SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

(Mackenzie Baker continued from Time to Play the Game)

Mackenzie was lost, plain and simple. She'd gone charging off in a blind panic and, now that she'd gotten her head back together, she realized that she'd gone off in the woods somewhere. Which woods even? The map had about three or four locations marked that were just trees. Wilderness...would this qualify or was it more like woods? She didn't know...she didn't know anything...

The events replayed in her mind. Bryan fired at her, but why? She'd done nothing wrong. She hadn't done anything, she...hadn't done a thing. Mackenzie leaned against one of the trees, looking down at her hands where she'd gotten dirt smeared on them, and realizing that she was 100% correct. She'd accomplished absolutely nothing. She puffed herself up like some great peacemaker, but when it came down to it, she just ran the instant that things became too hard for her, the instant that she'd experienced some tribulation. She'd just left a man to die. He was probably...because of her...

Darn, she was crying, wasn't she? She wiped her eyes quickly, and immediately regretted it when she got dirt on her face. Nobody could see her as weak and pathetic. If anyone saw her crying, they'd just think she was acting up again or...wait...Actually, why should she even care at this point? She had a sword! If she wanted to cry, then she could bloody well cry! None of this diplomacy stuff. If anyone tried to ignore her again, she'd just go right for the blade and then they'd HAVE to listen to her. Yeah...

"Hey! Anyone out there? I could use some help!" she cried, kicking off from the tree and moving her straw hat back onto her head. It'd slipped off in the fracas and only her chinstrap had saved the thing from being utterly lost. While she was at it, she dusted off her top and began wiping her hands and face. She looked a mess, and that wouldn't do, not when she was expecting to find people. Fact was, she should have stuck to her guns and persisted, even when bullets were flying. If there was one thing that Mackenzie could do, it's make noise, and she would NOT be ignored again. No matter what.

((Joanne Coleman continues from hold on to this lullaby))

Joanne trudged through the woods, low-energy (sad!). She had run for the woods for what felt like an hour, mostly away from the gunshots because fuck that noise! Literally. In terms of the noise actually existing, not in terms of the fucking, that is. In that hour of tribulations, she had lost several pounds, gotten kicked out of the Titty Brigade, only had to take a break five (5) times, lost a gallon of water through sweat-

Hold up.

Joanne stopped for the sixth time, and dug through her bag. She hadn't actually bothered opening either her bag, her daypack, or her weapon bag yet, despite being on this island for hours already. They had taken so much from her, and for her to open her bag and feel the gaps would be to concretize those absences. But, if they hadn't taken this from her, it would be worth it.

She rummaged through the bag. Her phone was gone. In it, the gallery roll of dozens of selfies the Titty Brigade had taken together at DC, at prom, at dance practice. She hadn't uploaded all of them to her Twitter or Tumblr yet. They were all in her laptop, but that too was gone. Memories, physically confiscated. But, she thought as her hand made contact with fabric, they hadn't taken all of them.

"Aha."

Held triumphantly in the air, a light blue #TittyBrigadeDC shirt. Membership in the Titty Brigade? Regained. Purpose in life? Found. Skin? Cleared. Crops? Watered. Water supply? Cleaned.

Both of them were here, weren't they? Adele, Tanisha? Joanne Coleman knew she was going to die here. This was a certainty that had not left her mind since she woke up. Might as well have one last hurrah, one last session of incoherent screaming and cheering before they all go, right? Right.

She stripped off her red tank top, because honestly? Rust dots on red? Not her style, bad shit right there. She threw it unceremoniously on top of a nearby bush, and noticed a camera pointed right at her. That's right boys, girls, people that identify as neither, get a good, good look at this right here. Not often do people get to witness such a fine, fine specimen of plus-sized perfection. They should be honored. And then she put on the shirt, because all good things come to an end. And it was decided. She would find her friends.

As if on cue, a voice rang. It sounded familiar, so she walked towards it, and then good capital-L Lord, sweet Jesus. How she hadn't seen that chartreuse tank top from across the island, Joanne didn't know. Nice (?) to see her homegirl Kenzie stuck to her bold fashion decisions, though. Consistent, in-character, etc. Those clothes sure were clothes, that was for sure.

She didn't look well, though. Not just the clothes she was talking about here, she looked frazzled. Stressed.

Enter Joanne with a slow stroll, an awkward waggle of the fingers, a lingering on the sideline for a few seconds longer than usual. Establishing herself as a presence gently, but firmly.

