SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

[Harlequin Girls --> Ema Ryan]

She didn't notice it, at first. It just seemed to be the natural progression of things. Hayley had been gone a while, the immediate area around their camp wasn't exactly filled with exciting diversions to keep Ema's attention on the umpteenth time she plodded through it, so the vaguely-circular paths she moved in gradually got wider. It was innocuous, she would wander a short distance astray to look at a strange-shaped tree, or to briefly consider trying to climb one with some conveniently low branches, only to decide against it and move on.

It was all so natural-feeling that she never noticed it had happened until she could no longer spot the clearing she and Hayley had camped in in the distance. To put it simply, Balls. Eloquent, too, Ema's got to keep up her standards of being absolutely inept with the English language, in spite of her rich vocabulary and wealth of literary pursuit. Yeah, Oh... bloody... balls! What the hell is wrong with me!? is the absolute best she can manage.

Wait. What was that strategy from before? The very night before, in these very woods, it had worked. What was it? Spirals. That's the one. If she'd been walking in sort-of-concentric circles around where she started, it stood to reason that Ema could find her way back if she walked in an inward spiral. Of course, that was assuming she knew which was "in" was. She'd made enough 360-degree turns on the spot looking for which way she'd come from to make herself well and truly disorientated, so precision was a crapshoot. The only option was the guess. Ema turned towards the direction she was vaguely sure the camp was in, then set off on a shrinking-spiral path towards it.

A few minutes in, it occurred to her to look for notable clearings on her map - she'd had the foresight to bring her daypack as well as her gun, luckily - so she started to rummage about for the map whilst still walking, glancing around furtively every few seconds to make sure she didn't walk into any trees or get snuck up on by some cunning devil. So it was rather ironic, she later decided, that it was between two such glances that she wandered straight into something even someone as spatially unaware as Ema Ryan should have seen a mile away. The mountain of a man that was Ma'afu Tuigamala.

True to form, there was only one thing she could say to introduce herself.

"...balls."

((Extremelyrushedposttogetthisthingoveranddonewithisago))

((Ma'afu Tuigamala continues from Never Take Friendship Personal))

He couldn't believe it.

For not the first time in his life, he couldn't even grasp a word in his mouth.

The announcements seemed so long ago, but the message still rang clear. He'd killed someone, killed Nick Reid. The same boy who he clashed with in the caves all those days ago. In a gap of memory so terrible that it had to be cut away like a browning piece of fruit skin from a perfect apple, he'd taken someone's life. And the announcements didn't stop there. To think that they would just stop there would be laughable and childish. It got worse, and it got to that point where he wasn't even sure if he still had the right to keep on walking around in adequate safety like this.

Jennifer was wrapped up in a long list of names the newest Danya or whoever had taken over his job now had read out in utter boredom. She was last, dead last. Disgustingly fitting how close that adjective was to the reality of what had hit him now.

He'd failed. Maf had never seen Jennifer, and now she got tangled in something he couldn't save her from. She was dead. It was the worst day in existence. Worse than hearing the death cries of his teammates, and his friends, mocked across the island by a fat man in a suit on a stretch of land so far away and detached. The girl he...the girl he knew he was in love with was gone, and he was left to grieve.

Some would call it silly how he realised how much he missed her after she was gone out of his reach. It was all just a high-school thing, it was all it was supposed to be. They'd have something, even if it was such a friendly thing that he could never see the feelings that they really shared, they'd enjoy what they had until graduation, and then they'd go their separate ways in life. That was all.

But after looking for her for so long, they evolved. A longing, he knew that if this was the last day they could ever spend together, he'd have to make it last, he'd have to do something to protect her, help her, anything.

And now there was nothing. Jennifer was gone, and he was left behind.

His mind wasn't sure how to react. He'd only stopped to refill a water bottle from the stream when they came on, after leaving behind his friends much longer ago. Maf had stopped. The bottle fell from his grasp when he heard his own name among the killers, tumbling down the stream almost comically, and his feet stumbled up the ledge behind him, backing away from an invisible assassin who weaved his name into the killers to besmirch him and commit the grandest act of treachery to his name.

Maf had slowly started to walk backwards, as though an entire squadron of his friends were standing knee-deep in the stream staring mouths agap at his name, and he could do nothing but back up against the tree closest and grasp it reflexively with his fingers, digging into the rotting bark and feeling a small colony of displaced ants hurry away in panic across the back of his hands.

But then the announcements ended with that name, and...

