☪

[Wham Yubeesling]

They’d taken her before she’d even gotten dressed.

The men had entered the house while she was busy brushing her teeth. Perhaps that should have been an indication that the surprise Marion was about to receive was not a particularly pleasant one. A home was like a vault. Only those who truly lived in that space were allowed inside. Marion’s home itself was… a bit of a stretch example, but it still fit the proper criteria. Only those who truly belonged were allowed to place their footprint wherever they wished to go. A plumber would be led to wherever they were supposed to go, and make sure the only impression they left was the work they did on the kitchen pipes. Someone hired to fix the roof might have been allowed to stay for lunch, but the conversations they had with the family would be nothing more than platitudes. Surface level information. The places they were allowed to be did not quite share the same sense of home that the more private places had. The front door was simply a place to visit those who tried to turn them all into Mormons. The bathroom was simply a place where any visitor could go to relieve themselves, if they wished. The bedrooms, the dining room, and the group living room were the only where Marion truly felt like home. Were the only places where Marion could say were hers and her family’s and no-one elses.

So when she left the bathroom to see two men across from her father at the dining room table, a part of her knew that this meant something would change. That this place that they’d just walked into would no longer be Marion’s home.

The abduction went by routine, or, rather, as close as Marion would imagine that being abducted from her former home was routine. They stopped talking to her father and told her that she was going to die and that the whole world was going to see it. She’d been caught on her words (honestly not sure what to say, for once) and eventually sputtered out that this couldn’t happen — not because this was immoral, not because she still wished to live her life, but because she was still in her pyjamas. The men just pointed at her bedroom, told her to make it quick. She did as much. Picked out her outfit. Sent one final tweet from her phone, as if that were enough to give her control over what was happening. She walked out. Met the men again. Heard no words but her father’s arguments as they all walked outside, headed to their van.

She imagined that they would at least hide her from her father while they dropped her out of the world she’d once called home. They didn’t. He got to watch — finally silenced for the first moment since she’d started brushing her teeth, the constant drone of background noise eventually tuned out of the piece — as they put the nozzle up to her mouth. Pushed her body to the van as every part of her stopped working.

And now she was here. There’d been another scene between then and now, of course, but Marion didn’t see recounting it as the best use of her time — other people would eventually do it themselves, and she personally did not find it pleasant to cause repetition. She was on a pirate ship. At the front point, staring more into the sky than into the sea. There was a little wind blowing and that little wind was enough to tilt her scarf, begin to convince it that having it be blown at full force as whoever would soon be behind approached would be quite an effective image. Painting was not one of Marion’s many hobbies, but she could see the image in her head. A girl in jeans and a blouse and shoes and a scarf standing near-dramatically over the ocean. A friend made a stranger. A person recognizable, were it not for the baby blue hood coating the back of her head.

That particular idea made the unseen part of Marion give a smile. The hijab had been the most deliberate part of her outfit. Enough of such that the blouse had been chosen to compliment its colour. Religion had become a more lazy topic the longer and longer Marion went through the course of her life, but the idea of modesty had managed to keep as important as it had always been. The idea that her hair was special. That it would not be shown for just anyone. It went down around her parents. It went down around Ashanti and Alyssa. It went down around those who she was truly becoming intimate towards. It was reserved for importance. For those who were important.

She heard whirring, behind her. Did not turn her head. The action would have only been needed had she not known that what was behind her was a camera. An audience. An entire nation, intent on watching every single moment of Marion’s continued existence. Waiting for her to turn around. Waiting to see what exactly she looked like, underneath her fabric.

She smiled, again. Yes. The hijab had been a very good choice. It would do adequately for what was to come.

((BC08: Begin))

[almostinhuman]

(MM07: NADINE FLORES STARTS HERE)

For someone who was certain she was about to die, Nadine felt remarkably calm.

Crouched below decks on a dilapidated old ship, Nadine rifled through her pack, mentally cataloguing all its contents. For the most part, it was as the briefing described, but there were some surprises in store. The nailgun was presumably her weapon, though she didn't think it'd be of much use at all in that role. The clothing was mostly standard, but among the t-shirts there was an elaborate fantasy-military-esque costume. Perhaps most inexplicably, she'd found a condom tucked among the supplies, which stood out immensely among the first-aid kit and food parcels. Beyond that, she made note of the food and medical supplies, tied the team bandana around her wrist, and folded the map up and tucked it into her pocket.

