Someday, You'll Go Through the Rain

[Macha*]

[G09 - April Stone, Debut.]

April staggered aimlessly through the underbrush, her head throbbing and her body injured from head to toe. Cuts, both small and harmless, and large and seeping blood, from either the thorn bush she landed in, covered the length of her right side, as did various shades of purple and black bruises and a particularly nasty red graze on the inside of her right elbow that burned when she tried to bend it. Her head had, thankfully, remained free from trauma, as far as she could tell. The last thing April needed was a concussion. When she had first regained consciousness, her eyes stung sharply when she opened them for more than a few seconds at a time, but that was starting to fade as they adjusted back to the light.

She had only been walking for about ten minutes when she noticed her bag hanging from a tree. April mentally corrected herself. It wasn’t her bag, but it had her name stencilled on the side, and a letter, followed by two numbers. G09. In her semi-conscious state, April wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, or why the bag was there in the first place. The only luggage she had packed was a messenger bag that contained- the last time she checked- her iPod, towels and a change of clothes, a stationary kit, and various snackfoods. However, it was a bag in a jungle in the middle of nowhere, and it had her name on it, so it was either a malaria fever dream, or a gift. So naturally, April had to try to take it.

That was the first of many bad decisions that April Stone would make on the island.

The bag was caught on a broad, sturdy branch that could maybe support her weight if she stood on it, and it didn’t seem like the bag was going anywhere fast. The branch was, to April’s estimation, about ten or twelve feet up and the tree itself was only about double that. There were smaller branches leading up to it that April thought she could use as hand-and-foot-holds, and it would make for a pretty easy climb, all things considered.

Of course, calling things “easy” had gotten April in trouble before, and she had no doubt it would give her trouble again, sooner or later.

April dropped her messenger bag at the foot of the tree and placed her hands on the lowest branch, slowly beginning to pull herself up. Amazingly, she was making good progress, until she slipped, a sharp bit of bark cut into the palm of her hand, and she fell backwards, screaming. She landed, ass-first, in the mud, and decided that she needed a new plan of attack.

There were some scissors in her stationary kit, and April quickly got to work on making herself some handwraps, deciding after literally every other option was exhausted that she would make them by cutting up her shirt. She took it off- because she didn’t want to risk injuring herself further- and cut three strips off the bottom, where there was more fabric. The first two went around her wrists, and managed to stay in place pretty well, and the third she tied around her head to keep her hair out of her face. Then, she cut the sleeves off, and trimmed up the back and neckline, in the hopes that she would look slightly less ridiculous in a makeshift tanktop. When she pulled it back on, she still looked pretty ridiculous, but it was undoubtedly going to help her in the heat, so April couldn't complain.

She couldn't help but notice the metal collar around her neck.

April made slower progress up the tree the second time around, but the padding on her hands thankfully prevented her from slipping, or cutting herself again. The climb to her bag only took a couple of minutes, and the branch looked sturdy from where she was standing, so she slowly lowered her foot onto it, and discovered that she was totally wrong. She put her full weight on the branch, and figured that there was no way that it could support her weight for long.

She was never too good at self-control, however, and she carried on regardless, despite the fact that the branch seemed to bend with even the lightest of footsteps. By the time she had reached her bag, April felt that the branch was starting to snap. With that in mind, April got the bag loose and pushed it off the branch, breathing a sigh of relief as it collided with the ground in a dull thump.

Then, slowly, she crept to the trunk of the tree, and climbed back down. As soon as her feet touched the ground, April threw her head back and laughed. She cautiously walked over to the pack with her name and number on it and opened it up. It contained the essentials, she guessed. Food, water, a useless map, and what looked like a gun of some kind.

April’s eyes widened and she zipped the bag back up, throwing it down by the tree roots with her messenger bag. She opened her bag and found her iPod. It was one of the classic shuffles, the ones that could barely play music, let alone access the Internet, so she had pretty much no chance of phoning for a rescue. The music would be comforting, though, and she popped an earbud in each ear and hit the play button. She sat down, legs crossed, by her bags, and rested her head against the tree as she tried, desperately, to make the throbbing in her head go away.

[CondorTalon]

B02 - Augustus MacDougal: START

"Are you fucking serious?!"

...

"Goddamnit."

Dougal had been sitting under the tree he had found himself at when he woke up. He was trying to process what had just happened in his head. He understood what, he simply had problems finding the how, the why.

Okay, so a bunch of people invade their bus, drop them off god knows where, and tell them to start killing their classmates. Alright cool. And then what? Will they really let the winner go? Wouldn't that be a really bad idea for them?

