Revolution No. 9

[Jilly]

Abel nodded before curving his hands over the moist, slick edge of the other crate. "Yep."

This was gonna work. It had to. Abel was always right even if he had to convince the universe he was sometimes. And how hard would it be to push a big block just a smidge, enough to get a corpse freed and get going wherever the hell it goes? Exactly.

He cleared his throat, braced himself, and began the count. "Okay. One... two... three."

[backslash]

Leaning over the dead boy was awkward, and the edge of the crate was slick with blood, already cooling despite the sun. It made Virginia's skin crawl. Abel's voice was welcome, because she could focus on that and pull her mind away from the physical sensations, a little bit.

"One..." She mouthed alongside him. Her hands were going to be sticky, and she didn't know if she had anything to clean them with.

"Two..." She'd have to dig through her bag to see, and she'd smear blood all over her things in doing so.

"Three." They pushed. Virginia grunted with effort, and it didn't seem like her noodle stick arms were doing much of anything. She had a momentary vision of them deciding to just give up and snap like dry spaghetti.

Instead, the metal box began to slowly and ponderously drift a little bit in the opposite direction. The dead boy, or parts of him, were being pulled away with it.

Virginia had another momentary fear, that he would turn and look at them as he was moved, but he just started to sink with little fanfare once he was no longer stuck so tightly.

[Jilly]

Abel worked with half of what he had, slowly cranking that up to 100% when that was what it took to get the crate moving.

His arms and chest were on fire as he pushed, and pushed, and pushpushpushpushpush'd until the gap slowly inched wider under his hissing.

He glanced over at Virginia and the body- but all he could do was glance before the exhaustion and the ferrous odor mixed with the salt in the air and the sight of what was essentially an exploded ketchup packet between the crates hit him all at once. He quickly turned away and shielded his mouth with his palm as he retched.

"Is he... gone?" He asked between heaves.

[backslash]

"He's... going," Virginia replied distantly. Her arms and shoulders and even her chest burned; she'd long ago given up on putting anything other than the barest minimum into PE, and these crates were definitely more weight to shift than any sad attempt at a pushup.

She wanted to spin away from the sight like Abel had, but she couldn't. Not until the dead boy finally sank. One arm that was a bit less mangled than the other floated up, like he was reaching for them. White palm under the blue-green surface of the water, fingers helplessly splayed. She thought about touching her own fingers to them. Returning some of his blood to him.

Then, "He's gone," she reported. She became aware that she could taste bile at the back of her mouth, and then she finally turned away, trying to breathe steadily enough to keep the nausea from rising. Breathing through her mouth and not her nose didn't help; she could still taste the salt on the air and the tang of the blood as it dried.

Virginia closed her eyes before remembering that you weren't supposed to do that if you felt dizzy. It would make it harder to ground yourself. You should find a solid, unmoving point to focus on instead. Everything around her was moving.

"Um, do you know if we got any... wipes? Or something?" She managed, staring down hard at her knees. They were red but not visibly bruised yet, though she could feel that they would be soon. "My hands are. Messy."

[Jilly]

Abel listened to Virginia's play-by-play as he focused on his own breathing, trying his best to ground himself. In... Out... In... Out...

Maybe someday he'd learn to stop chasing girls; they'd be the death of him if he wasn't careful.

Okay. Okay. He was- ...He was good.

Abel nodded at Virginia's request, glancing at her red-stained hands and the pink bandana on her wrist that looked suspiciously similar to his before the nausea hit again and made him gag. He shook his head and tore into his bag for the first aid kit and the pack of antiseptic wipes within.

He duck-walked closer to Virginia, keeping his back turned away from where the kid was. "Here. Take mine, my dear."

The corner of his mouth twitched as he suppressed a chuckle. His teeth flashed at Virginia for a second.

[backslash]

Virginia blinked at him. "Thanks." Nobody had called her "dear" before that she could recall, besides elderly ladies at the grocery store. It was an odd, formal thing to call someone your age, but Abel was dressed kind of formally, so maybe that was just his style. Except for the... oh. That matched hers, the rag wrapped around his elbow. She'd noticed it before, but it hadn't registered. That probably explained why he had decided to stick around and help her.

