before the day is done, my prince is gonna come

[Shiola]

Chris was playing chess, and Ty was playing rock, paper, scissors with a blindfold. It wasn’t a fair fight, not on the ground. Every frantic shift of his weight, every attempt to leverage his size was met with another, faster adjustment that seemed to put him into a worse position than he’d been in before. Ty knew the only reason she hadn’t yet choked him unconscious was that he’d managed to avoid giving her his back. It was only a matter of time. She clearly had experience, and far fewer steps across the island on her side.

Why would she stop? I’m the bad guy here. That’s how it looks to the others, doesn’t it?

She had almost locked in his right arm. He tried to roll away, but it didn’t work.

All she has to do is find a good angle, and this goes from bad to worse. I’ll be as good as dead if she breaks something.

He tried to kick out. It didn’t work. This was exhausting. The next shift tore a hole his shirt, caught on a splinter in the wooden planks of the pier.

”Do they hate you?”

Someone had held him down like this before, in a way he’d been powerless to stop. All because of who he was supposed to be. A familiar sensation took hold, as the calm determination he’d always taken into a fight abandoned him.

What if she goes all the way?

His mind was back in that house, to hunger, to sleepless broken nights, to being a pathetic, helpless child again. In place of all of his strength, his dignity, and his willpower was the same thing he’d felt on the end of every beating:

Panic.

Please, no. Not again.

There was no way to reach his pocket from here. The terrorists took his knife, anyways. The crowbar? He turned his head to glance at it. Just out of reach. Looking at it had put him in another precarious position, as the tools he’d previously used to defend himself were now more or less rendered useless.

They feared him. They had to, because of who he was supposed to be. That could protect him, wouldn’t it? If they were afraid, they’d keep their distance. But someone else joined the fray, something Ty had counted on not happening. More hands, clawing at his shoulders. Trying to get a piece of him.

Oliver didn’t keep his distance. He joined in. He wasn’t afraid. Why hadn't he counted on them coming to help her?

A lifelong mistake: this stupid, broken defense mechanism was going to get him killed, or too injured to salvage some purpose out of all of this and die with dignity. Why would she stop now? Why not just finish him? They’d think it was mercy. Put someone down who was too broken to function, too broken to not play the game they wanted him to play. Even if that was the only option for someone like him. Even if they’d forced his hand.

Her collar brushed against his face, as if as grim reminder of where this was inevitably leading. His shoulder felt like it was on fire, and he could feel something starting to give. If she was imploring him to give up, he didn’t hear it. It didn’t matter at this point. The others had joined in. They could grab the crowbar and break his skull open. Or just beat him unconscious. It would be the safest thing for them to do, as far as they knew.

Of course his first instinct had been the right one. Why had he thought otherwise? The choice he’d made then was to die, to defy the terrorists and everyone who’d doubted him.

That was before he’d been given more time than he’d ever wanted to think about it. Before he’d found himself here. Just another victim, about to die because someone wanted to be a hero, and because he couldn’t help but place himself in the role of the antagonist.

Either the terrorists would get their killer, or he would die here.

Tyrell was not yet ready to die.

The key to doing something unthinkable was naturally, not to think about it. If the skill he possessed was meaningless here, savagery was the only option left. Ty inhaled sharply, summoning whatever strength he had left, and bit into Chris’ neck as hard as he could. Hard enough he could feel the metal implants in his jaw. Hard enough to break through skin, and keep going. When she tried to pull away, something tore.

There was so much blood draining onto his face that he could scarcely recognize what he’d just done.

[dmboogie]

kshhhhhhhhhhh there was a sword through her throat why was there a sword through her throat

kshhh

she was going to tell him to stop she was going to tell him to stop and calm down but she hadn't had the breath or the time and she had oliver beside her and she was grateful because she hadn't expected him to help because she hadn't really been thinking of him not really but together they had ty's arms pinned so it was time for everyone to stop and calm down and now she didn't have a throat and blood was leaking leaking leaking kshhhhhh erupting like a crimson geyser, another puddle on the pier, she would be a puddle and a person and puddle of the person

kshhh

The crowd gasped and cried. Their blades were meant to be dull and harmless, no one was supposed to get even a scratch. This was an honorable competition, not a deathmatch. Chris numbly fell on her back as the black knight pulled his sword from her throat with a sickening splurch, paining the dirt beneath them with blood. A laugh echoed within his cavernous armor and he pulled his helmet off as he was swarmed by the guards, and Chris saw the manic grin of someone who had only wanted to hurt her all along, and she didn't understand why

kshhh

it hurt it hurt it hurt she couldn't think she couldn't see she was on the ground and she couldn't focus was there anyone around her how did it come to this she never thought it would be this excruciating to die for nothing

