Pool Of Blood

[Primrosette]

((Damien Crossly continued from Grave Encounter))

Damien didn't know why he had high hopes while she was making his way to the pool. The first thing that he noticed was the blood and the dead bodies. It looked completely more horrifying than when he had strangled Bianca to death not that long ago. At least this time he wasn't throwing up. He had nothing left in him to bring up. He couldn't stand to look at the bodies anymore so he turned his gaze away from them.

He was now looking at the Kama in his gloved hands and he wasn't sure what to think. Should he continue down a dark path? Taking out more of his classmates and friends? Or should he try to redeem himself? Stop himself from hurting anyone else? Maybe protect other instead?

He didn't know what to do.

I want to win, I want to win, I want to win.

"I want to go home...." He said loudly to himself. "I want to.... I really want to win this. If I have to become someone that I never wanted to be.... Then so be it! I'll win, I will make it to the end! You'll see! ....You'll see...."

Damien bit his lip and he felt a bit of pain in his arm. He had forgotten about the injury that Bianca had given him. He should do something to stop the bleeding. He wasn't sure if he wanted to do it near the pool. He didn't need an audience of dead bodies watching him.

[Cicadan]

"Hey! That's the spirit!"

((Bride Mossberg

Though, she guessed she didn't quite get that less-clarified bit about 'someone that I never wanted to be'? It seemed odd to think that you wouldn't want to be the best, strongest of America's chosen. The most decorated of the patriots it would produce, destined to do something super cool! Though Bridie didn't know what that super cool thing was. Program winners, according to the government, 'avoided the spotlight' for various important reasons. Probably not literally running away from a spotlight, but whatever was really meant, Bridie did happily trust that it was a relevant explanation.

continued from Mind The Music And The Step))

Bridie's hair was still kind of stringy and wet, but besides that she was cozy and bundled up in her dress and blocky green sweater. The sun was out in full force, diluting the crisp blue sky with pastel cream, and she did feel a bit hot, squirmy under her two layers, but she knew it was important to not get cold while she was still not completely dry or she'd catch something. Not fish, more like a cough and runny nose or something worse, and those things would be potentially detrimental in combat!

Bridie focused on Damien for a second. She'd followed the shoreline and then noticed an odd sort of pool, a pool of all things! And when she'd come here, she'd seen a strange face for a second, then she'd recognized that strange face! Damien had always been kind and friendly to her in school, even when sometimes his other friends hadn't cared for her so much? And she thought she'd just appreciate his company, even for a moment.

"I've already told other people this," Bridie started, "but I think it's important none of us lose sight of the bigger picture here. It's our duty as American citizens to do our best to win, so I'm glad you're not losing sight of that, Damien! Um, Damien, right?" She still wasn't totally sure.

She got a bit closer, being sure to keep some distance from the particularly torn-open looking body, in a patch near the water with all odd manner of pink and yellow things spilling out of the holes. Bridie didn't know the insides of people looked like that. It made her kind of queasy, and she preferred she not get too close. It looked gross, and it looked less friendly than Jason had looked after death, after she'd pushed him around to get him into the ocean so his body could peacefully sink away. Jason had been oddly light for his big size when she'd pushed him all about, and his neck had done weird things, like, flapping this way and that way like an open-and-close book's fluttering pages... when Bridie was pretty sure her own neck couldn't do that. Death remained inscrutably odd to her, it made people look far more... disturbing, somehow, even though their body was the same thing as it was when they were alive.

"Did you do this?" Standing about a few strides from Damien, she caught a whiff of something... like Mom's cleaning supplies, or, like metal, or, like meat. It made her gag a bit, and that gag turned into an awkward giggle. "O-oh, sorry! I wasn't gagging at you, I promise! Just this weird smell! Is it the bodies, you think?"

[Primrosette]

Damien just stared at Bridie blankly. He hadn't thought that someone would be willing to approach him after seeing the scene in front of them. But Bridie was.... Bridie. He knew that she was a different type of girl. His friends had told him in the past not to bother with her but he hadn't wanted to do that. He had wanted to be her friend and to be fair, he actually liked Bridie a lot more than some of his current friends.