"Ay, Kenzie."

She had a sword, Joanne noticed. She stopped a few meters away.

"What up?"

Someone had responded to her cry for help, sooner than Mackenzie had liked. She hadn't had time to straighten out her hair, for one, and her skirt was still all dusty. Bleh. It was what it was.

Not a bad person to come to her rescue though. Joanne Coleman had always seemed to her like a fun party girl, and she'd hung out with her on a few occasions. She was confident, energetic, and overall just a really enjoyable person to be around. If anyone could keep her chin up and resist the influence of evil, it was probably her. Yup, she was absolutely, totally safe.

Her eyeline was fixated on something to Mackenzie's right though. Strange. Mackenzie glanced sideways and started as she realized that she had her saber out. Funny, she thought, observing that her sword was held up in a threatening manner. She didn't even remember drawing it.

"Oh, uh...hi, Joanne!" she replied, lowering it down to a hopefully less intimidating casual stance. "I'm alright! I just uh...well I met the Carter brothers and they uh...Bryan had a gun and he..."

Oh, for pete's sake, just spit it out.

"So yes, I almost died. How's your day been?"

She glanced down at her saber, making sure that it was staying put. So far, it seemed to be behaving, but while she'd usually stride towards someone and greet them at a nice friendly distance, she found that her legs were frozen in place. Odd...She hoped that this would pass, because it was making casual conversation very difficult.

Billy was exhausted. He was sweaty and disheveled, and he had half a dozen scrapes from running through the thick forest.

He was also really goddamn pissed.

((Billy Trevino continued from Early Bird))

The trio was making their way towards the mansion, just as they had planned, and then poof, Mac was gone. She'd bolted off like a schnauzer that'd spotted a squirrel. What the hell was wrong with that girl? They'd tried to follow her, but then they heard her running into the woods in a completely different direction. They'd ended up chasing her halfway across the goddamn island. Billy considered just giving up a few times, but he kept going. By the end, he didn't know if he was following her to honor the alliance or to give her a piece of his mind.

Billy was pretty sure he and Kyle were getting close, and he was proven correct when he heard her start crying for help. Billy pushed his way through some more inconvenient flora, and when he came out he finally saw her, her face red and covered with dirt. She was with Joanne, of the GHHS Titty Brigade, and they seemed to be talking about some bullshit. He didn't care. Billy had been waiting a long time to talk to Mac, Joanne could wait her turn.

"Hey! Mac!" Billy shouted, marching towards her. "What the fuck?! Why did you run off?! You'd better have a good fucking explanation!"

Billy knew this wouldn't help get the gang back together, but he didn't care. This was fucking Death Island, she couldn't just happily run off wherever she liked, leaving him and Kyle to fend for themselves. She needed to have her stupid bubble burst.

((Tirzah Foss continued from Waking From One Nightmare into Another ))

Tirzah tromped through the woods, having escaped from the infirmary, not too much worse for the wear besides her chipped nail. The gun was tucked into the back of her skirt and she kept the damaged nail in her mouth. Her outfit wasn't really optimized for running around the woods, but at least she had decent shoes on. That whole situation hadn't gone well. She removed her finger and chewed on her bottom lip. She kind of hoped there weren't too hard of feelings between her and Aurelien. She only tried to shoot him because she liked him best, because she thought it would better to get over the hump of getting rid of the people she liked first. Then it would be just a bunch of nobodies left to deal with. So really, it was a compliment, when you thought about it. He'd probably thought about it.


It wasn't like she wanted to kill anyone. Tirzah just didn't want to die. She'd paid attention during the little movie they played and saw what happened. It was rare for anyone to figure out where the kidnapped kids were and rescue them. Also let's face it, she didn't think their class had anyone smart enough to pull that off. Tirzah thought she was a somewhat smart person, but not in the computers and gadgets way. Still, this gun was a problem. Apparently she wasn't skilled or strong enough to hit anything with the hand canon that wasn't right next to her. It was a brain stumper and she was still scared out of her mind. It was like the stress of being in laser tag times a thousand. Maybe she had jumped the gun on this.

Suddenly she heard a voice call out in the woods. The person was alone and needed help. Tirzah went towards the voice, not really sure what she would do when she found the owner. Unfortunately, two other people had already shown up. Tirzah hid behind a tree, holding her breath, and listened to the conversation. From the talking she gathered one of the people was Joanne and the other was someone named Mac.

{Kyle Harrison continued from Early Bird)

Kyle had heard the shot.

