Part seven.

While Allie was investigating, Captain Phillipa got all of the Chatterboxers to line up and counted them all. Only ten remained of the original sixteen.

Darkling frowned. "Has Agent Winter been found?"

Captain Phillipa nodded reluctantly. "She was found frozen at the bottom of one of the cracks of the iceberg."

"What?" Kitten cried.

"The footprints in the snow indicated that she had been pushed over the edge." Captain Phillipa continued. She pushed her hat further askew, then absentmindedly reached up to correct it. Summer wondered if all of the hat twitching meant that the captain was nervous.

After fifteen minutes, Allie returned, clutching something in her beak. "I found this outside the door of the 'safe place'." She telepathed. "Whoever broke in must have used it as a lockpick." She dropped something small and white onto the floor. The Chatterboxers gasped. It was the knight from IvoryPint's portable chess set.

IvoryPint went deadly white as the Chatterboxers rounded on her. "I didn't..I know it's mine, but I would never...I just wouldn't, I promise...I didn't do it! I didn't set off the bomb! I now how this looks but it wasn't...I didn't do it!" She looked as if she was about to burst into tears.

The Chatterboxers shifted uncomfortably, not looking at IvoryPint.

For the first time, Captain Phillipa looked uncomfortable. She took off her hat and kneaded it between her hands. "I know, but..."

Quill coughed to get everyone's attention. "We played a lot of chess while we were stuck in the bunkroom. Anyone could have taken that knight." A couple of Chatterboxers frowned, and Quill looked at the floor. "Just saying." She murmured.

After a brief pause, Queen stepped in. "No, you're right." She said. "The knight doesn't incriminate IvoryPint."

"Are you sure?" Captain Phillipa asked. Quill and Queen glanced at each other, then nodded. Captain Phillipa took a deep breath. "All right then. I think," She stopped to straighten out her hat. "That I'm going to give you your weapons back. Since the Murderer has access to explosives and..." She paused for a moment. "Other dangerous things, you should all be able to defend yourselves as best you can. Why don't you all go take a shower to get the dust off, then meet me in my office to collect your weapons."

The Chatterboxers nodded, then set off. They all stayed as far away from each other as possible on the way back. The Murderer, who was feeling rather daring after her recent success, found it ridiculously easy to grab Barnswallow and pull her off down a corridor.

Barnswallow opened her mouth to scream, and the Murderer stuffed the white queen from IvoryPint's chess set into her mouth. Barnswallow gagged, and the Murderer leaned in close. "If you want to keep living, don't even think about screaming."

Barnswallow's eyes went wide, and she spat out the chessman. "Are you the Murderer, then?"

"Yes."

"Are you going to..." She swallowed. "Kill me?"

The Murderer smiled. "That depends." Barnswallow made a dash for freedom, but the Murderer grabbed her wrist. The Murderer pulled out a long, wicked looking silver sword. "Don't even think about it."

Barnswallow bit her lip.

"I want to show you something." The Murderer said. She bent down and picked up the white queen from the floor. "So, you're going to walk in front of me with your hands up, and if you don't make any trouble, you may survive until we reach our destination."

They set off through a warren of white tunnels with metal floors. Barnswallow's heart was in her mouth. She had no doubt that she would end up dead, and she was trying to decide whether to yell out the Murderer's name in the hopes that the other Chatterboxers would hear her. She had just taken a deep breath to scream when she found herself in fron of a huge metal door. The Murderer stepped around from behind her and inserted the white queen into the huge lock. She twisted it around for a moment, and then with a loud click, the door slowly swung open.

"After you." The Murderer said, motioning for Barnswallow to enter the room. Barnswallow hesitated, and the Murderer brandished the sword. Barnswallow stepped through the door. As soon as she was inside, a light clicked on, and Barnswallow gasped.

The room was enormous, the size of a cathedral, and at least two stories high. Metal shelves lined the walls and floor, giving the room the appearence of a library gone horribly, horribly wrong. Crammed into the shelves and hanging from the ceiling were all kinds of different weapons, from rusty old knives to lightsabers to chainsaws, and all kinds of different explosives from fireworks to thermal detonators. The Murderer smiled. "As you can see, I have access to this stuff anytime I want. You and the others think you're so fortunate to get your weapons back. You have no idea what a real weapon looks like. With this much power, I could blow up the Cosmic Pioneer."

"No way."

"Yes way, but I choose not to. You see, Barnswallow, I'm not taking some petty revenge. I'm not doing this for fun. I will kill of all of the Chatterboxers on this cruise one by one, and when I return, I will be the most famous Chatterboxer of all time."

Barnswallow chocked on a laugh. "You will never get away with that."

The Murderer's face flushed. "Come here." She pointed to a large, siniser looking metal machine.

Barnswallow looked back at the door, but somehow it had swung shut without her noticing. Reluctantly, she walked over to the machine. "What is this?"

"A new technology that I want to test out." The Murderer opened a small hatch into the machine. "Get in."

Barnswallow glanced back, but the Murderer brandished the sword. Barnswallow stepped into the machine and heard the hatch click shut behind her. Outside, the Murderer pressed a few buttons, and Barnswallow just had time to feel a thick, syrupy liquid flowing over her before she sank into unconsciousness.

