a thug changes and love changes and best friends become strangers

[Buko]

The rain was relentless and they were completely removed from any sense of respite or refuge.

Completely vulnerable and complete victims of the elements.

Unprotected...

And in more ways than one.

“Hey, uh, Ivy--don’t get mad,” he said knowing she probably would be, “But I lied. I got no idea where the fuck we’re going…”

The truth shall set you free, right? He now understood why the caged bird sang more than ever.

And then he saw it, a clearing in the distance, a break within the woods and the forest--he knew it in his soul before he saw the first sole. He moved with a hurriedness and confidence, holding Ivy’s hand firmly as he practically dragged her through the woods with a gentle determination.

He remembered it on the map for how weird it sounded: the Shoetree. What did that mean? That it was shaped like shoes? It was made of shoes? How big was the tree to be a significant landmark? It was distinct enough that even if he couldn’t really read the map it stuck in his head.

And now they were there! Cross that one off the bucket list--however short a time it had been there. Small victories were worth a lot out here. He savored it like he won the Super Bowl.

“Uh--I lied! We weren’t lost! Call it Ace intuition--we weren’t far from shelter!”, he exclaimed with all the grace of a labrador on skates, “Let’s wait out the rain here, alright?”

[[ B10: Ace “Beats” Ortega Continued From - Day One ]]

At the base of the tree, protected by branches and rubber and leaves and canvas and leather they made their home.The smell of old wet shoes in the rain probably showed why putting old shoes anywhere but the trash was a bad idea.

He plopped his duffel bag on the ground and then sat on it. He thought about getting a bottle of water out his pack, his lips dried and his mouth on cotton.

But he didn’t want to admit that he still didn’t fully trust his water not to be tampered with.

Gotta get over that one Beats.

But he had gotten over enough today, he thought.

“I’m sorry, maybe you take over the map duties? My head is still screwy,” he said finally, “I still catch myself wonderin’ if I’m on that shit or not. Whole world feels fucked.”

He blinked.

“I guess it sorta is,” he sighed, “Everything is.”

He gulped.

"Sorry, I'll shut the fuck up."

[Fenris]

Ivy always knew she'd live to regret her tolerance for well-meaning stupidity.

>> Ivy Langley continued from the world was spinning but only in grey

Obviously Ace didn't know where they were going. At best he'd chosen a place totally arbitrarily and was trying to get there based on the poorly-drawn landmarks on the map and the position of the sun or whatever—even that rapidly became impossible as dark clouds encroached on their sky—and at worst he'd dragged her off in a completely random direction. Both were stupid, and honestly Ivy didn't care which was true. It wasn't as though she or anyone else had a manner of determining where anyone was without simply finding them by chance. Where would she go, given the chance to direct? Where was Myles? How the fuck was she supposed to know?

This was as good a plan as any. At least she didn't have to think too hard. All the sleep she hadn't gotten and the stabbing pain in her side that reasserted herself with every step despite the painkillers she'd stopped to take and the creeping shadows that faded over the hours but never faded completely all combined to make planning an impossible proposition. At least someone could keep an eye on the horizon, even if that someone was an idiot.

At least that someone was quiet, mostly. At least he taken her bag for her, after a while, when the pain began to overwhelm her and she'd started to fall behind. At least. Ungrateful, maybe. But when the sky opened up and started raining hell on her head she felt no desire to be grateful toward anyone or anything.

All she had by way of protection was the stupid hat that she now felt inexplicably too attached to to take off her head. It kept rain from ruining her makeup, at least, but all she could do for the rest of her was try to walk a little faster and ignore the worsening aching and then Ace was dragging her by the hand and that certainly didn't help but there was, at least, shelter. Shelter under a tree, littered with... shoes. The odor of rotten leather floated in long before they actually reached it, but any reprieve from this goddamn rain was worth the relatively minor cost.

She took her bag from him, put it on the ground beside him, sat. She wondered how sturdy these bags actually were, and if she was going to open it to find her clothes waterlogged and muddy—but the alternative was to sit on the ground and get her current clothes waterlogged and muddy, which wasn't better, exactly. Her shoes, hardly made for this much walking, were already irrecoverably filthy. She thought she had a pair of sandals in her bag, not that those were much better for walking. She could scavenge something here, maybe, but the thought of wearing something so old and rotten made her skin crawl.

