Alligator Arms

[carduinal-cyn]

Blood.

Everything was blood. Blood and entrails, splattered all over the floor.

Olivia barely had time to process the falling corpse. Even Ivan Rodriguez, man of muscles and murder, shuddered at the grisly sight before them. She stared blankly ahead, unaware of the avenger's presence. He could have teleported there, for all she knew. He could have blown her head clean off, and she wouldn't have even batted an eyelash.

Finally, she blinked. Her swirling vision regained its focus. A chiselled, bloodstained torso loomed in front of her — attached to that torso was a man with a shotgun. His left eye was pointed permanently at the ground, and someone had slashed a crude letter F into his head. For a moment, she failed to recognize her old classmate, as covered in gore as he was.

"Ivan, you look like hell," she blurted. She could feel the blood howling in her ears, keeping her in limbo between reality and dissociation. "He's, he's dead, right?"

She screwed her eyes closed. The whole world had watched that boy liquefy on live television. The whole world. And she needed confirmation.

"...s—shut up," Olivia muttered. "No shit."

[Yonagoda]

"Uh, shit. Haven't been keeping up with everything right now, who cut who's fucking face off?"

She looked from the grossest sight in the deck to the third-grossest sight, because the second was another damn corpse.

"And, uh, what's with the F?"

In her own script, she omitted the one-and-a-half seconds of raw, horrified screaming. It felt a bit more comforting, to narrate herself right now.

It made her feel in control. Which she was not. And also there's a faceless corpse in front of her, flayed.

Also she was still surrounded by people who are Not Her Teammates and who also had actually killed actual people including probably her best friend if the announcements weren't spinning it around and also had a fucking shotgun and also had run-ins with someone who flayed faces off apparently and honestly it was so much that it was difficult for her to process, so she didn't.

She just looked away from the corpse and looked right at Olivia, instead. And sometimes the deck, but only in places where there weren't any blood.

[Fenrir]

“Fisk. The ‘F’ stands for Fisk.”

That was always what she had assumed at least. Her recurring adversary wasn’t the only person to take part in the attack on Ivan, or so she had heard, and she wasn’t even certain if he had been the one to take a knife to her teammates forehead; it could just as easily have been Bacchia or one of the others. Verity hadn’t been around back then, so it wasn’t her. Or it could have been…

She turned her head slightly and looked at Lucia out of the corner of her eye. It could have been Vasily, who had been just as involved in that murderous group as any of them; Akeno was still convinced he was the one to shoot at her back on the clipper ship, preventing her from tearing Fisk apart, and he had undeniably played a role in Lucille’s death. Whether they should inform Lucia of that or not was something she was still thinking about.

No doubt it would come up naturally if Lucia ever remembered just who it was that killed Vasily, but until then she saw no reason to mention it.

Fisk was still the most likely candidate for the mutilation though and she couldn’t think of any other reason why that particular letter had been chosen, if not out for self-aggrandisement. Did that mean he was responsible for this as well? He’d spoken of crucifixions and blood eagles the last time she had run into him, over the top threats of horrible tortures; did he actually go through with it and cut someone’s face off? If he was, had he seen her or Ivan from up above?

Akeno turned towards Ivan, making sure he was focused, lucid, and she had his attention before she spoke. “We can’t fight them now. Not when they have the initiative over us.”

[The Honeless Beard]

Ivan stared at Akeno as the other two girls spoke, watched her answer the question even as his own lips parted, trying to force out his own response even as a wet fist seized his windpipe, shoved deep. His eyes burned for the first time in days, since the day he'd locked himself in the house boat closet and pressed shaking knuckles to his teeth to keep sobs from bursting forwards.

He suddenly remembered his hand, sticky with dried blood, and wiped it on the back of his jeans, lips quivering as he paused to stare out over the ocean, playing it off as a sudden intense need to see other things. There was a pause in the conversation, Ivan glanced back to Akeno to find her watching him, making sure he was coherent.

"I want to-" he started, then frowned, considered.

Nodded sharply, flipped tenga back to Selkies.

He then jerked his head at Lucia, gaze still fixed on Akeno. "She's not one of Emmy's."

