ali bomaye

[Buko]

Well…

What fuckin’ now?

[ Ace Ortega Continued From: What we are in the dark ]

Ace sat on the familiar bed in the familiar Leadership House. In spite of the familiarity—it still felt foreign. Ace blamed that on the drugs. Beats then blamed the drugs on Lori. That was wrong. Lori wasn’t here to defend herself—Ace had seen to that. Personally. He had set her up and shot her down. Killing was supposed to take a piece of you—it was supposed to shatter your soul and tear up your insides. That wasn’t really true. Ace hadn’t really thought about Lori. He wasn't so torn up about the death of the short-time cheer captain.

Ace stopped thinking about the people he had killed before as soon as he killed somebody new. He put shit behind him. Sometimes he was surprised by how easily.

If his spirit was shattered Ace still found ways to feel like himself. He thought of and sang rap songs, because, y'know, of course he did. Beats tried to decipher wisdom within lyrics. Ace tried to predict the actions of others. Ace figured that eighty-five percent of the people left on the island weren’t much to worry about. Just regular kids. Nobody remained who could physically make him sweat. Only Blaise and Erika had killed more. Ace was battle tested. Ace was ready. Fighting to live, ready to die.

Eighty-five percent of the people left on the island weren’t much to worry about. Ten percent were give or take. The other five? In the Justin Greene category. Though that did Justin a disservice. Justin had been a unique case. He had been a monster all on his own.

His bag next to him on the mattress. The BR18 atop it. One pistol in his right pocket, one pistol in his left. The Wildey .45 stayed in his palm and Ace stared at the metal of it. In that same house Ivy had gotten beaten down in. In that same house he had kissed her for the first time. The place where he had begun his journey and the place where he had declared his war. It was a safe spot. A familiar place. The smart thing to do was wait. The only thing left to do was stay alive and make it to the end.

“I sit alone in my four-cornered room starin’ at hammers,” he whispered, “Waitin’ to go bananas…”

[Melusine]

Sakurako had died and Willow's nails dug small red crescent into her arm. She had died and Willow had forgotten entirely about her. She had died and Willow wasn't there to remember her. She had died and her soul was somewhere else.

All because of Justin.

((Willow continued here.))

She was okay with not going home. Willow had made peace with that way before she had stepped a foot on the island. She was already dead, her soul was already reaped, her sins were already judged; she had told herself all of this things way before that her classmates started killing each other.

The destruction of every single of her bonds from her past life was going poorly because she, simply, didn't want to destroy them. The Sakurako's and the Katrina's of this very limited, low populated world she had called an arena proved that. Michael had died and she wasn't even able to harvest anything from him. Willow did not care about not landing the final blow, but she wanted to see him die.

Maybe she was hoping it would make her happy, or maybe she would think that a piece of her soul that was lost would come back, but the announcement only prove that she was rotten to the core. It was another thing that Willow already knew but that the island reminded her every single second.

Rotten like a fruit covered in fruit flies and rotten like the corpse festering with maggots and rotten just like the girl who was wandering inside a house searching for a bed to knock herself out until everyone had died and rotten just like the wood she stepped on.

Rotten just like the voice she heard. It was a man and, for some reason, her first reflex was to cringe.

She had the machine gun, she had the stun gun, she had the cleaver: Willow had all the tools to win even if, at this point, she didn't want to.

"Who's there?" She asked. Willow remembed her bike hidden underneath the patio. She could just run to it. Willow nodded at her own statement, running sounded great. "Who is it?"

She had heard someone and she honestly didn't want to know who it was.

[Buko]

The door opened and then it closed. Beats gripped the .45 and rose up from the bed, inching closer and closer to the doorway. Somebody was in the house. That wasn’t good. In this game it was better to be alone. Until the end it was better for Ace to be by himself. He was fighting to live but he was ready to die. Ace wasn’t playing but he also wasn’t the one to play with. Beats wouldn’t start a fight he wasn’t ready to finish. Ace wouldn’t hesitate to shoot first if the moment demanded it. Whatever he needed to do he would do. That much was obvious.

What wasn't obvious was what he was gonna fuckin' do next.

