Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Everything was actually gone. Everything. How did that even happen?! Who’s doing was this? Mephone took a glance at everything in front of him. He didn’t dare turn around. He just could not face Cobs, he thought that he could never face his own creator ever again, Not after the recent events that just occurred. Not after what he just did. His knees were close to his chest, trembling with little to no control. His now shaky hands were near his face. Not quite touching it, but close enough to feel the heat coming from them.

Mephone noticed the hole beneath him, a reminder of the hotel that was no longer existent. Like everyone else, like everything else. If it wasn’t for the mark, it would look like the hotel never even existed in the first place. It wasn’t a pretty thought.

“Let’s go.”

Those words hit harder than a hit on the head with a metal club. Those words were words that Mephone had been dreading since the day he had left Meeple itself. He had actually heard them. He never wanted to. Cobs’ voice rang in his ears, attempting to even try to comprehend what he had just said.

“No…”

He couldn’t. Not after all of this time. He couldn’t just give up. There was no way Cobs could have won that easily, surely. There had to be some sort of loophole or maybe even escape, right?

Mephone however, knew that he was completely incorrect. Cobs had a chokehold on all of his products that could manipulate any one of them into quite literally everything. He was good at that, Mephone had to admit. He hated it.

Cobs’ voice then unexpectedly halted Mephone’s trailing thoughts.

“Come on, show’s over.” Cobs walked over to Mephone. The latter felt a chill as he felt Cobs walk by him, before settling his form in front of him. His gaze burned holes from the back of his head, he was almost surprised on how he didn’t burn, almost.

“We’re going home.” Cobs said with a stern tone. A tone Mephone was afraid of. A tone that he never wanted to hear again. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Cobs had reached his hand out to him. He wanted to run, hide from him. He knew he couldn’t, this was something Mephone couldn’t just say no to. The products hands dropped to his sides, expression turning more somber.

Mephone’s gaze lingered on ground longer, making a pathetic attempt at stalling the inevitable. He didn’t want to. However, couldn’t just stay forever.

So he did something that he never wanted to experience ever again in his lifetime. He took Cobs’ hand, and let his eyes fall shut while the rest of his face fell deeper. He had lost everything. His contestants, his game and his island. He had lost to Cobs.

He had lost.

Chapter Text

Mephone barely paid attention the whole walk back, his body automatically kept moving forward behind Cobs like an obedient servant. The sorrow that he once felt a while ago had now turned into near nothing. He had no intention to try to escape anymore, as he knew there was a little to no chance of it even working.

He looked back at the circular dent in the ground where Hotel OJ once stood. It looked empty, like something was supposed to be somewhere, but it wasn’t there and might never be again. Mephone hated that thought. If anyone would ever come across it, they would probably assume that some reckless individuals had made some sort of marking in the ground.

Mephone then shifted his eyes to his free hand. It’s doing nothing, just like him. Mephone did nothing to stop Cobs, nothing to run. He couldn’t even do that anyway.
His mind then went elsewhere. To the contestants, to the people that he had made and he didn’t even know up until a few hours ago. It hurt, even just thinking about them and how they weren’t here anymore. They had their own personalities, their own friends, their own life. They developed themselves into that, and it got taken away from them in a matter of seconds. Mephone felt guilt, he felt disgusted. They were gone now, actually gone. A singular tear almost shed from his eye, but he quickly wiped it away with his free hand.

Why would Cobs even try to even do such a stunt as this? Why would he hurt people who had nothing to do with Meeple, just to take revenge on Mephone leaving him all of that time ago? Sure, the remaining contestants from season two went up to Meeple once, but that was to get a battery for Mephone. He was the cause of this, he was the reason why all of these events happened. Cobs constructed this whole ordeal to kill them, even though they barely did anything to Cobs.

Mephone made the show to get away from Cobs, to start a new life away from everything he had known before. That was tarnished. Cobs had found him after all this time, and Mephone was caught. He was going to the one place that he never wanted to call home again, as if he could ever call Meeple ‘home’ in the first place. That wasn’t his home. The show was his home, the contestants were his home, and now his home was gone.

Cobs was speaking, but Mephone barely heard a word he said. The former’s words went in one ear and out the other of the latter. After a while, the robot had noticed how Cobs had let go of his hand. Mephone kept following though, he just could not risk what could happen if he had disobeyed Cobs yet again. Mephone shut his eyes once more, his eyes shut again. He didn’t notice Cobs turning around just when his eyes were fully closed.

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Mephone’s eyes slowly fluttered awake. He sat up while he tried to get accustomed to his surroundings. What the hell just happened? Did he fall asleep or something?

No. No. No.

Oh hell no.

There was no actual way that this was real, right?

“Meeple…?” Mephone quietly muttered to himself. He looked up at the ceiling, and immediately recognised the patterns engraved into the plain, white tiles. He knew that Cobs said that they were going ‘home’ but Mephone didn’t even register the way here! How long was he even out for?

“Oh good! You’re finally awake.” Mephone heard that menacing voice coming from right behind him. Cobs. The sound wasn’t up close, but it certainly wasn’t too far either. Mephone debated turning around to face him, before his pondering was once again interrupted.

“Come on now, don’t be shy! I don’t bite you know.” Cobs let out a small laugh at the end of his sentence. His tone nerved Mephone to his metal core. The robot reluctantly turned to face his creator, barely looking up at him. Cobs was sitting on an office chair, so he presumed that they were in Cobs’ office. He noticed how there was another chair there. Smaller, but there. He had never noticed that chair before. His expression turned into worry as he attempted to figure out what he should do.

“Really quiet today, huh?” Cobs spoke out again, making Mephone turn away even more. Cobs’ eyes gazed on Mephone, a smirk was planted on the former’s face.

“You’re getting this all wrong, Mephone! They aren’t dead.”

Mephone perked up his head at that, what did Cobs mean by that? He was joking, right? They weren’t alive. He had seen more than half of them get murdered in broad daylight. How could they be alive?

“What do you mean by that…?” Mephone asked with hesitation crawling out of his voice. His eyes could barely focus on Cobs, his hands were shaking yet again, as if they had never stopped in the first place.

“I’ll show you.” Cobs pointed to the small chair next to his own. Mephone stood still, being unsure what to do and so he was unintentionally delaying the process.

“Four.” Cobs’ tone suddenly turned increasingly dark. Mephone hated that Cobs had kept calling him ‘Four’ since he had first talked to Cobs during his failed finale. He had a stone look on his face, and that usually meant business. At least to Mephone, anyway. So, Mephone reluctantly walked to the chair and carefully sat on it.

The robot didn’t fully relax in the chair obviously. he was on the edge of his seat, literally. He became wary of his surroundings, scared that anything could jump out at anytime, any minute, any second.

A screen flickered, Mephone immediately drew his attention to it. He took a quick glance at Cobs, who was looking at the screen while smirking. Mephone turned his gaze back to the screen. It almost seemed like Cobs wanted him to watch this, Like he wanted him to see what in the world this screen would show him. So he watched, as it turned on.

At first glance, he saw tiles at appeared to be a ceiling. Much like the room he was currently in, it was a plain, white pattern. He remembered all of the rooms being the same pattern. The camera angles slowly came down. It was an agonising wait for Mephone, mostly because he had no idea what Cobs wanted to even show him. He quickly snapped out of his thoughts when the camera came to halt.

What. The. Hell.