The Arrow of Time

Hypothesize

"O-okay, everyone, don't panic yet." Daroach's voice wavered. "She's not actually late yet, right? There's still... one minute..." That minute went by in complete silence, save for the clock ticking. Zan Partizanne did not appear. "Shit."

"It might not be anything bad! Maybe she just... forgot?" Kirby's face gave away that even he didn't believe what he was saying.

Dedede hit the button on the elevator. "We're all going down there to look for her. Ten PM, we're meeting back in... I guess it's a dining room. Get back to the dining room by ten."

"Wait." Adeleine interjected. "What if we all go down there and then she comes back up?"

"Good point. I'll stay up here." Dedede picked someone out of the crowd. "Rick. You stay up here with me. Everyone else go downstairs."

"But there are no stairs."

"Shut up, Marx."

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"Okay, so me, Kirby, Magolor, Meta Knight, Marx, Elfilin, Francisca, Ribbon, Coo, and Susie will investigate the white room. Dark Meta Knight and Kine will keep an eye on the library, and the five others will look around the rest of the floor." Bandee summarized the plan they had come up with.

"Yep. Everyone got it clear?" Daroach looked around at the seventeen nods. "Right. Let's go!"

"There are way more nooks and crannies in here than you would think. This room is really confusing..." Ribbon checked the oddly uneven ceiling alongside Elfilin and Meta Knight.

Francisca had taken to spouting ideas that she didn't really believe in the hopes that it would calm her nerves. "Maybe she got lost in here, I wouldn't put it past anyone. Everything in here is way too confusing for someone to reliably find their way around."

"But wouldn't she be hearing us and trying to call for help or something?"

"Thanks for the reality check, Bandee."

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"Hey, everyone! I found something!" Elfilin called out to everyone else. It took a few minutes for everyone to find him. He was indicating a hole in the ceiling. "It looks like there's some kind of passageway here. Let's follow it!" They all began entering the strange passage, one after the other. Francisca entered last, then all was silent. However, even through all that silence, none of them, not even Magolor, were able to hear the voice of Dark Meta Knight saying that time was almost up.

They couldn't exactly tell where they were going. It was like travelling through an air duct in a heist movie, except the team got confused about their roles and ended up all doing the exact same thing. That, and most heist movies generally believe that people will stay quiet when they're trespassing somewhere they clearly were not intended to be. That's because none of them cast Marx as an actor. "This place smells worse than Castle Dedede after quesadilla night." Or something in that vein, every thirty seconds, give or take. Every single time, someone different would respond with an explanation as to why he should shut up.

"What if someone hears us?"

"We might get caught!"

"The sound of your voice makes me wish I was deaf!"

"We're trying to join Zan Partizanne in a good way, this is not the good way."

"If whoever's running the show here doesn't kill you, I will."

"I hope you look back on this fondly when this place gets flooded with a deadly neurotoxin."

Ribbon, leading the way, got to a dead end. "What now?"