All That I've Ever Known

[Ruggahissy]

((Sorry it took a while. Promise I won't take that long again!))

Ethan walked a few paces and saw the trucks parked near the sawmill a few feet ahead. He walked slowly, still shaken from the explosion and trying to balance the weight of the girl in his arms. When he reached the nearest truck he put her down as gently as he could manage in the bed of the truck.

"There. Safe from dirt and scorpions and whatever the fuck else crazy shit is running around here. If dynamite boy or the guy with the scythe look around they probably wouldn't see you in here."

His back was killing him. Ethan could still feel where the work bench had slammed into his back as if he was still leaning on it. The cotton feeling in his ears was still there, but getting better. Ethan walked back to his bag and picked it up. On the way back to the truck bed he saw Eleri's bag as well and dragged it back with him, dumping both bags near the truck which contained the girl.

You know.....how much help is this girl going to be? True she's hot and true I could score sympathy points with her, but maybe I should just steal her bag and leave her here to die. I know there's nothing good weapon-wise in there, but she's got extra food and water. Though if someone sees me carting around an injured girl, they're going to assume I'm a safe guy. They're going to assume that I'm not playing this game; I'm a hero who can be trusted. Yeah right....heroes.

Ethan looked at the truck. If they were going to survive they needed something. He put his hands around the old license plate of the car and tugged. It didn't budge. He jammed his foot against it, kicking and kicking. Finally it came off. He held it up and looked at the bent license plate.

Guess I can use this to sharpen some sticks. How fucking sad. Sharpening sticks.

The mummer of sounds drifted to him through the invisible muffles on his ears. Much to his dismay, it appeared that Cisco and the other boy had survived the blast. Ethan threw the two bags into the truck bed and crawled in after them. He pulled Eleri's body so that she was all the way inside and crouched down low.

[Super Llama†]

Duncan could hear voices nearby again. Voices that, if he recalled correctly, belonged to Mr. Grim Reaper and his accomplice. Even though he didn't know where the dynamite guy went, just standing around while the other two composed themselves, and possibly went on the offensive, didn't sound like a good idea either. Come to think of it, maybe he could take advantage of this confusion. Sneak up on Mr. Grim Reaper and relieve him of his weapon. Not kill him or anything, just make sure he couldn't use it to hurt th-no wait, there was that other guy, too. He never was able to get a look at what weapon he had. Hell, he could've had a submachine gun, and would just blow him away if he tried anything like that. Better to just get the hell out.

Fortunately, he caught sight of the boy and-OH SHIT what happened to the girl? Was she alright? Well, of course she wasn't alright, she looked like hell, and clearly wasn't conscious. But was she at least alive? Nabbing his shirt and pack on his way over, Duncan hurried as the two disappeared inside the truck bed, hiding himself behind it. "Hey." He said quietly, peeking his head over the truck bed to get a better look at the girl. "Is...is she going to be okay?"

Suddenly, the obnoxious sound of feedback was heard all around him. What the hell was that? Duncan looked around frantically, trying to find the source, when a voice that made him sick to his stomach, even before he could recognize who it belonged to, resounded.

"Holy shi-19!?" Duncan whispered. He felt he should REALLY be more surprised than he actually was, but then again they were unlucky enough to run into a guy chucking dynamite on their first day, something which could've ended up far worse than it did. Swallowing hard, he listened to the names as they were rattled off with sick glee, feeling like she should make a mental note of who he should be watching out for (though it probably wouldn't do much good, seeing as he hardly knew the names of many of the people in his school.)

enough to get a half-decent draw, was Warren Brown.

Wait a second. He knew that name. Wasn't he a bass player in-

Oh, shit.

Duncan still remembered the Blank Nation concert he went to. Though he was there to see Maria play, he had to admit the rest of them, including Warren, were pretty good, too.

Maria's NOT gonna be happy to hear this.

Speaking of...

new fan favourite Maria



!!!



...Santiago

Duncan breathed a sigh of relief, before realizing how guilty he felt now.

