Sound and Fury

[Solitair†]

((Quincy Archer continued from Battle of Epic Proportions))
((Warren Pace continued from A View to a Kill))

It had been a while since the Barracks had seen human contact, but that would soon change. The first person to revisit the place was none other than one Quincy Archer, esquire, who had been struck with indecision as to his next destination until Danya's announcement revealed the newly-christened safety of the barracks, which by coincidence he found himself next to. After his company with Margaret, which ended in their separation, he found himself desiring a few minutes of personal time before he was forced to interact with his 'peers'.

The first thing brought to his attention was the fact that one of the buildings appeared to have suffered serious fire damage. Quincy whistled at the havoc his fellow students had managed to inflict. Of course, it was only to be expected when powerful weapons were given to drooling mongoloids.

The second incongruous detail was the large patch of blood and flesh that dominated the outside area near the burnt building. It amazed him how artificial it looked compared to what he had seen of bloodshed online. No, he realized, this was more realistic than what he'd seen in the movie or indeed, anything he didn't witness up close. It reminded him of the audience's expectations to hear sound transmitted through the vacuum of space, highly exaggerated gunfire, and horse gallops that sound like coconuts being banged together.

"Things that try to look like things often look more like things than things," he quoted, then chuckled madly. He'd done his best to look past the conventions of fiction and critique things based on actual facts of life, but he'd slipped and forgotten himself with the sight of real bodies. Not even witnessing the first SOTF series had accomplished this, as anyone who'd read his blog could testify.

A close examination revealed, well, nothing. By this time the area contained little more than bits of maggot food, barely recognizable as human flesh, and little shreds of fabric from the unlucky victims' clothes, and Quincy couldn't see how he could possibly determine anything from those.

Then he realized that he didn't need to. The first announcement that he heard on the island had told him the whole story.

Ivye Dewley was the punchline to a great many of Quincy's joke back at Southridge. While Quincy was not unsympathetic to goth culture, being a modest fan of My Chemical Romance himself, he couldn't help but laugh at those who took it too far, and no one did that better than the ludicrously named Ivye. With a name and complexion like that, he supposed that she couldn't help but be pigeonholed as a goth, but Quincy drew the line at actual delusions to vampirism. He'd heard it one day and had persisted in helping a great deal more students find out about her, and why not? Even Quincy himself was capable of discerning fact from fiction! It perturbed him to know that there were worse people out in the world, and one going to his own school to boot.

Compared to Ivye, Gabriel Theobaldt was almost normal. Oh, sure, there was the matter of the whole reclusive jackass thing, but Quincy never saw anything wrong with that. He'd actually missed the old Gabriel when the latter began to socialize more. Sellout. Quincy had called him out on it, and began to worry when Gabriel didn't relapse and beat his scrawny little arse into the ground, an act which he was more than capable of. Then again, Quincy knew nothing about Gabe's time on the island. For all he knew, the kid could have gone mad and reverted back to his old self.

Not that it mattered now. Both him and the Queen of the Night had met their ends at the hands of Adam Dodd. Boy was Quincy stunned when one of his favourite 'fictional characters' transferred to Southridge. It gave him the incentive to look up SOTF again, and from the looks of things, his entire class had been caught in the crossfire of Danya's grudge against the boy.

"So this is what you do for a living, watch kids blow themselves up," he commented, feeling the aroma of death and decay force its way down his nose. "You must be a riot at parties."

He turned to leave, but stopped when he felt his bladder swell to uncomfortable proportions. Come to think of it, he hadn't really stopped to take care of business since he came to in the quarry. Oh well. Might as well do it now.

As he unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis, Quincy looked at the blood-patch and raised an eyebrow. It would be funny if he aimed his golden shower at the center of the circle of gore, but no. Someone might see him and take offense, and if that someone had a gun, well, Quincy would be concerned with other bodily fluids of his. So he aimed at the burnt building instead, whistling at the impressive distance he managed to make. After several seconds, the stream ebbed to nothing and Quincy zipped himself back up. "Ain't nothing like getting out what you've gotta get out," he commented.

