From the Gallows | Wilbur Soot

Act Four: The Smile

"You're lying, Toms," Inferna hears an unfamiliar voice say. "No way there's a real woman here."

Upon finally being granted a job for the prince, he'd very rudely instructed her to "get out of his face." Although, it was probably for the best, because if Inferna had stayed near it much longer, she probably would've ended up bashing it in.

It's barely day one and her patience is already wearing thin.

Luckily, Inferna remembered fairly well all of the turns her and Niki had taken to get to the training room, so it's pretty easy to find her way back up to the main level.

Hearing the unfamiliar voice, Inferna starts to head in the general direction of it since she has yet to be assigned a more important task.

"I'm not lying, Tubs," Inferna hears Tommy whisper behind the closed door. "A real life woman-"

"Excuse me," Niki's offended voice interrupts. "Are we going to act as if I'm not a woman as well?"

There's silence for a moment before a second unfamiliar voice speaks. "Of course you're a woman, Niki," it says sheepishly. "It's just, you don't really count-"

"Don't really count?!"

"No, I didn't mean it like that!" The voice tries to defend itself over Tommy and the boy he called Tubs's laughter. "It's just- it's just, you know, we've known you for forever-"

"I think Jack's just trying to say that we don't really think of you as being any different from us because we've known you for so long," a third unfamiliar voice offers. "Whereas, when there's a new woman around, it's a lot more nerve wracking. Especially for teenage boys like Tubbo and Tommy here who can't seem to separate their heads from their arses-" laughter replaces the unfamiliar voice as clambering sounds come from inside of the room. "Get off of me!" the voice pleads.

"This is your punishment, fox boy," Tommy's voice says deviously, "take back your words, or else."

"Please! I'm innocent!"

"Furries are never innocent," says Tubbo. "Take back your words or I'll make a scarf out of your tail-"

"So, are you just going to stand here listening, or are you going to actually join in on the fun?"

Inferna jumps at the voice from behind her, her right hand simultaneously whipping out a dagger from the pocket on her right thigh.

She manages to catch herself before bringing it all the way up to the stranger's neck like she did earlier with Niki, but the tall man doesn't miss it. The man's blue eye on the half of his face that is darker than the night itself holds eye contact with the girl that still has bloodlust burning in hers as she calms down, whilst the red eye on the side of his face that's whiter that the palest snow stares at her dagger as she grips it tightly.

"How are you looking in multiple directions at once?" Inferna asks.

Although the man is taller than anyone she's ever met, he doesn't seem to impose any real threat. He's very skinny, and if he wished to harm her, he would've attempted to whilst she wasn't looking.

"Ah," the man brings his hand up to the red eye, then pushing two of his fingers into the socket behind it and pulling it out with ease, "robotic." He smiles, holding it out to her as the wires connecting to the white part of the robotic eye spark and spit.

"Did you just... break it?" Inferna questions, extremely puzzled with this odd man.

"Yeah..." he trails off. "That probably wasn't the smartest idea."

"Well he's... interesting?" Even the voice doesn't know what to make of this.

"I'm Ranboo." The man sticks out the slender hand that isn't holding his eyeball. Inferna shakes it hesitantly, feeling as if she's in an extremely lucid fever dream.