Oh yeah, good thing it just some OTHER Maria that got killed, and not the one you know, right? Way to look like an asshole.

Wait a minute, dangerzones? Oh crap, those start today. Duncan tensed up, ready to haul ass if need be, but fortunately the dangerzones seemed to be assigned elsewhere. As the announcements wrapped up, he looked back up at the others. The announcements had his full attention, so he didn't really notice their reactions to the news, but he decided to speak up anyway.

"Well, that was...intense." He said, cursing himself for coming up with such a crappy conversation starter. "...uh, anyway, I'm pretty sure we overstayed our welcome. Think we should get the hell out of here?"

[Sunnybunny]

Eyes fluttered open. Pain began.

Feo moaned in agony, and managed to shudder herself right out of Ethan's arms. She hit the ground with a thud, but that was like a bug bite compared what she felt right now. The pain made her want to scream, her pride kept her from doing so. What the hell had happened to her? She was going to distract Cisco and the Dim Reaper, and Duncan and Ethan were going to jack their shit. How could it have gone so badly?

And why, pray fucking tell, was she the only one hurt?

Her arms hurt like hell. She quickly grabbed her bag and emptied out an entire bottle of water on the backs of her arms. Why were they burnt? As deadly as a scythe could be, it wasn't a flamethrower. Was the whole thing a setup to kill her? It would explain something at least. All she had were questions.

Fucking Ethan, she should have known not to trust anyone here.

She walked right up to Ethan, fully prepared to follow her unheard threat to beat the dogshit out of him. She raised her fist, fully prepared to him to loose several teeth. But she noticed something a bit off about her hand.

She had three fingers. She was pretty damn sure people came with five fucking fingers. Her other hand had five fingers, so why did her right only have three?

Her pain multiplied by her loss, one would think that this was that point that Feo would start screaming and crying. But she didn't. She just looked Ethan dead in the eye, and asked him a simple question. Or rather, made a simple statement.

"Ethan, if you don't tell me what the fuck happened with the damn ambush; why it went so wrong that I damn near lost a hand, I'll . . . Eu far-lhe-ei o desejo que você teve gotted wacked com os professores. Eu prometo que eu."

She was fucking handicapped now. She was a fucking liability, easy to kill. She was never going to able to play a saxaphone again.

She was never going to be anything more than a pretty face again.

And it might not even be Ethan, but someone else was going to feel as much pain as she felt right now. She promised.

[laZardo†]

"Cisco, can you hear anything? If you can hear me, say something"

Even if he could say something, Cisco wouldn't have been sure if even he could hear it. Being that much closer to the explosion had rendered him damn near deaf. At least his sight seemed to want to get back in line first, the clouds of color forming into more recognizable outlines of shapes such as the eyes and head.

"Lemme get my weapon..." he groaned, squirming in place, "I'm helpless...without my weapon."

He was helpless enough as it was, as whatever dirt and debris had been embedded into him from the explosion had made stretching certain muscles through motion cause extreme pain. Not that extreme pain wasn't an unfamiliar sensation, this time it just made movement extremely difficult and slow. He had almost reached a sitting position when something shiny and circular had caught his eye, next to something brightly-colored and square.

Given the fact that his thought patterns were probably more out of order than they normally were, and that he actually hadn't looked inside the record sleeve since he got it, he could only assume that the vinyl of Carol Channing's children's songs had to have fallen out of the sleeve when it got separated from him.

In a motion not dissimilar to that of a sea lion, he channeled enough of whatever strength he had recovered into his arms in order to push himself toward his weapon. Then, when finally getting himself within reach, he started trying to slide the 'vinyl' into its sheath.

"There you go, baby..." he seethed, trying to force an almost motherly tone toward his weapon, "Nothing's gonna destroy your sweet music." He didn't seem to notice that his fingers also seemed to leave dark red tracks across the sleeve of the record.

