#xandra

It was surprising that they had all gathered and stayed for dinner. Xandra sat on one side of the table between Elias and Haku, who had Ritsu on his other side. Taiga sat across from Ritsu, an empty chair acting as a buffer between him and Sho, who sat across from Xandra, with Alan on his other side across from Elias. It was more surprising that for the most part they had all conversed civilly. Talk about food turned to airing frustrations about 'The Game' and how they were going to get through it with all the speculation and suspicions about the Rogue.

"Why don't we just ask the Rogue to come clean, hm?" Elias suggested, plunging the group into abrupt silent tension.

"I have no objections," Ritsu said quickly, his eyes trained on his captain. Taiga took, or pretended not to take, any notice, instead picking at what was left on the plate of food Elias had handed down to him.

"It would be a big help," Haku agreed.

"Whatever it takes to get the hell out of here," Sho shrugged.

"Alright," Haku said. "So, who's the Rogue, by raise of hand?"

Nobody moved.

The seconds trickled by and at about the 20-second mark Xandra snorted, resulting in all eyes turning to her. She put her hands over her face in a poor attempt to stifle her snickering, but the harder she tried to stop giggling the worse it became.

"Come now—" Ritsu started.

"It's not that funny," Sho scolded her lightly, reaching his leg under the table to tap his foot against her calf.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Xandra wheezed, swiping at the tears forming in her eyes before tilting her head back to take a deep breath. "It's just, okay look." She grabbed her glass and took a drink of the sparkling wine Sho had poured earlier before starting.

"Ages ago, in the Before Times, me and some of my best friends would get together every week to play games. Like, board games. God I miss those guys." She reached up to absently twist one of her earrings between her fingers. "And for a while we had a total blast playing this game, Legacy Betrayal. It was like this possessed haunted house and the players would have to explore to try and find things, or stop the other players from doing things, or just straight up escape. But it had this continuous storyline of "events" and each event took like two hours to play through so we played that game for weeks and it was amazing." She paused to look at Haku, "I bet Subaru would love it. It's insane." She broke a grape off the bunch on her plate and popped it in her mouth before continuing. "So each session starts off kind of normal, if your character survived the last session cool, if not you made up a new name before starting. And after each round there would be a "haunt roll". If the haunt didn't start, you just kept doing your shit. If we failed and the haunt started, depending on who started it and which room they were in, someone was "The Traitor"." She paused again, sending a sneaky squinty-eyed grin down the table at Taiga. "BUT the first time we played the game, our first event, we all had to draw a card and whoever got the Traitor card was it for that first session. And when the haunt started it was like "the Traitor is trying to unleash the evil stop them before they do" kinda shit. But the thing was the rules said we couldn't show each other our cards until we died so you just had to go off vibes and trust to know who was trying to kill everyone and who wasn't. NOW—" Xandra reached up and grabbed her hair, pulling it over her shoulder and fingering the ends of the dark strands. "SOME of us MAY have had a reputation when it came to similar games for enjoying being a little backstabby and generally giving other players grief and that MAY have led to them being the first one targeted because they may have been taking a little too much joy in the haunt starting." Xandra flung her hair back over her shoulder and took another sip of her wine. "Anyway for totally unrelated reasons my character died first." Haku and Sho both laughed. Elias at least had the courtesy to put on a pretend pout and utter a quiet 'oh'. Xandra briefly put her hand on top of his on the table, "Tragic, I know, thank you. ANYWAY dying first meant that while everyone else was still running around trying to slaughter each other, I got to open the first story envelope and read it in secret before anyone else." Her gaze passed from Sho to Alan before she looked at her plate, tearing a piece off of a fluffy roll and rolling it into a condensed lump between her fingers. "Guess what it said?"

"What?" Ritsu asked.

Xandra giggled, leaning forward and smiling at him with undisguised glee before her eyes slid to Taiga, meeting his piercing yellow gaze. "That we'd all been driven mad by the dark force in the house. There was no traitor, and we were killing each other for nothing."

Taiga laughed. Sho groaned. Haku and Elias shared a look behind Xandra's back, both shaking their heads with disbelief.

Xandra leaned back in her seat and shrugged. "Anyway. Literary parallels or some shit. Just saying, maybe the reason the Rogue won't come forward is because there isn't a Rogue and the whole point of the game is to get everyone to tear each other's throats out because the dark force of the castle has made us all crazy." She popped the now thoroughly squished bit of bread into her mouth, chewing it slowly.

"It's…" Alan muttered.

"…a possibility?" Sho finished. He didn't sound convinced.

"An interesting theory, but it would be in breach of the guidelines set forth when we agreed to come here in the first place." Ritsu said. Xandra suddenly shot forward in her seat, making Haku jump.

"What if," she said, her eyes wide and wild, "because it would be fucked up and very very funny, you're all actually Rogues." Her gaze skittered around the table, looking at them all in turn before she looked back at Ritsu, who looked aghast. "And what better way to take the heat off your own back than act like you want the Rogue to come clean and be cooperative." She glared playfully at Haku, who sighed with a small smile and lifted his hand, bringing it down in a chopping motion on top of her head.

"You're insane," he said softly.

"One of my many charms, surely." She grabbed her glass and downed the rest of her wine. "For the record," Xandra said quietly, lifting her face to look at Alan. "If any of you ever wanted to kill me for real you've had ample opportunities before so, no matter what happens, I trust all of you."

In the hall, the heavy chimes of the clock rang out, and a screen in the corner flickered, the face of the Game Master coming into focus.