She accepted the wipes and scrubbed the blood from her hands. Out, damned spot. It did come off more easily than she would have thought; she'd have expected the color to linger in the lines of her skin, like permanent marker, but there it went. Like she'd never had any trace of a dead boy on her skin. She left the wipes in a crumpled pile in the corner of the crate when she was through.

"...Are you okay?" She asked Abel. He looked ill. Virginia wouldn't have been surprised if she looked the same. "We should leave. Probably." She held up her right hand, showing off the bandanna. "We can go together."

She wasn't great at the whole teamwork thing, but that was what they'd been instructed to do. One big group project. Only you didn't know who you were working with until you found them, and if they didn't do their part, someone would probably die instead of just getting a docked grade.

Anyway. Being alone right now sounded bad, so even if they hadn't matched, Virginia probably wouldn't have been quick to wander off on her own. That they did made things easier for the long run, however long that ended up being.

[Jilly]

Abel watched Virginia cleanse her hands with the wet wipes (overtly, anyway; men's eyes tended to wander on their own). The browns and reds all vanished without a trace as if they were simply from a child's paint set. If only you could do the same for the visions of brown and red that were scarred into your brain.

"I'll be fine. It's just... really different. Seeing a dead person up close like that."

He looked down at his own bandana as Virginia presented hers. "Even if we weren't both... what was it, 'Buccaneers'?" He cringed; he should've at least been getting paid to say these words out loud. "You seem interesting. And I like... interesting people. So."

He smirked again out the side of his mouth as he adjusted his glasses. Another wave rocked the crates, jostling Abel from his perch a bit. "We can look at the map when we get on sturdier ground. How's your knee; can you walk?"

He shook his head again, looking back at Virginia for the first time in several seconds. "Oh... did you see their bandanas? The girl or the dead kid?"

[carduinal-cyn]

(Olivia del Rio continued from Rise, Rapture, Rise)

There came the sound of footfalls from the edge of the cargo floats as two girls dashed to the edge of the western pier, the shorter one leading the taller one by the hand. At the sight of the crates, bobbing like chunks of stew in the ocean beyond, she dug her heels into the old wooden dock and released her grip on her companion's arm. She lowered her head, trying to catch her breath. Her right hand held tight to an antique crossbow.

Olivia del Rio was not having a good day.

She'd been abducted. She'd fought a boy over a weapon. And impulsively as ever, she'd run down the nearest jetty with Lucia in tow. She had no end goals, save "get as far away from the yacht as possible" and "live to the end". The path was precarious now. Looking ahead, she could pick out the figures of a boy and girl. Danger.

Olivia raised her crossbow. It was a pre-emptive measure; she had no intention of actually firing it. She hoped the intimidation factor was enough. In lacrosse, confidence (or, at least, the illusion of it) was everything. She couldn't let that break. The weak never lasted long. Not on the field, certainly not here.

[ciphermitarai]

(Lucia Cuevas Valdez from Rise, Rapture, Rise)

Closely in tow came Lucia, tugged along. Not that this was ideal by any means, no, especially not following others. But strength came in numbers, right?

As they threw themselves wildly through the path she did her best to keep her eyes off of the water. She knew how to swim, yes, but she prayed it didn't have to come to that. If she had to play, well, she might as well get the jump on now. She took her strongest stance that she possibly could here and held the cleaver ahead of her, gearing herself up for a fight if it came to close range—at that thought she glanced at Olivia, who already had her crossbow up. Good. She wasn't hopeless.

Fate's already laughing at you. Take this damn second chance, you've never been one to miss hints! Nobody wins by running and flailing. You've been practicing your whole life for this, Lucia. Remember your form and don't lose time!

By God, if she had to go all out, she would. She couldn't let her nerves get to her anymore. She was a good fighter, right? Right? Yeah, they didn't stand a chance!

She hoped.

Zeroing in. She couldn't afford a single slip, not here, not now. They didn't have the strongest of postures, so she tried to keep her face steely. Intimidation works when you know how to use it.

(She doesn't, but she has time to learn.)

[backslash]

"Thanks," Virginia said again, even though calling someone "interesting" was kind of the same thing as saying that they were really weird but in a non-threatening way. She didn't feel like she'd done anything particularly weird just yet, though, so maybe Abel actually meant it, in the same way that maybe he just called people "dear" on the regular.

