Raw Deal

[Primrosette]

When Ty had told him to sit down and that he couldn't protect him; Drew felt a surge of shame as he knew that Ty was right and that he had acted without thinking of the consequences. He should have just stayed where he was as the useless person that he was and just sulk over how unhelpful he was. Had he really always been the weak out of his friends? ....Yes, he was. He knew that his friends were stronger than him and that they would not run away from people who were trying to help. He should just stay out of things and think about how tired he still felt.

Drew turned his head to look at Ty with helpless eyes and he then lowered the hand that he had held out to stop the girl from doing anything. "But I.... Okay, okay. I should rest, yeah." Drew realized that his voice was sounding drained and that his throat was hurting a little. "S-Sorry, sorry."

He didn't know why he was apologizing to Ty and he didn't know why he even acted in the first place. He moved back to the couch and glanced down at his bag on the ground, feeling himself trying to clear his sore throat. He then leaned down to unzipped it and he reached in to find a bottle of water, trying to keep his eyes open by blinking more.

The girl commented that she just wanted to get out of the rain and Drew couldn't blame her. Being out there would just cause more trouble and Drew needed to remember that he still needed to find his friends. He couldn't find Danny as he was dead now and he still felt a pang of sadness over him dying. Quinn was definitely not someone to mess with. He hoped that everyone else was safe out there.

He got out a bottle and he forced himself to sit down on the couch once more, unscrewing the lid off of the bottle and he slowly took a long sip from it to help with his throat. He then glanced over at Ty and the girl with a feeling of unease. Waiting to see what Ty would do or say next.

[Shiola]

There were words from the other side of the door. He couldn't make them out through the rain. Trying to figure out how to handle the situation, how to handle Ty.

Ty observed Jessica as she scrambled for a reply, briefly casting a dispassionate glare in Drew's direction as he rightly sat down. Apologizing, unnecessarily. Drew was already such a small person; it was annoying that he seemed intent on making less of himself.

She didn't offer a response right away. That seemed strange. Want in a place like this was so immediate. Wanting to live or die and have it mean something. Maybe just wanting to live, or die and know which one it was. Wanting something to eat besides stale bread and crackers and protein bars.

Wanting to know who you really were.

She just wanted to get out of the rain. That was alright with him. No doubt Drew would appreciate the group. Somewhere he could fade into the background, hide. Bodies who'd step in front of someone so helpless. It wasn't entirely stupid as far as survival strategies were concerned.

He tried to smile.

"Well, you're out of the rain now."

Motioned towards the barricaded windows. Running his hand on the floor, he discovered a tiny piece of brass. It read 9x19 on the back, next to some letters. Ty picked it up, and played with it in his hands.

"Little comforts can make even the worst moments a bit easier. This place is pretty nice, you can stay if you want."

Ty let the case fall from his hand onto the floor, and it rolled away. He looked to the open doorway.

"If any of you have a gun, I'd appreciate not seeing it pointed at me. I don't have one anymore. Let Claude have it."

Some part of how he was sitting felt imperceptibly uncomfortable. Too still.

Ty straightened up against the wall taking care not to move too quickly. A smart person would assume him capable of anything, and it wouldn't do to make any sudden movements. He set the crowbar across his lap, if only to make it clear to everyone where it was. Sat still for barely a moment, before interjecting almost cheerfully to the others.

"Kinda wish I had a smoke right about now."

[Kermit]

Jessica talked; or at least sort of talked. She only managed a single sentence, which Val thought was fine. The less information Ty and the other boy had, the better.

Ty talked; gave information. Mentioned not having a gun anymore. Mentioned meeting Claude.

Val glanced sideways to Camille and nodded her head. She still spoke in hushed whispers. "Stay cautious; could be lying unless Claude found him after leaving us. I don't remember Claude having a gun and Ty shot Felix after meeting Claude, so..."

She poked her head out of cover diagonally and made eye contact with Ty again. "Hi, sorry! Important question!" she said before slipping back into cover. "When specifically did you give him the gun?"

[General Goose]

Camille stayed in position, just casually taking in how this scene was playing out. Thankfully, it seemed that it was not destined to explode into unchecked violence, but Camille knew that that was a matter of luck. There was no security, no real sense of harmony and amity, certainly none that had any real durability or resilience. Camille never let her fingers move more than an inch from her gun.

