One Big Joke

[Fiori]

"Alright, here we are. Sure you're going to be fine on your own?"

Jenna Rhodes turned to face her father with a sarcastic look on her face, causing the middle-aged policeman to let out a light chuckle.

"Okay, not alone-alone, but without your mother or I?"

"I'm 18 dad. I'm fairly sure that means I'm old enough to look after myself." said Jenna.

"Well, in that case, I hope you and your friends have a fun time in Disneyland..." her father replied, sighing to himself. "Your mother and I are going to miss you, you know that right?"

Jenna smiled, then leaned forward to give her father the biggest hug she had given him in a long time. "I'll miss you too dad. I'll try to send you and mom a text every day."

Her father chuckled again, hugging his daughter back. "Now, run along, don't want to keep your friends waiting."

After giving her father a quick kiss on the cheek, Jenna grabbed her bag and left the car, making her way towards the long cue of students lining up for the coaches. She had barely made it a few metres away when her father called out to her again.

"Oh, be careful around strangers! Never know what kind of people you'll meet in California."

"Duly noted!" Jenna replied, a bright smile on her face as she waved goodbye to her father...



Jenna Rhodes was alone.

She wasn't sure how long she had been awake for. Ten minutes? Half an hour? A whole day? She couldn't bring herself to look at her watch, or do anything for that matter. All she could do right now was think long and hard about her current predicament.

It was like her worst nightmare had come true. One minute she had been laying back in her plane seat, contemplating the shapes the clouds outside her window before slowly drifting off into a deep and pleasant sleep. Next thing she knew... No, she couldn't even bring herself to think about it. She couldn't bring herself to even accept that any of this was really happening.

She looked up at a nearby camera that was watching her every movement, recording everything she did. She wasn't sure what creeped her out more, the fact that someone had installed a security camera inside of a woman's bathroom, or that there were people watching her every movement. People judging her ever action, thinking ungodly things as they voyeuristically observed her. What was her family thinking? Were they even watching, or did they not want to see what fate would inevitably befall her?

Like most rational human beings, she never liked Survival of the Fittest. In fact, she absolutely detested it with every fibre of her being, as well as the disgusting filth who enjoyed watching it. It was barbaric in every sense of the word, a cruel subversion of everything good in the world. The fact that there were actually people out there who watched it for entertainment sickened her. This wasn't a game, or some inane reality television program. It was a hostage situation, simple as that.

A hostage situation that Jenna had now found herself in.

How could this have happened to her? How could this have happened her class? Surely whatever point these terrorists were trying to make had been made long ago, during the past versions of this supposed game? What could they possibly gain from any of this? The apparent pointlessness of it all irritated her to no end.

She eventually decided to take a look in her duffle bag, much as she would have preferred to not have to. Undoubtably, some people were bound to cave in to the demands these terrorists were making. It would only take one person with a gun and a desperte need to survive to start a never-ending cycle of violence and retribution, and frankly she did not want to be the one who was the first to go. Of course, whether or not her assigned weapon would actually be of any use was anothe-

...

She could not believe her eyes.

At first, she thought she must have mistaken it for something else. Surely they couldn't have expected her to defend herself with a vile object like that?

With much reluctance she took the object out of her bag, and sure enough it was exactly what she hoped it was not.

A large purple dildo.

Some people would have immediately dropped it in disgust, or thrown it against the wall in anger. She dreaded to think that might of even be aroused by it, though why anyone would want this thing near any of their orifices was a question she did not want answered. Jenna however reacted in a way that surprised even her.

She laughed.

Not a particularly happy or cheerful laugh though, god forbid. In all honestly, she had no clue why she laughed. Maybe it was because of the sheer absurdity of her situation, of the fact that she was the unlucky soul on this island to have been assigned this lurid object. The very idea that she had been assigned what was popularly referred to as "joke" weapons.

A joke. That's what this whole situation was, wasn't it? A big funny joke. "Haha, look she got a big purple dildo as her starting weapon, isn't that so darn funny?"

Just thinking about it was making her angry. Was that what this was? Some stupid game were people were expected to murder each other with dildos? She remembered once overhearing her classmates discussing one of the previous versions, laughing about how some poor boy cursed gravity as he fell to his death.

She had hated SOTF before, sure. Hated it more than anything else in the world. But now, hate was beginning to sound too minor a word to describe her feelings.

As much as she wanted to throw the disgusting thing away and forget it ever existed, she decided against all logic to put it back into her bag. She hadn't a clue what use it could possibly be in the future. A makeshift club perhaps, or would that just be giving sweaty Youtubers footage for their "Funniest moments" compilation videos?

No, she had to calm down. Negative thoughts were not going to get her anywhere. If people were able to escape this situation twice, then surely it would be possible for it to happen a third time. Maybe not by their own hands, but she was sure the government would have set something up for in case this situation was to ever arise again.

