Exposure

[Outfoxd]

((Leona Van Kamp continued from Forever...Forever...))

For the first time since arriving on the island, Leona Van Kamp was awake.  As she spent the last day fleeing from the scene of Matt's murder, she made the realization almost in passing.  She hadn't really let it sink in what was going on.  It was all some big illusion.  Until what happened at the park blew the whole show.

The amateur magician finally knew that there were stakes.  And every time someone's name burst through the loudspeakers, that was a payout on those stakes.  She didn't hear Rebecca's name yet, which was cause for hope.  But Leona didn't hold out much of that.  A bum knee might as well have been a death sentence given the circumstances.

Hope was at a premium.  Leona was unarmed, and unless her would-be murderer was a mark for magic tricks, she was at a loss for options if her head was on the block.

"Grandiose, girl.  Downright grotesque."  She muttered, and grimly chuckled.

Her wanderings had taken her across an abandoned park, dotted with old playground equipment choked by unmowed grass.  The island of innocence among the grim reality almost seemed put there to mock her.

She cast a glance around the area, almost not noticing that her hand had dipped again into her pocket and set her trusty quarters into a slow, deliberate walk across her knuckles.  The only thing that might have been a decent weapon was a rock here and there.  She didn't even bother picking anything up.  She didn't think she could put enough weight into a decent throw.

A knife, though.  A knife would be good.  Or a gun, better.  Plenty of those floating around.  Just in the hands of her more "prolific" classmates.

Leona shook her head as if to clear it of the thoughts.  She walked over to the set of swings and took a seat.  It squeaked and groaned with her weight, asking rather rudely for a can of oil.

"Shut up."  She said back.  When she settled, the swing relegated itself to sullen silence.

"What I thought."

((Thread's open once Deamon gets in here guys, so if you want in, just wait till he's here))

[Deamon]

Eventually Chris had calmed down and stopped running. He'd run for god knows how long and he was struggling for breath.

Then he'd puked.

((Christopher Harlin continued from Cause When You Try Hard))

That had been a while ago and after drinking some water and calming down Chris was thinking more clearly. Not that it was an improvement. Now he was in a more built up area, and more exclusive after having a quick look around. There were entire gated off communities and he could even make out a mansion. Chris didn't exactly care about any of that though. As things were he was happy not to have had his collar blown up by the terrorists after Jesse had died. It would have been easy for them to do too, just press and button and then boom, his head would have been taken off.

He shivered. Another thing he hadn't thought about was the loneliness. He hadn't been on his own for a long time and now he was. It was different and not in a good way. He felt lost. They'd always had a plan and a goal when he'd been with Brianna and Jesse and now they were gone and he had no idea what he was doing. He'd achieved nothing but tiring himself out with his running and having a little explore of the area. Having to carry two bags at once was also a pain but the benefits when it came to food and equipment far outweighed the negatives Chris could think of.

He was moving towards the quad area when he heard the unmistakable sound of someone talking. It was only a few words but in the stillness it was instantly noticeable. It instantly made Chris tense. There was never any certainty that someone would be friendly or if they would try to kill you. He slowly approached to see a girl sitting on one of the swings. It took him a few seconds but he eventually recognised the girl as Leona Van Kamp? He wanted to say Kamp. She was the magician girl. She didn't look like a threat at all, and even if she did attack him Chris was certain he could overpower her based on height and weight alone.

He slowly moved closer and raised his hands up to try and convey that he wasn't a threat.

"Hey, you friendly?"

[Outfoxd]

There was another voice and suddenly Leona was wishing she had picked up a rock after all.  Not that it would have done her much good.  When she wheeled around in her seat to look at the owner of the voice, she doubted she would have been able to accomplish much.  The kid was in shape.  Leona thought she might have seen him out on the school field, one of the faces doing whatever it was the...less interesting students did after school.

Still, she stood up and faced him, not liking the idea of being on her buttocks with a new element ready to be parsed.

"Friendly's an ephemeral word these days.  Maybe not specific enough."  The quarters rolled round and round her knuckles as she took a slight step back, regarding Chris, appraising him.