She blinked and the world went black. People were screaming, but she couldn't. All she could do was lay there, feel her life exit her body through her throat. She had long since resigned herself to dying in the line of duty, but she'd never expected it to be so... pointless. The throne far above her was empty, now, and she futilely reached out for the memory of the woman who had so shortly been her prince.

no static anymore everything was bleeding together both reality and this dream she didn't realize she'd been having and she wanted to love everyone on the island but she needed there to be a one and there wasn't there was no one who was her everything there was no one who would be broken by her fate and she didn't want anyone to break but she still wanted to mean so much to someone that her end would ruin them was that so selfish on this graveyard of an island where no one was getting out alive even the winner

Darkness. A soft warmth. Someone had removed her gauntlet, taken her hand. Chris opened her eyes, and saw the radiance of her love. She was even more handsome up close, filled with grace even as tears streamed down her beautiful face as she lost the battle of composure. "You fought well, my knight."

cold cold cold she was reaching out and no one was there for her and everything was fading and she couldn't think of a single person she loved like really loved there were people she liked and treasured even if it didn't go both ways and she'd even take that much but none of them were around only strangers only the ocean only puddles would she be a puddle would they roll her body into the ocean to be eaten by the strongest mermaids or would she just lay there forever in the sun

Her sun smiled through the sobs, and Chris reached out to stroke her face with weak, trembling arms. She wanted to apologize to her prince for failing her, but the words leaked out of her wound along with the blood. All she could do was make a weak gurgling noise. Her prince kissed her hand. "Shh. I'm here for you. I'm not leaving. Rest. You'll be okay."

the world was fading and tyrell wasn't there anymore and she wanted him to die wanted him to suffer wanted him to never receive the comfort she'd been denied never see erika again be killed by erika see her rent to pieces no no no she didn't wish that on erika she didn't erika was nice even though her loss would break tyrell and he deserved to be broken completely and was this how she spent her last moments of thought as a human was the last thing she had in her heart hate was that all she had left to give was that all she was worth

"I love you."

she didn't want to hate but there was no one to adore and she widened her eyes as she flailed and choked weaker and weaker with each second and she saw a hazy image of a person in front of her and she knew that if she could just hold her for a second everything would be okay but

No one was there. Soon, she wasn't either.

[Yugikun]

Everything had devolved so quickly.

One moment Jonathan had had only just reached the pier, thinking about books about cars and girls and how that red stuff that Diego was looking at was obviously, hopefully not someone’s blood. The next moment Tyrell had shown up, said something... completely insane, completely incomprehensible and Jonathan hadn’t even had the time to properly understand what it meant because the next moment Tyrell and Chris started arguing, shouting at each other about a topic that had completely passed Jonathan by. Maybe it was a good idea to stop them, try and de-escalate things, but Jonathan didn’t know how and Jonathan didn’t know if they needed to because hey, it was just an argument, nothing more. It wasn’t like they were going to lose their minds and kill each other over this, right?

But the next moment proved him wrong. They both went to the ground. Ty was on top of Chris and Chris was on top of Ty and Jonathan was just standing close to them, watching. He didn’t know what to do and he’d never seen or been in something like this before but hey, that was okay because they was nothing he needed to do, right? The fight would stop itself. Oliver would get the two away from each other like he was doing right now and they would both stop trying to hurt the other because they’d both realize that no, they weren’t going to do that. They weren’t going to turn on each other. They weren’t going to kill. They were just going to sit and talk around until tomorrow came and then they’d all get their heads blown off because nobody was going to kill each other, right? Dying tomorrow was the only way being here would end, right?

...

The next moment Ty moved. Bit Chris. Tore something out of her throat.

The next moment Chris bled. Stayed there. Stopped moving.

...

...

Jonathan just kinda stood there for a second.

[Shiola]

Chris stopped trying to hurt him. She fell back, or he pushed her. Ty wasn’t sure. It was hard to see through the blood in his eyes. He rolled to his side, pain shooting through his shoulder as he did so.

Escape.

It tasted like copper and rubber bands, and the taste didn’t leave his mouth even after he coughed a bloody chunk of Chris onto the pier. Ty searched for his duffel bag. Only a short distance away. It just hadn’t been close enough.

