Flowers Hurt

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Isabel.

Jae recognized her voice and that drove every other thought out of his mind, lighting a fire of terror and hate in his veins. Back to his feet, elbows and knees stinging from where he'd fallen, crossbow in one hand, grabbing for his bag and ammo with the other, winging off a wild shot into the hall before he fully had his bearings.

He shouldered past Dorothy, images burning into his mind like snapshot stills for a fraction of a second. Silhouettes in the dark, monsters in the dark, kill her-

He scrambled for the bag and ripped the zipper open, hissing with pain as he jarred his broken fingers but not slowing, fumbling until a new bolt slid home, split second of who the hell are you as he caught sight of the other girl cowering against the wall-

One fraction of a second's distraction. That was all.

Jae jerked the crossbow up, Isabel's shadowy figure in his sights. He pulled the trigger, and god, he meant it.

[VoltTurtle]

Before Isabel had even realized what had happened, she had been shoved back and a knife had once again sliced into her face.

Hissing and screaming as she stumbled backwards, away from Asha, Isabel clutched her face with her free hand. The pain was even more intense than when Kimiko had cut into her. The blade wasn't as sharp, it had done more damage. Thankfully over a smaller area-

Movement called Isabel's focus as she realized that there was another person in the hallway with them, before she reflexively leaned backwards as a projectile whizzed through the air just in front of her face.

For the first time since she got on the island, Isabel was legitimately scared for her life. There wasn't going to be a way out of this. She didn't want to be here anymore. This wasn't fun anymore.

Proper focus returned. It was time to fight. Adrenaline flowed through her veins. Two targets in front of her. One with a knife, one with a crossbow. She needed to live, they had to die. Lily wasn't going to help. She was alone in this.

Asha was about to stab her.

Her hand went up, caught Asha's wrist, the knife was kept at bay. What felt like eternity was spent keeping that knife held there, too focused to attack back.

Pain erupted in her left forearm. Cold blade met tender flesh around her collar bone. She screamed.

Then she struck, teeth clenched, catching flesh and tearing fabric.

[ViolentMedic]

And now more people were appearing, and a crossbow had come out. Lily had tried to block it out, but she couldn't ignore the noise of a crossbow bolt thunking into the aged floor.

Lily opened her eyes, saw the struggle, the fighting, glimpses of blood, and shut her eyes again. Instead, she scooched backwards, sliding along the walls.

Her back hit a door, she could tell from the change in how the surface behind her felt. She reached up, found the handle and scrambled backwards through the door, closing it behind her.

It wouldn't save her if they tried to chase her, but it'd keep her out of the way until Isabel killed them or they killed Isabel. And then... and then...

She didn't know what came after that.

[dmboogie]

Asha hated how satisfying it was to hear Iz scream. Barbed questions of "Doesn't feel good to be on the receiving end, huh?" danced across her tongue, but she remained silent. The point wasn't to hurt Iz, to try to guilt trip her into feeling something resembling human empathy, to try to break her. The point was to kill her. Preferably as quickly and efficiently as was possible, having already missed her best chance.

Jae was doing an admirable job as backup, though Asha wished that his aim had been a bit better. Still, he had given her an opening, one she quickly moved to take advantage of. As Iz was recovering from dodging Jae's first salvo, Asha thrust her knife down, aiming for her defenseless throat. Painful, but a quicker killer than anything other than a bullet to the brain.

Unfortunately, Iz's quick grip on Asha's arm ensured that she'd live a bit longer. The two girls struggled, life and death reduced to a simple question of strength. Through countless years of tireless practice and aching feet, ballet had deigned to gift them both with endurance. Though they were close to equals, their stalemate was broken by a second bolt slamming into Iz's arm. Asha, snarling, plunged the knife into Iz's flesh. Still, her resistance had been enough to shift the blow off course, hitting her shoulder instead of her throat.

Caught off guard by this, Asha wasn't able to fend off Iz's retaliation. The scythe cut deep into her thigh, searing pain only made bearable by adrenaline. Asha shrieked, stumbling backwards, only staying on her feet through some miracle of willpower. The dripping blood from her knife was soon joined on the cold floor by the blood running down her left leg.

[backslash]

His second shot hit, and Jae took a vicious thrill from Isabel's obvious pain. He'd have liked to come up with something witty to throw at her, but there was no time to think as he scrambled for another bolt.

Isabel and Asha disengaged momentarily, each reeling from the blow the other had struck, and Jae couldn't concentrate on how Asha was bleeding, couldn't afford to let his focus slip again-

Asha stumbled into the line of fire, jerked to the side by Isabel as Jae tried to reload. He snarled wordlessly, torn between taking another shot and just charging in there physically, adrenaline rushing through him and urging him to move though he remained indecisive.