[carduinal-cyn]

"So what?" Olivia replied defensively, shifting her weight a little closer to the only non-Selkie alive at the pool. "She's with me!"

When did teams start mattering again? she thought with a pang of icy terror. Her big brown eyes darted back and forth — Lucia, Ivan, Akeno — as if tracking an invisible lacrosse ball's unpredictable movements. Lucia had a fearsome cleaver, but what good would that do? If the two other Selkies deemed her an enemy...

Liv winced as she pictured all the grisly possibilities. Lucia pinned to the tile floor, harpoon lodged in her stomach. Lucia's head, reduced to an unrecognizable meat-paste with one split-second shotgun blast. Fisk, who'd literally carved his name into SOTF history, slashing clean through Lucia's throat like a horror movie villain. Olivia had been everywhere and nowhere with the woman who put the "buff" in "film buff": four days of wandering the jetties, sleeping in cars, attempting conversation. It couldn't possibly end this way... right?

And so, she took it upon herself to try to reason with her killer new teammates.

"We've been together this whole game, all four days. If she was gonna... y'know, do anything, she would've done it already!"

[Yonagoda]

...

''No offense, but wasn't Bacchia and, uh... Giselle also...''

She trailed off.

Since when did she get so detached from it all? Shoving Vasily in the near-back of her head, trying to cope? Staring down the half metaphorical gun barrel and just... not doing anything? She thought she'd been broken, but she was still just marching on, shredded personality pieces sloughing off her form.

''Like, if you don't want me here,'' She decided, ''Then that's cool! Just gimme a few minutes to grab my stuff and pack up and talk to Liv and you'd have your happy reunion or whatever. But since when did you care about who's with Emmy and who isn't?''

She didn't mention how she can't fathom going alone.

She didn't mention how she was the only one of Claudia's left, and she hasn't heard a single breath of actual advice.

She didn't mention that she was the last Kraken, that Seo was just gone, just like that, and she didn't know what to feel.

She didn't mention that she hadn't known what to feel in a long, long time.

(four days)

Lucia smiled her biggest nice-girl smile and draped around Olivia a single calloused hand. Unblemished. She felt fresh and delusional enough to be in love, but she's not in love, just grasping for human connection. She was the schrodinger's cat, both real and not real. She was a coward who said on the first day that she ''don’t want to kill more than I’ve gotta'' So instead of actually doing anything she let a teammate die and then left another girl to also die after she said she'd been rooting for her and then fucked up her only secondary motivation/sidestory/subplot/whatever of finding Vasily to the point where she is now staring at his murderer, not doing anything, wow, yeah, great job surviving and thriving there buddy!

Really, she should have known right after Cory got shot that she was screwed, but oh boy did she not anticipate this level of screwed- six foot guy with a shotgun, six foot girl with a martial arts history that could rival her own, and Liv the trigger happy fucked up pipsqueak.

Guess which one she's attached to.







Lucia rubbed her eyes. She didn't dwell on this barrage of self criticism thinly disguised as houghts. She didn't let them take over her. She compartmentalized and moved on.

''And, well, I'd also prefer to, like, y'know, stick with my buddy.''

[Fenrir]

“We’re not killing her.”

Akeno wasn’t sure for whose benefit she was saying that. She wasn’t sure if killing Lucia was even what Ivan was implying, or if he was just pointing out the obvious fact of their different allegiances and wondering what she wanted to do about the other girl. Maybe it wasn’t even what the other two had inferred from his words and Olivia and Lucia just assumed they wanted to send the odd-one-out of their group away. Maybe she was the only one with death so present in her thoughts, that killing was at the forefront of her mind.

Because that’s where this was inevitably heading, wasn’t it?

Three white bandanas and one red? There was only one way that could end. Seo-Yun had already claimed the early release, even if guiding Lucia to ten kills wasn’t already an improbable idea, and it was unlikely this particular group of people could manage an escape attempt in a short amount of time. The only way this ended was with one team left standing and there was at least one person standing among them who had to die for that to happen.

They didn’t seem to have realised it themselves, or maybe they had and they were just refusing to acknowledge it. Ivan had; he was a fan of this show after all. He knew how things worked. “It’s fine. The teams don’t matter for now.”

