Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.

[xylophonefairy†]

((Neill Robertson continued from Don't Fear The Reaper))

After the Inland Woods were downgraded from Danger Zone to Normal Zone, they decided to head there. After all, it was unlikely that there would be too many other people there, and it was a large area so if there were any, hopefully, they wouldn't run into them. Thus it was perfect for their plan of staying out of everyone else's way and thus dying later rather than sooner. The downside was that they were even less likely to find Ray if they stayed away from people. Neill felt edgy as they paused by a stream to fill up their water bottles. This was less exposed than the cliff had been, but at the same time, people could still be hiding in the trees. He looked up, there weren't any as far as he could see.

Perhaps that was the way to do it? Build a treehouse and bomb people from above? They didn't have any bombs, but heavy things would work just the same without the risk of blowing up their treehouse too. Neill took a swig from his water bottle, using the moment to regard his friend and his potential friend with curiousity, wondering what life in a treehouse with them would be like. They would probably have to have Mass on a Sunday, which Neill wasn't sure he would be able to handle as a hard and fast agnostic with atheist tendencies. He was pretty sure that the only reason he was still alive was because religion hadn't come up as a topic of conversation yet. Rachel was the crazy ass Catholic, right?

The woods were suspiciously peaceful. He knew some shit must have gone down for it to be declared a danger zone two days in a row. Looking around, it looked pristine, they must have been in to clear it up, fix the cameras that that Liz kid had apparently been smashing. That was a strange thought. Somewhere on the island there was a helicopter. They had seen it fly overhead once, heading for the mountain, the roar had stilled them for a moment, in a few short days that mechanical sound had already become something alien and exciting. They could have followed it if it hadn't been so damn fast, and if any of them had even the faintest idea how to fly a helicopter and get in it, get it going, and get it out of range before their collars were all simultaneously exploded. Add to that a lack of knowledge of where they were, and unless either of the others had a better sense of direction, he suspected they would probably end up at the South Pole just as they ran out of fuel.

Stealing the helicopter wasn't an option.

Neill sighed and threw a pebble into the water. It skipped once, to his surprise, and he immediately tried to mimic the same action to no avail. He laughed once, taking another drink of water.

"So," he said, looking at their surroundings for what must have been the billionth time. He noticed a tin can on the ground just slightly covered by a rock, and stood up slightly to reach forward and grab it. It was slightly squashed and devoid of a label, lid or any contents, but otherwise healthy looking. That was the sort of thing that might come in useful... at some point... for something. "What do you think happened here?"

[Killer_Moth†]

((Robert Barron Cont'd from Don't Fear the Reaper))

He was tired, he was hungry and thirsty, and he was doing his best to not let it show. Still, Bobby figured that his friends had to have noticed that he was beginning to struggle with it all. Rachel being there was helping him, but she still left him uneasy. Neill was quieter as well. He supposed that swapping Ray out for Rachel didn't sit well with him, not that any of them could have done anything about it.

He reckoned by now that they had to have been there a week, but he was beginning to lose track of what day it was. It felt like a Tuesday, and he'd never been a fan of Tuesdays. Never knew why, just didn't like them. It was the closest thing he felt to a superstition.

Bobby had been idling an idea in his head as he walked, his hand playing with the pressurised canister he still kept in his pocket. He'd been given this weapon for a reason. He had to believe that, as much as he couldn't believe that it was for him to kill. He just had to figure out what it was. He knew that there was some way he could use it to help them. As he walked, he ran his finger round the collar at his throat, trying not to interfere with it to much, but enough to ease the chafing.

The travel was quiet, and the weather remained pleasant. He'd thanked God for the sun every night before he'd went to sleep, knowing that if the rain came, everything would go downhill form there. Even better, they'd found a fresh supply of running water. He slaked his thirst directly from the stream before emptying out the stale water from his canteens and replacing it. Now, if there was only a way to make what little stale bread they had left more palatable.

The water find helped to raise Neill's spirits as well. He was laughing and playing. Good signs, Bobby thought. He was coping very well, under the circumstances. And then came the question.

"I'd like to think not much. This place is too nice to be somebody's last resting place. At most, somebody passing through dropped it or tossed it."

