Chapter Text
God damnit, again?
Truly, Damon can only handle so many fake doors before it really, really begins setting him off. This is the fifth one just this run, and he’s barely past halfway through. Sixty-two or Sixty-one? He can't be arsed to always remember door numbers, it’s more mind numbing than certain news sites, but getting killed by the same trick over twenty times gets more grating than having to prevent it.
Of course, that doesn’t fix that he wasn’t paying attention this time.
Damon pulls himself from his errant thoughts with a long-suffering sigh, inching ever so slowly towards door sixty-two, feet shuffling quietly on perfect wood flooring. He’s careful to place himself well enough that his ear doesn’t quite brush the door itself, slowing his own breathing to make sure nothing covers the potential sound of growling to be heard on the other side. He’s had enough encounters with Dupe to have the sound practically memorized, anyway.
A second, two, three… Nothing. Not a sound. He’s not often lucky enough to get it right on the first try!
With a quiet whisper of gratefulness to guiding light- Though they hadn’t quite done anything here- Damon opens the door, steps forward, and-
Plummets.
-
Ex-RP. A stupid title to be slapped with, but fitting enough for a prisoner, she has to admit. It’s a bit annoying to be called ‘Expendable’ or other shit by just about every able-mouthed thing in this place, but it’s not like she’s up to spouting her name off to things that want nothing more than to carve her face into a fleshy jack’o’lantern.
She hates this part the most, the stupid jetsuit course. She never gets past it, even the suit warnings admitting she’s heavier than the normal schmucks that put it on before this place went to shit. It pisses her off that almost four hundred research is going to waste- She’d used most of it at Sebastian’s (and wasted the medkit almost immediately)- but there’s nothing to do but run it.
Blah Blah Blah, ‘Firewall shouldn’t activate’, whatever. She narrowly misses five consecutive jumps before she fully misses one, hissing at the pain of ricocheting off the harshly padded course floor back onto the platforms, and jumps again. Two more, she’s cursing under her breath when she misses again. Another bounce, her bones are rattling, but she keeps running, until a fumbled dash sends her to the floor again. But she doesn’t bounce. No, there’s no floor to catch Ex-RP as she falls. She just
Plummets.
-
Slide- The next door flings off it’s hinges like nothing more than wafer paper as their boot slams it open. Sure, their palms protest the constant screaming of their body against solid brick and concrete, but there’s not much that Charity would consider more satisfying than pretty much kicking hundreds of doors open as if she’s a cop and not.
Well.
A sinner.
Damned to… Whatever this place can be called, to run an endless maze made of bricks and inhabited by things the world places them into the blame of. Not that he can complain. He’s not above being truthful about their shortcomings, at least to himself.
Another kick, a slide, another turn, a kick. It gets repetitive, though they’re thankful for the occasional black shape running at them or eyes glaring them to the floor for at least some break of monotony… as adrenaline filled as said monotony gets, anyway.
She kicks another door, and flies out into nothing. She only has enough time to realize she hadn’t activated pits before she
Plummets.
-
Waking up after your body slams into the floor is a distinctly not fun experience, in Damon’s opinion. He’s fallen plenty of times, yes, but never hard enough to lose consciousness… And certainly never onto grass in the middle of an in-hotel run. His brain still rattles from more than the impact as he groans, body folding into itself just long enough for the pain to subside, then he finally picks himself up.
Odd, it must be big here, his groans only just now echoed.
Damon blinks, seating himself up on his knees and rolling the pain from his shoulders. Must’ve been a top-first sort of landing, really not ideal when falling from something, but it’s not as if he expected a scenery change in such an unchanging place.
A buzzing at his ear calls his attention- Twinkling star sounds laced with warmth somehow- and he realizes that what had been thought to be an echo is… Something just a slight bit more… Alive?
Two other people- Is that shaky one really a person?- are recovering near him, both splayed in the grass in similar, post landing-from-an-unexpected-fall positions, but they’re recovering almost as quickly as Damon himself had.
