Author's Note: We're preparing to split up the group again. Remember, this isn't actually a choose-your-own-adventure story, so please do not request that Robin choose a certain door. Thanks, and hope you enjoy it.
Nonary Game: Resonance
"Whoa!" Leo called, presumably as a reflex, as Marcus dropped to the floor. As he landed, his hands were pressed firmly into his temples, squeezing into his eyes and disheveling his hair.
Without a word, Boxcars descended to a knee, putting a hand on Marcus' shoulder and squeezing just as tight, or so it seemed to Robin, who had stayed completely still. Most of the other participants had done so as well, not being so inclined to provide comfort to someone they had just met. Indeed, it had even been a bit of a surprise to Robin that Boxcars had been the one to offer the kind gesture, since he was beginning to think that was something more up Ian's alley. Alas, one look at Ian's face revealed a pallor more representative of the man's nature.
Most of the other participants' faces held mixed amounts of discomfort as time went on. Basilio and Leo had turned their heads away from the rest of the group, their eyes lost in the lines bordering the tiles on the floor across the room. Lucky's mouth had twisted into an odd curve, leading Robin to believe they were biting the inside of their lips in some strange sort of empathy. No matter the expressions, though, every one of their bodies was stock-still, frozen in fear of bringing attention to themselves.
After a painstaking amount of time, though, Boxcars finally managed to coerce Marcus to his feet. Only one hand dropped back to his side, however, and he didn't seem to have yet opened his eyes. Boxcars whispered something in his ear, and he nodded weakly. With that, the two began to trudge toward the enclosure with the bean bags. Robin watched them in silence as they slipped inside and slowly sank into seated positions.
Having let another several seconds of quiet pass, Ian asked, "Is… everyone else alright?" He was answered by a series of nods.
"Yeah," Delta said, stretching out his vowel sound slightly as he took on a pensive look. "That leaves me with some interesting questions, but I suppose that's nothing we can solve by worrying about it just yet. I'll reassert the question: Do any of you recognize the picture?"
"No, not at all," Basilio admitted.
"Same here," Cody sighed. "She's a total stranger."
The consensus was out, and thus, the clue had become useless. Robin sighed, a bit exasperated. If a picture of this girl was hidden in the room, she had to have been a hint about something - the purpose behind the Nonary Game, or maybe even Zero's identity - and it frustrated him to think that the mystery might have to go unsolved. He supposed that Boxcars or Marcus might be able to identify her, considering they had conveniently gotten distracted and slipped away upon seeing the photo, but it hardly seemed the time to approach them about it. Robin gave the face of his bracelet, bearing the same digit as the mysterious card, a long and considerate look before turning back to the others.
"Was there anything else you three found in here, by any chance?" Cody asked.
"I figured our silence might answer for us," Delta began, "but no. This room was definitely not ever considered to be one of our kidnapper's puzzle rooms, and wisely so, I might add. There's just nowhere to really hide anything." Robin gave the room another quick lookover, easily agreeing with the man.
"So, essentially…" Lucky stated, "...we've got nothing of any use at the moment." Robin wished he could retort, since he was still rather proud of his find, but there was little support he could give to the hope that had been trying to flourish in his heart.
"Not entirely true," Delta answered. "I think we've definitively decided that our numbered bracelets are quite functional."
"Do you really think we're in any condition to just keep moving on?" Ian asked. "I mean, Marcus is clearly nowhere near ready to walk on his own. And we can't just leave the key in the bathroom behind. What if there is something on this floor that can be unlocked by it that we're missing, since it's not like we can come back here and use it whenever we want to."
"If there was something, we would have found it," Basilio grunted. "There is no point waiting around. No one is going to come and save us."
"That's not what I was saying!" Ian replied. "I'm saying as soon as we head through the numbered doors, we can't get the key again. If we need it for something later, we're fucked."
"It doesn't matter!" Basilio snapped back. "We can't take it with us! What are you so afraid of?"
"What do you think? What are we all afraid of? I don't want to die here any more than any of the rest of you do, and I want as much of an advantage over this game as I can get, so that maybe we can actually all get out of here." Ian's words came in quick bursts, almost making his last sentence sound like several separate ones.
"There's no reason to be so upset, dude," Cody sighed. "Whoever kidnapped us set up everything in this game for a reason. If we have nothing to open with those keys yet, it's probably because we're not supposed to. I hate to say we should just do what he's suggested in his rules, but our only real choice is to keep moving with the game."
"Besides, we'll probably come back here later," Leo said.
"What makes you so sure?" Ian frowned as he spoke.
"Well, if we didn't, what would be the point?" Leo answered. "I doubt these keys are just a joke our kidnapper's laughing about somewhere. And, more tangibly, I guess, there's no way this school has only one stairwell between each floor. That'd just be bad planning, super inefficient for students, right?"