[blastinus]

(Rachel Gettys continued from Don't Fear the Reaper)

As she did her best to keep up with the men, Rachel was strangely silent. Though normally she'd be content to speak at length on matters of concern to her, her mind was on other things, specifically matters of her mind. She hadn't been keeping track of how many days had passed, but at this point, she couldn't deny it any longer. He wasn't coming, and she was beginning to get the feeling that He had never told her that He was coming in the first place.

When she thought of how she'd talked to the people she'd met, how she had been acting, it was becoming more and more evident that something was wrong with her. Rachel was insane. Or at the very least, she was delusional. When had this begun? How had it happened? Had she killed a man on her own volition, rather than being told to do so? And if so, what did that make her?

Too much thinking was giving her a headache, so she brought her attention instead to a discussion that Neill and Robert were taking part in. It was some small talk about the local area, and she couldn't understand why in the world they were talking about it. The woods looked fine, and the grass looked quite inviting with her leg feeling the way it did. "If you don't mind, I'd like to rest for a moment," she said, and without waiting for a reply, she sat down a short distance away from the water. "Whatever happened here, it does not really matter, does it? While it might be fun to speculate, the important thing is that nobody else is here."

Staring into the water, Rachel repeated mostly to herself, "Nobody is here but us. We're all alone." What reason would there be for Him to be watching right now? Neill was no believer, Robert had gone off the path, and Rachel...well, she was still unsure what to call herself right now. She still wasn't sure that she could call what she did 'murder,' but chances were high that anyone who looked at her actions would call her that.

[xylophonefairy†]

These guys sucked at speculating. Clearly, they needed more practice. Bobby waved off the idea with hopes of peace, which Neill doubted very much. If there had been nice things happening, they wouldn't have closed the whole area off for two days. And Rachel also waved off the idea by saying that it didn't matter. Which was true, admittedly, but many things in the world didn't actually matter and people talked about them anyway. Speculating about what was going to happen on LOST didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but it was something to talk about. And in the middle of some lonely woods where murderers might be hiding in the trees, they all needed a distraction.

Looking at Rachel as she stared contemplatively into the water, Neill shook himself, trying to stop himself getting distracted. They had been wandering aimlessly for far too long, they needed to come up with a plan, they needed to do something. So far, as far as he knew, nobody had successfully escaped, nobody had made contact with the outside world, nobody had come up with that one brilliant plan. So it looked like it was all down to him. Neill Robertson was going to help him and Bobby and Ray, and maybe Rachel if she stopped acting so weird, get off the island.

All he needed now was a plan. Which he didn't have. He joined Rachel in staring at the water for a couple of seconds, then looked up, and clapped his hands together forcefully.

"Right!" he said with an authoritarian air. "This has gone on long enough. We need to start doing something," Neill indicated the general direction he thought the sea might be in, which was a cheap shot as on an island they were surrounded by sea. Nearest sea. "I have decided that we are going to escape." He paused for dramatic effect. The pause continued. Neill glanced down into his lap for a second before looking up at the others again. "I did think we might try and steal the helicopter, but it's miles away now so I don't think we're going to catch it." Plus, we'd get exploded before we were five feet in the air. I don't want Sam to see me explode. Still, appearing that you might have known how to fly it is a good move in developing island cred. He paused again.

"Anyone else got anything?" he admitted sheepishly.

[Killer_Moth†]

The ennuie he had been feeling was returning swiftly. The three of them failed to gel in the way that he and Neill had with Rick. The relationships were different. Despite their history, Bobby felt less comfortable around Rachel than around Neill. He guessed this was what it must be like in the military, where your comrades became closer than family. But somehow, Rachel wasn't part of the unit. Not properly. At least not yet.

He guessed that she was feeling the same way. She'd been distant, not talking to him. He wished in so many ways that he could take back what had happened, and that things could be as they had been before. Before he'd told her that he was gay, before she had killed Edward, and Theo, before Charlotte, before everything.

He was dragged from his reverie by Neill stating the his great idea. He smiled at the other boys energy, his hope. True, the helicopter idea was far fetched, but was enough to spur him into action. "Okay, there's gotta be something we can at least look at." He still held onto his belief that the government would find them eventually, but it was a hope that was fading. After all, they'd been there for a week now, or was it longer?

