You Gotta Roll With It, You Gotta Take Your Time

[decoy73]

((Christina Rennes continued from Little By Little))

Sakurako was dead. Stephanie was dead. That was something. She knew that if they had been safe at home, she'd be screaming at Stephanie and Jessica to quit cumming so loudly. And getting a good look at their tongues shoved up the others' birth canals while complaining about the paper thin walls in the process.

Yell about sex, get exposed to it anyways. Works both ways.

Either way, their original hiding spot was blocked off under penalty of detonation, so there was no returning to there. Christina sighed.

"So, getting back to what I was saying before we got shot at, what I said was stupid, and I'll try to be better with my words."

[MurderWeasel]

((Darlene Silva continued from Little By Little))

More than a day had passed since the group came under attack. Darlene still didn't know who had done it.

The retreat had been tense and hurried at first, and then just tense, and finally tense and boring. Every moment, it had seemed inevitable that a second round of fighting would begin, inevitable that gunfire rattle from nowhere or some maniac hop out from behind a tree with the very same baseball bat that had torn Darlene's ear and sent her sprawling. But nothing had happened. There wasn't even much left to happen. There weren't many of them left overall, and once the trio had moved further from the lake they'd found themselves in the vast woodlands, wild and dense and with just about no landmarks. There was no candy trail to follow this time. There was just endless spans of dirt and grass and trees, confusing and hard to see through yet concealing and beautiful in its own way.

Darlene had not sung anymore. The time for songs seemed gone, for now at least. How many times had she thought that and then caught herself humming something or mumbling lyrics to herself? She didn't tell herself it would never happen again, not this time, but the urge just hadn't struck her.

The morning report carried new information along with the typical noise. At first Darlene expected it to be of no consequence beyond possibly revealing whether their blind fire had somehow struck home and felled their attacker, and this matter was indeed cleared up (unsurprisingly, they had accomplished nothing but scaring off their assailant, but that was enough). She had to remind herself to pay attention to that part, though, because of the other revelations.

Sakurako was the very first name listed. The girl apparently ran out of luck and got shot. Had she been lucky to begin with? Was it luck to survive the explosion after taking as much damage as she had, or was luck having moved further from the point of impact and having nothing to show for it but an intermittent tinnitus ring? Darlene had thought that might be all it was when she heard something in the distance, not so long after the girl's departure. Tinnitus, or gunfire. After finding out what happened, she was even less sure which was the truth.

Nick was gone. Darlene didn't really know him but he had put Beryl down, so she was aware of him in a different way than a lot of others might be. Abe knew the truth too. Was anyone else left alive who did?

Arizona had killed some guy named Garren. Darlene had heard the name at school and thought it was weird, and she had this feeling that the boy had been unsavory somehow but couldn't remember why or what he looked like. She was pretty sure he hadn't killed before, but they said he grew a spine so he probably attacked Arizona. And even if he didn't, he had definitely deserved it, Darlene was sure. He had to have. Arizona wouldn't have shot him otherwise.

Three in a row was the longest stretch of information on the announcements mattering that Darlene thought she'd had this entire time.

Number four was a dud, but then five more than made up for it. Arizona had killed again. She'd killed Michael.

If there had been any hint of doubt about the Garren situation, it went away entirely upon that revelation. Darlene knew what Michael was like. She knew what he'd done, and she knew he'd deserved it, and she could've—she should've tried to do it herself, maybe, but probably she wouldn't have managed anything anyways, or maybe she would've just gone and gotten herself killed. Arizona got him because that was what she was like. She was cool and tough and Jonah had loved her a lot and so of course she'd put things right for him.

Another one Darlene didn't care about, and then Stephanie was dead, courtesy of one of the names that turned up so much that no face came to mind for. And then, then another familiar one on the side of the killers. Ace did a "team kill." He'd been into sports, but the framing overall sounded less than great, like he murdered a friend. But then, the people running this tried to make it suspicious, right? So maybe they weren't saying how he had to. Darlene glanced over at his shoes hanging off her bag, and wondered if his feet were hurting.

