Afterparty? Catherding?? .........Afterherding?????

[aboyandhiscar]

[As soon as they're let out of the trial area, Mike makes a beeline for lounge and kitchen. Why, becomes apparent, because soon after, the room furniture in the lounge is arranged in a circle, with a seat for the all the remaining guests.

There's also a pot of coffee and soda cuz it's been a long fucking day. Maybe there are cheezits too, I don't know, a seventeen year old boy put this together. There are pizza rolls probably.

IN ANY CASE, hope you had enough time to flop and mope because Mike's knocking on every door and telling folks to meet in the lounge--if they aren't in their rooms, he'll slip a note under their doors. Once gathered, he skips straight to the point.]

I know it's been...a rough couple days for all of us, but we can't rest just yet. Especially not after that.

Before anything else can happen, we need a plan. How do we get to our friends, and how do we get them back?

And has anyone gotten any more weird notes lately?

Comments

[toogoodforhim]

[Lefou takes the note, but after a minute of trying to read it without sounding it out loud, he just hands it back.]

Who- whose ring is it?

update: ya don't gotta worry about getting this to ten comments, i am Good

[terribibble]

[God, that's right, dammit. Okay. Gotta get Lefou up to speed here.]

Near as we can piece together from all these pieces of paper... well it's complicated, but I'm goin' to guess it belonged to a woman named Emily, who was married to the man who owned this mansion before, ah. All this kidnappin' and murder business started goin' on. To make a long story very short.

[toogoodforhim]

Oh, like- like these?

[He passes his own two notes over to Fidds.]

[terribibble]

[He looks them over briefly, grimaces, and nods.]

How much about what we've found out thus-far do you know? Don't know how many of those conversations you've been privy to.

[toogoodforhim]

Um...

[terribibble]

[HAHA OH BOY HE GETS TO BE THE ONE TO SUMMARIZE THIS BULLSHIT HUH]

Ah. Let me just... there's a lot.

[Look, I am not writing out all the awkward dialogue that follows. The main important parts stay the same: there was a butler named Beau Blood who was shanghaied by pirates. He started sleeping with the captain (Randall), then at some point took part in a rebellion, beheaded him, put the head in a hatbox and took his place. He buried the head. The head did not stay buried. Eventually he made his way back to dry land, married his sweetheart Emily, but the head continued to refuse to stay buried and everything went completely pear-shaped. Presumably everyone died. He's a little fuzzy on the exact details, not having read every note personally, but what he didn't read himself he heard second-hand. It's fine. It's a nice wholesome story.]

[toogoodforhim]

...Oh. My, goodness.

That's- that's a story, yeah.

[terribibble]

Now of course that's just what we've put together from the notes and all. I don't know how, ah. Accurate. It is. To what really happened. But it's the best we have to go off of and of course it's not like we can ask anyone involved.

[I mean they could try and seance Emily. With that ring. They could. But he is still very leery of the idea of seances, frankly, even if they're running out of other options.]

[toogoodforhim]

...Do you think it's. Really random? Getting these things out of that machine now?

[He looks at the ring in his hand.]

[terribibble]

I don't know. It doesn't feel entirely random, to be plain with you.

I've always figured there was some sort of curse on this house we had to put right and I'm very sure this all has somethin' to do with it.

[toogoodforhim]

[He turns the ring over in his hand, chips some of the old old old blood off of the stone carefully with his thumbnail.]

So what do we do? With this whole story?

[terribibble]

I... I don't know. This isn't my area of expertise.

[He glances over at Ford, whose area of expertise it very much is.]

It feels like we've got all these puzzle pieces but none of them fit together and half of them aren't even to the same puzzle.

[Is he a little frustrated that this is a problem he's so ill-equipped to fix? Absolutely.]

[toogoodforhim]

We don't even have any way to know where to start putting the pieces together. What the solution to the puzzle even looks like.

[He's not a problem solver.]

[terribibble]

[Yeah, see, sometimes Fiddleford wishes he wasn't one either. Then this wouldn't be so difficult to deal with.]

Hopefully it looks like us gettin' out. It's just... it's just gettin' there that's the hard part.

We'll figure somethin'. We have to. Every problem has a solution, it's just a matter of lookin' at it the right way.

[toogoodforhim]

I hope you're right.

I'll- I'll leave the problem-solving to those of you who are good at it.

[terribibble]

Mmhm. Just remember not to sell yourself short, y'know. Sometimes honest common sense is what solves problems. Common sense sees things all the book smarts in the world can't.

[I'm sorry Lefou did you want to keep insisting you're bad at things because nobody around here is going to let you get away with that shit anymore my dude]

[toogoodforhim]

[Sheepishly, he scratches at one of his sideburns.]

I'm sure there's plenty of others who have more common sense than me.

[terribibble]

Oh sure, but every little bit counts for somethin'.

[toogoodforhim]

Well... I appreciate you thinking that.