Don't Shake

[Pippi]

((Bethan Gayle continued from Don't Fight It))

There was a body at the foot of the stairs leading down from the main corridors to the deep, inner workings of the ship. It was nameless. Faceless. Unidentifiable.

At least, Bethan wished it was all of these things. In truth, she knew exactly who the corpse in front of her belonged to. She knew its name. She recognised its face from all the classes they had shared together. She knew the things it had said, its little verbal tics, its little physical actions it subconsciously made without realising it.

She knew all of this, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit it, not just yet. She was able to, just about, acknowledge that her friends and her classmates were being killed off around her, probably right at this very moment as she sat here, third step from the bottom on this cold metal staircase, arms wrapped around herself once more. If she saw the bodies as anything more than that, if she saw them as the people she had grown up with rather than cold and motionless corpses, she was terrified that she would break irreparably once more.

It was cold. And it was callous. And it was unfair to everybody, herself and her now lost friends, and it just really really really really sucked. And it especially sucked because part of her so very badly wanted to find Lucille, wherever she might be, just so she could talk to her, to see her one more time, to apologise for not being there, to cry over her, to say all the thing she’d been too scared to say while Lucille had still been breathing, to spend just one last sombre minute with her, even though she knew it was selfish and she knew it was cowardly and she knew, she knew instinctively that if she did then it would completely ruin her, and all of this work to drag herself back out of the dregs of despair would be for nothing.

She knew as well just how late to this party she was, and how much she was having to rush it; she was going through the full seven stages of grief in a couple of hours, several days into the game. Everyone else had almost certainly gotten over that hill already. But, well, that was the bed she had made. She had been instantly willing and eager to go along with Kaya’s suggestion. She had been presented with a fairy tale escape route and she had latched onto it with both hands. She couldn’t pin all the blame onto Kaya. She couldn’t hate her - not that she ever had - for trying her best to help when she had been lost, and scared, and desperate.

That had been another thing Seo-yun had said, hadn’t it? That she needed to forgive Kaya for this whole stupid delusion thing? She would do that soon. She would go back on deck and find her friend. She only hoped that Kaya had forgiven her too, forgiven her for running and for messing up.

Bethan sighed, and gently swung the heel of her boot against the bottom step, a hollow metal ringing sound bouncing off the walls of the lower corridors. So, that was the immediate plan. But what then? What would she do after that? If there was some way of escaping from this arena, then she couldn’t for the life of her see it. Her frantic, panicked mind had suggested using the lifeboats and dinghies to flee the flotilla, but now that she was thinking clearly, she couldn’t actually remember seeing anything of the sort attached to the ship. Odds were the producers wanted any escape attempt to take a lot, lot more effort than that.

There were no windows down here. She was surrounded, on all sides, by thick sheets of metal and piping, totally boxed in. If she turned around and walked upstairs, and outside onto the decks, then the walls were gone, she would be standing in the breeze, but the result would still be the same. She would still be surrounded. She would still be trapped. There would still be, without a doubt, no chance of escape.

She was silent for a long, long time, staring at a spot on the floor, a foot or so away from where the body was lying. Seo-yun had said something else, hadn’t she? That she needed to make peace with the fact she might die out here. Okay. Okay, she could… acknowledge that fact. So what? Now, she was just on tenterhooks, constantly on edge and knowing that the end could come any second now. Was that what Seo-yun had wanted for her?

She was still once more, and slowly, painfully slowly, a small kernel of an idea grew in her mind. She wasn’t going to kill, she knew that without a second of doubt. And if she was going to… to… to die, then she didn’t want her last few days, hours, seconds, however much longer she had, she didn’t want them to be spent cowering and crying in terror. So. So… she had spent all of this time on SOTF pretending to be a Buccaneer, hadn’t she? A swashbuckling adventurer, boarding ships and surviving out on the open waves? They were on TV, after all. What else could she do, now that there was no hope in sight, but put on a show?

Maybe she really did just have to become a Buccaneer, until the very end.

She nodded to herself, then planted her feet on the bottom step and jumped the short distance down to the floor, a movement that still almost sent her sprawling thanks to the tremors that refused to leave her body. If she was gonna go for this, then she needed the proper outfit for it. The magical girl stuff had been kinda a fun addition to her regular get-up, but, well, it really did clash in the end. And… if she was gonna go out, then she wanted to be wearing her very favourite LED boots when it happened.

The gloves and boots came off quickly, the latter easily replaced with her usual rave-going pair and laced up in a few seconds. But there was a new addition she needed, something she’d been thinking about and talking about ever since they’d met Emmett and Amanda on the patrol boat. Something vital that she needed if she was gonna go full Buccaneer.

The sound of fabric tearing echoed throughout the bowels of the ship. It took longer than she expected; it always seemed so much easier to tear clothing apart on films and stuff than this. But after a few minutes, she stood proudly with one hand on her hip, the other holding her spear, bag over her shoulder, bright pink pirate bandana on her head, the shredded remnants of the t-shirt she’d used to make it littering the floor behind her. She was pretty proud of her effort, even though she couldn’t quite tell how it looked without, like, a mirror or anything. She’d just have to ask Kaya when she found her again.

And speaking of. That was her next task, and there was no time like the present to get it started.

Bethan took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders, and forced the smallest, shakiest smile back onto her face. Then, with one last look at the body behind her, she made her way back up the stairs, back to the corridors, back to the game at hand.

((Bethan Gayle continued in No More Heroes))