Anger, Violence, and All That Nasty Stuff

[Aura]

((Adonis Alba continued from Septic))

Adonis had interacted with other people three times since waking up, and two of those encounters ended with him getting chased off with a gun.  Didn't matter whether they were shooting or just pointing it, fact of the matter was that two girls had already threatened to shoot him so far today, and he wasn't even sure if it was lunchtime yet.

Shit, and he thought he had seen some bad days back home.

He was still running from his previous encounter, tearing across the landscape with a speed and intensity that only an athlete like himself could conjure up.  Despite his high physical ability and even higher appraisal of his abilities, he couldn't keep running forever.  eventually he had to stop and get some energy back.  It happened after he fled the cliffs, and it had to happen again.

He slowed his pace and took a look around to find himself in a new, strange place.  instead of the forests that he had been charging through recently, he was now in a place marked with huge black pools of... hell, he didn't know.  Looked like something out of a really shitty video game level.  And... oh man, what the hell was that smell?  This place was fucked up.  Seriously.

He didn't want to stick around this shitscape, but he needed to take five.  He was going to take a drink, maybe eat something, then get moving to a place that looked like it should actually exist.  He sat down and unzipped his bag for the first time, removing a bottle of water and taking a refreshing, savory sip.

[Latin For Dragula]

((She doesn't look back. That's the safest place to be.))
He could be stranded
What had she learned today?
He can't run easily
1) It was the ones you least expect that seem to have the most fight left in them.
Everyone is dangerous this information is inefficient discard it immediately
2) Groups were risky, as were tight spaces.
Don't let them in
3) Everybody could have a surprise waiting in their bag.
But it's no surprise at this point
So when Katarina rolled up to the sign in front of the stinking pits and spotted a lone figure waiting in their midst, she saw an opportunity to test her knowledge on someone who, if they were all being honest, no one was going to miss if things went badly. She lined up her sights behind Adonis very carefully and kept her shoulder in mind before calling out across the tar.
No mistakes.
"Put your hands in the air very slowly and turn around."
No margin for error.
At this range, she wasn't sure she could hit him. But he didn't know that, and if he wanted to take a risk running anyway through the field of bubbling pools he could be her guest. If he fell and drowned in one nobody would even know it was her fault.

[Aura]

Motherfucker...

Why would Adonis be allowed to enjoy a moment's peace? He sure as shit hadn't gotten around to it yet, and it looked like he was just gonna have to wait a little longer. Why? Because he had to deal with some other asshole yelling at him, that's why.

With a sullen expression, he placed he cap back on the water bottle, screwed it back on, and dropped it back in his bag. From there, he zipped up the bag, and raised his hands before slowly getting to his feet. Once he was standing, he turned around to be faced with a girl staring him down from across the pool. Not just any girl though, but another girl with a gun. You know, the kind of person he really had a knack for running into lately.

"ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?" He bellowed, throwing his hands down with disbelief. "Three times! Three times today I've had a girl point a gun at me!" He was now holding up there fingers and flailing them about. "I don't know what your deal is, but you are NOT very FUCKING original!" He was starting to get a little winded from ranting without proper nutrition, so he skipped straight to the end part where he threw his head back and yelled at the sky.

"FUCK!"

[Latin For Dragula]

Katarina let him get that out of his system. Her expression didn't change until his rant trailed off, shifting from disinterest to a slight smirk. "You feel better now?" Maybe he wasn't paying attention, or maybe the bruise on her chin and bandages around her shoulder weren't enough to tell him she'd been having the same day, or maybe he just didn't care. But she didn't have any sympathy for him, only amusement. Adonis was still the same loudmouth musclehead he'd always been. Some people didn't change.
Stop thinking about what he was. It only matters what it will be.
"If it helps, you're the first person I haven't shot at. That's pretty unique for me." Her gun dipped down from his chest to his bag. "We can even keep it that way. Just tell me what you've got in there that's worth having." And back to his chest. She didn't have to elaborate on what was going to happen if he decided he didn't want to play along. She had time. It was worth the wait to experiment. Worst case scenario, she walked away and left him to his fate. Actually...
Take it all.
"In exchange, I might be able to help you out of there."

[Aura]

Adonis breathed heavily. He had just let out a lot of anger very quickly, and that could be pretty draining for a person. It didn't make him feel any better, though. He was still angry, and rightfully so. The girl wasn't really helping matters, either. She was still making her demands, and she didn't really seem to be taking him seriously.

"Fuckin' asshole..." He muttered, crossing his arms. "Givin' me shit and stuff..."

He looked down at his bag. The girl wanted to know what he had, but he hadn't even checked for himself yet. Hell, even if he did know, he wouldn't really want to spill the beans anyway. She was already pointing a fuckin' gun at him, so did she really need any more advantages right now? No, Adonis really didn't think she did. But still, he needed to do something to keep her from pulling that trigger, so he did the first thing that came to mind.

