Never Known Questions

[MethodicalSlacker]

"Spot the rot, oh spot the rot,
Oh spot the rot we say.
Spot the rot they tell the tot
while feeding him some say."

[Lili Williams, continued from New Destiny]

While it wasn't quite the best song to be singing as she walked across a bridge to what could be her untimely demise, Lili tried her best to keep herself in high spirits, and if that meant singing some deranged stuff to herself, she was perfectly fine with that. The wind had not let up since she departed the bell tower, leaving Eye-patch behind, and as Lili passed on the bridge above the water it seemed to pick up, if anything. Lili was glad that she dressed somewhat heavily for the science trip. From the colder weather, Lili guessed the island wasn't anywhere close to Kingman.

She swung her nightstick as she walked, continuing to sing to herself quietly. The Residents were one of her favorite bands, and she made sure that she wouldn't forget her favorite songs of theirs as she lived out her stay on the island.

Now, wait, she couldn't just keep on calling it "The Island," now, could she? No, Lili thought, she needed to come up with some kind of name for it. Something to call her surroundings. Lili thought back to some of her favorite songs, mentally searching through a long, long list of song titles. She stopped walking to briefly consider her options.

"Spiderland," She said aloud. It was the name of an album by the band Slint, a rock group from the late eighties. Yes, Spiderland would do. With a name settled upon, she resumed her stroll towards the other side of the island.

She smiled to herself as the bridge creaked beneath her, her nightstick brushing against her leg occasionally, swaying to and fro. Her cravings for a cigarette had only gotten worse after she left the bell tower. She felt slightly uncomfortable in her feet, like her shoes were on wrong, even though checking them proved that they were on just fine. Her hands didn't feel quite as tingly as they did when she woke up, but they instead itched. Lili tried her best not to scratch at first, but just a little while after she crossed the bridge, she gave in, lightly picking at the backside of her right hand, her nightstick hand, with her left.

The collar around her neck didn't help her discomfort. She hadn't paid much mind to it just as she woke up, but now that the wind was seemingly picking up she could've sworn it tightened harder around her neck. The presence of the collar was unshakable, despite many attempts on Lili's part to ignore it. A light tug now and then didn't help - she'd tried, to no avail. It didn't seem to be enough to set the collar off yet, though, so unconsciously she began to form a habit of pulling on it every so often. Even if some of her classmates would end up setting their own collars off by tugging, Lili knew that with her strength, she'd never manage to accidentally blow her own head off.

She kept on walking and singing quietly, though she was in no hurry.

"Spot the rot, oh spot the rot
and then you'll be okay.
Spot the rot, oh spot the rot,
but still you'd better pray."

[D/N]

What had it been, like an hour or two since she'd woken up?

Kaitlyn Greene didn't stay in one place too long.

G058: KAITLYN GREENE - START

So.

...Space aliens, man.

Kaitlyn had woken up somewhere; she didn't know the exact spot. Even scrunching her face, looking at the map while she sat around, her waking place wasn't somewhere notable. It was just on the ground, somewhere  she guessed was near the northeast shore. So she woke up. She sat. She got up and started to stretch her legs a bit and then she went.

Aliens. Coming outta nowhere a whole fleet of them suddenly land in front of you and say "Take me to your leader". Or maybe they suddenly start to fucking breakdance. Doesn't matter. Doesn't even need to be aliens. Could be a zombie invasion or something. The point is that it's completely out of not just your expectations of life, but your entire expectations of reality and human existence, and because of that, you have no damn idea how you're gonna react to it. Even if you like zombie stuff, like Kaitlyn sometimes did, she loved Walking Dead and all and thought sometimes hey a zombie apocalypse might be fun, but if you're actually faced with it?

Ah ha ha. Piss off with what you THINK you might do and how you imagine you'll act in your dumb fantasy. Cause you don't know.

So Kaitlyn took a walk, and saw the bridge, and knew where she was on the map. And knew that there was no way she wasn't gonna walk straight down the middle of this bridge right now. There was even some big shield right near the start of it. Bonus. She hefted it up and started lugging it along, and realized straight away that she wasn't gonna be able to carry this thing forever. Ah well. For now, at least.