It had been hours ago now, it was dark. His body had slid down to the ground somewhere in that timeframe, and rooted there like the tree behind him, as the words were still floating around in his head.

He never even felt the small girl stumble into him as she blindly stumbled around following her map. He could hear a voice, an exclamation, but there was nothing to get him to get up.

God and all his angels couldn't unroot him from the ground.

To her credit, Ema did recognise the young man she'd walked straight into. Not instantly, and she couldn't put a name to the face, but she did recognise him. He was meant to be one of those absurdly altruistic people one often hears about but rarely meets; volunteer work, friendly demeanour, general magnanimity, all the good stuff Ema herself wished she was, sometimes liked to think she was, but ultimately never had the drive nor the commitment to actually become. He looked like he'd been through a lot, too, and for her part, that was saying something; sitting against a tree, looking like he'd just yesterday escaped from fight club or something, Maf was certainly a mess.

But "a mess" wasn't what Ema truly saw. No, she saw the root, the cause, the presumed reason why he was in such a state. Any notion of the boy's well-deserved lovely reputation was banished by the appearance of a very tall, very broad, very violent looking individual. She hadn't been expecting to run into a veritable giant, and she certainly wasn't duly prepared. Indeed, "Balls" summed up her thoughts on the whole situation quite well.

Luckily, though, he didn't seem to be reacting, not immediately at any rate. This gave the spatially unaware girl a short grace period to back off several paces out of melee range oh jegus are you serious this isn't wow but he does actually have like a foot and a half and 200 pounds on me fuck fuck fuck. The was, however, a natural response to this massive imbalance in physical strength and the perceived danger. Ema dropped her map and scrambled for the gun inside her coat, eventually fishing it out and aiming with two noticeably shaking hands. It soon occurred to her, still backing up, that if she were disarmed she'd probably be snapped like a proverbial twig, so her left hand went flying to her daypack, too, still open from grabbing her map a few minutes prior, and felt around for her sword.

A few small cuts on her fingertips later, Ema produced the falcata, and soon elected to switch hands so that the more physically demanding weapon was in her dominant hand, whilst her left hand continued to point her gun at Ma'afu. Ordinarily, she'd probably have drawn a comparison to Cervantes, but such was her panic that the likeness didn't occur to her. Her mind was blank, even of the almost de-jure "Stay back" sorts of phrases. Ema had a gun and a sword, she was pointing the former at Maf and she had the latter in what she thought was a defensive position in front of her body. Surely that should say enough.

Maf never even noticed it.

His mind was running, sure, but there was no oomph behind it, no push. It was running free, watching the world, and not even telling him what it all meant. Not telling him to get up, not telling him he should be regretting something, not telling him to get back to those friends he abandoned. It had been so long ago he heard two names spread across the island that he wasn't even sure he wanted to know what anything meant again.

He could see the stream flowing freely, snaking through the earth. He could see a some small furred animal peek out from the depths of an open knot in a skyward reaching tree, possibly watching the boy who'd been motionless for a rather long once more. Had he seen it before?

That's all he had now, his memories.

But he really should have noticed that something was wrong. The little critter seemed to think so and shrank back into the dark. It saw something.

Not a someone, it didn't say that to him. He knew the stage had changed, but it didn't really tell him that there was an element of danger right next to him. All that occurred to Maf was that there was...danger? But his body wasn't in pain, at least nothing that passed his surprisingly high tolerance for pain, or even matched the wound in his side from his fight with Nick back-

His fight with Nick?

...

*

Nick closed the space quicker than Maf could comprehend, and quicker than he could think.

But basic instinct took over him.

This was it.

He was going to die here.

Which was why it didn't fly through his head when the basic instinct of the human body took over. Maf's left hand left the wound, and clenched at the sword as Nick got ever so close again. The dagger was almost close enough to pick at his teeth, and Maf swung the sword in front of him. Instinct.

There was an almighty tear. A knife through a raw steak.

And Maf's hands felt warm.

His head was averted from the sword's impact, whatever it impacted. His breath was heavy, those chestnut eyes had a gaze enwrapped by his arm and the grass behind it. There was nothing to the left, nothing to see to the left, he shouldn't see what happened to the left-

But rather than listen, he turned.

*

So that was how it happened. They were all there, there on the mountaintop, and Nick wanted him dead. Jennifer wanted it to stop, Maf wanted Nick to stop, but he just wouldn't let up. Maf did everything he could to defend himself, but Jennifer thought he was responsible. If he could have told her he wasn't trying to do what he did, he would have. If he could turn back time and beg her to understand what he was doing, and he wasn't responsible. But she'd never listen.