He was quiet again, until he wasn't. When she opened her mouth her tongue stuck to the roof of it for a moment, dry and stale. It had to have been a few hours since they'd started moving and she hadn't spoken a word. She swallowed and licked her lips absentmindedly as though trying to restore them to function.

"Yes."

Ivy then realized she had only partially processed any of what Ace had just said, and that "yes" was probably not the best response.

"I mean, everything is fucked, yes." The water on her skin felt less cold, now that it wasn't assaulting her. The humidity was oppressive. She pulled her hair over one shoulder and started wringing it out like a damp rag.

"I understand, though. The... it's still there. When I try to follow it disappears. If that makes sense?" It didn't, most likely, but neither did any of this. She had never planned on consuming anything stronger than alcohol and god, she could use a drink, now that she was thinking about it. Wasn't there alcohol in their first aid kits? She'd be more likely to kill herself than actually get drunk, attempting that, but desperate times, desperate measures? She'd put a pin in it for now.

She studied his face. It looked... solid. Real. She was beginning to readjust, but she still felt like she'd stared at that face for an eternity.

"... How did you know, anyway? That it was drugs, I mean." She tilted her head at him, curious. Of course, she knew the answer. She'd picked up on every story and rumor coming out of Swiftball, partially out of her usual need to collect such things and partially to see if she needed to do damage control for her own night's activities. Ace, and Kayden, she believed it was, they were rather less subtle with their night's activities.

Still, these things were always more interesting dragged out of the person in question. It wasn't of any use to her, now. But it would fill the dead air, for the moment.

[Buko]

“Nah, I got you.”

He looked out at the rain pour and thought of a football game--of course he did.

Football wasn’t a game like baseball, football was war. It was played in rain, in sleet, in snow--the struggle could never stop. The war always continued. He remembered a game early on in the year, September, when Chattanooga could still be hit by the rogue summer shower. He recalled the rain under the lights, pouring down so hard he could hardly see in front of him. He thought of Connor on the one yard line, a defender going for the sack, the QB ducking and shoving him off like a flea before moving out the pocket on the roll out.

He dropped deep and tossed it hard.

It landed in Ace’s finger tips with so much force that he was surprised it didn’t slip right through--it didn’t, he gripped the ball hard and ran harder through the rain. He could hardly see beyond his face, but he still saw that green. It was hard to stop Ace when he had open field in front of him.

Touchdown.

He had always liked the rain.

He hated it now.

“I’m not such an innocent boy scout Ivy, shit,” he stuck his tongue out and plastered on a fake smile, “I did E with Brockman at the ball of swiftness--it was different but I knew what it felt like to be, y’know, fucked up. I guess.”

He wanted to apologize for last night, for kissing her more than once and actually liking it. But he didn’t want to be immature. He had a girlfriend, she was Ivy Langley and they were on murder island. He didn’t have mental real estate to think about her lips and her hands and her in general and then Meilin and the guilt and the questioning of his own character that came along with it. He had enough on his plate, the whole fighting for his life thing.

“So you aren’t doing lines of coke and E in the background whenever you vacation in like Ibiza or Europe or South Beach or somethin’? That was always the impression I got looking at your snaps.”

That much was true, he did have an image in his head concerning the decadence and hedonism of the wealthy. He blamed rap music, mostly--of course he did.

The conversation was innocuous and trivial but he savored focusing on the innocuous and trivial, all things considered.

Small victories meant a lot. He was going back to back.

[Namira]

Quinn Abert continued from One Final Embrace.

[Cactus]

Somewhere along the line, the sky had opened up and it had started to rain. It hadn't taken very long at all for Connor to understand that moving around through the rain in a heavily-forested area meant a whole lot of traipsing around through the mud, and if there was one thing that he wasn't prepared to do for the next few days, it was walk around with muddy shoes. So begrudgingly and albeit a little more cautiously than he'd been the day prior, he moved on to the well-travelled path, and before he knew it, all he could see coming before him was a tree full of shoes. For a moment, he stopped, staring at the spectacle, using his duffel bag as a rain cover of sorts.

Who threw their shoes on a tree like that?