She didn't think she'd actually live long enough to need any of this. But knowing she had it felt right.

As she ascended the stairs to the main deck, she was surprised to learn she wasn't alone. All the way to the front of the ship, someone was there, facing away from her and staring out to sea. She couldn't make out a team bandana on them, but she felt it safe to assume they weren't an ally. She started stepping carefully backwards down the stairs-

*SNAP*

A board suddenly gave way under Nadine's weight, and she found herself tumbling down the steps to the deck below. She briefly laid where she'd landed, too dazed to get back up again.

[Wham Yubeesling]

The girl up the stairs from Nadine turned her head. Looked around. At first, Marion imagined the noise as a gunshot — she had no frame of reference for what one was supposed to sound like, only that it wasn’t quite equitable to what they were like in the few movies she had watched — but the fact that neither Marion nor Nadine were dead implied that perhaps she would not know what one sounded like. At least not for a little while. Instead the noise was likely what had sounded out when Nadine hit the floor. It was an odd sight to see. Marion honestly wasn’t sure how to continue the interaction. People normally did not start their conversations by falling on the floor. They would usually walk up to the mysterious girl they couldn’t quite recognize and ask who she was. There was a response lined up for that: Marion turning her head around like she’d just done and saying ‘it is me, I am the captain of this ship’ — hopefully making the other person laugh and hopefully inject some sort of levity varying-degrees-of-appropriate-and-inappropriate for this situation. That didn’t quite happen. The interaction had already gone in a way Marion had not expected.

Which, in fairness to Marion, was in all likelihood something she should have expected. Being trapped on a junkyard of boats with the expectation that she will have to cause the death of all those not on her arbitrarily chosen team was not quite like regular life in Miami. She was thankful that this reminder to adapt came now, as opposed to when her life likely depended on it.

So she turned around. Sighted out Nadine on the ground at the bottom of the steps. Took her steps — methodical, loud — across the front of the ship and then down the stairs, taking care to ignore the one which no longer looked like a stair (as tripping and falling on top of Nadine was likely not quite an appropriate way to start this interaction), and closed in on her. Tilted her head. Stared, for a few moments.

“Do you need help?”

That wasn’t a particularly appropriate way to start the conversation either — too easily answered a question, too many inefficient words — but Marion was confident enough that Nadine wouldn’t mind. The situation was slightly too heavy to be thinking about anything more complex in the present moment.

[almostinhuman]

Nadine wasn't certain how she'd expected her first minutes on SOTF to go, but it hadn't been like this.

For a few moments, she was too stunned to even notice anyone was approaching. Once she'd shaken that off, she realized the girl she'd fruitlessly tried to avoid was now standing over her, staring at her quizzically and offering her help. Nadine vaguely recognized her- another band kid, maybe?- but she couldn't place her name. Even that minor degree of recognition was, somehow, just a little bit reassuring. She felt a bit ashamed; partially for trying to sneak away from her, but mostly for tumbling down the stairs like an idiot.

"Uh... thank you... I guess?" she said, already starting to rise on her own "Honestly, though, I think I'm fine."

[Pippi]

You ever get your brain, like, stuck in that loop of repeating the same goddamn thing, over and over and over again, regardless of how annoying or inane or infuriating that ‘thing’ is, and no matter how many times you tell your brain to please shut the fuck up? Not to the level of an intrusive thought, with your mind telling you to shove that old lady into oncoming traffic, just repeating some inane quote from some shitty action-comedy-straight-to-Blu-Ray movie, or some random British YouTuber’s Minecraft 2 Let’s Play, over, and over, and fucking over?

Yeah, that was what JL10, Laura Hakštok, was currently dealing with. The phrase “Killer headache, lol” - and yes, the ‘lol’ was included - was circling relentlessly around her mind, no matter how hard she tried to think of anything else.

You see, it was like, really funny, because she both had a massive fuck-off headache pounding against her skull, AND because she was gonna die horribly and messily in the next few days.

Yeah, real next level comedy, right there.

She knew the score. Didn’t matter what weapon you got rolled, or how much you could bench, or how nutbustingly popular you were, or whether you had no qualms about killing people - or, hey, in Laura’s case, whether you had Jewel Fucking Evans as your goddamn mentor, Jesus dick - if the Fates decided your number was up, then look forwards to breaking your fucking neck tripping on a pothole or something. 90% of the time? One person walked away from this with their body intact. Everybody else? Fuckin’ worm food. She’d watched enough seasons of this show, stoned out of her mind or no, to be aware of that.

