Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Everything was actually gone. Everything. How did that even happen?! Who’s doing was this? Mephone took a glance at everything in front of him. He didn’t dare turn around. He just could not face Cobs, he thought that he could never face his own creator ever again, Not after the recent events that just occurred. Not after what he just did. His knees were close to his chest, trembling with little to no control. His now shaky hands were near his face. Not quite touching it, but close enough to feel the heat coming from them.

Mephone noticed the hole beneath him, a reminder of the hotel that was no longer existent. Like everyone else, like everything else. If it wasn’t for the mark, it would look like the hotel never even existed in the first place. It wasn’t a pretty thought.

“Let’s go.”

Those words hit harder than a hit on the head with a metal club. Those words were words that Mephone had been dreading since the day he had left Meeple itself. He had actually heard them. He never wanted to. Cobs’ voice rang in his ears, attempting to even try to comprehend what he had just said.

“No…”

He couldn’t. Not after all of this time. He couldn’t just give up. There was no way Cobs could have won that easily, surely. There had to be some sort of loophole or maybe even escape, right?

Mephone however, knew that he was completely incorrect. Cobs had a chokehold on all of his products that could manipulate any one of them into quite literally everything. He was good at that, Mephone had to admit. He hated it.

Cobs’ voice then unexpectedly halted Mephone’s trailing thoughts.

“Come on, show’s over.” Cobs walked over to Mephone. The latter felt a chill as he felt Cobs walk by him, before settling his form in front of him. His gaze burned holes from the back of his head, he was almost surprised on how he didn’t burn, almost.

“We’re going home.” Cobs said with a stern tone. A tone Mephone was afraid of. A tone that he never wanted to hear again. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Cobs had reached his hand out to him. He wanted to run, hide from him. He knew he couldn’t, this was something Mephone couldn’t just say no to. The products hands dropped to his sides, expression turning more somber.

Mephone’s gaze lingered on ground longer, making a pathetic attempt at stalling the inevitable. He didn’t want to. However, couldn’t just stay forever.

So he did something that he never wanted to experience ever again in his lifetime. He took Cobs’ hand, and let his eyes fall shut while the rest of his face fell deeper. He had lost everything. His contestants, his game and his island. He had lost to Cobs.

He had lost.

Chapter Text

Mephone barely paid attention the whole walk back, his body automatically kept moving forward behind Cobs like an obedient servant. The sorrow that he once felt a while ago had now turned into near nothing. He had no intention to try to escape anymore, as he knew there was a little to no chance of it even working.

He looked back at the circular dent in the ground where Hotel OJ once stood. It looked empty, like something was supposed to be somewhere, but it wasn’t there and might never be again. Mephone hated that thought. If anyone would ever come across it, they would probably assume that some reckless individuals had made some sort of marking in the ground.

Mephone then shifted his eyes to his free hand. It’s doing nothing, just like him. Mephone did nothing to stop Cobs, nothing to run. He couldn’t even do that anyway.
His mind then went elsewhere. To the contestants, to the people that he had made and he didn’t even know up until a few hours ago. It hurt, even just thinking about them and how they weren’t here anymore. They had their own personalities, their own friends, their own life. They developed themselves into that, and it got taken away from them in a matter of seconds. Mephone felt guilt, he felt disgusted. They were gone now, actually gone. A singular tear almost shed from his eye, but he quickly wiped it away with his free hand.

Why would Cobs even try to even do such a stunt as this? Why would he hurt people who had nothing to do with Meeple, just to take revenge on Mephone leaving him all of that time ago? Sure, the remaining contestants from season two went up to Meeple once, but that was to get a battery for Mephone. He was the cause of this, he was the reason why all of these events happened. Cobs constructed this whole ordeal to kill them, even though they barely did anything to Cobs.

Mephone made the show to get away from Cobs, to start a new life away from everything he had known before. That was tarnished. Cobs had found him after all this time, and Mephone was caught. He was going to the one place that he never wanted to call home again, as if he could ever call Meeple ‘home’ in the first place. That wasn’t his home. The show was his home, the contestants were his home, and now his home was gone.

