18:00

3 : Hot Cocoa

"...and then I just woke up here. No explanation or anything, all I had was a couple people surrounding me and a tail where my legs should've been." Soap said. "Well, that's it. Any questions?"

Fan hesitated for a moment, taking a sip of his hot cocoa. "Uh... just a moment, this is a lot to take in at once."

"Take your time." Soap said. She gently smiled, floating over and taking a seat on one of the rocking chairs sitting off to the side. Well, she couldn't actually sit, so it was more or less floating atop the chair rather than sitting.

Fan set his mug down, being careful not to splash the liquid inside all over himself. He took a moment to observe everything around him.

Well, for one he now knew where Marshmallow and Apple had been all this time. He also discovered the two ghosts of the only permanently dead Inanimate Insanity competitors, so there was that. He looked at Bow and Soap, who were both doing their own things.

Bow was ripped at the sides, most likely from when she had gone crazy during the season one finale. Luckily, she seemed to have gained most of her sanity back in the afterlife. She still had torn and charred parts of her from the electricity burns, but other than that and the slight electric blue tint to her tail at the tip, she was unchanged.

Soap was an entirely different story. She had a scar tracing along her forehead horizontally, though he doubted that was related to her death directly. Her gunshot wounds had been stitched up before she died, so she thankfully wasn't covered in blood. However, the one thing Fan found peculiar about her figure was that her body faded to orange around her waist, or where her tail started.

Even though Bow's tail was a different color near the tip, at least the rest of it was pink like the rest of her body. The very faint electric blue could be explained by Bow's death being due to, well, electricity and water. The start of Soap's tail was white, but quickly faded to orange, being pure orange just a fourth of the way through. There weren't any correlations to the color orange with Soap's death, so the color was an unexplained sight to Fan.

He thought to himself further. An idea hit him. It might be a bit selfish, but...

"Uh, would you mind if I asked you a bit of a sensitive question?" Fan asked. Soap crossed her arms in thought.

"Mmm... Sure, what is it?" Soap responded.

"Right, uh... God this is awkward to ask." Fan laughed nervously. He forced himself to speak his mind, knowing he wouldn't get any answers otherwise. "If you're here and you died in the lab incident... Does that mean that Test Tube is here as well?"

The room was filled with silence. Fan internally shamed himself for daring to ask such a personal question, especially during his first time talking to someone about their literal death. Before his thoughts could get too far, however, Marshmallow spoke up.

"Yes, she does happen to be here." She said, her voice almost shaking. "Why do you want to know?"

"...I think the message I got was from her." Fan muttered. He looked at the ground, trying not to curl up in a ball and die from the pure shame he felt stating it. "I know it sounds unbelievable, but she might've been the one who sent me here. If you don't mind, could I try... talking to her?"

"Uh... about that." Bow said, swishing her mug of hot cocoa around. "We don't really know where she is. We just let her do her own thing as long as she doesn't bother us."

"I mean, there's a big section of the mansion we don't really utilize, but we don't have any specific location for you." Marshmallow explained further. "So yeah. Sorry, can't really help you there."