As his gaze crept slowly down the entirety of the tree, Connor's eyes widened as he realized that two people stood beneath it. Narrowing his eyes, his heart rose - and then immediately sank - as he clocked their identities. The first was a teenager he was incredibly well-acquainted with; the star running back of the George Hunter High football team, and Connor's preferred red-zone target; Ace Ortega. Under any other circumstances, Connor would have been tickled to see him. Here and now, Ace was just another reminder that people - damn good people - would be left behind. He was one of those people he'd been praying not to run into and yet, here he was.

The person to his right was another one that he'd been hoping not to run into, but for a whole other reason all together.

Prom King, meet Prom Queen.

"Aw, hell," he muttered under his breath as he started towards Ace and his companion, Ivy Langley.

((Connor Lorenzen continued from Welcome to Your Life))

It didn't take him very long to clear the distance between the two of them and the tree, and while he walked calmly and casually through the rain, he wore more of a bemused look upon his face, rather than one of happiness or even the disdain that he felt for one half of the duo. He wasn't sure that they saw him coming, and so he figured that it wouldn't hurt to announce himself before he got too close. So tossing on his game voice, he projected.

"Alright, it's third and real long and we're sitting at our own twenty-five. Time to bust out the screen and get that first down. Ace, you ready?" He put a little more english on the last bit, knowing that his friend would pick up on it right away. As they turned to greet him, he allowed a genuine, sad smile for his teammate, hardening his expression back up as he looked over at his companion. It was a strange duo, to be sure.

"You're a damned sight for sore-eyes, Ace." He paused, and nodded. "Ivy."

Neither seemed much the worse for wear, though Ivy had her hair in a style that Connor had never seen before, a bang brushed right over her eye. Both of them were soaked from the rain and dirty, but so was Connor, so he didn't count that for much.

"Glad y'all are okay."

Okay indeed - for whatever that was worth. Alive might have been a better word. They were basically one and the same, now.

[Fenris]

Ivy could have laughed. Maybe, in another life.

"Europe, yes. South Beach, once. Ibiza, no. Not my scene." She shrugged, adjusting her position. Comfort stopped being the goal a long time ago; at this point she'd settle for putting slightly less weight on her rib. She leaned back a bit, came within an inch of putting her hands down on the ground to rebalance herself before deciding the change in position was absolutely not worth getting her hands filthy. "I've never done any drugs, no. Hadn't, anyhow. I'm not, like, Mikki."

She found herself oddly self-conscious, raising an eyebrow at him; had her reputation spiraled so out of control without her knowledge? More than likely he was just messing with her. Even more likely, it did not and would never matter. Nothing anyone on this island believed about her would matter ever again.

She didn't want to think about that.

The rain was unyielding. The tree they sat under, unappealing as it was, provided adequate shelter as the shoes above her head took on water. She had questions, of course, but she wouldn't dwell on them. No one was left on this island to give them any answers. People had lived here once, created this place; the fixtures in the house they'd taken shelter in seemed to have been left in place long enough that Ivy couldn't imagine they'd been abandoned recently. The terrorists had not cleared this island of residents; that, or they'd planned disturbingly far in advance.

Didn't matter.

The rain kept falling.

They practiced in the gym, when it was raining. It didn't save them during games; the boys played in the rain and so did they. Ridiculously dangerous, in retrospect. She barely trusted Madison or Lori to catch her when the sky was clear, let alone when they could barely see and were tramping through mud. Still, though. The team had to play. They had to keep everyone else from being completely miserable in the process, even on days where the bleachers were practically empty as the wind and water tore the would-be spectators from their seats.

She perfected her smile, over the years. She could put one on now, if she wanted. It wouldn't mean much, though. Not to Ace. Not to anyone.

Ivy started as she heard a voice, squinting through the rain as her ears failed to pinpoint the direction of the sound over the downpour. She had to swivel her head to spot its source. Once she did, though, well.

Connor Lorenzen was conveniently unmistakable.

Shocking how a day and a half had changed things, really. A few days ago Connor would run very low on the list of people she'd be happy to run into. Not so much before prom; it was awkward at times, yes, considering their history, and considering being female and within twenty feet of him seemed cause enough to set off the Madison Alarm, but he was always pleasant. Tooth-achingly fake, yes, but she had a taste for that. After prom, though? After prom they'd both turned to ice every time they'd passed each other in the halls before the trip. She supposed she couldn't blame him for that, necessarily. It wasn't as though she'd planned on speaking to him ever again after that night, anyway.