She turned towards Lucia. They were never that close, not really; not like she had been with Lucille or Jasper. Someone that she shared a few interests with, someone that she spoke to from time to time, but ultimately they were too different to get along that well. Even so, Lucia might have been the last friend Akeno still had alive on the show at this point, close or not. Akeno didn’t want to lose that. Not yet. “Stay if you want; or leave. It’s up to you.”

Akeno turned towards the girl under Lucia’s arm. The game would separate them eventually, inevitably, even if she and Ivan didn’t. Until then… “That goes for you too. I’m not going to force you to work with us; stick together if you want.”

[The Honeless Beard]

Ivan opened his mouth as the words the teams don't matter, a vicious rebuttal forming on his tongue. The teams were the only things that did matter at this point - that was the whole fucking basis of Akeno's proximity-

Just as quickly as his ire was raised, it fell, floating, crumpling to the ground.

The reality, here, was that they were doing nobody any favours by pretending that this wasn't going to go nuclear at some point. Lucia and Olivia couldn't exist in the same spaces - Lucia and Akeno couldn't - for the entire game. Every single time a dynamic duo paired up and weren't on the same team, it ended in disaster - via external or internal forces.

But Ivan wasn't willing to be that internal force... yet. Not yet. He could shoot Lucia right now, spread her guts across the deck of the pool, but then his teammates would be all over him.

Better when they came to the same conclusion as him.

"If we're not killing her," Ivan said, unwilling to let the point go, "then who is? Fisk? Anthony? The big killer flavour of the day?"

[carduinal-cyn]

Ivan Rodriguez was a less than pleasant person on the best of days, with his hyperfixation on SOTF and his selfish need to do entire group projects on his own. (Not that Olivia was complaining about the latter, but the big man managed to make the act of shoring up her mediocre grades into a hassle.) In this moment, his voice sounded downright cruel. He keeps bringing Lucia up, Liv thought. Then the realization hit her. Her eyes blinked, then ballooned to the size of dinner plates.

He's serious, isn't he.

She felt a gentle pressure; she understood even before she saw the muscly arm recline against her shoulder. Without RJ and Vasily and all the rest of them, even an awkward acquaintance of four days might as well be her best friend.

If this was goodbye, she wouldn't dare be ungrateful.

Olivia's torso shifted to one side. Her arm snaked around Lucia's back — a makeshift hug. All the while, she kept her eyes trained on Ivan and Akeno, waiting for the crucial moment. She thought up a little bullshit excuse. She prayed the other Selkies would swallow it.

"Fisk, Anthony, right now those two are the ones we've gotta worry about," she bluffed. "Especially Fisk! He's, uh..."

She pointed at Ivan, stared up at the raw F shape rent into his flesh. "...Well, just look at you! He's probably lost it by now. Anthony, I dunno, I kicked him once, but—"

"But" what? asked a familiar voice in a tone that dripped with malice.

"But he killed my best friend"?

Is that what you want to tell them, when you shot Cory and not even Ritzy Daggers knows about it?

When they've actually killed people?

You don't understand.

You don't have to understand.

Cause you've always been a team player.

And if you wanna win, you're gonna keep being one 'til the day you die.

In the absence of words, Olivia's brain filled the verbal void with a blatantly stymied "uhhhhhh".
Why couldn't Coach ever learn to shut the fuck up?

[Yonagoda]

“I don’t know. I mean, like, none of us two here have killed anyone, or saw anyone really die, here.”

She finally sneaked another glance at the corpse.

“So, like, I don’t really know. It didn’t sink in yet. And I’m too far to think about that so much. Just, uh, like, I’d rather not have you two ruin this-” she swept her hand over to Olivia- “Potential alliance, and I don’t want y’all to talk about it with Liv here. If you see me again and you shoot me, well, that sucks, but not here and not now.”

We don’t want another Cory, don’t we?

We wouldn’t want that at all.

Except the audience, of course. They eat that up.

“Listen- I’m gonna be honest with you two, I’ve done nothing. It’s all Liv. But if somebody’s flaying faces off and shit like Fisk, murdering his way through the game, Anthony, whoever, I mean- I’m fine trying to stop whatever that guy’s doing. I’m fine with helping if she is, alright?”