Dougal had trouble putting his brian into "critical thinking" mode, after the gas and all. Instead, as his eyes scanned across the thick undergrowth, he spotted something, just past a low bush. Getting to his feet, he scurried over to it. So this was supposed be his daypack? Well, unless there was another guy on the bus who was named Augustus... yeah probably.

He opened up the bag, trying to see if there was anything of actual use in there. They were all given weapons, right? Dougal looked for his.

He didn't find it until he looked up, funnily enough. There it was, embedded in the tree in front of him. A tomahawk.

Dougal stared at it.

"An axe. They dropped me off in the jungle. And they gave me axe."

He almost laughed. Almost.

Instead he settled for a

"God... what the FUCK?!"

[Pippi]

((G02: AILEEN BORDEN-START!))

Okay, somebody pinch me. There’s no way I can’t be dreaming right now.

This was just one of the many intriguing and rapid-fire thoughts Aileen Borden had had since she’d woken up on the island. Other thoughts included “What the HELL is going on here?” and “What do they expect me to do with a hockey stick?!” But recently, the thought that this whole thing must just be a dream was growing larger and larger. How else did you explain the fact that Aileen was currently walking through a jungle?

Aileen knew really though that she wasn’t dreaming. That she had seen Kiel get shot by a large man in front of the rest of the class. That she was currently in a jungle, on an island, forced to kill her classmates. The horrendously humid climate and the numerous scratches she’d already gotten were evidence enough for the whole “not dreaming” thing.

On the subject of killing her classmates, Aileen certainly wasn’t going down that route. You couldn’t just abduct a bus full of kids and get away with it. Someone would find out in due course, and come to rescue them. In the meantime, Aileen would just hold out in a comfortable location, and pray her classmates didn’t swallow every word the fat man said.

Comfortable was certainly not the word Aileen would have used to describe the jungle she was currently in, however. She could already feel sweat on her brow, despite waking up only fifteen minutes ago. She was now traipsing slowly through the undergrowth, searching for the way out, hockey stick clutched in her hands. Getting out was easier said than done, however. Every tree looked the same, and while Aileen was sure there was some way of using the trees to work out how far into a jungle you were, she couldn’t for the life of her think of one right now. As well as that, her clothes were seriously impeding her movement. She was going as slow as reasonably possible, and she’d still had to stop herself from tripping multiple times.

Aileen had come to a rather dense patch of flora. She tried to use the hockey stick to push it aside, but the stick just got tangled up in the vines and such. Aileen made a noise of frustration. If she didn’t need some way of defending herself, she would just leave the stick where it was. Instead, she wrenched the stick out of the vines, and looked for a different approach. Aileen headed towards an area that looked easier to traverse than the way she’d been going, when she heard a shout coming from that direction. Making her way there, and keeping hidden using leaves as cover, Aileen could see someone-Dougal MacDougal, who she guessed was the source of the shout.

As far as Aileen knew, Dougal was a cynic with an interest in technology. His weapon was clearly visible, unlike his motives and plans. Aileen didn’t know what he might do if she suddenly appeared out of the undergrowth. However, if she just stayed there, and he found her, it would be kind of hard to explain away without seeming like a stalker.

Taking a deep breath, Aileen pushed a few leaves and vines aside, and stepped out in front of Dougal.

“Um. Hello.” There was silence for a brief moment. “You’re not, uh… playing, are you?”

Maybe it’d have been best to ask that before stepping out of cover…

[CondorTalon]

((Skipping to avoid inactivity.))

Dougal had cleared his head and began to wedge the tomahawk out of the tree. He'd freed it right when he heard movement coming a nearby undergrowth. His hands instinctively tightened on the axe as he turned towards the movement.

“Um. Hello.”

Aileen Borden.

"Hi."

Dougal didn't know much about Aileen, other than that she had a bit of a temper. His eyes narrowed slightly.

“You’re not, uh… playing, are you?”

Hmm... wasn't that the million-dollar question. Dougal didn't feel that he would be going around killing people, but should he tell her that? On one hand, he didn't know if she was, and if he said no she could try to kill him right then and there. Or take advantage of him. Or something. On the other, if he said yes, she might try to take him down in self-defense, or run away. And being alone in this game would be worse- well, actually no, it wouldn't be worse than dying, but it would sure come close.

So he decided to take a third option.

"I'm not if you're not," he said, almost casually.

Well. That was great. Now what?

He sat down, sighing.

"So, how have you been? You know, other than the whole kill your classmates bullshit we seem to be stuck in."

[Macha*]

As she swatted away the thousandth mosquito that attempted to make her arm its summer home, April was beginning to regret cutting up her top. Or climbing the tree, come to think about it. They had seemed like good ideas at the time. Really, they did, but now she was coming down from what she assumed had been the mother of all adrenaline highs, and was beginning to feel the after effects. She had spent the past few minutes leaned up against a tree, her ears ringing, and her lunch spewed out in chunks on the ground next to her and, unfortunately, on the leg of her jeans. Trust April to keep it classy, right?