Cobs was speaking, but Mephone barely heard a word he said. The former’s words went in one ear and out the other of the latter. After a while, the robot had noticed how Cobs had let go of his hand. Mephone kept following though, he just could not risk what could happen if he had disobeyed Cobs yet again. Mephone shut his eyes once more, his eyes shut again. He didn’t notice Cobs turning around just when his eyes were fully closed.

———————————————————————

Mephone’s eyes slowly fluttered awake. He sat up while he tried to get accustomed to his surroundings. What the hell just happened? Did he fall asleep or something?

No. No. No.

Oh hell no.

There was no actual way that this was real, right?

“Meeple…?” Mephone quietly muttered to himself. He looked up at the ceiling, and immediately recognised the patterns engraved into the plain, white tiles. He knew that Cobs said that they were going ‘home’ but Mephone didn’t even register the way here! How long was he even out for?

“Oh good! You’re finally awake.” Mephone heard that menacing voice coming from right behind him. Cobs. The sound wasn’t up close, but it certainly wasn’t too far either. Mephone debated turning around to face him, before his pondering was once again interrupted.

“Come on now, don’t be shy! I don’t bite you know.” Cobs let out a small laugh at the end of his sentence. His tone nerved Mephone to his metal core. The robot reluctantly turned to face his creator, barely looking up at him. Cobs was sitting on an office chair, so he presumed that they were in Cobs’ office. He noticed how there was another chair there. Smaller, but there. He had never noticed that chair before. His expression turned into worry as he attempted to figure out what he should do.

“Really quiet today, huh?” Cobs spoke out again, making Mephone turn away even more. Cobs’ eyes gazed on Mephone, a smirk was planted on the former’s face.

“You’re getting this all wrong, Mephone! They aren’t dead.”

Mephone perked up his head at that, what did Cobs mean by that? He was joking, right? They weren’t alive. He had seen more than half of them get murdered in broad daylight. How could they be alive?

“What do you mean by that…?” Mephone asked with hesitation crawling out of his voice. His eyes could barely focus on Cobs, his hands were shaking yet again, as if they had never stopped in the first place.

“I’ll show you.” Cobs pointed to the small chair next to his own. Mephone stood still, being unsure what to do and so he was unintentionally delaying the process.

“Four.” Cobs’ tone suddenly turned increasingly dark. Mephone hated that Cobs had kept calling him ‘Four’ since he had first talked to Cobs during his failed finale. He had a stone look on his face, and that usually meant business. At least to Mephone, anyway. So, Mephone reluctantly walked to the chair and carefully sat on it.

The robot didn’t fully relax in the chair obviously. he was on the edge of his seat, literally. He became wary of his surroundings, scared that anything could jump out at anytime, any minute, any second.

A screen flickered, Mephone immediately drew his attention to it. He took a quick glance at Cobs, who was looking at the screen while smirking. Mephone turned his gaze back to the screen. It almost seemed like Cobs wanted him to watch this, Like he wanted him to see what in the world this screen would show him. So he watched, as it turned on.

At first glance, he saw tiles at appeared to be a ceiling. Much like the room he was currently in, it was a plain, white pattern. He remembered all of the rooms being the same pattern. The camera angles slowly came down. It was an agonising wait for Mephone, mostly because he had no idea what Cobs wanted to even show him. He quickly snapped out of his thoughts when the camera came to halt.

What. The. Hell.

Chapter Text

She opened her eyes, and found herself underwater again. Surprisingly, this was becoming increasingly common lately. Only recently had it began to start to take place a lot more frequently.

Suitcase did fear, as she always did. She couldn’t tell whether her hallucinations were fake or reality anymore. It was hard to comprehend considering all of the recent events that have occurred in the past day or so. Not even she could wrap her head around it.

Suitcase at the same time however, felt nothing. Another common issue that had begun happening with her hallucinations lately. It was one of the primary reasons of how she could barely tell what was real and what was fake at this point.

