But It Always Feels the Same

[MurderWeasel]

((Jewel Evans continued from Shapeless in the Dark Again))

So past the body out front and into the lobby of the hotel walked Jewel, shivering slightly and glancing side to side. While she had been en route, the announcements had played once more, reopening her current location for business. It was made appealing by the its surely-empty status, and also by the way others might come to the same conclusion and make their way there to keep her company once she was already ensconced. Jewel had simply been the first, lucky as she was to be in the vicinity at the appropriate time.

She didn't recognize the body on the ground in front of the hotel, but she didn't look very closely or try very hard. Inside, there were chairs strewn at random, blood on the ground, a piano. The bench was overturned. Walking up to the instrument, Jewel ran her fingers over the keys. They were smooth, something not plastic but better, colder. She shivered again and pressed two keys at once, chopsticks like in elementary school music class, but the discordant note produced cut through the silence and straight into her head and made her wince backwards, drawing her hand away and gritting her teeth. She pressed no further keys.

Instead, Jewel made a quick circuit. She secured those doors which could be latched, checked the stairs to find no immediate sign that anyone had somehow beaten her here. It was a nice hotel, and very tall. Her head still rung with the echoes of the piano, and maybe it caught her so off guard because of how loud and clear and pure it was compared to gunfire and bird calls and the whistle of wind and screams. She dropped her pack off in a corner and drank some water and turned back to the piano and tried to remember a time when killing people was something she only thought about in lighthearted fantasy, but it was hard over everything happening around her. How many were alive still? Something somewhere in the hotel creaked, and there was a popping sound like bullets either far in the distance or only in her mind.

So Jewel kept her gun and stun baton very close at hand, even as she enjoyed the greater warmth and didn't allow herself to be bothered by the blood spatters here and there.

[Polybius]

((Brendan O'Toole continued from A Failure Played in Stereo))

Another announcement. There weren't many people left who Brendan could trust, or even knew. His school was getting completely decimated, and Brendan... he was just running around in circles. No matter where he went he couldn't find any friends, just dead bodies and possibly insane strangers. His concerns about whether his plan would've worked or not had vanished. It just didn't matter anymore.

Brendan came across Munez's body on the way into the hotel. He couldn't muster any sort of emotion looking at the jerk's corpse. Yeah, the guy had killed one of Brendan's friends, but so many of his classmates had been killed that a guy like Munez seemed kind of minor in the grand scheme of things. He wasn't Jewel or Pia, he was just a small fish in a sea of killers, and he ended up dead pretty quickly.

Brendan passed Munez and entered the hotel's lobby. Jewel was there, just sitting and drinking water like a regular person. He just stared at her for a few seconds, before hastily stepping back and pointing the cattle gun at her head.

"Just, ah- don't do anythin'! I won't hesitate to- to shoot you!"

[MurderWeasel]

The bottle dropped from Jewel's hands, landing with a soft and hollow sound of plastic against tile, not because she was surprised but because she consciously let it fall. It was still a quarter full, and the water spilled from it as it spun on the floor. Jewel's gaze followed its course for a moment before returning to the interloper. Unfinished business pointing a strange weapon at her. She respected it as though it would kill her if she brushed it, since she didn't know what it was. She did not respect the boy's weak and unsure words.

He didn't need to know that yet.

"Okay," said Jewel. Her weapons were one on each side in the pockets of her coat, and the gun was loaded and she was fast and didn't think he was likely to be good at aiming, but she still said okay like she meant it, and for an instant she really did.

Something was bothering her a lot and giving it a moment's thought she realized that it was that she'd apparently done something to engender a serious grudge from this guy before even meeting him and had gunned someone down right in front of him and promised him death and somehow she'd not learned his name. This was not the right moment to ask. This wasn't really the right moment for any of this; it wasn't what she'd had planned in that loose way she'd formed ideas of where the game would carry her after her speech, and maybe it wasn't well staged or dramatically timed even in the way she'd thought when setting it up yesterday, but it was what it it was and it was happening, so she would see it through. She'd given her word.

"What now?" she asked, turning her head towards him. She searched his face, looking to make eye contact, her lips peeling back and her shoulders relaxing a little. He wasn't going to shoot her straight out, because he'd spoken first. If he dropped his guard, if he made a wrong move, if he looked at her eyes instead of her hands or stepped too close or backed off too far, she was ready.

[Polybius]

What now?

