Neigh!
This was one of the hardest scenes to write, and I'm not sure how it reads because I'm really tired and am only going to die at work tomorrow. However the gist of it, at least, is all laid out. If you're lost up to this point, what is said here should give you the basics. No assignments will follow this as of just yet, but we are now very close to them, so I'll be bugging you guys sometime this week!
Roll-Call
Nobody spoke. In the background, even several hundred metres above, the sounds of a city falling were inescapable.
"Is everybody present?"
Strop did not bother to check who spoke. He could not be bothered to remove his face from the cradle his hands formed, propped on his elbows which in turn were propped on his knees, as he sat, cross-legged, on the floor of his room. "That's kind of the problem," he mumbled bitterly. "There's not many of us to be present right now."
"Darnit Strop," Dank snarled, "That's not funny."
"You still remember that?" Strop smirked to himself. "Was a year ago, about."
"A year ago we had a shortage of moderators. Now we have an even bigger shortage of moderators. Yeah, good one." Dank swatted at the floor with his gauntlet in disgust."
Strop opened his mouth to speak, then shut it. Then opened it again. "I'm going to assume that you are being your angry self in general. Yes. That's what I'm going to do."
"Hey, can it boys," Asherlee rose slightly, before groaning and sinking back, rubbing her head, whereupon Dragonmistress resumed applying cold compresses. She in turn shot Strop and Dank a glare. "This isn't the time to argue."
Dank jerked himself to his feet, which was to say he wasn't much taller than he already was seated, but the gesture stood nonetheless. "Then what time is it? Time to sit around doing nothing? When out there, everything-" Dank waved his arm out the window, where the burgeoning clouds were tinged with the orange of the fires below, "is burning up to hell? My academy. I had to blow my academy up!"
Strop now removed his face from his hands to glare at Dank. "Dank, you're not the only one who suffered a loss today."
At this, an eletronic moaning started sounding from the voicebox of Moe. Strop winced, but Dank, oblivious, baralled on.
"That's precisely my point! How did it get like this, you tell me? How is it that a moderator would perish, like that?"
"Come on now," Dragonmistress chided Dank. "What happened to Ubertuna was unexpected. Or maybe not unexpected, but we couldn't have stopped it."
"We are moderators!" Dank started pacing back and forth. "We are defenders of the order of this land, and when even we are overwhelmed..." he choked up and went red, "Don't you see why-"
Strop rose to his feet.
"I'm going to be blunt Dank. You're not saying anything new here. We're all tired because we've been running ourselves ragged over the entire city while you've been sitting in your Academy."
Dank went from red to puce, bits of spittle frothing in his beard. "What did you say?"
Strop leaned over Dank, trying to press his height advantage to get Dank to shut up and listen. "You fought for and lost your Academy, but we fought for and lost everything else. The Market. The Bank. The Atrium. Even the Courts. All captured and mostly reduced to rubble. And why would that be, when we are moderators? Because we had no teamwork!"
Dank flinched, then came back stronger. "What teamwork is there to be had? It was everything I could do to make it to ArmorGames. You saw it yourself, I was chased all the way from Newgrounds! And I think it's rather rich that you would accuse me of not being a team player when you hijacked the Way of Moderation with that-"
"QUIT IT." Asherlee lurched back upright and banged the hilt of her sword on the floorboards with a massive thump. "It's already obvious. We got beaten up because we didn't have teamwork. None of us. But we need to move forward."
"How? HOW?" Dank pointed at each and everyone in the room but got no answer. "Ash, you say these things, but can you see nobody knows what to do next. Do you?"
"That's not a fair question." Asherlee bristled. "We're not even moderators right now."
"Great." Dank threw his hands up. "Just great. So who DO we have here who is a moderator?"
"Were you involved in the whole community for the past year, you shouldn't have had to ask that, Dank," Strop icily shot at him.
"Maybe you should think why I have to ask it, here and now then!" Dank retorted. "Because some idiot obviously messed things up pretty good didn't they!"