And as she was walking down the middle of the bridge, shield in one hand dragging along the ground and her bags slung over her shoulder with the other hand, she saw someone else coming in the other direction. Should've expected that. She couldn't tell who it was yet. OK then.

She just continued to walk. A half-smile played on her lips.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Another student was walking in Lili's direction. She tensed up, holding her nightstick more firmly. She stopped singing to herself, moving over to the other side of the bridge, sizing up the other traveler. They carried with them a large shield that they dragged on the floor, making a scraping sound as they went, and over their other arm they carried their bags. No apparent weapon at a first glance, but Lili didn't want to make any dangerous assumptions. The girl's face wasn't familiar to Lili in the slightest, and she couldn't remember speaking with her before in the future. Strangers like this were the biggest unknown on Spiderland besides the island itself. You never know what they'd spring on you.

A smirk was spread across her lips, a pleasant neutral smile, a default mask with no meaning. Lili returned the grin, trying to appear as pleasant as possible. Internally, she had wished that she had run into someone she had known a bit better, someone she could stop and talk to, but with a stranger there wasn't any obligation to stick around for them. Lili had always taken something of a passive stance in the social scene at Cochise, and when it came to people she didn't know here at Spiderland, she intended on taking something of the same policy.

"Morning," Lili said, greeting the other girl as they passed each other. Something innocuous, something polite, any semblance of normal interaction to hold onto. Familiar ground.

Then, the bell rang.

A golden, resonating sound enveloped Lili's ears from behind. Lili turned to see the bell in the bell tower slightly rocking back and forth, sending forth its tone across the whole of Spiderland. Lili froze in her tracks. Had Eye-patch decided to ring the bell? No, from what Lili knew of her, that didn't sound like something she would do. She was more cautious than Lili. She had pointed a gun in her face. She was a scared, dangerous stranger herself, not the kind to usher in the chimes that she now heard.

But if she hadn't rang the bell, who had? Someone far less cautious, that much Lili knew. Was it a group of people all together, or just one person by themselves? Were they trying to assemble people around them, or were they ringing the bell for the hell of it? Either way, Lili had just came from that direction, and she didn't really feel like going back just to check what had happened. After the bell had finished ringing, an odd, awkward quiet filled the bridge. The water below, rippling and tumbling in the waves, seemed quieter than before. The wind felt much lighter, as if it had died down. The sheer force of the bell being rung had made every other sensation feel small and insignificant in comparison.

Lili turned back to face the other girl, curious to see their reaction to the odd noise. "Well," Lili said, hoping to fill the void left by the bell, "That sure was something."

[D/N]

Asian. Small. Must be a junior, cause Kaitlyn didn't have the first clue who the hell she was. Most importantly, the other girl veered off. She gave Kaitlyn the middle lane. That was every fucking thing Kaitlyn Greene need to know about her, right there. Oh, and she had a baton or something. That was cute.

And as the other girl stepped aside, Kaitlyn started to pass her, wondering what exactly she should be saying, cause she was still thinking about that. The girl muttered a half-hearted greeting, and Kaitlyn stopped. She tapped her foot on the ground a couple times and made up her mind what to say, when the bell rang.

It was far away, but the sound still reverberated. Weak, but impressive for the distance, the soundwaves rolled over Kaitlyn and presumably the other girl like the last remnants of dying rainstorm, and Kaitlyn squinted in the distance at first, looking at the tower. It rose up impassive.

Kaitlyn backed up a step and looked sideways at the other girl.

"Yeah. Uh... maybe I'll go see who it was."

Then she took a couple more steps back, until she was back in front of the girl, looking towards the eastern edge of the bridge. Kaitlyn stared at her a moment, and then the half-smile grew up into into a short half-burst of laughter. Well, that probably didn't look great.

"Sorry!" she said right afterwards. "Sorry, like... nerves, you know? it's just weird."

She looked at the girl once more, and then she knew. For this moment, at least. What to say.

"Hey. This... this doesn't work. You get it? We can't just pass like this."