None of those kind of thoughts mattered right now though. What actually mattered was the fact that she was quite literally ‘underwater’. She knew she didn’t actually end up there, right? The last thing she remembered was falling out of Cobs’ ship.

Right, Cobs. He actually fell for her and Knife’s bait. Their trap. Their plan. She had some doubts about it when they first planned it, but she instantly regretted that when she saw that it worked!

She didn’t think of Cobs to be stupid enough to trap himself in that. It seemed that she was proven incorrect however, as he completely bought the lie. That was a good thing though, as it gave the others time to attempt to unplug MeLife. Speaking of which, seemed to have worked. She didn’t see the event happen, but she had high hopes that they had actually unplugged it.

Okay, she was getting off track again. Surprisingly, nothing was even happening in this strange situation. That never happened, so naturally she gradually grew quite worried. Why was nothing happening? Was this even real?

Wait a minute.

How is Suitcase even alive? Hallucination or not, she should be dead, right? Why and how was she still here? Why was she having this same ritual that she had been having for weeks on end even though her death should have occurred? It all confused her. Her mind could barely come up with an answer, and she had no idea if this was just her fate or if she was actually still alive. It makes sense though.

Hold on a second… did the others even unplug MeLife? Is that how she was alive? Did they actually just fail and she was somehow alive? No, now she was being silly. She may have not witnessed the event happen, however, she did see how not only her and Knife, but everyone else left on the ship had fallen out. It also seemed of how the ship itself had deleted. She didn’t pay attention to that detail much though.

She didn’t know it, but what she was seeing came to an end quickly.

———————————————————————

Suitcase warily opened her uncooperative eyelids. Her sight was immediately hit with a burst of white. She closed her eyes again swiftly. What the hell was this? Was she actually alive? Surely not, right? All of these thoughts kept clouding her head, goodness. She felt more accustomed to the light now. She opened her eyes once more.

The ceiling was basically just an old, bland white pattern. Strange, but it was better than underwater. She sat up slowly. What the heck? What was going on?

In front of her very own eyes, just right there, there were all of her friends, competitors and even other people she had never met before. Wait a minute, was everyone here? Is this where everyone went where they dead? That can’t be right. How did that even work? Suitcase started to observe the room, attempting to gain some sort of idea of what was going on.

While Suitcase was looking around, she had taken notice of multiple things about this strange room. For starters, there were three doors. There were also some sort of signs covered by cloth. That was pretty weird. She swore she almost saw another figure… was that just her? She honestly couldn’t care less anymore.

The room was also filled with conversations, some people were keeping to themselves though, she noticed. She saw where she herself was. She was near a corner of the room. She actually had no idea what the hell she should be doing. She had just found out that she was technically still alive. This doesn’t even make sense, but she didn’t really give anymore cares about what made sense and what didn’t anymore.

She stared down at the floor. She had to wrap her head around this. She felt a strange mixture of feelings and emotions all at the same time. She didn’t know if any of those were good, but she pushed that thought away. Wherever she was, where they all were, surely an answer would come to them soon, right? From all of her thinking, she almost didn’t even notice someone walking up and sitting down beside her.

“Hey, are you okay?” Suitcase didn’t recognise the voice speaking to her. She turned her head and so she saw…

“Box?!” Saying that Suitcase was in shock was an understatement. “How the- How are you alive?!”

Box looked down, Suitcase couldn’t really tell what she was feeling. She was surprised to say the least though, Box was literally there. Right in front of her.

“Long story short… I’ve been in here for quite a long time. I found out from some of the other people here that you all were on a show, ‘Inanimate Insanity’, correct?”

Suitcase nodded, not knowing where this was even going.

“Well, I auditioned for that show as well. Who you all played with? My corpse.”

Suitcase’s jaw dropped instantly. Box was a corpse the whole time? How did that even happen? How does that even make sense? Surely, there was an explanation. However, before she could ask, Box spoke again.

“I don’t really want to talk about what happened. Just know that was a corpse you were playing with.” Box said, glancing around at everyone else in the room with a nerve-wracked look on her face.

