Let Me Go Gravity - The Reaper's Game CYOA

The hexahelix of frogs spiraled towards Chris, but just as they would have sucked him into the Vortex, he disappeared. He he reappeared slamming down on So-yeon's position. Apparently that Grave Marker-type psych has more than one use.

The frogs hit the wall and bounced off in Mike's direction. Fast

Yipe!

His shield came up was engulfed entirely in the froggy maelstrom. The shield luckily lasted just long enough for the helix to chew him up and spit him out the next time they hit a wall. The spiral of frogs was ripping apart pretty much everything in their path. Jesus chucked two heavy display cases towards them, and they crumpled like marshmallows in a blender. Mike regrouped with the others as So-yeon whipped an earthquake and tornado their way, to be unaffected by either.

"Dodge!"

Chris yelled, as everyone scattered, since the helix was coming their way again. He and So-yeon just dove, while Sparkles teleported Jesus up to the rafters, and Mike grabbed Zachi and dashed to the other side of the room. Zachi laid out an ink blot in the middle of the floor.

"Lure it over the ink!"

"Get to higher ground!"

Both Zachi and Chris yelled at the same time and drowned each other out. Well, they and the crunching noise made by the frog storm cancelled each other out.

"WHAT?"

That was Sparkles.

"HIDE! REGROUP!"

That was Chris.

"TRAP! THERE! INK!"

That was Mike. He figured he was louder than Zachi, but apparently his message didn't go through either. There was a staircase towards a second floor, and Chris was dragging So-yeon towards it.

Zachi looked up at the pair in the rafters, Jesus specifically. She started signing something...and Jesus shaking his head indicated that he had no idea what she was doing. So she just pointed at him and the Ink blotch as Mike grabbed her and dragged her to a side of the room the frog helix was not barreling towards.

"They won't stick. Really doubt it." Mike muttered to Zachi.

"They don't need to if I have good timing. Sparkles should be bait. She can teleport." Zachi replied to Mike as they both hid behind a counter. The furniture wouldn't stop the frogs, but staying out of sight might be a good idea.

A) Go along with it.
B) Mike should be bait instead.
C) Do what Chris said.

B because the teleport will fall at the worst possible time. They always do.

Mike peeked out from behind the counter.

"I'm gonna do it. Objections? You have good timing, right?" Mike said, making a judgement call.

"No. Yes. No. I mean yes." Zachi said, lagging behind in reply.

"Ok good."

Mike zipped out from behind cover and stood on the ink. He called out "Come here you French appetizers!"

...that might be more insulting to the French actually...

From behind the counter Zachi wrinkled her nose, and from the rafters Sparkles yelled "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" as the frogs carried their vortex of destruction Mike's way.

I hope Zachi isn't French...what was her last name again?

Chris was on the stairway to the second floor, eyes closed and knelt down in some sort of meditative position. So-yeon seemed to be standing guard over him. They were off to the side though, and not the current target of the frog helix.

Nolan? Norman? North? ...shoot my shield better be off cooldown.

Mike hit the pin and backpedaled in a frantic way (oh neat, Velocity Attack could rush him backwards) as the frogs gained on him. The shield wasn't for the helix since he figured he could dodge fast enough. And it wasn't for the gigantic BOOM from the pillar of fire bursting from the ink as the frogs passed over (oh neat, Zachi does have good timing) since he knew the explosion wouldn't hurt him. It was for the frogs who could possibly survive the explosion and use it to launch themselves all over the building.

Wouldn't you know it? That was all of them.

Formation broken but now moving at twice the speed, two of them bounced off Mike's shield, one of them was going to hit Zachi before she blocked it with her baseball bat, and three of them were launched skyward towards Sparkles and Jesus.

"AAAAAH!!"

High pitched girl.

"GYOZAA!"

Medium-high pitched guy.

Sparkles grabbed Jesus as if to teleport, but the moment she was supposed to disappear came and went. She didn't have time to check her cooldowns in frustration, since Jesus shoved her off of her perch to the ground.

"AAAAAAHHHH!"

She likes screaming.