No. Because of the aliens. Because of the zombies. Survival of the Fittest, of all the fucking things in the world. Because you never knew what you were gonna do, and if you said you were, you're a damn liar. And Kaitlyn was no different. Kaitlyn didn't know what she was going to do before she woke up and faced it straight on. But she did know what other people would assume she'd do. She'd thought about that for the past hour or so. You wanna make her prove it? Go to every other kid here, every one, ask them to make a list. "Top Ten Kids Most Likely to Go Psycho Crazy in SOTF." Not that Kaitlyn could guarantee she'd make every list or anything. But when you added it up, she knew there'd be a group of kids that popped up again and again on a list like that.

Yeah. She knew.

"So you wanna play a game?"

Kaitlyn dropped the two bags she'd been carrying and rolled her neck.

"It's called toll booth."

[MethodicalSlacker]

"It's called toll booth."

Why had Lili thought that it would go smoothly? Why did she assume that she'd be able to normally pass somebody by, say hello, and keep walking? This was Spiderland now, for Pete's sake. She'd came up with the name herself, and she knew perfectly well that there was no way that somewhere called fucking Spiderland was going to turn out normal, especially not when it was host to Survival of the fucking Fittest. Lili cursed herself for making such an obvious mistake. For letting her guard down. For thinking it could be normal.

First, the tall, hawkish girl had responded normally. She had remarked at the bell, like a normal person, saying she might check it out, but then she had broken down with laughter. Was she mocking Lili? Almost certainly. Nerves? Really? If anybody was going to succumb to nerves, it was going to be Lili. This girl, this self proclaimed toll booth attendant, could crush Lili in moments. In just a few seconds, Lili would be thrown off of the bridge and into the waters below, to be scattered across the rocks.

Toll booth. She wasn't a scared stranger, no, but she sure was dangerous. Lili tensed up, tightening her grip around the nightstick. By the sound of the name, Lili figured that the Attendant planned on making her pay to get to the other side of the bridge. The Attendant probably wanted some of her rations, or her weapon, or something like that. Lili didn't want to part with any of her belongings yet. She had already consumed almost an entire tin of crackers earlier, so she wanted to hold on to anything else as best she could. Still, judging on the Attendant's posture, the way she spoke, and the way she rolled her neck, Lili decided that, at least for the time being, it would be wise to play along as best she could.

Lili sighed, and looked at the Attendant. "Alright," Lili said, exhausted, "You want to play a game? Sure. Toll booth, huh? Fine. How do I play this game of yours?"

Spot the rot, they told the tot, while feeding her some say.

[D/N]

"Nah, nah it's easy. So uh... it goes like this. You give me something, then I give you something. Then I let you pass, and you let me pass."

She paused a moment. Kaitlyn Greene didn't get headaches easily or often. Maybe because she wasn't usually stressed out. Headaches were usually just caused by stress, right? And what was there to be stressed about? She had her life, and she thought it was kinda fucking awesome. So the jagged pain edging through the left side of her head right now was bugging her a bit. She blinked it into the background.

"Yeah, I guess it's kinda self-explanatory," she finished.

The other girl was clearly already breaking. Winding down, a cheap toy running out of battery life. A voice with no life behind it and no fight and nothing Kaitlyn could really respect. She glanced at the other girl's bag and wondered if she should ask her name.

"How bout one of your protein bars?"

Kaitlyn was touched by her own benevolence.

[MethodicalSlacker]

A fair exchange? With that kind of laughter preceding it? And the way that the Attendant looked at her bag just didn't feel right, not deep down in Lili's heart of hearts. She wasn't going to let that kind of thing get through without some attention paid to it, no way, no how. A better name for this "game" was Highway Robbery.

But a single protein bar, by itself, wasn't too much to spare. If this did turn out like a fair trade, and the two managed to leave the bridge without anybody doing anything rash, then maybe Lili could just ask for another bar in return and Lili would go on her way without really having lost or gained anything in the process.  It was a distant possibility, but it wasn't totally out of the question yet. She just had to play it safely and with caution, and she couldn't let her fear get in the way of her.

Plus, there was a little something she needed. It didn't hurt to ask.

