Swamped

"You should probably cover the hole," Clancy says, interrupting your train of thoughts. "Could just shove that side table over it, if something comes up it's going to make a lot of noise at least."

You give him a glare.

"I'm not settling for that. I can do better than covering it with a table."

You go poking your head into the closet.

"Now, where did I put those... ah, here we go." You pull out a pair of hinges. "Thanks for pointing out the table, it's a good starting point."

Clancy just watches on as you attach the hinges to the table, then shove it onto the floor and start nailing in the hinges.

"There! Now I just need to add a latch, and the next time some fool gets stuck down there, it'll be easier to let them out. Ought to be a latch on the underside too, one that's too complex for the beasts. But that can wait for tomorrow."

You go digging around in the closet to find a decent latch mechanism, and attach it to the table. For good measure, you shove a bag of spare parts on it to weigh it down.

"Right, that'll hold until I can find time to improve on the design. Bah, I'll have to report this, though. And I already had an assignment..." You look at Clancy. "What are you still doing here?"

"Er, well, I'm not sure where to go now..."

"Well, you found yourself down in the tunnels, there's got to be someone you should report to about that," you say absentmindedly. "Maybe go to the medic in case you've got some kind of tunnel sickness. Whatever you do, just leave me alone."

Clancy shrugs and walks out without another word. Now you can get on with your business.

Which is what, again?

god damn it, now you've gone and forgot

Dammit. What with all the distractions, you completely forgot what you were going to do after you finished checking up in here.

In that case, you suppose you may as well tell someone on repair squad what happened here. You can let them make the reports.

Fortunately, you find Lisa Black not far away. She seems surprised when you approach, but you can't be bothered to give that much thought. You tell her about the hole and that you helped Clancy out of it and covered it up again.

"Where'd Clancy go after that?" she asks. "He was nearly stuck there thanks to our work, I should ask him what happened so we can figure out what to do about it."

"I've got a basic trapdoor design in mind, should be able to get concrete plans for it by tomorrow," you say. "Anyhow, I've got no idea where he is. I suggested the infirmary, but who knows if he listened."

"I'll check there, then. Thanks."

About time. Now you've got to focus on remembering what you were asked to do.

You suppose there's nothing for it; you'll have to go back to the auditorium and ask again. They'll be upset, but whatever, it's not as if you're here to make friends.

When you arrive, the leader gives you a glare. You notice a big hole in the tarp.

"Where the hell have you been? If you'd just done your job like I asked, we wouldn't have lost the greatrat."

Oh, right, the greatrat. That's what you were supposed to be doing.

"Ash was indisposed," you say with a shrug. "I figured I'd wait a half hour or so, so I passed the time by checking my room to make sure everything was in order. Then some fool got himself stuck in the tunnels and I had to help him out. That distracted me and I lost track of what I was doing, so I came back here to check."

Ben Eleventh glances at the hole.

"Was that Clancy?"

"That sounds like his name, yeah." You shrug. "Why?"

"Because he came here to pick up the greatrat, and right then it bolted for the hole. We were trying to figure out what to do, and then we hear a loud growling sound. We figured he'd been eaten, or would be soon, and it wasn't worth risking our necks to help him out of there."

"I see," you say.

Then you punch Ben in the face.

"You never abandon another Bogknight," you growl at him. He just stares back at you in shock. "You all don't know how goddamn lucky you are Clancy made it out on his own, or I'd do a lot worse. Every last one of you should be ashamed. This is the last time I work with you heartless cowards."

You walk out and slam the auditorium doors behind you. The guards stare at you, but you don't give a damn what they think.

So now what are you going to do?

well someone's gotta recapture that greatrat. time to make a life-size version of mouse trap

There's a greatrat on the loose.

The thought strikes you as you walk away. Ben said the rat fell down into the tunnels with Clancy. That means it might surface again.

If it came back to look for food, it would most likely attempt to use an open hole if it found one. One open hole is in the auditorium, but it's under guard and slated for repair.

The other is in your room, and you can open it whenever you like. That means you've got the perfect place to set a trap. You get to work on it at once.

You're now Tom Ninth, and you've just woken up. You can hear lots of loud noises that sound an awful lot like Tom Eighth working on something again. Apparently, being kicked out of his room isn't enough to stop him. Sadly, that doesn't surprise you.

You get out of bed and knock on his door, but, unsurprisingly, there's no response.

Well, you're not getting any sleep now. Are you going to try to barge your way in, or just go somewhere else and wait for him to finish?

barge in and start the tom tom club

better yet get tom tenth too make the tom tom tom club

oh yeah, with tom fifth nowhere to be found you can get the band back together. That guy hated the tom tom tom club.

You can't take any more of this. You fling the door open, and see Tom Eighth building what looks like an elaborate trap that fills the whole room.

You don't care any more.

"The hell are you doing, Eighth?" you shout. "All you care about these days is your damned inventions. We used to be inseparable, you and me and Fifth. We had a good thing going, with our little band. We were even kind of good at music. And then you just, stopped. You've stopped making music and exchanged it for just noise."

