hOLE In eArHt swaLowS GiRL wHoLE [NSFL]

[Bikriki*]

Once Vincent had left the tunnels, and gotten a bit farther from nut and sack, he had stumbled upon a cabin. There were people in the cabin, and Vincent hated people. So he chose to go somewhere else.

It turned out that the sea began behind the cabin's area. Water, where ever he was looking. He actually hated the sea too. So he turned around, and passed the cabin again. And then passed the entrance - or, well, exit - of the tunnel again. Of course, he didn't really pass it because then he might meet the crazy people again. Really, it was an elaborate and big arch around the tunnel exit he made.

One way or the other, Vincent stumbled his way through the forests for a while. In the meantime, he had to learn to his own great shock and surprise that he was not as good at reading maps as he was. Or perhaps, the map he was issued was useless and degenerate.

Of course, it was the latter option. No sane person would be able to make sense of that crap piece of paper he'd be given. But that was how it was.

Now then, after a felt-eternity of walking around, Vincent actually came to an interesting place. Not a good place, but a curious one. The smell of tar was unmistakable, and could be smelled from afar.

Still, what really surprised him was that there was a people again. It seemed they were a bit in distress, but Vincent was not an expert in these kind of things.

He remained at a considerable distance. If he were lucky, he would not be noticed.

[The Honeless Beard]

((Kasumi White, Anger, Violence, All That Nasty Stuff))

It took a shameful amount of time before Lance entered her thoughts, an unbidden spectre floating across her frontal lobe. Kasumi's memories of him were flavored bitterly, food that pressed against the sour sides of her tongue, made the roof of her mouth itch. He had been on her bus, and that meant he was somewhere on this rock, this premonition of blood spilled that she sat upon, surrounded by the stench of the tar pits.

Kasumi's signature-riddled weapon turned crutch rolled in her hands, her thumbs seeking each of the carved letters, pressing against wood that stuck out of the fine grain, digging it into her thumb. Her knee throbbed with pain, and she curled her good leg until her foot was underneath it to allow for more support. The sharpness of the sliver entering her thumb compared to the ache of the bullet wound in an oddly satisfying harmony.

She looked to the sky, lifted her thumb to her mouth, bit the sliver and pulled it out, her eyes twisting in concentration. Then, wood in her teeth, she began to murmur.

"He's the one who makes the birds sing, he's the one who put the moon in the sky. He's the one who hung the stars, one by one."

[Cake]

[[Wendy Fischer Continued From: I Am The Lie, I Am The Liar.]]

"Neat."

poke-poke.

The bubble popped.

Wendy swirled the murky pool a little more, letting the bones of whichever poor critter had gotten trapped in this strange quicksand, peak out from its oily depths. The stuff mushed itself onto the edge like a blob of dough in its stickiest form. Except it was dark and clung to the end of a branch rather than a wooden spoon. Probably didn't taste too good either.

For a second there, Wendy thought of Will Lohman. Funny how a friendship started not from the initial tutoring, but from a learned common interest of "culinary arts" as he would call it. She knew he was here, saw the splatter on his bifocals, he'd been there too, along with the rest of them.

Now, what of Will, was he still Will? Would they still be able to cook together, would she find him too? Or Will, was he a carrion meal?

Kind of like that girl turned mudskipper she'd been keeping an eye on for a little while now.

Slowly but surely, Wendy strolled her way down in her brightly colored clothing; a glowing neon light standing out and side-stepping a mass of brown, grey and blackened ooze. She'd spun the stick, twirling it around in the same fashion as she'd done with her cheerleading baton.

The tar was persistent, it was quite impressive, never sliding or slopping off; a glue-like sap, chunky at one end of the woody ramus. She swiped at the slimy substance and examined, squooshed it up, down and around between her fingers.

Was it flammable? She was very curious.

Then she stopped and took in her surrounding nature sights once again. What a breath-taking island this was so far. They'd all breathe in the majesty and have their breaths taken too. Sooner or later. Certainly took this one's breath away.

Wendy gazed at the mudskipper, whom to her astonishment was talking, still breathing. One hand instinctively rose to cover her mouth, a gasp barely escaping.

"What happened."

A reactive interjection of quick surprise, not loud. Meant for no one.

Until now, she hadn't seen the aftermath of anything.

Well. No. That wasn't true - she had seen some things earlier. Just not here.