And speaking of, hey, what the fuck? She hadn’t even been allowed to start her joint before being dragged off into the back of a fucking van. Maybe if she had, this headache wouldn’t be so much of a cunt, but no, she’d only gotten as far as sneaking round the side of the school building with Alaska before they’d almost literally walked into a handful of suit-wearing executive pricks. Then she’d been knocked out, then woken up to watch the exact same goddamn spiel she’d watched sixty-six times before, then a brand newspiel from Jewel to let her know she wasn’t gonna be like the mentors from the past two seasons - which wouldn’t exactly be hard, the bar was on the fucking floor - then she’d been knocked out again.

And now, here she was, sitting with her back pressed against a cannon, a plastic skeleton slumped next to her with its arm around her shoulders, the floor beneath her tilting gently, and the sound of a trumpet echoing in her fucking ears. Because sure! Why not! Why the fuck not! She was already on Survival of the Fittest, might as well make it as deranged as goddamn possible!

Was this a punishment for the nuggets thing? If so, fuck that, that wasn’t fair. That was it’s own fucking punishment.

Laura groaned, resting her head against the rough wood of the cannon housing. It would’ve been nice to have some more time to sleep this headache off, but she couldn’t have that either; couldn’t have shit in Miami. Her class was massive, and full of loud, obnoxious assholes - yes, she was including herself in that, if you were gonna be a shitty bitch you had to be aware of it - and there was evidently a handful of them already on this ship with her, if the voices, and the loud clomping footsteps, and the goddamn crashing was anything to go by.

“Hey! Dickheads!” Laura yelled, loud as she could, even with her throat feeling like it was full of sawdust. “Can you fucking keep it down, alright? Bitch is trying to get buzzed!”

Her bag was already half-unzipped; she’d opened it first thing after waking up in order to grab the long strip of black fabric that designated her team and tie it into a bow around her plait. She opened it fully now, rummaging through it, ignoring the majority of items stuffed into her bag in search of one thing and one thing only. Yeah, she knew it was unlikely the producers had stuffed her baggie of weed in there, but hey, she was open to being surprised. Maybe that was part of the ration pack for this version. God knows, Laura considered it an essential.

“Fuckin’ dipshits,” she muttered.

[Wham Yubeesling]

“No problem,” Marion said, offering Nadine a hand as she slowly found herself getting up off the floor. Marion knew that it was exceedingly unlikely that Nadine would actually take it — for more reasons than because she said she’d get up herself — but Marion also knew that it was important she offer as such regardless. All of her (quite quiet) encounters with Nadine before this had been marked by Marion not quite knowing how to connect with someone when they were all the way on the other side of the orchestra pit and also did not tend to talk much. Marion had considered making Nadine a bit of a project — not to try to “cure” her introversion, mind you, just an attempt of seeing whether Marion could truly get to know Nadine a smidge — and perhaps now may or may not be an appropriate opportunity to do that. There was only so far it could go, of course, but downplaying the fact that a notable percentage of the people Marion knew and would like to believe she genuinely cared about was a decent goal for now, no?

Of course, there was only so far Marion could go when the fact she had an orange bandanna and Nadine had a blue meant that sooner or later one or both of them would have to die. Which was frustrating, thinking about it. Not a very well considered game mechanic. What good was attempting to build trust with your adversaries when the colour of a handkerchief could supersede anything one had to say? Not a lot. Marion wasn’t particularly pleased about that. Perhaps she was simply pithy at the fact that this game was truly leaving her with nothing to say. It was currently Marion’s loss, but she genuinely felt as if she wasn’t the one quite at fault for that.

Perhaps Marion was also pithy at the fact that someone she couldn’t see had just screamed at her to shut up, for no particular reason whatsoever. Perhaps that was why Marion decided to shout right back at them. Make it clear that what they were doing had no place in this scene.

“Okay! Sorry!” She yelled. “We’ll both try to keep it down! Just for you!”

It was enough to make her throat want to cough. She spent a couple of seconds, trying to do so as quietly as possible — she so loathed it when people asked whether she was okay when she was obviously clearly okay and not dying — then turned her focus to Nadine. Giggled. Found it quite easy to look her in the eyes.

“Sorry.” She said, giving another little cough. “Don’t usually shout much.”