"Um, I think I'm fine. It'll probably bruise, but I can walk." It wasn't like she hadn't eaten shit on the curb before any number of times. Stumbles and bumps and bruises were the badges of honor of a good night out. She'd had lots of good nights. Maybe, if she could make it to nightfall here, she'd feel better.

Virginia picked up her gun and bag again, gathering herself to stand. Her knees stung, but her estimate of the damage (that was to say, not significant) seemed accurate. "Um, the bandannas... I didn't see the girl." She'd been far away, but if she briefly closed her eyes and drew the memory back up - even though it made her stomach churn - she could remember. A band of bright blue on the boy's leg, standing out from his pants. Like Abel, it probably wasn't a fashion statement. "He was blue, though."

She cradled the shotgun in both hands, considering as she swayed with the crate. "She might have been... with us. Do you think we should find her?" Maybe the organizers had put several people on the same team together to start? And left the dead boy to the proverbial wolves.

It wasn't unlikely enough for her to feel comfortable.

Anyway - movement, in the corner of her vision. They were no longer alone on the water. When she turned to get a good look, Virginia saw what looked like two girls, approaching from one of the piers that the edge of the crates touched. They were coming closer.

She realized, suddenly, that maybe she didn't want to find any other people right now after all.

"Um. Company."

[Jilly]

Abel listened along, stretching out his arm and hovering it behind Virginia as he rose with her as if that would do any actual good if she slipped and fell and joined the fresh corpse in his live-action game of Poohsticks along the surface of the ocean. But, you never know.

Blue bandana, huh. That, as the youth these days said, "scanned" with the ones he found digging through the bags back at the yacht where he was the first one awake. Blue, black, orange... what else... red, white, and pink as confirmed with yours truly. 9 people so far, and at least 6 teams with some repeats just in that small sample pool. Curious.

He was lost in thought, left hand on his chin and the other one pressed against his hip when she asked about looking for the girl. Not a bad idea in theory, but she was probably long gone by this point. Contrary to popular belief criminals usually didn't return to the scene of the crime, let alone during a murder game. That girl hit and ran. Maybe she was a teammate; there was perhaps a good chance of that being true if Abel's thinking was right (which it always was), but even so sometimes you had to sell the losses and trim the fat so to speak. He wasn't going to waste energy chasing her down.

When he looked back up, they weren't alone at the floats anymore. Looks like they did have company; made sense, the party was just getting started anyway.

It was two girls, also upperclassmen like Virginia. Abel recognized them from the yacht he woke up on, but as far as names go they might as well have been blank slates. They both looked fairly meaty and ready to square up, one with what looked like a meat cleaver and the other that crossbow apparatus he had considered taking but figured was unsportsmanlike to just do but now that he was on the receiving end of it he was rather kicking himself in the head. They would've been no match for the shotgun if they got too close at least, though it was probably not the best call right now for that or for Abel to try and spend time reaching for his own pistol in his bag that would only fire about a quarter of the time, though he already had his hand halfway in his bag held out in front of him so it was kinda stuck there. Most important perhaps, as of right now they didn't seem like they were particularly mutual friends of Virginia's either. Drat.

"Uhm... Hello!" He called out to them. "Do you ladies need anything? Or-?"

[carduinal-cyn]

Olivia didn't give the boy a reply. The words she wanted to say — "we come in peace", maybe, or if she was feeling brave, "don't move or I'll shoot" — caught in her throat. Her mouth was parched. Her hand stayed on the trigger, even though it was starting to tremble from the sheer levels of adrenaline pumping through her body.

Instead, she looked out at the cargo floats ahead. She squinted, trying to see if the two people bobbing atop the crates were classmates of hers. The girl she recognized as one Virginia Burns: tall, intelligent, a bit of a stoner, and, most importantly, holding a fearsome-looking gun. Olivia's blood ran cold. Her every instinct told her to stay far, far away. She took a hesitant few steps back, eyes trained on the shotgun barrel as she did. She stood at Lucia's side now, not at the edge of the jetty.

Her eyes briefly darted over to Abel, dressed in a preppy outfit. She'd seen him in the hallways before, but no name came to mind. All Olivia could tell at first glance was that he was an underclassman. The weapon he'd been given didn't matter to her one single, solitary bit. No, Virginia was the one that mattered now, Virginia had the power to kill all three of them in one blast if it suited her.