Wendy placed the blue cooler on a patch of grass, twigs and leaves nearby then sat on its surface carefully, Mr. Dolph resting safely inside. Her knees stayed together, bag to the side, one hand on leg other hand perched on the dry end of her tarry baton. She leaned forward and peered at her classmate, blinking in, her observations.

Kasumi White. Except not so white, covered in a mix of petroleum, mud and cherry pie, where the knee used to be.

Her eyes reached the wooden slugger in the poor slug's grasp and an imaginative crack filled Wendy's mind. Her classmates falling to the floor as the Louisville split their skulls, pummeled by an unidentified female. Fingernails dug into her forearms and scratched at the thought.

Then it was gone. Wendy's body language segued from tensity to relaxation. She continued to lean in, resting her chin on her palm and knuckles, her braids tossed back and a soft smile appearing on her lips.

Fingers fluttering, she waved.

"I thought you were dead."

[Bikriki*]

Okay...

So, that was the thing that was going on.

Neither Kasumi nor... whatever the other girl was called - Vincent could have sworn to remember her name just a moment prior - had noticed Vincent approaching. Well, not approaching. It was more a matter of being in the general area at the same time as them, while he wasn't there just a moment ago. He wasn't really approaching them, because he wasn't even sure if he wanted to go nearer to these.

Vincent held on tightly to the straps on his body.

He really wasn't prepared for anything like this. How in good heavens was he supposed to act now?

After a few steps closer, Vincent managed to dare himself.

"Uh, hello?"

It was an instant regret. If it were not for his excellent manners, Vincent would have turned around and bailed that very moment.

[The Honeless Beard]

A statement, followed by a question, followed by a greeting. Kasumi didn't know which to address first - the bat scrawled with bible verses laid across her lap, now, her shot up leg straight in front of her while her other leg curled protectively inwards. Her head lolled loosely on her shoulders, lazily supported by virtue of possessing a spinal column rather than any conscious thought on her part.

"Maybe I am," she half-whispered to the first pain-generated hallucination that took the form - out of all things - of Wendy Fischer. Kasumi knew it wasn't real, because Wendy was carting around a cooler behind her.

The second hallucination was Vincent shaped, and Kasumi nodded towards the shadow in acknowledgement of his greeting. She checked the wound on her knee, played with the rust-coloured gauze, fingered one of her safety-scissor carvings.

"I did a dumb thing."

[Cake]

"Hm. Who says what you did was dumb?"

Dumb.

Nails dug into her forearms. They stopped.

Wendy tilted her head. There was a sound. She could feel some watchful eyes spying.

Someone else approaching, a really tall boy creeping up on them. She knew this boy. She stared at him, watched him in his hesitant roaming. He was a wildebeest in caution, testing the waters out for any sign of dangers, trying his best to avoid the lions, not aware of a potential crock, lurking. She'd seen that on TV once.

It was so sad.

"Hey there. Hi. What's that?" she asked, puzzled, pointing the tar stick at the object near Vincent's feet.

A partially dome shape thing, looked like it was shattered, but there didn't seem to be many pieces nearby. She shrugged and turned back to Kasumi, checking her wounds and the inscriptions onto her baseball bat, turned totem.

"We each have our reasons for doing what we do. What are yours?"

She turned back, looked at Vincent for a moment.

"...and yours?"

[Bikriki*]

"I... what?"

Vincent was confused. Generally, if Vincent was confused his words were a bit more useless than usual. That was a bit of a problem, because Wendy asked him a question. But left with only useless words, all Vincent could give was a useless answer.

Again, just more so than in general.

Vincent's eyes darted back and forth between Wendy and Kasumi. The latter still being in a very shoddy condition. Well, unfortunate as it was, there was nothing that could be of help here. Oh, and that did not refer to Kasumi. He didn't know how to help himself find an answer for Wendy. In fact, maybe he should've started at wondering whether he had to answer her of all people at all.

"Honestly, I don't think I've done stuff?"

Oh, there it was anyway. So much for the navelgazing.

[The Honeless Beard]

Kasumi's eyes were drawn along the tar-covered stick her pain-seared delirious version of Wendy waved, eyes on the small dome - looked like a snowglobe - that Adonis had thrown. The thing he'd thrown that had resulted in the dirt in her ears, debris from a bullet that had been mailed from the muzzle of a gun in her name. Absently, she rubbed at a clog of dirt in her ear, the grimy dark soil mixing with a buildup of ear wax, smearing slightly, but mostly retaining its shape in a small cone.

She flicked it off, addressed Vincent first, her eyes briefly meeting his before looking towards the ground.