He didn't know what had happened. All he knew was that they had lost Mackenzie for a while, then later there was a gunshot. The first thing that flew into Kyle's mind was that it could have been Mackenzie. A girl he had met only a few hours ago could have been shot after they had been split up. Someone who had been standing in front of him, talking to him,could suddenly be dead without any good reason or explanation. It was an idea that scared him, that anyone could die at any time.

He was pretty sure that was what the terrorists wanted, fear. Fear that clouded their minds and made them distrust each other. Fear that made them fight instead of working together. It was one of the sickest tools that man could employ, and it was on full display on this island.

And when they finally found Mackenzie again, Billy went off on her straight away, yelling about how she had disappeared and how dangerous it was. No, no, no, this wasn't what they needed to do. They couldn't succumb to infighting already. They hadn't even done anything yet! He tried to run faster to catch up to them, although he was still a good way slower than Billy to make it there.

"Hey, don't worry!" He tried to calm Billy's more aggressive approach. "The important thing is that she's safe, right?"

Joanne slowly shook her head.

"Of. Fucking. Course."

Well. Just as she thought. Trash. The Carters were born trash, and they would die trash. Also consistent, in-character, etc., TBF. Joanne's middle name would be Pinocchio if she said she didn't think the Carters would buy in to the terrorists' bullshit, and TBH, Joanne Pinocchio Coleman had much less of a punch than Joanne Sekai Coleman. So yeah, she expected it. She just didn't expect they would start killing this soon because goddamn????? They literally just woke up????? Joanne had a "low, low, low, low, low, low, low" (T-Pain, 2008) opinion of some of her classmates, so naturally, the bar she set for them was also low. And they still somehow failed to meet it.

They almost took out homegirl Kenzie here within the first hour, and imagine what a shame that would have been, to die without even getting a chance to fight back. The worst part of it was that Kenzie had come from a different direction than her. She would have noticed that highlighter-colored monstrosity otherwise (no offense to Kenzie). Meaning the gunshots she heard were a completely different set of human trashbags playing into the terrorists' hands. Two separate groups of people literally had murder on their minds the moment they woke up.

Joanne would have said more, offered more comfort, been a shoulder to cry on, when Billy Boy here barged in and decided giving a traumatized girl a piece of her mind was the best course of action.

She was passingly familiar with Billy. They hung out in the same parties, made awkward eye contact, avoided one another. Adele had told her that he was 'sketchy,' and Joanne trusted her fellow brigade members when it came to reading people. And holy fuck, he was living up to the expectations Adele had set.

She vaguely recognized the other boy, Kyle, and he was being much more rational and sensible. She was safe, she had a brush with the Carters and lived to tell the tale and that really was all that mattered. He got it. Thumbs up, 'You're doing great, sweetie,' a soccer mom shouts in the distance.

Joanne decided she needed to put a stop to this shit before sweet dear Kenzie got even more traumatized, so she raised her hands, and stepped in between Billy and Kenzie.

"Hold up, hold up! The girl almost died here, give her a break. Calm down a little, Jesus."

To say that Mackenzie was overjoyed that her companions had caught up to her would be oversimplifying the issue. She thought she’d lost them, or worse, that they’d followed her into the jaws of the beast. To see them alive, even if they were angry at her, put a wide, cheery grin across her face, even if she was still feeling really sick to her stomach.

“It’s...it’s okay, Joanne. I can explain myself.”

Stepping alongside Joanne so she could give Billy an unobstructed view, she pushed her bangs out of her face and took a deep breath, trying to recall the chaos and the blind terror as well as she could.

“About running ahead...I know. It was stupid, and I’m sorry. As for why I ran...well...”

Slowly at first but gradually picking up speed, she explained what she saw: how Morgan was on the ground, maybe unconscious, maybe dead. How Bret Carter was holding Bryan Merryweather on the ground while Wyatt Carter was trying to beat his head in, how Bryan was struggling with his assault rifle and then...she paused. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to say it.

“It must have...must have been an accident. Bryan wouldn’t...shoot at me on purpose. But I panicked...I ran. I left them and now one...maybe two people are dead. The Carters, they...they have a gun now and I...I couldn’t stop them.”

She was crying and shaking, she realized. Her eye shadow was probably running like crazy. She pulled a cloth from her bag and started wiping her face. She hated herself more than anything right now, having to explain how she left two people to die. When it came down to it, she couldn’t do it.