After a few minutes, the Murderer opened the hatch to find a neat cylinder of resin with a figure suspended in the middle. Barnswallow still had a shocked look on her still face. The Murderer nodded. The machine had worked perfectly. She turned off the lights and locked the door, then slipped back down the corridors towards the bunkroom. None of the Chatterboxers noticed her reappearence.

~~~

RIP Barnswallow. Yikes. What a way to go.

Hopefully I'll get the next post up this weekend!

Death Toll: 4, possibly 5. aqua, smothered by a beanbag chair. Luna, killed with her own weapon. Jubilee, drowned in a waterslide. Agent Winter, pushed down a crack. Barnswallow, suspended in resin. (Suspended...hmm.)

Do you think Barnswallow is actually dead? Why or why not? Any suspicions about who The Murderer is? Do you think she'll get away with her plans? 

Oh no! Barnswallow! That's a bad way to go. Suspended in resin. Wow.

As for murderer guesses, maybe Quill, Queen, or Emekittycon K., since they brought swords? But then again, the murderer could have just got it from the giant weapon room. And then there's IvoryPint, but I feel like that's a bit too obvious. 

Can't wait for the next part, per usual! 

Part eight.

After the Chatterboxers got their weapons back, they retreated into the bunkroom for the rest of the morning. They did, however, come out for lunch, although a couple, unwilling to leave, hung back for a few moments before catching up with the others.

Once they had finished, Captain Phillipa stood up and cleared her throat. The Chatterboxers quieted down. "Given all of the difficult things that have been happening upon this cruise, I thought that you might want a change of pace. We'll shortly be anchoring near a tropical island. I thought that you might like doing water activities: surfing, waterskiing, swimming with dolphins--"

"Dolphins?!" The Chatterboxers cried. The captain smiled.

"I see what the most popular choice is. Why don't you go and change into swimsuits, and this time stay in a group! If you brought floaties or water toys, you can bring them up as well."

The Chatterboxers hurried down the stairs to the bunkroom and returned a few minutes later in swimsuits. The Murderer hung back to complete some last minute preperations, and then quickly locked the door on the way out.

Captain Phillipa led the way out of the breakfast room up a few flights of stairs, then through a vast and decrepit old ballroom to a small balcony on the side of the ship. The Chatterboxers crowded onto the balcony after her. The wind was blowing just enough to play with their hair, and the sun shone down, reflecting up from the water into their faces. In the distance, they could see a pod of dolphins playing in the water, cutting through the waves with squeaks of joy.

The Chatterboxers had just enough time to absorb the beautful sight when Captain Phillipa pressed a button on a control panel, and to their surprise, the cHatterboxers found that the balcony was descending towards the water like a vast elevator. 

When the bottom of the balcony touched the surface of the water, it stopped descending. Luminescence made a run for the side of the balcon,m but Captain Phillipa held out a hand to stop her. She turned and addressed the Chatterboxers.

"Now, I'm sending down Allie to keep an eye on you, but all of you need to be extremely careful, right? I don't want any deaths today."

"That would sound wierd out of context." IvoryPint muttered.

"Is that clear?" Captian PHillipa asked. The Chatterboxers nodded. "Good." The captain said. "Then off you go!"

The Chatterboxers lowered themselves into the water and swam out into the middle of the dolphin pack. The dolphins were all around them, circling, leaping, sending saltwater into the Chatterboxers' faces.

They laughed and played and splashed for a while, until even the most hardened swimmers began to get winded. THe dophins chuckled to each other and then circled the Cosmic Pioneer once before heading out to sea. The Chatterboxers climbed up onto the balcony.

Raining Rainbows smiled. "That was amazing."

"And nooo deaths!" Kitten added.

"Don't jinks us, Kitten." Summer joked. The other Chatterboxers laughed nervously.

A few minutes later, Captain Phillipa brought the bacony back to the top, and the Chatterboxers streamed back into the ship and down to the dorms to change. Heroes was leading the way, talking with Emekitty and Quill. Surprisingly, the door was locked from the outside, but Heroes was able to open it. When she opened the door to the bunkroom, hr jaw dropped and her face went completely white. Emekitty backed away, and Quill shrieked.

The entire bunkroom was covered with spiders, and more were swarming in through a hole in the back corner. Big spiders, little ones, hairy and smooth, white, brown, and all of the colors in between. Webs were woven in between all of the hammocks, and spider thread hugh from the walls like old curtains. Worst of all, lying in them middle of the room with spiders swarming all over her, was a body that could only barely be recognized as Darkling's. The rest of the Chatterboxers crowded around to look inside the room. There was dead silence, and then Queen shut the door firmly. "We have to tell Captain Phillipa about this." She said. She was shaking from head to foot.

"Do you think...the Murderer..." IvoryPint asked hesitantly.

The others nodded. Luminescence looked like she was going to be sick.

"Where did all of them come from? I mean, where does that crack even lead to?" Emekitty asked.

"I don't know..." Raining Rainbows said, "But I'm beginning to think that this ship holds a while lot of stuff that Captain Phillipa hasn't told us about."

"Like the thermal detonator." Kitten said. Summer nodded.

Quill had been quietly counting everyone, and her face darkened. "Wait a second..." She said. "Where's Barnswallow?"

~~~

RIP Darkling. Yikes. Just Yikes.

Sorry it took me so long to get this up, and sorry about any typos! I'm working under a bit of a time crunch with school.

Death count: 7. 

What is your favorite animal? 

Well, that was... an very unfortunate way to die. *shivers*  My favorite animal is a wolf (obviously) but I also like most animals.

Ho, boy, that's a toughie. Probably... I dunno, puppies? I honsetly wouldn't mind if I got cuddled to death by a bunch of puppies. Actually, I WOULD mind, SO DON'T GET ANY IDEAS!!!!

(I'mmap) (uppyy!!! *Makes puppy dog eyes.*)

Bradley. STOP THINKIN' YOU'RE A WERE-WOLF!!!!!!!!