Olivia felt a familiar catch in her throat: the urge to cry. She knew the feeling well from her brief stint as a midfielder, the time she'd had to get a buzz cut, the first days as a lonely Mangrove Garden freshman.

No.

You're not gonna cry on the first day.

You're not gonna let her shoot.

You're not gonna lose. You're not gonna die.

You're a winner, Olivia.

This is just another game.

[ciphermitarai]

“We, ah, we don’t need anything,” Lucia coughed out, tone as even as she could possibly make it. She tried to keep her eyes off the gun—can’t look too suspicious—but she felt her eyes drifting to it each time. How could they not?

Still, the distance gave her time to think clearly, unlike in that little box of a room, and that allowed her to breathe. Ironic, huh? You’re facing down a gun and you’re calmer than you were before. The thought made her want to kick herself. Did she really want to get used to this?

No motion was made, though. Hold still. Any sudden movement could lodge a bullet in your thigh and then you’re dead meat. As Olivia came to her side, she kept an eye out on her, too—she didn’t seem to be plotting to shoot her dead, though, which was relief enough, so she shifted a bit in front of her, hoping to calm her nerves.

Creaky silence.

“We just, ah, were trying to get out of a fight. No harm meant! Promise!” She tried to smile, though it was grim. Her nerves told her to fidget with the bandanna, to do something but—

Any second lost could get you killed. When was she going to start playing?

Not now, not with a gun near her but—this girl, Virginia, probably wasn’t the most sure of how to use it. Right? Not a lot of high schoolers in Miami know their way around one... Her posture loosened only slightly as she stood there, awaiting a response.

[backslash]

Virginia's eyes swept over both the girls. No flashes of pink. They weren't with her and Abel, and they were both armed. Cautious, though. Aware of the gun in her hands. Her fingers weren't anywhere near the trigger, but she supposed that they didn't need to be.

They were in her grade. Lucia was kind of a troublemaker. Also kind of hot. She and Virginia weren't friends and had never been in close enough proximity for Virginia to think about making a move on her, but Lucia was one of the few girls at school who was openly into other girls; that kind of thing Virginia remembered.

The other one was, hm. Olive? Probably not, more likely it was Olivia. Her name was called not long after Virginia's in some classes, but she seemed very normal, so she slipped out of Virginia's mind. Olive and/or Olivia had what Virginia could only guess was a crossbow, though it was small. She didn't look happy.

"Is someone chasing you? Do you think?" She asked. If she were running from someone, this wasn't where she'd want to go. But maybe they didn't have much of a choice.

Virginia glanced sidelong at Abel in case he had anything to add, but she wasn't ready to fully take her eyes off the other two. She still didn't want to fire the gun, so hopefully just holding it was good enough to keep all the new tension simmering under the surface instead of bubbling over.

[Jilly]

Getting out of a fight, hmm? Wonder what went down on the yacht. Though, clearly people were already playing. And one of them had the crossbow gun thing. And only two people back there had repeating bandanas, and neither of them were ol' Blue Hair.

Assumptions made an ass out of you and me, but logically speaking they weren't Abel's friends right now. And they didn't seem to be Virginia's friends, with or without the shared bandana colors. They had a conflict of interest to begin with.

Abel only cared about finding the other... ugh... "Buccaneers". He wouldn't have even bothered to go after Virginia if it wasn't for the fact Siri or Stepney or whatever her name was said the damn girl was one of his. He was a little peeved at himself for burning a question so early but at least it wasn't a "no, sorry, thanks for playing" answer.

He could've done without her saying that he was her "favorite" and laying it on thick, though.

He glanced at Virginia, rolled his eyes, and pulled his gun back out of his bag as he looked at the yacht and the deck and back to Lucia. He didn't really see anyone else coming down that path; didn't even have the sun in his eyes in this direction. He frowned. Didn't look like anyone was chasing them. Looked more like they were running from something they probably started, which made sense being girls and all.

"Interesting. It sure looks like you ladies are trying to start a fight here."

He looked to his right and nudged Virginia with a shrug of his shoulders. If he and his pink compadre kept going, kept the distance between them like this, they could make it to the dock on the other side. Had to be careful to not slip, though, but that was easy.

"We got better places to be though, so...."