She was inclined to believe the claim that the gun had been given to Claudeson and that no gun remained - at this point, Ty had no real incentive to try and pretend that he didn't have a big target on his back. There was something odd, admittedly, about the chronology of his story and the notion that he'd given away a potent tool of protection, but she couldn't immediately work out what advantage could be gleaned from lying.

"It's Camille," she spoke, responding to the offer to lend a cigarette, letting Val take the lead on the questions and answers. A small act of charity, of benevolence, that, to Camille's mind, carried no unreasonable risk. "And I have a cigarette."

She held it around the corner, already lit.

[Shiola]

((Sorry I have to leave guys, time constraints and all.))

Ty slowly got up, the offer of the cigarette too tempting to ignore. It might help focus him, put his thoughts back in order. Something familiar to remember who or what he was supposed to be. Maybe. He replied to the question posed from just outside the door matter-of-factly, as if he was describing a test score.

"Give is maybe the wrong way to put it. I left my bag on the table there when he came in and took it right out. Shot at me, just past my ear. That's where the hole in the wall and that brass case on the ground came from."

Leaving the crowbar on the ground, he carefully moved past Jessica towards the door, and gingerly took the cigarette from Camille's outstretched hand. He suppressed the urge to look past the door, and instead turned and headed back to his bags, and Drew. Taking a long, leisurely drag of the cigarette, his eyes scanned the room. Starting from the bullet hole on the wall, then to Drew, to the case on the floor, and then to Jessica and her friends.

It took him a moment to remember to speak. "Thanks."

He blinked. Sighed, looking towards the ground. Taking another drag of the cigarette. Nicotine didn't bring everything into focus, but it did put the whole situation in perspective.

No matter how hard he might try, he wasn't going to be wanted here. If he left, they might stay. They'd have a better chance in some kind of shelter. Drew might have a better chance staying with a group. That made sense.

Ty grabbed hold of his things, picking up the crowbar last. His eyes trained on the back door of the building, which he began to walk over to, before stopping just next to Drew.

"Keep your arm dry. Don't give up. You're tougher than you seem."

He turned back to the others.

"I'm going to leave. I think that makes things easier for y'all. If I were you, I'd give up on looking for Claude. I think even if you find him, you're not going to really find who you're looking for."

Did they understand? Ty raised an eyebrow, as if to question his own choice of words.

He twitched. Maybe it was in anticipation of the rain outside. Maybe he just felt uncomfortable in his own skin. Reaching down, he tossed aside the chair holding the back door closed.

"It was nice knowing you. If the kids like Claude are right, maybe we'll see each other again."

Ty left, checking his compass as he did so. There was some high ground on the North side of the island. High enough to make it quick.

((Tyrell Lahti continued in Tempest of Seasons))

[Primrosette]

((Sorry guys, posting to leave and to avoid activity problems!))

Drew felt like most of the things that Ty had said to him before leaving had been a blur and he was now left with about three girls. Drew felt like he couldn't stay there with the girls as he wasn't sure if staying with them would make his condition any better and he didn't know if he could trust them. It was strange how he seemed more willing to trust Ty over innocent people. Maybe it was because of how Ty reacted to the news of what Erika did and Drew was a fool for feeling sympathy. Okay, he knew Ty was a bad person for killing two people but... Drew couldn't stop thinking that there was a layer of goodness under Ty's façade.

Me...? Tough...? I'm not a strong person, Ty. But I have to try....

He looked back at the girl that was still in the room and he forced himself to get up to his feet, feeling his body wanting to go back down. "I....I have to leave too. I can't stay as I-I need to find my friends and I think I should d...do it alone."

He got on his shirt with difficulty, he put the blanket around himself to protect his injured arm and then he picked up his bag to put on his good shoulder.

"...Bye."

He then quickly made his way out of there, hoping to find his friends before he would.... die.

((Drew Woods continued in Everlasting))

[Kermit]

((activity post go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!))

Ty answered the question. Claudeson had stolen his gun and almost shot him in the head.

It was a good thing they hadn't found Claude, then.

Ty left. The other kid left.

