A/n: Another fanfic, this one has only got Sherlock characters. It should be updated once a week, if I get round to it.
The idea came from both me and my sister, so credit to her too!
Enjoy!
Sherlock fidgeted impatiently in the line, stood side by side with five other children.
He had been, against his will, mind you, forced to participate in this game show for children. He had argued against it, but his 'friends', the people he stood by, had cajoled him into doing it, with the excuse of it being 'fun'.
Unsurprisingly, Sherlock disagreed.
He had not expected to actually get onto the show when he agreed to it, either, but supposed that not many people were stupid enough to want to do it. As a result of this doubt, he had not bothered to find out what the show was actually about, and had no clue what was going on as a result of this. Educated guesses would be key to survival today then.
One of the many sources of his irritation was the oddly shaped device known as a 'whisperclip' (a lie, as any noise coming from is was ever actually a whisper) stuck on his ear, through which a woman could be heard prattling on about 'unfortunates', the collective (and only) term used to refer to him and his acquaintances. The woman had been introduced only as 'The Voice' and was speaking in a tone clearly intended to intimidate, though the results were not completely successful. Sherlock himself was nonplussed, but he could see in his peripheral vision that Molly, at least, was shifting uncomfortably every time 'The Voice' spoke.
A brief pause ensued in which the saboteur was supposedly spoken to by The Voice, being given instructions on how best to make everyone else fail. From his position in the line Sherlock couldn't see anyone well enough to discern immediately who the saboteur was. 'Ah well. Might as well have some fun with this then.' he decided, opting to play investigator while trying to succeed in keeping the wall built.
"Unfortunates," speaking of which, there she was again, this time hopefully with something more useful to report. "This is Wall of Sorrow. To pass, the wall must be full at the end of 90 seconds. Let the challenge begin... now."
With this, the game began. Everyone rushed towards the fake bricks that were to be stacked in order to complete the wall. Greg got there first, closely followed by John. The urgency with which they took to the task was genuine, and Sherlock put them at the bottom of the rankings for suspicious behaviour.
Standing back slightly, but still holding bricks, were Molly, Sally, and Jim. Sherlock took the initiative to race over at this point, collecting blocks to avoid casting suspicion on himself. After all, there's no fun in losing on the first round, it takes all the excitement out of the investigation!
As the two up at the wall moved back to retrieve more bricks, the four lagging behind took their place. Taking care to balance them properly, Sherlock placed the blocks down. He noticed as he was doing so that Sally was looking at the wall a bit too intently, a badly masked look of indecision on her face. He made a quick mental shift in the ranking, making her suspect number one.
John and Greg arrived with the last few blocks and the wall was complete.
"Well," John said, "that wasn't too hard, was it?"
"Just wait until after the blackout. We'll probably have to put even more bricks in place then!" Greg pointed out. At his mention of the incoming lights out the group edged closer to the wall subconsciously. Sherlock made a mental note of the positioning of everyone and then casually placed himself directly between Sally and the wall.
After a few seconds of unnecessarily tense waiting, the lights went out. Immediately footsteps were heard from Suspect Number One's direction, confirming Sherlock's suspicions. Showing this even further, she wasn't even in the same spot as before. 'It's like she wants to be caught!' He thought incredulously, before turning to survey the damage.
As predicted, the wall no longer existed. With only a few seconds left on the clock, everyone rushed forwards in a vain attempt to salvage it in time. Molly, who had hung back before, dove into the second part of the task with exceptional amounts of vigour. 'Probably trying to make sure no one suspects her. If I hadn't already figured this out, that might have been seen as suspicious' he mused absently.
Shockingly, the attempt failed. In the words of The Voice, they had "Failed miserably." A chorus of irritated groans rang out at the signal to cease wall-building, primarily from Greg and John, who were in Sherlock's opinion taking it a little bit to far.
Now it was time to present the, quite obvious, evidence, and convince the others to choose the logical option in regards to the saboteur.
"Sally, who do you think the saboteur was, and why." The Voice asked, letting the pointless voting begin.
"It must be Sherlock, since he was the last to start helping." The saboteur spoke, clearly lying to those who bothered to open their eyes. And with a rubbish argument to boot.
"Oh yes, that'll convince them." Sherlock cut across, "let's just hope they abandon all logic and ignore all the incriminating evidence there is against you so you can go through to the next round." The sarcasm laced in his words was obvious to even the densest people in the room.
"Like what?" Sally argued accusingly, neither her nor Sherlock letting the voice sounding in the clips telling them to wait their turn stop them.
"Let's see. Your baseless argument against me can be the first thing. Then the fact that the footsteps sounded from your direction when the lights turned off. Speaking of which, you failed to return to your position afterwards. Far too much to the left, and a little bit forwards."
The quick shutdown had managed to leave Sally flustered, unable to produce any sound arguments to oppose him. Seeing this, the others quickly voted for her too, leaving only the irritating adults to read their scripts before the next round could begin.
"Poor, unfortunate Sally. You're... trapped!"
"Freak," Sally, not the best loser, sneered as Sherlock passed her, "figures you'd pay such an unnatural amount of attention to something like this. I can't wait until you're the saboteur, what'll you do then?"
As usual, Sherlock ignored the comments, leaving a seething Sally to deal with her anger on her own.