[almostinhuman]

Nadine honestly didn't know what to make of what was happening around her. This conversation -complete with interruption by an unseen classmate- was perfectly ordinary, but in that mundanity it felt entirely surreal. She wasn't a SOTF fan by any means, but she knew well enough was it was about. She'd expected the violence to be much more immediate; at the very least, she hadn't expected an offering for help from a girl whose survival was mutually-exclusive with her own. Nadine wasn't certain if this delay of the bloodshed was reassuring or not.

Still, any sort of normality should be a bit of a blessing.

Getting up, she could feel she'd taken the fall a bit harder than she'd let on. A dull ache formed in her right hip, low but unceasing. It probably wasn't serious, but any sort of handicap was a bad thing. She hoped it wasn't too obvious.

"Don't feel like you have to apologize on my account," Nadine said as she finally stood up straight, "Really, my little pratfall is probably what set them off."

Getting a closer look at the girl, Nadine couldn't shake that feeling that she knew her, or that she was supposed to know her anyway. It normally wouldn't have bothered her, but in these circumstances, the recognition would nag at her. She felt like she had to know at least her name.

"Nadine." she said, sticking out her hand. "You are...?"

[Pippi]

Aight, so one of the dickheads up top decided to prove they were a total dickhead by responding in a real dickhead manner. Because they were a dickhead. Like, sorry for inconveniencing you so much by telling you to pipe down and whatever. Laura wondered if they were gonna keep their passive-aggressive moral high horse bullshit when their stomping and yelling drew the attention of some wannabe Elliot Rakowski with a shotgun or whatever.

Dickhead number two didn’t respond in any way, which made them significantly less of a dickhead, in the grand scheme of things.

Anyway, enough about dicks, and head, and the combination thereof. For now. The contents of Laura’s bag were currently spread out on the… ‘deck’, she guessed, in front of her. To her incredibly mild disappointment, because really, she hadn’t been expecting anything, there wasn’t even an ounce of weed strewn among her new possessions.

“Fuckin’ cheapskates,” she muttered, before glancing down at her collar, tapping the black plastic at the front.

“Hey, yo, if any of the producers are watching, can I give a rec for next version? Just, like, give everyone a little baggie of weed or something. Three-quarters of the kids in any given version are weird little spotty virgins or walking slabs of muscle with the social graces of a teaspoon, they’re not gonna be using a condom for shit. Replace it with some weed and some rolling papers and fuckin’ trust me, your numbers are gonna go sky high.”

She tilted her head, and made a face.

“Sky higher, I guess. A’ight, peace out, cunts.”

There were only three things of interest in the pile of dried food and mixed clothes, and that didn’t include the sextant because who in the fuck knew how to use one of these? Nobody who still had all their teeth and hair intact, that was for damn sure. There was a tiny little bottle of Captain Morgan, barely enough for a buzz, let alone anything more, but it was better than nothing. There was a one piece swimsuit in a pile that looked like it had come right out of some creep’s roleplaying wardrobe.

And there were two little plastic containers, with a label marking them as a‘ Tannerite Binary Explosive’.

Now, Laura wasn’t impressed by many things, and simply didn’t give a shit about most other things, but this was impossible not to ignore. This was, like. Wow. This was an actual explosive. This was a real life, honest to fucking God, bona fide Big Boom. The closest she’d come to anything like it before was drunkenly setting of fireworks at a New Year’s Eve party, but this was a whole different level.

She turned one of the containers, a line of concentration creasing downwards on her face. There was a fuckton of possibilities to be had with this. There was one, very prominent one, that was real goddamn hard to ignore. That being that, if they were all on a boat, all of them together in one place, then, well. She had a real easy means of ending this entire season before it had even started.

Laura looked the container over for a moment longer, before chucking it idly - it was a stable explosive, keep your goddamn panties on - back into her bag. Not now. Not when it was nothing more than just an idle thought, anyway. Everything else went haphazardly back into the sack on top of it, with two small exceptions. She placed the tiny bottle of rum on top of the cannon for a moment, before she unzipped her jeans, tugged them down to her ankles, and kicked them off into a heap just next to her bag.

Her eyes were fixed on the black and white swimsuit lying in a puddle on the floor. A lazy grin slipped onto her face. God. She was gonna look like such a fucking moron in a couple seconds. She couldn’t wait.

---

“Yo ho ho, bitches!”

