This was inspired by a series of roleplays I had on msparp. Thank you to the amazing Porrim, Cronus, Karkat, and everyone else who tolerated my sucky internet and random business and disconnecting too early. I wish I could credit your tumblrs or something, but even if you gave them, I guess I forgot to save the logs. Please take credit, you know who you are! I don't think I'll use any direct quotes, Karkat isn't even going to be here, but thanks for helping me flesh the idea out and figure out how other trolls would react. I couldn't have done it without you guys!

Note – don't mind the change in tense, it's there for a reason: the first bit sets the scene of what has already taken place, and the present tense moves us out of remniscing and brings us to the current action. Hopefully, that makes sense.

Aranea had finally gathered everyone on the Land of Mazes and Crystal, and for once it looked like something was going to get done. The meeting wasn't everyone's first, but it certainly had been a long time, and indeed the speaker was met with much grumbling and protests when a voice finally announced "Alright, let's get down to 8usiness, there is much to 8e done."

Still groaning in disgust, the group of adolescent trolls left their various conversations and slowly gathered around the cerulean-blood's hive door, whispering reduced to a minimum.

"Now, as the last player to have entered the Medium, I certainly don't have the same knowledge as those of you who entered earlier do, 8ut I do think that everyone here has some interesting experience to share and surely that will help us to develop a plan of sorts. We have a strong team with a lot of talented players, and I'm sure we can 8eat this game if we can all put our 8ickering aside for the most part and try to work together."

She did seem to make a good point. And for once, everyone was able to shut up and listen. It was beginning to look like someone on the team had some leadership.

You would interrupt if you thought you would be listened to, but Aranea did seem to have a handle on the situation far more than you ever did – and besides, you wouldn't want to trigger her. And interruption could be taken as questioning of her capability to lead the discussion, which, in fact, you had full confidence in. Besides, under your past leadership attempts, the bickering which Aranea had alluded to had been even worse than before the game, despite your efforts to the contrary.

You continue to listen to her instructions, and others chime in when called upon for their input. Everything is running very smoothly, and you make a mental note to ask Aranea for tips on group mediation – you have to admire her talent for it.

But suddenly something... something is wrong. You spend the next ten minutes distracted, trying to figure out what it is that's bothering you so, when you realize that you've completely lost track of what Aranea is saying. Hoping that no one has noticed your rudeness, you quickly focus your attention back on her; or, that is, you try to. But it's only now that you notice that you can't hear her. For a matter of fact, you can't hear anything.

Being sure to keep a straight face, you quickly run through a mental list of all situations which could cause your sudden deafness. For a minute, one possibility worries you, something you saw which you'd never thought would come true. But you had never thought that the raspy throat, the bloody ears, the scream you couldn't hear – you never thought they would belong to you. All this time, you had been planning how to stop it from befalling one of your friends... but wait, this doesn't explain how it is that you've suddenly become deaf.

Maybe the vision isn't coming true just yet, because suddenly your eyes start to swim and images start to flicker... blindness was never part of the vision...

The vision.

Oh.

It's happening again.