"Bridie...?" He didn't know why he was confused about seeing her. Maybe his mind was a bit hazy after he took Bianca out of the picture. "Y-Yeah, Damien is my name. I remember you."

Ah. Now she was asking if he had killed whoever those dead students were. He stared down at the most messed up body and instantly regretted doing so. He wanted to be sick again. But instead, he glanced back at Bridie. Should he tell her that he killed Bianca?

"No. I didn't kill anyone here." He answered her honestly and he raised the Kama at his side a little in a non-threatening manner. "See that blood? It's my blood.... I got attacked by Bianca in the graveyard and I had to fight back to survive. I.... I strangled her.... She's dead...."

[Cicadan]

"I remember you too, yep! Like, uh, that one time in class, uh..." Bridie could see it, the memory of their speaking and Damien's face and his lips moving and Bridie laughing, but she couldn't remember the specifics. Awkwardly the memory seemed to not have the audio track attached. Bridie trailed off, as a result. Because she suddenly had nothing to say, and sounded stupid, as usual.

"Uh..."

Never mind! The idea slipped away into the murky ebb and flow of her thoughts as quickly as it had emerged from the waves.

"Bianca?" Who was that, again? Okay well, that probably wasn't important, though Bridie had lost a good second puzzling it out. "Oh, oh no. Did she injure you? I'm glad, at least, that you were the one who came out on top in the fight! I'd rather meet you than her, I suppose, if I had to be honest!" It was a bit mean-hearted she supposed, but it was the truth. She didn't know Bianca, she did know Damien. Knowing someone made the whole meeting them part way easier because there were already expectations, and assumptions, that could be had.

Bridie also remembered to track Damien's weapon as it sat at his side. Just in case.

The next second Bridie suddenly approached the sea itself, turning her back to Damien. She'd noticed a boat speeding in the distance, chopping up the water in it's wake into a frothy foam way larger than the little speck of boat itself. She offered the boat's general direction a salute, firm, spine held tall and proud even though she was kind of sore from how much action she'd already seen. Those were the troops, dedicated to ensuring the safety and continuance of Program and it's participants. Maybe they didn't see her specifically like Bridie couldn't make out the boat itself in detail, but the honor was still crucial to present!

She turned back after giving the salute a few seconds of silence like it deserved. Lagged on Damien's eyes, then returned to tracking his weapon in time to a conductor's cue in her head. "What do you think you'll do now?"

[Primrosette]

Damien had just thought that he would go to a better area to take care of his injury and then maybe hide out for a while. Take a break, plan his next steps, get a weapon that was more gun-based. He could use both his current weapon and a gun at the same time. It would definitely give a much more better advatage over his classmates.

And my friends when it is time for me to kill them....

....His thoughts were getting more darker and darker. Damien was starting to smile at Bridie. But it was coming off as a creepy smile. He lowered the Kama to his side and he put it behind him slightly, to get it out of Bridie's vision.

"....I need to take care of my injury and find somewhere where I can take a break from.... this...." He used his other free hand to wildly gesture to everything around him and her. "I only want to look for a gun...."

[Cicadan]

In the periphery of Bridie's vision, she saw that Damien's blurry face had changed, colors fuzzing together differently. She looked up, briefly distracted. Damien was smiling, and Bridie mirrored his smile. Not entirely, because his smile looked a little odd, one of those smiles that she couldn't quite understand. Like it bent in a weird way that Bridie felt slightly gross trying to copy, so she just kept the tension out of her grin, showed a few teeth! She wondered why Damien was smiling the way he was, it seemed odd.

"Well yeah, I'd like a gun too!" Though, Bridie wasn't quite sure what she'd be doing when she found one... Who she'd be shooting, how she'd be shooting them. That seemed too far in the future. She'd never been good at planning ahead, because when she'd tried, it had never gone according to plan.

"Maybe we can go somewhere else and bandage your wounds? I'm willing to help out."

Because, it seemed like the time to not attack? It was her duty to attack her peers, sure, but she also had to actually try to win! Now that she thought about it, it was probably harder to win if she attacked without a clear advantage. James had been an appropriately taken kill, probably, she liked to think. Damien, now, would be unlikely. So this, probably, was where the whole strategy thing kicked in. While she had a friend to have, she might as well have a friend!