The sound of bare feet on wood made its way towards Marion and Nadine, traipsing up the stairs from the orlop deck. A few moments later, Laura made her appearance. She had her bottle of Captain Morgan in one hand, a plastic skeleton under her other arm, and all she was wearing was a ruffled black swimsuit designed to look uncannily like a French maid outfit, dinky little bowtie included.

“Avast, and like, whatever!”

She grinned as she walked towards the pair, unscrewing the bottle as she moved, stopping a couple feet away and giving them both a single nod.

“Can you, like, believe this shit?” Laura said, raising the bottle up to eye level. “Budget of fucking billions and this is all the booze they can muster? I’m gonna die in the next couple days and the last thing I’m gonna get to drink is something stolen from a fucking airplane food cart.”

[Wham Yubeesling]

“Marion,” said Marion. “I would say I’m pleased to meet you, but…”

...But what? What exactly was preventing Marion from being pleased to meet Nadine? It was certainly true that the two of them were in a situation where meeting a new person wasn’t quite as simple as it was in Miami, did that necessarily mean that Nadine had transformed into a different person in the space of a couple of minutes? No. Perhaps she could be on her way — and perhaps were Marion more inclined to think about this in a ruthless sort of way she should get around to changing too — but Marion was going to push that idea aside, for the time being. People thinking people were going to attack them was the reason people attacked people. People attacking people was the way this show seemed to be perpetuated. The perpetuation of this show was exactly the reason why Marion and quite a lot of the people she cared about were slated to die here.

Ergo: perhaps place a little more trust in people. It was quite an adequate idea. Just as much as the hijab was.

“Sorry. Let me correct that. I am pleased to meet you. There is… not a lot else that particularly pleases me about this, but at least now I finally got to talk to you.”

Speaking of things that tended to please and also tended not to please Marion: Laura. There she was. Walking right up to Marion and Nadine. Wearing effectively no clothes. Marion had half a mind to keep talking to Nadine since this was obviously an attempt on Laura’s behalf to derail the scene ongoing and make it all about herself like usual, but then she read all the specific words she’d placed in this sentence thus far. She was making this scene about herself. Like usual. Those specific words were fairly adequate. Just like the idea. Just like the hijab. Perhaps place all these quite adequate things together, and they would form to produce something more than adequate. Perhaps even cromulent, should all these single things work out.

So Marion allowed herself to turn her head. Look at Laura. In the eyes. Not anywhere else. Obviously.

“Laura!” Marion said, the pleasure in her voice seeming genuine even if it was a little overwrought. “I’m pleased to know you haven’t changed at all. Really.”

[almostinhuman]

Marion. Nadine had definitely heard her name before. Marion was another band kid, she was certain of that now. She'd seen her, across the room with the other string players, though if they'd ever been much closer than that she couldn't say. They'd certainly never spoken. A strange feeling welled up in the pit of her stomach; it felt a bit wrong that they'd been so near each other so often, and that it took this to get them talking. To get her talking, if Nadine wanted to be honest with herself. She opened her mouth to respond, uncertain of what she even wanted to say.

The dramatic entrance of their fellow passenger cut her off.

The girl -Laura, according to Marion- sauntered up the steps from the deck below them and into view. She was wearing a frilly bikini and inexplicably carrying around a large plastic skeleton. Despite the grim circumstances around her, she seemed unfazed; indeed, for her the most pressing issue appeared to be the minuscule rum rations in their packs. Their first meeting here was quite a lot to take in all at once, especially in the middle of situation that was already a lot to take in.

All Nadine could muster in response was a flat "What."

[Pippi]

Right. So. These bitches.

If the concept of guilt existed in Laura’s body, then a very teeny tiny vestigial corner of it was being tugged at the fact she’d called two entirely-not-awful people ‘dickheads’ and ‘bitches’. Marion in particular; she had a pretty neat Twitch channel, some pretty good playthroughs and several hilariously preventable deaths in her Dark Souls run, and if nothing else, she had let her Twitter account become a playground for taking potshots at Sylvain, so that was pretty fucking rad.

And Nadine was, uhhhh, a total fuckin’ blank page in Laura’s mind to be totally honest. Like, she knew the other girl existed, but in much the same way she knew her front door existed; sure it had a purpose, sure she acknowledged it when it was in front of her, but as soon as it was outta sight, it was right at the very bottom of ‘Things Laura Gives A Shit About’. So, cons, she was too much of a nothing person to poke fun at. Pros, she was enough of a nothing person that she hadn’t graduated to the mass of smooth brained dipshits that made up most of her class. So, wooo, go Nadine.