Was this what caring felt like? Was this what everyone else had been going through every single morning? Darlene did not like it one bit!

Then again, maybe she was just overly edgy. Maybe her emotions were out of whack, or her mindset. Mostly she walked just fine without tripping, but now and then she almost drifted off mid-step and felt like she might pitch face-first into the dirt.

More than a day had passed since the group came under attack. Darlene hadn't slept a wink.

Probably none of them had. She was more used to it than most, she thought, but at a certain point it didn't matter much. There was a big difference between sitting at her desk not sleeping while pulling her head back up every time it drifted towards the keyboard and reading the same wiki page again and again and knowing she was doing that even though she couldn't stop, between that and just spending all night listening to animals and wind rustling leaves and snapping branches as she clutched her gun and bit her lips and pulled little hairs out of her arms so that the pain would keep her conscious just a little longer.

It was easier when it was light out, at least. She'd always gotten a second wind from the day, had been able to somehow sort of parse first period math class when she could barely tie her own shoes, and the return of the horrible rain at least removed any chance of her getting too comfy and passing out. This was another point in favor of the woods, too: the canopy above their heads was nowhere near perfect, but at least it took a couple hours for Darlene's clothes to fully soak through. At least it meant there was some source of water to be found, now that the lake was gone.

At one point, when nothing much was happening, she turned her head up and stood with her mouth open and her tongue out until some drops landed in the right spot instead of going up her nose, and they were better than lake water but still tasted gritty and gross. She wished she had root beer instead. Her glasses were always speckled with water now, little pools obscuring the world in front of her even as they removed some of the need for constant cleaning.

Her bandages were getting soggy, too.

The announcements had played hours ago, it felt like. The rain wasn't letting up, and the three of them had been quiet, and Darlene missed conversation but not really being a part of it herself. And at the same time, she sort of wanted to get a little space, just for a moment. Just to, to check her bandages and maybe to find a bush because it had been a few hours since her last bathroom break, which was just about the only time she was out of sight of the others. Maybe it was time to change her shirt again, too, because the t-shirt was probably now grosser than the stuff she'd taken off days ago for being too gross. She briefly considered putting her sweater back on before she realized it was gone, gone forever now in fact, up by the waterfall serving as Max's pillow. The dog was gone forever now too, and it felt bad realizing she couldn't go back even though she probably never would've.

She hoped they were under some cover. She couldn't remember. Max had been leaning against a tree, and the dog had been watching over him, but was it a tree with big branches and thick leaves, or an old ragged one with dead twigs everywhere and peeling bark? It wouldn't really matter, of course. Max was dead and the dog would do its job in rain or snow as well as in the sun, but she would just feel bad if they were getting super wet. The thought was strong, circling around and around in her head, feeling ever more important, and she wanted it to go away because her throat was tight like she was going to cry, but also she wanted to keep it because remembering Max and the dog let her think about those happier moments before so many things fell apart.

When Christina spoke up, Darlene jolted, her breath catching. She rotated her head quickly, wildly, but then laughed a little, because it was just Christina, it was just... just the same conversation that Darlene hadn't been a big part of the first time.

That was it, then. Just like that, it came to her. This was between Abe and Christina, and Darlene wanted some space anyways, and to change her shirt, and maybe they'd sort stuff out and she'd clear her head and when they came back together in five minutes or ten it would all be much nicer and better, and they could be happy and sing again, or at least laugh from something besides relief that it was still just them and not somebody else coming to get them.

Until, of course, someone did come around and try to murder them all again. How long would it be this time? A minute? An hour? Half a day?

"I, uh, I was," Darlene stammered, cutting directly into the other girl's presumably-heartfelt apology and feeling a little bad but it was for a good reason, right?

"I was, I need to use, um, I'm going to go find a bush and put on a fresh shirt," she managed. "I'll be, I'll be right back. Stay here please. I'll be right back and I'll listen and I'll come if you yell."