Here they were, though. And here there were far, far worse people she could've hoped to have run into. There were worse personality traits to have when laws went out the window than "unbearable self-righteousness". Him and Ace were friends, so he'd be pleased, at least, which was... its own wrinkle. Something to consider. Loyalties to measure.

She had time to worry.

"Hello, Connor." Her voice was neutral, along with her expression, matching the lack of feeling in his eyes as he looked at her. If he had died before now, how would she have felt? She wondered.

A shadow passed over his eyes. Her breath hitched for a moment, and then it was gone.

[Buko]

He had just been thinking about Connor and the actual appearance of his Quarterback was enough to make Ace’s heart burst out his chest.

He had lost two teammates yesterday and he feared he would lose them all before saying goodbye, before saying thank you. Connor meant more than most, Connor and Ace had made each other on offense and it had been Connor who largely had recognized and marked Ace as an athletic equal. Ace benefited from defenses forced to drop back and only rush 4 due to Connor’s intelligence and arm, Connor benefited from defenses forced to stack 8 to deal with Ace’s speed and power. They were a two headed beast. Iron had sharpened iron.

There was a difference though and Ace knew it deep in his core: Connor was a leader and Ace was not.

“OH SHIT! THAT’S MY QUARTERBACK!”

Connor was a natural born leader.

The type with the ability to look in a man’s eyes and convey the thought that whatever he was saying was for the benefit of the us as opposed to himself. Football was war and the alliance between Ace and Connor had been forged in blood, sweat and tears. Ace had trusted his dreams in Connor’s hands and Connor the same in Ace. If you got my back, I got your back. If you go to war, we go to war together.

So many battles fought on the gridiron…

The real one being fought on the island.

He wouldn’t want anyone else by his side.

Connor would know what to do. Connor’s judgement, anticipation and leadership was something that could be relied on and called on at a moments notice.

Don’t be so naive, this ain’t a game no matter how you try and frame it like that.

But he ignored that voice in the back of his head…

And he was oblivious to whatever iciness was there between Ivy and Connor. All he thought about was Toby and Dante and what he would say or do for his teammates, his only friends for so long, if given the chance. He didn’t have a chance with them.

Connor approached and Ace rose from his position and cackled at his friend.

“Don’t play cool with me right now Lorenzen! You can’t just come out the rain and say ‘good to see you’ like it’s something to be doing! That ain’t fair man!”

He felt tears come to his eyes in spite of him trying to bury his grief with his goofiness. He was joking to Connor, but every good joke contained true shit. Connor was a leader, he was always poised and composed.

That was the difference between him and Ace, island or no island.

He rose up and quickly met Connor in a large bear hug.

“Didn’t think I’d get to see you again brother,” he said hoarsely, “Lost two teammates yesterday. All I can think ‘bout is losin’ more.”

He separated from the QB and shook his head, a smile plastered on it.

“Sit down dude, wait out the storm with us.”

He hoped Connor would take him up on that, he always felt more confident with Lorenzen in the huddle.

[Namira]

The rain soaked into her as she crouched amongst the trees, staring out at the tree filled with shoes. In a way, this was where the path had started.

The town was too dangerous during the day, but perhaps it would have been worth the risk to avoid catching cold.

No point worrying about it now. This was more interesting, anyway.

From the base of the tree at the edge of the clearing, Quinn studied the duo, now trio, taking shelter under the sneakered eaves, eyes intent, dark.

[Cactus]

The exuberance that radiated off of Ace as he stepped forward and grabbed Connor in a bear-hug was comforting, if not pity-inducing. Without a moment's hesitation, he returned the gesture, giving his friend a strong embrace. It was such a damned shame. All of this was a terrible loss, of course, but Ace was the kind of guy who might have actually made it. No one said it out loud on the team, but Wyatt's attitude might have prevented him from going further than he could have - that was if he had even planned on going to college, which he wasn't. Bret had similar physical gifts, but football was a means to an end for him. He'd play in college and probably come back and work in his family's business.