Where did she go?

Someone was screaming. Chris was lying on the pier, torn open. She seemed so small, so broken. How had he let things come to this? Ty let out a haphazard cry of shock, the red hue slowly beginning to clear from his vision. The ramifications of what he’d just done hadn’t entirely set in, but their shadow was enough to send him scrambling.

Run.

It was hard to stand; how was he supposed to run? Not now, not after that. Ty stumbled away from the Pier, slowly gaining surety in each step as he moved further and further away. He expected a knife, a gunshot, a blow to the head at any moment.

Is it time for that, now?

No retribution came, as he set off across the periphery of the wilderness. There had to be somewhere safer. Somewhere to wash off the blood, and the guilt he felt in letting the terrorists have their victory. It wasn’t his, that was for sure.

She probably didn’t deserve to die like that, either. No changing it now, though. The way she’d thrown herself at him, it probably would’ve happened with or without his help.

Yeah. That made sense.

((Tyrell Lahti continued elsewhere))

[Frozen Smoke]

((Faith Clementine Marshal-Mackenzie continued from Student Government))

The walk to the edge of the island from where she'd been had been relatively uneventful, with the only break from the path she was following and the houses and woods that surrounded that being the bright red building, that cut it's way through the green and brown like a red wound in the island. She'd contemplated looking inside for a while, standing by one of it's walls, before deciding that going into a big, unlit building whilst unarmed probably wasn't the sort of thing that would end well for her. At least in the open, she could see what was coming.

There were people there, out on the Pier - A rickety construction of wood that jutted out into the water - talking by the looks of things. She couldn't recognise them from this far away, but as she got closer, the wind began to carry the sounds of words on it. Streams of indecipherable sound, that started to become more clear, before snapping into focus as a louder sound carried over.

"Fuck off!!"

One of the figures shoved the other, and Faith began to move faster towards them, trying to figure out what was going on. What she could do when she got there to de-escalate this. She could see things happening, too fast to stop, yet slow enough for her to realise exactly what was going on as she broke into a jog towards them. One person went down, and then the other followed them, writhing on the floor.

"Oh shit..." She murmured to herself in horrified realisation, coming to a halt a few hundred yards away. One man stood up, the other, a girl she didn't recognise, didn't. The man ran too, ignoring the path, but heading towards the rest of the island. And, as he got closer, she recognised the face.

Tyrell.

Erika's boyfriend.

There was blood on his face, red and thick, and a look in his eyes she'd never seen before. Her eyes flicked back to the coast, to the girl that still hadn't gotten up now, a splotch of red spreading on the wooden boards of the pier. The other person on the pier just stood for a moment, in shock. She realised, after another second, that she was doing the exact same thing, just standing and waiting for help that would never come.

Faith ran as hard as she could, in the opposite direction to where Tyrell was, trying to get away from it. Her mind raced too, as she pieced together what she'd just seen. She'd just seen someone die.

She'd just seen someone she knew kill someone else.

Fuck.

((Faith Clementine Marshal-Mackenzie continued elsewhere))

[decoy73]

What in the actual FUCK?!

That guy got into a fight with Chris and they went on the ground before he bit her neck, and ran away. Chris just convulsed and she then lay there. Stephanie approached carefully.

"Chris?" This was some sort of joke, right? The blood was fake and she was just lying there to scare the other guy off.

Right?

[Maraoone]

This hadn't been inevitable, at one point. There had been several points, in fact, where the situation could have deescalated, where Chris and Ty could have used someone stepping in, cracking a joke at an opportune time, physically separating the two. Someone could have cracked that joke when Ty took that first step towards Chris. Someone could have stepped in when Chris gave that first shove. Someone could've pulled Chris off Ty when she was pummeling him, getting far, far too close to him. Diego had not been that someone, and he had not planned on it ever. He had lived his high school life on the periphery of every conversation, every group, and he had intended on continuing that role for the rest of his week.

He really should've been that someone.

He watched from his seated position, still all too near that puddle of blood, as the two fought, and he did exactly nothing but watch. At some part during their monologues, his pupils dilated, the two blurred, and not out of boredom, but more out of the thought of is this happening? is this really happening? this has to stop at some point right? right?, and it was happening, and it didn't stop. Even as someone on the very bottom of the grape vine, Diego had been aware of Ty's reputation, and before this moment, his bets had been on him probably starting a fight on this island, where they were given the option and the requirement to do so. But he didn't think it would happen to them here and now. They had barely just begun.