He stalled.

"You know, I don't even know what my weapon is." He answered. "Hell, I just reached in my bag for the first time to grab that water I was just drinking."

Yeah, it sounded pretty dumb, but it was the truth. Maybe that would be enough to get her to hold off for a minute while he figured shit out.

[Latin For Dragula]

KK shrugged. "Sounds plausible. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't take a peek together. If I'm going to get you out of there, I want to make sure you aren't armed." She nodded her head towards the bandages around her right shoulder. "Already been shot once today. I don't want to repeat it." The barrel of her gun bobbed sharply towards the bag, then back up to him again. "Inventory. Then we'll negotiate. I dunno if you've figured it out yet, but you're in a pretty dangerous position out there."
You're in a pretty dangerous position everywhere.
She had no idea if he was buying it, but it seemed like a decent enough ruse. He was out there in the middle of the pits, and she could get better angles from the edges than he could. There was a good chance she could get him out safe, or at least pretend to as long as it suited her. If he was as dense as she remembered she could also guide him somewhere more dangerous, or lead him right into a pool and save herself the trouble. That could wait though. There was plenty to work out before then.

[Aura]

So she hadn't shot him yet, but she still had her gun trained on him. Shit, this was gonna be harder than he hoped it would.

"Well I know I've got water, so that's a start." Adonis said, trying to crack a little joke to ease the tension. Hey, it sucked, but at least he was actively putting effort into not getting killed at that very moment. Besides, improvising was hard. Too bad he didn't have a lot of time to get better at it.

He knelt down next to his bag, slowly bringing his hand closer to the zipper before bringing it up again to point at the gunwoman. "Hold up a sec!" He declared. "How can I be sure I can trust you on this? Who's saying that you won't just shoot me as soon as you know what I've got? I mean seriously, what am I gettin' outta this?"

Fair questions, right? Sure, he wasn't in much of a bargaining position, but they were still probably worth asking.

[The Honeless Beard]

The bat's engravings were still fresh, the wood sticking up from where the scissors had scored and carved and scrawled her testimonial upon the fine grain. Numbers - three and four, with colons separating them and words like Leviticus chasing them. They were bookmarks that she had felt she needed to place here, on this wooden symbol she'd been handed by people who willed her to use it for their purposes.

Symbols, she knew, were mostly in the eye of the beholder. Symbols were up for interpretation in the long run by those who utilized them, by those who carved them, crafted them, erected them in places of worship. Each were crafted by someone for a reason, erected by someone else for a reason, and worshiped for another. Symbols were willed into existence and warped by design. Perversion was part of their intent.

She could take this symbol, this bat with her own reference points inscribed upon this, and utilize it for the intended purpose of inflicting harm.

She could do this.

((Kasumi White, debut))

With a screech that was barely human, Kasumi barreled towards KK, baseball bat held high.

[Latin For Dragula]

Given time, KK might have paused and outlined for Adonis that the primary reason he hadn't been shot so far was that he was a moron.
What does that say about me?
That he had managed to trap himself in the middle of a sea of tar pits without noticing it, and had yet to piece together that the help being offered was to get him out of there alive despite her overt promises. That he was either telling an extremely bad lie, or he seriously had not checked on his weapon despite having been shot at multiple times so far. In short, that he could never be a threat to anyone but himself, and so there was no point wasting the bullet when he was as likely to drown himself in the bubbling black ooze in front of her as he was to walk off of a cliff because he wasn't watching where he was going.
Unless I'm wrong. Unless I'm not seeing everything. Unless I just want to believe I'm right and it all makes sense.
But there was no time to elaborate on that, because something that could actually be a threat was coming her way.
Shoot.
There had been a subconscious thread in KK's mind reminding her not to think of her classmates as human. It painted a picture of them more as obstacles that needed to be overcome than people, and while that hadn't fully taken over yet it made it easier to draw on them. What really sold that notion, though, was Kasumi's screech tearing at her with abandon. For a moment something in her felt intertwined fear and connection.
Stop looking at her face don't make me look at her face
Was this what it was like to stare down the steps into the barrel of her gun?
Only one way to find out
A question that didn't need to be answered. Her whole body spun away from Adonis and braced with her finger holding the trigger down tight. No warning shot or staccato of bursts, just a wild and unrelenting stream drilling towards the creature whose name she'd already made herself forget.

[The Honeless Beard]

Yeah, no, the whole 'symbols' thing wasn't working out too hot for her as she hit the deck, soil and grime filling her mouth, baseball bat flinging somewhere behind her with the carefully inscribed bible quotes.

Not checking to see if she was injured, Kasumi covered her head, her scream becoming a choked, gurgling whimper.

[Aura]

Okay, that was unexpected.