He placed his backpack on the ground, and rummaged around in it until he triumphantly drew out the map he'd been provided with. He spread it on the ground, and using the compass, he tried to align it so that it was aligned properly. He'd picked up some useful skills in orienteering on an adventure holiday when he was 16. "Judging by where we've been, I reckon that we must be somewhere about here." He said, pointing at the left hand side of the map.

"There's no obvious way off, but I doubt that they'd give us one unless it was a trap. The shipwreck up here" he indicated towards the key "is either useless or decorative. We can't sail it, obviously, but there might just be enough materials to make a raft of some kind." He paused, trying to gauge their reactions.

"The main problem is these collars. We need to figure out how to get them off, and then we can really make a break for it. So, that's how I see it, anyway." He smiled at the pair, hoping that he'd made some sense at least.

[blastinus]

"That's an utter waste of time."

Rachel had expected Robert to say something of that ilk himself when Neill had proposed that hopelessly naive idea of escaping. She'd seen prior seasons, and knew that an escape attempt would be absolutely hopeless given their current resources. But no, Robert had simply chimed in with the idiocy, stating that they could somehow, with their current means, convert a boat into a raft. Hearing them give their spiels, one question immediately sprang to mind: did her two traveling companions have cement for brains?

So far as Rachel was concerned, her two teammates were too valuable to lose in such an easy manner. Even if they did, somehow, through some miracle, manage to get their collars off, three kids in varying degrees of physical health on a makeshift raft finding their way on the high seas with barely any provisions would require an act of God to pull it off. Besides which, the instant that Danya saw them trying to pull off a foolhardy mission like that, he'd probably just blow them up or send some of his goons to hunt them down and drag them back. No, the odds were far too much against the three of them for them to try something as daring as this.

"For goodness sake, Robert," she scolded, staying seated. "You just spoke your entire plan out loud, with cameras watching us." She sighed and shook her head. "Honestly, I thought you were smart."

Pulling notepaper out of her bag, she took a pen in hand and scratched out a short message, passing it face down to Robert with a small smile on her face. The message read as follows:

"If we're going to work together, we must be more discreet. Pass the message to Neill too. Face-down, if you please.

Sincerely, Rachel."

For no obvious reason, Rachel took this moment to take out a comb and start untangling her hair. Now that she'd had a better look at herself, she realized that she looked awful, with her hair all awry. That simply would not do.

[xylophonefairy†]

Receiving the note from Bobby, Neill read it surreptitiously, enjoying the fact that for the first time in days something wasn't going to be broadcast to the world. He was going to have a secret, be one of only three people in the world who knew something: what was written on that little bit of paper. The thought that Rachel was conveying had crossed his mind, from what he'd learned from watching previous series was that all the good ideas had to be thought up alone. Perhaps that was why people didn't escape, human's worked best when they worked together a lot of the time, and that had effectively been taken away from them.

He pulled a pen from his pocket and scribbled a hasty addendum to Rachel's note, which he then passed back to her. This was turning into one of those games he's always seen girls playing in middle school, taking it in turns to write a little bit of the story with limited information as to what had gone before. As far as he remembered, it had always taken them a long time, produced shrieks of laughter, and from the couple of times he'd managed to snatch a copy, had been of intensely poor quality. Still, that was an idea. This game was all about hiding behind a smokescreen, and hoping that smokescreen was sufficiently opaque.

It's all about appearances! Pass to Bobby. was what he'd added to Rachel's note.

"I think we should play a game," Neill said after a pause. He rifled around in his duffel and produced a letter size notepad of his own, tearing off a single sheet. Hopefully his background as a writer would help with their smokescreen here. "You might have played it before. I write a bit of a story, then fold the page down so that only the last sentence is visible, then you have to continue the story." Neill tapped the end of his pen against his lip, thinking of how best to word it.

In the middle of the vineyard there was a gazebo that Claudette used to visit thrice monthly, when the sun was almost set and those last few rays cast a reddish glow over the white painted wood. There she would spend the only minutes she could truly alone. Write some crap and then in the last sentence write what you actually want to say and write small so that the cameras can't pick up what we're writing.

He passed the note to Bobby, unable to keep a bit of a smile off his face.