He'd reached that point where he wasn't even sure if it was him controlling his actions anymore.

So he'd found out what happened.

What now?

Jenn was still gone, his name was mud, worse than mud, and he knew that anyone who wanted an excuse to kill now had him down as a potential.

What on earth was there to go on for? Even if he did make it back, there was no way to get back into society after everything he'd done, everything he'd seen. Even if he spent thousands on therapy to get him through the absolute horror and the memories he'd retain, what about actually facing the family of the one he'd killed? What about the guilt? He'd just told himself he didn't have to do it, so there was no way of getting rid of that, so the question remained whether or not he really even deserved to leave.

Did he want to leave?

Of course.

Was he going to have to go through her?

Her?

He turned his head, only slightly, to see who or what was here.

There was definitely someone here, a girl. He didn't know who she was, at least from the first glance, but all he knew was that-

-before he knew it, a hole almost the size of a threepenny ripped through the bridge of his nose and painted the brown bark red and grey.

B108 - Ma'afu Tuigamala: DECEASED

*

His eyes opened once more...did that implied they were closed once?

It was still night. But the trees were gone, as were any signs of nature. The sky was bright, even though it still seemed like a late hour, but it wasn't from the stars or the moon. No, it seemed like it was from...

...streetlights.

This was Saint Paul.

Home.

And the smell of Han's Kitchen still fell through the air.

The night came back to Maf just now, he remembered it so clearly. This was almost exactly 25 minutes after prom, Maf's car weaved in between houses and commercial businesses to an old favourite restaurant, the best that served take-away he knew. The owners were nice people, their son was in Maf's grade.

They ordered, he sat with Jennifer and chat as they listened to the pans sizzle, the cooks shout orders in a foreign language and the owners always loaning the best of smiles. They talked about everything they could think of, everything they didn't know about each other. It was a wonderful 15-minute wait. Once their meals were ready for pick-up, they paid, left, then sat in the car for almost another half-hour, still talking. He'd had to leave the window open a crack so their senses weren't engulfed by the Beef Chow Mein.

There was it, standing there almost omnisciently as he watched through the rear window. He remembered this moment. There was a silence in the chatter. It was so brief, some would say it never happened, hell he barely remembered it himself.

He never even got to kiss Jennifer, in all that time together. There was this driving urge to do so, he had that little window of opportunity when the silence hit. But his lips were only met to a small serving of noodles and beef with a little plastic fork.

If there was one moment he regret tonight, it was not kissing Jennifer right then.

He never knew the window of opportunity was bolted shut forever.

The meal finished, the car chugged to a start, and pulled away from the curb. It was pretty late now, and time to turn in. Jason would grill him for everything that happened after prom, and he'd have to tell him in between yokes and jokes.

At least that's how he remembered it.

He stood outside Han's Kitchen, watching the car shrug along down the street.

It turned the corner, and disappeared.

And with that, every light on the street shut down, plunging the world into darkness.

Something was horribly wrong here. Sure, she hadn't said a thing since first blundering into him, but it just didn't make sense to Ema that Maf could not just completely disregard her presence, but be so damn casual about it too, as though he was busy having a particularly good daydream, and just didn't have the time to pay attention to small girls that happened to be armed to the teeth coming across him. On some level, it was almost insulting. On most levels, though, it was unsettling. Her rational mind told her it was a good thing, she shouldn't be looking a gift-horse in the mouth, so to speak, because the huge dangerous looking guy wasn't getting up and trying to kill her. Surely that was an unambiguously good thing.

It should've been, but it only served to make the addled majority of the girl's mind nervous. How could he have survived so long, alone, behaving like this? It didn't make sense. It had to be a trick, a way to make her let her guard down and turn her back, so he could shoot her in it. Not today.

Ema's right arm, entirely of its own volition, raised itself high above her head, in preparation to counter the attack she was convinced would soon be forthcoming. Her left straightened out fully, levelling the barrel of her gun straight at Ma'afu's head, so she could stop him as soon as he tried what she had decided he was definitely about to try, whatever it may be. Her hand steadied itself, she clenched her jaw, she held her breath. She wasn't going to be killed here, no, not today, not ever. She had to live, had to find Hayley, had to get home. Had to get home.

Maf's expression changed, a more conscious, surroundings-aware kind of expression. He turned his head.

And then there was a bullet in it.

