World 1-2

[Sh4dE]

"Well, we find the remote control to disable it. But we just have to figure out where it is."

Hm, Lance was not sure if he could say everything outloud. There might be microphones hidden somewhere.

He looked around the room. Then he spotted a camera on the ground. His eyes went wide as he stared at it. The flashlight pointed at it.

He calmly let silence enter to the room while staring at the cam before saying words.

"Chuck, I have a feeling this is not just a camera."

[General Goose]

"We find the remote control..." Chuck was...in a certain way impressed by the unique logic on display there. He had been rather vacant and out of it during the whole kidnap procedure. He was pretty sure he was one of the last people to take their earphones out, for one. And so maybe Lance was acting on information that he hadn't been privvy to. But the idea that there was a tangible remote control on the island, one that they could actually reach and sabotage, was madness.

For so many reasons. Even if there was, they'd activate it before they reached it.

"I'm not gonna point out the flaws in that plan, on the small chance the terrorists haven't already thought of them." Chuck pushed his glasses up his nose and rubbed the left ear of his hat as a kind of calming measure.

"Oh? What else is it? A smelloscope?" He was being a little bit sarcastic, but Lance's exuberance had gone from endearing to exhausting pretty quickly. It had forced him to confront the island in more detail, to come to grips with his own mortality, and face the sad truth that none of the students were smart enough to figure out an escape.

[Sh4dE]

Lance smiled at Chuck.

"Well, what are the flaws of the plan?"

[General Goose]

Chuck furrowed his brow.

"I'm not going to point them out in case the terrorists haven't already thought of them. If I troubleshoot your plan now, Mr Vance, then they'll be able to fix those problems."

[Sh4dE]

Yeah, that was right.

"Hm. You're right. But they cannot control all of our communication. There are ways to communicate without speaking. If you wanna know what my plan is and what I've figured out so far I can tell you..."

Lance shrugged. His voice became lower.

"But I think the only problem of the plan is the risk of dying, which is high...Which is why we need to work together."

[General Goose]

"Hey. Genius. Great plan. But about the whole communication thing. One little nitpick."

Yes, Chuck was being sarcastic.

"I think they can probably read lips."

[Sh4dE]

"Okay, this might come off as very, very wrong."

Lance was not sure how to say this.

"And I think it is very reasonable and sane if you say no and don't want to. But it's the safest way of communication."

Lance was afraid of saying the next words.

"Chuck, could you please take off your shirt?"

[General Goose]

Chuck shrugged. Not really much of a conversation to be had there. He knew Lance wasn't being voyeuristic. The dark saw to that. Chuck was too tolerant, too nonchalant, a guy to engage in the homophobic panic that a less confident or less amiable guy might have interpreted Lance's question as warranting.

And Lance had an unconventional and heterodox, but essentially benign, way of doing things. That much was clear to everyone, despite the shroud of darkness. So playing along with his reasoning would, at most, cause Chuck to be cold. And getting erect nipples was not the worst thing to happen to him today.

But yeah. Might as well have some fun with it.

"Oh, you've noticed the tension too, lover boy?"

And he hummed that stripper song as he took his shirt off.

[Sh4dE]

Lance fake smiled at Chuck's joke as he hummed and called him lover boy. It was humourous and funny, but Lance really was not in the mood for this kind of joke...

Kasumi...

He sighed and dropped his bag to the ground since there was no reason to take the hunga munga with him.

As he moved to Chuck he went behind Chuck's back.

"I hope this isn't uncomfortable for you."

He turned off the flashlight. It was dark. Still there was a possibility of the cameras getting night vision. He pressed his body against Chuck's back. His hand inbetween them. Lance's shoulder pressed against Chuck's so it would censor what was going on between them.

"You can read letters, I hope."

He moved his index finger on Chuck's back to form letters. He tried to use big bows to write them slowly. A break of a couple of seconds inbetween the letters. He did not hesitate to dig deeply into Chuck's flesh. He had to make the message clear after all.

C A M

"Next word."

R

"Next word."

R E M O T E S

"That's how I see things. And here's the plan."

D E S T R O Y

"Next word."

C A M

"That's what I do. Don't worry, you're safe. You don't do that."

S P R E A D

"Next word."

T H E

"Next word."

W O R D

"That's what you do. I hope you could follow me."

Well, that was intense. Lance hoped Chuck would be able to understand what he meant and come to a conclusion of the full meaning behind this.

[General Goose]

Chuck continued humming the classic David Rose piece, even as he stood there, shirtless, tapping his hand on his leg in keeping with the rhythm. His mind wandered to an old English comedy sketch where two comedians made breakfast to the tune. Wonderful piece. He smiled. Little moments of reminiscing like that would keep him sane.

