Antisocial Darwinism

[Sunnybunny]

She shouldn't have felt a ping of anything besides relief at Johnny leaving, but of course things couldn't be that simple. It was just eerie to think about, that every time she let a person leave they might be walking off to their death. Everyone wasn't prepared to do whatever they were prepared to, though.

Well, unprepared to do. Only prepared to try.

Stretching her limbs behind her back, Sakurako gazed out on the beach that already seemed looted. What she wanted to think about was sunshine and snow cones, her biggest issue being finding the perfect spot to put down a towel. What was on her mind was a bit less brighter than that. But step by step, brick by brick, they could make an honest attempt at building something. A piece of hope to combat the feeling of being completely fucked.

"We need writing utensils, and paper if we can get it. There's no sense in coming up with the perfect crime and letting them know we did right away. Being able to communicate with each other secretly might be the most important thing."

No one was pointing a gun at her, but she still felt so stifled for some reason. So far from herself.

"How about we just make a shopping list of things we should be looking out for? Besides everything not nailed down, of course."

[Somersault]

"Yeah, we're gonna have to plan this all out." Obvious, yeah, but it needed mentioning.

Adele nodded at 'Rako's words, still contemplating whether or not to wave at Johnny. He'd threatened them with a gun, yeah, that couldn't be forgotten, but in his own strange way, he sorta helped. Only sorta, but still. It was a good sign for the rest of the people on this island, all the fake-ass bishes and the a-holes, that maybe they wouldn't go insane. A fool's hope, really, had to focus on ways of getting out of here safely first, but still. Had to hold onto something in order not to get swept away.

She'd decided, in the end, not to offer anything more than a nod to Johnny's departing figure. He was more reasonable than he was at first glance, but waving him off? After how Blake and Aditi threw hissy fits about him if he decided to hang around? That wasn't smart, even if it made her want to offer a few pointed looks to the two. They were still in this together.

Adele was just hoping that was a good thing.

Really, none of these people were anyone she really wanted to work with, but it wasn't as if she really had a choice in this whole thing, so she was going to have to make do. To be fair, then, none of them were explicitly awful. Just treading the line of humor and assholery just enough to induce some eyebrow-raising and disapproving looks. Nothing there for her to feel comfortable, she realized, as she looked down onto the ground, past the block letters on her shirt.

Those letters, reminded her of all she had to lose here, her girls, out there fighting their own battles, and as much as Adele wanted to go run off and find them, make sure they were okay, she knew that this had to be more important to her. Sacrifice comfort, familiarity, sure. But not the lives of innocent kids. Not everything everyone had worked so hard for in Chattanooga, let that all be corrupted and turned into something else. Something other.

Adele looked back up at the others, plucking the scrunchie off her wrist to finally tie it into her hair.

"Well, if someone could bring out their map, that'd be much appreciated." She smiled as she said it, the kind where lips barely curled up and no teeth showed.

Okay, maybe she hadn't intended for all of that to come out kinda bitchy, but it was hard, okay? The smiling, the understanding-ing of it all, when people just had to act their act. Yeah, was meant to be good, showed that they weren't giving in, but it still meant that they could grate. She was fine with it, though. Had to be fine. Had to keep the order.

[Brackie]

The irrelevant person left, buzzing like a gnat all the while, and Aditi's attention returned to the important people.

First off, she had to consider what Blake was saying - the plan was escape, and the method was making a raft. It wouldn't work, for numerous reasons, first and foremost being that there was still the matter of not only the boats patrolling the island waiting to gun down anyone who got fresh with the limits, but the bomb strapped to their necks that could go off before they even left the shallows. So Aditi was not down for that idea.

She also had to consider what Sakurako was saying, and her plan seemed to be finding pencil and paper, or anything they could use to write really. That was more realistic and short-term, even if it did still seem to resemble a step in a plan rather than a plan itself. It also ran the risk of putting all of them on the radar of the people running it, which was...not ideal. If they hit the wrong note, the people in charge could hit a button and end the four of them right there, and nothing of value would be lost, nothing gained. They were mosquitoes and what Aditi assumed was a giant panel of red named buttons was the swatter.

And Adele's plan wasn't a plan at all, best described as an action that would someday lead to the creation of a plan. Still, she nodded silently and pulled out her own map, walking over to the three.

"Okay, here we are."

With a quick cursory glance around the horizon, noting features as well as the sun in the sky, she pointed to what seemed to be the bay.

"There's a lot to go through, and I think it's dangerous to try and hit everything, so I think our best option is to find-"

Aditi pointed at the collection of habitations she'd woken up in before finding the three of them.