“Wow, Box. That’s… something.” Suitcase’s voice lowered, almost as if someone was watching her. No one was though, right? Then again, there was that figure…

“I guess it’s quite the tale, huh?” Box playfully rolled her eyes. Suitcase cracked a soft smile as well.

“I should probably be going, but it was nice getting to talk to you.” Box stood up, she looked pretty relieved now. That was good.

“I’ll see you, Box.” Suitcase looked down at the floor once more as Box walked away from her, presumably on her way to sit by herself.

Suitcase felt strange. It was normal for her by now, yes. She couldn’t shake the feeling off though. Again, these thoughts consumed her mind. Goodness, this place really made her think a lot, huh? Then again, a lot of things made her think. Okay, she’s getting off track once more-

“Suitcase? You okay?” She heard the familiar sound of Knife’s voice. Thank goodness, he was here. Thank goodness he was okay. She turned her gaze towards him, a cautious look on her face. She was still relived, of course. However, she felt like she had to put some sort of guard or wall up. Knife sat down next to her carefully.

“I’m… doing fine. Are you okay?” She asked concerningly. Knife looked pretty worried himself from what her brain could take in. It had definitely had enough for one day. In all honestly, she would feel the same if she was in the same position. Probably anyone would feel the same as her brain.

“I’m doing alright. I’ve been trying to figure out where in the world we all are though.” Knife turned his gaze towards the massive crowd scattered across the room, all in conversations or sticking to themselves. Most of them had been doing the former, but some were doing the latter. Figured much though, everyone here had practically been through the most traumatic and terrible event of their life. He looked back at Suitcase, who looked quite nervous herself.

“That’s fair. I don’t get this place at all if I’m being honest… I don’t think any of us do.” Suitcase glanced around the room once more, before turning back to Knife.

“I noticed a figure in here somewhere, did you see anything like that? It seemed like they were almost trying to not get caught watching us.” Knife’s voice dropped to a mere whisper as he spoke, almost as if he didn’t want anybody to hear what he had just said.

“I noticed that too! I didn’t really get a look on what they looked like though. They seemed like they were in a rush for something? I’m not quite sure myself.” At least Suitcase knew she wasn’t going crazy. Looks like this figure is really real and here with them then, huh?

Suddenly, the pair heard multiple pairs of footsteps, but no one in this room was walking? Some of the others had noticed it too, they perked up at the noises as they finally saw who was watching them the whole time.

There were three of them, and they all looked like… a Mephone? That didn’t make sense. What were different Mephones doing here? They were all on top of one of the three doors, as if they were their own posts. Suitcase then heard voices echo through the room.

Chapter Text

“SILENCE!” Voices rang through the crowd. Suitcase swore she saw multiple of the others jump. Everyone became quiet pretty fast. The others turned to look at the perpetrators of the noise. Suitcase knew who it was though. The three Mephone’s who had been watching them. What were they even doing? The robots looked serious, as if they were programmed to do this. To be fair, they probably were.

The one on the left was the tallest one of the group. They had thin green lines go across horizontally while shades covered their eyes. They had some sort of grey bands cover their arms.

The one in the middle was the shortest of the bunch. They had an orange line for a mouth, making the shape of an ‘M’ almost. They had a visor that covered their eyes, almost as if they couldn’t see at all. They probably can see though.

Finally, the one on the right was around medium height, probably closer to the taller one than the shorter it looked like. Their eyes were the only ones which weren’t hidden or covered up unlike the rest of them. Unlike the others however, they had some sort of claws for hands.

They were unsettling, to say the least. All of them were. Besides, what were they even doing? Why were they here? What was the meaning of this? Suitcase could only wonder for the time being.

Suitcase noticed some sort of sheet? Curtain? Whatever it was, it was covering something. Was that even there before? Regardless, she knew better than to question this at the current moment. She looked up, her attention drawing back to the three before one of them started to speak.

