#drfh

The lights came up, Arthur and Lancelot were gone, and Cherry was on the floor in a ball. Somewhere along the line, her legs had given out due to the sheer power of shock and confusion. Her head was spinning, like her brain didn’t even know how to start unpacking this. Two robots just appeared, told her and her classmates they’ve been kidnapped, have to kill each other, no one cares about them, and then disappeared. This would almost be hilarious if she wasn’t so scared.

In the few moments real time it took her to realize she was on the floor and then stand up, it was if an eternity had passed inside of her head. Her survival instincts were in full gear now, heart pounding, adrenaline pumping, maybe it was a bit overkill but who was Cherry to tell her nervous system that, if she even could. Her thoughts were a jumble of feelings, flying too fast to even put any words to them. All she knew right now was confusion, fear, and hopelessness. What did they mean everyone knew and no one cared? That’s impossible, Hope’s Peak would never let this happen. Even if they were supposed to be some sort of challenge class, making students kill each other was a crime they just wouldn’t commit. And her parents! The police! Why wouldn’t they care?

Those thoughts sunk into the pit of her stomach, mixing with whatever she had for breakfast and making her feel like she was on the verge of throwing up. She put one hand against the wall and another over her mouth, swallowing her anxiety and wrestling with the idea that maybe no one really did care about her, not even her parents. It wasn’t as if that was an unfamiliar thought. But everyone else? There must be someone that would come get them, even if it wasn’t for her.

And two strange robots telling them to kill each other? It was straight out of the beginning of some sort of horror game. Maybe murder mystery...horror mystery? She shook her head, trying to clear out those thoughts that were distracting her from the here and now. As insignificant and hopeless she felt at this very moment, something deep in her heart glowed with the hope that no one would be that desperate. However, that light was soon extinguished with just five little words that came to her not much later, and those words were - “at least, not at first.”

God, how could I be so untrusting? It’s not a fucking video game, there’s no protagonist, no antagonist, no character arcs, no mysteries to solve! This is real life, a real, live, dangerous hostage situation. I should be more scared, not just some stupid idiot who thinks of everything in terms of a video game strategy. 

Unsure of what she looked like from an outside view, she finally took a breath as her consciousness came back to the present. Emotionless, she looked around the room at how everyone else was reacting. Worst case scenario, someone gets desperate right away. The best way to fix that is to make allies. I may be an idiot who only thinks in terms of video game strategies, but I might as well use it, right?  

With that thought, she cleared her mind and put on a cheery smile. Her heart was still pounding and legs still shaking, but she started to laugh.