In the meantime, she had to focus on staying alive, as well as making sure that her friends did not go around murdering each other. With this in mind, Jenna got up from where she was lying and made her way outside the bathroom door, leading into what looked like a reception area of some description.

Alright then, where to first?

[CondorTalon]

((Yukiko Sakurai continued from Sink And/Or Swim.))

From the pool, there was a small, blank room which contained two doors. The doors were labeled "Men" and "Women", so Yukiko assumed that these were the changing rooms. Another hallway branched out from the room, and this one Yukiko followed.

Yukiko decided that they were going to have a chance of finding any friends they needed to move quickly. There wouldn't be anytime for dawdling, especially once they started searching the outdoors.

They were in some sort of residential building, she realized as they walked. Presumably a hotel, though being in an apartment complex wasn't out of the question. She wondered whether or not it would work to search the upper levels of the building. Presumably, the elevators weren't working, and taking the stairs to check every floor would not doubt be a slow and arduous process. She turned to David to get his opinion when she heard a door closing.

It was somewhere nearby. No, it was around the corner.

Instinctively, she threw her hand out behind her, stopping David from moving forward more. With her other hand she moved her finger over her mouth, motioning for David to keep quiet.

Cautiously, she peered around the corner.

The room she was looking into appeared to be a reception area, more or less confirming her thoughts about this being a hotel. It might have been a nice place to stay, had this been a different circumstance. No, wait, that wasn't important right now. Someone was there.

Someone she knew.

Yukiko walked out from behind the corner, taking a small shaky step forward.

"J-Jenna? Oh god, Jenna is that you?"

[Riki]

[David Zimmer, continued from Sink And/Or Swim]

David let Yukiko take the lead, as she was the one searching for someone. Of course, David also had people, especially Joey, he was looking for, but he felt optimistic. He thought that he would find them eventually along his search for Chase. Suddenly, a door closed somewhere and Yukiko's arm stopped him.

"Wha-" -t do you think was this?

David attempted to ask Yukiko this question, but he saw how she moved her finger in front of her mouth. He understood what that meant. Stay quiet.

He followed closely as Yukiko peered around the corner, and he saw a person standing in what appeared to be a reception area. It was... Jenna Rhodes. David knew her, but no particular memories came to mind. Yukiko, definetely was happy to see her. David noticed that Yukiko's legs were shaking as she took a small step towards Jenna and thus he quickly closed the distance to be near in. Just in case she fell down.

[Fiori]

As Jenna observed her surroundings, taking particular note of a nearby coffee table with a number of magazines on it, she was suddenly taken aback by the sound of a familiar voice.

"Yukiko?"

Admittedly, Jenna had not expected to see her friend and fellow swimming enthusiast so soon. Not that this was in any way a bad thing, quite the opposite actually. Considering how quickly it took for some people to lose sight of their humanity during the previous iterations, she was more than thankful that the first person she met happened to be one of her closest friends.

That said, a part of her was also saddened to see that Yukiko was stuck in this dreadful situation as well, along with a number of their friends. Thankfully, not everyone she knew went on the trip, but the fact still remained that unless they were rescued it would be impossible for them to both return home. Those damned terrorists were determined to make sure that there was only one survivor this time around, one who would have to bloody their hands if they expected to return home without having to go through this hell a second time around.

The severity of their situation aside, she was still glad to see that Yukiko was safe for now. And not alone as it seemed, seeing as she appeared to be accompanied by none other than David Zimmer. Whilst she and David were barely acquaintances, he always struck her as a more-or-less decent person, one who also happened to occasionally visit her local swimming pool back in Seattle. At the very least, she could definitely think of worse people who could have found Yukiko all by herself.

In any case, as much as Jenna wanted to remain as calm as possible, after seeing out that one of her childhood friends was okay she couldn't help but briskly walk up to Yukiko and give her a quick hug. Normally, she didn't consider herself to be a very "huggy" person regarding people outside of her family, but at that particular moment in time she just couldn't help herself.

"Thank god you're alright, don't think I'd be able to forgive myself if something happened to you or the others" she said, mainly referring to the rest of their friends who were stuck on the island.

She then turned to Yukiko's male companion. "Good to see you're okay too, David."

[CondorTalon]

Thank god, she'd managed to find one of her friends this quickly. As Jenna called her name back, she simply nodded.

Yukiko thought that things couldn't be that bad, now, because she'd found one of her best friends really early on. When Jenna came forward for a hug, she dropped the weed whacker and quickly returned the hug, wrapping her arms around her. Although she wasn't the person she had set out to find, she was really happy to find her nonetheless. She was already a step closer to her goal of finding all of her friends.

"It's okay," she said, in response to Jenna's comment about not forgiving herself.

She broke from the hug, and reached down to grab the weed whacker.