Perhaps unknown only to Cisco, he'd actually found a circular sawblade that had been dislodged from its saw when the explosion destroyed its respective table. The blade was actually smaller than the vinyl itself, allowing it to slip into the slightly-torn sleeve while slicing through the skin of his fingertips. The actual vinyl had actually snapped in two after he landed on it. He had somehow managed to cling onto it until that moment despite the force of the explosion.

More known to whoever was nearby was the fact that thin streaks of blood seemed to be almost trickling down his back, leaving tiny yet visible puddles on the floor as he slowly brought his quivering legs under him to try to kneel.

"Aaagh...could you help me up a bit, eh?" Cisco groaned, his back arching a bit as he found himself to orient even the upper half of his body straight up.

It certainly looked almost pathetic that Cisco didn't even seem to pay any mind to that, though it wasn't as if his self-preservation instinct seemed to override it all.

[Sean†]

Joe wasn't sure if Cisco could hear anything, and it became more readily apparent that the green-haired boy was in a very bad way.

Then, an idea dawned on Joe. He opened up his daypack, found the gear he was travelling with, pulled out his notebook and a pen, and jotted down a very short note in large print saying "DON'T MOVE. TRUST ME ON THIS." He then showed the note to Cisco, in the hopes of getting a reaction.

Hrm, a lot of action for one day. Wonder how Rose is doing? Joe wondered to himself as he waited.

[Ruggahissy]

Ethan looked on, bemused as Feo woke and promptly hit the floor. She stood and started screaming at him.

His eyebrows knitted and a frown tugged down on his mouth. He grabbed the arm of her raised fist and gripped it firmly in his hand.

"Lower the decibels, woman!" he shouted above the ringing that still lingered in his ears. He tightened his hold on her wrist and pulled her in close, looking down on the girl from above.

"Second," he said in a smoother, though still noticeably annoyed tone, "English is the language I know, so we're going to stick with that and if you don't like it I can toss your narrow ass off a god damn cliff. Are we good on point number two?"

He let go of her wrist, pushing her backwards slightly.

"Moving on to your other query, well that's just the grand prize question, isn't it? Far as I can tell we were all on track to jump those guys when some guy I couldn't see ran up, screamed something and tossed an explosive at your feet. I'm not counting that as my fault, but I guess I can see your point. I really should have factored in screaming assholes with C4 or whatever into my plans. My bad on that one," he finished, the sarcasm acridly coating his words.

Having finally noticed the other member of their group had reappeared, Ethan turned to look at Duncan. He cocked his head to the side and looked at the shirtless boy.

"I.....I'm not even going ask. Lack of shirt aside, I'm with you on getting out of here. I don't know where scythe boy and Cisco ran off to and I'm sorry to say your little cuddly creatures called jail break when the blast knocked over their tank so let's not stick around."

Ethan picked up his bag and slung over one arm, then picked up Feo's and slung it over the other.


((Ethan Kent continued in The Man-slut, the Cocktease and the Lover))

[Super Llama†]

The good news was, Feo was finally awake.

The bad news...well, she wasn't exactly all there. And she was none too happy about it.

"Uh...it's...it's not that bad..." Oh who the fuck was he kidding? It was terrible. Maybe not as bad as, say, losing an entire hand, but losing an entire piece of your body that you'll never get back is still a huge deal.

Fortunately, Ethan took charge of the situation, though he was kind of a dick about it. As he finally looked back at him, Duncan remembered his current shirtless situation and put it back on. His jacket, however, was back inside the sawmill, and there was no way he was going back in there with Mr. Grim Reaper and Friend around.

Picking up his daypack, he followed after Ethan as he carried Feo off away from the area, wondering where the hell Maria could be. Having taken a look at the map before he got here, this seemed like a pretty huge island, and she could be anywhere around here. He was sure, though, that if he could ask enough people, he'd be able to track her down eventually. She wasn't exactly the kind of person one would forget.

{{continued in The Man-slut, the Cocktease and the Lover}}

[Sunnybunny]

Fucking prick. Thought he was better than her.

Had this been any other sitution, she would have thought the whole man-handling thing was kind of hot. God, this was not the time for that, or for thinking about just how long it had been she'd gotten laid. Bastard, throwing her off her game.

