Princess felt little fear, but a pang of something primal did occur to her, to tease and seduce with it's simplicity. She could whine and scream like a petulant little child robbed of toys and candy, she could let the sudden bubble of frustration that choked off the tubes of her lungs explode out of her chest in all manner of pitiful little noises. She could promptly and duly freak out with the rest of them, with the best of her class. Reduce herself.
The moment passed, and Princess was almost sad to see it go. In and among all her delusions of grandeur a moment of pettiness felt human and humane.
But of course, back to stagecraft.
"Oh, for
goodness- thank you, Claude..." Princess poured girlish exasperation into her voice and diluted it with exhaustion, taking inspiration from the multitude of individually lame pains that had settled into her body with the last few hours worth of exposure to the elements. She sounded pathetic, as intended. An innocent girl next door thrust into a situation above her stature and beyond her imagination. The tremble of her hand was real, her nerves echoed the aftershocks of her ass slammed into cold rock. But she played it up, just a little. Claude's good intentions were a good freebie.
"I.. think. I think I'm fine." She found her footing, and slammed her heel into the earth an extra time to be sure. To remind all the wayward spirit of nature that might or might not have existed- avoid embarrassing her, please and thank you.
"I'm glad you were here! I might have stumbled worse without another flashlight."
... Right. She didn't mind his company. She wouldn't mind the company of anyone else willing to let her breathe a little longer. Fear of death, perhaps, but she also accepted that weakness into her calculus.
Everyone else, their math didn't quite add up. Their understanding of the human condition, less. As a class, the seniors of GHHS were outnumbered and outgunned to a romantically tragic extent. To say nothing of the pollution of the pool, the murk of fear and loathing that would quickly turn placid waters to billowing darkness as inky color bled into the clarity. Princess maintained no proper delusions of the likelihood that people wouldn't die. People would die. She would die, natch. She didn't ask for even that much- for that was too much to ask for, to pretend that any one of them could come out of this clean, worthy of being called a hero.
None of them could.
So that's why
none of them had to make it off the island.
Their mark as a class, their moment of heroism, of absolution, would only come when their last peer turned the gun on themselves and rejected the premise of their game. Princess only needed that. Whatever it took, however she had to debase and dehumanize herself. She, all the rest of them, would be canonized when their captors were left with nothing, when society was left with nothing. Close the box, leave nothing to judge. They would all be defined by their final act of defiance, the climax that proved that for a moment in time, they could truly rise beyond the human condition.
Even if Princess had to trick and bribe and beg her way into forcing that last person to, for but a moment, think of something besides their own useless mortality.
It would be a thankless job, but she was used to that sort of deal.
SCENE END