"Non-hostile?  More specific."  Idly, Leona flicked a quarter in the air between her thumb and forefinger before catching it.  The quarters then resumed their dance.  "Sane?  Also good."  She palmed the quarters, stowing them back in her pocket.

"Don't think you have to worry in any case.  The only weapons I have are persistence and luck, and judging by the last few days, I'm running out of the second."  She gave him a thin smile, but it felt tight on her lips.  Unnatural.  The events of the last day had sapped some of her good nature.

[Deamon]

Leona got up and started speaking. Chris noticed her step back slightly, was she scared of him? His arms dropped, ready for any attack that could be launched. It made sense to be cautious when he thought about it. You never knew who could have snapped or who could be planning to attack you. It's why every encounter with someone else always left the after effects of adrenaline coursing through his body. Right now his body was preparing, getting him ready for either running or fighting.

Instead it just seemed like they would be talking. Chris relaxed some, clenching and unclenching his hands to try and calm himself down. His lips twitched at her joke, any smile would have been fake or forced so he didn't bother. He licked his lips before speaking.  "Sane is good...sane is safe." Safety was what mattered most wasn't it? Since if you were safe you could survive and if you put yourself in danger then the more likely you were to get yourself killed. Simple logic in the end. But so hard to stick too.

Leona had no weapons though. That made Chris relax even more. She didn't look to be a threat to him in a straight and if she did try anything he had a gun and a glass shard. The phrase about having the deck stacked in his favour didn't do it justice. Instead
he just slowly dropped his bags down to one side.

"You have no weapons, and I'm not interested in violence. So let's just talk yeah?"

[Outfoxd]

Leona gave a slow now.

"Talking's good.  Talking's a lot better than dying."

She unslung her pack from her shoulders, unzipped it and removed one of her bottles of water.  She took a pull from it before capping it and replacing it in her bag.

"Speaking of weapons, would you happen to have come across something you'd be willing to spare?"  Leona's eyes dropped to the bag, wondering at what it could contain.  She held up the finger that still had the Chinese finger trap attached to the tip and waggled her eyebrows.

"Like I said, luck is a luxury I don't seem to have right now."

[Deamon]

Spare a weapon?

Chris had to carefully consider that. There was the unspoken trust issue that permeated every facet of SOTF; on the one hand Leona seemed friendly. On the other maybe the only reason she hadn't attacked him was because she didn't have a weapon. You could never really tell Chris had learned.

He stood there thinking for a moment, trying to figure out a way to handle the situation. In the end he realised that regardless of what he did Leona was probably powerless against him. He had size and strength and unless she was also packing a gun he had the better weapon.

He nodded. "Alright I'll give you something." Crouching down he opened his bag, glancing up at Leona every so often to make sure she wasn't trying anything. He stood up as he pulled the shard of glass out of his pack and held it out to Leona. "This is all I have spare...careful, it's sharp."

[Outfoxd]

Leona plucked the shard of glass gingerly out of Chris's hand.  She turned it over, eyeing it, tongue working on the inside of her cheek.

"This'll do."  She stared at it for a second longer.  "With a little modification, maybe.  Can't go cutting myself up with my own weapon, can I?"  

She reached down into her bag with her free hand, opening the medical supplies each student had been given.  When her hand came back up, she was clutching bandages.  She set the shard of glass on her bag as she went about freeing a long strip of bandage from the roll.

"So...You've any plans?  Ideas?"  She paused to tear the strip from the roll with her teeth.  With it free, she picked the glass shard up and started slowly and tightly wrapping it to form a makeshift grip.

[Ruggahissy]

((Amaranta Montalvo continued from Allegory, Allegorier, Allegoriest))

Mara was slowly pulled out of her slumber. She sighed and blinked lazily.

She'd run over to the quad after that horrible meeting with Zubin. Everything was still sore and she couldn't move without breaking out into yelps from the pain from her muscles and bruises. Slowly, she climbed a short tree in the quad, tied herself down to a branch with Mike's long sweatshirts and went to sleep with her bag as a pillow.

