Though Far Away, We're Still the Same

[Maraoone]

Johnny vaguely took note of Daniel being in his way as he rushed Irene. He pushed him aside, cleared his path, and swung his fist towards her. He would regret that later, he decided. Not now. He didn't have the time.

The exertion caused his wounds to sing. And it hurt, it stung, it creaked, it ached, it burned, but it felt right. Revitalizing.

And then her teeth pierced the flesh.

He jerked his arm back, on instinct, and it dragged through, spilling blood. He gritted his teeth. Part of him felt like shouting would be a declaration of defeat, for some reason. Whoever says uncle loses.

If she wanted to hold on to him, he'd let her.

He grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her down to the ground with him.

[delicateMachine]

Oh, so that's what it felt like to be tackled by a football man. Daniel felt infinitely more secure in his sport choice. Like, alright he hadn't been tackled but he'd definitely been bodily shoved, and since that whole experience wasn't great that meant being actually tackled would be exponentially worse, right? He stumbled, and fell, and skinned his elbow a bit which definitely hurt but it also wasn't important at all, because Johnny had punched Irene square in the face and now they were both on the ground together, and none of this was good.

He shakily got back to his feet and rushed back to the fight, grabbed hold of Johnny around the chest, tried to pull him away. "Jesus Christ, stop!" He breathlessly shouted, because Johnny wasn't an easy dude to move if he didn't want to move.

[Zetsu]

There was pressure on Irene's teeth as Johnny dragged his arm away. It hurt, or maybe it was uncomfortable--it kind of sat on the line between the two--but it was mainly the fear that her teeth would get knocked out somewhere in there that caused Irene to release his arm.

And now they were both on the ground, and Irene was on the bottom, the harpoon knocked out of her grasp, and this is where it starts to click that maybe getting into a melee fight with a football player wasn't, like, a great idea. Or maybe it was since it meant that Irene was the underdog--get it, cuz she's under--and man wasn't that a fun narrative to run with and make Irene feel good about herself? Wasn't it?

And then Johnny started punching her in the face and Irene stopped thinking and started lashing out with her feet. Kick his balls, kick his chest, something to make him stop or get him off of her.

[Pippi]

Oh, hello.

(Bunny Barlowe continued from The Killer Bunny of Caerbannog))

This was quite the skirmish she’d wandered upon! Bunny stood there, bemused, arms by her sides, watching Irene and Johnny tear lumps out of each other, and watching Daniel kinda just get bounced around like a pinball. This really didn’t look like a fair fight in the slightest. Either Johnny had kinda gone loco and dropped either half of his ‘Badass’ moniker, or Irene had bitten off way, way more than she could chew.

She’d heard the fight long before she saw it. She’d decided to take a trek to the field of flowers because, y’know, why not? She hadn’t been there before. It’d be a nice little break, just surrounded by a lovely ocean of pretty colours and scents.

Yeah, gosh, hadn’t that been wishful thinking?

The violence was growing in intensity, and blood was beginning to be spilled, and as Bunny watched on, she began to think about how funny it was that almost 50% of the kids remaining were in this one little patch of flowers together. She guessed it wasn’t that unlikely; even though the number of kids were dwindling, so was the number of areas they could run to. Still. Bunny found it funny. Maybe the rest of them could turn up and they could all have a party, before Bunny gunned them all down.

And speaking of which, as she looked on, her finger twitched against the trigger. Y’know, she couldn’t lie. Her mom had drilled into her from an early age that lying was bad. So she wouldn’t lie; she was kinda itching to point the gun at them all and let a spray of bullets fly towards them.

But why bother? Why waste bullets that could be vital in the final skirmish when it looked like these dummies were gonna rip themselves apart for her? Why waste energy when they’d all be bleeding out on the floor before they even noticed her?

Nah. All Bunny was gonna do right now was sit back and watch the show.

[Maraoone]

Punch her. Harder. Hurt her. Harder. Destroy her.

Punch her harder hurt her harder destroy her harder punch her punch her punch her punch her hurt her destroy her kill her-

There was a vise against Johnny's ribs. Pushing inwards.

crack

Feet flung towards him. Towards his chest.

crack

Stars in the sky.

Fingers jabbing at, into his torso.

Breathless.

He fell limp in Daniel's arms, grasping at his chest. Gasping, cracked breath, trying to remember how his lungs worked. He blinked once. Twice.

Saw Irene's face.

A flash of silver on the ground.

Irene's face.

He pushed himself against Daniel's grip, towards the harpoon.

[delicateMachine]

For a second Johnny went limp, and Daniel thought that things were gonna be fine, like this was just the strangling all over again, where he'd collapse and apologize and everyone'd be fine except for some trauma but who cared about that, right, but then he was straining against his grasp again. He could physically feel how much Johnny wanted to hurt Irene, and it was a level of malice he was unprepared to confront from anyone, let alone a friend.

