solnet | EMERGENCY BROADCAST (text)

(All active cellphones sound an alarm briefly during the delivery of this message.)

To: All Users
From: sans.
Subject: (SUBJECT HERE)
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URGENT ANNOUNCEMENT: The following is an automated message.

Nature of Emergency: cagey queen left us hanging

PRESS 1 if outside the vicinity of: home If it is safe to do so, follow the prompts to take and send an image of your surroundings to the administrator.

Users in the vicinity of: home are requested to congregate in the: mess hall immediately for: probably a good idea to come save us

Additional Notes:

* sup.
* not much, not much, just hangin' with about 3 new and old friends in this cage dangling precariously above the water.
* can't say i like the conditions either, but the cold and damp doesn't get under my skin. i think i see other cages, tho and, uh, i can't say much for them yet.
* six other occupied cages, with about three in each. hey, it's like those math problems you used to get in school.
* startin' to get a real sinking feeling so if there's anybody out there who ain't locked up, it'd mean a lot to me and over 20 other people if you bailed us out.
* see ya. sans.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's a good thing everything autotranslates here, so we don't have to guess which language it's in on top of that...

How kind of the Queen to have a sense of fair shitty play

[Srsly if she can steal them from their beds, why didn't she just murder them right out?]

[Right? Honestly, didn't anyone teach her it's rude to play with your food? No manners on this one.]

But seriously. You'll ask for help, right?

I will if I need it

[if he were by himself, then maybe... but no, the rules are different enough that Sanji brushes aside his usual stubbornness. There's no shadow in front of him seeking a fight; his power means nothing in this cage.

But still--]

Oi I'll be alright, the hard part'll be getting out of the shitty cage, not this rope

[Mm. Well, she'll trust him on that. Rin isn't the type to worry over details like that longer than needed. She'll believe that fully for now.]

Alright. On that subject, tell everyone with you not to try breaking out of the cages by force. The Queen has some kind of spell placed on them. From the feel of, I'm thinking the cages will only open if certain conditions are met.

[These puzzles probably have something to do with it, but it could be something else too. She's not sure yet.]

We found out the hard way over here that if you push anyways, the cage will rebound any attack back to the people inside. It's best to play by her rules for now.

[Thank god text strips away non-verbal cues; the look on Sanji's face is of pure abashment. Not to say he was gonna try kicking the cage the moment he was free of the rope, buuuuut...

... Yeah he was totally gonna do it.]

I'll let everyone know, thanks for the tip

You know how many cages there are? Mine's close to this ledge

[Ummm... She moves about in her cage, trying to take a peek. She can see a few, but not all of them.]

Some of the ones nearest me look like they're lined up one after the other, so it's hard to say. But I think I saw Sans mention there's seven altogether?

[Messaged much later, private, littered with a few spelling errors:]

the roipe tightns

[He promised he would keep her updated.]

[She didn't think much of him not responding earlier. Their communication is well intentioned, but an unstructured mess, if only due to how many people are involved and the high tensions and emotions.

So it's surprisingly, how between all of this — phone calls to Masaomi to take care of Koo, a phone call to Frisk teaching them to use a weapon that only a mage should hold, arrangements and puzzle solving, and fighting Shadows that appear in a flash, to drag them down into a portal with nowhere to run, and so much so much...

Yes, it's surprising with all of that that there's still space for one's imagination to run wild. Imagined scenarios for what she'll need to do if her cage dips below the water. If Tim's alter ego gets loose a few cages over. What that noose around Sanji's neck means, and what will happen if they guess wrong.

It's exactly how she pictured it. The only logical way it could have gone.

It's exactly what she though it would be, and yet Rin still feels a bead of sweat prick on her forehead; a tightness in her chest when she reads the text a second time.

it's started, and things are serious now. She won't bother him with false assurances, but she won't give up hope yet either. The only point of imagining a worst case scenario is so humans can pull their wits together and steer away from them, if the situation takes that dreaded turn for the worst.

Hangman is a game that allows multiple chances for error. Depending on how many tries it takes for a game over, Sanji's is danger, but his life isn't at risk until at least five tries, she figures. So...]

How many wrong guesses have been made? And correct ones?

One right and one wrong

nine letters and the middle is E

[Okay, that's not too bad yet. A middle E gives her nothing to help contribute any better than Papyrus and Chara's brother, who's right there. But she can keep mental track.]

What was the wrong guess?

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