Kasumi remembered the old cartoons, where a character had a decision to make - angel on the right, devil on the left - each whispering their advice in the respective ear. Inevitably, they'd devolve into violence, hitting each other with overly large weapons in an attempt to convince the character to do good or do harm. She wondered which Vincent was.

"I wanted her to stop," Kasumi said, "and she did this to me. I can't- I can't bend my leg."

The baseball bat - Bible Thumper, Kasumi thought, and it made her smile - was lying against her leg, the sun shining on the varnish, interrupted with the verses scrawled across it in shallow carvings.

[Cake]

Wendy arched a brow, traces of a smirk rising, studying the increasingly muddled boy as he spoke. She stayed a seat atop the squared blue, picking at a leaf from the nearby bush, detaching herself from eye to eye contact whilst nodding.

"Come join us, Vincent," her voice mellow, yet sanguine. "Maybe you can do some stuff, here."

From there, her eyes trailed back to the busted leg of this shell which was Kasumi. The downed girl, trance-like in revealing her reasons, status, frame of mind. Poor, injured, little Kasumi. Wendy nodded at her too, once again, curious, matching her smile.

"Stop what," what was she doing? Better Question. Wendy contemplated, briefly. "Who is 'she'?"

Who was the pretender, dying to be big fish in this pond.

[Latin For Dragula]

((All adopt roles. Few understand that it is commitment, not familiarity, that sells them.))

Katarina couldn't hear what they were saying from this distance. Only large movements were all that noticeable. Part of her wished that the blur would last no matter how close she got, that the figures in her backtracking path could remain indistinct blobs only to be mowed through on her way home. Maybe she could manage a shot from here. They would scatter into the pits at the very least and probably make themselves easy targets.
...
That part of her was weak and needed to be dealt with. She raised her gun and began walking forward, but she didn't fire. Let them see that she was armed and draw their own conclusions. Two figures and a corpse in open terrain weren't much in the way of a threat to her by now.
...
She made no attempt to hide her approach or what she intended to do if they let her get close enough.

[Bikriki*]

Well, what if Vincent wasn't interested in doing stuff with the girls?

No homo.

Well, yes homo but-

No, he wasn't into doing stuff. In Survival of the fittest, the only thing one could do was die. And that wasn't something Vincent preferred to do. "Nah, I'm good." He said, and was about to mean it. But something pushed him closer to Wendy and Kasumi. Nothing against them, of course, but he didn't know why he felt the need to spend his time with them.

Vincent halted mid-step. He turned his back to Wendy, and saw someone else approaching.

"Oh, good." He said, despite it not being good.

In either case, he could not say he was surprised.

[The Honeless Beard]

"Her," Kasumi said, her voice a whisper, her eyes closing, her body going still.

"She came back."

[Cake]

Eyes widened.

"Oh."

Moment paused. Head turned slowly. There it was, not a fish, but a lion in all its glory.

KK and a lead manripper.

Wendy trembled, reliving the fate of their teacher the last time she'd been front row to one of these. For now at least, they were a safe distance away. With every step KK took, Wendy drummed her fingers. Before long she had gotten a firm grip on the cooler's handle. Kasumi went back to bed and Vincent merely stared at the girl, as expected. Wildebeest in caution.

Locking eyes for a second, Wendy relaxed, briefly lifting the corners of her mouth into a wide, toothy smile.

She stood up, pulled up the cooler and hurried away as quick as one could be while lugging this big fish around.

[Latin For Dragula]

One was running already. The corpse was just as still as she'd left it. And much like the last time she was here, there was one gawker trapped in the middle of the field. Neither of them appeared to pose any significant threat to her unless the girl secretly had a gun in that cooler. KK kept advancing. Her body moved with a rigid, almost robotic rhythm under her stone-set face. Running away from a killer with a gun likely seemed sensible, but in this case she had the advantage. Any step could leave them trapped for her, or worse.
...
At the rate they were breaking, she might as well just not waste the bullets.
...
"Stay where you are and I'll make it quick," she said flatly. "Run and either I'll catch you, or the pits will. Your choice."

[Bikriki*]

That was not really a choice. Vincent did not expect someone as dumb as Konipasta (?) to understand that, of course. A choice was not really a choice if the results of all options were the same. Then it was just window dressing. No, even if it was as simple of a concept as it was, Konipastel (??) was incapable of understanding it.

...of course, it was actually a choice. It was just that Vincent would take the third option.

Running away and not falling into the pits!

And as such, he did exactly that.