"I have extra supplies, so we could use mine!" It seemed nice to offer. While she didn't need them, right?

She'd stopped paying attention to Damien's weapon. It had vanished from sight, and from mind.

[Primrosette]

Extra supplies...?

Damien's smile started to fade into a frown. Maybe he had misheard her, maybe he did not. Still, if she had extra supplies.... Then that meant that she had either killed someone and taken their supplies or she had looted a corpse. Damien wasn't sure if he wanted to ask her about it. Still if he wanted to 'trust' her, he needed honesty from her and himself.

"Extra supplies, huh?" He raised an eyebrow as he spoke and he took a step forward. "Did you rob from a corpse? Or did you end someone's life?"

Curiosity kills the cat, right?  

[Cicadan]

Okay well now Damien wasn't smiling, and maybe that meant the mood was changing. Bridie quickly also started to not smile, that was to say, her frown turned upside down... turned upside down again, or however that saying went because if a frown turned upside down the first time, it was just a smile. Pretty much.

She took a step back, suddenly a bit unsure... intimidated... definitely both of those things. She didn't like his expression quite as much as she had. Bridie was reminded of times when it had turned out that she'd done something wrong, like... like, like when Bishop and James had been questioning her patriotism before and making her feel like she'd been doing the wrong thing! She hesitated a long, pregnant moment:

"... I killed someone. James Bagstad. Friend of mine!"

Adrenaline had burned the memories into her head, forged each neuron more efficiently than normally built.

"He left himself open and he had a gun. I only lost it after because I wasn't paying attention like a dummy, then, another guy named Bishop attacked me and ran off."

Wait wait, no, she was leaving out too many details, and that wasn't good.

"Hold on, no. What happened was Bishop found me first and we were talking, and I was trying to tell him to play the game properly," she emphatically emphasized, with soft gesticulations of her hands. "Then, then... James came by and checked on us, but then he was also like, not going to use his gun properly, so I tried to tell him off! Then he left himself open, like I said, then I attacked him, then Bishop attacked me and told me I'm wrong for attacking people! Even though it's, like, our duty. I dunno. Then he took off."

[Primrosette]

Damien's face turned into an expression of worry. To hear that Bridie had killed a friend, had made him feel uneasy and possibly a bit confusion. The way Bridie was talking about what happened was.... disturbing to say the least. Bianca hadn't been a friend of his, he barely even knew her but he still had guilt over what he had done deep inside him. Friends should be harder to kill, right? Bridie had made it seem easy. To just take a friend's life....

....

"I don't understand...." Was all he managed to say to her.

He shook his head in disbelief. He couldn't understand anything about this. Why did they have to be the ones chosen for this? This wasn't right, but he knew that sooner or later that he had to kill more people to survive. It wasn't their 'duty'. They were just slaughtering each other like pigs.

"....Do you feel guilty about killing James? I mean, he was your friend and all."  

[Cicadan]

...

She didn't understand, also.

She thought of an explosion of red. The shell piercing a chest and turning it into a crater of stringy goo. The chest of a friend vaporized into red, away from her, towards her with the gentle caress of mist over what had been her bare skin. She remembered, all too clearly.

If she thought of it, the image seemed as disgusting as the pink gumbo soup of gore of the nearby dead person. And also, if she thought of it, she'd been so happy and triumphant in that moment, taking an honest stand as an honest citizen, she hadn't really thought of anything else. Not the sensation of gore clinging off the flesh just above her tummy, not the oddity of the face of a friend turned empty and hollow like... she didn't know what that was like. Empty... but what did empty mean? What was it supposed to mean for how she felt when a friend's face was wiped away? Except for the disgust?

Was it supposed to be the odd uncontrollable sluice of a tear down the canyon of her nose? Two equal sensations that she was shocked to not know the reason for, but feel so strongly all the same?

"I..."

She sniffled, just a bit.

"Um, don't know. He was my friend...! But this is my country, Damion."