After a few minutes, her vision began to clear, and she attempted to stand. Suffice to say, it didn’t work quite as well as she hoped. So, April stayed on the ground, and dragged herself forwards, crawling towards her bag. She reached out with her fingertips, managed to touch the canvas, and pulled it close to her, looking in and hurling. Again. She recoiled, wiping her mouth with her wrist tape, and reached in, pulling out the colt. She grabbed it in her hands, closed the bag- trying to breathe through her mouth to avoid the smell- and placed it over her shoulders. She would clean it out if she found a lake, or a stream, or something. For now, she was just going to deal.

It was a few moments before she felt well enough to stand, but she managed to make it back up to her feet without too much trouble. She held the colt tight in her hands and moved forwards through the trees. It was there that she spotted two people. A guy, and a girl. She wasn’t close enough to be able to reasonably identify them.

“Hey!” She shouted, though she may have been too far away for them to hear her. “Hey you guys! It’s April!”

She shivered and, in the second of many terrible decisions, April raised the gun to her eyeline, turned it on its side, and fired twice. A warning shot, she decided. To get their attention. The kick almost sent the gun out of her hand, but April managed to keep a grip for long enough for her brain to register what she had done and for all her thoughts to condense into one word.

Shit.

She turned on her heels and ran as fast as she could, arms forwards to push the foliage out of her way as she tried to run out of the jungle.

[April Stone, continued in Well, This Sucks.]

[Pippi]

Aileen was definitely regretting not staying in the cover of the bushes now. Dougal not only had an axe (a tomahawk if she remembered correctly, although that wasn’t really important right now), but he was holding it now, and the way he was gripping it told Aileen that he wasn’t going to give it up any time soon.

Fortunately, in a sense, Dougal seemed just as on edge as Aileen was. His response to her greeting was brief. He then seemed to ponder over Aileen’s question, before answering with “I’m not if you’re not.”

Aileen frowned at Dougal’s remark. Well, that wasn’t helpful in the slightest. Hell, in Aileen’s opinion, that just made him more suspicious. If he’d said he wasn’t playing, then Aileen was currently prepared to believe him. If he’d said he was playing, then hell, at least his intentions were clearly laid out. But this? This meant that Dougal was still an enigma, and Aileen didn’t like it one bit.

Aileen stared at him, still frowning, as Dougal sat down, her hands tightening slightly on the hockey stick. Dougal then asked her, of all things, how she’d been. This was not a good first impression. Aileen did not like how casual Dougal was acting. She kept her true feelings hidden inside, however; there was a possibility of an alliance here, and yelling at the other person in said alliance was not a good plan.

Instead, Aileen replied “Okay. Could be worse. This humidity is the worst thing, really. And the fact that I have no idea where we are. The map’s been useless.” Despite trying to remain neutral, Aileen’s voice still had a hint of acid in it.

Then, there was silence, aside from the general rustling of the jungle. Aileen thought she heard something like a human voice from way off in the distance, but she shrugged it off as her imagination. She considered what to say next. It was fifty-fifty between offering an alliance or telling Dougal not to be so ambiguous and shifty. Before she could say anything, however, a pair of short, sharp cracking sounds pierced the general calm of the area.

Instinctively, Aileen let out a short yell of shock. Her mind raced as to what the source of the noise could be, but really, she already knew. Gunshots. It had to be. They were on an island, and people were being given weapons. Obviously, some were better than others. Aileen felt her heart stop momentarily as she considered the possibility that someone had already been shot. No. No, that’s not what happened. Someone must just have accidentally fired the gun. We’re kids. We don’t know how to handle firearms.

Still though, better safe than sorry. Aileen looked over at Dougal, and at the tomahawk in his hands. “Don’t even think about going over to investigate” she said, voice stern and serious. “Just because you’ve been given a weapon does not make you invincible all of a sudden.”

[CondorTalon]

Dougal raised his eyebrow as Aileen talked. There was something about the way she said it. Dougal felt like something was off about the tone. He wondered if something he had-

*CRACK* *CRACK*

Dougal jumped when he heard the sounds, quickly scrambling back into a position. His hands began to shake. He knew enough about the situation, enough about what he'd seen on TV and on the Internet to quickly realize what the sounds had been.

Gunshots.

Why? Why were there gunshots? They sounded like they were close by, too. Oh god... some of them were given guns, weren't they? Was someone already playing the game? What if... what if someone was hurt?

“Don’t even think about going over to investigate.Just because you’ve been given a weapon does not make you invincible all of a sudden.”

