Power Outage [REWRITTEN]

Desperation

Sounds of crickets' chirping echoed through the halls. Amethyst paced around in circles again, again, and again. The words of the note ze found in their notebook troubled hir.

I'm growing impatient. It's been multiple nights, and you've yet to use your role. If you don't poison someone by the end of the outage, I'll assure you that Prasiddhi will be next.

-

Prasiddhi woke up to the sudden door slam across the room. Like they premeditated, Alab arrived to inform everyone about the daily morning meeting. Her eyes wandered to the lump in her bag: the gun.

Once we gather in the living room, I'd have to tell everyone, wouldn't I?

"Hey, are you ready yet?" Alab's muffled voice emitted from behind the door.

Prasiddhi reluctantly gathered her belongings in her bag and followed Alab past the corridor. Together, they trotted down the staircase and met at the rendezvous. Her face felt like glass: it was easy to see what she was feeling.

Alab turned on their heel and said in a reassuring tone. "You good?"

At the same point, Rosalie and Nikolai position themselves on the couch and prepare for discussion. Prasiddhi scrunches her face in discomfort, signaling to Alab by what caused the uneasiness.

"Where do we start..." Elizabeth mumbled, "I guess we could talk about what we found recently. Not that there'll be much anyway; we just woke up."

Quinn scrambled for something in their pocket while mentioning, "Found some weird powders in my pocket this morning along with a couple of herbs too."

Amethyst's face lit up and ze exclaimed, "Where'd you get those? Those are–" Instantly, ze clapped over hir mouth, ceasing the rest of hir statement.

With suspicion, Prasiddhi curiously examined the substance in Quinn's grasp, but in an endeavor to not seem skeptical, she held off on checking the items in her bag.

"Those are what, Amethyst?" Charlie inquired.

"Medicinal herbs and chemicals. I would know since I work with them for a living." Ze shrugged.

"Clearly there's something yer hiding." Austin scoffed, "Otherwise you wouldn't cut yourself off like that. Something you know?"

"Heh, of course not!" Giggling, Amethyst became tense, "I just thought that maybe it would reveal something about Quinn."

"You tryna dodge the subject?" Quinn shot a frightening glare.

The crowd stared at Amethyst, and ze panicked as people began to debate hir innocence. Questioning whether she should take action, hir significant other bit her lip and eyed her bag. Prasiddhi reached for the inside of her carrier and slammed the object onto the table. Everyone veered their heads and had widened eyes as they scanned the weapon lying there.

"Is that a gun?" Elaina's mouth was agape.

Amani raised a brow, "Prasiddhi, where did you find this?"

"The attic." She specified. "One of the many boxes contained it."

"None of us ever brought any boxes in when we came to the party. Did they bring it prior, or maybe we just caught our culprit?" Marley attentively stared at Jean-Claude.

"No, I don't believe that's the case." Prasiddhi shook her head,"If he had visited the attic beforehand, then we would have seen some foot and handprints on the layers of dust when we hid there."

"Perhaps he's been planning for a long time," Marley speculates.

"Nah," Austin leaned forward to make himself more visible. "Some of us like Charlie and me haven't known Jean-Claude for that long. If he really wanted t' kill y'all for some time now, don'tcha think he would've killed people he's familiar with."