“I’m...I’m sorry,” she said shakily, “I messed up.”

Kyle and Joanne were trying to calm him down, trying to stop him from unloading on MacKenzie. Kyle had good intentions, whatever, but of course he would be too soft on her. That was just who he was. Joanne was just being annoying. That was just who she was, her and her clique.

"Buzz off, Jo. This doesn't involve you." He was trying to get around her obstruction, but thankfully, Mac solved that herself, coming up and talking to him. Billy crossed his arms as she explained the situation. She ran ahead to try to get the Carters to stop attacking people. Come on, how naive could she be? Trying to reach the hearts of the two most heartless shitheads in their school. But as she kept talking, recounting about how she was shot at, about how Morgan and Bryan were probably dead, his rage faded away. Damn, with her crying and shaking in front of him, he was starting to feel like he had done something wrong.

Billy looked away, starting to feel the shame creep up on him. He was right. Of course he was right. But he could forgive her for this. As long as she had learned her lesson.

"You... okay, yeah. You messed up. But we're all still alive, so..." Billy swallowed and looked back at her. "Just don't do it again. And don't go around trying to talk it out with psychos like the Carter twins. It won't work."

He tried to process what she'd said in full. The Carter twins had killed Morgan and Bryan. Well, he guessed they didn't know they were dead for sure, but he didn't see Tweedledee and Tweedlum just letting them go. With luck, maybe Bryan gained the upper hand and filled them with lead. But, well, based on what Mackenzie described it didn't seem like that was likely. Morgan and Bryan were good guys. The game had started in full, and it had already claimed some innocent victims.

"It's sad to hear about Morgan and Bryan. But it wasn't your fault, yeah? The same thing would've happened if you weren't there." She'd done a lot wrong, but she couldn't blame herself for what happened to them. That wouldn't help anyone.

Tirzah stayed low, moving down and taking a seat behind a bush, which hid her from the directions the voices were coming from. Mac seemed to have had a fairly interesting encounter given the short amount of time they had been awake. She'd found Brett and Wyatt and said they may have killed Morgan. She was unclear on the fate of Bryan, who had a gun. That means they possibly had one gun, but also that they were working together and working together indicated they were rational on some level.

One boy had said, "Don't go around trying to talk it out with psychos like the Carter twins. It won't work."

This information made Tirzah consider the change in players on the board. And she also didn't like people saying not to do something, because it made her want to do it, even though this advice was not directed at her. It sounded like a challenge.

She went up on to her knees and stuck just part of her head out above the bush.

"Excuse me, which direction did you come from?" she asked Mackenzie.

Kyle's spirits fell further and further as Mackenzie tole her story. All he had known about before was the gunshot, so at worst he thought that the might have startled someone with a gun and caused her to misfire. But as she went on, it became painfully obvious that wasn't the case at all. There were people on the island... not, not just people, his classmates. He had classmates who were hunting people. Attacking people. Maybe even,..

No, it couldn't be. It just couldn't be possible! Kyle knew his classmates. Maybe he didn't know most of them that well, but he knew that he didn't go to school with the kind of people who would rob and kill each other! Even if some people, like the Carters, weren't really nice most of the time, he couldn't imagine them doing... what Mackenzie said they were doing.

But even so... she saw them, and she didn't seem like a liar. So if she said that they were dangerous... then they must have been, right?

Kyle didn't know how to feel. He felt like most of his reactions were numbing as everything he thought he knew about his class was falling apart.

"You, uh... you didn't do anything wrong..." He mumbled as he walked up next to Mackenzie. He was fighting as hard as he could to remain optimistic, as the world had just reached up and was now trying its hardest to pull him down.

"Kyle?"

Violet had been bumblestumbling through the woodthicket for some time, hand loosely placekeptcrossed against her forehead wound, when she picked up the chitterchatter voicesound from a group of her classmates somewhere in the distance. Has she not rememoried one of the voices she'd have turned tail and split down into the bramblebranches, but somewhere in the haze of conversation and sobbing and helpyelping she heard a familiar tone. God, her head hurt. She spun her orbit down through the greenleaves towards the frequency.

Emerging from the trees, Slenderwoman stepped out slightly hunched over, bagstraps girdled hazardhaphly around her torso, magazineless riflebutt poking out from the bag where it lay swaddled in her occultist robe snuggie. A faint bloodtrickle had spilled past her hand and down her nose, which would have been the only sight of blood seen by the assembled if Violet had not lowered her red right hand and revealed the full extent of her scratchwound lettedblood smeared on her forehead.