Shoot her, maybe? That's what he was supposed to do, right? Vengeance and all that. But something wasn't right about this. Jewel was too calm, too compliant. She had to have something up her sleeve. She had killed... shit, he didn't even remember how many people she had killed. She had to be prepared.

Brendan remembered being angry at her before, but now? He was just scared. He couldn't back down, if he backed down she'd just kill him. Even if he kept the cattle gun pointed at her she'd probably find a way to kill him. God damn it. He looked her in the eye and took a step back, keeping the cattle gun pointed at Jewel's head.

[MurderWeasel]

A step back, locking eyes. Small things. All it took.

That weapon was what gave her any pause, and so it was where Jewel's attention fixed as her right hand shot to her side and came up with the gun and her left swept around to stabilize. She pointed it and fired and it was all in one quick and smooth motion, her aim roughly towards his arm or shoulder, something to throw him off and just maybe land an injury that could take that weapon out of the equation. She'd acted quickly, hoping to catch him off guard, and it was all adrenaline and instinct as she shot to her feet and towards him, her own weapon now in a two-handed grip so as to better bring the axe blade to bear.

Had she hit him? She didn't know; it was all too fast and instinctual for real thinking. He'd hesitated, so she couldn't. He'd given her a moment and an edge and now she had the initiative. She intended to press it into the ground.

[Polybius]

It happened. She made her move and he wasn't ready for it. Brendan tried to dodge to the side but ended up taking a bullet to his left shoulder. He went crashing down to the floor, but he kept his grip on the cattle gun. There was no way he was going to lose that.

He was so stupid. He hesitated in the face of a mass murderer. He was so goddamn stupid. His shoulder- fuck, it hurt so much. Jewel was running towards him. Brendan swung the cattle gun in her direction and pressed down on the trigger.

[MurderWeasel]

The shot connected, and he stumbled backwards and fell, and it was just what Jewel had hoped for. She came down above him, right hand readying the axe, eyes narrowed in concentration. He brought that weapon up, and now they were close, so close, and she still wasn't even sure what it was but as she swooped after her prone foe he moved and it was pointing right towards her and she had to react. She threw her left arm out, try to catch the barrel and knock it aside, and as she did he pulled the trigger and a flash of pain burned down the side of her arm.

It wasn't a gun; a metal slug or blade or something shot out and then back and tore a gash along her arm, catching its edge just as she tried to disrupt his aim, and she screamed and it wasn't on purpose and he could just keep coming at her if she let him, could get her on the defensive and he was bigger and stronger and what did it matter if he died from her bullet if it only came too late to do any good?

So Jewel swung the axe blade at him again and again, trying to get him down, to land a blow, to do something so he couldn't recover and turn this around on her. It was all silent now except for her screaming and breathing and the sounds of their struggle.

[Polybius]

The cattle gun didn't shock Jewel like it was supposed to. She pushed it aside it the last minute and it tore a gash in her arm and made her scream. Nice, but not enough. She brought the blade of her axe-gun down on Brendan's arm, a few inches under the bullet wound. Brendan screamed and grabbed his new wound.

Shit, he messed up again. He just couldn't do it. He wasn't made for this. He wasn't the guy who took down the big killer all by himself. He couldn't do anything by himself, why did he even try? He was done from the second he became the sole survivor of the football team

The second blow came down on Brendan's stomach. It was over, no doubt about it. At least he'd gotten her arm. Maybe that'd help the next guy get her. He really hoped the winners would be from Davison, though that didn't look like it'd happen.

The third blow sliced his neck right open. Brendan watched as a red puddle formed around his neck. It was a strange experience. He wondered what his family was thinking about this. He hoped they weren't watching.

The fourth blow went into his head, and that was the end of that.

AE4, BRENDAN O'TOOLE: DECEASED

[MurderWeasel]

There was blood everywhere, blood splattering from the boy and blood dripping from Jewel's arm, blood on the floor from their fight and blood on the floor from before, and as she wrenched the axe blade free from his head with too much force and tumbled backwards, she sprawled in a puddle of it. Her hands were sticky and her lower legs were too through her tights, and she was still screaming in her mind but only breathed heavily on the outside. Her ears rung and her eyes stung and she wiped at her face with the upper right sleeve of her coat. It was the only thing she could be sure wouldn't make her dirtier.

Trailing muddy-red, she pushed herself backwards along the floor with her legs, until her back pressed against solid wall.

((Jewel Evans continued in Everything as Cold as Life))