[Killer_Moth†]

"Sorry, sorry. I guess I'm just tired. Haven't been thinking straight. It was a pretty useless plan anyway." This was typical Rachel. Always there, to find fault and try and correct Bobby when he got things wrong. Usually he appreciated it, as she was gentle with him, but now there was that harshness to it. Things between them were never going to be the same.

As he read her note, he smiled and passed it over to Neill. Yes, it made sense, and yes, they were almost certainly being constantly monitored. Still, he figured that the kidnappers wouldn't want to spoil their programme by wasting them with collar detonations if they didn't have to. And there wasn't really any other way for them to interact once they were on the island. Not without putting themselves at unnecessary risk.

He took the paper and pen from Neill and began to write. Flibble dibble ibble. Do we need to waste time with the story? What we need is to figure out how to remove these collars, and then we can work on escaping. Anybody got any ideas?"

[blastinus]

Rachel couldn't help but be both amused and impressed by how quickly her allies adapted to her new plan. Perhaps there was some hope for them yet. The large issue, of course, was that even if they had a new method of communication that would allow them to share plans in private, they didn't have any concrete plans with which to communicate to one another. First things first, she supposed.

With the writing pad in hand, she tapped the side of her head with her pen. Robert was correct. They needed some means to get the collars off if they wanted to have a hope of escaping. Liz Polanski, she recalled, had recently had a bounty put on her, indicating that the terrorists had somehow lost the ability to dispose of her themselves. However, placing their hopes in finding Ms. Polanski would likely result in them traipsing without a clue around the island in the vain hopes that they would somehow run into her. Assuming that she hadn't already been killed by a student hoping to collect on the bounty.

Finally, Rachel shrugged and penned a lengthy note that went onto the other side of her paper, passing it over to Robert.

I fail to see the point of a running narrative as well. We should wait on removing the collars until we get more information. Our current concern should be on gathering supplies. We aren't leaving today, so we should gather water and food. Since we're right next to water right now, the first part should not be a problem.

Rachel was thinking long-term with her plans, which had the potential to be a little disastrous. Still, she wanted to be sure that the group would do this escape attempt correctly. The instant the terrorists caught wind that something was up, they would probably only get one shot at it.

[xylophonefairy†]

Neill took the paper back from Rachel, quickly scanning what the other two had written. Even if the others weren't going to write a story, he felt like he would keep it going. It would give the whole thing a bit of context. Also, if they were to lose sight of it - the bit of paper - there was a chance that someone would pick it up and only see his ramblings and discard it before they read the rest of it; the important stuff. Well, the stuff that might become important, if they could actually think of something. Neill reached into his pack and retrieved a cigarette and lit it with the lighter that he was still faintly surprised had made it to the idland. Either they hadn't noticed it or they hadn't thought it would be a problem. For once in his life, Neill found himself not really caring about the small details. Instead he took a drag from his second cigarette of the trip and stared out at the trees. More important was what he might be able to do with the lighter that he had. Burn the forest down?

He began to write as he thought.

Someone was walking up the path towards her. Claudette turned sharply, her eyes guarded until she saw the dog collar that rested at his neck. The dog collar of the vicar rang a little too close to their own collars at that point, and Neill paused, taking another drag from the cigarette that hung loosely from his left hand as he wrote with his right. Her face softened and she ran down the two steps that elevated the gazebo from the ground. The vicar smiled at her as she stopped a few steps away from him. Two children, Elise and Henri from the village appeared suddenly, as though from nowhere. They didn't seem to notice the adults as they tore between them, disappearing moments later into the vines, their shouts and a fleeting memory the only indicators of their existance. I think that we should-

Pausing, another drag. He was going to study linguistics at Cornell (was being the operative word), languages were his thing. This would be a really useful time to make up a language. Neill had no idea how he was going to acheive that; he would need to do three very difficult things. The first was coming up with the imaginary language. That was enough of a reason not to bother in itself. But this was a clumsy way of doing things. The second was communicating the language to Bobby and Rachel. The third was communicating the language to Bobby and Rachel without the language at the same time becoming apparent to Danya and company. That was the hardest of the three.

Neill suspected that idea wouldn't go down well until he'd figured out the details, so kept it to himself. Instead he wrote down something else.