"Okay," Lili said, her shivers slowly coming to a halt, "Got any cigarettes? I haven't had single one since I woke up." She stood up a bit straighter, tapping her nightstick against the outside of her leg lightly. Since she woke up, she hadn't seen a single person she knew well enough to trust. Eye-patch had scolded her, and now she was being harassed by the Attendant. With her luck, she'd be assaulted by a group of murderous athletes the second she stepped off of the bridge.

She thought back to her yoga lessons, searching for something, anything that could help her reach a more composed state. She settled on a breathing pattern she had learned in the first few days of her classes.

Inhale through the nose for a count of four. Hold the breath for seven seconds, and exhale for eight seconds, also through the nose. She did this silently while waiting for the Attendant's next move.

[Zetsu]

They just had to fuck around with grey goo.

((B045: Alan Banks: Start))

I mean like sure it takes quite some mental gymnastics to link this to grey goo and like I'm sure there's easier stuff I mean whole bunch of kids are dying so yeah. That impact not good enough for you? No? Ok ok here's how it works. Constant terrorist attacks lead to increase in government military spending lead to advancements in nanotech. Which leads to grey goo. Fucking grey goo, fuckers.

Hey Alan you okay there?

Everything's okay, everything's fine, as long as he keeps thinking about grey goo everything will be fine OH CHRIST fuck no fuck why you just had to become self-aware there for a second. You just had to be self-aware for a second and now all your lovely plans for staying happily deluded are just

Yeah.

Okay. Showtime. This was like some movie shit, huh? The terrorists-- okay, terrorism is a loaded term and needs to stop getting thrown around but maybe just this once it's actually justified so fuck yeah he can call them terrorists-- had trapped them in some movie shit. Can you kill your best friend? Can your best friend kill you? Ooh aah scary and deep and all that. So you put on a fucking show. You put on your badass cape and your badass trenchcoat and hold up your badass gun and say some badass words and then, well, and then

You already know what to do with this narrative.

And yeah, maybe a part of him was whispering something to him. Something like: Hey Alan uh you know the terrorists just want a good show right. You know rebels are pretty popular and entertaining in show biz right. You know this plays into their hands. Their fucking gloved machine-gun-wielding cybernetically-enhanced mystical magical ringwraith terrorist hands.

Hey voice uh how about you fuck off before Alan thinks he's schizophrenic and shit. Because fuck it if Alan was going to sit around and be some boring kid. That'll be some rebellion. No, Alan was going to rebel and he was going to make the terrorists laugh like kids in the candy store and then the candy was going to have fucking poison in them. Because this rebellion was going to fucking work.

So how do you do lead a rebellion without a badass gun, right?

Okay okay this is easy. You walk up to someone and ask for their gun. And they give you their gun, because you're a trenchcoat badass rebel guy and they're so in awe they give up their gun to fight for the cause. And if they're assholes and they don't believe well then, well then! Then you get to hold them up with your badass fucking lightsaber. Yeah, Alan had been itching to use the thing, he really had.

Keep your lightsabers away guys the market's in town.

Alan was fucking in.

"Hey, um, no cigarettes here, but I got like a lightsaber if you wanna deflect bullets and stuff."

Badass rebels need no swords.

[D/N]

That was only about halfway the answer Kaitlyn expected. Maybe the girl had more of a spine than she seemed. Maybe she was just dumb. And... wait, she smoked? Huh. That wasn't fitting the narrative. Maybe the girl was just lying. Looking for street cred or something. Making bad assumptions. Not that Kaitlyn begrudged smokers. She was a fan of them, actually.

"Sorry, don't smoke."

But nevermind that., Even if she did, she certainly wouldn't have offered something as valuable as cigs in return for the bar. No, Kaitlyn knew exactly what she was gonna give this girl. And she couldn't wait to see the look on her face when she said she'd give--

Leave it to some guy like Alan Banks to charge in and fuck everything up royally.

"What?"

And he was just there, having (she guessed) jogged right in behind her while she was preoccupied with the girl here or something. Christ. She glanced over and confirmed that yes, it was Alan Banks, a guy who over the past four years had alternated between pissing her off royally and impressing her with his ability to piss off people who weren't her. He was complicated, for a dumb fuck. And she kinda liked that in him.

"So... hey, Alan," she said after that glance. "Uh... not gonna say it's good to see you. Like cause of the circumstances and shit. Sucks to be here, huh?"