"This place, look for what we can, and then set up there for the long haul. That way, we can come up with a plan, so we can figure out how to get on a raft off this island without our heads being blown off or shot into the sea."

There was a dot in the horizon she could have sworn was moving, but all it did was remind her what happened in the worst outcome.

"Tell me what you think."

[Super Weegee]

Blake eyed Johnny to make sure that he was out of earshot before responding.

"Yeah," Blake said, "that sounds like a good idea."

It did raise a couple of questions in his mind, though. He had a feeling about how Adele and Sakurako were going to answer them, but he wanted them to get it out there for Aditi and see how she responded to that.

"But how will we deal with anybody who poses a threat? I'm not exactly going to let them walk all over us. I suppose neither of you have any actual weapons we can use, just in case?"

His mind went back to what Danya said about what would happen if they tried to mess with the cameras or try to start a fire. Obviously, trying to even touch them was a no-go, but making a short wall in the distance to obscure their activities...probably isn't against the rules. They aren't necessarily doing anything to the cameras. He won't be the guinea pig for that, though. He would have to convince someone else to try it.

And if they didn't find anything writing related beforehand? He knew the perfect place to try that out, if the others agree to it.

He pointed to the area that seemed to indicate sand.

"If we can't find anything, we can probably use the sand at the beach to communicate. Build ourselves a little wall in the distance and draw using sticks."

[Sunnybunny]

That all sounded smart enough. Pick a spot, build a wall, write things down. Simple simple. A home away from home.

They could build the actual Hotel California! Because they weren't planning on leaving their base camp, of course, not because they probably couldn't leave at all. Sakurako cracked a smile at her errant thought, but sharing it wasn't going to happen. Gallows humor would go over like a sinking stone with this crowd. She didn't judge them though, they were the normal ones here. Besides, there were worse people to plan with. They didn't have to know each other to execute what would be the greatest escapes in history, did they?

Was there anything she could add to the group, when it was all said and done?

"Sounds good to me, but we should probably take turns going out for supply runs during the day, to make it look a little less like we're trying anything. I think that's what they use danger zones for? I mean, to corral us all up."

Shock humorists loved jokes about kids getting blown to bits from not paying attention. It wasn't something she made a habit of watching, but she was aware of the subject in the same nebulous way the whole country was. Keeping it that way would have been nice.

"I can make people step on a lego or two, but that may not get the job done."

She was not assigned errant legos, but she wasn't lying about not having a weapon. It was just that she didn't want to give up what she had received from the terrorists just yet. A fool to the end, only a sentimental one this time. It made her wonder if they'd been making fun of her or if she'd gotten a theater prop by chance.

The only thinking she needed to do was about The Plan, their potential salvation. All glory to The Plan.

[Somersault]

Adele nodded at all the statements, arms crossed, gaze unwavering.

"Yeah, finding some kind of shelter's the safest bet."

It wouldn't do to be out here, exposed to the wind, the rain, and maybe even the rain of bullets that had threatened to come out of Johnny's gun. Had to stick to the basics, start small, and lead things off from there. If they found somewhere to set up shop, they could expand. Find supplies. Maybe even find people that she was much more content speaking to. Not that she wanted to be rude about it all, but still, there weren't any good vibes here, any sign that they really trusted. That they really wanted this. Maybe her time with the Titty Brigade had spoiled her a bit in that department, thicker than even CupcakKe, but still, it was nice to wish for something like that.

Out of all of them, 'Rako probably had the best idea about what to do in order not to get their heads blown off, lists all like what Pa told her to do if she ever got stopped over. Be quiet, put your hands up. Don't offer any sign that you could be a danger. Small steps to ensure that you weren't the next headline. Why, Adele had asked back then, 12 and still trusting that the boys in blue would keep her safe because mommy and daddy were part of them too. Well, the world isn't fair, her dad'd say back, bitter like the coffee he had every morning. That wasn't fair, this wasn't fair, but she was still here. No use in crying.

She blinked away those thoughts, kept on listening. "Maybe we could do the buddy system," she offered, grimly determined. "Make sure that we got someone watching our backs.

Couldn't be tripping. Not now, not when she had to hold this ship together with nothing but blind faith.

"Really, though? Whoever's going out has to have something to protect themselves with."

[MK Kilmarnock]

((Continued from having to interact with Brady and Garren at the same time, holy shit))

While generally understanding that she was on an island, Cheridene recognized the difference between being told a reality and experiencing it for yourself. She heard the sound of the waves before they actually came into view. The sounds of talking were almost entirely washed out by the ambiance of the bay; the noises were just enough to recognize people were there and discussion was strained, while keeping individual words forever lost. To her, at least.