She tried to give them a brave smile, like she had last time and the time before, and just like then her lips came up only at the corners and only for a second. Hopefully, hopefully things would get better. She could barely make out the faces of the pair through her water-flecked glasses, so she pulled them off and wiped them on her shirt and put them back. Mostly this just changed where the speckles were.

With a quick wave, Darlene headed towards the underbrush. It was a little sparse here, so she'd need to go a few hundred feet, but she'd walk in a straight line and pay good attention and worst case she'd yell. She wasn't going to lose them. Not after everything they'd faced so far.

((Darlene Silva continued in Dead Bxdies in the Lake Part II))

[dmboogie]

((Abe had gotten a pretty solid understanding of the woods by this point.))

Not in any like useful way, he was never gonna be on any type of survivorman shit. Instead he just got a lot of deja vu, like, how often was he retracing his steps, here? He kept thinking he recognized a specific spot, like he was gonna turn a corner and be right back on day one and see Marco snoozing on the ground, and if he had to do it all over again, well, he wouldn’t have left behind the Dew, haha.

Right then, taking cover from the rain under a tree, he coulda sworn that he was standing right where he’d been that morning when the announcements had come on all like ‘hey did you forget Axel was dead? well, sorry, buddy, you won’t believe it, but he is absolutely dead,’ which was a stupid thing to swear about, like, there were trees and there was a log on the ground, that described half the fucking island, the woods weren’t that big but they weren’t that small either.

The fact that he was able to worry about all that useless bullshit was probably a good sign, because it was something to think about that wasn’t just being on edge constantly. He was still alert, obviously, still keeping an eye out for weird noises, one hand on his gun, but giving himself rope burn from holding onto the tension for hours on end wouldn’t do him any favors. He’d even gotten some shuteye, last night.

He hadn’t exactly planned on sticking with the group for another full day, and he sure as hell hadn’t felt confident about falling asleep with Christina around (best case scenario, he woke up one gun lighter, worst case, well, he didn’t wake up) but there’d never been a clean chance to break free, and before he realized it, the sun was setting and it’d soon be too dark to make an easy getaway.

It’s not like he really needed to leave yet, anyways, even though he could, at a moment’s notice. His near-headshot experience showed that he was still getting plenty of benefit from being a social animal. Two people shooting at you was scarier than one person shooting at you, right? Simple geometry. Christina kind of cancelled Darlene out but he was pretty sure the group was still a net positive - the reason he’d been able to sleep at all was ‘cause he knew Darlene was awake and wouldn’t be a fan of Christina fucking with his shit.

The announcements had happened at some point, and as those things went he was a fan, ‘cause any announcement that didn’t have your name on it was a good one. He was bummed about Sakurako, but he’d resigned himself to never seeing her again when she’d ghosted them, and at that point it didn’t really matter if she’d meant to ghost them before she’d ghosted, y’know? At least this way he didn’t have anything to do with it.

Nick was dead, too, and all the damage control he’d done for the dude was so long ago it felt almost nostalgic. He wondered if Darlene felt thankful that he’d taken all the blame for her, but he wasn’t gonna ask, ‘cause he could do the right thing occasionally, or at least stop himself from doing the wrong thing, and maybe that was the same thing?

Everything else was business as usual. All the killers sounded like repeat offenders, even though some of them were obviously more notorious than others. No suicides or even accidents. They’d probably all been filtered out.

Time passed uneventfully and soggily after that, and continued to be uneventful as Christina decided then was the time to circle back to something Abe had honestly already forgotten about, which was probably for the best for her, he’d been kinda pissed? His attention was caught by Darlene excusing herself, not for the first time, obviously, but she made it sound like she intended to be gone a while, maybe she just needed to take a righteous dump.

“We’ll stay put, just, like, don’t be an idiot and die somehow?” Abe called out after her, which wasn’t really encouraging but was also probably the nicest thing he was ever gonna say to anyone that was left.