He was also big. And toned. And Alan the Contrarian, just how was he reacting to the alien zombie invasion?

She looked back at the other girl. Too bad Kaitlyn didn't know the answer to that question. Cause now it was forcing her to play it safe. Wouldn't do to give Alan the wrong impression here, given that he was actually a... threat? No that's the completely wrong fucking word. Let's just say he was more on her level than junior girl was.

"We were just introducing ourselves," she said, half-smiling again. "I'm Kaitlyn. Uh--" at this she hefted the shield a bit -- "yeah you guys can see what they gave me. Waaay too fucking heavy. So... yeah not sure what I could give you in return, maybe some crackers or bread? I need the protein more than the carbs."

Yeah. The shield. Now Kaitlyn had another secret. She liked that.

[MethodicalSlacker]

No smokes. A shame. Lili's hands shook a bit more, just lightly twitching back and forth, and she dug her free hand into her jeans pocket. The feeling of denim on her hand was uncomfortable, but she didn't want to show the Attendant that she was nervous any more than she already had. "Well, better to ask and not get any then to not ask and miss out, right?" Lili said, shrugging her shoulders.

And then suddenly, they weren't the only two on the bridge. A big guy with what looked like a toy light-saber (From Star Wars. Lili was surprised at the terrorist's cruel sense of humor, as she hadn't really seen such a joke of a weapon so far) approached the two, announcing that he didn't have any cigarettes. Did nobody on this damn island have a cigarette? Lili was starting to get annoyed. At least the presence of the boy meant that the Attendant was less likely to do anything stupid. Lili eased up a bit, her hand settling down in her pocket. Slowly, she took it out and put it at her side.

Judging on their brief exchange, the boy was named Alan and the girl was named Kaitlyn. Lili was about to offer up her name, then paused. She thought back to what Eye-patch had told her on the bell tower just moments before. Scared, dangerous strangers, all afraid of each other. Eye-patch hadn't wanted to take any chances with Lili, pointing her gun at Lili without a second thought. Lili wasn't going to take any chances either. She didn't know Alan, and she sure didn't know Kaitlyn, and maybe it was best to leave it that way, at least for now.

Surprisingly enough, Kaitlyn actually made a decent offer. Lili didn't know if that was her intention all along, or if she was forced into being more friendly by Alan's presence. Either way didn't matter much to Lili. A single protein bar for a loaf of bread? Now that was a steal. Lili remembered the taste of the crackers on her tongue, and made the decision that she didn't want any of that anymore. A loaf of bread could last her a while. Bread was one of life's simple pleasures, like flying a kite or playing a CD. Lili could take comfort in bread.

"Sure, I'll give you a bar for a loaf of bread," Lili said, "Alan, if you don't mind, I could take that light-saber off your hands too. I'll give you a protein bar for it also." Lili hoped that by getting Alan over to trade as well, it would decrease the chances that Kaitlyn would try anything even more. Alan was strong and approached innocently enough, so Lili trusted him more than she did Alan, who burst into laughter like a maniac not long ago.

Lili thought back to the song she was singing earlier. It went on further.

"To show,
or be shown,
is a question,
never known,
not even by many to exist."

To show, or be shown. Lili hoped she was choosing the right option.

[Zetsu]

Candy bars, huh? You offering Alan a nice tasty candy bar for his beautiful-as-shit badass lightsaber and yeah how about a no thank you on that. He should-- he should hold them up now. With his fucking toy lightsaber. It was for the greater good, right? Because if you don't hold them up for all their food, you hurt your chances of stopping grey goo and grey goo trumps fucking everything, and shit Alan go fuck off with this shit. Go fuck off with this shit before you actually convince yourself because hey Alan was a pretty persuasive guy, right? He was like really smart at making stupid stuff sound smart and shit you gotta control yourself man. Or at least until he had an actual plan or idea or something about how to rebel, but Alan doesn't do plans, does he?

Alan Banks doesn't control himself. You do not tell him to control himself. He is a force of nature. An agent of chaos. He is a-- oh, fuck it with the superlatives. Alan was going to think whatever he damn well pleases.