He stood at the threshold of the doorway and he gripped his pistol with one hand. Ace's legs twitched and his heart raced. The girl would be at the end of the hallway, past the living room where Ace had spent that first night. The same table he had peeled that orange at and Ivy had heard that meowing. Everything was the same. After twelve days--everything was different.

“Beats,” he responded, “Ace,” it felt familiar, yet foreign, “I don’t want no problems.”

“Y’don’t get it man…I gotta win. I gotta get home. This ain’t a team sport.

“Don’t want no company either.”

[Melusine]

It sounded like a made-up name. She knew that it wasn’t, but it still sounded like one.

Willow’s eyebrows knitted themselves together, her hands still on the gun. With her finger on the trigger and her fist wrapped around the barrel, she asked herself a question.

What did she want out of this?

And the answer was, a distraction. He wanted to be left alone and so did Willow. But it didn’t mean she wasn’t allowed to have fun. Her face relaxed and then turned into a grin.

“Mhm, so you’re name is Ace or Beats?” She asked. “Like you’re Beats Ace or Ace Beats?”

He had been in the announcement more than once. She already knew the answer by now. Ace Beats. He did football and had a lot of fun with various people. Exactly the type of people to poke and to push, just a little bit more toward the shape that Willow wanted.

“Like that’s so weird, was your mom a SoundCloud rapper?”

[Buko]

"My moms a mail lady," Ace said outta reflex, "What you care?"

Beats swallowed. She was at the other end of this hallway and if she got much closer--the outcome would be unavoidable. Ace was tired of the fighting and the killing. He didn't want to do that anymore. What he wanted didn't matter. There was no love in this game, it didn't love you back. The only real rule was kill or be killed. What was there really to discuss on day twelve?

"You need to get to steppin'. This ain't show and tell."

She didn't get the message? Fine. Beats'll send another one. A louder one. Ace pointed the Wildey to the ceiling--he closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger twice.

BANG! BANG!

[Melusine]

"Are you sure that-"

Bang! Bang!

She gasped, less because of the surprise and more because of the indignation.

"That's so rude, Beats!"

The worst part about it is that it would be something that Willow would do. She totally would shoot in the middle of a conversation that she didn't want to have because fuck giving some people that platform to hurt her. It was also terribly rude. Willow rolled her eyes at the back of her skull, seeing stars.

"Real talk though." Her voice was still confident as she screamed throughout the house. "Why did you kill Parker?"

Her face had withdrawn from her smirk, swapping instead for the neutral face that she preferred wearing. She needed answers, something to tally up in her mind to choose whether or not Ace deserved to live.

"Did he say something dumb? He usually did." She confessed. "Like seriously, why did you shoot him?"

[Grim Wolf]

She couldn't stay away.

(Daria Bhatia continued from Stop Crying Your Heart Out).

She tried. She really tried. She set out, fearsome and fearless and determined, hating herself more with every step (for her hesitation in the face of Blaise's monstrous nature, for her cowaride in the face of Blaise's gun, for the hypocrisy in seeking Blaise out to kill her, and break the one promise she'd made to herself).

But she couldn't find Blaise. She couldn't find anyone.

Not much surprise there, she supposed: there had only been thirty of them left yesterday, and she didn't even know how many they'd lost since then. Nor was she striding like some avatar of vengeance into every scene: she crept, crawled, and sneaked, as best as she was able. Outnumbered, surrounded, and injured, Blaise had still been able to kill Stephanie with a single lucky shot. Daria had no intention of being taken down so easily.

Morning found her wandering still, in her lurching, uncertain way. She was back near the Leadership Houses again--not out of some search for comfort, but because this was simply the terrain she knew the best, after her last few days. She found a convenient shelter in the gardens, hidden from view, to steal a few hours precious sleep. She awoke (as she'd known she would) with the Announcements.

She sat up, looking blearily for the nearest camera before sipping one of her half-full water bottles and nibbling on some old rations. She reacted to Arizona and Blaise's names, though in different ways; for Arizona, a slightly-bemused raising of the eyebrows as she wondered what exactly "found a spine" meant; for Blaise, her eyes narrowed into a glare.

How many killed by her hand? How many, since Daria had let her go? How many since yesterday?

