Author's Note: Thanks for your patience during this hiatus; college has been busy as always. As of today (10 April 18), I have completed 25 chapters. I'll try to update more frequently soon to catch this site up a bit.

Nonary Game: Resonance

(Current path: 5)

(Suggested listening: Imaginary)

"What do you mean, you don't remember seeing it?" Boxcars asked. When he saw that Robin didn't move his hand away from his face, however, he became a bit more serious. "Hey, Topaz, you feelin' alright?"

Robin wanted to respond, but the wave of heat that encompassed his head had condensed into a throbbing pain, clouding his vision for the few seconds that he kept his eyes open. He could hardly remember a time he'd had such a pounding headache, which seemed to last several minutes.

When he finally eased down to a point where he'd regained his senses, he realized he was lying on one of the benches between two rows of lockers. "Did I… fall over?" he asked, almost too quiet to be heard.

"Not exactly," Boxcars answered. "You managed to walk most of the way over here, but…" He trailed off then, an untranslatable look on his face. "You were down for a solid minute. What exactly was that?"

"It was pretty bad, wasn't it?" Robin's words hardly fit the severity of the headache, but he was hoping it'd be an outlier. He briefly admitted so, then shrugging sadly.

"Anything specific you think could have brought it on?"

Robin smirked then, telling Boxcars that his guess was as good as any. "Maybe I haven't eaten in a while? Who knows how long we were down when our kidnapper gassed us… Could it have been the anaesthetic?"

"I don't think migraines are a side effect of anaesthesia. But… I'm sorry, dude. If you want, we can rest a bit and wait for the others to tell us what they've found."

"No, I think I'll be alright. It's just… let's hurry up and solve this damn puzzle, see if we can get out of here as soon as possible."

Boxcars laughed once. "Amen to that." He grasped Robin's hand then, pulling him back up to a standing position.

(Suggested listening: Senary Game)

"Yeah, no wonder I missed the bathroom; it's not even a real room." There were three stalls, constructed of grey plastic matching the walls of the rest of the locker room. "White and grey, not exactly the most warming color scheme."

"What can ya expect with a school though? Although our captor clearly has enough money that he could have gone for better." Boxcars approached the single sink set against the back wall. After staring into the mirror for a few seconds and rubbing one of his eyes, he glanced down at the sink itself. "There's a little plastic thing in the drain, like one of those things you put your keys in when you go swimming."

Robin peered in as well, the item in the drain reminding him of the key they'd found in the bathroom out in the main hallway. Unfortunately, there was no chain that he could pull to retrieve the capsule. "If it floats, maybe we just need some water." He flipped one of the faucet handles but found it useless. No water came when he turned the other one, either. "We'll probably have to come back to this, then."

"I'm startin' to think that's a trend here. Is there any damn part of this puzzle we can do right now?" Boxcars had stepped to the stalls, inspecting them for any other interesting clues. The first two had been completely ordinary, but as he lifted the toilet seat in the last one, he finally noticed something. "Oh, look, another locker code. At least, if we're right about that. This one says "BBBB," so… yeah."

Thus, the two had exhausted their progress in the men's locker room for the time being. "Here's hoping we find something in that access hall that's helpful," Robin said. Boxcars held up two crossed fingers as they passed through the doorway. As there had been nothing of note when they first entered, there remained nothing in the area. "Well, I guess we should cross over, then; maybe Leo and Delta have found something interesting." Robin opened the door between the access halls and stepped through, but Boxcars followed slowly and only after a few seconds.

"H-hey, check this out," Boxcars stated, looking back at the door. "There's another post-it here, just like the one in the office." He retrieved it, handing it to Robin.

"E: 900 mg," he read. "So we've got A, C, and E, then. You think maybe we're gonna have to get certain amounts of different liquids or something and, eh, do something with them?"