But Ace? Ace actually had talent. He had skill, he had swagger. The two were incredibly effective together on the field, giving him an honest-to-goodness weapon outside of their sad-sack receivers. On top of all that? Ace was a grade-A human being.

So that he was here, it just wasn't fair. The feeling in the pit of Connor's stomach only intensified as he stood back and took the duo in. Of all the classmates that he'd miss, of all the people that he'd hoped not to run into, Ace was near the top of that list. How could he look this guy in the eye and tell him that they had hope, that everything was going to be okay? How could he do that when he knew that someday in the future he'd probably click on a website and see how his friend died? Swallowing his turmoil again, he nodded to Ace. He'd wait out the storm with them.

The immediate storm.

"Y'all know I'm too stubborn to die," he sadly smiled at Ace, though his face had fallen at the mention of teammates. Of course - Ace wasn't just on the football team. Dante and Toby were on the track team with him, and they weren't around anymore. Evidently it didn't matter how fast you were, you couldn't outrun a bullet. "But yeah, I'll stick around. I reckon it ain't gonna help matters any walkin' around all wet."

He knew he should acknowledge Ivy in some way, but his default reaction to her was disdain. Once upon a time — even as recently as prom, Connor had actually cared a little about Ivy, but she had gone and thrown it all away, spreading her poison all around his friends for no other reason than she could. There were so many words he was tempted to use to describe her - whore, slut, tramp, ho, bitch; all felt appropriate. But maybe that was in another life. He had to be on his best behaviour here. Everything that he did was under a microscope. Everything he said, every action he took would be scrutinized by his future college coaches, by the public at large. If he was going to have to overcome the hurdle that would inevitably be: "the guy who bought his way out of Survival of the Fittest", he needed to be crystal clear, his actions without reproach.

"I'm so sorry about your pals, Ace. We're all losin' friends here. This is bound to bring out the worst in everyone. I think we just need to make sure we're stayin' true to who we are. Try and be our best selves, you know?" He turned and looked at Ivy, and allowed her a smile. "The past is the past. What's important is the here and now, y'all can't be worryin' about what's come before. We just need to try and survive. Stay low, stay quiet."

Complete and utter lies, of course. Ivy meant absolutely nothing to him right now, but forgiving her out loud meant that they could at least maintain the facade of civility. Connor doubted she'd believe it, but he knew she'd probably roll with it anyway. He looked up at the tree of shoes, an oddity that he still couldn't quite understand.

"S'how I spent most of yesterday. Got separated from a group, and then just stayed low. How'd y'all make out? Did anything... happen?"

He wasn't sure how to ask it, nor was he sure he wanted to know. As they said, ignorance was bliss, and as far as Connor was concerned, he was more than happy staying ignorant of all the horrors his fellow classmates were experiencing.

Now was not the time for it. He could read about them later.

Mourn them later.

Connor leaned back against the tree and listened. For now, here they would stay.

[Buko]

In Tennessee football was like a religion. Ace had never really believed in anything but he believed in football. He attended mass five times a week and for the past four years Connor had been his pastor. Ace looked at Connor as he spoke and the running back nodded in reverence. Connor was right (of course he was) and he confirmed a lot of what Ace had believed from the beginning: stay low and wait it out.

“You’re right, of course, we been doin’ the same.”

Connor knew exactly what was up, the past was the past and the majority of people were just scared kids. It’s why he felt so complicated in thinking about Toby’s death--he couldn’t help but think of Tirzah thereafter. He knew Tirzah. She was an independent, free spirit who played by her own rules no matter the consequences. She did what she wanted when she wanted. She wasn’t a cold blooded murderer.

Yet she had murdered Toby, so it seemed, in cold blood.

Because she’s a scared kid.

And dumber than a bag of hammers.

That don’t make her evil.

He couldn’t say the same for Blaise, whoever the fuck that was. He couldn’t even say if that was thinking right--that callousness felt foreign in his heart and wrong. He knew who he was and who he wanted to be.

But he also knew, like Connor, he was far too stubborn to die.

When and how would that be tested?

