Chapter Text
“The audience has chosen…for you.. to die.”
Blinding white pain, then nothing.
-
Ranboo woke up. He was in a cabin. The cabin. With a raging headache.
The same cabin they’d been in just a few hours earlier.
No. That’s impossible right? People don’t just die and come back like that. Ranboo fought to keep a semblance of a stable train of thought over the pressure in his head. Maybe they hallucinated.
Or they’d just woken up from a dream.
A really, really bad dream.
Where they’d died.
Hm. He’d had worse dreams, all things considered.
This is a lie.
Anyway, now time to find out how and why they were in a weird-ass cabin. That he’d just dreamed about. Pfft, those two things were completely unrelated. Sweet thoughts guide him to the bookcase. When did they get there? They shrug it off and search for the keys. The odd gaps in their memory of something just did, paired with the crystal clear recollection of what will happen next is completely unrelated.
Right?
“BOO, BITCH!”
Ok, so that had also happened in the dream. That’s…not great. The key here is to not start panicking.
The demon starts ranting about vaping and free Girl Scout cookies.
Ranboo was now feeling distinctly ridiculed by some asshole god or something. Did the divine just steal the plot of their dream? ‘Oh that would make a funny story, let’s do that.’ They’re probably overreacting away. He can’t even remember most of the dream anymore, as it often is with dreams.
This is a lie.
They should just take the door to leave.
“-CHRISTIAN HELL?”
They shut the door, do not think about Bart the Vore’er and sigh. Yep, that would be the God fucking with him. They ignore the rampant deja vu this Slimecicle guy is giving them.
“Uhh, sure. You just have Christian Hell out there. Why not.”
Slimecicle grins and continues loudly talking in an accent he doesnt recognise. Was it Boston maybe? Beetlejuice if he was a raging New Yorker? Ranboo definitely isn’t distracting themselves from how similar this is to their very vivid lucid dream.
“Aha! First you must cook me something slimy .”
Ranboo deadpans at him.
“A cooking challenge.”
Slimecicle points accusingly at him while bits of his suit ooze into the floor.
“Yeah, and what of it huh? Stop talkin’ back at me. You are just tall, dry and pathetic. Like a tree. You’re a sad dry tree.”
Ranboo backs up into the kitchen.
“What- ok?”
“That's what I like to hear, Dry Boy. And it better be slimy.”
Slimecicle drags out the last vowel of ‘slimy’ while leaning exponentially closer to his face, wearing the most cursed expression Ranboo has ever seen. Deja vu cooking show it is.
Temporarily satisfied, the demon retreats back to the living room while ruining every object he comes into contact with. A ghoul shoves a bowl into their hands and limps after Slimecicle. The two share a high five that then accidentally sticks their hands together.
Ignoring the awkward commotion of the two trying to free themselves in the other room, they open the fridge and are only half surprised to find it empty. What a great start.
-
About an hour and several magic fridge items later, the deja vu was getting distinctly worse. This is not a good sign.
Slimecicle had thankfully not killed him for his disgusting microwaved concoction, but that did not mean this was any less weird. Ranboo takes a moment to breathe in, out, and try to completely forget the weird hallucination/dream/deja vu incident. It doesn’t work, but they pretend it does. Something in his mind urges them to continue exploring.
He thought it couldn’t hurt to check the basement, just in case.
Ah, Sneeg. Sneeg and Frank. Who definitely don’t have something going on between them. Mhm. So everything had currently, uh, completely followed the events of the dream. This is concerning for many reasons. But people don’t just come back from the dead like this. So it’s not real.
Sweet nothings invade their mind, and suddenly Sneeg’s been killed by a godless sharpicklester abomination, and Slimecicle is a towel. When did they do all that?
It doesn’t matter, the fuzz whispers.
This is a lie.
A needle stabs the back of their neck, and Ranboo doesn’t have enough time to think about how familiar it is.