Mara rubbed her eyes and found she was still not well enough to move much. She rubbed her arm and shoulder, trying to massage out the injured spot. It was a chore to do even that. After a moment she realized it was two people talking nearby. She very carefully turned to look down and see who it was and if they'd noticed her.

Some girl and some guy. She recognized the girl as the magician who did parlor tricks sometimes. They didn't seem threatening. Mara worked on sitting up in a way that would result in minimal pain while quietly observing.

[randomness]

((Stephanie Wright continued from Wish I Had a Chance, Here))

Stephanie was tired of wandering, tired of being alone and simply tired. With less than a hundred people on this island, there was about half a square mile per person, which if she remembered right was lower than in Canada.

Not that it had been quiet. Gunshots in the far distance, the occasional shout, even the occasional animal cry broke the silence just often enough to remind her that she wasn't alone. But apart from that, she had been alone, and being this alone was not something she liked.

Perhaps she should have followed Claire. She would have felt much safer. She should have shouted back, should have just run after her, and decided that she didn't want to be alone after all. But she didn't and so she was here, wandering about, hoping that some minor miracle would happen.

The park had looked interesting from a distance and she had walked up to it without any extra thought. The playground's colour had faded over time, but it was the most eye catching thing around.

Little did she expect two people to already be there, familiar enough faces, but not one she knew well enough to give a name to the faces. The girl she remembered slightly better, she did a few magic tricks, and she was the one working on making something at the moment, wrapping something in cloth.

Should she say hello? Yes? No? Maybe? Stephanie was completely undecided. Maybe she should wait until they noticed her instead. But that would seem completely weird wouldn't it?

"Hey." Stephanie had simply walked over, trying her best not to look completely nervous. "Mind if I join you guys?"

[Deamon]

Leona took the glass and didn't immediately try to gut him with it. It was a start and at least there was some form of trust there.

"Plans and ideas?" The image of Jesse having a hole blown in his chest flashed through Chris' head. "Not anymore no." He left that part about the death of his group unsaid. It was better that way. Less baggage to share with someone else; Chris didn't want to drop someone into his problems anyway everyone had their own stuff to deal with anyway. No point burdening Leona with anything else.

He watched as she started wrapping the wider end of the shard in bandage so she wouldn't cut her own hand open, bending down he retrieved the gun from his bag. Now that he was calmer he realised how stupid it was to have gone running off around the island with the gun in his bag, if anyone had attacked him he'd have had to waste time retrieving it and wasting time was dangerous.

Chris jumped when he heard another voice. He span around pistol in hand but didn't raise it. He recognised the girl a little but no name sprung to mind at first. It began with an S though, that part he knew for sure.

"Hey." Chris said raising his free hand. There was a tense atmosphere as S waited for a response to her question. Chris' heartbeat had sped up at the first sound of her voice but it was starting to slow down. "Sure you can join us." Chris didn't want to turn anyone away and didn't have the heart to anyway. Not after what had happened with Brianna.

[Outfoxd]

Leona had finished wrapping her new knife by the time Chris had pulled out something much better than a shard of glass.  She raised an eyebrow at the hardware.  She was all set and ready to ask him if he might have another one of those knocking around when someone else announced her presence, sounding for all the world as if they were gearing up for a picnic in the 'ol park.

Leona wasn't quite as wired as Chris was, but she still kept a wary stance as she turned on the girl.  She didn't know her personally, but she was sure she'd seen her around school before.  She cut an impressive figure, having a couple inches on even Leona's above average height.  Leona took her in and nodded, as if approving of her.

"At your leisure.  We're just spending some time doing a whole lot of nothing."  She added onto what Chris said.

[Ruggahissy]

Mara continued looking down at the people. A new one seemed to come into her frame of vision. She couldn't hear them. She couldn't hear much of anything. There was a terrible ringing in her ears ever since the grenade explosion. It came and went, but it was always hard to hear for her hear. She only heard Zubin because he was loud and close, stupid loud oaf.

