Unknown Time, Tuesday, October 26th, 2021: Undisclosed Location
BEAR: "That's what happened. Why else would I be here without him? He could be dead, Jess!"
TIGER: "Hold on-"
OWL: "It's OWL you- whatever. Whatever. Okay. He's dead. The hiker is trying to kill us, and you RAN AWAY instead of shooting at him from a distance?"
TIGER: "I think-"
BEAR: "You know I get dizzy when I teleport!"
TIGER: "Please st-"
OWL: "YEAH, and MAYBE you should've learned how to deal with that by now!"
BEAR: "That's not fair, Jess, I've been trying-"
OWL: "Shut up."
BEAR: "..."
OWL: "Holy fuck. This could barely be any more of a shit show."
TIGER: "I think we should leave."
OWL: "And let that guy win? Nah. He's not the cops. We'd know if the cops were here. We just need muscle."
A walkie-talkie beeped, crackling with static.
OWL: "Shark, Wolf, I need both of you back here right now."
SHARK: "Wh-? We just resupplied. We still need to find 'the bastard' and all the runaways."
OWL: "Maybe I'd trust your ability to find them if you had found anyone before now. Get. Back. Here."
WOLF: "Will do."
SHARK: "...fine. Over and out."
The walkie-talkie went silent.
OWL: "We're gonna finish this. Then we go."
10:06 AM, Tuesday, October 26th, 2021: The Great Basin Desert
Owl slammed her thumb down on the button to begin the announcement, speakers coming back to life all around the arena. Her only page of notes sat in front of the intercom, listing solely the dead, their causes of death, and their killers, if applicable. No jokes, just like last time. The preceding days events had made focusing on wise-cracking difficult.
"Hello everyone," she began, her voice quiet, unnaturally stern, and totally confident.
"As you all might know, this is the last day of our little game. If more than one of you is alive at the end of today, then all of you will die. When there are only four of you left, I will come back on here and direct you all to the location of our grand finale."
She smiled.
"Enough of that for now, though. Let's get to the latest deaths. To begin, we had a few that someone missed yesterday. One was Lucine Everett, who didn't learn the lesson not to mess with the collars, and went boom just like all the others."
She rolled her eyes.
"The other, Mattie Wilkinson, got blasted by a corpse reanimated by Cecilia Moreno."
The corners of her mouth fell.
"As for the first real deaths of the day, our dear Astrid Millar got our day started with a double kill, with both Ana Ford and Joel Foster dying of blood loss at her hands."
She coughed.
"Shortly after that, Anatoly Orlovsky lived up to his nature as a vampire when the light of Claudia Salgado cleansed him from the Earth."
In contrast to the previous announcements, Owl sounded bored, like she was reading off a list with no flair.
"Next, Mei-ling Chou... uh... well, we didn't have great footage for what happened to her, but she wandered into the danger zone. So, yeah."
Owl wasn't even sure if she was actually dead. The one camera that had been left behind in the area had only caught the audio. Owl briefly considered mentioning the other runaways in the same breath, declaring triumphantly that they had been gunned down for their disobedience, but she was sure she wouldn't be able to hide her real frustrations.
"Lastly, then Raymond LaSalle was beaten to death in yet another kill for Crispin-Kelley Cuyler."
Rolling her shoulders, she let the tension that had been building fade.
"So that's all of the day's deaths. We were already cozy, but now there are only ten of you left, so that means we're going to have to get intimate. That means The Exterior is our latest danger zone, and you all are limited solely to the Compound and its Recesses."
She pushed the button to play the fanfare one last time.
"Except for the winner of our last Most Kill Award! You all have been doing an excellent job killing each other, but we're going to be giving the award to Astrid Millar. You'll find your prize out in the Exterior, though there-"
There was an abrupt, muffled bang, followed by a shout.
"WHO THE FUCK ARE Y-"
The speakers abruptly cut off.
10:08 AM, Tuesday, October 26th, 2021: Undisclosed Location
For them, it had all happened so fast.
((For him, he had watched it play out thousands of times before he had even stepped foot in the room.))
