At Home In The Forest

[Pippi]

The stranger wearing the grey bandana introduced himself, and the guy on Brennan’s team. Brennan nodded as he spoke, but froze slightly as Simon mentioned he wasn’t playing the game yet. Brennan guessed that he would at the stage of this “game” when you’d have to kill to stay alive. Brennan hadn’t considered that. Could he really will himself to kill anyone? Even if they’d killed all of his friends? Even if they were his friends? The thought brought Brennan to the verge of tears again, so he looked to the ground again, listening to Eric insult Rishi. On a normal day, he might have attempted to stop Eric, but... It didn’t seem like Brennan would have a normal day ever again.

Eric and Rishi’s words about leaving broke his stupor and gained his attention. From the sounds of it, the group was splitting up, Oranges going one way, Greys the other. Damn it. We’d have been stronger as a group. If only I’d been stronger and spoken...

Rishi headed off, giving a final farewell to Brennan. He tried to force a smile onto his face, but it just wouldn’t come. Instead he simply gave a slight nod, and said “Good luck”, before Rishi was gone. Brennan let out a deep sigh. One more person he knew, who he might never see again.

“Brennan!”

He hadn’t been expecting that in the slightest. Especially not from the guy who’d been looking at him with pure disdain a couple of seconds before. Brennan let out a startled cry, as Eric continued speaking. It seemed to Brennan as if Eric wanted to be the leader, and that was fine with him. Eric certainly seemed strong enough, and Brennan needed all the protection he could get. He picked his bag up, and stood up, wiping the remaining tears away from his eyes.

“... okay...” Brennan took a couple of deep breaths, trying to keep himself together. “Yeah. Let’s... let’s find the rest of the team. So, uh... where d’you think we should go?”

[Fenrir]

Simon was more than a little relieved when both Eric and Rishi decided to just back off from each other and go their separate ways. While it would have been better if they could have all worked together to get through this, Simon didn’t have much hope for that after the first thing out of Eric’s mouth. After that he was just hoping to get out of there without a punch being thrown.

“Uh, yeah, let me get my pack”, Simon took two steps to retrieve his pack and with some shock realised that was as far as he’d moved since the start of the game; honestly, Rishi had found him before he’d even moved and then all this happened. He turned back to Eric and Brennan briefly, giving them both a little wave before turning away again.

He double checked his map and compass one last time before walking after Rishi and taking the lead. “It’s this way first. I don’t know how far north we are so I say we just go straight east for now and see where we are when we reach the edge. We can find a path to the Rainforest from there”

((Simon Porter Continued To: King of the Jungle.))

[Solomir*]

He watched Simon Porter and his friend walk off, their voices fading in the distance. He could follow them, catch them off guard and take out some competition. Or at least keep tabs on them. Of course, keeping close enough without alerting would be difficult.

Eric glanced over to his teammate. Scratch that. It would be impossible to tail them without getting noticed.

"Give me a moment," Eric said gruffly to Brennan's question. He shrugged his backpack from his shoulders and dug through it for a moment before withdrawing the folded map it had contained. It wasn't as detailed as he'd hoped, but it at least gave Eric an idea where they were.

"We're going that way," he said, absently pointing in the opposite direction which the Gray team had walked off in. Really, it didn't matter right now which way they went. Maybe they'd find somebody on their team who could actually be useful. "Let's get moving," he said after hefting his pack back up, "and stay close to me. You're little and easy to lose."

((Eric Tam continued The Walking Dead))

[Pippi]

Simon was leaving now. Brennan returned the wave he gave them, but still couldn’t will himself to smile. Brennan sighed, and looked over at Eric, still looking over the map. He realised that he had no idea what the island was like, seeing as he’d only looked for his “weapon” after he’d woken up, which was now in his right-hand pocket.

I hope we don’t have to go anywhere hot. I hope this island’s small, so we can find our team-mates easily. I hope they’re all right, wherever they are. I hope I can actually do something useful for Eric.

Eric seemed to have decided which direction to go in, which Brennan noticed was the opposite direction Rishi and Simon had gone. The larger boy’s tone of voice was... slightly disturbing to Brennan. Eric seemed far too calm about being on SOTF-TV. Although, maybe that’s just because I’m so scared about it...

Eric was moving off now. Brennan scrambled to his feet, hastily lifting his bag up. He should have been insulted at Eric’s “little and easy to lose” comment, but right now, there were more important things to do. Find the rest of Orange team. Get off this island.

((Brennan O'Brian continued in The Walking Dead))