[Primrosette]

Damien hated their country with a strong passion. Mainly because they were forcing teenagers to kill each other. Still to see Bridie like this, he wasn't sure what to say to her. He didn't have any words for her that would make things better. He just wanted to scream out in rage at himself for being a goddamn fool.

"Our country...." He murmured softly to himself as he glanced over at the bodies again and then he looked back at her. "Bridie...."

I can't win. I don't want to win, but I want to survive this nightmare....

"Okay, that's.... fine, I understand. You're just doing your duty." The word duty came out more bitterly than the rest of Damien's words and he took a step back from her. "Do you want to leave with me? I mean, I rather not be on my own out there. And it doesn't look like you have a weapon..."

[Cicadan]

The tear dragged down, touring the whole of the scenery, one bulb of her nose, one sharp of her lip. It itched, and distracted. Bridie felt a bit of overcooked steam trying to escape from under the suddenly too tight neck of her sweater. Frustration, that she at least understood. It made more sense to be frustrated at her inability to process all these sudden emotions, rather than to try and actually... process them!

She crushed and flattened tears under one fist, brusquely digging knuckles into the meat of her eyeball.

"Our country..." She echoed, perhaps reverently.

"I... yeah. That's what I was doing." She felt a little better, at least. Damion understood, so now she was just awkwardly warbling and sad for no reason. She tried to get ship-shape, at least make her voice more presentable and worthy of status that befitted an American citizen in active duty.

"Maybe we can ally for a bit...?" And also, Bridie wanted to be honest. Honesty was always the most honorable policy, even if it had people yelling at her like Bishop and James had... "But not for long. Eventually we'll be enemies too. I think we can both keep each other on our toes though, at least!"

[Primrosette]

Damien let out a chuckle when Bridie was speaking her mind. She was too honest for her own good. Still, she wasn't wrong. They would eventually become enemies down the line. He knew that and he couldn't deny it. It didn't really matter how long they would be allies. One of them might kill the other or get killed by some other student. Still, he wanted her to know what he was thinking.

"Bridie, I know that we will become enemies some time down the road." Damien paused for a moment to bit down on his lip lightly and then he stared at her with a calm expression. "I just want you to know that I will still think of you as my friend. Okay? I just wanted you to know that."

Damien then turned away from her, getting ready to leave. He glance over his shoulder to look at her and to keep an eye on her.

"Are you ready to get out of this place, partner?" He asked, grinning a little.

[Cicadan]

Bridie was sort of really embarrassed she was still crying. It was okay to cry, her parents and her superiors had all told her that, but still she knew at least sometimes that crying was more cowardly and lame than anything else, in specific circumstances like... like this one, for at least some of them. Where she wasn't even upset anymore, and it was just that her stupid eyes wouldn't stop leaking water and stuff like that! Bridie breathed sharply and forced down a wet clog of snot stuffed up one nostril like a fist.

Someone else got it. Someone else who didn't have some manner of hangup about the proper, patriotic path. Come to think of it... no, Bridie swore Damien had never been, like, one of the friends in school she'd known for sure were honest and red blooded. As if suddenly something had changed. And Bridie didn't like that idea so much, 'suddenly, something is different' seemed rather inconsistent to her, it changed the page of the book while she was trying to read it, twisted it out of her grip and gave her a nasty papercut in the process... Ow, that was a weird thought.

Bridie supposed this is what adults meant when they said 'things change'. Damien changed.

Maybe she could too, but she supposed that she'd rather she didn't!

"Ready," she smiled. "Lead the way!" She stepped, away from the bloody and gory mess of blobs in and around the pool. She'd already forgotten them, and she devoted herself now to remembering that Damien was her ally, up until it was time to do the dutiful thing and swiftly forget... Whenever she was supposed to implement such a plan?

She didn't know, and she wasn't worried.

((Bridie Mossberg continued in Little Bighorn))

[Primrosette]

Damien led the way forward. To where? He wasn't sure yet. But maybe, just maybe they were both going to get through this. Until it would come to that decision.

I will have to kill her....

Damien almost smiled gleefully at that sick thought. How could he have changed so much after killing someone?

.....

He didn't know the answer to that. Yet....

((Damien Crossly continued elsewhere))