Hey Alan that girl's offering you something for nothing. She's pretty cool. Pretty chaotic. Bringing down capitalism and all that, yeah? And that other girl, Kaitlyn something, she's pretty cool, right?

Turn to the Asian girl. Say something. Say something epic back.

"Really? Cool. Hey, as a thank-you gift or a token of good will or some shit, I'll give you a free candy bar. For free."

Because fuck waiting until he was finished taking down the terrorists, he was gonna stick it to the man right now. The man. The fucking system. Burn it all down now. Send it all tumbling and crashing down. Like, he might not have the chance later, right?

"And Kaitlyn, I don't know but this place has some pretty sick deals on candy bars right now. So I'll give it a, um, C+ for effort. And, like, it's all your fault for getting put here, anyways. It's the government's punishment for libertarians."

Yeah. She'd love that.

Okay, so she won't but at least it'll make her stop being a fucking libertarian. Or at least make her become a better libertarian.

Oh wait she was a different kind of libertarian wasn't she.

Aww, fuck.

[Ciel]

(Scout Pfeiffer continued from They say the hangover after you get drugged and kidnapped by terrorists is the worst.)

Scout blinked.

She stood at the precipice separating solid ground and bridge. She saw the blockade in the distance, three people who seemed in the midst of... counting? Trading? Whatever. It really did not matter. What seemed more important was how she planned to pass by trio. It seemed rather easy. There were three ways to cross the bridge after all, two walkways and a road separating them. She could just walk straight ahead and pass them without so much as a hello.

But then she'd be turning her back on them. Scout wasn't stupid enough to do that.

Frankly she was sorting out what to do once the two girls met. The boy joined soon after. Scout was operating under the assumption that they did not see her, a rookie mistake. Scout was too far back to really hear what they were saying. It wasn't like they were screaming for all the world to hear, and rightfully so.  But it intrigued her. Maybe one of them had a gun. She'd be willing to fork over everything she had for a gun, even the bags of candy she had tucked away... though she honestly had trouble believing that obtaining a gun would be that easy.

She thought for a moment. Then she shook her head.

Know what?

Fuck it. Just pass em.

Scout kept her eyes squarely on the group as she walked closer to the traders. She shouldered her dufflebag. Her saw was tucked into the pocket of her top, the hood thrown over her head. The handle of the saw stuck out but, seriously, Scout didn't care if they saw it. She recognized Williams - the Chinese girl with the nice set of chucks - but not the other two. Must be seniors. Whatever. Didn't matter who they were. Scout just wanted to get through.

[D/N]

Really, was that the best Alan could do? That was barely every trying.

"OK, first off, you sound like Mabes, you should like go seek her out," Kaitlyn said. "For the record, the government is way too fucking incompetent to pull off something like this. They can't send an e-mail without Wikileaks or that Snowden guy finding out. I mean don't get me wrong, they're totally fucked up and they probably would, but... yeah."

Yeah, he got it. And he wasn't getting to her. Not yet, not when there was this girl offering the worst trade she'd ever heard of. Kaitlyn turned back to her.

"And uh, no. I said some bread, I didn't say all bread. I'll give you a quarter of a loaf. "

So that offer was on the table. See, Kaitlyn knew when to bend. She was tempered steel. That was the best type of steel, you know why? You know why.

And while it was there, Kaitlyn saw eyes looking behind her and glanced back. Girl#2 was on her way down the bridge as well, coming from the same way she had. At least this one Kaitlyn kind of remembered seeing in the hallways at school. Another shortie, pale ginger this time round. You know what? Being tall was really fucking awesome, wasn't it? Kaitlyn shot a glance at Alan. He knew it, too.  

"Hey girl, you gonna just pass us by? Or you gonna trade?"

Who knew, maybe she'd have some cigarettes for the other girl. Who, Kaitlyn hadn't missed noticing, wasn't even offering to give he name at all. Kaitlyn made a half turn so she could keep an eye on both sides, while at the same time speaking to Alan and Girl#1.

"You know, this has gotta be like the heart of the island. It's the meeting place. Everybody who wants to pass from one side of the other has gotta go through here. Never know who's coming next. Huh."