She hoped Duncan liked being a referee, because this partnership was bound to get uglier before it was over. She rolled her eyes at his attempt to comfort her. Did he think she was stupid?

For a brief moment, she thought about leaving the guys and going off on her own. But Ethan was carrying her bag, which was nice. Considering her arms still ached so badly.

She followed Ethan and Duncan, but not without getting one a last shot off. "Okay, next time I threaten to kill you, I'll speak English. Happy?"

((Feo Eleri Smith countinued in The Man-slut, the Cocktease and the Lover))

[laZardo†]

This was not exactly the best time for his vision to regain the ability to recognize letters, as the first thing he was able to read since the explosion were written on a note in front of him.

DON'T MOVE. TRUST ME ON THIS.

Cisco immediately halted any opportunity to try to get up, currently kneeling on the ground. He shivered in place, not wanting to even turn to face Joe for fear of accidentally shredding a critical vein from one of the many possibilities for reasons not to move in the first place.

Maybe he had an entire steel pole going right through his back like a giant lawn dart, and he couldn't feel it either because it was just one little drop in a sea of pain, or because that area had gone numb. Maybe he was technically already dead, and Death would pass him a bit of his power to live longer at the cost of still not being able to remove that collar around his neck. Maybe Joe was going to send him to the next life right then and there, though compared to the other, more painful possibilities, that wasn't such a bad idea.

If anything, the suspense would probably kill him before anything else would.

Cisco held his "vinyl" close in its sleeve. "Trust you on what? Joe? What's going on?" he whimpered, almost as pathetic as he squirmed a few seconds ago.

[Sean†]

"Trust you on what? Joe? What's going on?" Cisco whimpered to Joe, sounding extremely pathetic. And huggable, although if Cisco had a spinal cord injury (the absolute worst case scenario) hugging him probably wouldn't be a great idea.

Joe turned the page in his notebook and wrote another note.

"I'M GOING TO PATCH YOU UP. IF YOU HAVE A BROKEN SPINE, THEN MOVING WOULD BE A VERY BAD IDEA."

He showed the note to Cisco, set the notebook and pen down, and shuffled around in his daypack for his first aid kit. He found it, and opened it up in front of Cisco, waiting for a response.

This wasn't an ideal situation at all, but Joe really had no choice but to try and help Cisco out. Even if Joe was manipulating Cisco, he didn't want the blood of someone he was somewhat friends with on his hands; that was simply how he was, and he wasn't going to change his personality that drastically in the span of a day.

[laZardo†]

I'M GOING TO PATCH YOU UP. IF YOU HAVE A BROKEN SPINE, THEN MOVING WOULD BE A VERY BAD IDEA.

The words "broken spine" immediately caught his eye and caused Cisco to shudder. What if his spine had really been severed by a rogue piece of shrapnel? He wouldn't be able to stand up, let alone fight. He would be useless to Death and he'd barely even started serving him. And he certainly wouldn't want to go out like that.

This left only one option: having to do something he normally didn't do. 'Normal' being relative, he would have to actually get serious for once and put his faith in something or someone to actually help him out of a situation like this. 'Normally' he would just get up, crick his neck and either go home or to the hospital where the mechanisms of real-life society at large screw him back together for his next escapade. That was how things worked, he didn't have to 'believe' in it to know it worked.

But these weren't - nor would there ever be - 'normal' times anymore.

"Thanks...buddy..." Cisco sobbed, "I love you...I owe you..." At least he could start to hear the lowest frequencies of what his throat uttered as the ringing started to subside.

He bit his lip, trembling as he cuddled the sheathed circular sawblade like a stuffed toy while Joe got down to fixing him up. A warm feeling spread across the length and breadth of his body, from his head to his toes, which perhaps was a good thing since that meant he could still feel something below his waistline. And it was in this feeling that he could sense an almost religious sense of gratitude for Death deciding to heal him rather than treat him.