"ALL OF YOU SHUT UP!" The command came from a completely unexpected angle, shocking everybody into silence (except Moe, who was still moaning). It had issued from Zophia, who, up to this point, was sitting with her arms hugging her knees, but had now peeked her face over to yell at everybody, her tail thrashing around. "You're all arguing uselessly, but nothing is being actually said!" Everybody looked down. Zophia looked around the room, as if surprised at the result, and more surprised at the fact that she now had control of the situation. "Uhm. Could somebody tell me what is going on? Please?"
Dank, Ash, Dm and Strop looked at each other. "Since... when?"
"Since about the time 'tuna came up to me asking whether I could turn Nill back into a man."
Strop attempted to fill the confusion with the pithiest summary he could muster. "Well, we got up to the final round of the tournament. Then we were invaded by trolls and /b/tards from Newgrounds. We've lost most of the city because there's not enough people to cover everything."
"Where is everyone else, in that case?"
"Speaking of which, where is Devoidless?" DM paced to the window. "I didn't see him at all this whole time we were here."
"He has issues," Dank snorted. "Said he couldn't be here for a while."
"You already know that Nemo is Nill now, and presumably still so..." Strop shot a quick look at Zophia.
"Hey, I didn't know that we'd be in this much trouble so many months later, okay?" Zophia answered defensively.
Strop backpedaled: "No no, moreso the fact that, well, Nemo wasn't the only one inadvertantly affected."
Zophia frowned. "Huh?"
Strop pointed at Moe, whose eerie electronic moaning had not given out. Zophia blinked, not quite sure what to make of it. Then her ears flicked. "And where's Cen?"
Strop fidgeted. "He's... out of town. He left. After an... argument we had during the finals."
Zophia said nothing, but her withering glare told volumes. Strop shrunk back, and bowed his head, arms folded.
"Has your voicebox broken down or something?" Dank, finally sick of the noise, whirled around to face Moe. "Come on, what the hell is wrong with you? Apart from being a woman, that is."
"Get a grip on yourself, little man," DM and Asherlee rounded on Dank. "You might be angry, but you can't go around saying things like that."
"Don't you start with me," Dank blustered. "You know full well what I was saying! Besides, it was Zophia who did it in the first place!"
"Don't drag me into your argument, the f-bomb was in good fun and has nothing to do with this mess!" Zophia's tail kinked in irritation as the situation started spiralling out of control again. Strop kept his head bowed, as there was nothing positive he could contribute to the exchange. The voices grew closer and closer, starting to overlap, until-
"Flipski is gone," Moe blurted suddenly.
Everybody stopped arguing mid-syllable.
"Gone?" Asherlee and Dank asked. "That can't be right, he's our staff-moderator. The most powerful of the mods."
"Gone," Moe repeated. "And there was nothing I could do to stop him."
"Wait, what happened?" mixed confusion and horror laced faces.
"Flipski sacrificed himself." Strop finally spoke up. "Somebody fed the trolls, and we were overrun at the courts. Flipski helped us get away."
"It's all my fault Flipski's dead," Moe lamented. "If I was able to use my powers, it wouldn't have happened like this. If I weren't affected like this, I would have been able to fire my laser..." Moe's voicebox started to static over, almost as if it were sobbing. Everybody exchanged uncomfortable looks.
"You can't blame yourself Moe." Strop placed a hand atop the brain jar. "Everybody is to blame. That is to say, nobody is." To the rest, he said, "I accept responsibility for my part in all this. I mishandled the tournament. I did not pay due attention to my responsibilities and the risks generated in the name of fun. And I'll apologise properly later, if and when we get the chance. But this mess is too large for any one to tackle."
He took a deep breath. "Now, I need all of your help. Because the land of ArmorGames itself needs our help more than ever. The castle is still ours, for now. From this point on, is where we either turn things around, or lose everything we ever worked for in this place."
"Yeah, that sounds more like it," Asherlee smiled, faintly, but it was a smile nonetheless. "I don't know what you have in mind," Dank echoed, "But we have to start somewhere."
Strop scratched his chin. "Zophia, what kind of progress did you make with the f-bomb antidote?"
"I don't think we're going to have time to change them back now, if that's what you're asking," she offered. "But I have a better idea."
Everybody looked to her. "Let's hear it, then."