“We were holed up in one of the leadership houses for the entire day pretty much,” he said to Connor with far too much comfort in his voice, “I ran into Ivy first but she wasn’t so lucky--fuckin’ Julien LeBlanc laid into her bro,” he slammed his fist into his palm for effect, “Like, that’s a six foot dude and Ivy is Ivy, it wasn’t a pretty sight. Fuckin’ psycho, Ivy don’t even got a weapon! They gave her bleach!”

He looked towards Ivy and felt a pang of guilt--she was the strong one, really. She kept things together and Ace was a babbling buffoon. She had been a beacon of light to him in the darkness that was the game and especially last night when the drugs had him most confused. He could see why Ivy and Connor had dated, they were both the leaders Ace desperately wished that he could be.

“Anywell,” he continued, “We ended up grouping up with Declyn, Lori and this girl Amelia,” his face soured, “Of course Lori had to fuck a thing up and drugged our water in some, like, I dunno, hair brained Lori scheme. It was a madhouse Connor, like, we were on drug drugs. Some Alice and Wonderland bullshit.”

Ivy throughout this had remained very very quiet, though he could feel the energy shift. He had only really known her tangentially before last night, but,eh, apparently exploring mind altering hallucinogens under the threat of death while playing tonsil tag was a good way to bond.

In another world, he’d have sought Connor’s advice on that one.

You never really confessed all your sins to your pastor anyway. Some you kept and dealt with on your own.

"Lori dipped and we split up this morning," he said finally, "I didn't really wanna be in a big group after the announcements popped off. Needed to get my head right, doin' better now, was bad for a bit."

[Fenris]

Ivy understood, suddenly, that she had been very wrong to assert that Connor was the lesser of many evils on the island. Instead she should have realized that his sudden appearance was clearly some form of karmic punishment. It was one thing to deal with his insufferable nature when social standing was on the line; it was quite another when all of them but one would soon be dead. He was tolerable when necessary. Was it really necessary, right now? Did she have to waste minutes of her potentially limited lifespan listening to the syrupy drivel coming out of his mouth? She felt the minimal contents of her stomach attempting to climb up her throat.

In retrospect she would have taken Tyrell.

Ace, bless his sweet, simple heart, swallowed every word Connor spat out like a starving baby bird. She supposed he was the type to cling to hope when it came to him. He'd already proven to not deal with despair particularly well, given the dusting of blood on his knuckles. She should resent him. She certainly resented him cataloging her current weaknesses, though she knew that was stupidity rather than malice. She didn't imagine Connor would take advantage of the knowledge physically, but...

But, what? Maybe it was her own stupid pride. Maybe she was scraping up whatever scraps of dignity she could, after all the tears, after the drugs, and trying to form them into something. Maybe it didn't matter what Connor knew or didn't know, but maybe she wanted to be able to keep her heart to herself for a couple of goddamn hours.

She could blame Ace, yes, if she wanted to.

...

"That's about it," she said neutrally. Ace had left out a few notable bits of the night before, and she didn't particularly care to fill Connor in. She glanced up at him and, after a moment of trepidation, swept the hair over her eye behind her ear, revealing her still badly-bruised eye. His inevitable fake pity would churn her stomach, but it was better than him assuming she'd made the Julien story up.

"I'm fine, by the way." A corner of her mouth twitched upward, sarcastically.

She played, idly, with the ring on her finger. She tried not to think about it.

[Namira]

Three of them. Dangerous. Risky. She'd had good fortune on her side in those previous encounters, weak opponents. Quinn doubted that a sharp piece of wood was going to cut it against hard muscle and sheer size. The gun? Reliability was suspect, and even a perfect shot left two survivors to contend with.

A moment's frustration clawed at her. This was pointless. Wasteful. She let the feeling go. There was interest in watching, even if it wasn't likely to bring her closer to her goals. What were they discussing? The two boys were obviously pleased to see one another; two football players, teammates, a bond she could understand. She knew their names, didn't especially care, but when rammed into one's face, the memories stuck.The tiny girl in the cap. Oh did Quinn recognise her. Quinn was confident Ivy had helped spread rumours about her, circulating the story about her ill-advised love letters. Even if she hadn't, Quinn had imagined she had, imagined seeing her tiny neck growing a red smile, parodying the sly grin as her blood gushed out across the school hallways.

The thought was almost enough to tighten Quinn's finger on the trigger. She held off. Too few bullets, too many targets, and too much athleticism on display. Quinn wiped rain from her eyes with a sleeve and continued watching, waiting.