Those were the big questions that kept her company through the Announcements (though she have a moment where nearly laughed hearing Connor's name; it caught her by surprise because she'd been almost certain he was dead already). When they were over, Daria glanced at the camera again, then found a place to relieve herself in the bushes where she wasn't ticking off anyone's fetishes and she could still glare at the camera, looking . She cleaned herself off as best she could, straightened herself out, and jabbed a finger at the camera. "Time's running out for you and yours."

Off again, still making her ambling way, thinking where next to search, trying not to let the panic set in, trying not to think about how outmatched she was, how easy it would be to kill her. She almost laughed; for the first time in a long time, she was not ready to die. She had something she desperately wanted to do first. For the first time-

BANG! BANG!

Gunshots in the distant, and the echoes of a shouting voice, and Daria was off and running to the sound before she even had time to think.

[Buko]

She…didn’t run away?

She kept on screaming?

In the face of fuckin’ bullets? Godfuckin’ damn it. That wasn’t promising. That didn’t mean anything good.

It wasn’t like Ace could hear her all that well, not much before the gunshots and very little afterward. His ears were ringing. She was on the other side of the house and Beats had yet to even see her. This intruder both didn’t make themselves visible nor did they offer an introduction. This smelt fishy. This smelt like an act of bad faith. Ace had plenty bodies to his name—he wasn’t afraid of getting more. He would kill if forced to with no problem. If he ran into Blaise? He’d admit ‘em to Hands U with a minor in Pistol Whipology. If he saw Erika? Beats would’ve emptied the whole clip, reloaded and emptied it again.

But Ace wanted to win and you didn’t win by picking every battle. You won by choosing them carefully. You won by choosing ones you knew you could win. Eighty-five percent of the people left on the island weren’t much to worry about. Ten percent were give or take. The other five?

Hold no quarter.

Where did this chick lie within the fifteen?

Why’d he kill Parker? Because he was trying to kill Blaise. Why’d Parker die? Because Parker was there. Wrong place, wrong time and Ace was the wrong man for the wrong job. Parker was collateral damage. How’d you explain that to a stranger? Especially with a collar ‘round your neck. Especially because any conversation or relationship would eventually have to be punctuated with a bullet.

“That dudes been dead for a week,” Ace screamed back before slamming the bedroom door shut, “I didn’t even know his name when I killed him!”

That was just the game, it wasn’t personal.

He walked towards the mattress and picked up his rifle and his bag. Then he wandered towards the window Lori had hopped out of all those days before. Beats placed his back to it, placed the still hot Wildey in between his waistband and pointed the BR18 at the closed door.

Fighting to live, ready to die.

[Melusine]

Oh.

So, he was there.

Willow smiled at herself. It was the best second option than to get him in the hallway, really. Too bad she couldn't set the building on fire to flush him out, she would have done this already. It was annoying that she could never get direct answers to her questions.

She always needed to different path from the used trails. It was bothersome, really. Willow turned around, looking at the dispositions of the room. It didn't look like she could entered by another door but that was fine, she knew better than to barge in.

"Alright! I'm leaving!" She screamed back.

She was, technically. Willow moved forward, reaching the door of the entrance. She turned the handle, pushing the door opened. The rotten wood was still as moldy as earlier. It looked like something someone would fall through and get themselves stuck through the floor. She skirted over it, stepping outside.

"Bye bye!" She called out dramatically. "See ya' maybe never!"

She moved outside, jumping over the patio's fence. The window to the room should be just over there, behind the wooden wall. She really hated doing this. Willow just wanted to talk, and nobody ever wanted to talk to her. It was frankly annoying, but her thoughts and her tinnitus were interrupted by something she couldn't really plan.

"Sup' Daria."

[Grim Wolf]

Running full-tilt, her bag bouncing painfully against her back, her spiked bat held high like she was Aragorn charging into the forces of Mordor. She felt half-crazy, (schizo? some part of her whispered, and she bit back something like a laugh and something like a sob as she heard Carrie's voice in her head again), her thoughts jumbled together, bouncing off one another in new and strange directions.

First was this; determination. That determination had driven her into a full-tilt run, just as it had when she'd heard Steph screaming. Daria had not really known this part of her existed--not like this, in the heat of a crisis. She hadn't known she could switch instantaneously into fight-mode, hadn't known she could charge headlong into danger with her thoughts racing as fast as her legs. She was almost impressed.

