Chapter Text
“Tag! Found you, Ivan!”
“Awww,” Ivan complained, but he grudgingly stomped his way out from behind the curtain. “How come you guys always get me first?”
Rose laughed. “I could see your feet under the curtain, that’s all.” She nudged him. “You’re good at finding people, though, so I’m glad I have you on my team.”
The two of them peered around the dark room. Chloe’s private hotel parties might mean dealing with Chloe for more than ten minutes, but they also meant free run of the hotel, and the annual class game of Manhunt. This year, Rose and Kim had lost the random draw for Seeker, so they had to find everyone else scattered throughout the dark hotel. Whoever found the most people would win the game.
There was a loud scuffle from the hallway, and they heard the rrrrrrrr of tiny wheels on the marble floor. Alix laughed as Kim screeched, “No fair! Rollerskates are illegal under Rule 39!”
“These are heelies!” came Alix’s retort. Kim’s footsteps thundered by, and Rose waited until the noise had faded to listen carefully.
“I think you’re the only one in here,” she concluded after a few seconds. “We should go before Kim beats us to everyone else.”
Ivan shook his head. “Alix should delay him for at least ten minutes. Maybe more.” He strode towards the door. “But yeah, we should go.” He pulled the door open, and let Rose out, squinting into the shadows one last time before following her outside. He thought he was the only one in the room too, but you could never be sure with people like Juleka and Marinette playing.
Out in the corridor, Rose felt her way along the wall to the next door. “You check in here, I’ll get the next one?” she suggested.
Ivan nodded, then gave a grunt of agreement when he realised she couldn’t see him clearly. He turned the handle, pushing his way into the room, and immediately somebody shot by him, the string of fairy lights tied around her waist trailing behind her.
Rose shrieked and sprinted back down the corridor after Sabrina, but the redhead had too much of a head start and vanished around the corner with a cackle. Before Rose could get around the corner Ivan heard a door slam, and knew Sabrina was already out of sight.
Indeed, Rose took a few slowing steps around the corner and shook her head, beginning to head back towards him.
“Sorry,” Ivan said. “She surprised me.”
“It’s ok!” Rose said cheerily. “Sabrina sulks if she gets caught too early anyway. We’ll get her later.”
Ivan shrugged and pushed the door open wider, squinting into the dark room that Sabrina had just vacated. He began to shuffle his hands along the wall, and heard something in the room shift ever so slightly.
Reaching back with his foot, he pushed the door until it was almost closed again and began to methodically search the room by touch while he waited for his eyes to adjust. He could almost hear the brain cells whirring frantically in the silence, and grinned. “Nice tactic, Max,” he said, and was rewarded with another almost imperceptible sound. “Hoped Sabrina would distract the Seekers from searching the room, huh?”
His vision slowly sharpened until he could make out the slight glint of Max’s glasses; the boy sat with legs folded inside the open closet, pressed back against the wood in an attempt to blend his silhouette with the looming furniture (Hiding inside closed storage furniture had been banned by Rule 23, ever since the Filing Cabinet Incident of 2013).
“Gotcha, Max,” Ivan said. “I see you. You’re in the closet.”
“Nice detection, Ivan,” Max conceded. He stood up and dusted himself off. “Might I ask whose team I’ll be joining?”
“Rose is just down the corridor,” Ivan said, making sure to tag Max as he passed by to make the capture official. Max nodded.
“I guessed as much, considering the exchange I heard earlier between Kim and Alix. Did you actually catch Sabrina?”
Ivan shook his head ruefully as they stepped back into the corridor.
“A pity. She’s most useful as a light source.”
Ivan nodded mutely, then heard commotion approaching once again. The whir of Alix’s heelies sounded around the corner, then suddenly she was barrelling down the hall towards them, apparently unaware of their presence. Ivan hesitated, but Max leaned across the corridor and neatly tagged her as she shot by.
“Waaaaarghbv- MAX!” Alix wailed, electing to crash into the wall at the end of the hall rather than brake. “I was winning!”
“I doubt that, since this is supposed to be Manhunt, not speed skating,” Max said drily. Rose had emerged from the room she’d been searching at the hubbub, and edged her way towards the others as Kim rounded the corner, panting.