"I couldn't leave it for someone else to take it," she explained. "I'm not going to ever use it."

"If you don't mind," she started again, "Let's not stay here for longer than necessary. I need... we need to find Chase, Max, and M..."

She'd almost forgotten.

Yukiko cleared her throat.

[Riki]

That whole situation was actually rather heartwarming. It also proved for David that his optimistic view was right. Friends were able to find each other, and that even before one of them was dead, or a killer. He figured, that the more people worked together now, the more chances they had to find a viable escape plan. There had to be a flaw in the system. David smiled when he thought of that. Things could turn out better. When Jenna told him that she was glad to see him okay, David replied with the same words.

He looked at Yukiko as she picked up the weed whacker with the reasoning that nobody should use it. David agreed to that. It would be better for him and his companions to have weapons, so that people not as peaceful as them may not take them and kill.

Then Yukiko mentioned how she wanted to leave the place.

"Hm... I would not leave that soon. Maybe someone else who we know is in this hotel."

[Fiori]

It was only after Yukiko brought up her assigned weapon that Jenna noticed it, her eyes widening in shock when she realised what it was.

It looked as though someone had taken a perfectly ordinary weed wacker an attached a circular saw to it, presumably so that it could be used to... Jenna dreaded to think what possible use someone could find for such a thing that didn't involve mutilating another human being. It was like something from some disgusting 1970's exploitation film. Just looking at and thinking of the horrific possibilites was enough to make her feel sick.

Much as she would have preferred to get rid of it, Yukiko's reasoning for keeping it was sound. Last thing they needed was for it get into the hands of someone who might want to actually use it. Of course, this also begged the question as to why she didn't just destroy it, at least until another thought crossed her mind. Namely that, as much as the thought sickened her, unlike the sex object she had been assigned Yukiko could at least effectively defend herself from physical assailants.

In any case, both Yukiko and David brought up good points. Finding the rest of their friends should probably be their top priority for now, which at the very least would give her a set goal until she finally figured out what exactly she was going to do about the situation. And as much as she wanted to explore their surroundings, she had to agree with David. Well, mostly agree anyway.

"Probably wouldn't hurt to check, although I doubt that we'll find them here. The odds of the fi... The four of us starting in the same building ought to be pretty remote, but then again so were the odds of us all being in this mess in the first place."

A thought then occurred to Jenna, prompting the young woman to quickly start searching through her bag.

"Just a sec... Ah, here it is."

She took out the map, unfolding it to get a better picture of what the island looked like. It wasn't as big as she thought it would be, a fact that she was both thankful and troubled by. On the one hand, it meant that finding Chase and Max should be much easier, relatively speaking anyway.

On the other hand, it also meant that they were more likely to bump into trouble.

"Hmm, this isn't good. This is the hotel, right? According to this map, we're smack bang in the middle of what looks like a town on the northern coast of the island. After we've searched the rest of this building, we're going to have to decide on what direction we should take..."

[CondorTalon]

It seemed that Yukiko was the minority here, as David wanted to check out the rest of the hotel, and Jenna seemed to agree.

"...Well, alright, as long as we don't take too long here."

She watched as Jenna pulled out the map. According to her, the hotel was located on the northern coast of the island, which meant that they had three directions to choose from, once they were done here. They'd have to decide which way to go, but it could be decided on later. For the moment, though...

Yukiko looked around the lobby, looking for the elevators. Even if they didn't work (and that outcome was really, really likely), they'd have floor indicators on them. She finally located them, to the left of the entrance, and headed over.

She looked up at just above the elevator door. She went for the call button, pressing it. The button didn't light up. She frowned, and turned towards her companions.

"It looks like... not counting the ground floor, we have seven floors to check. The elevators not working either. There's no way we're going to be able to check the entire hotel quickly."

[Riki]

David liked that Jenna was agreeing. Yes, it was unlikely to have all of their friends to be in that building, but so many unlikely things happened already. Another one more would not be that surprising. Then, as Jenna took her map out, David did the same and went from not understanding probabilities to somewhat understanding maps. He took the map out of his bag, and tried to follow what Jenna said. It seemed like decisions were needed. A decision of where to go. David was not very sure how to decide that, although he guessed that people went to places where they expected shelter.

Yukiko still did not seem to be very happy with this. Then she said that the hotel had seven floors. Which, as Yukiko said, really made the search a bit more extensive. Yet that was only reason for David to find an efficient way. Maybe shouting? Or splitting up? Maybe both?


"Well, we could split up and meet here again after a hour or so. We should be able to search this place faster then."

[Fiori]

As Yukiko went to check that the elevators were working, Jenna decided to go and have a look at the magazines she had spotted earlier.

