Staccato

[Jilly]

Beep.





Beep.





Beep.





A series of electronic beeps emitted from one of the bathrooms on the lower deck of the transport ferry. Each one shriller than the last.





Beep.

[Jilly]

After half a minute passed, the beeping came faster.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Gasping for breath, Mariko sprinted from the shaky jetty to the ferry, making the transition from one to the other with an ill-advised leap. Fortunately, her feet found purchase, and with her bag slung over her shoulder, harpoon in hands, and pigtails bouncing on the back of her head, she walked along the outer Starboard deck until she found a door inside. Teeth clenched, Mariko pressed her shoulder to the door and pushed it through.

Empty benches and rusted skeletal automobiles greeted her. Mariko moved quickly, pointing her vision around the room with the tip of her harpoon. The tension of the bandana on her left arm kept her grip on the harpoon steady as she skirted the edges of an old Ford truck, glancing into the window to see if anything inside was worth picking up. She barely needed to look—bits of seat cushion were all she could see, and so she kept moving, car to car to car until eventually she made it to the stairway and half up before she heard behind her, faintly, bouncing from behind a wall—

Beep.

Mariko spun and hesitated. Her harpoon was in her hands, unfired. There was nobody there, but the hesitation—

Beep.

There it was again. Mariko kept her self-aimed sigh to herself and stepped lightly back down into the lower deck. She hadn't noticed them before, but from this angle she could see a set of bathrooms on the other side of the hall.

Beep.

Mariko walked forward, pushing off the balls of her feet towards the bathroom doors.

"Someone came unprepared for the session," she muttered.

[Jilly]

Beep.

[MethodicalSlacker]

"Oh beep, beep, beep," mocked Mariko in an unflattering octave as she walked to the bathrooms, "go ahead and beep yourself to death."

And that was bathroomsuh, plural. Either they were left or they were right. Times like these called for a coin-flip, or a dice roll, but despite all the luck (all of it) that Jewel said she had, Mariko was going to let time let this choice make itself.

Beep.

"Okay," Mariko said, "Let's do this."

With a short, sharp breath, Mariko stepped into the women's restroom as another beep echoed off the chalky walls.

[Catche Jagger]

((Gabriela Garcia-Campos continued from Keyboard Warrior))

Gabriela stepped out from the bathroom, pistol in hand, only to be met by the sound of beeping and the sight of someone entering the other bathroom.

“Hey, what the fuck are you doing?” She shouted to the person standing in the doorway, pointing her pistol at their back.

She swallowed. What the fuck were they doing? What the fuck was she doing.

She took a step forward, awaiting a response. It seemed as though this shit had almost been constructed to just get worse and worse.

[Jilly]

Leslie didn't look up when Mariko barged in. He just stayed fixed in place, leaning over the sink counter and propping his head up by his right hand. His eyes were buried in his palm.

Beep.

Someone else shouted something, but Leslie couldn't care. He couldn't care about anything anymore.

Beep.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Mariko froze and hesitated again when someone called out behind her. She saw Leslie out of the corner of her eye as she turned around, but suddenly her focus was far, far away, seated cross-legged on the end of Gabriela's gun.

And she was sure Gabriela's was sitting right across, perched on the end of Mariko's harpoon.

"I—"

Beep.

It was loud enough that Mariko had to take a hand off her harpoon and put it over her ear.

"Fucking shut the fuck up with the beeping already!" Mariko spat over her shoulder as she winced.

[Catche Jagger]

Turned out the figure was Mariko, and Mariko had a harpoon gun. That girl was already annoying enough without a killer weapon in hand.

Things were already turning out to be fucked up right from the start. Gabriela was already starting to regret ever deciding to step out of that bathroom. Just a few more moments and she might’ve avoided all of this bullshit.

“Ignore the fucking beeping and focus on me! I asked you what the fuck you were doing, Mariko!” Gabriela demanded, keeping her gun trained on the other girl. The moment that Mariko had been distracted by the noise would have been the perfect opportunity to fire, but… it didn’t feel right. Not yet.

It wasn’t like Mariko was that much of a threat anyway. Just some irritating presence that always seemed to hang in the periphery of her life.

Gabriela grit her teeth, refusing to break her focus on Mariko for whatever the hell was happening in the bathroom. Better safe than sorry.

[Jilly]

His collar beeped again anyway, despite Mariko's objections.

[MethodicalSlacker]

"What am I doing?" Mariko said incredulously as another beep slammed the walls of the bathroom.

She fought the wince this time.

"What are you doing?" she snapped back, "Are you giving me back my copy of Forward the Foundation? Doesn't look like it, so fu—"

Beep.

Mariko couldn't fight the impulse when it came around again. Instead, she followed through on it, swiveled and aimed the harpoon at Leslie's head, and screamed;

"WHY ARE YOU BEEPING SO GODDAMN LOUD?!?!?"

[Catche Jagger]

Mariko just started trying to turn shit around on Gabriela, started asking about one of the fucking Foundation books.

Wait, had Mariko given her a book or something? She couldn’t recall, though that was probably because she actively tried not to remember the incessant nattering of weird nerds that have no clue what the hell is going on.

“I don’t-” Gabriela began, but Mariko had already whirled around and was yelling about the fucking beeping again.

“Oh my fucking GOD! Would you shut the fuck up about the beeping and look at the person with the FUCKING GUN POINTED AT YOU! I CAN'T BELIEVE WHAT A-!” Gabriela began to shout, body tense all over, only to be cut off as she applied too much pressure to the trigger in her rage.

The gun went off.

[Jilly]

That got him up, with a yelp.

Leslie's hands dug into the sink counter, and he just stared at the commotion with his red, puffy eyes. Just stood there paralyzed.

He still beeped, though. Maybe just a little bit faster, even.

[MethodicalSlacker]

With a thundering sound that slaughtered the measly cries of beeps before it, the bullet sailed past Mariko and Leslie and lodged itself in the opposite wall. Mariko startled, but it was Leslie who screamed, and it was his scream that drew her attention,

Beep.

first to Leslie's face in the mirror,

Beep.

then to the collar around his neck,

Beep.

and finally to his arms and legs.

Beep.

Mariko pointed at Leslie and shouted over the ringing in her ears.

Beep.

"WHERE IS YOUR BAN—"

Beep.

[Catche Jagger]

Gabriela wasn’t sure what was happening for a moment. She’d fired her gun, there was a yelp and then it was like nothing. The beeping continued, Mariko’s yelling continued. Her fuck up had passed and things remined not so different than before.

She was relieved.

But even more so, she was furious.

Even with a gun, even in demonstrating its power, she’d been ignored by complete brainlets that couldn’t figure out how the fucking collars worked.

“I told you to SHUT UP ABOUT THE FUCKING BEEPING!” Gabriela took a step forward, and although what she did next was fueled by vindictive impulse, this was no mistake.

Gabriela fired again.