He perked up at the sight of all of them, poising to run at them, but Ivan and Max quickly raised their hands and declared themselves for Rose. Alix followed suit after grumpily rolling back to the group.
Kim looked a little crushed. “You got Max and Alix?”
“And a Sabrina sighting,” Rose added.
Kim stepped back. “Right.” He began sidling back around the corner. “Guess it’s time I got moving, then. I bet I can find everyone else and catch Sabrina before-”
“Kim,” Max said in playful warning, and Kim stopped.
“OK,” he amended. “I bet I can get Sabrina.” He glanced at Max. “Good?”
“Yes, Kim. That’s a bit more achievable.”
Alix smirked. “Just a bit, Kim. You’re still setting that bar pretty high.”
Kim waved his hand. “Pfffft. Sabrina isn’t that hard to find.”
Ivan thought about the year they’d all spent an hour and a half hunting Sabrina as a whole class, only to find her boxed within a fortress of bookshelves in the library. That was the year that Rules 27 & 28 had come into effect- No moving furniture, and Sabrina has to wear a belt of fairy lights. Listening to Max’s snort of amusement, he knew Max was remembering that too.
Kim cracked his knuckles. “Piece of cake.” He waved cheerily, setting off at a jog in the other direction. “I’m still gonna win this thing.”
When he was gone, Rose’s team bunched together. “So, where should we look next?” Rose asked.
“Alix, any sightings to report?” Max queried.
“I saw Nath heading for the library, and Alya and Adrien were over near the kitchen,” Alix reported. “But that wasn’t recent, so they could be anywhere by now.”
“Nathanael would be a useful asset,” Max commented. “He has a near-photographic memory; he could be a map of the hotel. But since we have two leads to follow up, it might be worth splitting into teams of two.”
“Dibs on The Wall!” Alix said immediately, and Ivan playfully swiped at her. She ducked, smirking. “It’ll be 2014 all over again. Chase and Wall, remember?” She paused. “Except my team won’t lose horribly because of it.”
“Because we’ll be on the same team this time.”
“Pssht. Details.”
“So Rose and I will go after Nathanael,” Max interrupted, “and you two check out the kitchen area.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Alix agreed. “Ivan, c’mon. Stealth mode.” She slipped her heelies off and unzipped her backpack, removing two pairs of slippers. “Give me your shoes.”
-----
Juleka fought the urge to hum as she sat beneath a table in the great dining hall of the hotel. She hadn’t heard or seen anyone since she’d chosen her spot, but she didn’t lower her guard. Faint yells and footsteps reached her from the rest of the building, and she knew it couldn’t be long until somebody came to thoroughly search the dining room. The large windows allowed some light in despite the drawn curtains, so it wasn’t as pitch black as many of the corridors.
As she thought it, she heard someone walk into the room from the lobby. Flickering lights bounced off the walls, and she realised it must be Sabrina. The redhead was alone, it seemed, and not pursued, judging by the airy way she was strolling through the restaurant. Did that mean she had been caught already?
Juleka held her breath as Sabrina paused to listen. There was a staccato of sudden running steps in the lobby, and Sabrina poised herself to run, before Chloe appeared.
“Hi, Chloe,” Sabrina directed a cheery greeting to her friend, but Juleka noticed that she began to circle around as Chloe walked closer, keeping a safe distance between her and the blonde. “Are you having fun?”
Chloe shrugged. “Kim found me,” she confessed grumpily.
“Oh.” Sabrina backed up more quickly. “Did you get away?”
“What do you think?”
Far from sarcasm, Chloe’s retort was toned as an actual question. Juleka watched avidly, wondering what Sabrina would do.
Sabrina looked nervous. “Well, judging from what I know about how fast both of you can run, and factoring in your superior knowledge of the environment…” she hesitated, “I’d estimate a…” She paused again, apparently doing the calculation in her head, “56% chance that he tagged you.”
Chloe didn’t deny or confirm, just continued to walk menacingly towards Sabrina. Sabrina was running out of manoeuvring room, and her window to make a break for it was closing.
At the last second, Sabrina looked over Chloe’s shoulder, pointed, and cried, “Look!”