Here she was, looking at a group from the outside in. Initially, she didn't recognize anybody, being too far away. Somebody had already walked off, and the tension in the situation seemed to drop off. Some of the tension dropped away, that was.

The lack of cover was cause for some concern, but reason had to prevail. This was a decent-sized group of people who didn't look to be heavily armed, nobody was attacking anybody else. That meant unless they'd made some sort of alliance with a deal to randomly kill the next person they saw, Cheri should have been okay approaching them. And if some random schlub ran at them with a gun...

Oof. She knew she should have felt the least bit guilty that her first thought was 'there'd be warm bodies to put in the way between me and them'. But she didn't.

"Hey! Hey y'all!" Cheri shouted and waved one arm. Then heck, just for good measure, let's wave two. Now that she let her presence be known, she could get close enough to start realizing who the hell it was she was talking to.

[Brackie]

Nobody had any idea what to actually do so it was time for Aditi to step in.

And then the new girl appeared.

Aditi looked her up and down, appraising her risk factor for the few seconds she had before she got back to the group.

"Hi. We're figuring out how to escape. Want to join us?"

She spoke with a raised voice, but tried not to sound authoritative. She wasn't the leader yet, even though she wanted to step up to the plate right this very second.

[Super Weegee]

"Sounds good, Adele." Blake said, smiling at her for a second before frowning, "But yeah, we need to find something we can use to defend ourselves. It's like my dad said, it's better to have one and not need it than to need one and not have it."

They might have the numbers right now, but it isn't going to matter if trigger-happy asswipes get together and prey on anybody weaker than them. Hell, even one guy can wipe Blake's group all out if he or she is a really good shot.

His thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Cheri, the basketball girl. Seems nice enough, but he didn't really know much about her outside of that.

Aditi was straight to the point, so he figured that he might as well follow up on that.

"Hey, Cheri." Blake said, waving for a second, "If you do want to help, I just want to say that we're risking everything by doing this. Those terrorists could blow our heads off at any time. Quite frankly, however, I don't want to kill anybody and I doubt that you want to either. Asides from that, there's no harm in sticking together, right?"

[Sunnybunny]

There was something genuinely amusing in Aditi and Blake just coming out with their plan, and she stifled a giggle.

*Hello, we're attempting a deadly escape but come on in! It's a beautiful day to defy terrorism!*

"Besides, all the great groups have five people, and unlike with musicians there's no record label to put pressure on our hypothetical sound."

She didn't really know Cheri except in passing but it didn't matter a whole ton. This group was so dour at this point she wasn't even sure anyone that wasn't doing the murder threats thing could bring it down futher. Hell, someone without a gun came up and tried to fight them it would at least bring some variety to the day.

Thoughts like that were poison.

But maybe work would actually improve morale? Idle minds and hands were the devil's workshop, and they were already in his proverbial playground.

Adele had brought up the buddy system before, and while in theory it fit in with the team spirit, Sakurako was having a hard time believing anyone on this bay besides herself even wanted to try and treat each other like people instead of...

Whatever the hell this was they were doing.

[Somersault]

Well, they were being upfront about all they were trying to do.

Maybe it was just her, but Adele liked to believe in the power of subtlety, even if she didn't really like using it all that often. There was magic in getting things implied, threaded through like the eye of a needle, the grace of a bullet entering a target. Nothing had to be said straight out loud, unless it really had to, after all. Maybe Adele was just accustomed to southern hospitality, or maybe she just wasn't a blunt bish, but this? This was definitely not the way to be going about trying to make something happen.

She swallowed down the doubt, though, bitter aftertaste and all, and threw up a smile in it's face. Wave, grin, wave. Routine by now, to every person she was at least alright with, and Cheri? Yeah, alright.

"Well, I suppose we're trying to get something off the ground."

But, not much more than alright. Still, alright was better than how she was feeling about most of the people here, who were really starting to ratchet up on her shady-ass person detector. Not really something she was fond of using, especially here, but the more things spiralled with jokes, bluntness, or just plain incompetence, the more she'd have to be on guard. That was the plain and simple truth, and she couldn't be going on pretending things were hunky-dory if they so clearly weren't.

Part of her wanted to leave, sprint for the shopping cart and run back off into the beach. Part of her wanted to say fuck this, take her shit, and 'Rako's by extension, because this really seemed to be driving straight off to nowhere. But, Adele knew, deep down, that wasn't her. Wasn't a thief, wasn't rude, wasn't about to throw away this chance, however small, just because these people weren't exactly the people she'd wanted to be working with. She was tethered here, almost, from the words sh'd said to Dane to the ones she said to Johnny, and maybe a lesser person would've backed down and ran out, but her? No way.