"But there wasn't a stairwell connected to the part of the hallway when we first woke up, remember?" Robin added, putting a hand on the back of his neck. He rubbed it slowly as he thought back to the start of the game.
"Maybe it was in another part of the hallway we can't open yet," Leo shrugged.
"Anyway, circling back, none of that really matters right this moment," Lucky stated. "We can spend all the time we want thinking about how this game could possibly go if you want. Or we can actually see it for ourselves. It's not like any of us are going to get murdered if we're all in groups, right?" The fact that Lucky had left their last statement as a question made it hard for Robin to find the idea comforting.
In the previous several seconds, Ian had detached himself from the conversation to check in with Boxcars on Marcus' condition. "Now isn't really the perfect time to leave," Boxcars sighed. "Why don't we give him a few minutes? He'll be better then." He gave a heavy sigh. "We're not in a rush anyway."
Thus, it was decided. Ian chose to stick with the two of them while they waited, and the group began to instinctively split into twos to give each other plenty of space. Delta and Lucky splintered off first, heading down the hallway toward Doors [2] and [6]. Leo and Cody decided they'd stick to another corner of the main room, leaning against the walls and beginning to converse in hushed tones.
"Perhaps we might head down that hallway," Basilio suggested, pointing back toward the stairwell.
"Really?" Robin asked, his face scrunching up in discontentment. "I did just come back from there with Ian, and I hate to just walk back and forth until we go through the numbered doors."
"Alright, then maybe I will have to just go myself," Basilio replied, adopting a smirk.
"Seriously? Why would you want to do that?"
Basilio's face returned to a neutral expression. "Okay, maybe I just have to use the restroom."
"Uh…" Robin said. "Fair enough. I guess." As awkward as the idea of following Basilio to the restroom seemed, he did not want to be standing around the main room alone in complete silence, so he lead the way down the long hallway.
He did, however, take the liberty of standing outside the bathroom while Basilio was using it. After a few minutes, the other man greeted him again. "So, that's the key, then," he said. Robin offered a single nod. "And that's exactly what it looked like back on floor 0?"
"Almost exactly. Except the different symbol, which you know about already," Robin confirmed.
"Topaz…" Basilio started. "Might I share a theory with you? You seem like you are good at making connections, figuring things out, and the like."
"Definitely," Robin answered. "I mean, definitely share it with me. Actually, do you think you might want to share it with everyone? The more we work together, the better our chances of getting knowledge from everybody and figuring this out."
"Ah, I… think I should not do that just yet. My theory has a fairly big flaw in it, and I believe the others might be a bit quicker to shoot my ideas down than you would. Shall I continue?" Basilio's words were immediately followed by a heartier nod from Robin. "Great. So, I think that, after seeing the symbol on the key just now, I might have some idea of what it stands for."
"Really?" Robin asked, his eyes widening slightly. "This could be really important for the game. What is it?"
"Well, it may not necessarily be what our kidnapper was going for, but… the triangle on top of the cross is used as a symbol for Pallas. Are you familiar with it?" Robin shook his head, so Basilio continued. "It is an asteroid, one of the largest and one of the earliest to be found, so it was around for the times when people still believed in astrology and gave symbols to any celestial bodies they knew of."
"So, it's an astronomical symbol…" Robin mused. He'd been somewhat familiar with the symbols of the planets, but he'd never heard of symbols being used for asteroids. "That would mean that the key from Door [4] probably does represent Mercury. But what's so special about Pallas?"
"As far as I am aware, there is nothing all that special about the asteroid itself. Our kidnapper seems to be something of an… esoteric man; I would bet he is trying to represent more of the mythos of Pallas than the astronomy," Basilio answered.
"You wouldn't happen to know much about that, would you?"
Basilio's face gave way to a lighthearted grin. "There is where you are wrong, Topaz. Admittedly, there is quite a lot of detail and depth to Greek mythology that can be… overwhelming. Perhaps a lot of the information is not exactly relevant to what our kidnapper is thinking, or alternatively there is a lot of meaning that can be derived from one mythical figure, which would mean it is impossible to know why they have been chosen as a symbol of this game.
"However, I suppose I can give a bit of a backstory into one specific story. Most of the earliest asteroids were named after women in Greek mythology. Pallas was actually used as an additional name of sorts for Athena, who was the goddess of war and wisdom and the like. You might recall her influence in the business of mortals in stories like the Odyssey, where she uses her cleverness and wit for battle to help out the protagonists," Basilio explained. Not sure what to think of any of this information, Robin waited for him to continue.