The door had come in easy, only 23 variations needed before he found the right angle and force needed to break the hinges and kick it in. Sunlight poured into the room with his arrival, shadowing him as his presence loomed in the RV that they had carved into a makeshift base of operations. Face to face with his opponents, he let the future play out thousands of times in that single moment, soaking himself in the environment he found himself in.
He was face to face with three people. Jessica, and her two associates, Amanda and Derek. The RV was cramped, between the four of them. On his left, a massive array of monitors lined the desk that stretched all across one wall. The only furniture to speak of was the chair Jessica was still sitting in, and a single cot that was crammed into one corner on his far right. Amanda wasn't wearing the ridiculous rubber bear mask anymore, though similar masks of a tiger and owl sat unworn on the cot and desk, respectively. Only Jessica and Amanda were armed, a pistol sitting on the desk right in front of Jessica, and Amanda still carrying the holstered pistol she had earlier. Not much in the way of improvised weapons for him to use for himself, but that was okay, he brought his own.
Before he tried anything else, he raised the pistol right at Jessica's face, but in every timeline going forward, the gun jammed. He must not have loaded it properly before coming in, and had foolishly not bothered to check if it would work. Even if he could see the future, he couldn't go back and change the past. All it meant was that he would have to improvise.
Luckily, Amanda always disappeared with a pop and a rush of air as soon as she saw him in every single potential that he witnessed play out. She was no threat to him. Unfortunately, Derek proved to be much more of a challenge. Inside those thousands of repeats, he watched himself die from first person again, and again, and again. Two hundred and seventy six times, Derek snapped his fingers and a metal ring sitting on the RV's dashboard detonated, and everything went black.
He thought, initially, that the trick would be to break Derek's fingers. Thirty two timelines later, and he knew the exact angle and timing needed to throw the gun in just the right way with just enough force to bust Derek's hand before the snap. Unfortunately, however, that didn't seem to deter Derek. It ended the same way for him, only without the finger snapping.
Another method, then. He would just have to be unconscious. Another sixty five timelines, and he knew exactly how to throw the gun right into Derek's forehead to knock him out. Whether or not the head trauma ended up killing him was a mystery, but desperate times called for desperate lapses in moral judgement.
With practice and brutal efficiency, he played out what he had seen in advance. By the time it finished transpiring for real, Jessica had already grabbed the pistol off the desk and leveled it at him. He had to give her credit where it was due, he had to go through four hundred and three timelines to avoid her incoming fire. The solution was unorthodox; a metal baton swung into one of the monitors on his left would cause it to spark, throwing off her aim just enough for him to duck out of the way.
It ended quickly after that. One timeline to execute one punch to the face, and she was down, pistol out of her grip, blubbering, clutching her head, and moaning on the floor of the RV, her only ally lying unconscious on the cot. The futures ahead of him were safe, at least for the five seconds he could see. He had a little time to talk; to apologize for what was about to happen. She didn't deserve it, but it made him feel a little more at ease.
He took out a zip-tie and yanked her hands behind her, binding her wrists in one quick motion. He plucked a heavily-used roll of duct tape off the desk, ripped off a strip, and messily slapped it over her mouth while she was still mid-sentence, likely trying to compel him. After a few moments, he went to pick up her gun, and she stopped struggling, her words muffled behind the tape.
"I've never had to do this before," he said, "but you are well beyond giving a second chance."
"Fuck you," she tried to say, her words muffled to incomprehensibility. "Stalker bitch."
"I know what you did to them," he continued unabated, motioning towards the unconscious Tiger with the pistol. "So they can go, but your story ends here. I'm sorry."
He raised Jessica's pistol to her face, her eyes widening with fear.
Then, before he could blink, he heard a metallic creak from behind, and on instinct, time spooled out before him once again.
Nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety nine times, he watched his life end right there and then, before he could even react. In the few timelines where he managed to spin around first, he saw a man in a shark mask, another one of Jessica's associates, standing just inside the doorway of the RV, his heavy magnum held with a firm grip and unassailable aim.
There was one and only one way he saw out. He spun, his hand jerking up, raising Jessica's pistol in just the right way, at just the right angle, to deflect the bullet away from him. The gun shot out of his hand, yanking his wrist along with it, feeling a tendon snap in the process, but he kept moving. Ryan, so taken aback by what he just saw, didn't fire another shot. Instead he uttered a muffled "what the fuck?" just as his assailant slung a metal baton right into his face, shattering the visor on his mask.
