#countdown writes stuff

Back home, in the bullpen, there's a certain saying her friends and coworkers had always liked to quote.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is a pattern.

Of course, you gathered all the evidence you could at every case, and you drew connections if they appeared—

But the real meat of it always began in threes.

The difference between fourteen and three is eleven.

And there are fourteen people in a shattered town, and the more information she gathers, the fewer of them are locals.

To be fair, Drift can't exactly blame them for not wanting to live in Oakhurst—

But she can wonder why all of them are here.

This place is a breeding ground for rumors, each more ridiculous than the last—plague is plausible, so is a natural disaster like famine or drought—

But Drift had always been an overthinker; it's part of what had made her career, and her thoughts are spinning more intentional stories.

Avid thinks it's vampires, says that the land itself is somehow other.

Vampires aren't real, of course—

But Drift fears the danger is.

Fourteen people.

Fourteen people.

A detective. A vampire hunter. A dreamer. A doctor. A soldier. A farmer. An author. A scholar. A lumberjack. A landlord. A stray.

And a butler(?), notably unconnected from any of the apparent nobles of the group.

There's no connection between them.

Sure, most of the town seems to be a little bit…interesting, but most people are at least a little weird, in Drift's experience.

The clues spread out before in shapes she cannot read just yet, and what she does know scares her almost as much as what she doesn't.

The difference between fourteen and three is eleven, and coincidences like this don't happen.

Drift's hands twist the fabric of her coat.

She just—

She just needs to focus on the basics.

Everything's alright for now, and Drift just needs to get some basic survival resources.

She and Avid already got Merp Manor all set up, and Cleo mentioned handling food so…

She could…go mining?

I mean, Avid was so excited about the silver, and Drift was with him on that front—There was silver just in the ground beneath their feet.

But he'd made it into a block so…going out and getting silver for some better tools and stuff would be good, right?

That was something Drift could totally do! I mean she wasn't very strong, but she could swing a pickaxe! It'd be fine!

"Avid?" Drift calls, loudly enough against fresh wood walls to send her shoulders up to her ears.

Embarassing.

"Yeah! I mean I never really—Well, my dad's dead, at least I think he is, and my m—" Shelby pauses, and does something weird with her face, and then barrels past whatever it was. "The humans don't understand, but everyone here accepted me!"

(Because they're dead.)

Her smile is wide, fangs bright. Dress perfect.

(Dead like Shelby.)

Skin frigid. Touch—loud.

(Dead like Pyro.)

She still hasn't let go.

(Dead like Cleo and Avid and Drift and—)

"Oh! Pyro! We should give Apo a tour, so she knows where everything is!"

Finally, finally, the hands leave hers to clap together, and Apo swears it goes off right next to her ears like someone's pulled the trigger.

(For a moment, Apo's fingers loosen, shoulders shifting to accommodate the force of recoil she doesn't feel for a gun she doesn't have.)

The sound echoes in the yawning halls.

A certain scar stings.

"What a lovely idea! The castle is truly impressive, after all, and it's easy to get lost."

Pyro fishes through the leather bag slung across his shoulder and produces a bottle of a color Apo has seen far too much of.

"But first, a snack."

Shelby chirps a thanks and plucks the offering from his hand, popping the cork with a single needle tooth and humming cheerily as the crimson liquid disappears down the pale curve of their throat.

Their scars peek out even from the high collar of their dress. Stark, raised, reminders of the brutality that changed their life forever.

How do they even do this? Smile so sweetly, docile and passive in the clothes their murderer dressed them up in?

Apo doesn't want to be like Shelby.

Apo doesn't want to be like Shelby at all.

"And one for you, of course."

Apo blinks to find another bottle suddenly thrust in front of her.

"What?"

Puzzled, Pyro's brows crunch together. "It's blood, Apo. Food. You are hungry, right?"

Of course Apo's hungry.

She's always hungry. She's pretty sure that's the essence of what vampirism is.

