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It's time for their match. Orpheus blinks and sits down slowly as she and Joker look at him worriedly.
He'd just been speaking with them a few moments ago just fine, so why now...
He stares down at the table that hazed up in front of him as their words become static in his ears.
He registers a question from her a bit late, and blinks. Is he ok?
"Um," he manages succinctly. "Brain fog."
Disconnect-
The Manor whirls them away to the match before he can say another word.
He stares at his new surroundings for a while, before slowly moving to the closest cipher machine.
His body, heavy. Harder to move than usual. He reaches the machine and slowly begins tapping, a far cry from his usual fast pace at the beginning.
A whoosh across the map informs him that the hunter found Gardener... He stares down at the machine in front of him and keeps tapping. He's not quite sure who Gardener is but she should be fine, right..? As long as the hunter doesn't come in this direction... He's not quite sure if he's present enough to be able to run...
He says nothing as Joker runs up and starts up on the same machine. This is fine.
"Kuh-" he breaks off and fails a calibration as his left arm spasms slightly. He clutches it with his right and grits his teeth as the muscles continue to disobey him and keep twitching, the haze shifting into a distorted kind of focus, but only on the uncomfortable, unnatural twisting of the skin he was clutching in his hand.
He can't. Decode like this. Or move either. The only thing he can think of beyond the haze is wishing his muscles would stop. Twitching. So he can move again.
He can't tell if Joker is looking at him in worry or ignoring him in favour of decoding. Either way would make no difference, though.
The spasms pass eventually, and he manages to continue decoding, even though the unnatural feeling in his arm remains.
Did Joker leave grafitti as he ran off to rescue Gardener? He doesn't know.
He finishes the cipher and heads to the next one.
He meets Mechanic. This is...his friend, right? The one who spoke to him in the beginning..?
He decodes and she runs elsewhere, presumably to get her bot set up or...he doesn't know.
It's a haze. He only realizes when Joker is chaired and almost sent off that the friend who spoke to him in the beginning was Gardener. Emma.
Then...the Mechanic was... someone else...
He keeps decoding, not quite there, as Mechanic rescues Joker just in time.
But they die anyway.
He's not quite sure what he's thinking when he pops the last cipher when Mechanic is on her last chair.
He's not sure when exactly he got injured, but he did, at some point, and there is no way to rescue her now...
He doesn't know when he got injured. When was he close enough to the hunter for that..?
He's running to the dungeon. Maybe the pop makes the hunter think he's gone to a gate...
A whoosh behind him, a butterfly in his face, and he's facing the ground on his knees.
Michiko. He looks up as she waves her fan and then picks him up.
He doesn't struggle. Not much of a point. What even is the point of this match? He doesn't know.
He blinks when she places him by the dungeon silently, and dances.
He blinks and fumbles forward, and puts down a grafitti in thanks.
Could she perhaps sense he isn't in his right mind..?
He exits the match, but yet the haze still remains.