No more time to waste. Ryan's ensuing blind fire was easily ducked, avoiding another twenty seven possible ends as monitors shattered and sparked, Jessica screaming incoherently through the gag on her face. He rushed forward, batting the gun out of Ryan's hands, and in a motion practiced over a dozen timelines, brought the can of bear mace to the opening in the visor, and let it rip.
Ryan stumbled back in response, screaming and clutching his face, just as a man in a wolf mask took a step into the doorway. Seeing the situation in front of him, started to fumble for his own gun holstered on his waist, his other hand reaching up to turn the valve sticking out of his mask. Wasting no time, Ryan's gun was scooped off the ground, and used inelegantly to blast off the spigot, and a few of Christopher's fingers for his trouble.
Gas like a white mist started to fill the RV, Ryan falling unconscious as it rushed into the hole in his visor. Time stretched out once more, showing another eighty nine dead timelines to this gas, with one easy solution. The vigilante twisted, throwing down his can of mace, and grabbed the owl mask off the desk. He messily pulled it over his own mask as Christopher recovered from having his fingers blown off. Before he was allowed to do anything, he was kicked back, ribs breaking on impact, sending him reeling out of the RV and onto the sandy turf.
The vigilante was on top of him in an instant, punching him in the face until he finally stopped struggling, the white mist pouring out of his mask dispersing in the open air around them.
Finally, standing back up, the vigilante glanced back at the RV, and watched the five seconds in front of him and every possibility of how it could play out.
And he was safe.
He let out a triumphant roar, his only celebration of his victory.
Then, he stepped back inside, Ryan's gun still in hand, and Jessica unconscious on the floor of the RV. He took the owl mask off, lazily slung it onto the floor, and looked back up at the array of monitors. For the first time, he took in the footage that he saw live-streaming several of the kidnapped students, and he remembered, despite the rush of adrenaline coursing through his veins, why he had taken such a risk to begin with.
He went to the intercom and pushed the button.
10:14 AM, Tuesday, October 26th, 2021: The Great Basin Desert
The speakers all around the arena came to life one last time.
"Hello," said the rumbling voice of an unfamiliar man. "Your kidnappers can't hurt you anymore. Leave, right now, and run as fast as you can. Follow the old road east."
Then, just as abruptly as it had started, the new announcement ceased.
10:15 AM, Tuesday, October 26th, 2021: Undisclosed Location
Without any hesitation, as soon as his impromptu announcement came to an end, he began to violently shatter every single monitor in the room. Jessica woke back up during the struggle, and through the gag even he could hear the muffled cries of "no, no, no" over and over again. For his final, spiteful act against her, he snatched the computer that the monitors were all hooked up to, and with a primal roar, smashed it on the ground right in front of Jessica's face.
He leaned down next to her, lips inches from her ear.
"I beat you," he whispered.
He stood back up. Rolled his shoulders. Leveled the pistol at her again. Bitter tears and a resentful, defiant glare painted her face.
Then, he heard a pop behind him, felt a slight rush of air and the cold barrel of a gun pressing into the back of his head.
Time unspooled once more, as he watched, over and over and over and over again, every single timeline go black.
No time to move, no time to react, nothing that he could possibly do.
Thousands and thousands of iterations, and all of them ended the same way.
Lights out.
DAY FIVE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2021
WEATHER: The clouds that had formed over the course of the previous day have begun to lightly drizzle over the desert, with gusts whipping through the Great Basin. The desert has hit its new low, with temperatures reaching a high of 13° C (55° F) in the late afternoon and a low of -6° C (21° F) late into the night. The moon has entered its third quarter.
There are no rolls for this cycle. They cannot harm you now. Run. Run fast, and far away, and you might just live to tell your tale.
The WHOLE ARENA minus the Outskirts are now "danger zones". Remaining may be hazardous to your health, though not for the reasons you might initially expect.
You have three days (72 hours) from the time of this post to finish up regular posting, and an additional seven days (168 hours) to exit the arena. Further correspondence about what happens next to the surviving students of Duniway High will be provided in fourteen days (336 hours).
Take care, it's a desert out there.