The match is struck. A blazing star is born.

[Pippi]

((Garren Mortimer continued from Mauerbauertraurigkeit))

He didn’t make it far before he threw up.

He made it far enough, mind, in the continuation of his island journey thus far, scraping by from day to day via dumb luck and by the skin of his teeth. He didn’t think that Nia would stumble upon him, here, and suddenly change her mind that he wasn’t worth killing, or whatever her warped internal train of thought was.

But he wasn’t out of the woods yet. Literally. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha fucking ha. No, he was still bent double with his palm pressed against the closest tree, surrounded by flora, the sound of rushing water playing faintly in the background behind him.

And more pertinently, he was still likely miles away from any form of salvation, with just an apple core and an energy bar, and the image of Aoi’s head exploding playing on loop in his own, thankfully intact, head. Christ. Fucking christ. He felt like throwing up again, even though the first salvo had been little more than a thin stream of acidic water, and there was very little left in the tank. He supposed he’d been fortunate, really, to have gone five days without seeing any of his dead classmates.

But then again, maybe not so fortunate, given his first encounter with one was a work in motion, a film of somebody’s skull being obliterated right in front of his eyes, visible even when he closed them. Jesus. Jesus fuck. He was shaking now, he realised. Out of everyone it could have happened to, it had to happen to the dude he’d managed to bring round onto his side. He and Aoi hadn’t exactly gotten on with each other - hell, they hadn’t actually liked each other, far as he was aware.

The bottom line was, though, that nobody deserved to die like that. Nobody at all.

Garren’s exhausted, wheezing breathing caught in his throat for a moment. He wiped his mouth, stood up straight, and kicked off some of the vomit that had landed on his shoe. He took a bite from the core in his hand, forcing it down even as the acid of bile and apple mingled together in his mouth. He sighed.

Cool. Another fuckin’ question dumped into his lap, like a Reddit Q&A for some technology-averse wrinkly old dipshit of an actor. He’d get around to even considering it in a moment. There was something else he wanted to check first. He dug into his pocket, shifting the energy bar to one side, pulling out the crumpled wad of papers and unfolding it into a slightly-less crumpled sheaf. He quickly scanned each sheet - goddamn, he didn’t think it was physically possible to write this stick-up-ass neat and tidy - and his brows furrowed as he reached the final word.

Y’know, he’d been expecting, or rather hoping, for some marvelous revelation upon reading this. Like in those films, where the character grabs the ancient artifact and all the mysteries of the universe are revealed to them, only with less head-melting (and goddamnit could his brain stop bringing up that mental image, thanks). There was nothing of the sort, no written confession as to why Nia had murdered Aoi. But it did tell him something. Enough that he needed to know.

It had started simply enough. A detailed overview of the previous day’s events, listing killers and killed, the danger zones, people to avoid and find, things to do. Then it had slipped, somewhat. Shifted from simply hunkering down in a safe space to finding someone and killing them. Then, even further. Cliffnotes, rather than a written report. The names of the most dangerous people on the island. The danger zones. And then a list of three other names. Two of them were expected. One, less prominent on the announcements, was less so.

You really didn’t need to be Sherlock fucking Holmes to pinpoint where Nia’s gameplan had shifted, here.

So Beryl - weird girl, not Garren’s type at all but some of the people around him physically couldn’t keep their dicks stowed away around her - had died, and Nia had started looking for revenge. Easy enough. It didn’t explain why she had killed someone - two people now - entirely unrelated to that. But it did confirm one of his questions - yes, this was a killer who had, or had had, a goal and an agenda.

One that it could be argued wasn’t too ignoble.

Fuck.

Garren limply beat his fist against the side of the tree. Again and again, he told himself that the easiest way to deal with these worries would be to just avoid anybody who’d been on the announcements, and again and again he second-guessed himself. Reminded himself that he had no way of knowing why those kills happened unless he was that person themselves. They could be accidents. They could be acts of mercy. They could be revenge for any number of things - if someone stood up and popped him in the head for anything he’d done at school, he didn’t really think he could blame them.

He thought back to the goal he’d plotted out, after walking away from Brady and Catherine and Cheri. The huge longshot endgame he’d hoped for - survival. Escape. Band people together to try and do something that didn’t end up with them all dead. If he excluded anybody from that, then they’d be left behind. And if they were left behind?

Boom. Crack. Brain matter spilled all across the ground.

He felt his stomach churn, but nothing came up this time. He supposed this was all a fucking moot point, now. He had no food, no water, and no ideas at all. Attempting to bring up the idea of escape now… well, that was pretty much what bonehead Brady had done. Was there any point in trying to band people together anymore?

Finally, a question he could actually answer. Of course there was. Altruism up to a point wasn’t truly altruism.

All the other questions and doubts and considerations could be dealt with later. After sleep. After rest. After, hopefully, some food.

Garren stayed with his hand pressed against the tree for a few moments more. Then he disappeared into the undergrowth.

((Garren Mortimer continued in Crime and Punishment))