He was about to move into one of the more intact buildings in the area when he noticed a familiar face standing ten feet in front of him. Said face had come to the barracks as a part of S.A.D.D., and was busy marveling at the fact that somehow, he had beaten track superstar Dorian Muriaru to the site when he came across his old friend's eerie lack of shock at the meat puddle he was examining. He'd watched, mouth agape, as Quincy relieved himself in the presence of the dead. Now the two of them stared at each other, unsure of what to do next, until Quincy decided to break the ice.

"Hullo, Warren. Did you enjoy watching me pee?"

----

SOUND AND FURY REVIEWS SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Normally I prefer not to pay attention to the fetid gossip that flows around me in my everyday life, if only to prevent myself from inhaling lethal amounts of carbon monoxide in the evening, but one item in particular has been pressed rudely into my face by you, the readers, who assume that a program like this would appeal to my deepest interests. Indeed, the combination of violence and the brutal punishment of retarded teenagers is what piqued my curiosity and caused me to finally take the plunge into your interests.

For those of you who live in remote areas without any connection to the internet (and apparently have some other way of reading my work), Survival of the Fittest is a massive television program involving 120 students who have been kidnapped by European terrorists and forced to kill each other. And that's exactly what you get if you watch this program.

What sets SOTF apart is that a comprehensive viral marketing scheme concocted in order to get the audience to believe that the events on camera are really happening. Before you send me hate mail chastising me for insensitivity to the deaths of the contestants, let me assure you that I went into this series fully open to the possibility that it was nonfictional. Indeed, most of the program fits in well with this assumption. All footage is filmed from strategically placed cameras around the 'island' and reminds me of The Blair Witch Project; some of these cameras are even 'destroyed' at certain times by clumsy or enraged students. Unfortunately, there is one area in which my suspension of disbelief was snapped in half with sickening crack, as if it were made of bone, and that is in the character acting.

Characterization is wildly inconsistent, as though the program was written by a writing staff of dozens who barely even bothered to collaborate before submitting their patchwork script. For every deep character like Adam Dodd, you find about five shallow stocks from the Friday the 13th series whose sole purpose is to engage in meaningless dialogue and wait for the nearest Jason to gruesomely murder them. Creative deaths abound, which would be more of a benefit if realism wasn't supposedly a priority. One boy attempted to swim off the island, only to be diced to chum by the propellers of patrolling boats; a girl was blown out of the island's outhouse by a grenade, her mangled and broken body flying an unbelievably long distance before hitting the ground at last; and another boy was repeatedly run over by a car near the end of the game. I'm serious! Not one, but TWO cars, apparently with full gas tanks, are found and, in a sequence that could have been directed by Michael Bay, engage in a chase across the island, crash into a warehouse, and blow it to the Mushroom Kingdom.

Another even more convincing blow to the program's credibility is the characters' surprising vulnerability (or resistance) to physical trauma. Nowhere is the latter more prominent than with the character of Jacob Starr, one of the early game antagonists, who is burned, shot, stabbed, and beaten and never seems to treat these injuries as more than a scratch. My eyes nearly rolled right out of my head when he was shot by an arrow in the shoulder and was still able to move it despite the fact that it should be ripping up his shoulder joint when jostled. (Incidentally, this happens with every arrow wound in the series. Clearly the writing staff did not do the research.) Fortunately, Jacob is prevented from ruining the series by an astounding improvement on the part of the writing staff, and becomes more sympathetic and well-rounded by the time Adam Dodd slits his throat (upon which he hits the other end of the durability scale and takes maybe ten seconds to bleed out).