Boxcars threw a hand in the air. "No sense wondering until we have all the information, I guess. Especially in this puzzle. It seems like we're just looking around for a ton of numbers and codes, and only when we have all of them will we actually be able to do anything. Not exactly the most interesting kind of puzzle, in my opinion."

"What kind of puzzle could be, though, in this situation?" Robin asked, rhetorically. He placed a hand on the handle to the women's locker room, and Boxcars' face sank. "Are you coming, mate?" Boxcars didn't answer. He didn't appear to be nervous, or trying to form the right words, or anything of the sort, but rather his gaze told that his mind had slipped away from the present. "Boxcars?"

"Listen, Topaz, I can trust you, right?" The question came as a bit of a surprise, and Robin was quite unsure he could promise someone he'd just met that it was a good idea to trust him, but he nodded. "Let's see, ah… what did you think when Lucky first introduced themself to you?"

"Well… they're kind of outspoken, huh?" Robin wasn't sure where this was going, but he went along for the sake of not making Boxcars uncomfortable. "I guess they make me a little uncomfortable, what with the shooter's jacket and stuff. But I suppose it was pretty cool they shared their pronouns with us."

Boxcars' face relaxed a bit. "Alright, great. That may have been a bit of a… roundabout way for me to test you, sorry about that. But anyway, I just… Like I said back when we found these rooms, I'm not too comfortable with going in the women's locker room." He inhaled slowly, maintaining solid eye contact. "I'm trans, is what I'm getting at. So, basically, when I was in like junior high and had to start changing in locker rooms with women, it was… not the easiest for me. I was one of the only ones who would actually go hide in the stall to change, when all the others would just do it in front of their lockers. They… used to tease me about that. I don't think it ever crossed their minds that I was actually male, or else they probably would have been accepting. It's just, our school was pretty shit about it, so I never told anyone until my last year of high school."

"Oh, I see," Robin said, not sure how he could sound any more comforting. "Well… did your high school let you use the men's lockers, then?"

"Oh, that wasn't something I was even gonna try and fuck with," Boxcars said. "Since it was my last year, I basically just decided I wasn't gonna go to gym class. I had too much else going on: lying around, hanging with friends, being late to class… you know, senior stuff." Robin couldn't say that his experience in the last year of secondary school was anything like that, but he reserved judgement. "Besides, I didn't need a bunch of jocks misgendering and deadnaming me. Teen boys are aggressive as shit, and I wasn't trying to get… you know." Robin, being cis himself, naturally didn't really know, but he did feel a great sadness that Boxcars had been so concerned.

"I'm sorry, I'm not really sure what "deadnaming" is," he interjected.

"Ah, that's fair," Boxcars answered. "It's when, like… if a trans person says that they want to be called, like, James, because they're actually a man, but their parents named him Lauren when he was born. So when James comes out as trans, he also says his name is James, because it is. But if someone were to insist on calling him Lauren, then they're basically saying that they know his identity better than him, and that trans people aren't real." Robin could imagine the jocks he knew several years back behaving equally terribly, so he only nodded.

"Anyway, thanks for being cool. I'll make sure we didn't miss anything back there, so if you figure out which lockers some of those codes go to, lemme know." Before he turned away, he passed the cinch bag to Robin, just in case he needed to look up any more information on the planets.

"Thanks for trusting me," Robin said. With a salute, Boxcars crossed back into the men's room. "Deadnaming, huh." Robin figured that if Boxcars had changed his name when he came out as trans, it would have to be to something he really liked and felt comfortable with. He then began to wonder why he had been one of the participants who'd chosen to take on a nickname at the start of the Nonary Game. What could he have to hide that our kidnapper doesn't already know…

Of course, Robin had also chosen to be nicknamed. Alas, he felt as though he could see himself having given his real name instead. He could almost picture Boxcars calling him "Robin" instead of "Topaz" a few minutes ago. He wanted to tell himself that he found nicknames to be much more cool and interesting that normal names, but the truth was, he almost felt compelled by his memory to take on the name. Whatever that voice was in his brain, it surely must have been there for a reason.

