alright, guess we’re going that way?” I-Pin looks at Lambo for confirmation.
He shrugs in response. “There’s literally no other choice, so yeah.”
“Alrighty, you guys move further down the hall.” Fuuta says, tapping on his computer and moving the digital tokens accordingly.
“... And? ” Lambo asks expectantly.
“And nothing. There’s no trap in this part of the hall, and you didn’t get a random encounter like Fran did.”
“I wonder why.” Fran mutters under his breath.
“Hush.” Fuuta smacks him with his folder for a third time, happily ignoring Fran’s mutterings of You’re worse than Bel-senpai. to flip through his notes. “It’s your turn now, are you ready for these bats?”
“Oh, I’m aching for these bats, Fuuta.” Fran drawls, apathy dripping from his lips.
“Well then, I’m going to need you to roll something called ‘initiative’.”
Fran grabs the handle of the keytar strapped to his back and flips it to his front, the keys giving off an ivory glow as the magic in his palm warms into the instrument.
His irises, once indistinguishable from the rest of his pitch black eyes, begin to glow a vibrant shade of green. The light they give off leave a trail of afterimages as his eyes flick left and right, the gears in his brain whirring as he reviews his options and spells.
Ignoring the ringing still present in his ears, his right hand juts towards the navy blue bag hanging loose around his hip. He pulls out a small square of white fleece no bigger than a coin. With a quick, practiced flick of his wrist - hand moving as if drawing a curved shape in the air - the fleece burns up in a small spark of green fire.
The sound of hurried footsteps rushing away from the area fills the chamber the rough, rumbling sound of a false wall opening quickly following it, though he’s deaf to anything but the blood still bubbling out his ear and the ringing that’s shaking his brain.
Holding his breath, he keeps as still as he can, eyes trained upwards towards the swarm.
Though he’s relieved to see the swarm shift towards the direction of the footsteps, flying up and out of the chamber in the direction of the footsteps, he keeps his breath locked in his throat. His eyes flicker about, searching for an exit. Blood drips down his chin as he gnaws at his bottom lip, a knot of frustration throbbing in his chest as he realizes he can’t see any openings.
Keeping his footsteps light, he makes his way down the hall, searching desperately for a way out continuing to come up short.
At the same time - in another, brighter part of the cave - Zorak, Vive, and Walnut are continuing their adventure through the cave.
In search of at least their lost companion’s corpse, the three began to explore the maze-like caves more thoroughly.
Vive leads the party cautiously as they forge ahead. She keeps a careful eye out for traps, her darkvision allowing her to see farther ahead than the rest of the party. Mapping out the paths they’ve taken and the traps they’ve seen on an empty page in her prayer book, she keeps Walnut’s reigns wrapped around her wrist, freeing her writing hand but also allowing her to guide the creature down the rocky path.
Zorak, who’s decided to ride on Walnut’s back to keep up with Vive’s long stride, has taken to nervously braiding their steed’s mane. His eyes, unequipped to see through darkness, are busy crying as he frets over how disappointed Tsuna will be when he finds that they’ve let Fran get obliterated just thirty minutes into their errand.
“Zorak.” Vive says with a mildly exasperated tone, not looking up from her cartography work. “Please stop crying, the cave echoes make it sound double pathetic.”
Zorak sputters and hiccups as he finishes off a fishtail braid at the bottom of Walnut’s mane, shaking hands moving to start a pull through braid above it. “F-Fran’s dead!” he sobs (but not exactly for his maybe-fallen companion) and chokes on his own spit. “Tsuna’s go-going to be soooooooo mad at uuuuuuuuuuu-huh-uuuuuuuuuuusss !!”
“He’s not going to be mad! We can’t control if he dies.” Vive says, marking the pathway they had been taking as a dead end and beginning to doubleback. “Besides, he may not even be dead. He could just be teleported away or really tiny or invisible or something.”
“But then how are we going to find him? He could be anywhere, and Tsuna said we have to take care of each other.”
“I told you, I’m mapping the ways we come and go! Eventually we’ll have seen the whole cave. And, if we haven’t seen him by then, well... Maybe then he is dead.”
“ Vive! ”
The word echoes, travelling deep into the dungeon, riding on the cave walls.
A distant chirping quickly follows it, pricking Vive’s ears.
She looks up from her prayer book, pencil in mid stroke, squinting out into the dark.
“Do you-”
The sentence is cut clean off by Walnut rising up on his back legs, a frenzied winnie ripping out his mouth.
Vive is yanked back, the reins wrapped around her wrist going taut. She winces as it digs into her thick skin, barely able to cut into it but drawing blood all the same.
Zorak’s hand quickly finds its place on Walnut’s neck, rubbing calming circles into his skin before he bolts and drags Vive through the rocks.
The steed settles down, but continues to shift on his hooves. Disgruntled huffs of breath rumble in Walnut’s throat as he trots in place, tail whipping aggressively behind him. His head swivels about, staring into the darkness hanging above.
Vive and Zorak exchange panicked looks.
Zorak hurriedly pulls a dagger from his bag to cut Vive free from the reigns, deciding they didn’t have time to untie her.
The blade flashes in the dim light provided by the torches as it slashes her free. Vive stumbles a few steps backwards as she’s set loose from the reign. Rubbing her sore wrist, she looks up towards the ceiling just as a festering cloud of black wings descend upon their tiny party.
Back in the darkest part of the dungeon, Fran tries to find his way out of the chamber he’s been entrapped in, straggling in the darkness.
Two hands running against the slick, mildew covered cavern walls, his bony fingers search for panels and indentations in what seems like a more and more fruitless effort as he journeys on.
His shoulder knocks against a hard surface. Left hand groping blindly towards the object, he finds he’s led himself into a corner. Biting his tongue to hold back a snarky comment, he balls his hands into fists and rests his forehead against the wall, taking a moment to think.
A hot, heaving breath gushing against the back of his neck stills his heart.
Stiffly turning his head, he looks up into a pair of large, red eyes. They glow too-brightly against the pitch black backdrop of this rocky cage. They drill into him with a wild, unblinking glare.
Fran, usually a man of too many words, finds himself unable to speak or even scream. His back is pressed against the cavern wall behind him as he continues to stare, entranced, into the burning red eyes before him.
He is so deeply entranced that he doesn’t hear the way the air whistles as a sharp, unseen blade cuts through it, gutting him with a clean swing.