Fortunately, there was one portion of the story that truly excelled. The story of Adam Dodd, whom I've already mentioned, focuses on the complete destruction of his optimism and hope, warping him into a shell-shocked survivor who seems to be as much of a feral animal as a human. Adam's performance, as well as that of his supporting characters (especially Hawley Faust), really bring this particular story arc to life, and made me forget that I was essentially watching a massively multiplayer slasher flick.

The final straw came for me when, as Adam was just about to have his final confrontation with his nemesis, Cody Jenson (who had also found a motorcycle on the island prior to the finale. Don't ask.), the cameras cut out due to 'technical difficulties' and the series ended. Consider it the final 'up yours' from the creators to the audience. A sequel series is currently running, but I won't be seeing it under any circumstances because of my lack of confidence that the first season's problems will be resolved in any way.

SOTF could have been a work of art if only the editors had cut out the ancillary bullshit storylines and the pretention of being nonfictional and focused entirely on Adam Dodd's battered humanity. As it stands, it serves to fill only a specific niche, that of diehard Jason and Freddy fans who don't mind feeling ashamed of themselves for watching blood-and-guts porn. Massive condemnation of this series has arisen from nearly every media outlet in the country, not to mention some outside the country, and I feel obligated to join them. The anonymous producers of the show took what could have been a cultural milestone and sabotaged it to add shock value and exploitation, resulting in a condescending, intelligence-insulting mess. If this is Art, it is the new kind that sacrifices meaning for the chance to offend the audience. View at your own risk.

Yours Sincerely,
The Late Arthur Aldridge

[Heatwizard†]

[Dennis McDonald continued from A View to a Kill]

Sigh. The metaphorical bike of SADD just had a stick of Danya thrown into the spokes. Or maybe it was a bomb. Didn't matter, this plan was undergoing serious difficulties. The first thought he had was to call his bluff; yes, Danya has more cameras then students, but if they broke enough, the potential casualties of keeping his word would involve most of the students including players, and they could try to find the magic unacceptable number. But it soon struck him that if they kept going, Danya would probably just skip straight to them and rid himself of the problem.

So camera breaking was over...but the damage had still been done. They put most of their damage into three spots. If they were hot, Danya might just play into their plan anyway. It was a wait and hope plan, though, since he didn't have any way to find out how much activity was in there. And it didn't seem like the cameras were chosen very strategically, due to how Neil talked about it. Bah...the difference between freedom and death is how well Neil planned the details.

For as long as he thought about these things, he never liked to be the leader of things. You have to micromanage everything, and if any mistakes are made blame tends to shift straight to you. it seemed like more trouble then it was worth. But now that there were real stakes, the mindset became more obvious. If he were in control, he could have done it better. The lagoon probably would have been a more worthwhile target for their efforts over the cottage.

Every step he took, Dennis looked every direction he could think of. After SADD got associated with Danya's little kill spree, he was convinced one of the victim's friends or something would jump out demanding vengeance. It was not a fun walk. In addition to the bugs that kept buzzing around his head, doing a number on his concentration. Bugs pissed Dennis off SO MUCH. It was probably a phobia, although he tended to react more violently then scared.

The set of barracks finally deemed Dennis' torment worthy and revealed themselves to him. He sighed in relief. With more heads working on this, the solution had to show up. Plus, he was really sick of being alone. A quick check in the buildings revealed them deserted, though. He found it hard to believe he was early, he didn't walk very fast...oh god. What if he was the only one who showed up? What if everyone else decided to just ditch the group and fend for themselves? Oh shit. He wouldn't last a minute on his own if someone decided he'd make an easy kill. He was an easy kill. Oh god was he screwed. Fucked with a capital shit.

No. No. It was hardly the time for his mind to play Hiroshima(Tasteless reference ftw). He probably just missed the group. Dennis started checking every building thoroughly, coercing his sanity to stay right where it was. But as the renewed effort turned up more and more nothing, panic started making a comeback. He pounded his head against the door of the latest empty building, coherent thoughts becoming more and more scarce.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Hey wait what the fuck was that. Dennis looked up, head darting around scanning for the source. It sounded like water. But there was no water arounOH SHIT SOMEONE IS HERE! He ran for the source, almost skidding around a corner as he caught up with two guys and a bunch of corpses.