She looked at Cheri again.

"You holding up?"

Adele didn't even know if she herself was.

[MK Kilmarnock]

Among the first things Cheri wanted to hear from a group, 'we're trying to escape!' probably ranked somewhere between 'we've figured out how to survive: we bottle our own pee!' and 'we're drawing straws to figure out who we're going to cook and cannibalize first'.

She just got done with this shit with Lucas Brady, who didn't have the first step of his plan down. These guys had the advantage of numbers. More heads to pool ideas between. Thinking about it a little harder, though, Cheridene had done enough group projects to know that all it took was one bad cog in the machine for the whole thing to get screwy. Plus you had the problem of too many cooks in the kitchen... really, there were a whole slew of metaphors to use for why groups had their strong sides and weaknesses.

But discounting all of that, there was still their method to take into consideration, namely shouting at the top of your lungs, 'hey we're trying to escape!'. She half expected a collar to burst then and there. When none did, Cheri still wasn't surprised. All that meant was that they weren't being taken seriously, or that the powers that be in whatever underground base (off-shore base? In the air?) were confident that the group's resources as they stood came nowhere close to establishing a reasonable chance for success.

So much for that, then. But safety still came in numbers, and plus, she knew Adele and Sakurako. Whether or not they knew her was another matter entirely; Cheridene made her way through high school by staying in the background wherever she could. There was nothing to really gain from standing out other than drawing a painful amount of attention to yourself. Funny enough, that same philosophy probably applied rather well, here. With all that in mind, she continued down on her way to join the group.

"Yeah, I'm alright I guess," Cheri said in response to Adele's question. She looked to Aditi, enough to at least acknowledge that she was there. She gave Blake, the lone boy of the group, the same courtesy. Didn't know much about those two, but they weren't out to cause headaches, she wagered. Well, they weren't out to cause intentional ones. "So, what's the plan? Was one of y'all assigned a boat we can take off this rock?" she asked jokingly, rubbing her palms together.

[Brackie]

Aditi was annoyed she was still stuck in the pleasantries phase of this when there was literal daylight burning all around them.

That was the entire point of getting it through to Cheridene quickly - so she knew what she was getting into without having to explain it like she was simply a new person late to the story. They were going to attempt to escape, in either Aditi's way or the more ineffective way, and that was all she needed to know. If she wanted more details, she would join them, so they weren't constantly just standing around the beach looking for new and inventive ways to get sniped by someone in biology.

"We do have plans; many, in fact, but..." Aditi paused and tapped the air near her collar "I suppose we shouldn't let them know about it so quickly, right?"

Whatever they were going to do, they weren't going to make it easier for them to be stopped. The more they looked like idiot teenagers talking a big game, the better off they were in the long run. They may not have had any concrete plans that looked like they could work at all, but nobody would on the first day. It was just as important they made it to the following days, so when a plan finally materialized they had enough people to put it into action.

And, heaven forbid, enough shields to take the blast between Aditi and death. But that wasn't the main goal, obviously, just an unintended feature of how this whole thing was going to work.

"We're going to find proper shelter right now, though, so make up your mind if you want in or not."

[Super Weegee]

"No boats, unfortunately." Blake said to Cheri, "The terrorists aren't stupid."

A part of him hoped that they slipped up somehow. Maybe it turns out that they did give something that could be used for an escape. But he's putting too much hope on that. If they can take entire buses filled with children despite the nation's high security, why would they get cocky now?

He couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at Aditi's claim of them having many plans. Other than the one involving the houses and the 'drawing in the sand' bit, what plans? Was she trying to entice her to come with them? Cheri seemed already convinced, so that bit was unneccessary in his mind.

Regardless, they needed to get moving. Blake put one hand on the handle of the shopping cart, ready to move as soon as she made her decision.

[Sunnybunny]

It was amazing that Aditi had so many plans! Maybe she was just subtle enough not to mention the intricate details, the little things that made a project go smoothly. When building things, your tiny pieces were your most vital.

Maybe she was just as lost as everyone else seemed to be, and couldn't admit it. It was fine either way, someone had to be the stone-hearted insistent person of this operation. Sakurako was just the comic who brought no relief. Her role, such as it was, was to keep them all looking like the fools that they all happened to be anyway. It wouldn't be hard. At least there was a purpose in it.

Was this really going to be it?

"We aren't either. At least, not stupid enough to be standing here until it gets really dark and creepy. I'm ready when you guys are."

Together they would make a heck of a caravan. Hopefully one sneakier than the them that managed to be snuck up on, in any case. When they led the way, she followed.

((Sakurako A. Jackson continued in why does mario sometimes jumps and sometimes he fists))