Hindsight told Diego that he should have stepped in, made a joke, separated the two, done something. But how could he have known that? How could he have known that despite Oliver jumping in to help, despite Chris having the upper hand, it would end in this?

Diego sat frozen as the fight went on, and he stayed frozen as it happened, as Ty dug into Chris' neck. His eyes locked on the scene for a few seconds, and everything stayed still, his eyelids, his breath, the world, everything except Ty moving his neck back and Chris' movements lessening.

After Chris' throat was torn, blood gushed from it, spilling onto the pier, seeping in between the cracks, mixing with the seawater. And the ocean continued to clap against the rocks, mocking her for her audacity, saying she was wrong. Nothing else was happening, nothing else was allowed to happen after this. He did not see Ty leave, or Stephanie approach, or Oliver on the side. All he saw was the drip. drop. of the blood between the cracks of the pier.

Diego screamed, and as he did so, he felt his vocal cords tearing apart, rasped, scraped from the inside, as if a new set of teeth were digging in.

[Skraal]

((Sorry for the kinda shitty post, will probably add more description at a later point))

No, no, no.

What the fuck.

This couldn't be happening.

Oliver gasped for air as he stared at the once animated body that was now lying still in a growing pool of its own blood. He couldn't think, didn't want to think about it. All he knew is that he wanted to put as much distance between himself and the scene as possible.

Before he had time to realize what was going on, his feet had already begun to carry him into the distance.

((Oliver Lacroix continued elsewhere))

[Yugikun]

He stayed there for another second.

And another.

Ty ran past Jonathan and the whole scene just kinda exploded around him and yet it still hadn’t felt like the other shoe had dropped. Chris’ body was right there in front of him and it was clear that she was never going to get up again but his mind hadn’t made the correlation that she was dead, that the thing right in front of him was what a corpse was. He didn’t know why but it felt like… it felt like she was okay. It felt like she was going to get up any second. It felt like she was going to walk towards him with a huge chunk torn out of her throat and all the blood coming out soaking into her shirt and she would grab him and she would shake him and she would scream at him to tell her why he didn’t do anything while she- while she- and he wouldn’t have an answer because he didn’t know whether he didn’t know if there was death here or whether he knew and wanted to do whatever it was he wanted to do or whether he was scared or-

It felt harder to breathe. The air felt different. It was colder and rougher and it couldn’t stay in his body because there was a huge hole in his chest where all the air went out and-

He took a step back, thought for a moment that there’d be no ground behind him and that he’d swing, fall, have to rebalance and readjust the way he thought of things like that old book he read once said. The eyes of his body were stuck in place, focused on Chris but the ones in his mind were moving around, desperately trying to find something else to latch onto, something that would let him move away from the b- from Chris, lying down below. His mind was a circle looping inwards and inwards because oh god there was a corpse in front of him and no no no he couldn’t use that word because it wasn’t a corpse it was just something else he didn’t know something else entirely explainable because there was no way he could’ve been wrong no way Chris was dead and his next breath tore at the back of his neck. His lungs felt as if they’d flooded. Everything was around him everything was pushing in on him and-

He couldn’t stay here.

Couldn’t let this… be here, be in front of him, he didn’t know.

His body took a step back, then another. He felt no ground below him as his feet went backwards across the jetty and he felt no wind on his skin as he turned around, changed his walk into a run, rushing off of the jetty into the woods and not looking back, not letting anything other than what was in front of him cross his mind.

((Jonathan Meyers, continued elsewhere))

[decoy73]

Oh, no way. Chris was dead. That guy had just bitten her throat out like a cannibal, and now she was dead, bled out, like a, like a ....

HUKGH BLEGHHH

Lucky, or unlucky for her, there was precious little for Stephanie to evacuate, so for a few seconds, she was simply dry-heaving. A little voice at the back of her mind was bemused at how undignified she looked. The stench of blood and other people screaming did a lot to mute that voice to note the truth: she was just a hot piece of ass for someone to discard.

[Maraoone]

The splash of something against wood stopped Diego from screaming anymore, from further ripping apart his windpipe. There was a burning in his throat, and he wanted to tear it out, he wanted to physically pull it out of him, force it to go away. He had just put both hands on his throat, had been about to start clawing, when his ears registered the splash of liquid on wood.