"You know full well why," Eighth grumbles. "We lost Third to the rain. That's why I've been working so hard. If you want to reminisce, go find Fifth. Everyone has trouble telling us apart anyhow."

"You think I haven't tried talking to him? He's cut himself off even more than you have. Barely says a word to anyone unless he's on-duty, and then he's all business. Nobody else has noticed because he puts on a strong face, but I've known him long enough, I can tell the difference. You could, too, if you ever actually pulled yourself away from your workbench."

Eighth just gives you a glare and goes back to work.

"What the hell are you even doing?"

"There's a greatrat in the tunnels. I'm going to lure it up here and catch it."

"If the tunnelers haven't eaten it."

"Tunnelers take decades to get big enough to even threaten a greatrat," Eighth says absentmindedly. "We'd have noticed something long before now if they'd been down there that long."

"So you're a nature expert now too?"

"I don't know swamp creatures like Dean does, but back home we had some abandoned houses with huge tunneler nests under them. These ones were bigger than humans. Heard they can get even bigger out in the desert, never seen it myself though. Anyhow, ours are probably just big enough to start digging. They dig fast when they get started. The bigger ones dig slower, but you can tell when they're at work because the ground starts shaking a bit."

At that moment, you feel the floor shake.

"Would it be like that?" you ask.

"Huh. Maybe we only found them late in the growth cycle. I guess they could be digging closer to the surface, too, but there doesn't seem much point to that when the greatrats already have good-sized tunnels."

"Maybe we should, um, let the officers know about this," you say.

"You can if you want. I've still got work to do."

That didn't go so well. Is there some other way you can try to appeal to Eighth, or are you just going to go now and report the shaking?

everyone felt the shake. what you need is to get through to tom and stop him from pushing everybody away all the time

Wait...Eighth's closet is open...does he still have his Tom Toms? ...He does! but...they seem to be attached to some kind of ...automaton?

no it's just tums

You can't just leave. Somebody else is bound to report the shaking; you don't know how widespread it was, but it must have caught someone's attention.

No, you need to help Eighth pull himself together. You're not giving up on your friend.

You think you spot something familiar poking out of his closet, amidst all the inventions. Could that be his old instrument?

"Stay out of there!" he shouts as you draw near, but you have to know. You grab for it and...

And a box falls out. You barely notice; turns out you didn't even see the instrument, anyways. It's just another of his in-progress projects.

"Is this what you've been making all the noise with?" you ask, staring at the contraption in your hands.

"No. Just, an old idea that didn't work out," he grumbles. "Thought I might come back to it some day, that's all. The big project's almost done, it's even functioning, but there's a few final touches I can't do just yet. Now quit touching my stuff!"

"All right, I'm sorry," you sigh. It was probably too much to hope for. You put the device back, then you lean down to pick up the box. "I just thought I saw something..."

Suddenly, there's a flash of light and you can't see clearly.

"Oh dammit, that's the last straw!" Eighth shouts. "Get out!"

You feel yourself being shoved out and hear a door slam just before your eyesight returns.

What the hell is Eighth working on? Is he making some kind of blinding weapon? It's the sort of thing Sergeant Ash might ask for, and he's one of the few people Eighth still talks to...

You wonder if you should go back in and try to confront Eighth again, angry as he is. Then again, it might be better not to go in alone; perhaps you should ask someone to come with you. Or, maybe you should just leave him there, and go report on what you've learned.

What are you going to do?

note to self: throw tom eighth a party/intervention. you've done what you can, it's time to move on to bigger and better things

This is how things went down.

Warning: contains singing.

You can't deal with this now. You'll wait for a better time, get some friends together, get them talking about what Eighth means to them. For now, there's nothing more you can do.

And then, just as you start to walk away, it strikes you all at once.

You're a goddamned hypocrite.

Oh, maybe you haven't let go of your other friends like Fifth and Eighth have... but when's the last time you wrote a song? In your own way, you've let yourself get lost in Third's death just like the others.

Maybe it's not quite the same, maybe you haven't let yourself fall as deep. But you're not the Tom you used to be any more. How can you even think to lecture Eighth on what he's done when you've given up such a big part of yourself?

So, you head back to your room, pull your own instrument out of the closet, and start to sing.

About Eighth. About how he's fallen. About what he must be thinking.

When it's over, you let yourself cry.

---

You're now Marshall again. It's been a long night, but dawn finally seems to be breaking.

Crook's given you some news; the strike force has come back, and never got as far as the assault on Bog Hill, but Rider hasn't returned. He doesn't know the details yet.

Mudviper's in a meeting with the command council. She apparently expected it to take several hours.

With Rider missing, and Mudviper occupied, it seems the answers you were hoping for aren't going to be coming for a while. So what are you going to do to pass the time?

play solo swamprats

It occurs to you that you have some cards in your pouch, and they let you keep them.

Unfortunately, you don't know a lot of games. You know Swamprats, and you know Three Leaves. And the other knights are in other cells, so it's not exactly easy to play them. The Marshguard watching you isn't interested in games, either; she's considerably less friendly than Crook.

So you think for a bit, and come up with a way to play Swamprats on your own. Well, sort of. It's basically a guessing game.