Mike rushed in and broke her fall with his arms. Up above, two of the frogs were successfully bounced off of a psychokinetically bent light. The third frog successfully hit Jesus, and bounced him off of said light before he dropped to the ground like a rock. He hit the ground with a thud that Mike felt Sparkles feel. His force field came up to protect the trio, and Sparkles scrambled out of Mike's arms over to Jesus, with "ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmidgod!" stumbling out of her mouth before "thank you" even crossed her mind.

Zachi was hiding under the counter, but the force of four frogs was able to slam said counter against a wall, with Zachi in between. The amphibians were whizzing everywhere, Sparkles was pouring out the last of her healing to get Jesus to wake up, and Mike was left thinking Now would be a really good time to do something awesome and save the day.

...next thing he knew, the wind had picked up and there were dozens of dagger-shaped light swords embedding themselves in the ground around him. He turned to see Chris and So-yeon, both suspended on a tornado and spinning through the air. So-yeon out pointed her microphone and Chris just held out his arms, and they showered the battlefield in knives like a sprinkler would spray water. They were both striking very cool poses while doing it too.

I was more thinking that I could do something but, well, damn. Good show. Why didn't we open with this?

The daggers pierced through the frog's bubbles, either slicing past them or stabbing them through and impaling them to the ground, or walls, or ceiling. Whichever was closest. Mike could hear a "tsew tsew tsew tsew" noise coming from the dagger spray, but it didn't drown out the last croaks of the frogs before they were Erased.

The tornado stopped, and the pair inside of it touched down to the ground. Chris exhaled, feeling kind of self conscious about the whole "super move saves the day" things. So-yeon was looking at herself as if she wondered how that just happened.

Jesus sat up with a jolt, and looked around wondering what he missed. Instead he caught Sparkles's worried eyes, opened his mouth to say something, but didn't, and instead just signed "thank you".

Zachi crawled out from under the counter. She looked less than amused and just called out "Why didn't you open with that?"

Mike felt the timer vanish from his hand.

Xavier, peeking in through the window, looked at the scene with complete annoyance. That one's gonna need some paperwork. Euuuuuuuuugh

---

The absolutely trashed Victoria's Secret faded away in favour of more crowded and appealing decorum. Everyone regrouped outside the store.

"Thank you everyone," Chris said to the rest, "As much as I tend to try and tackle a mission alone, today wouldn't have been possible without your help. I feel like you're all deserving of some explanation, about how we're going to win this Game together, and about myself as well. Let's find somewhere quiet and I'll fill you in."

Chris and So-yeon turned and walked away. Sparkles followed, and Jesus was about to as well, but Mike pulled him aside.

"Dude, if you're going to keep being a hero like that, get a leather jacket." He said, pulling at his own "Tigre Punks in the mall. It's armor. Zachi's idea. You can trust her."

Jesus grinned and signed "thank you" again, before pointing, giving a thumbs up, and a wink.

...I think he's saying I look good in it.

He left to join Sparkles, and Mike was going to follow, but then Zachi pulled him over.

"You can trust me?"

"With my life. And I mean that literally now."

"Then why didn't you listen to me?"

"I wasn-"

"I didn't want them on the ceiling. I knew they'd get hurt and I was right."

"You could have said that."

"I wouldn't have to if-"

"STOP FIGHTING WITH ME!"

Mike's outburst shut them both up.

"...sorry." Zachi said, walking int he direction the others went.

"I shouldn't have yelled." Mike immediately corrected, following up.

Zachi didn't look at him, but she did still speak. He voice didn't show any wavering, and she spoke as plainly as ever. "You're not a slave. You aren't going to follow all my orders. I forget to take into account that you feel differently."

Mike was thinking of how to respond, but then Zachi stopped walking.

"I owe you an explanation too. Of my entry fee and everything. We could do this now or after the group meeting. I couldn't care less."

"...uh..."

Mike noticed that the others were getting out of sight.

A) Catch up with the group
B) Talk to Zachi

WE COULDA GONE WITH A, BUT NOOOOOOO!

I vote B, and you should too.

B for waifu

"Well, I do care." Mike said, facing Zachi, "So let's hear it."

The other players turned a corner and vanished. Meanwhile, Mike and Zachi found a bench, and they sat. Mike let out a sigh, getting some much needed time off his feet.