Chloe shook her head. “Come on, Sab, I’m not a moron.”
But Juleka had seen what Sabrina had; Alix was speeding in, her feet gliding noiselessly over the marble as she quickly padded up to Chloe. Before Chloe could reach Sabrina, Alix reached out and tagged her. “Freeze,” the pink-haired girl said, invoking the Ice Queen rule, Rule 36, which decreed that if a member of the opposite team was tagged, they had to freeze in place for 5 minutes.
Chloe went rigid, then spun around. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she whined. “I have to stand here for 5 MINUTES?”
“Well, you made that rule up in the first place,” Alix said. “I had to stand still for about half an hour back in 2016. You got a problem, take it up with yourself, I guess. And no talking while frozen, remember? Rule 37.”
Chloe looked furious, but clamped her mouth shut. Sabrina hovered in place, looking uncertain. Alix glanced at her.
“Go,” Alix said eventually. “I still remember last year.”
Even as Chloe glared daggers at her, Sabrina edged past her frozen friend and, with a last glance at Alix, bolted towards the kitchen door. She crashed through the door and Juleka heard Adrien shout in alarm; Sabrina’s fading voice squealed apologies as the doors swung closed again.
Alix had turned her face towards the door, and she started heading over to the kitchen as panicked scuffling and whispering started inside. Juleka was about to let her breath out when a large hand touched her shoulder, and Ivan’s voice whispered, “Tag.”
---
Alya crouched under a kitchen worktop, watching Alix’s slippered feet pass by. Adrien and Mylene had bolted after Sabrina had crashed through, assuming correctly that she would be being pursued, but Alya had elected to stay put. She had never played Manhunt on this large a scale before, but so far it was definitely proving a little boring, if she was honest. The hotel was just a little too big for only 2 initial seekers to hunt in. She guessed it must get better later on, when more people had been caught and there was more actual pursuit and escape strategy put into play.
She adjusted her position slightly, her legs aching from crouching for so long, but luckily Alix didn’t seem to hear her. The short girl left the room shortly after, apparently deciding that Sabrina had scared everyone out of the kitchen. Alya breathed out in relief, and settled herself into a seated position, letting her foot jut out from under the counter just a little.
So it was that, when Chloe shoved the door open three minutes later, Alya was just a little too late to pull her foot out of sight, and Chloe started moving towards her.
In no mood to be stuck on a team with Chloe, Alya scrambled further under the counter, pressing herself against the back wall. Chloe stopped in front of the counter, and started tapping her foot.
“I saw you, Alya. Come out of there.”
“Make me,” Alya responded, slipping her phone out of her pocket. She quickly tapped off an SOS to Marinette. Trapped in kitchen by Chloe. Help. Plz.
Marinette responded within 30 seconds, even as Chloe continued with her passive-aggressive foot tapping. Her message just read RIP, with a skull emoji.
“Texting your lame friends won’t make me go away,” Chloe snarked.
“Ladybug says she’s coming to save me,” Alya retorted. Chloe shoved her foot under the counter, trying to nudge Alya with her toes, but she couldn’t reach.
“Ha ha. As if Ladybug would waste her time with anything as pointless as this ridiculous game.” Chloe withdrew her foot. “I’m not going to crawl around on this disgusting floor. Get out of there.”
“If it’s a ridiculous game, why do you invite everyone to play it every year?” Alya shot back.
Chloe didn’t answer, instead reaching in with her foot again. Alya, realising the jig was up, clambered out from under the counter, not acknowledging the brush of Chloe’s finger across her shoulder and the muttered “Tag, or whatever.”
“So whose team are we on?” Alya asked, dusting herself off.
“Kim’s,” Chloe responded. “I think we’re losing, though. Rose has Alix, Ivan and Juleka, at least, and I was the first one Kim tagged. Knowing him he hasn’t had any luck since then.”
“Well,” Alya said, taking out her phone. “I can probably find out a few locations with a bit of subterfuge. I might have told Marinette that you found me, but Adrien and Nino don’t know anything about it.”
Chloe feigned disinterest, but she glanced at Alya. “Using mobile phone notifications to locate a player goes against Rule 14.”
“I see. But does it say that the person can’t reveal their own location via text?”