Hunger, and being dead.

But being hungry doesn't make a vial of her nightmares any more appetizing, and it doesn't make it go away, either.

It just sits there, held aloft in Pyro's corpse-colored grasp.

Apo doesn't want to do this.

But—

But she has to.

All of this, Oakhurst, the castle, blood—Apo only does it because she has to.

The bottle is just a bottle. Clearish glass, a little uneven, maybe homemade.

It's just a bottle.

It's what's inside that counts, and Apo realizes, belatedly, that both Pyro and Shelby's eyes are on them.

Fuck it, Apo, move.

The cork pops off easily, caught in two fingers, and Apo knocks the damning contents back like a shot—

And gags as soon as the taste swallows them whole.

Metal clogs their mouth, drowns their nose, drips from their lips, crawls into their lungs.

It's everywhere, iron on their tongue and in their brain, and for a second or a minute or a month Apo is no longer in this godsforsaken castle; they're somewhere far, far worse.

Bloodstains in a childhood bedroom—

A grave like the earth itself was bleeding—

Bodies, bodies all around them, the living and dead alike in their misery—

The camp has turned to mud and mire, and not a drop of rain has fallen—

The storm passes as it arrives, and Apo slams back into themself on shaky legs.

"How do you drink that stuff?" Apo yells, flinching at their own volume. They're breathing heavy, dead chest heaving.

Apo can still taste it, crouching sticky and sharp in the flesh of their cheeks.

Blood is a monster that likes to follow them, and when it strikes, Apo never forgets.

Shelby stares at Apo.

Blinks.

Pyro smiles like he's apologizing for an unruly pet, and tells her she'll get used to it.

"It gets easier once the hunger sets in."

Except...everything she did was...off, just slightly. She built her base of wood, not an intelligent move, but not an odd one.

Except for the fact the wood was alive.

Except for the fact she'd grown her defenses, not built them.

Except for the fact she'd made a knight out of a king. A knight who swore everything to her in a game rife with betrayal.

Except for the fact that when her circle burned down, her alliance fell apart, and her name turned red--Lizzie bent the rules that governed them all.

Rules that only the winner, only the Star, had dared to make mockery of.

She refused to harm her knight, and her knight in turn made it to the final stand.

And so, the ones who Watch decided to remove her from their games. They wanted to punish her insolence, but their hatred of the Star pulled their attention.

But then, when the game of secrets began, they chose to bring her back. After all, the Watchers had much greater control over their toys in this game. The lady shrouded by shadow would not escape their sight again. This time, she would suffer the consequences of defiance.

And suffer she did.

And yet.

And yet.

In the game of control, the Watcher's new toy proved once again she would not bend so easily.

For she died. She died in the void, where the Watcher's power was greatest---and in doing so, she broke the curse of the canary.

She was the first to fall.

It must have been a fluke.

How else could the most laughable of shadows have robbed them of their symbol?

And so, when the next game began, the short one of flailing limbs and motion sickness, Lizzie was once again removed.

But the canary did not fall. The curse was once again defied.

And this, this made the Watchers experience what could almost be called panic What was a better representation of their power, their control, then their favorite omen of the horrors to come?

They put her in the next game, the one of dice and chaos. The game of chance and unpredictability.

Surely, the curse was simply transferred. Surely, in this game where players had no inkling of what was to happen to them, the Watchers could finally tame their wayward shadow.

As the game goes on, the Watchers begin to feel that now uncomfortably familiar nerves. They urge the other players to kill the shadow, kill the shadow, but, overwhelmingly, they fail.

And she does not canary.

The Watchers dont put her in the next games.

Something calling itself a smile worms across Scott's mouth.

"Good."

He rises from his chair, and, with a flourish of black-and-red cloak, disappears into the recesses of the castle.

He affords no other words to anyone.

The remaining trio doesn't seem particularly phased by this.

Shelby calls a cheerful goodbye, complete with a little wave of their hand.

Owen straightens up from the sprawl he'd been lounging in before.