She shifted a glance to nameless shortass Asian girl.

"What is your name, by the way?"

[MethodicalSlacker]

Lili loosely knew Scout from school. The two were in the same grade, after all, so they had shared a few of the same classes from time to time. Lili saw Scout trying to move around the group and winced when Kaitlyn called out her name. Oh, can't she just leave her alone? she thought, Why can't she just leave anyone alone? Lili looked in Scout's direction and smiled wearily, an awkward smile that she hoped sent the message that she wasn't really here of her own free will either.

Even though Alan had responded pretty well to Lili's offer, Kaitlyn made her best effort to squash the deal before it was set in stone, ranting on at Alan's harmless comment about Libertarians and whatnot. By "Mabes," Kaitlyn probably meant Tessa, who Lili knew by name as a somewhat outspoken girl interested in politics and folk music, the latter of which interested Lili far more than the former. Was she also on the island? More than likely so. Lili vaguely remembered seeing her board the bus before her.

A bar for a quarter of a loaf? Lili didn't really remember how many slices that would be, but she knew it was far smaller than a full loaf. Lili couldn't let that slide. She was starting to get hungry again, even though she had eaten not too long ago. After Kaitlyn made a comment about the bridge being the heart of the island or something, Lili spoke. "How about I give you the bar for half of a loaf?" Lili asked, "Meet me in the middle?" Lili was not used to negotiating in any sense of the word, but she figured she wasn't doing too poorly for herself.

Then Kaitlyn asked her name. Eye-patch hadn't even asked Lili for her name - Lili just sort of offered it up - so this was the first time since she woke up that people were asking her what to call her by. Maybe she could make up a fake name, she thought? No, that would only complicate things later on. It was time, then, to cough up her real identity. She struggled a bit on the wording in her mind, in the space of just a second or two that felt like hours to her, and then opened her mouth to speak.

"You can call me Lili," She said, "Lili Williams." There. That was a rather harmless way of putting it, right? Informative and succinct, without any flare for drama or theatrics. Hopefully it was a neutral enough statement that it wouldn't set anyone off, right? Lili didn't want any more trouble than she had already been given. She made an effort to stand up a bit straighter. Lili Williams. Right, that was who she was. Was she someone else for a minute, just then? No, of course not. She had always been Lili. Always.

Except to her parents. To her parents, she was named Liling Wan still, even if they didn't call her by it. Her birth name, a footnote from her early childhood. She had almost forgotten it just now, standing at the toll booth. What exactly reminded her of it, Lili wasn't sure, but she took the name and held on to it tightly, like she would a kite caught in a summer gale. She wasn't going to let herself forget it.

[Zetsu]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Was Kaitlyn actually taking him seriously? Did that Lili girl actually take his offer at face value? Kid, when someone makes you that kind of offer, you're supposed to offer back something stupid or epic or something. Like, Alan was attached to his lightsaber and shit. He didn't want to give it up for literally nothing. That was a dumb idea. Lili was supposed to offer back two bars, or her weapon, or a piece of grass she found on the ground or something. It was like a game. A good game, not this shitty game.

He tossed two bars and his lightsaber over to Lili.

"Now give me a bar and a penny. If you gimme a rusty dime I will throw it at you."

Except he did get something from Lily. Loyalty and shit, right? He'd shown her some goodwill, hadn't he? And, fuck, maybe she wouldn't be much use to his upcoming Rebel Alliance, but at least she could keep watch or something, right? The Rebellion would need every fucker it could get, and it should get every fucker it could get. Doing otherwise would betray the cause or something.

Hell, this was a pretty good-sized group assembled here right now.

Alan cleared his throat.

"Alright, here's the dealio. I'm not playing, and I don't think any of you are. If you are, then, like, fuck yourself and all, but I don't feel like wasting time doing an eval on you."

It was dumb not to vet people or something, but eh........fuck it. Nobody had an actually good weapon anyways to backstab someone with.

"Anyways, if you wanna join a badass Rebel Alliance or something, I'm putting the offer on the table now. Except Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn's required to join so she doesn't go off on her own and contribute to societal collapse or something."

There. That got the right message across. Plus she was the only one here who would definitely be fun to talk to. That was something.