“Well yeah, course I haven’t, why the fuck would I need to?” Laura shrugged, looking at Marion, the skeleton clattering merrily away under her arm. “Like, what the fuck do the producers think me pulling some serial killer or femme fatale bullshit is gonna do? Make me die a fraction slower than I might’ve otherwise? While having to put on some godawful act for the cameras? Nah. They abducted me. They’re gonna have to take me as I am. Sounds fair to me. And…”

She turned to Nadine now, big, lazy grin sprawled across her face.

“Jealous, right? Betcha wish you’d got handed one of these things. Hey, how many shut-in losers do you think have already jizzed in their tighty whiteys seeing my boney ass in this fetishy fuckwear? Really showing off all zero of my curves, you’d have thought there were enough big tit goth bottoms in this school to shove this onto. Or maybe, uh…”

Laura took a step back, tucking the bottle of rum into the top of her swimsuit, before holding the skeleton in both hands and making him stand upright in front of the other two girls.

“... you’re talking about my good friend and second-in-command of this here vessel, Patella Skullyvan? Pat for short.”

She jabbed a thumb at her chest, continuing to speak, voice never rising above her usual apathetic drawl.

“And the captain of this godforsaken vessel is me, obviously, decided by me, of course. And my first order as captain to you landlubbers, is…”

Laura took a long, deep breath, then grabbed the bottle from her chest, and raised it into the air.

“To do whatever the fuck you want. I mean, look at this pile of shit, there’s holes all over the place, there’s nothing but skeletons and cobwebs and crap everywhere, not like we’re sailing anywhere anytime soon. Wanna share a drink with me?”

[Wham Yubeesling]

Sometimes Marion tended to regret the things she said. Sometimes this regret came relatively quickly after she said her poorly-chosen sentence. Sometimes (though not often) it was immediately after Marion had said what she had said. Sometimes it didn’t tend to manifest after the other person had given their reply.

This was one of those latter times. As soon as Laura had reopened her mouth, Marion decided that maybe Laura should have changed after all, if primarily for the sake of perhaps having some sort of pleasant conversation around here. It was, admittedly, expected — what else should Marion have predicted would happen when Laura came in here not wearing any clothes? — but it felt slightly like this game: the reality of it did not seem so upfront until it was up here, right in front of her. Of course, a Laura who hadn’t changed was potentially more adequate than an anyone else who hadn’t changed, but it still didn’t mean that Marion had to be entirely pleased with it. That this, of all particular things, was her best case scenario.

But still. This was simple. All Marion had to do was tilt her head. Politely ignore the request for alcohol as if the person who offered her wasn’t Laura and it wasn’t an attempt to push her buttons and go straight in the direction of what she thought she needed to do.

“So if I can do whatever the… whatever in particular I want,” she asked, “would it be possible for me to become the Captain?”

[almostinhuman]

Nadine had only truly known Laura for a few minutes, but already she felt like one of the strangest encounters she'd ever had. That possibly had more to do with the circumstances they met under, but even so, she was quite a surprise. One could almost be forgiven for forgetting about the life-or-death situation they were in, if she hadn't mentioned it herself. And hell, maybe she had a point; it's not like Nadine, or any of the kids, had much of a chance of getting out of here. She could definitely see the appeal in saying fuck it and just messing around for however long she had left.

But no. Nadine couldn't really bring herself to throw caution to the wind like that. It felt too much like giving up, and even though Nadine was perfectly aware of how slim the odds were, she wasn't quite ready to call it quits.

"Honestly, all I want right now is to find a ship that doesn't look like it's gonna sink at any moment," Nadine said, briefly looking back to the busted stairs she'd tried to ascend, "so I think I'll hold off on the booze, thanks."

[Pippi]

God, the vibe here was fucking awful. Seriously, what was with these two? Was a girl in a maid outfit one-piece holding a plastic skeleton seriously the most batshit insane thing they’d seen in their lives? They were from Miami, for fuck’s sake, this was far from the most outlandish outfit she’d seen before. Or worn herself, for that matter.

Actually, Nadine being a wallflower bookish bitch and all, the most weird thing she’d probably seen in her life was her bookmark being out of place or some shit like that, so she got a pass.