“We assume you want to know who we are, correct?” One of them spoke. That swiftly caught practically everyone’s attention in the room. Those who weren’t paying attention actually began to listen.

“Well, you won’t know! Until you’re separated, of course.” That’s when the majority became quite confused. Suitcase herself was quite concerned, what did he mean by ‘separate’? Would everyone be getting split up? Just then, the Mephone’s rapidly tore off the curtain from earlier. It revealed three doors, all of them had some sort of sign engraved on it.

On the right, the door had two symbols right next to each other. ‘G1’. In the middle, the door practically was the exact same, except with ‘G2’. Finally, the door on the left was the same, with ‘G3’ instead. From what Suitcase could see, she saw puzzled and cautious looks from around the room. Just then, another one of the Mephone’s began to start talking.

“Three groups. Which all of you are placed in by your debut season! There’s no concern here, as you’re now in our care. In our dear old Meeple!”

Meeple? No, there was absolutely no way they could actually be in Meeple! Suitcase had been to Meeple only just recently, and she certainly didn’t remember it looking like this.

Almost if not everyone in the room had some sort of reaction to that statement. Suitcase knew those reactions were justified though, they had to be. She herself was confused. This couldn’t be Meeple.

“You all look pretty surprised! We thought it was so obvious!” The same one called out.

“Shut up, Nine. No one thinks you’re funny. I’m sure they all don’t.” The one in the middle quietly spoke. Her voice was cold with a hint of bitterness in her tone. Sounds like she’s someone they wouldn’t want to mess with…

“…Anyways!” The one on the left began again. “Line up before we force you all to do so. Come along now.” He ordered.
Suitcase and Knife looked at each other, both with unclear looks on their faces. They were silent, as with the rest of the room. They both turned back to see that most of the others were hesitantly following the commands.

“Debut season, huh?” Knife questioned. Suitcase turned back to him.

“This is… quite the thing to experience after you thought you literally died.” Suitcase replied.

“Look, we’re all going to find a way out of here. If we’re really in Meeple, I’m sure Cobs won’t mind if I break his other lense on his glasses.” Knife said, mostly joking but it did sound serious in ways.

Suitcase looked back at the three doors from before. She noticed, the others were walking to the doors that corresponded to their own experience. She then focused on the door that she knew she had to go in.

G2.

———————————————————————

Mephone was watching all of this in real time. How could this happen? How is this even legal?! His mechanical heart broke for the contestants. He wasn’t even sure if he could call them that anymore. They weren’t contestants, and they certainly weren’t his anymore.

His gaze never turned away from the camera’s, he watched everything. Everyone was being separated and he had no idea how this would go or what Cobs was even planning on the first place!

He could hear Cobs chuckling from his office chair just above him. Mephone wasn’t short, per se. However, it definitely seemed like that when Cobs’ chair was higher than Meeple’s sales.

“Enjoying the show, Four?” Cobs asked in such a manner that made Mephone want to dive straight into his sound system and disconnect the wires that made him allowed to hear and process in the first place. He didn’t respond to Cobs, not at first anyway. He wanted answers, and Cobs certainly wasn’t giving him those answers that he wanted anytime soon.

“You know, I could honestly do worse to them. You’re lucky they’re even alive at this point.” Mephone could feel Cobs rolling his eyes as he finished that sentence. Mephone didn’t want to, but he turned to Cobs.

“How are they alive?” Mephone needed to know. MeLife was disconnected, the icons still haven’t came back from any of those deletions. Mephone needed to know, because this certainly wasn’t possible at all.

“Don’t you worry about that, Four. Besides, I thought you would be happy to see them alive, no?” Cobs patronised subtly. He hated that tone. He hated how Cobs spoke to him in every shape and form possible.

“I am… but not when they’re like this. Not when they’re trapped here!” Mephone slightly raised his nervous voice. His confidence was starting to make a tiny comeback. Just a little one though, he was still on edge.

Cobs didn’t respond to Mephone after that. The robot didn’t even know that these other Mephone’s were made! Every Mephone made had tried to kill or hurt Mephone before, so why not these three? It was suspicious, but Mephone could worry about that later. What was important right now, was the contestants.