Finding open airspace she reiterated then her statement of disbelief and horror;

"Kyle?"

[Violet Schmidt farflung from I Want To Make You Cry, I'm Nothing Like You.]

Buzz off? It doesn't involve her? As far as Joanne could tell, she was Kenzie's friend, and her friend Kenzie was being confronted here, so therefore, henceforth, thus, it involved her. QED, giant black square in the lower right corner. So, Billy better thank his ass that Kenzie spoke for her, explained herself, because if she hadn't, Joanne would have busted out a fresh can of Whoop-ass™.

And... damn, this was serious. It was one thing for Kenzie to have almost died, but Bryan and Morgan seem to have gotten off worse. Lord, this was actually happening. The game had actually started, almost as soon as the day. Bryan and Morgan never had a chance.

As much as Billy pissed her off, he had a point. Trying to make the Carter twins lay off was like trying to mix oil with water, put a circular peg in a square hole, convince Joanne to enter Thread Heads: an exercise in futility. She couldn't blame Kenzie for trying to do good by herself, but still. And while Billy would come in with the occasionally unwarranted, unasked-for logos, the logical way of dealing with Kenzie's concerns, Jo would bring the unasked-for pathos. And by pathos, she meant this.

"Come here, girl, it's OK." And without waiting for Kenzie to come, Joanne herself went over to her and gave her a big ole hug.

Maybe Kyle could take care of the ethos, whatever that translated to in a situation like this. And he made a half-attempt, worth maybe half a You tried-star in tarnished bronze, but hey, he looked like he was dealing with his own shit too, so she'd let it pass.

Two things happened in quick succession afterwards: a voice came from a bush and a bloody girl emerged from the forests. The voice was familiar, some girl she knew in parties and preferred to know only there. Tyra? Trisha, maybe??? More question marks???????? The girl, less so, one of the Violets if memory served right, and her forehead was bleeding. It felt like the entire school had come here to party, and by 'party' she meant ask questions and be sad and confused, mostly, the worst party she'd been to since... ever, really.

The point was too many things were going on at once, and so she needed to delegate, be assertive, a Bo$$ Bitch, one could say. Billy could deal with Kenzie and hopefully not be too harsh with her again. Kyle was good with wounds, and Violet had asked for him anyways, so, she let go of Kenzie and snapped her fingers in front of Kyle's face.

"Kyle, hon, you have company. She needs help."

And then she turned to the bush with a wig and eyes. Seriously, how long had she been there? What the fuck?

"Why, you know Bryan or Morgan?"

As Billy and Kyle had given their words of advice, Mackenzie nodded gravely. She didn't think that trying to stop people from killing each other was wrong, but going off alone and trying to talk the Carters down was a foolish way to go about it. They weren't trying to get on her case, just help her to not throw her life away, and she appreciated that.

When Joanne hugged her, she hugged her back, glad for all the sympathy that she could get. Back in Chattanooga, she'd need to be loud and abrasive to get this kind of attention from people, and this was genuinely sweet and refreshing.

The relaxing feelings abruptly ended, however, with the arrival of two new faces.

First was Tirzah Foss, poking her head out of the undergrowth and asking for clarification. How long had she been there, and why did she want to know where the baddies and their newly acquired rifle were? This seemed like bad business all around, but rather than be obstructive, Mackenzie figured that she might as well tell her...but in a nice way.

"It was up on the hill where the manor is. B-but that's dangerous. they-"

She was cut off by the arrival of Violet Schmidt, and she looked like a mess. She seemed to be specifically looking for Kyle, and considering his medical skills, that seemed like the best bet to help her. Still, that gash on her forehead wasn't a good sign. Another player, no doubt. How many people on this island were trying to kill people? It gave her a chill just thinking about it. Was Tirzah planning to go after Bret and Wyatt to get a kill of her own? Seemed like the only explanation for why she wanted to know where.

And honestly, if she was planning to kill them, should Mackenzie even stop her?

She shook her head. Where had THAT thought come from? She needed to get a grip here.

"I know most people a little bit, at least," she said to Joanne, picking herself up and brushing the leavings and dirt from her legs. Tirzah picked up her bag and shoved her gun into the band of her skirt, below her crop top.

"Thanks, appreciate it, " she said to Mackenzie, waving. She jogged off in the direction the girl had pointed out.

((Tirzah Foss continued in Tapped Out ))