He tried to ignore how convenient it’d be if that was the last time he ever saw her. That way, Abe wouldn’t have to kill her, and then he could just… y’know, deal with Christina, in whatever way felt right at the time. Go back to being a free agent, killing time until it was time to kill. By like any objective metric that was the mindset he needed to be in but that didn’t make it any more fun? When Sakurako left he shoulda just sprinted away in the opposite direction, he was getting in way too fucking deep.

For once talking to Christina was a welcome distraction.

“Well, we all know I’m not the most diplomatic guy in the world, so, y’know. All good.”

[Cactus]

After hours upon hours of thinking about it, hyping himself up for it, and trying to convince his own mind that there was some sort of honour in what he was outwardly saying he needed to do, everything came crashing down in a mass of sound and fury.

It was all over; Michael Froese was dead.

((Morgan Dragosavich continued from "Listen, there's a moment when everything—"))

Staggered against a tree somewhere deep in the woods, Morgan felt as though Wyatt had broken his ribs all over again. There had been an entire day at which they'd meandered around in search of any and all sounds. Gunfire, screaming, even the muted tones of a private conversation would have been something that they could have grasped onto in the hopes of finding one of their targets.

Their targets. The words sounded so foreign to Morgan even still, even after all of the shit they'd been through or the discussion they'd had about it. Blaise was a target. Justin was a target. Erika was a target. They had done horrible things to good people and the justification made sense. Who the hell were they to him? Classmates, bare acquaintances at most? He couldn't have given two solitary fucks if any of them died if it would bring back Henry, Toby, Ariana, Dante, Lizzie — any of his fallen friends.

But there was one friend who was a tougher nut to crack. Michael was one of those people who had been doing the horrible things to good people and even had a hand in what was probably the biggest regret of Morgan's life to this point. There was no good reason for him not to want to see Michael dead. Out of anger and pain, he'd even vowed as such. Aurelien was down with that, his own quest for vengeance had expanded from the murderer of his beloved to anyone who lived in the same mental headspace. But Morgan wore his internal conflict barely underneath his dirty and tattered t-shirt, the hissing of the orange pixelated cat warding off the spectre of his own shame at denouncing his friend — his best friend.

That didn't matter anymore. Morgan would never meet up with Michael and be faced to make such an impossible decision. There would be no more cryptic discussion, no more of Michael insisting that he was a serial killer or that he was beyond saving, even though he was obviously terrified and remorseful at what he'd done. It was all over. Arizona Butler, Jonah's pretty girlfriend, had seen to that.

Morgan got it, for sure. Jonah had been one of the people that Michael had killed, a friend of his even, and that Arizona had found her own brand of vengeance wasn't at all surprising. That was how it would go from here on out. Nearly everyone still alive had been responsible for something awful that had happened and penance would be extracted from them all. Some were murderers, others had probably abandoned friends or stolen from their allies. Morgan felt that his own crime was worse than any of that. He felt it deep within his bones — it was a betrayal. Of who he was, of his friendship. Morgan had fallen victim to the game just as much as anyone else, and writing off Michael completely as he had was going to leave a hole in his soul bigger than any gunshot or stab wound.

Upon hearing the announcement, the two hadn't really moved much. He hadn't said it, but he was sure Aurelien could see how he'd been impacted by the whole thing. Morgan was sure he got it. Aurelien may have been furious and vengeful himself, but he wasn't stupid. The two were bound together, a bond forged in the hells of the game, but they were still just teenagers. None of this would be easy for seasoned adults, let alone kids.

"Okay," Morgan finally managed after hours of silence. "We should get—"

Finally having taken a moment to look at Aurelien, something well back in the woods moved. It was only in his peripheral vision and he couldn't see details, but the type of motion was unmistakable.

They weren't alone.

"Shit, Aurelien — get down," he hissed, crouching down behind a tree. His heart started to pound. If this was one of the big killers, it was very possible that his own life was coming closer towards its end. Morgan pushed the thought out of his mind and pointed behind his friend. It looked like at least one person, maybe two, he couldn't tell.