"Well then. If that's that, I suppose we'd best be off."

His gaze finds Apo once again, and the light tone darkens like the drawing of a weapon.

"But if you find yourself fond of the humans once again…My judgment will not be merciful, and your end will not be swift."

Apo swallows. She wonders if Owen makes a threat every time he speaks.

She doesn't respond to this one.

Shelby and Pyro don't, either.

Out of sight, the door slams shut, and Apo can feel the sound vibrate through the ground, shaking through her feet and up her torso and rattling her teeth where they sit in her skull.

For a moment, all is quiet.

For a moment, all is still.

For a moment, Apo feels—

Shelby is the one to break the unofficial standoff. She skips to Apo like gravity doesn't tug at her limbs like the rest of them, a grace like dandelion seeds given flight by the wish of someone who still knew how to dream.

Shelby takes Apo's hands in their own, and they cannot help the startle. Cold skin against cold skin, sudden and inexplicable and overwhelming.

Apo jerks back, quick and clumsy.

Shelby doesn't seem to notice.

"It's so great to have you here! I'm really sorry they kicked you out, they just fear what they don't understand. It's not your fault they won't hear you out. But you're part of the family, now!"

"…Family?"

The word tastes alien in their mouth, and the shape of it presses down like the strength of Shelby's grip.

It's not painful.

It's not painful.

Not yet, at least.

(Could they escape it if they tried? Apo doesn't know.)

Patrol's been quiet, so far, and it's getting on her nerves.

I mean, it's not like Tsugumi wants something to dramatically blow up or anything, but the near idyllic lack of chaos is enough to send warning bells ringing in the back of her head.

She's half expecting a barricade to spontaneously manifest at her back, just to really hammer home that "about to run headfirst into a boss" vibe.

Real life isn't video games, except for the part where she's a pro hero and therefore real life actually does behave unsettlingly like a plot-heavy RPG.

So, sue her for being a little jumpy, okay?

Tsugumi carefully scans the shadowed streets below, goggles flicking between modes. There's a cluster of heat signatures in the alley to her right.

Gumi springs forward with a burst of Force, smothering the usual bright gold flash of her Quirk with barely a thouught.

There's no reason to assume that this group, whoever they are, is up to no good—Gumi herself has certanly loitered in her fair share of alleyways—but she can't help the dread gnawing at her.

Pro Hero Skysong makes a point of being careful. It's how you stay alive.

The cluster, upon inspection, turns out to be a crew of probably-twentysomethings, chatting and joking and smoking with backs pressed to the alley walls.

Tsugumi waits, for a good several minutes longer than was probably necessary, just to make sure she hasn't stumbled on a drug bust or a crime syndicate meeting or something of the like. (Because she has done that. Several times. A lot of times. More than any hero, Underground or not, should ever stumble on accidentally. It's honestly kinda ridiculous, like criminal organizations are north and Gumi is a goddamn compass or something. Maybe villains are just really bad planners.)

One of the alley-goers quips something low and flirty to their companions, and that's when Tsugumi promptly disappears back into her normal route, a flush crawling up her neck. Good for them, but like, accidental voyeurism is not on the agenda today.

So, those guys definitely aren't the source of her anxiety.

Probably.

…If it turns out that they actually were villains, Tsugumi is gonna do something drastic. Like—like file a fucking complaint or whatever. Or set something on fire. She can already see the headlines: "Local Hero Nobody Cares About Crashes Out Over Assuming Villainy To Be Normal People Behavior" or, perhaps, "Why You Shouldn't Loiter In Alleyways Because Apparently It Makes You Feel The Urge To Do Crime".

Ugh, she's being obsessive again, isn't she?

Tsugumi shakes her head to clear the spiral. C'mon Sky, she thinks, sure, there MIGHT be some kind of great evil and/or massive shitstorm about to happen, but getting twisted up about it is gonna make you miss something obvious.

She takes a deep breath. Exhales.