Yet Another Murder Mystery (multi object show fanfic) [COMPLETED]

Howdunnit

Flaggy rushed out the door of the mess hall, tears leaking from her eyes. Almost immediately, she ran right into Bottle and Cheesy, who were walking down the path which led from the cabins. "Woah! Slow down, Flaggy!" Bottle said. "What's wrong?"

Flaggy didn't respond, choosing instead to push past them and continue sprinting away. They glanced at each other, concern on their faces. "Should we go after her?" Cheesy wondered aloud.

Bottle looked back. "I think Suitcase and Bowling Ball are still in their cabins. They should be able to help cheer her up!"

"Alright, I suppose..."

They continued forwards and entered the mess hall. Inside was quite the scene. Marshmallow sat on the floor, tenderly rubbing her neck. TV's arm was next to her - nobody had bothered to touch it - and TV himself was dejectedly slumped on a chair. WL4 and Flower were glancing between the two of them, while Marble sat at a different table, trying not to look at the cleaver lying on the ground near her.

Cheesy and Bottle froze when they saw all this. "...what the hell happened here?"

"You missed a lot," WL4 chuckled in their direction. "Basically, TV's a cyborg, and his robot arm went crazy and tried to strangle Flaggy, then Marshmallow, and then Marble had to cut it off with a knife."

Cheesy gasped. "A cyborg? That's so... COOL! Well, uh, aside from the attempted murders."

"You seem to be in a much better mood," Flower remarked.

"Yup! All thanks to the Bottle Therapy Hour, I'm..." He hesitated. "Well, not good as new, per se... but as good as I'll ever be. I think."

Bottle giggled. "Thanks! I did my best."

"Hate to break up this wonderful bonding moment, but we should really try to figure out why TV's arm went haywi-" Marble stopped in the middle of her sentence as a thought entered her brain.

TV nodded glumly. "Marble's right. However, the only explanation I can think of is that I was hacked."

Flower looked at him weirdly. "Hacked? With what? The only electronics around here are the game consoles in the lounge, and I'm pretty sure it's impossible to hack anything with-"

"My laptop," Marble growled.

The others turned to look at her, perplexed. "Your... what?" WL4 questioned suspiciously.

The red-haired girl glanced around the room surreptitiously before answering. "Listen up, because I'm only explaining this once. The reason I disappeared for a few days was to look for Oodle's cabin in the woods. Remember how he accidentally put it on our maps at the start of this twisted game? Well, I found it. And I found him. And he actually told me several extremely useful things, which is much more than the rest of you have done so far."

She took a breath. "I know I don't have the best reputation, and you probably don't trust me-" She aimed that last statement at WL4. "-but you need to do so now. Oodle is being forced to do this game, just like we are. He doesn't want to host it, but the mysterious 'higher-ups' have put him under the same threat we're under; if he doesn't cooperate, they'll kill his family."

Marble took another deep inhale in the silence. "I should mention that he told me all this through writing, because he also said that his superiors can hear whatever he hears at all times during this game." Everyone else in the room suddenly realized that at some point, Oodle had vanished from the mess hall. Maybe he knew the conversation was coming and absconded from the scene to make sure he couldn't overhear anything.

"But there's more." Marble grabbed their attentions again. "He gave me a laptop of his, to... I'm not exactly sure. He said he couldn't access the internet, either, but that maybe one of us had good enough hacking skills that we could use the laptop to push past whatever wireless barrier the higher-ups have constructed, and possibly send a signal to the outside world."

"I hid it in my cabin yesterday. But when I woke up this morning, it was gone. Stolen." By this point, her voice was icy. "I didn't even have a proper chance to look through the programs on there. For all I know, there was one that allowed the shithead murderer to hack into TV's arm or whatever."

TV winced. "I knew I should have disabled my Bluetooth brain implant."

"That's quite the story," WL4 commented. "You sure you're not making any of it up?"

Marble stared at him. "Do you think you're able to put our little feud from the past behind us for two seconds, or are you just so stupid that you don't care if we all die here in a horrible fashion?"

The boy's brow furrowed, but Marshmallow interrupted him by slamming her fist into the ground, making them all jump. They'd nearly forgotten she was there, she was so quiet. "I'm... getting REALLY tired... of you all arguing," she wheezed, still recovering from the attack on her life. "And tired of... this whole shitty game in... general."

Flower snorted. "You can say that again."

--------------------

Flaggy didn't bother to go to her own cabin, instead just running straight down the path and into the first building she saw - Cabin 4. She burst through the doorway and leapt onto an empty cot inside, startling Bowling Ball and Suitcase, who were sitting next to each other on another bed. "Flaggy?" Suitcase asked, worry creeping into her voice. "What are... are you ok?"

Flaggy mumbled a reply, muffled by the pillow in which she had buried her face into. Suitcase and BB exchanged glances. "We, uh, couldn't understand that," BB said.

No response this time.

"Ok, well, uhhhhh... if you... need a place to... rest? Cry? I guess you can stay here for a while. If you don't mind us talking."

She didn't respond again, which they took as confirmation. They continued their conversation, more quietly this time, occasionally glancing her way. Flaggy wanted to vent her frustration towards TV and the world in general by screaming into her pillow, but she figured that would only make her throat worse. She could barely talk as it was.

Eventually, despite everything, she managed to drift into a restless sleep.