"Hullo Warren. Did you enjoy watching me pee?"

Warren! Warren was with SADD. Finally. He couldn't help but laugh...but not before realizing the other guy wasn't. He could have been a player. Players always seemed to make little jokes like that. And the corpses. Oh shit oh shit OH SHIT. Dennis reached for his shotgun, the possible consequences never crossing his thoughts.

[Theseus†]

((Neil Sinclair continued from A View to a Kill))

Neil Sinclair emerged from the jungle.

He was soaked from the rain, but even the rain couldn't wash away the blood on him. He was stained. He walked slowly towards the barracks up ahead. He saw all the buildings, and wondered which one everyone was in. There could be players in there, waiting and hiding. Neil, who had the Ida sword from Blood Boy in his left hand and M16 in his right hand, moved slowly. He should have waited for Dominica and Matthew to catch up.

He didn't though. If there was someone in there playing the game, Neil would take the fall. He was tired of his friends getting hurt. Though, the members of S.A.D.D should be here. He went through the first barracks and saw nothing. He performed an equal search on two more and saw no one.

He continued to a fourth barracks and heard voices.

People.

Neil made his way through the barracks, glad to be out of the rain, moving closer to the voices until he saw three kids up ahead. Neil couldn't tell who they were, as he was some distance away, but he decided to take a chance anyway. Neil raised his M16 and spoke to them. Not in a loud yelling voice, he was tired of that. He spoke in a way that almost gave proof to what he experienced back at the lookout tower.

"It's Neil Sinclair. Who's there?"

[Ciel†]

((Dominica Shapiro continued from A View to a Kill))

*ACHOO*

This was the last thing Dominica Shapiro wanted. A cold. Ever since she, Neil and a battered Matthew left the lighthouse, she felt this rather annoying pain in the back of her head. She didn't think to much into it, but a while later she found herself sneezing. She had a cold, probably from all this rain. Rain, rain, pouring down from the heavens, never ending, no signs of stopping. She grimaced, having tied a bandage around her arm during the trip. It wasn't exactly the best job anyone could have done, and it only partially stopped the bleeding, but it was the best she could do. The pain in her arm was overwhelmed by the nausea in her head.

I know what the problem is. It's these wet clothes. I need to get out of these, get into some fresh clothes... yeah, that would make me feel at least a little bit better.

Dominica looked back at Matthew, noticing that Neil had went ahead. Matthew was having a rather hard time walking, but Dominica couldn't help the boy whatsoever. After all, he was most likely heavier than her and she couldn't support him. So she came up with a better solution: the speargun, dropped inside her bag. It was long enough to act as some kind of improvised crotch, and it was light enough to allow Matthew to move about. She took the gun out of her bag as quickly as possible, handing the rifle to Matthew.

"H-Here..." She said, between sniffles. "Just use this. I can't carry you around, but with this you can pretty much get around by yourself." She forced a smile. She didn't particularly like the boy, but he fought his own quite well during the fight and she was filled with respect for him. He was alot more brave than she had thought beforehand. "And... thanks for protecting us. If you hadn't distracted Blood Boy, then ... well, I don't know what would have happened."

She set the gun in Matthew's hands and walked ahead, reaching the Barracks just after Neil. "Hmm... I wonder where everybody is. Weren't they supposed to reach the barracks ahead of us?" Dominica was worried. They were supposed to come here, right?

[dinah_shore†]

((Denise, cont'd from at Dawn))

The walk to the barracks did no good for Denise's awful mood. She'd only had one cigarette yesterday, and her clothes were soaked right through to the skin. Wearing wet underwear continuously for 48 hours was enough to make her cranky, but that coupled with nicotine withdrawls made Denise downright twitchy.