[VoltTurtle]

A moment to breathe.

Isabel's attack had caused Asha to disengage, she had a chance to think for a moment, even through the searing pain present in most of her body.

Another crossbow bolt embedded in her flesh would almost certainly let Asha kill her. She needed to make sure she didn't get hit again.

Shuffling sideways, blood dripping down her face and body, Isabel strafed around Asha as she mirrored Isabel's own movements. Breathing heavily from the pain, the exhaustion, the adrenaline, Isabel had put her target in between herself and her ranged attacker. She had the edge now, all she had to do-

Isabel as squealed in pain as Asha cut into her right breast with a well timed swipe.

She retaliated shortly after, and her sickle got another taste of Asha's blood.

[dmboogie]

Here she was, being used as a human shield again. Asha had been spot-on when she had compared Michael to Iz, after all.

That made things pretty damned inconvenient. Devil knew how long she had before her leg gave out on her. She winced with every step as she circled Iz, slowly feeling the growing pain that even the shock and blood loss couldn't fully dull.

Trying to pirouette past Iz obviously wasn't an option. Neither was trying to play the vulture's game of patience. Asha supposed she would just have to borrow a move from Iz's book and stab her. A lot.

Asha's next slash caught Iz solidly on the chest, but not deeply enough to cause immediate debilitation. Iz's counter was better placed, gashing her left arm. She cried out in pain, again stumbling backwards, blindly lashing out with her knife. This time, the wall pressed against her back was the only thing keeping her from collapsing entirely.

[VoltTurtle]

Another wild swing caught Isabel in the arm as another crossbow bolt whizzed past her head.

Isabel's mind raced at a million miles a minute, trying to make sense of what was even happening, trying to comprehend the agonizing pain enveloping her whole body.

This was not working. She had been trying her best to be defensive, avoid as much damage as she could, but playing defensively was just resulting in a back and forth exchange of attacks. If things continued the way they were going, they would both die, or that boy would get a lucky shot and end Isabel's life right here and now. She had to stop reacting and just act on her own. Asha didn't seem to really care if she died, so long as she took Isabel with her. Isabel had to be just as reckless, she had to go for the kill.

Asha had to die, no matter what it took.

Abandoning all sense of reason and caution, Isabel charged at the prone girl, her sickle arm ready to make Asha hurt. Asha's arm extended itself towards her in response, and she felt the cold steel of Asha's blade scrape her left bottommost rib.

A scream of rage and agony escaped from Isabel's lips as her arm moved forward, undeterred, carrying the wicked hook end of the sickle towards Asha's exposed throat, her attempted responsive stab having left her wide open.

The arcing blade connected, making a sickening gooey noise as it sunk itself into Asha's flesh and caught itself in her larynx. A fatal wound for just about anyone, but that wasn't enough. Asha didn't deserve to just bleed out and get a chance for closure. She needed to suffer.

She needed to die NOW.

Another scream emanated from Isabel's throat as she grabbed the sickle with her other hand, the fire in her arm quenched just long enough to force the blade the rest of the way through Asha's neck, torn and mutilated chunks of her throat falling to the ground below as bundles of tendons and sinew clung to the blade.

It was over.

[dmboogie]

Back against the wall. Still better than face against the wall, Asha supposed. She weighed her options, with her leg and arm now weighing her down.

She could make a break for it. Try to lunge out of the way of Iz's next attack, stumble towards Jae. Crawl, if she had to. The closer she got to Jae, the better chance he had of actually hitting Iz with his next shot. Maybe they could tag-team her, have Asha toss him the knife just like they'd now traded the prized position of "most fucked up, 2015." Her wounds were bad, but they had medical supplies. She'd probably live.

That was assuming that Asha could get away, though. Worse - it was assuming that Iz wouldn't get away. Was she suicidal enough to charge at a crossbow wielded by a guy almost a foot taller than her? Or would she take the chance to run while she could, surviving with serious, but not fatal, injuries? There was no doubt in Asha's mind that Iz would take out all of her pain and frustration out on the next sorry soul she ran across. Excruciating, amplified agony. Preventable. Her fault.

It came down to a question of whether Iz's pride and spite were stronger than her self-preservation instincts, and that wasn't a gamble Asha was willing to take.

