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The downtime room has got its usual lazy hum going. Mafioso's four goons arguing over a hand of cards, Itrapped draped across one couch like a discarded jacket. This is when the door swings open and Noli saunters in, hands in metaphorical pockets, looking like he owns the place.
"Wh@t’s up," they announce to the room at large, not really expecting an answer.
What he gets instead is Guest 666 and Slasher, already perched shoulder to shoulder on the opposite couch, dead silent, completely still, staring at him like a pair of gargoyles that have been waiting all day for this exact moment.
Guest 666's tail is doing a slow, anticipatory thump against the cushion. Slasher's just…Slasher-ing.
Noli stops and looks suspiciously between them, Void Star humming innocuously in their hand.
"...0k. Wh@t’s @ctually up?" A moment of silence. "Why d0 y0u b0th l00k l!ke th@t."
Silence. The thump of the tail gets a little faster.
Then, in horrifying unison, in sign and in a creaky voice, they both say, "Do the thing."
Noli blinks in confusion. "Wh@t th!ng."
"DO THE THING," Guest 666 bellows, horns snapping upright like the weird cat ears they behave as, like volume alone will clarify four billion years of context that doesn't exist.
"WHAT THING," Noli shouts calmly.
‘THE THING,’ Slasher signs rather largely, which in turn conveys his excitement.
Noli stares between them with the most appalled face his dead, rotting corpse, can muster, and–
Something in Noli just short-circuits.
There's no Thing.
There was never a Thing.
And apparently that's exactly the amount of nothing it takes, because Noli's whole body just gives up processing the question and redirects straight into motion.
Both Noli’s arms snap out, and they immediately start dancing into the full unhinged commitment of the Yoinky Sploinky deployed with zero warning and zero mercy.
Guest 666 absolutely loses it, shrieking with delight, horns bobbing wildly off-beat to the conveniently functioning music function of Noli’s Voidstar. Slasher's doubled over silent-cackling, signing ‘it’s the same every time’ between wheezes.
Mafioso's goons abandon the card game, throwing the cards in the air outright to clap along, badly, out of rhythm, as if The Thing was a cause for celebration. Even Itrapped's cracked one eye open, mildly, begrudgingly delighted as a smile forms on his face – not that anyone can see.
Which is, naturally, the exact moment the door swings open.
1x1x1x1 walks in first. Azure trails behind, mid-sip of tea, and what happens next is less a spit-take and more a full tactical failure of swallowing. There is now tea down the counter, down his front, and he's coughing, staring, utterly betrayed by his own reflexes.
1x1x1x1 stops dead in the doorway. They stare at the dance. They stare at Guest 666's horns, bobbing along to it. She stares at Slasher, dying on the couch arm.
"...What." He tilts her head, slow, genuinely struggling to conceive of what in the world they’re witnessing. "The fuck. Am I witnessing."
“The Thing,” Guest 666 rumbles helpfully.