This wouldn't be much of a playground if she wound up splattered all across it.

[Cactus]

As one did when assuming a position of authority in any circumstances, Connor sat and listened intently to Ace's version of events from the day prior. In a situation like this, information was bound to be crucial, and goodness gracious, did Ace provide. The first key piece of information was the fact that evidently Julien Leblanc - a face that Connor could ever-so-vaguely recall from around the hallways of GHHS - had done the whole student body a favour and done the one thing that no one could ever seem to actually do.

He'd tuned up Ivy Langley.

As he looked over at her, now seeing the mostly-hidden black eye she was covering with the bang, he used every ounce of strength to hide the bemused look that was dying to make its way across his face. From the way Ace told the story, Ivy was undoubtedly the blameless victim. Connor knew that the 'Ivy had done nothing wrong' story was likely about as much a fallacy as the Titans chances of winning a Superbowl in the next four years. There had to be more to the story, but in the grand scheme, Connor didn't really care. Had he heard of all this in the real world, he would have probably privately bought Julien Leblanc a drink or something. Violence wasn't a way to solve anyone's problems on the first shot, but sometimes difficult problems needed difficult solutions.

The second interesting story was that evidently, Lori Martin - a friend of Madison's if he wasn't mistaken - had evidently decided that drugging the lot of them was the way to go. Connor couldn't help but blink in surprise at that particular story. It seemed almost unbelievable, but his memory dropped back to his own designated weapon. The multitool hadn't really come in handy for much, and it wasn't about to be good for self-defense in case of any emergencies, but it clocked that maybe they'd assigned that girl drugs.

Ace's own admission that he wasn't handling the situation overly well wasn't a big surprise to Connor, but at that, he clapped his friend on the shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze. The running back had always been the kind of guy who wore his heart on his sleeve, crushing hard on whatever girl he had his eye on and feeling his emotions more acutely than most. It was an endearing quality, most of the time. Out here, it would probably get him killed. The gesture was almost more for himself than it was for Ace. Thinking of his friend dying here, senselessly and without dignity was enough to trigger some guilt within him. Some of them deserved this, some of them deserved what karma was going to dish out, but the speedy Latino wasn't one of them.

"I'm sorry, pal. This ain't easy. That sounds like a helluva day. Can't think anyone's gonna judge you for that. Lord knows I've had a few moments, myself."

That last bit was a lie, but Connor sold it professionally. Ivy took that moment to confirm the story, revealing her true wound and snarking about it. She was fine, by the way. Shame about that was what he wanted to say, but he refrained. One thing he couldn't hold back anymore, though, was his amusement at her newfound facial adornment. He could look past their history in the here and now, but he wouldn't forget things that spoke to her character - or lack thereof. Instead, he looked at her with only the hints of a grin.

"Swell." Pause. "Which that's gonna, give it a few days. Not sure all the makeup in the world's gonna hide that one, sweetheart."

He didn't even bother trying to pretend to have sympathy for her predicament; she would have known better anyway. As both Ace and Ivy started to speak at once, Connor held up a hand to silence them for a moment.

"Sorry." He wasn't, but continued. "Speaking of your fellow cheerleaders, Ivy - apparently y'all have some real winners on that squad. If I'm hearing all that right, Lori's got a few more flaws than a makeup tutorial woulda solved." Lori's adventures with foundation had gotten more than a little play in the locker room.

"I woke up around a few folks; Regina Petrov, Mike Brown, y'know, from the baseball team? Plus, uh," Connor's eyes narrowed as he tried to remember fatty's name. He couldn't. "Some, uh, other kids whose names I never caught and Amber. Cheerleading squad Amber."

Connor looked at Ace, then looked at Ivy, deadly serious.

"Y'all know that girl's battier than the attic of an old country barn? She thinks she's got a second voice in her head, or something. That's what she was goin' on about for a while. We all got separated," Connor shot Ace a knowing look, not even trying to hide his true meaning, "and I hoofed it around solo for the rest of the day. Holed up for the night behind some old buildings with Daria and Craz- er, Caroline. Woke up this mornin' and they were both gone."

He sighed. Another small fib, but at this point, what did it matter?