-
Ok, so getting kidnapped and forced to dissect Charlie. This was not a good thing. Hoping Charlie was not on the other side of that door, and then opening it to that exact sight was not a good thing at all. It isn’t possible for them to know that.
This kept getting more and more oddly specific. The sweet fuzzy feeling was back, so they tried not to think about it. Niki is shot dead in the cubicle, and Ranboo catches himself thinking “The Puzzler couldn’t make that mistake twice.” They didn’t know that was going to happen. That thought was impossible.
This is a lie.
The puzzles continue, and each time they allow themselves to recognise them more and more. He is thoroughly confused.
As they notice the camera crew and walk out to the railing, a whisper of “what the fuck is this place?” stays in their throat. Because don’t they know already?
The fuzzy feeling in his head reminds him that it was just a dream, coincidence. But it can’t be. Ranboo mentally tells the fuzziness to shove off. They know something is off, and no weird mind game is making them change their mind.
Dreams can’t predict reality. But past experiences might.
This is the truth.
So Ranboo forms a hypothesis. Somehow, he’s gone through this before. And if he’s right about that, then around 45 minutes or so from now he will be murdered.
Shit.
Ranboo mentally sits down with themselves and tries to put together the equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle with the wrong pieces. Somehow, he’s repeating a day he just lived. After a small and existential brainstorm, unfortunately the only way they can come up with to test this out is what they dub as “Loop-de-Loop Theory.” To follow through with this loop and see if they wake up back in the Cabin again. This means they will most likely have to get crushed and crucified in a mini iron maiden again.
This is not ideal. But nothing ever works in their favour, and Charlie is ambushed again. And Hetch is just as much of a bastard as he was before.
As the box shuts, they hope to God that Loop-de-Loop Theory is correct.
Then Ranboo jolts awake on the sofa. Their head throbs with a death-induced migraine.
Definitely wasn’t a dream last time then. Loop-de-Loop Theory was right. They really are resetting. Shit. Shit.
They force their breathing under a semblance of control. Think about this logically, Ranboo. They have a bit of time until Slimecicle, Charlie, kicks the door down again. Use that to make a plan.
The most glaring questions on their mind are as follows:
-What the fuck.
- How the fuck.
-Is there a way to escape?
-Can he help others escape?
This is too many questions for the moment. They decide to answer the easier ones first.
Ranboo gets comfortable on the sofa and tackles them one at a time. Breathe in and out. They can get through this one.
1, What the fuck.
This question is pretty easy to explain with Loop-de-Loop Theory. Somehow , they’ve ended up in some form of time loop beginning when they wake up in the Cabin. Or at least, that’s what it looks like. There isn’t time to really dive into Question Two, “How the fuck”, any farther than the fact it only seems to loop when they die. It’s morbid, and Ranboo is pulling out every damn stop right now to not collapse into a panic attack over it. Is it only the box execution that loops them? What if they escape, die of old age, and wake up on the sofa again?
Ok. Moving on to the next question before that spiral continues.
3, Is there a way to escape?
The logical escape would be getting out of the Showfall building successfully. But even then Ranboo wouldn’t properly be free from them would they? They’d be hiding their whole life, not being able to talk to anyone about it- ok. Let’s move on from that question too. He settles on the hypothesis that escaping the building will end the loop. If it doesn’t, then that’s a later problem. Don’t get stressed over it now.
4, Can he help others escape?
Frankly, Ranboo would love to get as many people out as possible. However, that will require a lot of loops, and deaths , to perfect. And honestly, Ranboo cannot handle that right now. They know that they can wake Charlie near the end, so there is at least hope to bring him to freedom with them. That life saved looks the most doable, so Ranboo focuses on it as some good that could come out of this. They’re just about to continue slowly spiralling downwards when a loud bang sounds behind them.
“Boo, bitch!”
Time up.
Ranboo shelves the questions in favour of just getting through the god awful cooking show segment. Just do the tasks and wait until you have time to think.