"There."

[decoy73]

So Abe was willing to talk. That was something, at least, and Darlene decided to take a piss, which was great for her. At least she'd be able to see what he was doing.

"Yeah, whatever. We can bullshit. So, if you end up going home, what will you do first?" she asked. Anything to keep his eyes on her, though she squinted. "No, wait." She pointed. What the hell? "Do you remember ever seeing a shopping cart on the island?" She started walking towards what looked like, yes, a shopping cart, as if there was a Whole Foods on the island.

[Pippi]

((Aurelien Valter continued from "Listen, there's a moment when everything—"))

This was not Aurelien’s place to say anything.

The silence, and the stillness, was painfully crushing. He could feel it, the itching inside of him, desperate to move the moment his exhaustion and aching had faded away. Another day had passed with little progress of note; they hadn’t found anybody, killer or innocent. And with each day that passed, the drive, the need to find a killer grew stronger and stronger within him. The sole comfort he could take was that they only had about two-to-three days left anyway, not enough time for that drive to fully take over, but that was the coldest of cold comforts.

But when Morgan had slumped against the trunk of the closest tree, barely able to keep himself upright without the woodland flora’s assistance, Aurelien had mirrored him, leaning against a tree nearby, staring into space, letting his mace rest momentarily, and stop his crossbow from digging into his back.

He’d heard the announcement. Morgan had too. Everybody on the island knew that Michael Froese was now dead. Aurelien couldn’t lie and say he gave a damn about the boy’s passing. He was a liar, and he was a murderer, and he had too much blood on his hands for any of his apologies or regrets to hold any damn meaning in Aurelien’s eyes. The only disappointment he held was the same for all the other murderers they’d missed, for Quinn and Tyrell - that he hadn’t had a hand in taking Michael down.

But regardless of whether Morgan shared any of those feelings, regardless of if he’d managed to prepare himself fully for headhunting Michael… the two had still been best friends, once upon a time. So even as the hours dragged on, and Aurelien could feel them bearing down on him and the heat in the pressure cooker growing and growing, he didn’t move, and he didn’t speak, and he didn’t do anything but wait.

Aurelien was pushing himself up and away from the tree as soon as Morgan spoke, his eagerness to leave readily apparent, which meant that as soon as the other boy hissed out his warning, he was off balance, stumbling to the ground rather than ducking down, stabbing his hands against sharp leaves and twigs in the undergrowth. He sucked in air through his teeth, trying desperately to stay silent, as he peered around the tree, trying to follow Morgan’s line of sight.

“I see,” he murmured, squinting, straining his neck to get the best possible angle. “There’s… two of them, there.”

He paused, for just a moment.

“Two that I can see, anyway.”

Another pause.

“Neither of them look like anyone we should be looking out for. Definitely not Justin or Blaise or, or Erika or Ace.”

He could feel each and every beat of his heart, accelerated, eager to move.

“Although if it’s Diego, I wouldn’t have a clue…”

[dmboogie]

“You get fuckin’ bashed in the head when I wasn’t looking or something, ‘cause that’s Sakurako’s,” Abe said, immediately revoking any diplomatic immunity he had left, but c’mon. Like in all fairness Christina had only been around her for like ten minutes but how the hell had she lived that long without getting a real keen sense of environmental awareness?

Speaking of environmental awareness, for a second he thought he heard rustling in the bushes behind him, and he did a quick lil’ gamer 180 to check if it was Darlene or someone he needed to shoot, and the answer turned out to be ‘a chipmunk probably’, ‘cause he didn’t see shit and the noises had stopped. He lowered his gun, but not his guard, ‘cause after all the scrambling he’d done yesterday he had very little patience for the thought of people scoping him out through the trees.

He followed behind Christina, scoping out the scene, which was pretty clearcut, now that he was closer. The cart was on its side, its bag cargo having obviously fallen out of it. Someone was lying on the ground a short distance away. Most of her was covered by a sweatshirt, but no prizes for guessing who was under it.