Second was this; a noxious combination of doubt and guilt. Because if Daria's determination had driven her fearlessly to Steph's side, that determination had collapsed in upon itself like a dead star the moment she had swung her bat (swung, fell, swung, fell, and in spite of all her rage Daria felt the same shock and the same guilt and the same question, could she kill Blaise, could she break the promise she'd made, she had meant to kill her when she swung the bat and she had stopped and Blaise had pulled a gun and Steph was Steph was Steph was) and made contact with human flesh. Some part of Daria could rush into danger on reflex, but another part could paralyze her, and how could she believe she could help anyone like that?

Third was this; confusion, and a little bit of hysterical disbelief. Because put aside the question of your motivations for a second, Daria: you are currently runnning towards the sound of gunfire while wielding a weapon that is just slightly more sophisticated than something your caveman ancestors might have attack each other with. Forget getting paralyzed in the face of danger; forget justice, or courage, or anything else. Let's assume you can fight the shooter; how exactly do you plan to win?

She had no answer. She kept running. She kept imagining whose face she might see as she charged into battle. She saw the vague ghosts of two or three fights against Blaise, perfectly-cut action sequences, ready for the big screen. None of them amounted to a plan, as the houses swelled in front of her.

"Sup, Daria."

Daria skidded to a halt so suddenly she thought she might topple over. A slender, too-thin girl was facing her, armed to the god damn teeth (so many weapons that Daria was surprised she could carry them all). Willow? Yeah, that was definitely Willow. They'd worked together once during the student one-acts, doing the simplest set design for the limited budget they had. Well, Daria had done the simplest set design: Willow had painted these gorgeous landscapes, and Daria had been some mix of envious and impressed, and...had Daria watched her stream something once? Some really pretty JRPG? No, wait, that hadn't been Willow. That had been...another girl. Shit, who was she thinking of someone else? Thin like Willow, similar hair, but very religious...?

Does it really matter right now?

"Uh..." Daria said, panting a little with the exertion of her run. "Hey, Will. What's, uh..."

God damn it do you feel embarssed right now? You're back in the neighborhood where your friend got murdered, how are you possibly embarassed right now?

She was still in her "charging Aragorn" pose, bat held by her head. Very slowly, Daria lowered her bat. "I heard...gunshots." She nodded towards Willow's gun. "Was that...you?"

[Buko]

It wasn’t fear that pumped through his brain but instead anticipation.

She shouted that she was leaving—but did she expect Ace to believe her? Did she possess so little self-awareness not to realize that her approach -even prior to a dozen days on Murder Island- didn’t inspire trust? Or maybe, much more likely, Ace was edging towards that dark paranoid and murderous abyss. What had Connor said? No turning back. Ace had always found another corner to make another—perhaps now he had reached a dead end. That was the thing about the edge, right? You never knew where it really, truly was until you stepped over it.

She’s going outside. She’s leaving.

Ace exhaled. Relief washed over him.

Wait…what if she isn’t? What if she's circlin' round? What if this a trap? Shit! Shit! Shit!

A sharp inhale and it was that unyielding nervous anticipation that took over him again.

Visions of Justin swinging at him—visions of Justin’s body being crushed under Ace’s strength. He lost his breath, not unlike when Lori wrapped her thighs around him in some crazed attempt at murder—he had shot her down too. Connor hadn’t even done anything. Connor had just been in front of Ace. Why didn’t this girl realize—that was all it took. That was all that was needed. It wasn’t what Ace wanted. What he wanted didn’t matter. He ran towards the bed and threw his duffel bag on it again. The BR18 remained attached to the homemade strap but Ace—Ace’s hands found two pistols: the still hot Wildey and the Kel-Tec. One pointed at the window, one pointed at the door His arms shook and his mind raced but that didn't change a thing. Anyone came into this room—lit up like the fourth of July.

Underneath the shakes, Beats wondered if he would be home in time for The Fireworks.

[Melusine]

"Ish." She said wobbling her hand. "But I wasn't the one who pulled the trigger."

Daria had a nice baseball bat, but Willow didn't need it as long as she had Roxie with her. The gun was still hanging low, next to her hip as it was attached to her chest. As she searched through her bag, she found her own blunt weapon.

"And I kinda need something from him so..." Her hands wrapped around the 'feet' portion of the leg. "He owes me an explanation 'cuz he killed my ex."

