Fluff

Chapter Seventeen - Entering the Endgame

Her sisters had told her that she'd know when they entered the Endgame, but she didn't expect to know it like this.

Between one step and the next, a screen flashed up before her.

Entering Endgame.

Two words over a small, semi-transparent blue-ish background. Emily was still trying to parse them when her sisters started to cheer.

That snapped her out of her momentary funk. "Okay, okay, calm down. Hey! You don't want the bad... the good guys hearing us, right? Please, we're being stealthy right now."

With a moment of quiet to think, Emily was able to better get her bearings.

She expected the Endgame to start within Saint Arie, and she was almost right. They were a few hundred paces from this intersection with an abandoned gas station on it next to a small warehouse. There was a wide road, and then Saint Arie started past that. There was a long road that she couldn't quite see down because of the angle they were at, and further in, some taller buildings that stood out above the town.

Emily crouched down, then glanced around. Her sisters were all around her, and some of them had caught on and lowered themselves too. "Does this warning come up for everyone?" she asked, gesturing vaguely at where the system prompt had been. It had faded soon after she read it.

"Yeah," Teddy said. "Anyone cool."

"Not normal people," Athena said. "They won't know that they're in an Endgame unless they start noticing that things are weird."

"Right, okay," Emily said. She glanced back. The house they'd stayed at for a bit was some ways back, but it had only taken them... She glanced at her watch. Forty minutes to get to the Endgame's edge? That wasn't too long. They hadn't exactly walked in a straight line, either, and they'd been scouting the area out a little. If they moved in a straight line, they could make it back in about twenty minutes. "I think that home we were at might become our, uh, headquarters after all."

"Neat," Teddy said.

Emily looked up. Teddy was... well, she was a lot but she was also the first of Emily's sisters, the one she'd spent the most time with. So when Teddy sounded a little strange, it felt rather obvious to Emily that something was off.

She scanned the area. They were next to a rather deep ditch that ran alongside a road, with a small patch of young forest next to them and plenty of bushes around. It was good cover, all things considered. She didn't see anyone around, or any HRF vans. "What is it?" she asked.

Teddy blinked, then smiled. "I'm waiting."

"For?" Emily prompted.

"For us to move into the Endgame proper," Teddy said.

"Oh," Emily replied. Teddy's momentary bit of lethargy seemed to have passed, and the rest of her sisters seemed fine. Was it her imagination?

She licked her lips, then did something she maybe should have done a while ago. She used Sisterportation and summoned Maple. The beaver girl appeared between one blink and the next, still positioned as if she was sitting down. She squeaked, then windmilled her arms around, but Emily caught her before she could fall.

"Hey," she said. "Are you okay?"

Maple blinked, then reached up and moved some hair out of her face. "Oh. Hi!"

"Yo, Maple," Teddy said. "About time you show up."

"You missed a bunch!" Trinity said. "We've been hiking, and we saw bugs, and we ate bark, and Teddy tripped a bunch, and we broke into someone's house and the Boss said it was okay!"

"That does sound fun," Maple said. "Oh, we're next to the Endgame already? I just got the notification."

"Yeah," Emily said. "That's why I called you over. Is dad okay?"

Maple nodded. "Grandpa Boss is okay," she said. "He was nice. There were candies in the glovebox, and he told me stories about when you were young."

Maple stared up at Emily, meeting her eyes. Emily swallowed. She... trusted Maple to keep whatever story she heard to herself. "Well, as long as he's fine. I guess he'll be heading out now. We're probably just going to go a little ways into the city, then pull back out to our, uh, safehouse."

"We're not staying in the Endgame?" Teddy said.

"I'd rather not sleep in it," Emily said. She glanced at her watch again. It was just shy of five in the afternoon. Not that late, but not so early either. They'd wasted a fair bit of time in the safehouse. "Let's keep moving? I'd like to see if crossing that road is safe or not. Then... maybe we can snoop around? How will we know what the Endgame expects from us?"