"Topaz," Leo greeted. "Are you having a good time out there?"

"Oh, sorry," Robin responded. "I must have zoned out. So, I think we have a few clues on the other side that maybe could help you two over here."

"Any chance you might have the distance between the Sun and Mars?" Leo lead him over to the stalls, set up just beside them. One was open, with its toilet seat up. On the underside were painted symbols much like in the men's storage room.

"As a matter of fact, yes." He reached into the cinch bag, which he noticed now also contained his notebook, and retrieved the device with information on the planets. For the third time, the astral tune lit up the room.

"Can't say I was expecting that," Leo said, scratching at his ear. After a few seconds, Robin played the statement that had been requested. "Hmm, 142 million miles. So I'm guessing the number we need is 142, then. Maybe something to do with locker 142?"

"One of the toilet lids in the men's room had a locker code written on it," Robin said, reading through his notes. "BBBB."

"I'll see if it works." Leo disappeared from view, presumably looking for the proper locker. Robin could make out four quick beeps, followed by silence. "It flashed red. Did we do something wrong?"

"I hope not," Robin sighed. "Maybe that code is for locker 142 in the men's room." That seemed to satisfy Leo, who nodded as he re-approached.

"I also found this note on the bench here," he said, handing a slip to Robin which read "B complex: 27 mg." "Think there's supplements in here?"

Robin wasn't familiar with B complex, but if the muscular man was asking him about supplements, it was likely he was referring to vitamins. The question seemed open-ended, though, so he didn't answer it, instead crossing over to the sink. He found nothing in the drain, but out of curiosity, he turned one of the handles, relieved again to see water. "I wonder if there's some way we can transport this to the men's sink." He pushed the handle back, but water continued to flow. "Oh, damn. It's broken."

"I doubt that," Leo replied. "Do you really think whoever kidnapped us would give us puzzles that we could break?" Robin figured their kidnapper couldn't care less if something bad happened to them, but he figured it was safe to assume nothing preventing them from solving the puzzles would happen. Indeed, after an additional thirty seconds or so, the water slowed to a halt. "There's nothing here, though. Maybe we'll have to look elsewhere."

Robin looked down the rows of lockers, just in case there had been any obvious notes hanging up or something of the like. There was little of interest, excepting a large, red tray sitting on one of the benches. It was the plastic kind that had individual lids for each well, almost as though it were a larger version of a multi-day pill organizer. Six of its seven opaque wells were open, and the seventh was shut. Robin tried to pry it open, but to no avail.

"You'd think they'd be labeled, like, "D, L, M," for the days of the week, but these say "A, B, C, D, E, K." It's definitely got to be referencing vitamins," Leo said. "But we haven't been able to do anything with it."

The women's locker room seemed even less abundant than the men's, but Robin continued his search by moving toward the coach's office. As he expected, it was locked, but his search was not in vain. He could see two very familiar things through its window. The first was another sticky note, this one reading "D: 1800 IU." The second was an infographic on bones. "There are… AAAA bones in the hand, 62 in the leg, and… CCCC in the entire body." As he copied the information in the notebook, he drew lines between the parallels to the infographic in the men's coach's office.

"Seen this before, then?" Delta asked. Robin wasn't sure when the man had approached, but he nodded.

"So the AAAA corresponds to 27, and CCCC is 206."

"Got it," Leo said, heading over to the lockers.

"While he's doing that, you should look in the storage room over here," Delta said. "There's another one of those codes on the back wall, so hopefully you found the number for it in the men's locker room." Opening the door, he pointed at the wall, which had simply been painted "FFFF."

"In our storage room, there was a Sun and Venus sign painted there. So we found the distance between them to be 67 million miles."

"Hey, Leo!" Delta shouted.

"Yes?" Robin could just make out Leo's voice from the main room.

"Locker 67 is FFFF," Delta continued.