"...take care?" Val said. This whole thing felt rather abrupt. She slipped back inside, and patted Jessica on the back. "Good, uh, work in there. You got your wish, out of the rain we go."

[Brackie]

It was a strange thing suddenly existing in a world where everyone decided you were wrong.

All Jessica wanted to do was make up for the stupid mistake she made a few days ago, and suddenly the world shifted around her. People didn't want to help each other anymore. People wanted to hunt down killers, exact revenge, monologue about themselves. It was similar to how Jessica felt several years ago when she shifted out of step with the world she used to know, only this time there was a very good chance that flecks of it would spin into nowhere.

Ty left, leaving his answers for their Claude questions. Drew left, no fanfare. It was back to the three of them, the three it had been since she's stumbled into their camp.

Val said something about the good work she'd done, and Jessica couldn't tell her intentions. Was she being sarcastic? Had the world shifted again, and it was time to mock Jessica for who she was?

She didn't even notice how often she was questioning something she rarely ever even thought about before.

"...yeah."

Jessica gave herself a pregnant pause, before walking over to the couch and sitting down. It was warm, as though someone had been laying in it all night.

"...it's good not being in the rain."

[General Goose]

Camille waited until both of the previous occupants had disappeared into the rainy horizon before she finally allowed herself the comfort of stepping underneath shelter. Shaking to try and dislodge some of the water, she sat in the corner of the room.

"I...did I mention I received a gun as my roll?" Camille murmured, fiddling with her bag, running a perfunctory inventory check to set at ease the ludicrous paranoid notion that somehow she might have been robbed in that time, and to ease more logical concerns that she had packed poorly and unwisely.

"Because apologies if I hadn't. It's not the sort of thing I set out to advertise, and telling you guys must have slipped my mind." It was genuine. Camille understood how suspicious that might have been, but she had forgotten, at every juncture, that she had probably not shared her rather advantageous weapon with her travelling companions. There was always something else - either more pressing or less distressing - to discuss.

"...I'm happy staying here for a while," Camille continued, looking around the room just in case there was some logic-defying trap or any unwelcome surprises that had been left behind for them.

[Kermit]

Val was a bit disappointed that Ty'd left, but... this could work. Camille had a gun, apparently, and that meant the group had at least some way to defend itself. The house could be a base of operations, of sorts.

The only thing Val still needed to find for all of this to work was people. You couldn't have a mass suicide without a mass to commit suicide. She'd been keeping the whole mass suicide thing on the down-low. It was the kind of thing that people could be eased into but not directly talked into.

"Mmm... we can - we can..." she snapped her fingers idly, trying to remember the word. "...fortify! We can stay here for a while, make things defensible. Let people come to us."

[Brackie]

The fact that Camille had a gun on her the entire time they'd been together should have been...something, to Jessica. A shock, a betrayal, a helpful tool to move them on their way to survive. But Jessica didn't feel anything, other than the fact that Camille now had a gun, and that was what it was now.

She was still trying to process the fact that everyone she tried to find, everyone she wanted to talk to, or be with, or find, or keep safe, they all just wanted to run off on their own. And every time it happened, Jessica's own mistake kept coming back with a clearer and clearer face, and Jessica couldn't really react to it other than the inevitable disappointment she knew she'd feel every time. It sucked. She wasn't used to people suddenly wanting to die, or wanting to kill, or believing she wasn't worth staying around for any positive reason. It made her feel awful. There were moments she was beginning to question if Valerija or Camille were going to abandon her as well.

But it wasn't going to be now, because they were going to hunker down, apparently. Stay in this house until...until whenever, apparently. Maybe until the rain stopped. Maybe until rescue came, or everyone stopped killing. Jessica really didn't know, and she was beginning to know she would never know.

"Okay."

--

Valerija and Camille did their thing. They did what they had to do, followed their ideals and ideas, and Jessica helped out where she could. But nothing filled the emptiness. They talked, they chatted, about themselves, with the only real difference on Jessica's side being the fact that she could no longer pretend to smile, pretend to keep her head up, pretend they would run into any of them again. Oliver, Diego, Princess, Drew, Claudeson, Tyrell, and Stephanie were all long gone, could just as easily be dead as Christine, and she wouldn't know until the next morning.

Maybe it was better that way.