"The most relevant story, I believe, is the one in which she received the epithet of Pallas. There is a lot of disagreement among scholars about where exactly the name came from. Some believe it came from a word that meant a young woman, so it was already a part of her name, since she tends to be the first young Greek goddess people thought of. Or so I assume," Basilio said with a shrug. "Others say that she had a close loved one who was named Pallas, and at one point, the two became angry with each other, and Athena accidentally killed Pallas. She was stricken with grief and guilt, and so to honor her loved one, she took on their name as part of her own."
"Not sure that would be anyone else's first instinct," Robin chuckled.
"I suppose that is why some scholars believe this story was made up later than the rest of her mythos, as kind of a theorized story about where the epithet came from," Basilio stated. "The debates do not end there. Some say Pallas was Athena's father, some say her sister, and some say a close friend. Sometimes they were at a lake. And some people think the word comes from an entirely different Greek word meaning 'brandish.'
"That is the thing about studying ancient cultures, I suppose," he continued. "You are never going to get the entire truth. Admittedly, I assume a large part of that is because the people in the stories are not real, assuming you do not believe in the Greek deities. Of course, from an anthropological standpoint, there was an original story, or maybe a few, and it is understandable to want to get a look at the unaltered version, to get a better understanding of the culture that created it instead of the one that followed."
"Yeah, not a lot of stories were written down back then, were they?" Robin added.
"Unfortunately not. And that type of story just does not last the test of time when handed down orally for thousands and thousands of years. I must say, I am quite relieved that we have gone ahead and invented the internet and pushed people to participate in it. Recording history in such a way is much more advantageous for future anthropologists… but I suppose that is a wide digression," Basilio said.
"So, apart from the fact that this story doesn't seem to have much relevance to our situation," Robin started, "there is another flaw in your theory that you mentioned?"
Basilio gave a slow nod, one that was almost a surrender. "If we suppose that the symbol on the key in this bathroom is representative of Pallas, and the one we found in Door [4] is of Mercury, that still leaves the other key that you have a mystery."
Robin retrieved the key from his pocket, recalling its simple dashed circle symbol. "No chance there's another asteroid or something that uses this symbol?"
"In fact, there is not a single celestial body that uses that symbol," Basilio admitted. "And there is little other chance for someone to apply literal symbols to mythology."
Robin pondered the implications of Basilio's theory deeply as the two returned to the main room. They were quite chuffed to see that Marcus and Boxcars were standing, although they did not appear to have returned to peak performance. "I guess we should get ready to head on, then, if there's nothing else worth looking at," Boxcars said, crossing his arms.
"The doors we have this time are [1], [2], and [6]," Delta reminded everyone, "so I believe we should just all choose doors again?"
"Hold on," Cody interrupted. "We're gonna have to do better than we did back with the first two doors. Just letting whoever's loudest make decisions for the rest of us doesn't really make any sense. Well, I mean, I guess it's reasonable enough when we're all hyped up, but this time, it's not really fair anymore."
"What do you propose we do?" Ian asked. After considering for a moment that his phrase may have been construed to be abrasive, he reiterated. "What I mean is, do you have an idea that could be more fair? I guess we could all vote at the same time or something."
"I doubt we need to go that deep," Delta countered. "Honestly, none of us have any real reason to pick a specific door over any other. There's no need to overthink this." Ian didn't offer a rebuttal, instead pursing his lips together and looking to the floor.
"How about this," Basilio offered. "Those of us who did not get to make a decision between Door [4] and Door [5] should get to choose first now."
Boxcars nodded, clearly on board with the announcement. "Who had their doors picked for them last time?"
"That'd be me, Marcus, and Leo," Ian responded. "If it's all the same to everyone here, I want to take Door [6]."
"Doesn't really matter what we want," Lucky added. "If it's your choice, it's your choice."
"Marcus, what do you say?" Leo asked. He gave his fellow participant a sympathetic look as Marcus slowly rubbed his closed eyes.
"It doesn't matter." Marcus' words were whispered, and even against the silent backdrop of the anxious group, Robin could barely make out the blunt message.
Leo offered the statement a modicum of respectful silence in return, knowing that his next words would be somewhat more selfish. "Alright then. I guess I'll pick Door [2]."
"Whose choice should be next, then?" Basilio asked.
"Well, Marcus and Ian were paired together at the end last time, and so were me and Topaz," Leo mused. "He was the last one to make a decision, so I guess we just let him pick. Reverse order, that sort of thing."
None of the others immediately rejected the idea, perhaps because they could feel the palpable tension of the room swelling about them. Not one to stir up trouble, Robin dutifully decided which door he would take. His choice would be to enter…
(Door [1].)
(Door [2] with Leo.)
(Door [6] with Ian.)