Indeed Cisco now knew this gratitude, after all, was incurred by nothing short of a debt. Not only had he been saved from and by Death, he would have to repay the favor sooner or later. If not (eventually) with his own life, then the lives of others would have to suffice. Of course, Death might not actually ask to have him help with any reaping at all. Whatever the case, Cisco reminded himself that he wouldn't go until he'd paid what was due in loyalty.

[Sean†]

"Thanks... buddy..." Cisco sobbed, "I love you... I owe you..."

Joe stayed silent and gave the boy a once-over. Cisco was on his stomach, making a quick check for any spinal column injuries a simple matter; Joe ran his hand along Cisco's back and didn't find any fractures or similarly-worrying wounds.

However, the green-haired kid did have a few cuts on his arms, and although Joe didn't think it would be too big of an issue, he didn't want to risk his ally getting gangrene from an infected cut.

Although Joe figured that Cisco would have at least some of his hearing back by now, he still wrote down his words in a note, simply to be safe.

"YOUR SPINE IS OKAY," the note read in large print.

Joe held his notebook up to Cisco long enough for it to register in the green-haired boy's mind, turned the page, and jotted another note down.

"ACTUALLY, YOU'RE PRETTY LIGHTLY WOUNDED OVERALL."

Joe held this note up too, then after a slightly longer period of time he turned the page and wrote some more.

"A FEW CUTS THAT I NEED TO CLEAN AND BANDAGE, BUT YOU'LL BE FINE AFTER THAT," the next note said. Joe held the note where Cisco could see it, and set it down after giving him a chance to read it. Then he set his first-aid kit down and went to work.

The first-aid kit was sparse, but it suited Joe's needs, as it had antiseptic pads, gauze, trauma scissors, and first aid tape. The Latino went to work on his patient; he didn't have any proper training, but it was fairly obvious what needed to be done. He rolled up Cisco's sleeves, delicately swabbed each small cut with an antiseptic pad, wrapped gauze around it, cut the gauze with the scissors, and taped it down.

After Joe was done working on Cisco's arms, he took a closer look at the vinyl and noticed that Cisco had somehow managed to slice his fingers up with what appeared to be a now-oddly-shaped version of the vinyl. More specifically, it looked more like a sawblade than a vinyl. Although those cuts were likely to be worse in the long run, they were also smaller, and Joe knew deep down that asking Cisco to drop the vinyl wasn't going to help the poor kid's mental state any. Besides, a sawblade was a better weapon than a vinyl, anyways.

The whole process took a fair while, but eventually it was complete, and with surprisingly little damage done to Joe's first aid kit. Joe silently thanked any existing deity for this.

Wonder if his hearing's back? Joe thought to himself. He decided to test this.

"Hey, Cisco. Is your hearing back yet?" he asked, somewhat worried. If Cisco was totally deaf, this would put a huge spanner in the works as far as their partnership.

[laZardo†]

YOUR SPINE IS OKAY. YOU'RE PRETTY LIGHTLY WOUNDED OVERALL.

Really? Was it really okay or was that just a trick to make Cisco try to get back on his feet only to realize he'd lost all feeling below the navel, resulting in much schadenfreude?

A FEW CUTS THAT I NEED TO CLEAN AND BANDAGE, BUT YOU'LL BE FINE AFTER THAT

And then it hit him like a slippery fish. He was under the wing of Death, for crying the fuck out loud. If the injury was THAT bad, he wouldn't have picked him as an apprentice anyway. And right now, there wasn't exactly a choice.

"Okay Joe...do your thing..." Cisco whimpered, closing his eyes and biting his lip.

Bit by bit, part by part, Joe worked his crazy death voodoo healing magic upon his apprentice's pitiful frame, on wounds that turned out a lot lighter than they seemed. Or at least that's what Cisco tried to imagine it was, what with his eyes squinted shut expecting some kind of mad doctor surgical procedure or at least some elaborately dramatic 'purifying' spell. Little pinpricks and stings from ointment and other first aid procedures created what felt like psychedelic flashes of color to mix in with the red of the light illuminating his eyelids.