Damn it. Abe hadn’t particularly wanted to see Sakurako’s corpse, but like, that wasn’t the issue here, what he wanted to see even less was Christina picking up Sakurako’s gun. If she found it, he wouldn’t have any good reason to keep it away from her other than ‘when the time comes I want it to be very easy for you to die’ which wouldn’t exactly fly. If worst came to worst he might need to shoot her and or get the hell outta dodge, with all due apologies to Darlene.

But hey, Sakurako’s murderer was one of the usual suspects, you didn’t get to kill that many people by leaving perfectly good guns behind for anyone to pick up, it was probably fine.

“Maybe don’t fuck with her bags, she set up a fun bear trap surprise for anyone who tried poking around her stuff, and I’m pretty sure you wanna keep both your arms, right?” Abe said, nervously trying to look everywhere at once - gotta keep an eye on Christina to see if she picked anything up, gotta scan the ground to try and find the gun first if it existed, gotta glance at the woods to make sure no one was coming to get him.

The situation was feeling uncomfortably like some sorta turning point and he had to consciously fight to stop himself from just bolting, to hell with their magical friendship unicorn hour.

[Cactus]

Eyes following along as the two people walked towards something that he couldn't see, Morgan's heart did its best to try and alert everyone on the island to his presence. Squinting, he tried to make out some facial features. From the distance he was at and the angle he had on the two, Aurelien was definitely correct. None of the large-number killers were standing before them, but that didn't at all mean that they weren't dangerous. Just the opposite, actually. Either of them could be just waiting for an opportunity to pull the trigger on a classmate that they looked as weaker, or easy prey.

Some people just hadn't found an excuse yet.

That bristled at him; he had decided to leave being a victim behind him and he wasn't about to pick that particular mantle up again. The pistol came into his hand seemingly by itself and while he wasn't in any particular hurry to actually take strides towards their proclaimed mission, at this point the best defense was a good offense. He'd much rather shoot someone and live to regret it than fail to do so and die regretting his inaction.

"I don't— no, that's not him," Morgan hissed as the male tossed a wayward glance into the forest, exposing his face for him to see. "That's Abe Watanabe, I think."

As the name escaped his lips, a chill ran down his back. Abe wasn't blameless; Morgan recalled hearing his name on the announcements. What was more? He'd actually gone and shot his girlfriend, the host of the biggest party of the year. Morgan had been at #Swiftball. Forrest had been blasted out of her mind on all sorts of drugs, probably having nary an idea that she'd be dead mere months later, killed by the guy she was seeing while attending an insane terrorist's idea of one-upmanship.

His shoulders fell; that was too easy an assumption. These terrorists weren't insane. If anything, they were too rational, too sane. Escape would have been easy, then. He and Aurelien wouldn't be running a fool's errand that would surely get them killed, trying to decide if it was smart to even approach fellow classmates. If these people were insane, the lot of them could have banded together and done something.

Instead, they'd likely just die.

Morgan pushed those thoughts away from his mind as quickly as they entered it. It was not the time, nor the place for fatalistic ideas to start dictating his actions. That would be a betrayal of everything he cared about, all of his friends who weren't here right now. Looking over at Aurelien, he shrugged.

"What should we do? If we announce ourselves, maybe they don't startle?"

It was a bad idea amidst a sea of bad ideas and it was the one thought he had that didn't start with them raising their pistols and taking aim.

[decoy73]

That was actually semi-expected. While Christina could have fired back with the fact that she hadn't had the opportunity to see a shopping cart in the dark when she was more focused on Abe not shooting her. But either way, there was a body with the cart, and there were bags by the body, which looked familiar, because ... oh, right. That's who the body was. The bear trap was something she hadn't known about, though.

"Oh. Thanks." Christina stuck her stick under one of the bags and pushed. It tipped over without incident. She opened it, saw the holy duckbills that's a lot of ammo, closed it, and picked it up. Next bag was poked and tipped over as before. She opened it, noted the food inside, and was about to close it before she saw the pistol right by the bag, putting the gun in the bag before closing it.