There were four or five sets of footprints in the mud leading up to one of the buildings in the area. She couldn't take on that many people at once. Denise entered the barracks one door down from the building in question.

Let's just finish this smoke (or two) and get the hell out of here!

Denise needed two matches to get her first cigarette lit. While she feverishly puffed, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a dirty window.

Jesus Murphy...

Some hair had fallen out of her pony tail, and was now plastered to the sides of her face, thanks to the rain. The bags under her eyes, coupled with her sallow complexion from malnutrition made her look at least ten years older. She fixed her hair quickly, but there was nothing she could do for her face.

...Or her nails. Her once well-groomed, long nails had been destroyed over the course of her stay on the island. Most of them had broken off and gotten infected. All of them were jagged or torn in some way. Flinching, Denise put what was left of her index fingernail between her teeth, and bit it off. She hated it when people bit their nails.

After biting off the remainder of her fingernails, Denise fumbled for her Player's and lit a second cigarette. She then sat down on the floor next to her daypack, which still contained the hare.

"So how am I gonna cook his bunny, now?" she quietly mused to herself.

[JB_Finesse†]

(I hope this is okay)

Shane Rafferty stumbled into the barracks, long hair dripping wet and pasted to his head, clothes covered in various muck, eyes looking red and irritated. In one hand was a shitty little Chinese pistol, aimed at the ground with his finger off the trigger.

"Hey," he said in a raspy voice, "What's up?"

[dinah_shore†]

The boy was shockingly casual-sounding, considering their situation. Denise looked him over. Noticing his gun, her interest in this unfamiliar boy tripled. He didn't appear to be on the attack, so Denise greeted him the only way she knew how.

"...Cigarette?"

[Solitair†]

Warren spun around to look at Neil, but noticed Dennis fingering his shotgun. "Dennis, no!" he shouted. "He's alright, I swear!"

"Hey, now, you don't know that for sure," Quincy warned as he wiped his hands on his shirt. "I mean, what's your basis for saying that I mean you no harm? For all you know, I could have caused this." He pointed to the giant bloodstain.

Warren stared at Quincy and began to reach for his gun. "I just thought, since your name wasn't on the announcements..." he began.

Quincy nodded and held his hands up beside his head. "Exactly. This right here is Dodd's handiwork. I haven't killed anyone because I got stuck with boxing gloves."

Warren smirked. "Oh. I don't suppose you found a place to check-"

"I already tried that joke on Steve Digaetano," Quincy interrupted. "Flew right over his head." He made a soaring motion over his head with one hand and rolled his eyes. "Some people.

"Anyway, your friends. Dennis, Neil aaaaaaaaaaaaand Dominica, right? Make yourselves at home. Have a biscuit. And don't track any mud on the carpets, I just got those in. You wouldn't believe how much Turkish rugs go for these days." He began to walk into the nearest building, leaving Warren alone with the other S.A.D.D. members.

He looked at them, then at the building, then at them again, and was about to speak when Quincy popped back out again.

"Don't go in there," he told the group, pointing inside the building. "It's nasty." He began to walk to the building across the way instead.

Warren sighed. "Sorry about that. That's Quincy Archer. He... used... to be a friend of mine."

[dinah_shore†]

(( OOC: okay, JB....is he in Denise's barracks or SADD's? there are more than just one building in the area.... see?))

[JB_Finesse†]

(Sorry about that. Denise's.)

Shane shook his head, dug around in his duffel bag, and pulled out a pre-rolled joint. "Brought my own."

[dinah_shore†]

Denise's eyes lit up as soon as he removed the joint from his bag. Her new best friend.

"Hey, guy...check this out." She zipped open her bag, pulling back some cloth to reveal the hare's legs. "Real food. I can cook it if we can get a fire going. Just let me hit that and you can have some too."