First, you shuffle the deck and put the top card aside, face-down. Then you deal yourself seven cards.

What you do next is draw a card. Then you take a guess if it's the same suit or rank. After that, you check the face-down card. If you're right, you add the card to your hand, and put another one from the deck on the ground. If you're wrong, you put a card in your hand aside. Your first thought is that the goal is to get through the deck and still have at least one card.

After one run through, you conclude that it's a little too easy. Mostly it depends on if you can keep track of the cards as you go through the deck. When you get down to just a few, you know what they are. Maybe you need a different way of keeping score, or a harsher punishment for wrong guesses.

Just as you finish, you hear a bell. You look out through the bars and see Ringer approach the guard.

"They want someone for questioning?"

Ringer nods.

"Well, point them out to me."

Who do you see Ringer pointing at?

you

and Dean

Ringer points to you for about a minute, then turns and points to Dean.

"Two together? That's asking for trouble. Especially if you're escorting them alone. I know one's only got one arm, but it's not worth taking chances."

Ringer's bell rings a few times.

"If you insist. But don't go blaming me if they get loose."

The guard opens your door, and Ringer grabs you by the arm. Then the same happens with Dean, and before you know it, you're both being dragged through the halls.

This seems to be a different room than the one you were interrogated in before. You'd ask why, but you don't think you're going to get a very clear answer.

Then Ringer shuts the door and just stands at it, watching the two of you.

Dean looks at you awkwardly, then at Ringer.

"So, hang on. Are you interrogating us, or are we waiting for someone else to arrive?"

Ringer shakes their bell angrily.

"I think we should stick to yes or no questions," you say. "Are we waiting for an interrogator? Um, one ring for yes, two for no."

The bell rings once.

"Well, that's nice to know," Dean says. "So I suppose we just wait. Er, maybe a game of Swamprats to pass the time?"

"I got pulled out of the cell before I could put my cards away. They're still back there."

"And I left mine back at base. Well, that's that. Any other ideas for what we can do while we wait for whoever it is?"

20 questions

Is that the sound of an angry petting zoo?

Is that the sound of an angry petting zoo?

that's question 1

"Well, there's a game I know where one person thinks of something, and everyone else asks yes or no questions to figure out what it is," you say. "We could do that while we wait."

"Er, I suppose," Dean says. "Um, all right, I've got something, start by asking a question."

"Is it an animal?"

"Yes. Is it really that obvious I picked one?"

"That's a standard opening question. Though, yeah, I had a hunch..."

Suddenly, you hear an assortment of growls and roars. They're distant, but recognizable. Dean looks baffled, but you have your suspicions - Rider's animals are upset.

Is it because he's not back yet? Or is something else going on?

You're not sure, and there isn't a lot you can do about it in here. You decide to just continue with the game.

"Second question... oh, right, I get twenty questions total, that's how the game works. If I don't get it by then, you win. Anyhow, second question, is it an animal in this swamp?"

"Yes," Dean sighs. "I'm that predictable, am I?"

"It's just a starting point. You probably know more creatures here than I do. In fact, I think if I just asked about specific creatures, I'd probably run out of ideas before I ran out of questions."

"Oh," Dean says, a little dejected. "I hadn't thought of that. Maybe you don't know this one."

"May as well guess anyway," you say. "Um, let's see. Is it an insect?"

"No."

"Okay, okay. Is it... a bird?" Not that you've seen any birds here, other than crows.

"No."

"A... reptile?"

"Yes."

Hmm. You haven't seen a lot of reptiles. There's crocodiles, and there's Rider's beast. Maybe some lizards and snakes, but you can't remember any particular species.

"Is it a swamp beast? Like Rider's?"

Dean looks pale.

"Heavens, no," he says.

"Is it a crocodile?"

"No."

"Well, then I'm out of ideas. Guess I'll see how close I can manage. Is it a lizard?"

"No."

"A snake?"

"Yes."

You're about to give up, but then you remember.

"Is it... a mud viper?"

Dean chuckles.

"Close, but not quite."

"Hmm, then I'm... well, let me think for a bit."

You definitely don't remember seeing any snakes, but there are creatures you've been told about. You try to think hard if there were any snakes.

Then it jumps out from your memories. A warning from Jackson, back when he was showing you around.

Can't tell if there's leaf vipers or not, though.

"Is it a leaf viper?"

"Yes! I was thinking about how to answer if you asked me if it was dangerous. Not an easy question with swamp creatures. Did you have a run-in with one?"

"No, but I heard about them. Their fangs aren't strong enough to pierce our armor, I think Jackson said something like that?"

"Right. And even if you do get bitten, you'll survive. Might feel sluggish for a few days, but it's not that bad, unless you get bitten and have to run from something on your way back to base."

You let that sink in a little.

"So, um," you ask. "Just out of curiosity, are mud vipers more dangerous?"

You don't get a chance to hear his answer, as there's a sudden knock on the door. Ringer steps aside, and someone else walks in.

Dean looks a little worried.

"Oh no. You."

Who could this Marshguard interrogator be that has him so upset?