"First, I want you to guess my entry fee." Zachi said almost immediately.

"Your emotions." Mike said, almost immediately. He kicked back and smiled at her. She wasn't reciprocating.

"Yeah, pretty much." Zachi said, giving nothing away with her voice or face. She wasn't looking at Mike in favour of looking straight ahead. "But that's not all...I think it's my empathy. I can't tell how people are feeling, including myself. It's detached. When I want you to do something, it's like trying to deal with a crashed computer. I click on the file and it doesn't open. So I click again. It doesn't occur to me that the computer might not want to open the file. I have to actively remember that."

Mike thought for a bit.

"That explains a lot." He said

"I thought it might." She replied.

"So what are you like normally?" Mike said leaning in, curious.

"...Um."

Zachi hesitated. Mike waited.

"People call me...cute. I'm...usually the first one to initiate a hug. I was known in high school to be the squeeing fangirl type."

...BWAHAHAHAHA!

Mike just barely didn't burst out laughing, but the imminent chuckle hurt his nose on release.

"I'll believe it when I see it!"

"I hope you do see it, actually. If we get out of this alive."

Mike was still chuckling.

Zachi continued, voice same as ever. "I'm getting a sort of warning message in my head labelled 'embarrassment' but I don't really know what to do with it. There's another one that says 'joy'. I'm guessing that one belongs to you."

Still chuckling. Zachi gave him a glare. Her revelation did nothing to soften the impact. So Mike stopped chuckling. He was still grinning though.

"Eh...sorry. That's a bit of a shock is all. I uh...I guess that explains why that's your entry fee then."

"Well yeah." Zachi said, more quickly than usual. Mike caught that.

"Or not? If you can't feel, what makes you so hesitant to tell me?"

Zachi hesitated.

"It's very personal. I've only known you for three days despite what we've had to go though. Experience says revealing such matters would be a bad move."

Mike looked around.

"We're sat here because you wanted to talk personal," he said with a continuing smirk, "so out with it."

"That was personal. It was nice. You might have missed it since I didn't treat it that way. Poor choice of words on my part. We're done now."

No...I don't think so.

Mike fixed his gaze on her, and she met it. Eye contact lasted for a few seconds. They were both trying to get a read on the other. Mike was waiting for a moment he could try to catch her off guard. Zachi was waiting for Mike to try and speak in order to cut him off.

"Yo-"

"Why was you entry fee your cat, Mike?"

Mike blinked. Zachi broke eye contact and just faced forward.

"Uh...because I love my cat?" Mike said offhandedly.

"Knowing how much you like staring," Zachi said, "I'd have thought they'd take your sight. Out of the eight players we've seen, two of us lost crucial parts of our identity, two lost their ability to communicate, and one lost her arms. They're definitely not afraid of handicapping us. So why is it that you lose something so insignificant as a family pet?"

"Not...not a family pet. Just mine."

Zachi looked at Mike, who decidedly wasn't looking at her.

"And I know what you're doing. You're making this about me now." Mike said, looking at his shoes. "But it's a big question, eh? The thing I value most is my cat. Not my bike. Not my skills. Not my personality. Just my cat. Her name's Clara by the way. Orange tabby. Just a year old."

Zachi wasn't distracted. "Not a family pet?"

"You're relentless."

"You pry with your eyes. I pry with my questions. My way involves significantly more consent."

Mike tried to return a Zachi glare to sender, but her blank face gave no indication whether or not he was doing it right. He sighed and looked away again.

"Yeah. Just mine. I live alone. Lived, I guess. Dead and all. Kind of."

He didn't say anything else.

But Zachi did. "You're estranged from your family and your cat is all you have anymore." she said. "A simple answer."

"Oh gee thanks!" Mike flinched.

"Just because you can feel and I can't?" Zachi went on.

"Nice guess. But you don't know the half of it." Mike muttered.

Zachi shrugged. "You've made conclusions about me, right or wrong. You must have. So out with it. I was kind enough to tell you what I think your story is."

Kind? Yeah sure. Anyways, might as well say...

A) It's about her future career
B) It's about her family
C) It's about a boy
D) I don't know
E) Other

C.

C.