SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

Colin let out a grunt as Marco knocked him off. However, he managed to quickly catch himself and whirl around to face Volker once again. Psychofuck had gotten up to his feet too, but Colin wasn’t going to let him stay up for long.

“You fucking murdered me you ratfuck!” He roared as he rushed Volker once again, reaching to grab him and forcefully thrust the fucker’s head right into the arcade machine he used for support.

Whatever weird shit this place was, figuring it out could wait. What mattered right now payback.

The significance of Bert switching to her birth name made Blake raise an eyebrow, being more confused if anything. Bert was alive and Liberty is dead? As far as he recalls, Bert was just a nickname, so what does that even mean?

Before he can relay those thoughts to her, Abel talked and made it pretty clear that he's in denial about his own death.

Blake rolled his eyes. This'll probably take a while. As he was took a couple steps towards Abel, some shouting momentarily stopped him. Turning his head towards the source, his eyes settled on some kind of ball pit. It's probably some of the others who's handling the whole 'they're dead' thing much worse, which wasn't surprising.

He decided to ignore it for the time being as he put his hands on Abel's shoulder.

"I wish Ber-Liberty's kidding," he said, doing his best to make eye contact, "but she's not. You were one of the first to go, dude."

Pausing for a few moments to figure out what he's going to say next, he continued.

"Heard your name when those terrorist fuckers announced it during the second day. Said it was a 'new speed record'."

Marco’s head bounced off the arcade cabinet with a ‘poink!’ His focus wasn’t even on Colin anymore as he bashed and slammed him against the arcade cabinet. Nay, his focus was on a more savage exchange right across from him.

So this Ron guy shows up acting all smug and shit, trying to pick up chicks with his stupid pickup lines and smug patronizing, but his target wasn’t having it. Dying wasn’t forever, but unfortunately for Ron, cucking was, and boy howdy he got DEKCUC hard! Riperoni in pepperoni my dude.

Marco’s focus went back to Colin as he continued to bash the shit out of him. Marco grabbed the plastic gun from the cabinet and began smacking Colin in the head with it, as Colin yelled out to him. Marco smiled, and replied in his best goofy impression, “Hyuck, I’ll fuckin do it again!” He yelled, as he wrapped the cord around Colin’s throat.

"W-what, Oh... I..."

Shit, she had a boyfriend! A stupid, living boyfriend. He probably should have expected... shit! He already fucked up. But, wait, he hadn't even said anything yet. Maybe he could pass it off as a misunderstanding? But she clearly knew what he was getting at. She knew he'd be lying, fuck...

Wait, calm down. Calm down. He was acting like old Ron. He was new Ron, yeah? Cool and confident Ron. Stuff like this just rolled off his shoulders. He took a deep breath. He could feel a drop of sweat trickling down his neck (they still sweated here?), but he tried to ignore it.

"Oh... I wasn't trying anything." he stepped back and forced out a chuckle. "I really just wanted to know if you were alright. Sorry if I gave off the wrong impression."

Old Ron dwelled on his mistakes, but new Ron just pushed forward. Alright, he was back in it! Yeah.

"S-so who is your boyfriend? Just wondering."

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked back to the fight. Man, they just straight-up ignored him. Not that he was bothered. He wasn't.

"Yeah, I kiiiiiinda found your corpse, bro," Liberty said. It was the tone of voice she would have used if she got high at someone's house and had to explain to them where all their Cocoa Puffs went. I kiiiiiinda ate all of them without any milk, scooped them out of the box by the handful, while watching Blues Clues because I put in the wrong number on the TV remote. She knew people who didn't like the phrase, but "sorrynotsorry" covered her tone of voice pretty well also.

"You were bobbing up and down in these rice paddies. It was pretty gross! I think you got drowned, but your head was kinda caved in, but like a bird could have also done that, so it's anyone's guess. Oh, right! It was Paloma. Pretty sure that's the name they gave. For the person. That killed you."

A fight broke out in the ball pit. Liberty looked over her shoulder. It was basically who she expected to be fighting. She didn't need to involve herself with that; there was something more important going on. She had to convince Abel that he actually got killed. If there were any other details she could offer about his death that he didn't know.

"When Quinn killed me she basically pistol whipped my skull until it caved in," she continued, "it was pretty fucked up, and it hurt really bad, but I'm, well, I'm dead, but I'm okay?"

She turned and looked over at Blake again.

"Hey, Blakey, how'd you die?" she asked, "you remember what went down?"

Abel rolled his shoulder and threw Blake's hand off. Blake stared right at him, but Abel couldn't do the same.

