Chapter Text
The crawl space only has one entrance and one exit. Through the boiler room. The four of you, yourself, Beau, Jacques, and Gaia, all stand side by side looking into the darkness of the crawlspace around you.
Your only light source being the light from the boiler room above you. The crawl space has always been creepy, but with Skylar’s 'suspension of disbelief’, it’s much more so. The crawl space seems so big it can fit a terracotta army!
“And here we are! Welcome… To the crawl space!” Beau announces triumphantly, arms spread out wide in the dark space. Jacques grumbles under his breath.
“Wow! Didn’t know all this was down here!” Gaia looks around curiously, sounding very surprised.
“Same! I mean kinda? I came down here looking for Keith and Bodhi when I learned that it was the only way to get into the attic! And to help Zoey. But I never realized it would be this big!” You reply, trying to hold in a sneeze. It’s very dusty down here.
You all hear a lot of things, creepy creaking sounds of the house above you, water flowing trough the pipes attached to the walls and… skittering?
“Okay! Beau, we’re here on a rescue mission, right? Which way to Isolde?” You say, looking up to Beau with an adventurous gleam in your eye. She looks down at you and beams.
“Abso-freaking-lutely! According to my research, Isolde is holding her quarry about two clicks to the east of us…” Beau puts her hand to her chin, inquisitively, before Jacques interrupts with his own inquisitive look. You can’t really tell if it’s inquisitive, confusion, or just boredom. “Clicks? What in the name of Poseidon is a ‘click’? Dolphins click, is that what you mean?” He asks as you all start to walk in that direction?
“It’s like a league? I think? Like twenty thousand leagues under the sea type stuff? It’s a measure of distance. I think it’s about three-ish miles? A click, if memory serves me right is… little less than a third of a league?” You answer.
Jacques laughs heartily at your words, smacking your back as a friendly gesture. “Now she be speaking my language!” Beau rubs her temple.
“Human, please stop enabling him.” You turn to beau with a cocked eyebrow. “I’m not! He asked so I answered! I will have you know I have many a fun fact in this melon I call a brain!” You laugh playfully, knocking on your head twice and elbowing Beau’s side. She groans, but she can’t stay mad at you.
This sort of thing goes on for a while as you four are walking to your destination, Beau and Jacques bickering like two crazy chihuahuas in front while you and Gaia are chuckling at the scene before you two until something catches your ear. Skittering… of many tiny little legs. The same skittering you heard before as you descended into the crawl space.
But now, you hear it on all sides. “uh… guys?” you call out to the bickering duo in front of you. But they can’t hear you over the sound of their own shouting.
As the skittering is getting closer, what appears to be a dust storm kick up around the four of you. the ground starts to rumble, finally breaking Beau and Jacques out of their trance. “What’s going on?” Beau calls out to you and Gaia, the quakes and kicked up dust minimizing her field of vision. “I-I don’t know!” you call back.
The skittering gets so loud, you can barely hear yourself think! All you can feel is something fly past your arm and something breaking. You look down and see volts copper band is no longer on your bicep. “Shit. Shit shit shit!” You curse to yourself, panicking. “Oh, Volt’s gonna kill me!” You still feel an electrical charge from where the bracelet was so maybe you still have a few seconds to defend yourself! You were wrong.
As you take a few steps back to get your bearings, you didn’t realize you were stepping into the dust cloud and away from Gaia. You feel something wrap around your waist and yank you back into the storm, separating you from the group with a loud scream. “Oh dear! That ain’t good!” Gaia turns to see you’ve disappeared from her side.
And just as quickly as the dust appeared, it vanished, whatever caused it skittering away. And with it, you.
“What the devil was that all about?!” Jacques whips out his sword and points it in the darkness around them. “And where’d the human go?!”
“I don’t know… but I do know one thing for sure… We’re gonna have to go get them.” Gaia gestures to the two of them with the broken copper band she had picked up.
“…Fuck.” Beau cursed under her breath. “They’re gonna kill us,” referring to the humans electric boyfriends.
***
You hit the ground with a thud, kicking up dust around you. You scramble to your feet, fists up in a defensive stance. You can’t really see much in the darkness other than five feet in front of you.
“Hello? Beau? Jacques? Gaia?” You call out, but in response you hear is a cacophony of voices, all gremlin like. Lights flicker on and all around you are cockroaches.
An army of them, with different weapons and ropes and other objects pointed at you. “Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” You mutter under your breath as they strike.
In a split second, the roaches dogpile on you, completely overpowering you in a split second, pinning your wrists behind your back and tying them together with duct tape. As you’re about to protest, scream and struggle, tape is slapped over your mouth.
As you struggle, a pair of black boots land in front of you. The cockroaches force you to your knees the person the boots connect to crouches in front of you. Your eyes widen as you look at a woman in front of you. She looks near identical to Beau. Same fair-ish skin, same hair style, save for the fact her hair color and eyes are ruby red. Beau's outfit seems to be made from cardboard, this version’s seems to be made of dark wood, with locks in her chest pockets and hat.
“Well, well, well. Look who we have here. The human of the house. A fine edition to my collection.” She smirks. “This is gonna be fun.”
The woman laughs as you black out.