I think that we should fake our own deaths. After writing it he paused. Years ago he'd read the book of Battle Royale on holiday, along with fourteen other books in the same week. He was now wishing he'd paid more attention to it, but he was sure that there was something in there about a couple of themm faking their own deaths. Do the collars of dead people work? We should find some bodies and try to make their collars explode, without appearing too suspicious. Then, we can fake our deaths... somehow. And then, once our collars don't work, we can try to escape.

There were more holes in the plan than Neill cared to think about. The first thing was how to play dead; the collars measured their pulses and all sorts and they would have to fool it somehow, without being too obvious. The next was that once they were sufficiently 'dead' they would have to then somehow get up and escape, without appearing to have risen from the dead. And then escape. Also it was possible that even if the collars were deactivated upon death, they could just get reactivated when needed once they realised they were still alive.

He started a new paragraph.

Well, it's a thought. Any better ideas? Also I'm not doing too badly for food, but are there any animals on the island? We could hunt. Or if not, don't eat the red berries.

[SOTF_Help]

It was Bobby's turn with the paper, but he was distracted. For a second there, he could have sworn he'd seen someone nearby. It was indistinct, shadowy. It had looked like a girl, maybe, or a very short boy, off in the trees. He couldn't even be entirely sure that his imagination wasn't just playing tricks on him. The fact remained, though, that there could very well be someone nearby.

It'd be best to check it out, if only quickly. And it'd be best if Rachel didn't come along. Bobby was glad she'd calmed down some. He was glad she was acting more sensibly. He still couldn't be sure that she wouldn't freak out again. More than that, her presence would jeopardize any attempt at diplomacy if the person was nervous. She did have two kills to her name. On his own, he might be able to win them another group member, as long as he could give them advance notice of Rachel's presence and state of mind.

Still, she wasn't going to be happy about this. He couldn't leave her entirely, so he simply gestured to her and said, "Take my turn. And Neill, watch my stuff for a moment, okay? I'll be right back. Just got a bit of quick business to take care of."

There were plenty of ways they could take that. Bobby trusted them to pick an innocuous one, as he started walking in the direction where he'd seen the form. Besides, he would be right back. Nothing to worry about.

((Robert Barron continued in A Quick Break))

[xylophonefairy†]

((Inactivity avoidance type post))

Neill nodded at Bobby as he left the group, jumping to the conclusion that he was going to do something biological. Still, it didn't mean he was comfortable being left alone with Rachel, even if it was, as he hoped, only for a few minutes. He smiled warily at the girl, tapping his pen against his chin.

[Solomir†]

((Apologies for the massive delay. Taking over Rachel from here on out))

Rachel watched Robert leave with a withering glare. Whatever business he had couldn't be that important that couldn't wait until the conversation was over. She contemplated asserting her opinion, but held off on account of keeping Neill and Robert placated. It had only been a day or so, and she was sure they hadn't totally warmed up to her just yet.

Taking the paper from Robert, she read over what Neill had written. She couldn't care less about the story he was writing, but she had to read through it anyway, in case he had nestled the important information in there. It wasn't a particularly good story, and Rachel had enough trouble trying to follow it when the prose gave way to Neill's suggestion. She looked up from the paper and raised an eyebrow at him.

She looked back at the paper and decided to mull it over for a moment. It wasn't that it was impossible. Well, even if it were impossible, that wasn't something that would stop the Lord if he smiled on her. It was more that it seemed like something the terrorists had already thought of. If it were an option, then there was a pretty good chance that somebody would have been able to pull it off in the past games, and that would've been something that even she would have heard about.

At least there were plenty of bodies for Neill to look at if he really wanted to. Rachel didn't want much to do with them, but she could remember where some of the more intact corpses and collars were. Taking her pen, she started writing her response in her patented neat cursive handwriting:

There should be some bodies in the little hut that's near the mansion. We can go that way if you want to look at collars. I'm not sure if this plan is good though. It sounds too simple. Maybe it should be more Rachel scrunched up her nose as she pondered the correct word choice for what she wanted. Something that would be unpredictable and would have a chance of gaining support among the remaining students.

daring.

The sheet was passed back to Neill, where he could possibly think up a new option. It was something she herself wasn't good at. One could organize a meeting and keep a club dancing to her rhythm, but bold and spontaneous was not something Rachel excelled at. Neill, on the other hand, seemed to have that quality. He could at least be useful like that. At least as useful as possible while she would still keep him around. The only reason they travelled together so far was because of Robert.