A nice baseball bat with little nails sticking out would really be a nice addition to Willow's arsenal, but she didn't want to be greedy. She was already stocked up on more weapons than most people, she assumed. She had a gun, she had a stun gun, she had a cleaver thing, she had Roxie's leg and she had duct tape. Basically, she didn't need to hunt down people for weapon. It was a nice way to say that she was priviledged in this murder game, and she'd rather not think about the opposite.

"Would you mind stepping aside? I don't want you to get hit by a stray bullet, you know."

[Grim Wolf]

Willow was cool, confident, utterly poised, snarking in the face of danger. Willow was holding a rather large gun. Willow was asking Daria to stand aside so she didn't get shot. Daria had to rise to this occasion. Daria had to be the badass she kept pretending to me.

"Uh," Daria managed.

This was...this was not what Daria had expected when she'd charged towards gunfire. Her head had been filled with the ghosts of failure, tragedy, and death, not this.

I mean, Willow? Little Willow was hunting down her ex's killer, demanding an explanation? Willow, who was kitted out like something out of Mad Max?

"I'm...sorry, I don't mean to..." Daria began, and again felt that surreal sense of embarassment. "S'not like I'm dying to get shot-" Solid joke, Daria, keep it up. "-but I guess I'm...I'm sorry, are you looking for revenge here? I kinda am, trying to find Blaise, I don't..."

Get it together, Daria, Christ.

"Sure, I can...scoot back." Daria did just that, sidling off to one of the houses to take cover. One thought slowed her down. "Uh...who are we...sorry, I mean you...who killed your ex?"

[Melusine]

Right, she didn't know that plotline. That was vaguely problematic, wasn't it? Willow was tired of regurgitating the same lines over and over again. There just was something so frustrating about the monotony of this story. Wasn't it that same reason that lead her there?

To break it?

Willow nodded at herself. The monotony was showing its nose again and she hated it. The boredom, the tiredness, the fatigue. They were all at bay, and she had to keep them faraway or else she will be swallowed by her feelings again. She wouldn't let them touch her anymore. She made peace with dying a long ago, but not with being bored, and that's what laid her say these words.

"It was Ace." She turned her head toward the house. "He's inside with a gun and he doesn't want to speak."

Her fingers wrapped around the prosthetic leg was a reminder of what she could do. She wasn't sure why she was breaking it this way, but she needed to do it. There was a peaceful reminder that she could die at any moment and maybe it would be right now. She smiled, walking toward the window.

"Like seriously just," she waved her hand at Daria, "just scoot over, or even better, duck."

She walked next to the window. If he wasn't dumb, he wouldn't be leaning on it. She raised her weapon, or rather the limb, in the air and swung it into the glass. It shattered, making a pleasant noise that she craved for.

[Buko]

You tryin' to get outta here then? I think everybody is playin' Never Have I Ever or somethin, but I bounced. Drinking games ain't my bag. Weeeeeeeeeeird viiiiiiiiiiibes over there, call it Ace Intuition!

So much had changed since that party.

This game was completely different from Never Have I Ever.

But you know what was the same? That good ol’ Ace Intuition.

That shit remained steady. That spirit would outlive his body the same way it had outlived his conscience. As soon as he heard the footsteps by the window his aim was there. Right when the foot came crashing through Ace started moving. Both pistols pointing right at the window, seeing the skinny girl on the other side of it—she didn’t look like much of a threat. He couldn’t see any weapons aside from the leg. Why was she doing this? He had warned her he didn’t want to talk! Beats had set off the warning shots! He didn’t want to keep doing this—he didn’t want to keep on fighting and killing. She knew who he was, he had told her! She knew what he was capable of--the announcement had told her over and over again.

It didn’t matter. What came before or what came next. What Ace wanted or why this girl was doing what she was doing.

The Wildey had 6 shots left in it and the Kel-Tec had 8. Ace unloaded the whole clip of both -fourteen shots total- before gripping at his duffel bag and running towards the bedroom door. Ace had seen it coming and he could blame it on experience or blame it on intuition. The house sounded like the fourth of July. There wasn't a sparkler in sight.

BANG-BANG! BANG-BANG! BANG-BANG! BANG-BANG! BANG-BANG! BANG-BANG! BANG! BANG!