He started up the game again, sneering to himself as Bert talked about some sorta nonsense about drowning and rice patties and Paloma like he'd ever said more than three words to her before or how he'd never be caught dead near water so how the fuck did that make sense? Whatever prank this was it wasn't fucking funny.

He spun the ball in his shaky hands as the timer started. He shot the first shot of the round.

It bounced off the rim. He was never gonna get that fucking bear.

Abel was set on shrugging her and Blake off? Fine.

She didn't want to have to do this, but she really had no choice.

"Okay," she said, putting her hands on her hips, "y'know what, why don't you check on something for me? Why don't you go on up to the front door of this place, open it, look out there and tell me what you see, yeah?"

The first step to getting over a problem was realizing that you had one, after all.

Or being forced to admit it.

Abel put a little spin on this next one. Though it didn't matter, since the result was the same.

"Not my problem, honestly," he flatly replied to Bert, shooting another basket. This one actually landed; he gave a little fist pump.

"You do it, since you're so curious."

His hands shook a little more as the next ball rolled in his hands.

"Already did."

"Cool."

Another shot, another miss.

"Guess that's that, then."

Blake's look turned into a glare as Abel was dead set on ignoring the both of them.

He didn't even register Liberty's question towards him as he was getting more and more impatient by the second.

"Listen, you-" He trailed off as Liberty butted in, talking about opening up the front door of the restaurant and relaying what he saw to her.

What? What's so special about the outside-

Oh, he forgot. They're dead. Something special was waiting for Abel, and the feeling of curiousness rose within Blake. Since they're in who-knows-where, what lies ahead of them outside of this building? A stairway to Heaven? Will they just fall into an endless void if they decide to walk out? The possibilities are-

"Not my problem, honestly."

That's it.

"For fucks sake, come here!"

His patience just about gone, Blake moved to grab Abel by the back of his shirt collar, intent on dragging him with all of his strength towards where Liberty opened the front doors.

Whether it's on his feet or on his back wouldn't matter.

Ron stepped back and apologized, and Meilin kept smiling but it wasn't as wide because wide smiles get weirdly tiring sometimes? Anyway, she nodded in acknowledgement of it. Sure he wasn't trying anything. They could go with that. Almost immediately, he followed up by asking who her boyfriend was.

"Oh, Ace," she replied. "And yeah, I'm... alright. Not bleeding out from stab wounds from my own knife a-la Quinn anymore."

Following the other guy's gaze to the fight- oh, one guy murdered the other? Huh. She ought to challenge Quinn to a fight when she got here.

"Oh yeah! By the way-" she said with a sudden realization, turning back to the guy next to her. "What's your name?"

Abel twisted and struggled against Blake's grip on his shirt collar. He snarled as he dug his feet in the ground, tantruming like he was a kid whose mom kept scolding him that it was time to go home.

He broke as his hoodie slipped further and further down his back and arms. Once he was free, he wiggled out of the hoodie completely and slammed it down on the floor.

His teeth was clenched as he stared down Blake.

He took a step towards him. And then another.

And then he pushed with both hands square in Blake's chest.

"Pussy."

Drew blinked a few times as he glanced around at his surroundings and he wondered what was happening. He looked down at himself and he didn't have an arm wound as far as he could tell. His clothing was back to normal and it felt like he was in some weird dream. But he could remember that Declyn has shot him to put him out of his misery and it was clear that all the people here were....

Dead.

Drew felt a wave sadness over seeing everyone that were dead, but he was also strangely relieved that he was able to see them again. Even if some people were fighting. Marco and Colin were trying to murder each other by the looks of it and he wasn't sure how that would work in the afterlife since they had already died. Double dead or something like that. Drew really didn't have a clue.

He noticed that Abel and Blake seemed to be in a standoff and the fighting was making him feel awkward. He took a step back and he sighed softly. It felt like it was normal once more. But he was alone here without the others. He just hoped that they could make it further. He wanted them to all survive for as long as they could.

"...This is fine." He mumbled softly to himself.

Blake nearly fell over with how hard he was pulling as Abel managed to free himself from his hoodie.

Quickly recovering and spinning around, he looked at him and stared right back, about to speak up when Abel began to walk towards him, seemingly eager to make the first move.

He planted a foot in front of him and his other leg behind him, putting himself in a fighting stance, just as Abel put his hands on Blake’s chest.

Feeling himself getting shoved backwards, Blake quickly moves to grab Abel’s wrist as he barely manages to stay upright. Once he recovers, he’ll have to make sure to maintain an iron grip on him before dragging him again to where the front doors are.