Or more accurately, through it. In that split second, Ema had made up her mind exactly what the young man was thinking, she'd decided on his behalf what his intentions were, and she'd decided not to let him either confirm or refute that decision. She didn't want to risk being right, didn't want to chance that margin of error. So as soon as he turned to face her, appeared - at least in her still-panicked perception - to be moving to get up, seemed to notice her, she killed him.

She'd done it again, Ema Ryan, the fragile one, the quiet one, the one who had no business surviving ten days on Survival of the Fittest, had killed a second person in cold blood, without so much as a pause for thought nor regret, or an honest scuffle to prove, if only to herself, that he had meant to attack her after all. She'd just shot him clean in the forehead and that had been the end of it. And why? He might've come at me but he didn't have a chance. How did I know? I... I just did? What if he hadn't? What if he'd been friendly, a new ally, a new protector? What if, what if... what if he isn't dead? He could be okay! I should help, yeah, he didn't die, it just grazed him, barely even scratched, yeah, he's okay, he's okay...

The feedback from Ema's eyes begged, no, demanded, to differ. Right before her, Ma'afu Tuigamala was doing a damn near perfect impression of Sapphire McLeod; laying on the ground at Ema Ryan's feet with a both eye-catching and eye-averting hole in his head, a lifeless body in a slowly expanding pool of its own blood. But was it lifeless? He twitched, he's alive, he's okay he's okay FUCK he's alive and he'll be pissed what do I do what do what do. Again seeming to act of its own volition, on instinct, Ema's right arm came into action. In a momentary thought that was something like "Not enough bullets just cut him", she swung her sword for the supposedly twitching arm of Maf. With only one arm and one weedy, underdeveloped bicep to guide it, the blade stuck fast in his shoulder, leaving behind it an even more nauseating wound in the boy's flesh. Ema began to panic yet again, hurrying to shove her gun into the nearest pocket and yank the falcata out with both hands.

An arc of still-warm blood came off of the weapon's blade when it finally came free, splashing a thin red streak along Ema's shirt and up to her neck. The perfect straightness of it was disturbing, and only served to heighten the adrenaline that fuelled the small girl's needless attacks. Plural, of course, because she didn't stop there, didn't yet realise that Maf couldn't get any more dead than he already was. Make sure he's dead make sure he's dead if not he'll come back like Jason and kill me in my sleep no wait that's Freddy fuck just kill him kill him kill him.

---

The next thing thing she knew, Ema was standing alone in a small clearing, with a horribly lacerated corpse at her feet. His - or perhaps its, being dead? she didn't know - blood stained the forest floor in a not-quite-circle around his huge fallen form. Cooled and congealing, it clung to her trainers, keeping her rooted in place, until she pulled both feet free with a vile, indescribable sound. It didn't take long to remember that the grisly scene was her doing, and the red stains covering her own face and torso certainly helped in that respect. Bloody hell, I've gone and... heh, bloody... I've gone and killed someone again and I'm giggling too. Oh Christ I've lost it..." Ema dropped her weapon, it landed in the almost-dry blood with a soft splat, and she cradled her head in both hands, soon stopping as she realised it only served to cover her palms in the red mess too. Instead, she settled for tilting her head skyward and looking for answers in the leafy canopy, and the clouds above.

After a while, she wasn't sure how long, the girl made a move. She stooped, prying her weapon from the sticky floor, and held onto it with as little contact as possible, as it too was sickeningly sticky with the dry blood clinging to hilt and blade alike. What had she been doing, before all this? Looking for something, or someone. Looking for a way somewhere, maybe. It had definitely been important to her, almost important as looking for a way ho-- Hayley. It didn't matter that Ema hadn't actually been looking for her sole companion beforehand, that's what she was doing presently. She had her bag and her weapons, it didn't occur that their camp was the best part of a mile away in some unknown direction, she just set off on the way she was fairly sure Hayley had gone, east, towards from the rising sun. Or away from the setting sun, now. It had been a long time. Ema would've retrieved her map, but it was obvious that attempting to pull it from the blood-soaked ground by Maf's body would be an exercise in futility.

Right then, try not to think about the dead body that I'm responsible for or all the gross blood, try not to dwell on how I couldn't even bring myself to feel any shame or remorse or anything about killing the dead boy, try not to think about any I'm a heartless psychopath of that no just estimate west by the I killed two people and don't even care sun and look for Hayley I'm a monster I don't deserve her and go back to gallivanting around like usual. Yeah. Do that.

So Ema did that. She headed east.

[Ema Ryan --> Confiscate the Crown]