So Much To Lose

Ch. 4 Assurance

Taco sat for quite a while up in the tree, looking over at hotel OJ as the sun started to come up. Wracking her head for any ideas of how to reach Mic she found herself struggling to figure out how to get a message to her without alerting the entire hotel.

She couldn't send a note, at this point most of the hotel knew her writing from the numerous letters she sent Pickle soon after season one, that and living in the forest didn't lend itself well to keeping paper clean and dry. Any physical messages would be likely to be confiscated.

That would get Mic's attention but Taco wasn't in the mood for the entire hotel knowing about this, especially since Mic had obviously gone out of her way to keep the other contestants unaware of her involvement and her eventual reason for quitting.

Taco impatiently tapped the wood of the branch she was sitting on, rolling through some more ideas, she had no clue which room was Mic's, OJ seemed to assign them at random, so she couldn't just break in.

She had theorized that maybe it was based on how annoying or popular contestants were, as the more loud and brash ones seemed to be on higher, less populated floors, but with an outsider's perspective she had no clue.

Glancing down at Mepad she wondered if the meeple product would be capable of teleporting her in, though it was risky. As evidenced by her struggle to get Mepad into the tree, his teleportation means were not precise, she could end up anywhere in the hotel.

Taco let out a long sigh, maybe she just needed to sleep on it, a good decision was never made after an alien encounter, losing your only friend and frustration as they say.

She leaned down to begin punching the coordinates of her hideout into Mepad, each input making a dull beep as she pressed it in.

The was the snap of a branch in the distance, Taco stopped immediately, holding her position, and listened.

If there was one thing living in the perilous forest had taught her, it was how to react to your surroundings. Despite the sun on the horizon it was far too early for anything big enough to snap a branch to be about, which only meant one thing.

Taco quickly punched in the last digits of the coordinates, then turned to scan her surroundings.

The tree she and Mepad were in was in the middle of a small clearing, dotted only by some bushes and a few saplings. The tree itself was one of the largest in the forest, certainly the closest large tree to the contestant grounds. A crunch of leaves echoed in the distance.

Taco slowly lowered herself to the ground, taking care to ensure Mepad was hidden in the canopy of the tree. A smaller branch snapped to her left, Taco turned towards the sound, whoever was headed towards the clearing was close.

Mepad's teleportation made a fair amount of noise when activated, Taco knew she couldn't use it now without whoever was coming knowing.

Considering the remaining contestants Taco assumed Knife was coming to confront her, a situation she was not excited for, giving the object's strength and use of violence.

She already had half of her shell cracked, thank you very much, Tacos wasn't banking on having to piece together an entire shell today.

But as the individual approached Taco noticed a faint glow on the foliage in the distance, accompanied by the mumbling of an object talking to herself.

Lightbulb, Taco thought, almost wanting to facepalm herself, she had seemed distraught at her friends being eliminated. She should have assumed she may retreat to the forest.

Taco's mind frantically scrambled for options to get out of this interaction, running out of the clearing would make a ruckus, but it was unlikely she'd be able to scramble up the tree to Mepad either.

So, in classic panic fashion, when Lightbulb entered the clearing where she often went to space out and clear her head, she was met with a Taco that looked like she'd seen a ghost staring directly at her.

"Uh, hey T and Co! What're you doin here?"

Taco's face dropped from a frightened stare, opening and closing her mouth a few times as if she couldn't find any words.

"It looks like your bean got freaked or something, are you okay, I haven't seen you in a while! Well I mean, you probably didn't want to be seen but still!"

Lightbulb began to approach her, Taco still didn't move.

"Seriously I just need someone to talk to right now, can ya give me something to work with, I'll start again!"

Lightbulb cleared her throat, then proceeded into an overdramatic restart to their conversation, which would be admirable if it wasn't so tone deaf.

"My gal, little T, girlboss, runner up and mexican brit what is up! What happened to your eye, it looks jank, we can't be having that!"

Taco mumbled her reply "I don't feel like talking about it, okay."

"Then at least let me help fix it, dummy!" Lightbulb exclaimed, playfully punching Taco in the shoulder, and beginning to move to touch the crack across her shell.

Taco swatted her hand away, clearly annoyed. Lightbulb looked disheartened at that, frowning, to which Taco realized she shouldn't let her bad mood get the best of her.

"Sorry I plan on patching it up later, I don't mean to be rude I just wasn't expecting to talk to anyone right now."

"Right now?" Lightbulb replied, before gasping "You're making new friends, that's nice! Who are they, do I know them? I bet we could have some good chat together!"

Taco was confused by the other object's enthusiasm "Why are you so interested, you have others to talk to, hell your whole team seems to like you."

"Yeah they did but they're gone now." Lightbulb remarked in an uncharacteristically dull tone "Fan and Tube left for good today, and Painty's been gone for a while."

So that's who got eliminated. In her surprise Taco had failed to note who else was walking through the portal to the hotel.

"Oh, sorry I don't think you'll find much better luck with my friend, she's not on the grounds anymore." Taco responded.

"You say that like she's dead!" Lightbulb remarked.

"Well I might be dead to her so close enough." was the deadpan response.

Lightbulb bit her lip, genuinely wanting to know who Taco had been talking to, and despite the ditz most people took her for she was fairly certain on who it might have been. Seeing as Test Tube had been hanging with her for the last few episodes, and there was only one other female contestant to leave recently...

"If I guess who it was will you tell me about what happened, I'm a super good friendship counselor, trust me!"

"No."

"Pleaseeeee."

"No."

"C'mon now that I have nothing to do if you refuse I'll just have to bother you for the next few days!"

Taco sighed "Fine, one guess."

Lightbulb did a little jump in excitement, before dramatically pointing towards her.

"Microphone."

"Damnit."

A/N; Woah sorry for dropping off the face of the earth there! Between school and other projects I completely forgot about this fic. There still won't be regular updates, especially with midterms coming up, but I still plan to finish this! Next chapter will be the second half of this interaction. I'll also be going back and fixing grammar and spelling errors in previous chapters because I've spotted a few.