Are We Alive Or A Dead Generation?

[Applesintime]

Ping! The bullet narrowly missed Fumiyo, instead hitting off the pot, ricocheting off and lodging itself into a wall. Fumiyo let out a gasp of fear, but finally her fingers grabbed, curled around the grip of the Browning and brought it to aim and fire back at Noriko, not having enough time to worry about aiming or anything other than pointing and shooting. Was Keita OK? Had Noriko killed him before her? Was Noriko the one she had shot at?

Oh, Keita, please be OK.

[DerArknight]

Keita was okay. Physically, at least.

In the end, he had settled on asking Fumiyo where she wanted the table to be. It was a stupidly trivial thing to ask, but any conversation not centered around the overall situation sounded good in his book.

But before he rounded the corner to the kitchen, he heard Fumiyo talking to someone.

A single peek revealed who it was. Noriko Nakagawa, armed with a fucking gun.

And then she aimed and shot at someone inside the kitchen.

Keita didn't even notice the second shot as he turned tail and ran back into the treatment room, where a barricaded door waited for him. With two fingers missing, removing the barricade would take more seconds, but he it was his only way out.

A voice nagged at his conscious as he shoved away the barrier Fumiyo had built mere hours ago. Wasn't this the second time he left someone behind? Shouldn't he at least try to intervene?

No. This wasn't some street brawl next to a comic shop. His life was on the line, and one girl he had barely acknowledged until last night wasn't worth risking it.

[DerArknight]

Noriko had made a mistake, and she paid dearly.

Fumiyo's bullet ripped straight into her left shoulder before bursting out on the other side. Instantly Noriko was thrown backwards against the wall.

What saved her live was that Fumiyo only fired once.

Before a second shot could hit her elsewhere, Noriko pushed herself from the wall and dashed away.

There wasn't even time to think about a direction, so she went to the right instead of the left, where the bathroom was.

[Applesintime]

Fumiyo saw the bullet hit Noriko clean in the shoulder, blood splattering all over the wall of the break room. If only she had kept pulling the trigger, but before she could fire another shot Noriko had slipped away into the main room. Fumiyo was hot on her heels, firing a few shots at her retreating figure.

“KEITA!”

[DerArknight]

With a heavy shove, Keita managed to get the barricade out of the way, freeing the door from its restraints like he had almost done not too long before.

Only a few steps were between him and the safety of the forest.

"KEITA!"

Maybe he felt a little bad.

Maybe it was just a reflex.

But for whatever reason, Keita reacted to Fumiyo's voice by stopping his swift exit and turning back.

If he had started running, he might have made it.

[DerArknight]

Noriko burst into the treatment room.

With adrenalin pumping through her very being, she barely felt her shoulder and only fleetingly perceived the bullets missing her by large margins. Instead she focused on the door that promised an escape route.

And the boy in front of it.

Noriko couldn't say that she knew Keita very well. He was a friend of Shinji and Yukata, who also weren't that close to Noriko. A friend of a friend of a friend.

But right now, all she saw was an obstacle.

BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!

[DerArknight]

Not a single one of the four shots coming out of Noriko's Beretta was particularly aimed, so predictably three of them missed Keita. It was the fourth that hit the jackpot, striking the metallic piece of looming doom Keita was involuntarily wearing.

The collision did not remain unnoticed. Unknowing and uncaring about any context, the collar had been designed to judge any noteworthy damage to it as an escape attempt and it reacted accordingly. The explosives running around Keita's neck were launched simultaneously, turning the outer shell of the collar into countless projectiles. One big piece shot upwards, impaling his tongue through the jaw. Others flew somewhere through the room, landing in furniture, walls, the ceiling. Some even grazed Noriko, who had ended up way too close. But most of them ripped through Keita, shredding his entire being apart, almost separating his head from his torso.

Keita made a gurgling noise, the words he had been in the middle of forming being cut short. Only by muscle reflex his body finished the movement he had started before the explosion, fully turning around in Noriko's direction so the small geyser of blood pouring out of what was left of Keita's neck could bestow her with its red mark. Then he toppled over, falling to the floor where he remained in an almost comical position.

There was no pain.

There was no fear.

In fact, there was nothing at all.

B02 Keita Iijima - Deceased

36 students remain

[Applesintime]

More gunshots from Noriyo, and then something exploded in the main clinic. Fumiyo didn't know what could have exploded; maybe an oxygen cylinder or something like that? Either way, she had to make sure Keita was safe. Pursuing after the little bitch, Fumiyo ran into th main room and she

she

she saw Keita, lying on his front and blood was all over the floor and Noriyo. It was red. So, so red. A lot redder than she ever thought blood could be.

Screaming in a mixture of shock, fear and hatred, she continued to fire after Noriyo, pulling the Browning's trigger again and again until the gun clicked empty, and even then, she tried in vain to shoot more, tears streaming down her cheek.

[DerArknight]

The moment Noriko shot for the fourth time, the rool turned red and loud and bright as Keita's collar detonated. Not expecting the explosion, Noriko was almost swept off her feet. Several points of her screamed as shards dug into the freshly-baked killer of two.

The smaller pains reminded her that she had bigger problems. Firstly there was the hole in her shoulder. Thankfully, there was a pile of small bags with red crosses close to the door.

Secondly there was Fumiyo letting out an inhuman scream behind her, directly followed by bullets flying seemingly random through the room.

Dropping any thoughts, Noriko went into a sprint. Her right hand clutched the Beretta - her Beretta - while her left hand grabbed on of the bags. She crushed right into the door, which thankfully opened outwards. Or maybe she broke it out of the angles. She couldn't afford to care about details.

Noriko made it out of the house. Passing a car that was parked in front of it, she entered the forest at full speed.

It would take a while until she stopped.

((Noriko Nakagawa continued in It's a game of two halves, Brian))

[Applesintime]

Click.

Click.

Click.

The gun dropped to the ground as Fumiyo watched Noriko disappear into the distance. Panting with exertion, the rage slowly letting go of its grasp over her thoughts, she continued to stare out of the door. She'd taken one of the bags they'd prepared in case someone wandered by wanting medical supplies, most likely to try and fix her shoulder up. Deep breath. Idly, she wondered why she wasn't crying. One of her friends — that seemed an appropriate term for the boy who's body she was staring at — was lying there dead, his blood spilling all over the floor, and all Fumiyo could do was watch it gently trickle out of what remained of his neck.

Probably shock, she surmised. Eventually, it would all set in.

Picking up her Browning again. Ejecting the clip. Putting a new one in. Another deep breath. Pulling the slide back. It was a rhythm that Fumiyo thought she'd grow familiar with. But not too familiar. She wasn't Noriko, shooting innocent people dead for no reason. How did she even get in? That didn't really matter, what mattered was that this clinic was clearly unsafe. She was going to have to leave. But she didn't think that she could leave Keita like that. He had a family, loved ones. Leaving his body like it was just a piece of garbage felt wrong, but it wasn't like there was a shovel anywhere to dig him a grave.

In the end, Fumiyo just covered him with a sheet. She had no need for the food inside his backpack; not yet, anyway. But she took the jagged remains of the boomerang. If she needed to cut something, it would be useful. And if she found Noriko, she would bury the thing in the bitch's stomach and watch her bleed out.

((Fumiyo Fujiyoshi continued in The Top of The World))