"Huh?" he said, snapping out of his panic. He looked at over Aileen.

"Y-Yeah, I know that..." he stuttered. It's not like he was go to go over there anyway.

But now it was a different situation. He heard the shots. There was a very distinct possibility that someone had already started playing.

"Should we... shit... should we get out of here?" he asked, as if the answer wasn't already obvious.

[Pippi]

Well. At least Aileen knew Dougal wasn’t planning on being overly reckless. At least, for the moment. The gunfire had stopped, although that didn’t really mean much. The gunman-or woman-could have left the area, yes, or they could have simply run out of bullets momentarily. Or they were waiting to decide on their next move. Or they were raiding their victim’s corpse fo-

No, shut up, no goddamnit! No-one is killing anyone yet. Everyone’s smarter than that. Most of them, anyway.

Some of them, then.

Still the most important fact right now was their current situation. Staying here was clearly not an option, not that Aileen had wanted to stay in the first place. They had to leave as soon as possible, but where the hell was the exit?! Everywhere Aileen looked it was just trees, trees and more damn trees.

Dougal suggested that they get out of the area, and Aileen retorted “No. We’re going to stay right here in the proximity of a guy with a gun. Sound good?”

A couple of seconds passed, and then Aileen shook her head. “Er. Sorry. I’m just kinda… releasing pent up anger and such. You just happened to be the target. Anyway…” Aileen took another look around to see if there were any clues as to where to go. Nope. Same old trees.

“Yeah, we should get out of here, but where exactly is ‘out’?” Aileen looked back towards the location of the gunshots. “Not in that direction, I know that much.”

[CondorTalon]

"No. We’re going to stay right here in the proximity of a guy with a gun. Sound good?”

Whoa, what was her problem? All of a sudden Aileen had snapped at him, for no reason.

"Er. Sorry. I’m just kinda… releasing pent up anger and such. You just happened to be the target."

Dougal sighed. Fine, he could understand that. After all, being trapped in this situation would probably make someone cranky. So... the problem was that they needed to get away from the gunshots, but being in the jungle meant that they could easily find themsleves lost. Of course, they were already lost, so it would probably be better to just go and try to find a landmark, or something.

"Well, I think the farther away we get from the shots, the better," he said. Then pointing in the opposite direction, he continued, "If we keep going that way, hopefully we'll get out of this jungle."

[Pippi]

Luckily, Dougal didn’t seem to be too irritated by Aileen’s outburst. At least, he wasn’t showing it. Maybe he was just storing up his anger too, and then the whole thing would go full circle. How wonderful. It did remind Aileen that she really needed to keep her temper in check. It probably wouldn’t be good for her health if she pissed off some gun wielding moron. She knew she should probably also keep a lid on the sarcasm too, but eh. She couldn’t promise things like that.

As if he was trying to test Aileen’s new resolve, Dougal suggested going the opposite way to where the shots had come from. Aileen was about to let fly with another sarcastic quip, but held her tongue at the last second. She was already walking on thin ice here. Annoying the guy with the tomahawk was not a smart thing to do.

Instead, Aileen hoisted the hockey stick onto her shoulder, and looked in the direction Dougal had pointed at. “Sure, that way’s fine.” She said, looking back at Dougal. “This jungle can’t go on forever, after all. We keep going on in a straight line, and we’ll reach the edge soon enough.” Aileen was about to say something along the lines of “It could always be an island of nothing but jungle” but again, stopped herself in time. Lowering morale was also not a good idea.

Aileen flicked a leaf off of the handle of the hockey stick, then started walking in the direction Dougal pointed. “I guess this is an alliance or something, huh?” she said, pushing vines out of the way. “Let’s go then. No point in waiting around.”

((Aileen Borden continued in The Darkening Ground))

[CondorTalon]

Aileen seemed to agree with Dougal's decision. At the very least, having someone accompany him on this death romp was a lot smarter of an idea than going at it alone. He wasn't sure what to make of Aileen's attitude. At the very least, she didn't set off any alarms in Dougal's head. Yet. He wanted to think that he could ease up a bit, but the gunshots they had just heard left him feeling a bit paranoid. Still, though, he thought he could ease up. Just a little bit.

“Sure, that way’s fine. This jungle can’t go on forever, after all. We keep going on in a straight line, and we’ll reach the edge soon enough.”

Of course, it could always be an island of nothing but jungle...

...

Nah... that'd be stupid, right?

“I guess this is an alliance or something, huh?”

"Yeah," he replied. It was.

An uneasy alliance, but an alliance just the same.

“Let’s go then. No point in waiting around.”

"Right," he said, following behind.

((Augustus MacDougal continued in The Darkening Ground.))