As Jessica took the couch for the night, listening to the endless rain rattle the roofings, she hoped she would feel better in the morning.

[Brackie]

But when Jessica opened her eyes in the morning to the sound of the announcements, hearing them pass, she did not feel better at all.

[decoy73]

((Stephanie McDonald continued from Gimme, Gimme Shelter, or I'm Gonna Fade Away))

Called it. Lorenzo killed Emil Van Zant. Quinn and Blaise were still killing people, but more importantly, she looked terrible. It had been yet another boring day in the rain and humidity, and with the dirt caked on her body and clothes, it was starting to become a tad difficult to pull off a decent look.

Stephanie looked over to the set of houses that actually looked like they deserved to remain standing. Well, at least she could do something about herself other than walk around and pick up a rock. She stepped to the door of one that looked good and knocked.

[General Goose]

Camille slept using her bag as a pillow. It was uncomfortable, but while she trusted her travelling partners enough to share a room with them and arrange night watches and the like, she couldn't suppress that perplexing worry that they might take her gun or that, less depressingly but still with the same end consequence, someone might slip inside and steal her supplies. Losing her supplies was one form of suffering that Camille could mitigate and prevent, and as much as possible she tried channeling her fear and unease to that particular focus. So she slept on her bag - she was a light sleeper - as it was a subtle way of keeping watch of her supplies.

She wished she could write. Camille expected there to be some kind of pen and paper salvageable on the island, but she preferred typing. She preferred backing her writings up straight away, to the cloud or whatever. That was the one hobby that she missed the most. It would be cathartic right now. Serve as a valuable outlet, a way for her to still feel useful and proactive even though by nature her reaction to everything around her was reactive, hoping that there would be some miraculous intervention, some deus ex machina, that put an end to this atrocity and allowed everyone left to cope with the already grotesque scars that they had endured.

Camille hated that she remembered every name. That she remembered their faces. That she remembered the flippant and abusive nature with which their names had been whittled down to in the announcement. And it just got worse with every announcement. By the time that the morning's announcement had ended, she was hugging her bag. It was awkward and uncomfortable and certainly not comforting in any conventional sense, but it was all she could do. Screw writing, she'd be happy if this bag was replaced with one of her own - perhaps that travel rucksack her cousins had gifted her that she had ended up using more as extra storage space. She liked that one. Maybe that'd be more appropriate. But no. She was stuck with this awful bag and two people that, try as she might, she wasn't really clicking with in a way that resembled anything more than convenience and pragmatism.

Then there was a knock on the door, and she bolted up.

"Hello?" she called out, managing to get her voice clear and steady, though unable to keep out the emotion that was reaching breaking point. "A-are - who are you? This is Camille." She supposed that if her companions wanted to offer up their own identities, that was up to them. And, perhaps, if this newcomer was seeking out solitary targets, a trap might be the just desert that was required.

[Kermit]

Another wasted day.

Another day spent doing nothing.

As time passed, Val grew restless. This wasn't the time for just sitting around and contemplating facts that everyone already knew.

And yet.

She couldn't do anything else.


She was a failure.

_____

She didn't sleep much.

At one point during the night, she snuck off to a private room, took her helmet off, and repeatedly, making downward motions, stabbed a couch with the helmet's spike like she was a Mayan priest and the helmet was a sacrificial dagger. She imagined the couch was her own face.

She knew she looked crazy but she cared more about the catharsis.

_____

The announcements.

Again.

Twenty-four hours the world could never get back.

More lost assets. Clay would have been useful as an orator, Bryan as a mediator. Claudeson had killed Bryan. Val took solace in the fact that her decision not to actually pursue Claude had been validated.

It wasn't the only solace she could take from today's announcements. On the brightest side of things, Teresa had stabbed Reuben to death!


There was a knock on the door.

An opportunity or a crisis. Both, maybe.

Camille revealed her presence. Val looked over to Jessica. "Get in cover." She whispered, before turning to Camille and miming the action of aiming a gun at the door. Then, she scrambled to her feet and stood next to the door, in a position she thought would be just out of sight from the perspective of the door when open. She took the helmet off and held it like it was some kind of pointy, extra-short battering ram, cognizant of the possibility that if the person was dangerous she'd maybe need to stab them if things went wrong.