Sakurako (so that's what her name was) ... her body, anyway, almost looked like she was at peace. She remembered how Sakurako never even used Christina's first name - of course, Christina used to have an identical twin, and in all fairness, Christina never referred to Sakurako by name. Christina shook her head before poking the last bag with her stick and seeing the machine gun in Sakurako's hands. That was a game changer. She just had to check what was in this other bag first. Unzip, click

Christina hissed as she put the index finger of her right hand into her mouth.

"GYYAAAAAAHHHHHH."

That was from the pain in her left hand as her body finally realized that her palm was caught in a fucking bear trap. She looked through the tears as she could have sworn that she saw blood from where the teeth pierced her.

[Pippi]

“No. We don’t need to announce ourselves at all.”

Aurelien glanced across at Morgan, facial expression as even and calm as he could make it. Slowly, he got to his feet, back pressed against the tree, still trying to remain hidden from the two figures deeper in the forest. He felt his hand come to rest upon the handle of the mace, rolling his shoulders back and brushing the dirt off of his knees.

“Abe isn’t someone we should be targeting, and whoever is with him, they’re also not one of the big killers.”

Of course, he seriously wanted to know what had happened between Abe and Forrest, what exactly had caused the boy to be the only one walking away from that encounter. He’d been to Swiftball, along with the other 90% of his year, he knew the two had been dating. Neither of them had seemed like the type of person to kill, even in self-defence, if he had to be totally frank. If they’d had more time, if he’d had more patience, maybe he could have discovered the truth. But if Abe was attempting to play, if he had killed Forrest in cold blood, then sure, he would be added to the list of targets; but no way was he going to be leapfrogging Blaise, or Erika, or any of the other priorities.

“Any time we spend on people who’ve only killed once, or not at all, is a serious drain on energy and a potential hazard to our safety.”

He was sure that Morgan knew as well as he did that any encounter that they’d enter with weapons drawn was an encounter they might not walk out of. You didn’t get to be a multi-time killer with only a sharp stick as your weapon, or an unwillingness to stand up to people advancing on you with their own firearms. If they were going to go down swinging, best to do so swinging at Blaise.

“Let’s move. Quickly.”

He grabbed his mace, hefting it out of the earth, starting to move as soon as it was balanced and secure in his hands, not waiting for Morgan to protest or argue against it. He was some distance away when he heard the scream, and he paused, glancing over his shoulder. His body, and his instincts, urged him to keep turning, to go back and investigate and help. Maybe if he’d waited for a split-second longer, he would have listened to them. Maybe if he had, he’d have made the decision that would have saved him.

But instead, with singular vision and focus, he looked forwards once more, and made his way out of the woods.

((Aurelien Valter continued in And Now Those Days Are Over And We Are All Ghosts))

[Cactus]

The moment that he heard the shriek come from the two people over there, Morgan knew exactly what was going to happen. Whether he wanted to go over and help the girl out of what looked to be some sort of booby-trap or not, it didn't matter. Aurelien was hyper-vigilant and wasn't about to go and waste his time on helping someone out, especially when there could be other villains lurking about. Abe was a killer, sure, but for whatever reason that he had for doing what he'd done, Morgan didn't think that they'd have the chance to ask.

He'd only killed one person; his own girlfriend. In most countries and places in the world, that was an open-and-shut court case, but this particular mental trial was one that he didn't have all the evidence for. While Abe was someone who technically stood in their way of surviving, he wasn't someone that was a problem for them. Yet.

God, it felt so wrong to think of his fellow classmates like that. After almost two weeks of being guided by his paranoia and survival instincts, Morgan was exhausted. They had goals, but the fact that those goals were both foolhardy and insane was one that his mind was keeping tucked away. Aurelien had his plan, he was determined. It was something to cling to when all else seemed to be nothing but misery. So when he said his piece, turned away and fled into the woods, Morgan wordlessly followed.