He was glad he hadn't told Johnny about the gun, still safe and hidden and unsafe and very loaded in Daniel's pack. He didn't know how to unload a gun and he didn't want to look at the horrific thing long enough to figure it out, so there it sat, like a sleeping snake that could also explode.

Johnny elbowed his way free, and basically all of Daniel's breath left his body, and he gasped and was like "Agh, Christ," and all he could really do was try to restrain at least one of Johnny's arms, so he'd have one less arm, to punch with.

[Zetsu]

Irene took a moment to gasp for breath, but then she saw Johnny going for the harpoon. Uh. Wow. He was really gonna take it that far? Irene felt like she should be more concerned about her life, but honestly she just felt offended. Had she really done something to piss him off that bad? So anyways, there was no time to waste to catch her breath, because fucking Johnny was actually going for Irene's harpoon, so now she needs to grab the thing, here we go--

And then Irene saw her. Watching.

Curling her fingers around the harpoon and pulling it out of reach--thanks Daniel--Irene whispered at the two boys.

"Hey. Psst. Bigger problems."

And then she got up and started walking towards Bunny, raising the harpoon towards her.

[Pippi]

Awwww. That was cute. Even though they’d been ripping each other’s hair out and flinging handbags left right and centre just a moment ago, it looked like Irene was trying to unite the three of them against a ‘common enemy’. The bigger bad. The real villain, here.

Good gosh was that narrative getting old. Blah blah blah, we’re so much better than you and to do that we’re gonna kill you harder, whine whine whine, yap yap yap, bleed bleed bleed. Bunny was real freakin’ sick and tired of it. By her account, according to the announcements, Irene had killed more people over the past couple of days than she had. And yet, here the other girl was, striding towards Bunny with a harpoon in her hands of all things, looking like she was gonna go all Conan on Bunny’s butt. If Conan had used a harpoon, and had been a girl, and about 5 times lighter.

But, y’know, aside from that.

Bunny looked right at Irene, and gave her the most disarming, cutesy smile she had in her repertoire, as she raised the machinenpistole, aiming it at the girl’s chest.

“Don’t try it, Ireney Beany! I’ll shoot first!”

She would, too. She didn’t care enough about Irene to hold back if she took another step.

[Maraoone]

Johnny let out a scream as Irene grabbed the harpoon away from him, trying to yank his arm from Daniel's grip. He didn't even try to listen to what Irene had said. It's not like anything she said would matter, anyways. He would still kill her all the same.

But then he looked up and saw who Irene was talking towards.

He saw the gun, pointed in their general direction.

For once, he stopped pulling away from Daniel, and just stared. Breath caught in throat.

[delicateMachine]

Daniel didn't have the required free brainpower to possess and utilize eyes and ears while he was locked in locking Johnny away from mortal combat, so his first sign that things had changed was Johnny going limp, again. He didn't let his guard down this time, because like, he'd already learned his lesson, but this time Johnny didn't seem inclined to go 'psych I'm still totally trying to murder this girl' so Daniel felt like he could take a breath, too?

And then he looked up and Irene was gone, and Bunny was there, and this wasn't great? He may not have been paying enough attention in the past to expect to be afraid of her, but he didn't exactly have to pay much attention to the future to realize she had a frightening-looking gun. Well, all guns were frightening-looking, but hers was pointing at a real human person, so that just like enhanced the effect?

He would have raised his hands in the air but that would've required him to let go of Johnny, and he still wasn't sure that was a good idea, so instead he just said "We, uh, surrender?" like someone who totally knew how to treat the situation with the gravitas it deserved. Someone who was totally used to having guns be pointed at people. Cool as a refrigerated cucumber. oh god they were all going to die

[Zetsu]

So. Bunny Barlowe, The big double-B, the Big Bad, the Head Jailer that Wendy was talking about. Well, this should give Irene a rush, right? All climactic and stuff, and really it should've been KK standing there for this narrative arc to really, like, properly work, but oh well. It was close enough, and she had a gun, so Irene felt suitably outmatched.

What next, then? There wasn't any sensible way of taking Bunny on. Little chance of hitting her without, like, y'know. Dying.

Hey, psst. Irene. What was that about being selfish? What was that about how you were gonna die anyways and you didn't really care about anything except living the fucking dream? Yeah, that. Why don't you have fun with that, Irene. Fuck being responsible and thinking about this shit.

Irene felt her mouth splitting open, forming a wide grin.

"Okay! Shoot me first, then!"

And she charged.