Every other 5 seconds it seemed he expected to wake up into some kind of eternal void of a world, every 10 doing so as some kind of mindless minion, a form molded piece by piece through the power of death itself. He imagined what kind of powers he would gain at the cost of his very sentience.

Then he opened his eyes to find that he was still in fact only aiding death in his own earthly games. Not that he had any time to be disappointed.

""Hey, Cisco. Is your hearing back yet?"
"Yes...I think I can hear...thank you..." Cisco replied, trying this time to hold back a smile as he then realized if he was okay, then he could probably stand up.

Thus was the moment of reckoning. The green-haired apprentice moved one leg out...than another...putting one of his bloodied and bandaged hands on the ground as he slowly - indeed - got back onto his feet. His knees did their best not to buckle, and wobbly as he was, he could indeed stand. He gasped with glee, observing his regained strength as he turned to face his now-repeat savior. He didn't look Joe in the face though, for not finding the words to translate his thoughts into speech.

I CAN STAND! HALLELUJAH!

"Thanks... maybe...you- we should get out of here...before this place comes down on our heads..." he mumbled, letting an innocent, childlike smile fall through as he held his "vinyl" close.

[Sean†]

((Sorry for the late post.))

"Yeah, we probably should," Joe replied. There was a rather large problem here, though; Joe had no clue where to head off to.

He looked at Cisco again and wondered what in God's name he had gotten himself into by keeping up this Grim Reaper impersonation.

No sense dropping it now, Joe thought, feeling somewhat defeated. Only problem is, I'll have to show everyone else this side until someone offs Cisco. Which, ideally, they won't because then I'll be on my own, and people who are on their own tend to not last long on an island full of fucking serial killers. Joe glanced at the "vinyl" Cisco was holding; he knew it to be a saw blade, as vinyl records did not tend to have serrated edges.

How adventitious that he would have something like that. Guess he's actually kind of a useful ally after all, now that I think about it, Joe silently mused.

"Well," Joe spoke, "might as well take a look at the map and see if there's anywhere interesting nearby." With that, he opened up his daypack, rooted through for the map, and unfolded it.

He looked it over, and found himself unable to decide where to go next. Joe re-folded it, and passed it to Cisco.

"I can't decide. Your call, I guess."

[laZardo†]

"Yeah, we probably should," Joe replied, hinting that neither of them had any idea where they would end up.

Although he didn't have any idea either, Cisco certainly did not realize the broad-spanning implications of Joe's ruse, already too busy falling for it hook, line and sinker with a smile on his face.

"Well, might as well take a look at the map and see if there's anywhere interesting nearby." Not finding anything interesting, Joe handed the map to Cisco. The green-haired freak put his supplies down, clipping his 'vinyl' between his ankles just in case and unfolded the thing. Although he didn't look like he understood it at first, holding it upside-down at one point, he eventually figured it out.

"Here," he said, turning around to show the map to Joe and tracing his finger down the dotted line to what apparently looked like a town, "We can rest here... maybe find someone to reap."

Cisco then handed the map back to Joe and picked up his supplies, this time strapping the daypack around his bandaged body like he should have done since he woke up.

"Besides which," he added with a childish, innocent smile, "how hard could it be? Let's go!"

And with that, Cisco turned around, almost stumbled because his bearings hadn't completely returned (as if they had been 'completely' there in the first place,) and started shambling toward the large hole in the wall blasted by the dynamite. His shoes managed to protect his feet from some of the still-smoking debris as he started humming what was supposed to be a happy tune if it wasn't indecipherable from his mostly off-key humming.

Indeed, he didn't even seem to feel the least bit worried about the fact that the Residential Area probably teemed with his classmates by now, some of whom might certainly be 'players.' Being convinced of the Grim Reaper's crazy death voodoo magic could do that to a guy. If all else failed, inevitably leaving him horrifically disillusioned and falling off the brink to proper, incoherent insanity, at least he still had his 'vinyl' to work some sweet music to calm him down.

After all, who didn't like Carol Channing?

((Cisco Vasquez continued in Day of the Dove))