And she could also answer her own question, because fuck her, it wasn’t like she could rely on these two to do so. So, yeah yeah, they were all on Survival of the Fittest now, and there was no way off of this ride until it finished. There had been some shitty reality TV show running for years about people living on desert islands and shit, which had ambled along like a walking corpse until the execs finally realised they couldn’t compete against a show featuring actual survival, and every single ‘superfan’ of that show had said the same thing; watching it and living it were worlds apart. Well, same thing applied here. It was easy to watch SOTF and talk mad shit about the wannabe players and laugh at their mistakes and think about what you’d do in that situation. Actually putting that talk into action? Yeah, good fucking luck. They all knew the same thing; no matter what you did, there was a 99% chance of horrible bloody murder being the end product of it all, and Laura got it, okay? That was heavy stuff.

But that was the thing; Laura got it. She got that there were people running around toting guns and knives and shit, she got that her chances of survival depended on luck more so than skill, she got that she was gonna end up face down and floating in circles next to a fucking speedboat or something. So if the outcome was already set in stone… why waste time and energy trying to rail against it? Why not just say ‘fuck it’ and do whatever you wanted in the last few days of your life? Like, did that not make more sense than running scared from something that’d catch up with you anyway, or was she just totally insane?

“Suit yourself,” Laura said, shrugging, before angling her gaze at Marion. “And sure, whatever, go hog wild. So long as I get to keep the actual title, you can do all the boring captainly bullshit while me and Pat try and get drunk.”

Raising the tiny bottle to her mouth, Laura paused, lips parted, corners of them turning upwards as she kept her focus entirely on Marion.

“So, you got a plan then? Or something?”

She tipped the bottle back, pulling a face as the burning liquid swirled down her throat. There was only a shot, maybe a shot and a half in there, but hey, anything was better than nothing.

“Is it, let’s say, a scary plan? Should I be running?”

Laura fixed Marion with a wicked grin, holding it for a few seconds, before glancing between the two other girls once more.

“Hey, but, if neither of you are planning on partaking in a beverage with me and Pat… mind letting me take ‘em off your hands?”

[Wham Yubeesling]

So here it was. Marion had been given the parts of the floor that Nadine hadn’t fallen through. The moment in the conversation had come where Marion would have to give a speech which would define exactly how these last few days of her life would go, but yet Marion wasn’t quite ready yet. For once, she honestly wasn’t sure what exact words to say, nor what order to say them. It was like a concept that the teacher hadn’t taught you anything about before the test — something that came out of nowhere, something you couldn’t have reasonably prepared for, that left you clutching your head as you stared at the paper, wondering just how you were going to make it through the next hour without breaking down and losing it all.

But keeping herself within this conversation was still not too difficult to overcome. Yes. The conversation now required Marion to take stage and give everyone in the vicinity some sort of greater purpose, as the Newly Appointed Captain of This Ship. The conundrum was that Marion felt slightly at a loss of what to say. There was a vague gist of a plan blurging through her head but the way it was now would not be satisfactory to put down on page. The answer hadn’t fully been worked out for the teacher to see. The handwriting was messy. Marion could not deliver her speech now. She would not be able to fully sell the other two over on this idea were she to share it right this moment.

So the solution — or, rather, the workaround — was to not do it now. She kept her gaze on Laura. Replied specifically to the question about her plan. Not the question about the alcohol.

“If I may, allow me to answer your two questions with two questions of my own.”

She took a breath. Refocused her eyes so that they were looking at the person in front of her — Nadine — and the person also in front of her, if slightly further down the line — Laura.

“a. I… would like to believe that none of us here really want to die here, when it comes down to it. If you’re okay with letting me get… personal: what would you two be willing to do to make sure you don’t die? Would you be willing to cross the line, or would you two… rather do something else?”

The solution was to not do it now. The solution was to use up her turn in the conversation — make it so that the other two were required to talk before Marion, yet still give her the narrative space to make her pitch once it became her time to speak once again. Thus, the questions. Something that could keep the whole group on the topic Marion wanted. Something that would allow her to pick up right where she left off, no matter what the other two were to say.

“b. Do either of you two truly believe that we are mutual enemies right now, given the colour of our sashes? Do either of you two like that everyone else on this ship right now has to die, if you were to be one of the ones who lives?”

And yes. The two questions stated were, in all actuality, four questions. Marion knew that. Marion knew that Laura would know that. Marion knew that because Laura thought she was smart and funny she would point this mistake out. That was fine. Marion simply wanted the other two to give some sort of response. It did not quite matter how witty and completely unpredictable they were.