[Maraoone]

Johnny watched as Irene charged Bunny. There was shouting, a crack in the air. Red mist.

And he couldn't process the audacity Bunny had, the audacity she had to just walk in and kill Irene like she deserved it.

He let out a ragged breath, and turned towards Daniel. He deserved better reasons, a better explanation. He would feel sorry about this later on. He would say sorry. He would try to make it up, somehow, when he had the time.

There would be time.

"They're both killers, Daniel," he said in a cracked, breathy voice.

He gestured towards the duo, now tussling on the ground.

"She killed Roy, for God's sake! I can't fucking let her get away with that."

He yanked his arm away from Daniel, and ran away from him, charging towards the two girls.

((All GMing from this point on of Bunny Barlowe is approved by Pippin.))

[delicateMachine]

"That shouldn't-" matter, he was about to say, because killing a killer made you a killer, that was like, first grade logic in both difficult-to-follow-ness and its grasp on morality, but Johnny was already gone. If Daniel had time to think or talk, he could've gone on like 'alright maybe they kind of deserve it for being murderers, under some like, ethics systems, but I don't think any literal high schooler can ever really 'deserve' to die, because everything is terrible and it's driving everyone to do terrible things, and even if you were totally in the right, it's not something you can just do without seriously messing up your psych, and just, bro, I don't want you to be a killer, you're better than that, alright?'

He didn't say any of that. Instead, he saw Johnny join the melee, which made him panic, because of course it did, so he ran to the bag he'd left a couple feet away, and violently opened it and grabbed the gun, and it was easy to find because all their bags were so, so light now, and everyone was at least kind of hungry and thirsty, except for the dead of course, with their hot cocoa in Heaven, and he drew the gun out of the bag, and pointed it at the three fighters.

"I've got a gun, alright? A gun! I'm holding it! So stop, all of you! Now!" He scream-stammered, and boy he looked like a tool because he was too afraid to hold the gun right because he was pretty sure the safety was on but he wasn't sure, so he had both hands wrapped around the handle-thing of the gun instead of having one by the trigger, so if anyone stopped to look at him they'd probably just laugh, but at least they wouldn't be fighting anymore, right?

[Zetsu]

So Bunny shot her first.

Irene didn't think it would've really happened, somehow. How had this played out in her head, what best-case scenario had she been envisioning that led her to, like. Actually charge? Did she think Bunny was gonna miss? Did she think Bunny was gonna freeze up?

It didn't hurt as much as she thought it would, getting machine-gunned in the gut. Oh, it hurt like hell, that was for sure, but the pain was just one voice in a sea of competing voices, competing sensations, and Irene doesn't have room to fucking think and parse it all out, so for now it was some big dark vaguely ominous thing sitting in Irene's stomach, literally and figuratively, and it was threatening to swallow Irene up and make her black out, but she could avert her eyes. She could pretend it wasn't there, don't look into the void and all that.

Damn, since when did running feel so fucking slow? Each step was an eternity, an eternity that led Bunny spit another bullet at Irene, that gave the void another chance to swallow Irene's mind, and Irene's breathing is loud, it's like she's breathing with her whole skull, like she's replaced her brain with another lung, and if she could just take one more step, then another, then another, then the agonizing slowness would be over.

Irene crashed into Bunny with the force of...well, Irene wasn't sure how heavy or fast she was moving at this point, but it was good enough to make Bunny stop shooting, to drag Bunny to the ground, and now Irene's hands are around the barrel of the gun, pushing it away, forcing Bunny to point it anywhere but at her. A couple rounds went off; Irene wondered if she had just inadvertently gotten a haircut.

[Maraoone]

He'd heard the bullets, whistling past him in the air. He heard Daniel shouting about having a gun, about them having to stop. But it didn't matter. Nothing else mattered.

From day 1, Johnny had been setting goals, setting expectations lower and lower and lower, and continuously failing to meet each and every one of them. He hadn't escaped from the island. He hadn't saved his friends. He hadn't saved Rachael. He hadn't stayed a pacifist. All he'd been doing was failing, and Johnny was so, so tired.

All he wanted was to feel good, for once.

He wouldn't ever be able to take back all the things he did, failed to do. But he could try and make it up to himself, at least. He would not let this week of failure end the same way.

This won't be it.

And now was his chance to make it up to Roy, to all of Irene's victims. Now was his chance to save himself, at the very least. And Daniel be damned, bullets be damned, he would take this chance.

Johnny fell towards the two, crashing on top of the both of them. He wrapped his arms around Irene and pulled her back. There was a dull sort of clatter. His eyes fell to the ground. Bunny's gun.

His chance.

He pushed Irene away with his left hand, and scrambled towards the weapon, reaching towards it with his right hand.