They would get out of there. They would. He believed they would and he knew they would.

Mephone couldn’t keep up hope for long though.

Chapter Text

“So you think you’re able to survive this?” The tallest Mephone said. Their voice projected into the crowd right below them.

“Just you all wait for the end.” The loudest one replied when no one answered. Just by looking around, Suitcase could tell that no one felt brave enough to try to speak up. That was justified though, as everyone was quite literally still processing the fact that they all ‘died’ and were somehow now in Meeple.

“Well then! Let’s get this show on the road…” He spoke again. Just then, the three Mephone’s all jumped down. Each Mephone was in front of one door. The silence boomed in the room. Suitcase was somewhere in the middle of her own line. She couldn’t pinpoint where though. She knew she wasn’t at the back or front and she certainly couldn’t tell if that was a bad thing or a good thing. Whatever it was, she shook it off for now.

The Mephone’s all turned their backs to their respective lines and began to walk into the now open doors. All Suitcase could see was pitch black darkness from beyond her sight. Something that bugged her was how the three Mephone’s were basically synchronised, all of their movements were sharp and fast.

The people in front of every line hesitated, but they eventually started to slowly walk into the room. Suitcase followed her own line nervously. As soon as she got in, she felt engulfed in the darkness. Practically nobody could see each other. Just then, a small light flickered in the distance. Suitcase hesitantly followed the others who were probably already walking towards it. When she looked back, the door slammed shut with a loud bang echoing throughout the darkness. Looks like she was really trapped in here now, perfect…

She wasn’t exactly paying attention to what the others were talking about. Or if they were even talking at all in the first place. There was this ringing, getting louder and louder in her mind. She had this feeling often, and she always got surprised by it every single time it occurred. She honestly felt like the floor could collapse underneath all of the ringing. Did anyone else feel that as well? Was she just going crazy or insane? She couldn’t tell. She couldn’t tell anything at the moment. She just focused on this damn noise that rung and rung constantly. Was the darkness doing that to her? Was being in the darkness affecting her this badly? Surely not, right?

Up ahead, that Mephone was there. Suitcase didn’t know her name, but she knew she didn’t look like someone she’d want to mess with. That was pretty established, at least to her own eyes. The Mephone stared at them, probably annoyed at how slow they all were.

From that Mephone’s light, she knew she was now at the back of the line. She didn’t mind that though. She didn’t even care. She should catch up to her group though, as she had no idea what would happen if she got separated from them.

Her thoughts were about to become true though, as suddenly, the ground beneath her literally dropped below. Suitcase didn’t process what was happening until her mind basically told her the answer through the fact that she had hit the ground.

Ground? She just fell. How does this even work? Was she being paranoid? Was she literally just fine and this was a hallucination again? That shouldn’t be possible, she literally just got over one of them…

She blinked her eyes open. Her body was not braced for any sort of impact, so she felt quite some pain. That was definitely quite a drop, huh? Regardless, whatever mess she was in, she had to get out of there fast. She looked down at her feet. One of her feet had some sort of tag on them, Suitcase brought her leg near her face, trying to figure out the words written upon it. She squinted her eyes, and finally saw what it said.

‘Victim - G2’

What did that even mean? Victim? Technically everyone here were victims if they were under Cobs’ control. This didn’t make sense, but would it ever?

The Mephone from before was suddenly before her own very eyes. She needed answers.

“What is this?! What are you doing?!” She asked, completely worried. The Mephone didn’t respond. Instead, she grabbed Suitcase and began walking somewhere. Suitcase tried to restrain, but she knew it was no use. She tried to figure out where they were going, but she couldn’t tell. Not long after, they were in front of some sort of door yet again. The Mephone opened it, and threw Suitcase harshly, but Suitcase didn’t land until a few seconds later. She immediately felt the pain rising in her body yet again. She looked up at the door, but it was now closed.

She was really stuck in here, and she had no idea what to do.