As Iz charged towards Asha, Asha used her last strength to plunge her knife deep into Iz's stomach. She would die, no question about it. It would be slow, and painful, and even though it wasn't what Asha had wanted she couldn't deny that Iz deserved every last bit of it, however long she would linger in this world, however long before she realized that pointless cruelty for the sake of cruelty would always be punished-

There was a dull thud as the blade of Asha's knife hit Iz's rib and was stopped, shallow.

[spoiler]
Asha tried to flinch, but found herself frozen in place, bloody hands wrapped tight around the knife that was still piercing Iz. She couldn't scream. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't even move her eyes. She was trapped, helpless to do anything but stare back into the hateful eyes of her murderer. The world dimmed around them, leaving the two surrounded by nothing but a black void.

For what could have been a minute or an hour or a month, time didn't pass. Asha and the statue of Iz were trapped together in what she figured to be a dream, or a nearest-death experience, a curtain call for who she was, trying to cram the rest of a lifetime of thought into a single blink of the universe. She desperately tried to think of some way to escape, to live, to use infinity to defy physics and logic and change the only possible outcome of the last seconds of her life-

"You never realized it, did you?"

Impossibly, there was a voice whispering in Asha's ear, cold breath touching the side of her face. Though her gaze remained irrevocably locked forward, she could feel someone, lurking just out of sight. Hear a gleeful sadism that sounded eerily familiar.

"All that buildup, and you have to go and get yourself killed before I could see the look on your face. Disappointing, no?"

What the fuck were they talking about, Asha wanted to scream, but her mouth may as well have been stitched shut.

"All I wanted was to see you admit to yourself that this was exactly what you wanted to happen. I hope you don't mind me cheating just a little to give you another chance at it."

No. They, whatever the fuck they were, couldn't be more wrong. She had never meant to abandon Jae and Dot, never meant to draw out Iz's suffering, had never meant to die-

"They'll cry for you, you know. Of course they will. They'll think that you were bravely defending them, a last stand for the sake of the sleeping. They'll be sure that the only reason you didn't wake them up right away was because there hadn't been enough time. You'll be remembered as a hero."

She just hadn't wanted to put them in danger, hadn't wanted to give Iz any chance to escape, it would have been over with quickly and painlessly if she had just had the guts to actually kill her-

"If you had lived for much longer, you would have had to start making some hard decisions, wouldn't you? If you made it to the end, could you still have chosen to die without a fight, knowing it'd make your mother cry? If Min-jae and Dorothy were still with you, would you try to force them to give up? Better for you to all die good people than for anyone to get out alive, right?"

That wasn't the point, the only thing that Asha had ever wanted was to help as many people as she could, prevent as much pain as possible, even if it was only through forcing smiles or shitty jokes or-

"Murder, yes. Maybe if you'd come to that conclusion a little bit quicker, more of your friends would still be alive."

Iz was different, Iz was irredeemable, she knew what she was doing the entire time and loved it and couldn't ever be reasoned with or understood, she could only hurt and hurt and take and take until there was nothing else left or something finally stopped her-

"I'm sure that's what some people think about Nancy and Alessio, too. Funny how you never even threatened them, isn't it?"

It was still early, there was still hope for them to change-

"Not too early for them to start murdering. Do you think it wouldn't have hurt your friends, to see you get cut down right in front of them? If you wanted to try and reason with them, why didn't you do it from a safe distance away?"

Jae would have shot them all, if he'd thought he had to-

"And you still don't even hesitate to call him a friend. You never even tried to think about all the people who loved Samuel, did you?"

It was different, Jae was sorry, he just needed someone to help him not overreact-

"Who do you think you are to forgive him? Who do you think you are to forgive any one of these damned souls?"

She just wanted to make them feel better-

"You just wanted him to feel like he owed you something."

She just-

"What better way to be remembered than as a martyr? The cheerful giver of absolution?"

That wasn't-

"And you've even managed to convince yourself that it really was all about their feelings. I'm almost impressed."

liar

"All this time, you've just been wanting to die in a way no one could blame you for, haven't you?"

nothing but venomous fork-tongue bullshit

"The easy way."

reaching deep inside and finding what hurts most and never letting up and caressing your heart with its talons and only stopping so you won't get used to it

"Like a hero, without any of the hard work."

just lies and misinterpretation and

"Admit it."

and just enough truth to get you wondering get you thinking that it can't all be wrong get you thinking that you're obviously not a perfect person

"If you do, this can all be over."

turning the inherent frailties of human nature and brief lapses of good will into inescapable mortal sins with nothing but yourself and

"All you need is to realize that you've never really been a good person."

all the time you'll never have in the world.

"I'll give you all the time you deserve."

