Isabel hissed in pain.
Her knee hurt from Kimiko kicking it. Her elbow hurt from having it hit the ground. Her back hurt from being flung into a hard surface.
And most importantly, her face hurt from Kimiko slicing into it.
She should've expected Kimiko to have another weapon on her. One weapon wasn't enough with someone who's killed three people. Especially one who's also won one of the best kill awards. She shouldn't have gloated, even for an instant. She should've just gone for Kimiko's throat immediately. As much as she wanted to correct that mistake now, Kimiko was gone, and Isabel was in too much pain to run, let alone keep fighting.
Isabel opened her bag, still quietly sitting next to the halberd in the stall nearby, an empty water bottle almost immediately popping out from how stuffed the bag was. Yanking out her medical kit and her flashlight, she got to work. A cracked mirror sitting above a sink let her make sense of the damage. The cut running across her nose and right cheek wasn't deep, fortunately, but Kimiko had nonetheless managed to hit muscle and sinew. This was going to scar. This was her individual idiot tax. Her reminder not to make the same mistake in the future.
She licked the blood running down from her face off of her lips in between grunts of pain from the alcoholic pads stinging on her cuts.
Clean.
She wrapped gauze around her head, coiled tightly enough around her skull to be secure when taped. Her nostrils were left uncovered, although that barely mattered given that her right nostril was filled with her blood.
Covered.
She sat in the shower stall for a while, letting the pain in her back, elbow, and knee slowly fade. She made sure to eat and drink from her stocks, after finally plugging up her bleeding nostril with a bit of bandage, to keep herself strong and nourished.
Eventually, Isabel wrapped the scarf around her neck again, and re-affixed all of her weapons to her person. Her knee and back still hurt with each step she took out of the showers and the corpse filled room, but it was a tolerable pain. She couldn't afford to stick around with Kimiko potentially knowing her whereabouts.
So she trudged out of the asylum once again, intently listening to the girl that had been tailing her this entire day move quietly from a distance - as if she was actually being clever.
She wasn't concerned with the girl tailing her. Quite the contrary in fact, she enjoyed the company, even if it wasn't exactly friendly company.
Being the top killer was lonely, and more importantly almost certainly made her look terrible to the viewers at home.
She tried to not concern herself with what her image would be like when she got back from the island. She was certain she could take her immunity for the crimes committed and make up for it- repair her public image that would be so thoroughly tarnished. She was doing what she needed to in order to survive, and she lost control at a few points. She could talk her way out of that. She could probably talk her way out of anything.
Isabel stopped for a brief moment, looking at the ground.
But what if she
couldn't talk her way out of it?
What if she actually
died out here?
It had almost been impossible for her to consider. She had easily taken care of everyone she's encountered so far, and knew what risks she could take and what situations to leave in. She thought she was smarter than everyone. Stronger than everyone. Far more capable of killing than everyone.
But she was wrong. She wasn't invincible. One mistake could get her killed. Kimiko proved that.
If she died out here, then that would mean that all she would ever be to everyone that remain behind would be a murderer. Her public image would rot along with her mangled corpse. She couldn't allow that. If she died, she needed to at least leave something behind. She couldn't just have her entire life up to this point and all her struggles with the social order and her parents be for naught.
...But she didn't know what to do. She didn't know what she could possibly do to make her seem better in the eyes of the public. She just needed something. Something that would give them a way to theorize that maybe she wasn't as bad as they would inevitably think. An image burned into their minds of who she was in the dark.
Isabel started walking again, to where she didn't know. She just kept her eyes peeled and her ears intent on her tail. She needed time to think, and a place to sleep.
She just needed to cleanse her sins for the viewing audience.
((Isabel Ramirez continued in
Megalomania))