(I’m useful/)

(So fucking use me/)

So you’re just… giving up your life for the ‘greater good’ now? What happened to you? What happened to the girl who said she’ll try and survive, and thrive, who talked about survival and how the game worked with her best friend, who loved the whole entire world for what it is and would never let it go?

Where did she die?

When was she murdered?

She didn’t raise the cleaver. She barely held on to it, grip weak and loose. Was she just bargaining? She’s always belonged with other people. Her entire life rested on the fact that everybody wanted and needed her, right? She protected and she taught. The thought of dying was almost as bad as dying alone. So she told herself, that she’ll just hold on, and-

(Lucia saw a girl.)

Lucia saw a girl getting on a boat.)

(Lucia saw something she shouldn’t have seen.)

(She’ll keep it quiet.)

(She’ll keep it quiet for the rest of her life in this high, miserable deck.)

Lucia shrugged, terribly nonchalant for somebody who has a fifty-fifty chance of dying here.

As Olivia’s brain short-circuited, she let the girl hug her.

“At least one of us will have to die here, and I know that. But this isn’t the time.”

Stalling, stalling, stalling.

[Fenrir]

This was taking too long. Akeno looked over her shoulder towards the door leading to the pool area, then up to the balcony where maybe-Fisk had been before; both showed no signs of people, but that did nothing to reassure her. They should leave this area as soon as they could; even if her fears were unfounded and nobody was coming for them, Akeno wanted to get away from all of these bodies and out of the open.

“Alright, fine.” Listening to the two girls talk, Akeno wasn’t sure if they really got it or not. Lucia probably did, a little more than Olivia at least, but she wasn’t sure if either of them really understood what was about to happen; if it was real for them yet. Neither of them had killed before and neither of them had seen someone die; a weird thing to say when there was a faceless corpse right behind them, but Akeno could understand what she meant. Seeing a body after it was dead was different from seeing your friend have their throat slit, it was different from pulling a harpoon out of someone’s back after being the one to put it there, or feeling someone’s dying struggles as you sat on their back and strangled the life from them.

“We’ll stick together then; for a while at least. At least until we deal with Fisk, Verity, Anthony and anyone else we run into.” If Lucia was still alive at the end of that, then they’d figure out what to do. Or at least, Akeno would decide if it was going to be her or Ivan who killed her while the other kept Olivia out of the way. "Sound good?"

[The Honeless Beard]

"Peachy," Ivan said, shrugging his shoulders. This would only end badly, but at least it'd end. If Lucia wanted to be an honorary Selkie and help at least one of them off of this fucking nightmare, then he wasn't going to say boo.

He'd have both fingers on the trigger, but he wouldn't say boo.

He let Tenga drop from his hands on her strap, dangling from one shoulder. He looked up for a second, squinting into the sun, trying to gauge the time of day. He'd always been rusty at this - hearing about it on podcasts was a far cry from actually practicing sun measuring - but he could at least get a general -

Something was falling. Ivan's eyes widened, opening his palms as something long and black fell into his outstretched arms, wobbling in his grip and rolling over as he desperately tried to hold on to it.

A shotgun.

[Catche Jagger]

We have trudged through the wild again and again here. It has coated our skin with something that we are not allowed to see. It may be blood or mud. Doesn’t matter.

Rip, smash, bang, crack.

Hands change and we are in the air until something new wraps us in itself. It is cold like we are.

We smile.

[The Honeless Beard]

Ivan frowned down at this gift, slowly raising his eyebrows at those assembled.

He let it dangle from his fingers, nodding.

"Lead on, then."

[carduinal-cyn]

Olivia stared — half dumbfounded, half envious — at the second shotgun that fell into Ivan's arms.

She watched the blood puddle beneath the corpse's mangled face.

She glanced to Lucia. Waiting. Hoping she'd speak up.

Nothing.

Typical, Coach sneered. Time for you to take charge, del Rio.

"...Let's get the hell out of here," Liv murmured, eyes flicking to the floor, then the exit. Her body lurched forward, as if finding her footing for the first time. She beckoned to the other Selkies. To Lucia. And then she was gone, as quickly as she'd arrived.

(Olivia del Rio continued in Hotline Miami.)