He stirs something absolutely inedible and plans. They settle on using the one hour of time given by the Puzzler when they first wake up in an electric fucking chair. Use that to plan ideas. Don’t fall apart, just think. There’s still a way you can get out of here. With friends.
This loop is then dubbed The Planning Loop. Figure out plans and ideas to test now, and use the next few loops to test them out. Definitely do not think about death. Think about the life you’ll have when you get the hell out. Think about the hot chocolate you’ll make. Something like that.
Ranboo takes a breath. They can do this. It’s always better to plan things, especially when you know what might happen. Test out theories. Understand what the fuck is happening to you. Ok. He’s got this.
And so when time draws closer to his inevitable demise by the hands of Hetch, Ranboo at least feels confident that they will wake up again.
And they do. The next few loops are henceforth dubbed “Information Loops”. Ranboo follows the plans they’d made, the things they had to test.
Ranboo wakes with a splitting headache every single time. They sit down and time how long it takes for Charlie to kick the door (about 7 minutes), if it’s worth it to even free Sneeg from his cage in the basement (this one is still a bit unanswered due to the amount of guilt even posing the question gave him). They nearly call the loops “Speedrunning Loops” due to the amount of checks concerning how quickly they could manage to get through a section without something going majorly wrong. (The fastest they’d ever technically ”finished” the Warehouse was an around 45 minutes straight running method back and forth, ignoring everyones screaming. 0/5 stars, he does not recommend.)
‘Hey ’ go his emotions, ‘are you ready to feel us yet? ’
Ranboo firmly shuts the mental door in his emotions’ faces.
The current Worst Loop To Experience would have to go to the one Ranboo had promptly awarded the title of “The Shortest Loop.”
Ranboo wakes up on the sofa. It’s time to test the most nerve wracking theory yet. Is the box the only thing that kills them?
He gets up from the sofa and, it sounds so morbid when he thinks about it, attempts to find the nearest object he can kill himself with.
Listen, it’s the easiest way to know. Ranboo doesn’t want to get mauled by Security for a hypothesis. At least if he does it himself then it might be more painless. And if it stops the loop then at least they’re free on their own terms.
Ranboo settles on kicking the door down Slimecicle style to retrieve a knife in the kitchen. Unfortunately, Charlie was standing right behind the door waiting for his entrance. He is promptly knocked to the floor and becomes the sticky middle of a door-floor sandwich, completely unable to move. Clearly stickier slime than he thought.
Ranboo attempts to not feel bad about it as they rummage through what they assume is the cutlery drawer.
They feel a little bad about doing it in front of Charlie, but this isn’t Charlie. He'll forget soon anyway.
As they watch their blood pool on the floorboards, they hear a faint “Was my cooking show idea that bad?” from Charlie before they black out.
The Shortest Loop was around one minute thirty, give or take. At least they know now that it isn’t just the box that sends them back. They woke up from The Shortest Loop with stabbing phantom pain and the firm idea not to do that again.
In the last few Information Loops, Ranboo gives themselves a moment to hide under the blankets of the bed in the Cabin and just takes a second. It was getting, to put it very lightly, frustrating. Nothing they were doing was working. The tactics they were testing would always end up with someone dying. They expected watching the deaths of their friends to get easier through the loops, but everything just hurt more and more as they continued to fail them over and over again.
They screamed into the pillow in an attempt to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling of growing self hatred and anger mixing around in their brain. Even if they couldn’t die permanently, they could absolutely suffer on every other plane of existence and they were feeling it today. It wasn’t fair.
But as clean as clockwork, Charlie kicks the door down in the next room and the loop continues regardless of what Ranboo wants. They can’t get a damn break can they?
They collapse defeated, only held up by the wires binding them, as the box snaps shut again.
For a few seconds there is only pain as spikes are shoved through their skull, and the promise of having to do it all again tomorrow.