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As it got closer to time to get things started, Cellbit could feel his nervousness dissipating. Perhaps it was strange, to wake up in nervous sweat the morning of a self-sacrificing plan and then slowly gain confidence, but he wasn’t going to complain much. The nightmare was a thing of distant memory now, all a blur of yolk and dyed-red yellow and green.
It’s not what is important, he thinks, as he stares up at the cobblestone structure above their backyard. What is important is finding the answer. Not just to the question of “How does Cucurucho punish rule breakers?” but to all the other larger questions behind it. Why they’re here, why they can only remember so much of just before their arrival, and why can’t they fucking leave? So many questions that need to have the answers uncovered.
And Cellbit knows, with a steadying sense of calm, that he’s the man for the job. He’s good at this, at these games for information. And these little pokes and prods, at prying things out of people. He’s not a man who likes to brag, but he’s not going to be needlessly humble. He’s a good investigator, and that means there’s nobody else that should be taking this first swing at bringing Cucurucho to justice.
He’s emptied his pockets almost completely, dumped all his earthly possessions onto Forever. He’s not anticipating failure, but a smart man never completely dismisses the possibility. Forever is trusted with all that he has on his back, and all that he has in his heart, as he shows him the camera monitor and reassures him that Richarlyson is safe in their bunker. Fully reinforced, in the middle of nowhere, with plenty of things to keep him fed and happy and occupied. Perhaps that’s partly why his dread has lifted. Knowing Richas was safe made things a lot simpler.
Richas, Richas, Richas. His egg. His son. If you had told him a week before now that he would be a father, he would have laughed so hard that coffee shot out his nose. No, family is for those with soft pasts and kind outsides, he would have said. Family is not for people like me.
But the island has showed him otherwise. Given him Richas. Someone who sees the hard past and rough exterior and thinks ‘pai’ instead of ‘killer’. When he rips the secrets of this island open, disembowels it from the stomach up, perhaps he will keep that fact in mind.
There is room in his heart to allow moments of kindness, perhaps. The confidence he has in this plan being as it is allows him to consider a scenario in which he could deign to show mercy. If Cucurucho becomes scared in captivity, Cellbit thinks, he will try to remember that it is always kind to the children of the island. There would be no need to be overly cruel, if the creature complies.
Forever elbows him out of his mental monologue, and begins to explain how to complete the forbidden farm in hushed tones. Most of the inner workings of it are fairly nonsensical to Cellbit, but he’ll remember it the best he can anyways. It doesn’t need to even work for the plan to work, it just needs to look convincing. He listens as carefully as he can, glad the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach has left him since this afternoon.
Alright, so he’s done better acting in his time. The ‘free diamonds’ may have been a bit of a weak bait, and the shaky-hands adrenaline (not fear, he’s sure) means his voice is wavering just enough that if the creature is good at detecting that sort of thing, it’ll know something’s wrong. But all he knows about it implies it might just fall for it anyway, so he steps onto the warp pad and loudly announces his arrival to quiet the gossiping voices behind the wall. It’s somewhat comforting to hear them, if not worrying for the plan. They stop chattering soon enough though, and Cellbit continues his charade to the air.
“Free diamonds!” He repeats, quickly wiping his brow with his hand. The warp pad stays empty, and Cellbit glances behind him. Nothing still. “Free diamonds, and huevitos-“ he tries, stepping back on the warp pad mid-speech. A quick warp back up, just to double back.
The ender particles whir around him, and then fizz to nothing. He frowns, giving it a swift kick. Maybe the warp crystal got dislodged. He doesn’t exactly have time to check. More particles fade to nothing around him, and he steps off it. This was not planned. Was the connection broken from this side, or the other?
Cellbit notes this, and then uses the elevator to jump to the ground floor. It’s fine. It’s all fine. He just needs to double back, check on the iron farm and the warp pad there. Perhaps Cucurucho just exploded the whole thing as punishment, and there’s a smoking crater there. That would make sense.
But he gets there, and nothing is changed. The warp pad is there, the farm is untouched. The warp doesn’t work, of course. The base of his neck starts to itch, as it always does when Cellbit finds himself in a situation with rapidly closing exits. It’s a good warning in situations where you can do something about that instinct, like his time in the death games, but a terrible irritation now. Yes, things are going poorly. What else can a man do but investigate?
The water from his drop down is still there, and everything else looks untouched. The cobblestone pillar leading up to the farm seems the same as well. He walks over to it, craning his neck up to try and see or hear any signs of Cucurucho up on the platform. There’s nothing visible down here, but it’s a bad angle anyway. He pushes his hair out of his face, and goes to get a grip on some of the protruding cobble. He’ll scale up, and check if there’s a mysterious sign or something left here. He hooks his arm around the pillar and pulls his body weight up. His feet leave the ground, and without warning, the world goes completely black.
Cellbit’s vision floods with red just as quick as it went black, and he almost stumbles to the floor at the gut-wrenching feeling of being suddenly teleported against his will. He catches himself with one hand against the cracked brick stone wall, jamming his wrist painfully. But he doesn’t fall, he stays upright. He keeps his wits about him, because he must. Because if he doesn’t, he will be at the whim of whatever is causing that bone-deep knowledge that something terrible is going to happen to him.