Speaking of Robert....

"Where's Robert been? It's been quite a few minutes now."

[xylophonefairy†]

Neill took the note eagerly back from Rachel, becoming more and more enthusiastic as everyone else became less so. He was already seeing the problems with his plan, the main one being that the collars regulated their pulse, and also that there were cameras on them all the time, any obvious sabotage would result in them getting blown up. He had no idea how that Liz girl had managed to do hers, whatever it was she had done, without them noticing and stopping her. Although... it had happened here, in these woods. Perhaps there was a weak spot, perhaps they weren't very well manned, he didn't know. But he did know that they probably wouldn't make the same mistake again. No, if they were gonig to do something, they needed to get out of camera view. Or... something needed to happen somewhere else, to distract them. Perhaps an explosion? Or a fire. If he could set fire to these woods, maybe in the few seconds that they were distracted by that, he could run off and disable his and Bobby's and Rachel's collars.

Only, first, he needed to figure out a way to do that.

His mind went back to the playing dead idea. They needed to appear dead but without actually becoming dead, naturally. If they could fit a small piece of metal between their necks and their collars, then maybe, just maybe, that would fool the system enough. But he didn't know how it worked. That was why he needed the bodies to test it on. Then he could figure out what they were going to do next.

Claudette smiled after the children, and after a pause, the vicar did too. Tension mounted between them, until, finally, he took a couple of steps forward and stroked her cheek gently with one finger. Brushing his hand away, she shook her head. Dead people don't explode when new danger zones are announced, do they? It was something that had been bothering him. One of the main influences behind his vague idea. It's like once we're dead the collars are inactivated. I don't know if it's automatic, or if they do it themselves, what I want to know is if they're permanently inactivated, or if they can still explode. Also, what have you got against my story? He wasn't sure why he was reiterating his plan to her, even though she'd essentially agreed to it.

As he was finishing, Rachel spoke. Neill had barely been aware of time passing, but now that she mentioned it, he'd been thinking for a while, and it took him a minute or two to write everything he needed to down. Tapping the pen against his chin nervously, Neill squinted into the woods in the direction Bobby had left, as though he might suddenly jump out flamboyantly.

"I- I don't know," Neill said, failing entirely to hide the anxiiousness from his voice. He'd now lost both the people he'd started out with, Ray could be anywhere by now and the only thing that was keeping him going from that incident was that he still had Bobby. Except he didn't, he had Bobby's ex-girlfriend (sort of) whom he was fairly conviced was a little bit crazy. Also, she'd killed someone, and didn't appear to show much remorse for it, another thing that scared Neill somewhat. He scribbled another couple of sentences down. "You'll like this bit," he said, grinning, trying to keep up his act for the cameras.

The key is in the simplicity. We're all trying to avoid death, so who would want to fake it? And that sounds like a good way to head, once Bobby comes back! He passed the note back to Rachel, folding it down securely.

[Solomir†]

Rachel took the paper back from Neill and read it over, her face retaining its regular icy cool. "There's nothing to like about this. It looks like a five-year old wrote this." Who was he to say that she was wrong? She was already bending over backwards and asking for his help, and he just waved off her suggestion like it was useless.

She glowered at Neill for a brief moment, then swiveled her head around to look for Robert. He was still nowhere in sight. If Robert were here, he would back her. Sure he hadn't been the most supportive a few days ago, but she had just been coming on too strong then. Now that she had seen reason, his vote would surely be on her side.

Neill might have been trying to say something, but she just cut him off with her next words. "We should go look for him. He should've been gone for only a few minutes." Maybe she was worried about Robert. All things considered, he was somebody she could trust after all. She put her comb and other grooming accessories back into her bag and zipped it up. Picking herself and her stuff up from her seat, she scanned the trees, trying to figure out which way they should be heading. Maybe she should've paid more attention when Robert had left.

In the end, she just settled on a direction and pointed. "I think he went this way. He couldn't have gone too far," she said. Neill in tow, she started off into the woods.

Silently, she prayed that nothing had befallen her friend.

((Rachel Gettys continued in Bloodgarden))