Q&A Sessions for Orders and Conscience

Scene: The Fallen Crew II

Northwind sighed and idly tapped his finger against the table. The ghosts had now moved on to someplace else where they could bother someone else.

They felt their phone buzz against their leg and saw a message from a friend. It was about the other half of the crew and if they could be brought in. Northwind took a deep breath and shrugged. What was the worse that could happen? He had sealed off the fireworks and the Molotovs, not to mention that they wouldn't have unlimited access to everything on the internet.

"Orange," Northwind called. Orange turned around and tilted his head, confused. Northwind beckoned to him and pulled him aside.

"We're going to do something that's going to sound crazy," Northwind said. "Especially considering what happened last time."

Orange looked at them with suspicion. "What are you taking about?"

"Bringing in the other half."

"By all the stars, please tell me you're joking."

"Nope." Northwind snapped his fingers and five crewmates appeared in the room, shocked and very put-off.

Rose patted themself down. "Here, here, here... how am I alive again?"

Banana let out an incredulous laugh and pumped her fist into the air. "Keyboard power! Let's goooo!"

Like always, Purple crossed his arms and glared suspiciously at everyone else, cataloguing their threat level. He positioned himself to be the furthest away from Red and Blue as possible.

Fortegreen was silent and turned to Olive to make several hand gestures. Olive shrugged and replied in kind, using sign language to communicate as best as possible.

"What're they saying?" Yellow asked Blue.

Blue shrugged. "Hey, Olive! What's Fortegreen saying?"

"She's asking what's going on," Olive said. "I said I don't know. Anyone want to explain?"

"You were brought back from the dead in order to participate in a little activity," Northwind said with a straight face. "Or, sorry, just to add more chaos."

Fortegreen tilted her head and tapped a little device on each of her ears, then swallowed. "Could you say that again?"

"We were brought back from the dead to add chaos," Olive said.

"Ah, okay," Fortegreen said. She rubbed the back of her neck and glanced awkwardly at White. "Uh, so we're talking to him now?"

"I'm right here, you know," White said, slightly indignant.

"Right, sorry."

The room was quiet for a little, until the silence was broken by Red clearing his throat. "Do I have to sit through more crewmate nonsense?"

"Maybe," Rose said, glaring at Red. "Thanks to your people, I was killed for the Impostor to take my place and walk in my skin!"

Fortegreen nodded assent. "Me, as well."

"At least we got our first guesses right," Green said.

"Yeah, because I thought about my choices rather than blindly voting," Orange said pointedly. Yellow rolled his eyes and muttered something that Northwind wished he could forget.

"Hey, Yellow's a good captain!" Lime protested. "Lay off him! We got out of there alive, didn't we?"

Orange coughed and gestured vaguely to Lime and Yellow. "Alive, you say?"

"That was this mission," Yellow said, "not last mission. I got Lime, Red, Brown, and Black out alive. Wasn't my fault that these leaf-clogs killed them."

Red growled. "Seriously, may I please be excused before I hit someone?"

Northwind rolled their eyes and waved Red off. Red stomped towards quarters again, clenching his fists and muttering under his breath. "Don't keep your face like that or it'll get stuck that way!" Northwind called after him.

"Hey, he's learning how to step out before he explodes," White said hopefully. "That's good, right?"

Black and Brown looked at each other and Black shook her head. "I guess so."

"Well, I'd take exploding before being stabbed several times," Banana said, her smile fading. "That hurt. At least exploding would be fast. It wouldn't be as clean as being stabbed, but I think I would die almost instantly."

"I was impaled on one of those needle-tongues," Olive said indignantly. "Do you know how much that hurt? They missed the first shot and dawdled before finally killing me! You died within two minutes; it took me five to pass."

"You know what also hurts?" Purple asked. "Being garroted. I don't even know how they got those wires, but the next thing I know they're digging into my neck and my lungs are on fire. I don't even know how long it took me to die because I was the first. There was no ghost looking out for me there..."

Black looked slightly overwhelmed. "I didn't know that we were authorized to garrote anyone..."

Brown shook his head. "We aren't normally. Sometimes they'll allow it if the circumstances are right. Ranking high enough or something."

"Oh, please just discuss nonchalantly the ways that you could kill us," Purple snapped. He glared at both Brown and Black. "While you're at it, why don't you discuss in detail how you killed everyone else on the crew?"

"I'm... going to assume that's sarcasm..." Black trailed off, rapping her fingers on the table.

"Why in the world would it not be sarcasm?"

Brown shrugged. "I don't know, you're mocking us?"

"Would you please look up the definition of sarcasm?"

"Sure!" White pulled out his tablet and read aloud, "'The use of irony to mock or convey contempt.'"

Purple spread his arms out pointedly. "See? I am mocking you, I'm just using irony to do so."

"Fine, fine, fine," Black grumbled. "You're mocking us, hooray! Now, can we please be left in peace?"

Purple sighed. "Well, since I'm dead I don't see why not. Relax and don't kill anyone else. If you do, I will personally rise from my grave to murder you."

"No murdering here," Northwind called. He looked up from his phone and sighed. "For the last time, no one is murdering anyone else under my watch."

"Well, you certainly didn't have a problem when we were killed," Fortegreen said accusingly. The rest of the dead nodded assent and Northwind felt somewhat threatened.

"Hey, that was Storyline, not me!" Northwind protested. "I just write it out, Storyline decides everything!"

"Still, you actively contributed to our deaths!" Olive growled. "C'mon guys, let's get 'em!"

"No, absolutely no—AAAAHHHH!" Northwind screamed as several angry crewmates launched themselves at Northwind.

Northwind started to type furiously into their phone and pressed the enter key, teleporting them away to safety. Unfortunately, that space was in Mess on Polus, and he was greeted with a familiar voice shouting: "FREEZE!"

Northwind held their hands up and groaned. "Indigo, please just-"

BANG