Denise was not afraid of a little pot. A bit of THC in her blood stream was something she could handle no problem, since she used to indulge herself on a daily basis. Hell, some skunk would be great for her stress levels at the moment.

[JB_Finesse†]

Shane grinned. "Shit, you're my savior. I've had the munchies for days now."

He shoved the gun into his right jeans pocket, pulled out a lighter, lit up the joint and puffed on it to make sure it got going. His buzz from last time was almost gone, and there was no way in Hell he could face any more time on this island sober. He hit the joint again, this time too hard, and coughed before handing it to Denise.

"So what's with the party next door? Know anything about it?"

[Super Llama†]

(EDIT: Ugh. Nevermind. Posts going by so quickly... x_x)

Hannah Rose was tired.

She trudged her way through the jungle, finally spotting a group of buildings as they came into view. Stopping to take a look at her map, she confirmed it as the barracks, and started out towards it.

She had felt the whole gamut of emotions throughout her six days on the island: fear, anger, despair, paranoia. But now she just felt tired. She had spent much of her time in hiding, wondering what she was going to do. Even now she had no idea what to do. She silently cursed her indecisiveness, and while she was at it, the apparent uselessness of her weapon. She took another look down at the weapon in her hand: a rusty spoon. Yeah, this is a great weapon if the other guy's overly susceptible to tetanus. She gave a sigh and reached up, touching the beret on the top of her head.

"You'll look after me, right magic hat?" She was surprised that she was still relying on her good luck charm, the one piece of superstition she ever allowed herself, despite the fact that it had, for all intents and purposes, completely failed her when she needed it most. In fact, she seemed to be relying on it even more. She felt a lot more secure wearing it, almost like someone was watching over her. It almost felt like that without, she'd have probably lost her mind by now. Then reality sunk in for a moment and she realized that she was contributing all of this to a hat.

Maybe I've already lost my mind after all...

She stopped as she heard voices, quickly taking cover behind a nearby building and peeking out. She didn't recognize either of the two people, Quincy and Warren, who immeadiately came into her line of sight. Then a third (Dennis, who Hannah recognized, but only in passing) appeared, brandishing a shotgun, and suddenly Hannah got the feeling that something bad was about to go down.

Uh oh, I better get out of h-

"It's Neil Sinclair. Who's there?"

She stopped as a fourth voice called itself by a familiar name. Neil Sinclair? As in Neil Sinclair of SADD? She had heard Danya mention SADD during the announcements, immeadiately before his little act of revenge (she shivered as those screams came back to haunt her.) She decided to stick around for the moment now that what she hoped was a friendly face had arrived, and as the moment of tension eventually defused she decided to show herself, stepping out into view and putting her hands up. "Excuse me, y-you aren't going to shoot me, right? I'm not playing, if that's what you think, not that I'd be able to kill anyone with what I got." She said, motioning to the spoon in her hand.

[Heatwizard†]

Dennis' mind was going a little too fast and he started to pull the shotgun before Warren spoke up. Most of it got lost from the ears to the brain, but the gist of it survived and he dropped the gun back into his bag, holding his head with a feeble "argh". Too much was going on at once, the effort of processing it made him feel sick. He needed to go and think less. Muttering a tired and unenthusiastic "Sorry" in the general direction of Quincy, he headed off toward the barrack insides(slowly wondering if the proper term for the single building was a barrack) and slumped down, staring off into space blankly. Now that immediate survival had been taken care of, and that little panic attack was over, he needed to clear out his head, process all this crap that just happened.

[dinah_shore†]

Hastily putting her half-smoked cigarette out on the floor (I'll save this for after...), Denise accepted the joint from Mr. Scruff and toked on it lightly.

Nice.

"Oh, our neighbours? I don't know, they haven't sent a welcoming party over just yet. There's at least 4 of them, though."

She took a bigger hit this time, and handed it back to...

Oh Jesus, just learn his name already!

"I'm sorry, but I'm really bad with names. You are...?"