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"We'll know," Athena said.

That was strangely cryptic and menacing, but Emily decided not to poke at it. Instead, she gestured towards the gas station nearby. The lights around it were off. "Let's start by checking that. Food grabbed in an Endgame is safe, right?"

"Unless it has anything to do with the Endgame, yeah," Teddy said.

"We'll see, then," Emily said.

They could break into a few more homes to raid pantries and such, but that wouldn't exactly give them a lot of food. Maye some canned goods? Fresher stuff would be harder to come by. If the area was evacuated about a week ago... things like bread in bread boxes would be on the verge of going bad, and anything refrigerated was probably inedible already.

Emily took another step forwards, then jumped as a second system message popped into existence before her.

Endgame Entered.
Group Detected!
Hi hi <3 Welcome to the Saint Arie Endgame! :3 Let's have a buncha fun! But first, which side are you on?
Cops OR Robbers?

She blinked. The system had never had little hearts in it, or smug-face emotes, and it hadn't asked her a question directly in a long, long time. What did Cops and Robbers even mean, though? Like, the children's game?

If so, then picking Cops only made sense, it was the 'good guys' side, and she was--

"Robbers!" Trinity said.

"Yeah, ain't gonna be a cop," Teddy said. "They're the burgerees enforcement arm, beating on the poor and the bad just because. I'd much rather be a proper communist robber!"

"Robbers are better," Athena said with a nod.

"Agreed," Aurora said.

Maple nodded and Trinity cheered.

Congratulations! Yay!
You're now part of team... Robbers!
Your goal is to steal the Big Prize from right outta under the Cop's noses!
You have a week to plan and execute your heist! <3
There are currently... 9 Robbers and 37 Cops playing the game! And the Cops were big cheaty-cheaters and brought in a few hundred friends too!
But don't worry, the Endgame will even the playing field a little! :3 :3

"Oh... crap," Emily muttered.

"Nice! Robbers are the bestest! Go Robbers!" Trinity cried in chorus with herself like the world's second-smallest cheer team.

Emily reached up and rubbed at her face. And that's when she realized that she was wearing something. A mask. She looked up, then noticed that the same was on all of her sisters. A tight, all-black domino mask, the sort worn by cartoon heroes and villains, and the sort that did absolutely nothing to hide someone's identity.

"When did these show up?" she asked.

"When we joined Team Robbers," Teddy said. "I bet they won't come off unless you move out of the Endgame." She walked to the other side of the ditch, and as she did so, the domino mask blinked away.

"Oh, I see," Emily said. "So, we're all wearing clear and obvious signs, on our faces, that we're not part of the team that the government is sponsoring?"

"That's right," Maple said.

Emily giggled. She didn't feel like it was a very good giggle. A few of her sisters gave her a look, though, so she got herself together. "Okay... okay. Right, this isn't the end of the world. Most of our costumes go over these, right? We should be alright from... a very long way off."

She took a deep breath, then another, then fell into doing some routine breathing exercises to stave off the stress.

"What now, Boss?" Aurora asked.

"I... guess we keep on going," Emily said. She had already sent her dad back. "Let's scout out that gas station, see if there's anything we can grab to eat later. In the meantime, Aurora, what do you know about this, uh, game?"

"I mean, this one specifically?" Aurora asked. They started to cut through the thin forest towards the back of the gas station. "Not too much? If it's a cops and robbers kind of game, then the goal will probably be to steal something important. For us, anyway. The Cop Team--" Aurora paused to let the others boo--"Will probably have the job to defend that thing from us. They win if there aren't any Robbers left. We win if we steal it."

Emily nodded. The best way to play, in that case, would be to leave.

But then, thirty or more heroes would have a new superpower. And what if the game didn't want to end that way? Wouldn't that mean that it would just keep expanding and expanding?

For that matter... she did a quick head-count.

They were seven.

The Endgame had said that there were nine Robbers.

***