Part of him desperately hoped it had been Chris waking up with a start, coughing out blood or water, as if she had only drowned a bit, and then she would be alright. But he had been naive to expect as much. She was still lying there, pouring out onto the ocean, turning blue ocean water a shade of brown-red.

No one else was there, aside from Stephanie, forcing air out of her lungs, as if she were the one actually drowning. Bits of food laid at her feet, mixing with blood, old and new, and the sight made he himself want to vomit, but he stopped himself because if he started, then he would never stop, and then he too would be laid alongside Chris, emptying himself out onto the ocean.

He got up from his place, next to the remnants of Dante, and stumbled towards her, and her alone, since there was no one else there, no other choice. He should have run from the pier like the others had, like Ty, like Oliver, but he didn't. He resented them for that, for leaving him with the aftermath of the atrocity that had just taken place. Ty, especially, should have stuck around to deal with the consequences of this, of all this, but he hadn't, and now Diego and Stephanie were left to deal with it, to somehow try to process it.

He stopped a few steps from Stephanie, a few meters from the body. As close as he was willing to go, for now.

A high, breathless rasp emanated from Diego's throat. "What... the fuck just happened?"

It was the only question he could think to ask, the only question that had the right to be asked here.

[decoy73]

"What... the fuck just happened?"

It was the other guy, Diego. And as to what he asked, well, the answer was obvious to anyone that had watched, which Diego had done. Of course, that wasn't what Stephanie said. She would have liked to say that she knew it was rude to be like that. The truth, however was that she had just seen someone die gruesomely in real life, and the shock of it all was still in sharp relief, especially since Stephanie had decided to approach the fresh corpse that she could still smell.

"She's ... she's dead. He just killed her."

[Maraoone]

Diego nodded wordlessly, looking less at Stephanie and more at the parts of Chris' body that weren't blocked by Stephanie. An arm. A leg. A puddle that was surprisingly small, given what had just transpired.

Her answer gave him nothing but her voice, a confirmation that someone else, at least, was to suffer this with him.

Unwillingly, he moved two steps to the left, to get a clearer view of Chris. She was left staring past the sun, the whites above her eyes visible. Her eyes unobstructed but taking in nothing.

In the event that Diego somehow ever survived this, he could write a novel on the various ways looking at Chris affected him, but he could never write more than a sentence on how she herself looked, on how the wound, in particular, looked. All he could say was that it was a mess. It was incomprehensible, what had been done to her and how it had been done in the first place.

Ty arrived, Chris asked him to leave, Ty didn't, they argued, they fought, Chris died. Ty arrived, Chris asked him to leave, Ty didn't, they argued, they fought, Chris died. Ty arrived, Chris asked him to leave, Ty didn't, they argued, they fought—at what point had this been called for? At what point was this supposed to happen? How could this have happened?

His legs trembled, threatened to bring him falling onto the blood, and yet he stayed. He stayed despite Ty and Oliver taking their leave because he couldn't leave Chris like that. A novel could be written on what this event had done to him, and he did not want other novels to be written by other people.

He turned to Stephanie. He couldn't remember Chris and Stephanie ever sitting at the same table in all his years of going around lunch tables, but maybe they knew a thing about each other. Maybe they knew each other better than Diego had ever bothered getting to know a person in this school. Maybe Stephanie could actually provide an answer here.

He cleared his throat, and his voice came out a little smoother, though still shaky.

"Did Chris ever say anything about the ocean? Or, like, did she hate the ocean, at least?"

His gaze turned to Chris. Eyes gaping, stuck in the horror of her last moments.

"We can't just leave her like this."

[decoy73]

"Did Chris ever say anything about the ocean? Or, like, did she hate the ocean, at least?" Stephanie shook her head. Nothing about the ocean. Nothing at all, really. Just standard stuff that one would talk about - Gay/Straight stuff.

"We can't just leave her like this." Chris looked ... scary. Stephanie just looked at the body. That rictus just made her taste bile again. She quickly closed the eyes and closed the mouth. That was better.

"How, what do we do for her?"

[Maraoone]

"Throw her in the ocean."

Diego appreciated Stephanie closing Chris' eyes. It made it easier to look. He could almost pretend she was at peace, if he didn't look at the neck.

He wrenched his gaze from Chris to Stephanie. Cleared his throat, so the next couple of words he said would come out slowly, deliberately.

"When... if you die here, would you want to be left out here like this? I wouldn't."