“What the hell….” The bulkier one hisses, sitting up, and Damon tries his best to take in their appearance before his staring is noticed. A gray robloxian, not a huge rarity, with close-buzzed dark gray hair. They’re well muscled, likely some sort of laborer, wearing a dark blue tank top with a slightly lighter jumpsuit sort of outfit on their legs and hanging at their waist. Their face is odder still, though, clearly stubbled and scarred, but the eyes… Damon can’t see them, despite the moderate light of this… clearing? That they’re in.
They sit up like someone expecting to be heavier, and he has to assume the glance they give to their bare-of-all-but-clothing back is somewhat confused.
They haven't looked at him yet, at least he assumes, so Damon turns his gaze to the other.
This one doesn’t look quite like any robloxian Damon has come across, with deep, darkly navy blue skin, surrounded somehow by an outline of blue so lightly tinted that it almost glows against their skin. Their hair is wild and fluffy, reminding Damon vaguely of scene style, though monotonely colored. They peek a narrowed eye open, and a moment of waiting shows they must only have one… And no mouth, as their lower face remains unchanged when they mutter, “What sort of… Huh-?”
Damon only manages to take in the vaguely familiar, almost priestly robes they wear as their gaze snaps quickly to him, body shifting back and hand shooting up in a position that would suggest they should be holding something, but their hand is empty, and even they seem confused on some level by the lack of item in their grip.
These reactions, compounded, drive Damon to look into his own hands and pockets, finding his lighter missing, as well as the some five hundred forty coins he’d gathered. Damn.
At this point, the bulky one is standing, scratching the back of their head as they, presumably, glance between Damon and the… Priest? They’re frowning, but something about the shape of their lips suggests an equal amount of confusion to what Damon and the other one surely feels. “Uh- ‘kay. I’m gonna go out onna limb ‘n say yer both… Robloxian?” They ask, the tone implying a level of skepticism that even Damon finds odd.
The ‘priest’ doesn’t seem to be listening anyway, so Damon opens his mouth first. “Yes, I am.” He says, careful to keep his tone calm, a new situation doesn’t always call for immediate jumpiness. “My name is Damon. I don’t… Don’t believe you were in a hotel of some sort before this?” He dares to wonder, knowing this one doesn’t really seem dressed for urban exploration. If anything, they’re dressed like a diver.
“No.” The ‘priest’ finally speaks, calling back the attention of the other two. ‘Diver’ seems to nod in agreement to the ‘priest’s’ response, earning a curious hum from Damon. A beat of silence, and when ‘priest’ doesn’t say anything else, ‘diver’ gives an awkward, forced cough and crosses their arms.
“... Ya c’n call me Ex, I guess. I’d ask ya if ya knew where we are, but goin’ off whatcha said, i’m assumin’ ya weren’t really outside before this?” Ex asks, and Damon nods, relieved that the muscley robloxian at least has sense. He hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself, but he’d been a little worried over the potential of this turning violent.
With both of them introduced, Damon glances back to ‘priest’, and he finds Ex doing the same, both seeing the taller robloxian(?) staring up at the cloudy sky like it’s about to shatter above them, hands twitching together at their chest. They apparently notice the sudden lack of speech, gaze lowering to glance between Ex and himself, brows furrowing at the silence.
It stretches a moment longer, and pityingly, Damon breaks it for them. “Your… Name? If you hadn’t heard us, I go by Damon, and this,” he gestures to the one beside him, “is Ex.”
Still, the ‘priest’ only blinks between them for a moment, almost making Damon question if he’d actually heard them talk before, but that confusion is squashed when words finally leave them… Though slow, as if being pulled from someone who doesn’t really want to be speaking. “... John. Charity.”
A simple response. With how odd this all is, Damon supposes he can extend them a bit of understanding for their short words, but he also knows it would be better for such suspicion to be thrown out sooner rather than later.
With names placed out, Damon clasps his hands together at his chest, hoping he at least looks a little more friendly before he speaks again. “Well- With that settled! I suppose we should find out where we are, hm?”
This, at the very least, should make for a more interesting loop.