A/N: Sorry it's been a while! I've been busy with school, tech weeks, getting into new fandoms, you know how it goes. On the subject of the latter, however, I'm considering a new fic idea (like, whoooaaaa I haven't had a fic idea in like years who'd've thunk). No promises though. Also I doubt any of you are in the fandom it's for so. Don't even know why I mentioned it.

….ON WITH THE CHAPTER.

Crimson

April 6th 201X

?:?

I woke up. Wait, I'd fallen asleep? When did that happen? All I remembered was hanging out with Lucas- you know, to avoid the fear of being alone- and then suddenly I was waking up. That doesn't really make sense, does it?

Confused, I opened my eyes to see some of the other townsfolk (only the humans, for some reason) around me. Everyone was awake except Ellie, it seemed.

"Hey, Crimson," Sharon greeted.

"Uh, hey…" I said, "does, uh, anyone know what's going on here?"

"Beats me," Jack muttered, shrugging.

"Nobody knows where this is or even how we got here," Sofia said.

"Where we are or how we got here?!" Ellie asked, snapping her eyes open. She shot up from her prone position like a rocket.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what she said," Luis said, rolling his eyes.

Ellie quickly counted all of us there- there were nine altogether. It was me, her, Sharon, Jack, Sofia, Luis, Victoria, Paranoia, and Lucas. She checked her left wrist, then sighed in relief when she saw nothing amiss before looking around the room of anything else suspicious.

"Is... something wrong?" Sofia asked, confused.

"I don't know, it just sounds a bit too much like the stup to a weird puzzle horror game to me. The lack of numbered bracelets suggest an evil teddy bear instead, but there are only nine of us instead of sixteen. And everyone knows that bracelets are for groups of nine and evil teddy bears are for groups of sixteen."

"Ah… of course," Sofia said, despite clearly not understanding what Ellie was talking about.

"I swear to god, if I see anything related to the number nine around here, I'll just frickin' fly off the handle. Or, like, do some kinda acrobatic frickin' pirouette of the handle."

"Dude. Literally nobody here understands your references," Luis grumbled.

"Well, how did you even know I was referencing anything, huh? That would imply you actually understood them to some extent."

"All that aside," I cut in, trying to prevent an argument, "how exactly are we planning to get out of here?"

"Well, I'd say it usually takes about six chapters and anywhere between ten to thirteen deaths," Ellie replied. "Or it could take nine hours and nine doors. Heheh."

"Ellie, please, this is serious," Victoria snapped, clearly losing patience. Ellie kept her mouth shut this time.

"Uh, I don't want to sound rude, but… has anyone actually tried the door?" Lucas piped up.

Collectively, we all turned toward the only opening in the room. I guess we'd all assumed it was locked and nobody had even tried it. So Jack walked up and turned the doorknob. "Oh," he said. "I guess it's open now."

"Man, whoever put us here was probably really stupid," Luis said.

"Or maybe they just wanted us to leave," Mia suggested ominously.

"But there isn't really any point to hanging around here, is there?" Sharon asked. "Come on, let's go."

As quietly as we could manage, we all tiptoed out of the room and into a long hallway. We did our best to stay as quiet as possible, so as to avoid drawing the attention of those who put us in that room. Oddly enough, the long hallway never split into other paths or even curved, as if whoever had designed the place had been incredibly lazy. The hallway did, of course, have doors on either side for other rooms, so the building was not pure hallway.

After we had gone a bit of a ways down the corridor, we heard some of those doors opening and closing behind us. We picked up the pace.

A bit more of a ways down, we heard someone scream. I'm pretty sure there were words to the scream, but it was too distant to make them out. Then we heard some sort of distant tapping noise. We kept going.

Even further down the hall, we finally reached the end of the longest hallway I've ever seen. There was a set of stairs leading upward, which made it feel like some sort of extremely boring RPG dungeon. By that point we realized the tapping noise was somebody running down the hall a ways off, and that it would've been in our best interests to get the heck out of there.

"Go, go, go!" Ellie whisper-yelled. "Up the stairs! Now!"

We each nodded and began our ascent. Ellie and I stayed behind everyone else to make sure we were all together.

"God, god, god, it is so hard to stop making game references," Ellie groaned as we rushed up the stairs.

"Well, try," Luis muttered.

After what felt like an eternity, we reached the top of the stairs with, with a hatch up above it.

"Okay, I'll open the hatch," Victoria said, probably since she was the tallest.

The hatch was opened, and we clambered out to see the wall of a building, and space around it. The wall looked strikingly familiar.

"This looks like we're… behind the Town Hall or something," Jack deduced. "How did they hide a secret hideout right next to Town Hall?"

"Well, isn't that a great question," Sharon said, thinking. "How indeed…"

"We can discuss that later," Sofia interjected. "We really should let the others know that we're all okay."

"Right you are, my good lady!" Ellie said. "Think another town meeting is necessary?"

"Honestly. All this is happening all at once," said Jack.

"Yeah, it just keeps… happening," Sharon said.

"That it does," Ellie sighed. "That. It. Does."

?

April 6th, 201X

?:?

Somewhere, sometime, someone is rather upset.

"What do you mean they're gone!?"

"I-I don't know, they just- they just disappeared!"

"You did remember to lock the door, didn't you, Moe?"

"Oh, so that's what I forgot to do! Psh, I knew it was something!"

"You utter imbecile!"

"Careful there, you're really starting to sound like a Saturday morning cartoon supervillain."

"Oh yeah, I guess they can't get away with swearing, can they? Let me rephrase that: you fu-"

"Look, calm down, both of you. This is fine. We will get our chance some other time. We'll show her. I know you two will make sure of it one way or another, won't you?"

"Absolutely, sir. I apologize."

"I'm just disappointed we didn't get to let them know our motivations and all that stuff… I was looking forward to it."

"Soon, young one, soon. They will all see soon enough. Just stick to the plan and all will be well."

Somewhere, sometime, something sinister was happening.