She walked over to the coffee table and started rummaging through them, her main concern being the dates that they were issued. They were the usual kind of magazines you would expect to find in a hotel lobby. Fishing, fashion, gossip, photography and even a film one, all of which seemed to be issued during different dates in the mid nineties. Given how varied the dates were, it seemed as though whoever used to run this hotel had a tendency to keep outdated magazines lying around, although the most recent one seemed to have been issued in 1996.

However, what Jenna was really looking for was a local newspaper of some description, although sadly there did not appear to be any. At a guess, the terrorists probably made sure that there weren't any left on the island, along with anything that could potentially give away the location of the island.

Oh well, it was worth a look. Not sure how relevant it is to know that this island's been deserted for over ten years, given how that seemed fairly obvious anyway given the state of this place, but a vague idea's better than no idea I guess.

Her curiosity satisfied, she returned to the others just as Yukiko turned around to inform them that there were seven levels of hotel to potentially explore, shortly followed by David suggesting that they split up to cover more ground.

"Hmm, not sure if that's a good idea. Whilst i'm not exactly fond of horror movies, one thing I do know about them is that splitting up is usually a death sentence."

A second or so later, a thought then crossed her mind. "Although... Seeing as everyone's still in the middle of waking up, I imagine there can't be that many people who've decided to start hunting down their classmates right from the word go, so it might actually be safer to split up now than it will be later. It'd still be a huge risk though, no doubt about it..."

Unable to decide one way or the other, Jenna turned to Yukiko. "What do you think?"

[CondorTalon]

"I think... no, I don't think it would be a good idea to split up, because if we do at least one of us will have to go alone and..."

Yukiko didn't want that to happen, mainly because they had just found each other, and splitting up again made her feel uncomfortable.

"All it'll take is one person who's gone off and..." she shuddered. She didn't want to think about it.

"No, I don't think splitting up is a good idea," she repeated.

She then thought about the situation... she realized that someone must have dropped off each individual student at their current location... she wondered if a terrorist would climb seven sets of stairs carrying a student.

"It would probably be best if we only checked maybe the first four floors up. I don't think anyone would carry an unconscious body up seven flights of stairs."

[Riki]

"A...alright. Then not."

The most important factor in David's decision to abandon his idea of splitting up was not a rational point, but Yukiko's visible aversion to that plan. Poor girl was stressed enough, so David did not want to add any further pressure on her mind. He, however, hoped that she way right. Right with saying that the terrorists could not be bothered with taking students up to the seventh floor. Then again, they were in luck. Well, as lucky as it could get in their not so fortunate situation, thus David thought/hoped that they would not miss anyone if they didn't go beyond the fourth floor.

"So, anything else?"

[Fiori]

"Nothing leaps to mind, no. That settles it then, we'll search the rest of this floor, then four of the floors above us."

Everything seemed to be going smoothly. It hadn't been that long ago that Jenna was lying alone in a bathroom, pondering whether or not she should throw away the disgusting sex object she had been given by a terrorist organisation. Now she was with her own little group, discussing how they would go about finding the rest of their friends.

As much as she would have preferred to search the whole building, Yukiko's reasoning was sound. She doubted that Danya's cronies would have gone through the trouble of putting them in particularly hard-to-reach places, or anywhere that would require them to put in a strenuous amount of effort. So whilst the possibility of people starting out on the top floor was by no means impossible, it was probably safe to assume that they wouldn't bother taking them any higher than the fourth.

Just thinking about it actually made her shudder. The thought that someone had picked her up whilst she was unconscious and physically placed her in that bathroom. The thought that someone - most likely a guy - had actually touched her whilst she was unconscious, as well as handle her belongings. The lewd things they would have said to one another about her more attractive classmates, or any of her female classmates for that matter, herself included. She felt sick just thinking about it.

Just another reason as to why this is one of the most repugnant terrorist acts in recent years...

"Well... Guess we may as well start looking."

With that said, turned to her left and started making her way towards the nearest door, motioning her companions to follow her lead.

((Jenna Rhodes continued in Allow Me To Begin))

[CondorTalon]

Alright, so it was settled then. For the situation they were currently in, Yukiko was rather pleased with how smoothly these first few moments were going. She'd managed to meet up with a group of friends, and they had a plan, for the time being. She felt like she could make this work. She'd find her friends, and they'd all find a way to survive. And then...

No, best not to think about that. She had to focus on the now.

She saw Jenna over at a door, motioning for them to follow.

"Let's get going," she said, turning back to David. Then, she followed behind Jenna.

((Yukiko Sakurai continued in Allow Me To Begin.))

[Riki]

Yukiko. Jenna. Soon, Joey, Chase, and who many more. Once they have a lot of people together, a lot of people with knowledge, they will find the flaw in the security system of the terrorists.

Hopefully.

Thinking what would happen if they did not manage to escape... well, that was not a good thought. No time for pessimism.

David followed the two other girls.

[David Zimmer, continued in Allow Me to Begin]