Asha couldn't cry. She couldn't scream. She had long since lost the strength to argue. She found no mercy or redemption, only the words repeating in her head over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over

"There we go! That wasn't so hard, was it?"
[/spoiler]

Before Asha could register that she had been cut, the blade had already torn open her throat.

The force turned her head to the side, and she saw Jae and Dot for the last time. She made a gurgling noise.

Then she died.

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"Asha!"

One second. One fraction of a second. That was how long Jae hesitated, that was all.

Shoot or run in, shoot or run in, and he had just started to raise the crossbow again when Isabel struck.

Asha's head jerked to the side, and her eyes met Jae's as their light was extinguished forever.

He was just close enough that a few droplets of her blood flew from the blade of the sickle and landed across Jae's face and neck.




A deafeningly loud, discordant, almost inhuman noise cut through the dark hallway, and Jae was just barely aware that it was his own screaming.

He fired again, didn't see if it hit, didn't care. He threw the crossbow down and lurched forward with arms outstretched, catching Asha before she hit the floor. There was a hot splatter of blood across his front as they collided, so much blood running over his hands, too much-

"ASHA!"

She was dead weight in his arms.

[VoltTurtle]

Isabel yelped as as a bolt slammed into the ground a few feet away from her, cracking the tiled ground and sending particles of dust and plaster into the air.

That little message being sent made it obvious that she needed to get out of here. Lily had run into one of the rooms just a few moments before, Isabel might be able to get in there and start properly treating her injuries. Scrambling to grab her things and make it through the door before the boy stopped fondling Asha's dead body and came after her, Isabel scooped up Asha's knife, her own sword, and her bag. Flinging the door open to a scared and cowering Lily, Isabel shut it behind her and fumbled to see if the door locked. She sighed in relief upon seeing that it did, and hearing the familiar clicking noise as she turned the mechanism and sealed them away from the violence that had just occurred completely calmed her frayed nerves.

Her weapons and bag dropped to the floor, save Asha's knife, which she kept clutched in her hand, before Isabel herself slid down to floor level, moaning in pain.

As the adrenaline from the fight left her body, she started to realize just how injured she was. Several lacerations and two different stab wounds, plus a crossbow bolt embedded in her arms, she had no time to rest, she had to treat all of these injuries now before she bled to death or worse.

Gasping and hissing in agony, Isabel shuffled herself over to a desk and sat down on it, noting that Lily had decided to hide in a medical office, before barking at the still visibly shaken girl to grab the medical supplies out of her bag as she sized up her injuries.

[Melusine]

DOT.EXE has stop working.

A problem caused the program to stop working properly.
Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available.


That would be the thing written on the screen of a computer if Dorothy was an application of some sort. Like Paint MS or Word, a program that would be use on a regular basis by the user. When that message popped up, the user, after countless hours of unsaved work, would either be upset, angry, or both. They'd scream at their monitor, or cry at the fact that their precious work was eaten up by something uncontrollable like a glitch or bug.

Dorothy was on both end of the mess. She felt like the user working on a project of some sort and when the whole thing crashed down, she wanted to scream. To hit her monitor. As if the most important thing in the world just died. She felt like the program too. Working well, efficiently and letting 1tself be manipulated by skilled hands until the whole thing went down.

Her body felt weak. The sound Asha made was abnormal. The gurgling made her gagged, her body was just a catalog of wounds, it was a proof of Iz's brutality. Even if she lived, Asha would still be unable to do anything. She was sliced up, chances are the blade met some nerves and muscle, causing irreperable damage.

Dorothy's vision started to blur, dots and circles of black started to appear in front of her. The dark void ate up everything she saw: Jae holding Asha's corpse body, Iz running away and the blood. The latter was everywhere. It puddled on the ground and smeared against the walls. Asha's clothing was probably stained, drenched in Iz's and her own blood.

Dot took a step back, her knees felt weak. The darkness engulfed her, shallowing the last remaining bits of her conscience.

She hoped it was just a dream. She wished it wasn't real. She dreamt it was nothing more than a nightmare.

She fought hard to stay awake, but she guessed the shock of seeing her friend died was too hard for her. She was already gone before hitting the ground. The gravity dragged Dorothy's body straight to the ground, falling on her back, hitting the floor hard like a rock. She was lucky to be out cold already because if she wasn't, she would have cried out loud because of the pain of her fall.

[ViolentMedic]

Isabel was injured. For a moment, Lily had to stop herself from smiling a little. Isabel deserved whatever had been inflicted on her, and Lily was only disappointed that the job hadn't been finished.

But now Isabel wanted Lily to treat her. To... help.