He stopped to allow himself to...feel Lance's requests. It was a surprisingly smart system, he had to concede. The syntax was not fluid, or legible, and provided little in the way of clarity or nuance. However, given the constraints of secrecy, Chuck had to admit, there was something admirable about it. The context, however, did not redeem the contents. Chuck could still vaguely follow Lance's plan. And it still vaguely came across as stupid.

Stupidity begets stupidity.

"Can you do it again?" Chuck's own tone dropped, his timbre becoming almost sultry. "And lower." That final syllable came out almost as a growl.

[Sh4dE]

Chuck did not get it and begged for more touchy-touchy. Oh well, guess he'd go along with it. He set his bass voice.

"Sure, baby."

A growl, too.

Well, now he had to think about how to make it more clear. Perhaps he should announce when a new letter comes. Or perhaps he should speak more.

"Gimme a second. I have to get it up."

Well, humour is one way of dealing with this situation. Though if there was someone watching them, which was the case, Lance and Chuck would have all the attention. That was probably not for the best. But what if no one actually watched them live? That was possible. No one would be able to marathon watch them 24/7. But what did he know?

C A M

"Next word."

C O N T R O L

"Well, then I do my thing. The result."

M I N E

"Next."

S A F E

[General Goose]

Chuck leaned his head back, and let loose a sensual, guttural growl. Or an approximation of such. 'Sexy' was not normally something in Chuck's repartoir, not normally a voice in his range that he had reason to so conspicuously deploy. His growl was amateurish, and came across as more threatening than nothing. So, to defuse any unwanted attention, and restore the jovial romantic aura to the scene, he added a "ooooh yeah," in his best impression of URL from Futurama.

Chuck thought he understood Lance's point. Key word being 'thought'. Truth be told, his mind was slightly distracted, with thoughts about URL from Futurama, and impressions thereof. A much more cheery topic of conversation, that. A pastiche of buddy cop movies and a satire on police brutality, conveyed through the medium of a robot voiced by John DiMaggio. Much more intriguing, much more worthy of sustained analysis, than Lance's half-baked theory. Which seemed to ignore the likelihood of detonations, the likelihood the island authorities were now keeping a particular eye on Lance as a suspected dissident, the possibility there wasn't such a remote that Lance could appropriate.

...did he just call the terrorists the "island authorities"? Fuck. That's a victory for them.

But again, Chuck was not convinced it was worth articulating these suspicions. Lance could not really "think" around them, or find solutions to them, and it was more likely that the terrorists had gaps in their contingency plans than anything else. Chuck sighed.

But it was all there was for Chuck to do. He didn't have the sources and word processor needed to discuss URL. Or anything else. Fuck. He missed the internet. Focusing on that loss made the other losses seem less...acute. Pressing. Urgent. It was a good tactic, emotionally. But he would need a new strategy eventually. He sighed. "Alright Lance. What do you want me to do?"

"And give my ass a pinch when you wanna signal a new word."

[Sh4dE]

He simply looked at Chuck with no words until breaking the silence.

"All I need is you to work with me. That's all."

Lance pulled his flashlight out of his pants to turn it on. He looked around. Everything was so bright right now. He walked to his bag to pull out his bottle to drink.

"Should we move?"

He looked at Chuck.

"Just a warning, but people outside are already...murdering."

[General Goose]

Chuck's face darkened as Lance revealed - with the authoritative cadence of someone who had seen some shit - that some people had already started murdering. Chuck was essentially an optimist. An idealist. That sort of happy-go-lucky go-getter scamp that would be, under most circumstances, distraught to hear that violence had already begun. That their childhood innocence had been so willingly thrown away.

Chuck was an optimist, sure, but also a realist. He believed, and still did, that most of his classmates would not indulge in the atrocities the terrorists desired. But it only took a couple. A couple of bad apples, or a couple of misunderstandings, or a couple of cowards. That's all it took. And it would spiral out from there, with no hope or order to hold things back, with nothing to stop them.

That was to be expected.

And as quickly as Chuck's face darkened, his smile reappeared. There was nothing more he could say to that really. Not until he saw the bodies or heard the announcements. There was no point in forcing himself to go through the various stages of grief, not until he heard the details at least.

"Noted." It sounded slightly callous, and he allowed a twang of weariness to slip into his tone, to take the edge off, to make it clear he was just keeping up a brave face. "So, I'm up for going. Let's skip. Skipping is a totally underrated means of transport."

[Sh4dE]

"Yeah, let's skip away from here. The air here is terrible, we shouldn't have mated so hard."

That was no joke, the air in here was terrible and the water did not help Lance to not feel as if he was in a room of some stereotypical fat otaku with bad hygiene who has never opened his window ever.

He walked in the direction to the entrance where he came from and hoped Chuck would follow.

"Hey, so...is there anyone in particular you want to see here?"