“Wha-“ he chokes out, and stops. Something is behind him. Cellbit is mid-turn before it happens, and all his senses slow down in order to allow him to witness the sequence of events in true, mind-scarring detail.
Cucurucho is standing there, the vaguely humanoid form with a painted on smile and bright button eyes. Under one arm, she’s tucked a prim and proper black book with a gel pen hooked onto the cover. It’s a blue pen, he thinks. It’s hard to see in the dim light of the redstone torch.
He gets that sight for a split second. It’s a mark of his detective skills that he manages to get that much, honestly. And he’s sure he could have gotten many other interesting details about the creature, if it wasn’t for the chainsaw.
He doesn’t see it start, just registers the revving of it at the same time he sees it moving towards him. The saw blades are dark and glinting, reflecting back the redstone torch light. And then he doesn’t see the chainsaw blades anymore, because they’re inside of him.
Cucurucho shoves the chainsaw through the small of his back, and Cellbit hears the sound of wet meat shoved aside by the roaring blades. His shirt feels tight on his shoulders as the bottom half of the garment is caught, torn instantly to shreds. The motor is deafening, louder than any sound he’s ever heard in his life.
The front of the chainsaw is protruding from his stomach, adorned with- with red and shapes and things he is familiar with, is familiar with exactly where it should be in his guts and all the problems that occur when it is not there. How did it get through his ribs? The plastic handle of the chainsaw rests hot on the small of his back, the creature holding it there steadily. The blade is as far out of him as it’s going to get.
The gray metal near-cleans itself in the open free air, flinging Cellbit’s blood every which way as it continues to whir. It hits his face like a fine mist, an unavoidable cloud. Whatever is left inside of his stomach must be blended to anonymity at this point. He screams, loud and wordless, and is surprised he still has enough of his lungs for it.
He sees a section of bone, chipped like wood, fly off and embed itself into the wall. Something animal takes over him then, and he’s scrambling against the stone floor to heave himself off of blades. Cucurucho does not move the chainsaw, and does not stop him as he pushes at the blade with a hand that’s quickly torn to shreds (but does its job well enough). The placid smile is unchanging, except for the new adornment of blood.
Cellbit stumbles a few steps away, and cannot register the surprise that he should feel at the fact that he can still move. Typically, he would be able to note several inconsistencies with what had just occurred. The lack of pain or sensation in most parts of the disemboweling, for one. For another, the fact that his organs were back on the inside and his fingers back on the right hand. In the split second of peeling himself off the weapon, every body part but the blood spray had been neatly tidied up and put back in its place. A good detective would be able to note the fact that there was no permanent harm done.
However, Cellbit does not have a detectives mind right now. What he possesses instead is the intricate and vivid knowledge of how his stomach lining looks like dripping from the spinning blade of a chainsaw and the loud engine whirr in the hands of someone he thought he could outsmart stamped into his brain.
“No, no, no!” Cellbit pleads, hearing a small step behind him and feeling the ghost of that small-engine heat on the small of his back. He wraps his arms around his stomach, and breaks into the fastest sprint he can. The ground is uneven, and he can see patches of greenery on the ceiling as he tries to escape. The sound of the chainsaw behind him fades in moments he speeds up, and becomes louder the second his step falters. It does not stop. He’s still screaming, he vaguely acknowledges, some combination of cursing and desperate begging directed at the sick freak enjoying watching him run for his life. Because it has to be enjoying it, right? Why else would it be doing this? It wasn’t getting any answers by making him run like a hunted rabbit.
His foot hits open air instead of stone, and Cellbit pitches face first into a pit lined with jagged stalagmites. Whatever type of protection he had from permanent damage and pain with Cucurucho does not exist here, and that is quickly made evident. He’s skewered through both hands as he tries to catch himself. Sunbursts of pain all over his body provide him with the very helpful conclusion that he is not getting out of this pit alive, and he screams in frustration and fear and rage all rolled into one. The chainsaw sound is close enough that he can feel it in his blood—whatever he has left of it, whatever is not currently running between the cracks of this cracked brick floor beneath the artificial stalagmites.
Cellbit struggles, because of course he does. He pries and pushes and feels himself fading. His leg is not responding at all, and his left eye stings from the blood. But he manages to turn himself enough to see the approaching monster, to stare into the eyes of the thing that is not just content with seeing them trapped here. The thing that wants them to suffer. Cucurucho switches the chainsaw off, and they take a seat next to the pit without breaking eye contact with the mangled man that still has enough consciousness to call himself Cellbit, and not just a corpse.
The devil swings their feet over the side of the pit, kicking them back and forth. They tilt their head slightly at Cellbit, their smile almost questioning.
This fucking bear is wondering when he’ll die, Cellbit realizes. Anger runs through him, alongside the pain, and he wants to rip this thing apart limb from limb. He wants to find out just how attached it is to those button-eyes, he wants to know just how real that smile is. With the remaining adrenaline he has, he tries to surge forward and grab onto its stupid leg, to pull it into the pit with him.
In moving, he feels something cold slide out of his side. A stalagmite that was acting as a stop-gap relinquishes its grip on his innards, and the last thing Cellbit sees before this death is that fucking smiling white face.
He doesn’t know where he’s going to respawn. He prays to whatever gods he knows aren’t listening that it isn’t near Richarlyson.