Anarchist | Riverdale

The Great Escape

Sweet Pea returns home around an hour later to a very, very unhappy girlfriend.
"Complete your quest did you?" Ellie asks, folding her arms as she sits on t the couch. Two empty bottles of wine and the stench of weed surround her. Her words were slurred and her thoughts were toxic.
"Yeah." Sweet Pea dragged out, examining the state Ellie is in and decided that not mentioning it was his safest option. "You wanted to talk?" He says, coming near to her, placing his jean jacket on the coat rack.
"It was incredibly important, Sweet Pea." The tears started again, it was obvious she had been crying on and off all night. "It's about G&G."
"What about it? It's a game." Sweet Pea shrugs, sitting on the other end of the couch.
Ellie takes a deep breath and releases her hair from the ponytail as it was starting to cause her a headache, running her hands through it before she speaks. "It's killed people, Sweets."
"Bull. It's a game, on a board, like any other board game." The boy says, confused at his girlfriend's overreaction.
"I'm not doing this with you if you aren't even gonna give me a chance to explain." Ellie gives up, putting her shoes on with a small stumble here and there, and she goes next door to see her bother.

"So you confirmed it? Dad used to play G&G?" Jug asks once Ellie told him the story of the Midnight Club.
"All our parents did, even Penny, and they swore each other to secrecy. But Jug, while they were playing, one of them killed their principal back then, Felix Featherhead, either accidentally or on purpose, but he had blue lips, just like Ben and Dilton. Which is why all of this has to stop." Ellie explains, basically pleading her brother to stop playing.
"Ellie, the fact our parents played G&G just corroborates what I've come to believe. That we have been playing this game for a lot longer than we know. And off-board. Think about it. The Hot Dog rescue. What was that, if not a quest?" Jug asks, still sounding crazy, she knew that the game had finally got to him and it broke her heart. "The Serpents, Ghoulies. What are they if not warring tribes? Might as well call us orcs and goblins."
"You're not making any sense." Ellie stops him before he can continue. "And you're also not listening to anything that I'm saying. We have nine suspects, that are all real, tangible leads. One of our parents could be a murderer. Let's go investigate them."
"You're not seeing the bigger picture." Jughead says. "Eldervair, the realm of Gryphons and Gargoyles, is an anagram for 'Riverdale'. The whole game is an analog for Riverdale. The game only exists in Riverdale. That's why you couldn't find it on the web."
"Okay, well that is a weird coincidence." Ellie furrows her brows.
"It's not a coincidence. It's all connected. It's all one big narrative, that's still being written and played." Jughead adds.
"You need to calm down, Jug. Who's telling you this?" Ellie asks.
"The game." He shrugs. "The more I play, the more familiar I become with Eldervair and it's rules. The more I see the patterns. The more I understand him or her. And how we'll catch the Gargoyle King. This game is their psychology. Their imagination. It's how they view Riverdale."
"Alice was right, this game messes with your head." Ellie shakes her head in disbelief.
"No, no." Jug wags a finger. "This is the clarity I needed. It's the truth. G&G's myths, they're our stories. Our parents' stories. It's simple logic, Ellie. How do you catch a game master? You become a game master yourself. That's what I'm doing. And in the end, when I prove that I'm at his level, I'll come face-to-face with him."
"Fine." Ellie raises her hands in defeat. "Fine, as long as you're safe, that's one less thing for me to worry about. So you, keep playing. Betty and I are gonna go figure this out, starting with our nine suspects." Ellie gives up and leaves his trailer, going back to her own to find Sweet Pea passed out on the couch. Seeing this, she sighs and just heads to bed to watch some Netflix on her laptop whilst getting the whole bed to herself, something she doesn't normally like but right now, it's exactly what she needs.

The next morning, Ellie and Betty gather some of children of the Midnight Club together in the Blue and Gold's office and spend a while explaining the whole story of their parents, Gryphons and Gargoyles and ascension night.
"Hold up, so you're telling me that my mother was a rule-breaking, anti-apartheid activist in high school?" Josie asks, confused.
"And that she and my dad were together back then?" Kevin adds and Betty nods.
"I don't buy it." Reggie shrugs and Ellie rolls her eyes. "There's no way my old man hung out and did, like, cosplay with a group of lame-ass nerds."
"Okay, it's true, Reggie." Ellie tells him straight.
"And you want us to find out what, exactly?" Josie asks.
"My suspicion is that whoever was running the game back then is running it now, which is why we need to stop them before things get any worse." Betty explains her theory.
"Wait, what are you trying to say?" Kevin asks.
"That one of our parents might be responsible for what happened to Dilton and Ben?" Josie guesses the answer.
"Maybe." Ellie sighs. "And that's why you can't tell them that you know about the Midnight Club. Okay? You have to be careful and subtle when you ask them what they know."