"Been walkin' around for a few hours. Listened to the announcement while knee-deep in the brush, and well," he shrugged, "here I am."

He let his words sit for a moment, and dropped his storyteller voice for one a bit quieter, a bit more introspective. It wasn't entirely a put-on. For the first time in a while, Connor was being completely honest.

"Hard to believe people are really buyin' into all this, huh?"

[Buko]

If Ace thought it had been their winning personalities that had drawn Ivy and Connor to each other years ago, well, he was pretty sure the same personalities that brought them together had torn them apart. How you get ‘em is how you lose ‘em, right?

They were some biting, petty people! Connor even had the nerve to quip when he saw Ivy’s black eye. That wasn’t exactly classy Lorenzen! It was 2018 and murder island or no, Ivy was a girl. You can’t just joke about violence against women like that! It wasn’t becoming! Besides, Ivy was like, five nothing. What could she have done to provoke Leblanc? Quip aggressively?

Connor seemed to sense Ace’s indignation a bit and rose his hand to calm he and Ivy down. He gave the quarterback the benefit of the doubt and listened to him intently. So Amber was crazy crazy? Voices in head and all? Ace had joked with Connor in a locker room far far away that the Quarterback had a thing for crazy cheerleaders (just look at Ivy and Madison) but this Amber story took the cake!

Maybe Connor really was a magnet for eclectic personalities, Ace didn’t wanna know where he lied in that equation.

“It’s about as hard to believe as the idea that we’re here in the first place.”

He thought about Connor and himself, bound by circumstance and talent but really could they be anymore different? Connor was smart and confident while Ace was spastic and insecure. Connor had been raised by a CEO and Ace by a post lady. Connor’s Dad came from oil, Ace’s Dad changed A/C filters.

“What you think is going on at home?”, Ace asked with a child like naivete, “There’s gotta be a lotta resources into finding us right? I mean, it’s the 7th time this shit has happened and you’re like if the Koch brothers gave birth to Lebron. Can’t imagine your Dad and all his Bentley buddies letting us die out here,” he paused, “Anymore of us die.”

Ace nodded to himself.

“They’ll find us, the government, the rebel alliance, somebody--our story don’t end this way,” he nodded again, "I gotta keep tellin’ myself that shit. Can’t lose hope cause then I’ll lose myself and I ain't lettin' these guys take me away from me, you feel me?”

[Fenris]

God, she hated him. Sweetheart. She would puke except she wasn't close enough to get it on his shirt.

... That was comforting, though, wasn't it? In a way. In the same way it was comfortable sniping at Lori before she'd gone all psycho and poisoned their drinks. It was just high school. It was just drama. It made her feel like herself again, the way everything else wanted to take away. The way Julien had, the way the drugs had, the way the announcement had. She had hated it for the better part of the last four years, the day-to-day, the fake smiles, but it was cruise control for her.

Tyrell was an unknown. Tyrell was dangerous in a very real way. Connor? He could snark all he wanted. He wouldn't touch her.

Ivy still kind of wanted to spray bleach in his eyes but she'd kind of wanted to do that back home, too.

It would be nice, then, if the conversation didn't slip into places it did. She could tolerate it, if she learned anything worthwhile; Amber was crazier than a sack of cats, to the surprise of literally no one who had ever met her except evidently Connor himself, and the rest was a list of names and events she could not even begin to bring herself to begin to care about. Connor expressed disbelief, Ace expressed suicidal optimism, and Ivy sealed her lips shut as she swept her hair back over her eye and looked back into the rain.

She was used to it, the day-to-day, the fake smiles. She could lie if she wanted, of course. She could tell Ace she was sure he was right, that they just had to wait out the storm, that help would arrive soon. She could tell Connor somberly that she couldn't believe it, that maybe their class wasn't the nicest group of kids on the planet but to kill each other, really, who could have known, who could have expected. She could have done either, easily, and Ace would believe her, and Connor would pretend he did, too.

She could tell them the truth, but⁠—

"Shhh!"

Alert, suddenly, Ivy tugged on the hem of Ace's shorts, nodding toward the rustling that had caught her eye.

"Someone's out there," she said in hushed tones. It could have been nothing, true. It could have been shadows, again. But an overabundance of caution seemed reasonable, considering.