Any plan was better than no plan; better than rolling over and waiting to die. Victims did that. That wasn't him, not anymore. Morgan had always been good at making plans; sticking to them was always the problem. So often in his life, he'd lose interest or focus and find himself off on a tangent, abandoning his plan altogether. This time would be different, though. This time, he would focus on their plan.

It was all that they had left.

He just wished that it wasn't likely about to get both of them killed.

((Morgan Dragosavich continued in And Now Those Days Are Over and We Are All Ghosts))

[dmboogie]

Y’know, for a second there it seemed like things would turn out fine. Abe saw Christina pick up the gun, and he tensed a bit as he stood behind her, ready to duck for cover if she twirled around and looked like she was about to start blasting, but nope, she just threw it in a bag, which was a baffling strategic choice when there were weird noises in the woods, but whatever, it’s not like he wanted her to be holding it, and said noises hadn’t tried to start any shit yet, so it was really all good.

And, y’know, Abe didn’t really think whatever supplies were in the bags were worth the risk, but it looked like Christina was being careful with them at least, poking them with a stick and tipping them over and shit, so he figured she probably had it handled, so he started scanning the woods again, just in case, ‘cause he could’ve sworn he heard someone talking, that time, but five goddamn seconds later Christina was screaming her entire head off and it didn’t take a genius to guess why.

Really, from Abe’s point of view, he’d gone above and beyond reasonable death game expectations for even warning her about the bear trap in the first place. If she was that fuckin’ determined to squander his show of good-will, well, what the hell did he owe her? Even less than he had owed her before, which was nothing, which meant she owed him, right? She should be begging him to save her worthless ass. Like, it’d be wasted breath, but he’d at least appreciate the thought.

“Hey, Christina, I’ve got a funny joke for you, stop me if you’ve heard it before, alright,” he deadpanned in between her various screams and curses, which like objectively speaking was some psycho shit to be saying when a fellow human being who hadn’t really done anything wrong to him was in excruciating pain, but like, he genuinely didn’t care, sue him.

“Whaddya call someone who sticks her hand into a bear trap? A bear trap that, I can’t emphasize this enough, she knew was probably there?” He paced around the scene in circles, a respectable distance away from the epicenter of the disaster. The gun bag was pretty tempting, but he didn’t wanna get smacked in the face with a bear trap if she started flailing or whatever.

“A dumbass who’s gonna fucking die in like a day! I’m honestly amazed you lived this long! Kinda offended, actually!” He was incredulously raising his voice at this point, ‘cause even his practiced unaffected facade could only take so much ludicrous bullshit.

[decoy73]

Abe was taunting her. Which was fucking awesome - yeah, hey, why not be a dick to someone who was literally screaming due to her hand being caught in a trap? Christina just grunted as she tried to open the trap with her remaining hand. The goddamn trap simply stayed put on her hand.

"Yeah. I'm sorry, it was stupid of me. I was careless. Could you please disarm this fucking thing so I can get my hand out?"

[dmboogie]

“Yeah?”

Abe paused. Let the suspense build for a couple seconds. If he wanted to continue his happy make-believe life of being friends with Darlene and tolerating Christina, yeah, getting the trap off her was the obvious good-guy thing to do, but he’d also been making excuses for an entire day about why he was still sticking around, so maybe this was a sign it was finally time to get his ass back in gear.

“What’s in it for me? I think you’re forgetting where you fuckin’ are, man.” Two hands on his gun in case he managed to piss her off enough for her to take a swing at him, but he didn’t exactly feel threatened.

[decoy73]

Oh, this guy was fucking kidding. What's in it for him? It took all she had to actually think of big words to use rather than the four letter words that were coming to mind.

"What do you think? At the very least, I'm a goddamn meat shield. And maybe I can help you decisively win instead of barely win when someone else attacks you." She pulled at the trap again with her hand and one foot before giving up and simply taking the trap in her right hand and getting to her feet, three bags on her shoulder.