She would be partially deaf for the rest of her life, probably. What did that matter really? She was already ugly now. There wasn't anything left to hear anyway.

She went to her bag and pulled out the box of pizza. There were still four slices of the large supreme pizza left that she wasn't able to stuff down. Mara ate until she thought she'd vomit, but couldn't get those down. She could save them for later. They were valuable sources of energy.

Looking at the box, Mara remembered Summer again. The last real act that was still the old Summer she had grown up with was that she'd shared her food with her. In the real world, it's the exact same thing she would have done. She was always sharing things. Summer would lend you whatever you asked for. That was the real last moment of Summer Sims, not the twisted shrieking mess that she'd shot.

Mara tossed the box down at the group lightly, like a girl tossing bread crumbs to pigeons. She couldn't give Summer a funeral or attend a wake. This was the best tribute she could give to say goodbye to her, doing something that her friend would have done, something totally unlike Mara.

"Bye, Sunshine. See you around," she said quietly, unable to hear herself clearly.

[randomness]

Stephanie was shocked for a second as the pistol was pointed at her. It hung there far too long for her liking, but was brought down soon enough when he realised her intentions.

"Oh god, for a second I thought you were going to- " She tried to stifle a laugh. It was so weird that people laughed when they were nervous. Completely, completely unnatural. It made no sense, why would people laugh when they were about to die?

But the guy with the gun seemed okay with her sticking around. Magician girl seemed to think the same way. For once, walking up to a couple of strangers wasn't a completely horrible idea after all.

"Nothing's good. It's good enough to simply have company," she said. "Or at least some that isn't trying to kill you or decides to leave in fifteen minutes anyway."

It was just then that the pizza box flew in. It hit the ground with a thud, and bounced a couple times before rolling to a stop against the a seesaw not too faraway.

Stephanie could only stare at it for a moment in incredulity, trying to comprehend what was going on.

"I'm not the only one who saw the box fly in, right?"

[Deamon]

Why did she think he was going to shoot her? She kept talking but Chris was taken aback, did he look like someone who'd just randomly shoot another person. He knew that people were on edge, but even still just because he was holding a gun didn't mean he was going to shoot someone else. He looked down at the gun, maybe people were just starting to expect the worst? After all it must have been a tough experience for everyone being trapped in the game. Everyone was probably on edge and wondering if the next person they saw would be their last. It would have sounded melodramatic, if it wasn't true. Chris tuned back in to the other talking about having company that wasn't trying to kill her or who left her behind.

That was when the pizza box fell out of the sky.

Chris couldn't help but stare at it. He had seen and been involved in a whole host of situations since he'd woken up on the island but nothing could top that for weirdness and randomness. It didn't just rain pizza boxes after all.

"No, you're not." Chris said, not taking his eyes off the box. His thoughts had moved on from what had happened to what the pizza box could actually be for. Had someone hidden a bomb in it and just thrown it down to distract them long enough for it to blow up and kill the three of them?

Tucking his gun down the back of his bottoms Chris walked over to the pizza box and picked it up. There was something in it that was for sure. He looked between the two girls and then opened it up. Chris wasn't sure why he was surprised that there was pizza in the pizza box. But at the same time it made sense to be paranoid; he now knew what the girl must have felt like when he'd turned round with the gun.

There were four slices, which meant enough for the three of them plus one spare.

"There are four slices left." He announced as he closed the box up again. He scanned the area around them. "So, did either of you actually see where it came from? Because someone must have thrown it."

[Outfoxd]

The pizza seemed to merit becoming the topic of discussion.  Leona was kind of mad that she couldn't place its origin.  Considering what had happened in the park, her own lack of attentiveness was starting to bother her.  Starting to scratch her credibility as an illusionist.

"Four slices.  We've a spare."  Leona deadpanned.  As she scanned the quad, she really had no idea where the pizza could have come from, as Chris wanted to know.  

Unless...


She looked at the tree, one of several in the area.  It made sense.  Maybe.  As much as the origin of a flying pizza box could make.

"Chris."  She said, and gave an upward glance at the tree.