Lily considered going for one of the weapons again, but she knew that... injured as Isabel was, she could still overpower Lily. A raccoon could overpower Lily.

So, silently, Lily grabbed the medical supplies and moved to sit next to Isabel. The best she could do right now was do such a bad job that, hopefully, Isabel would die of infection. As she moved over there, she glanced at the lock.

She wondered how long that would hold, and what the crossbow-wielding guy would do with her if he broke in. Would he believe her if she told the truth? Or if she lied? Not now that she was helping to mend Isabel's wounds.

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This wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening this wasn't happening

Jae's legs buckled, sending him and Asha to the floor, jolting his good knee painfully and leaving his splinted leg awkwardly splayed. Some part of him realized that Isabel and the girl who must have been her accomplice were gone and noticed the thud of Dorothy hitting the floor behind him, but he couldn't tear his focus away from Asha's limp body.

"Asha, fuck- Don't-" He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. "Don't fucking do this to me, do you hear me!? Don't-" His voice cracked and Asha's head lolled back too far and there was so much blood on his clothes and his hands and his face and even if she had been able to respond it probably would have only come out as a gurgle-

Jae's entire body shuddered, bile welling up in his throat. He dry heaved, doubling over as he gagged. He had to catch himself on one hand, gasping, eyes stinging. "Asha-"

She was gone. Right in front of him, almost close enough to touch, and he still hadn't had a chance to even say goodbye. The realization sapped his remaining strength to hold himself up. He sank down, curling around Asha as his vision blurred.

This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening.

[VoltTurtle]

"Thanks..." Isabel said, through pain-induced gritted teeth. "I really... appreciate it... Legit."

Talking was difficult with the amount of pain and especially the crushing amount of fear that Isabel felt. This was the first time she had gotten seriously injured. She wasn't sure if her first aid was up to snuff, or if she would get a serious infection from all of her wounds. The last thing she wanted to do was die slowly from blood loss, or worse die painfully from septic shock.

Isabel moved her shaking left arm over to Lily, before cutting away her sweater's sleeve near the wound and breaking the shaft off of the bolt head embedded in her arm. "Just... leave the thing in there. Hopefully it'll get better in... in the meantime."

Placing an alcohol pad over the puncture wound and hissing in pain, Isabel stammered out orders to Lily. "T-take some... of the bandages fr-from my second... second medical kit on y-your side, then apply constant... pressure to tha-at wound for the n-next... ten minutes, p-please..."

Hastily moving some medical tape, additional alcohol pads, and bandages out of her medical kit with her free arm onto the desk next to her, Isabel sized up her injuries. The stab wounds near her ribs and her collar bone were the ones that had the highest priority, as they were hemorrhaging the most blood. Lily was handling the bolt wound, and the regular old lacerations could wait.

Medical tape to help hold the flesh together. Alcohol pads to sterilize. Bandages to pressure and staunch blood flow. So simple in theory, so much more difficult in practice, especially when trying to do it all with only one arm. She needed to get a tight wrap on each wound to hopefully staunch blood flow enough for her to properly pressure each of them before she bled to death.

After a moment of struggling, Isabel pulled her sweater off of her right arm and her torso, the shirt still awkwardly hanging off of her occupied left arm.

Isabel slowly taped, sterilized, and staunched the stab wound around her ribs, doing her best to remain calm in spite of the pain and all of her blood she saw dripping down her body. Her shoulder wound followed suit as she clumsily continued to put pressure on what had almost been a stomach wound. ignoring the cuts elsewhere to the best of her ability.

Time passed as the two sat and tried to stop the bleeding, silence only being broken by the sounds of Asha's allies mourning just outside the room. Worrying about a corpse wasn't going to get them anywhere, and Isabel felt nothing but contempt for them and their asinine behavior that had gotten all of them into this mess.

Eventually, Isabel counted out ten minutes and, after verifying that the bandaged wounds were no longer bleeding, ordered Lily to start pressuring her hastily bandaged collar bone.

Isabel treated and wrapped her arm and face wound, before cutting away her sweat stained and bloody bra and wrapping her chest up as she did her best to ignore the lightheadedness that was slowly getting worse.

Another ten minutes were counted out, and Isabel sighed in relief when she saw that she was no longer bleeding noticeably anywhere on her body.

"T-th-thanks... L-L-Lily." Isabel stammered out, making no attempt to hide the fact that she was still in a lot of pain and had spots black appearing in her vision. "I'm... s-s-so glad... that this... stupid... sh-shit is... over... k-k-k-kinda..."

And with those final words, Isabel collapsed onto the table, only barely conscious and too weak to force herself up.