"On it." The interaction was quite amusing to Robin, but he focused on the task at hand.

"Is there a poster in here that talks about blood, perchance?" he asked. Delta responded wordlessly, reaching into a nearby box and handing Robin the required poster. "So the 8 main blood types thing is the same, but we have that blood cells are a large portion of 3.7x10 to the 13 cells in body, and there are 10 to the 5 miles of blood vessels. So... the EEEE is 13, and the DDDD is 5," Robin noted, drawing even more lines. "Since the numbers are in this room, and the codes are on the poster in the men's, I think these codes are for men's lockers."

"Alright then," Delta nodded. "Let's see if Leo found anything."

Naturally, he had. Each of the three lockers he'd opened had contained a bottle of vitamins: A, C, and K. "I put each of the bottles in the tray on the bench; maybe that'll unlock them." Robin and Delta observed his work as they headed back to the bathroom area. "Can't say I've ever seen supplements with such low amounts of the vitamin. Like, the C pills only have 45 mg each, but… whatever."

Robin kept the information in mind and headed back to the men's locker room. He briefly described to Boxcars the parallels between the two rooms, then offering him the code to locker 142. He himself took on lockers 5 and 13. He punched in the two strings of letters quickly, earning himself a click as the lockers opened. As expected, he found two bottles of vitamins: D and E, respectively.

"Here ya go," Boxcars said upon his return, handing him a bottle of B complex pills. "Hopefully these get us that key, huh?" As Robin stuck them in the pocket of his jacket, Boxcars' attention moved to the sink. "Dude, look! The sink's full of water now. Did you do something to it?"

"All I did was turn on the women's sink. Maybe this one's connected to it." The capsule that once eluded them now floated to the surface, and Robin grabbed it, wiping it off on his shirt before popping it open. "It's a key. Not the kind we're looking for, unfortunately." Alas, the two took it to the coach's office, since it was the nearest locked door. "Awesome, it's unlocked now."

As they'd assumed earlier, there was little in the coach's office of any interest. The only things they could find, apart from the clues they'd already used to open the lockers, were two items in one of the desk drawers. The first was a slip reading "K: 180 ug," thus making it the last of the vitamin slips to be found. "Now that we know what these are referencing, maybe we have to get a certain dose of each vitamin or something," Boxcars suggested.

Robin held up the other item to the light. It was a small sheet of transparency, at roughly an A5 size. There were black markings on it, but they were hardly decipherable. "What do you suppose this is?"

"Beats me. But that kills it for this locker room, I think." Boxcars lead the march out of the office and towards the access hallways. He paused beside the exit door, offering a casual wave to Robin as he returned to the women's room.

"Alright, let's just put these bottles in here…" He carefully set the three bottles upright in the tray, but the seventh well remained unopenable. "Uh… that's unfortunate."

"You saw those slips, didn't you?" Delta asked. "Hope you're good at math."

"Oh, right. We must need to put certain amounts of each vitamin in here," Robin said. On the bench beside the tray, he set his notebook, open to the information that had been on each slip, alongside all six bottles. "These A pills are 900 ug each, and the slip said we needed 900 ug, so…" He opened the bottle and retrieved a single pill, placing it in the A well before moving on. "The B pills are 27 mg each, and we need 27 mg…" A single B complex pill went in the B well. Continuing, he placed two of the 45 mg C pills, three of the 600 IU D pills, five of the 180 mg E pills, and two of the 90 ug K pills.

"These are like, a tenth of the concentration you'd find in real supplements," Leo said, his voice almost making Robin miss the sound of the seventh well popping open. "These pills are useless, and they're probably just something our kidnapper made up."

"Hmm," Delta said, almost as a laugh. "That reminds me of something."

"Oh yeah?" Leo seemed a bit intrigued. Robin, too, wondered what sort of connection Delta could have made to such a statement. "What's that?"

"It reminds me of delta," Delta answered.