Adonis watched dumbfounded as some girl ran in out of nowhere, screaming her head off and making a beeline for Gun Girl, baseball bat raised proudly like some kind of teenage barbarian. Adonis had seen a lot of pretty crazy things since waking up that morning, but that... yeah, that was definitely up there.

Unsurprisingly, Gun Girl used her obvious weapon advantage to spray a stream of bullets at Bat Girl. Man, maybe he should have done a better job of learning people's names back at school. In fact it wasn't until that he began to put a name to a face. The girl getting shot at... that was Kasumi, wasn't it? Yeah, one half of Hobbs' resident churchy couple. Hard to forget her and Lance, being all lovey-dovey and stuff. Kinda annoying, now that he thought about it.

Wait, he was getting sidetracked. He had an opportunity. Gun Girl didn't have a bead on him anymore. He could get away. Or better yet, he could turn the tables. Everyone else had weapons, so that meant he had to have one too. And since Gun Girl wanted to see what was in his bag so badly, he might as well show it to her.

He hastily unzipped his bag and felt around for whatever felt like it could be a weapon instead of food or supplies. He felt something hard, thick, and kinda plastic-y. Must have been his weapon, maybe the hilt of a gun. He smirked and pulled it out, pointing it at Gun Girl with an energetic "Ha!"

Adonis did not have a gun in his hand. Instead, he held the base of a snowglobe with a shattered dome, all the snow of which had long since been lost. Standing in the midst of the broken spectacle was a cowboy wearing a stetson and a sheriff's star, the angle at which it was being held giving the look that he was tipping his hat at the befuddled ex-jock.

Adonis reacted the only way he knew how.

"The fuck is this?"

[Latin For Dragula]

In a strange way the thing's whining as KK's shots tore through its legs were its saving grace. The cries of pain reminded her that despite the initial, panicked reaction, what she was shooting wasn't an inhuman monster. It became Her became Kasumi and made her flinch again, her gun hanging with a direct line to her skull but silent. Hesitance. Unavoidable, shameful hesitance.
Stop.
Adonis gave her an excuse to ignore it. Her body whipped back towards his outburst, only to find him as helpless as ever. And so her eyes went drifting back and forth between them, two easy targets that she should be able to finish. They were at her mercy, and Katarina knew she had none.
Don't think about it so much
So why wasn't she pulling the trigger?
Please
"Adonis, you don't care about anything in your bag, right?"
I can't do this
The gun leveled back at Kasumi. She could stall. She could put the decision in someone else's hands.
Don't make me do this
"Throw it in the tar, or I kill her."

[The Honeless Beard]

The world faded out around Kasumi as her pain took the form of a silent yawn of agony, her jaw clicking with the effort and neck trembling with the strain of keeping the scream in her lungs, trapped. Her personalized baseball bat lay behind her, and she couldn't reach it if she tried - and trying anything other than feeling was too big of an ask for her body to fulfill.

The e-mail to her synapses labelled coherency was lost in the servers. The kink in the barrel of her rifle meant the bullet was trapped in the chamber. The river of decision making was blocked by tree stumps before it could become a waterfall of action.

To the others, Kasumi clawed at the earth, shook her head rapidly, and dark stains appeared on her pants.

[Aura]

That seriously couldn't have backfired any worse.  Adonis had gotten Gun Girl's attention again, and now he was pointing a useless piece of plastic at her.  For this situation, one magic word came to mind.

Fuck.

Now he was forced into the role of an impromptu hostage negotiator, one that he happened to be very ill-equipped for.  Man, if only they were a little closer and didn't have a big-ass tar pit between them.  Then he could just punch her out and take her gun so she couldn't keep waving it around.  Yeah, he knew that it wasn't polite to punch women, but he was pretty sure that there was probably an exception somewhere about crazy murderous women or something like that.

But yeah, she wanted him to throw his bags in the tar?  Yeah, no way was that happening.  No way in hell.  He had water in there!  And probably food and other stuff too, but the point was that he needed that bag to stay alive, man!  There was no doubt about it.  Bitch was crazy.

He reached down and grabbed the strap of his bag.  "Alright, it's cool.  I got my bag, see?"  He called out to Gun Girl.  "It's gonna go in the tar, alright?"  He gave a really big, obviously forced smile as his scalp moistened with sweat.  He raised his pack and started to swing it back and forth slowly.  "Okay, you ready?"

He counted down in his mind.

One.

His brow furrowed.

Two.

He gritted his teeth.

Three.

He reared back and chucked the snowglobe over the pit as hard as he could.  His bag still hung freely from his other hand, safe from the sticky embrace of the tar.  He watched wordlessly as his useless little bauble flew towards the hostage taker, tumbling in the air as it soared.

Man, I hope this works...

[Latin For Dragula]

The globe rolled across the ground to her feet.
It's not my fault
"Fair enough."
I'm just following the rules
She pulled the trigger.