We're Mostly Made of Water

[General Goose]

Chuck had not seen more of this shit show. But he knew enough about the...characters involved to be able to extrapolate. "Fucking Saachi happened, psycho bitch. Regular argument became a bloodbath because she's just, oh, hi, I'm Saachi, I just love killing."

Chuck was pointedly not looking at Jason's corpse. Fuck. He couldn't handle that. He had held out some hope that Jason might have survived, in the split second after the impact. One of those miracle stories of someone surviving impalement or something. Jason was young and fit, after all. And despite his flaws, cosmic justice was probably on his side. He should have survived. Should have been the beneficiary of some miracle. But no. There was no sign any life remained within his body.

At least it had been quick. Abrupt. If life had not lingered in Jason's body for more than a second after impact, it hadn't been able to scream, or writhe, or anything quite like that. In a way, that was a scary thought. Trapped. Some I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream level shit right there.

He saw the new arrival. Natalie or Natalia or something. But he knew the identity of his other...companion now. Michael. Definitely a killer. Seemed presently harmless, though. Chuck ran over, to Kyran's side, the moment the crossbow was loaded.

"Is Kyran okay?"

Michael would get the interrogation later.

[Cake]

Sana sana, colita de rana, si no sana hoy, sanará mañana.

Spanish. He couldn't speak a word of it except maybe the basics, but he could understand most of it. The saying never did make any sense but it's what she used to say to him when he was a kid and got himself hurt for doing something stupid. Which to her was pretty much always.

Despiértate. Kyran. Despiértate.

His eyelids sluggishly half-lifted into momentary brightness. Hazy sounds, loud but muffled around him.

Blurry silhouettes.

¡Hola Hijo! Kyran? Why are you always so stubborn? I said wake up!

Dull slaps to his face, movements to his body from the unidentified outlines. His dry, chapped lips mouthed a response.

"Mom?"

A mere whisper. Weak. Nope. Don't be weak Dean. You can't be. Dad always said they couldn't. Real men were supposed to be tough. Slowly, his hand reached his way, past metal to hold onto the heart shaped pendant he wore, a gift from Dr. Angela Dean. He gripped it tightly. Dazed.

Legs stirred, but the world blurred and began to spin. Disorientation. Eyes rolling back. Vision turning black.

Fading again.

[Somersault]

Natali grimaced as she listened to Chuck's explanation of the events that unfolded, pointedly trying to look away from the dead body she saw in the distance. She had seen bodies before, within the last day, actually, but that didn't make them all the more pleasant to look at. Each one reminded her of Aria, the blood and brain matter flowing from what used to be his head. It pooled out like crimson waves, but there was still the conversation to get to. Had to get her mind focused back on that.

In fact, it was kind of hard not to be focused on the state of Kyran, who seemed to be calling out for his mom, before going back into an uneasy slumber. Although, it was probably less of a slumber and more of just plain-old passing out, considering how delirious he seemed to be. She went a step closer to the horror-movie man and Kyran, trying to get a closer look at the situation.

Oh, wait. Wait wait wait wait. Her eyes widened, as she made a sort-of sudden realization. Piggyback, piggyback, piggyback. That wasn't a fun experience, but it did help her realize something important. Something very important. It helped her realize that the thing that was very important was the fact that Kyran didn't have his bag, only his gun. That may have explained why he currently was laying dazed on the ground, not looking all that well.

She looked up at the two other boys that were conscious, pursing her lips. "I mean, I don't really think he's doing too hot. Maybe he hasn't eaten or something?" The words came out uneasily and strained, but that idea was now up in the atmosphere, something for them to think about.

Besides, if anything went wrong, she had the gun.

But, she didn't know if she wanted to pull the trigger anymore.

[ItzToxie]

"What a shame."

Michael eyed the blood pooling out of Jason as Chuck went into Saachi's status as 'bluh bluh huge bitch'. It gave him enough to know that yeah, she definitely was playing for sure, and he'd have to kick her ass if he saw her. It wasn't all bad though, at least she only killed Jason, and not Adonis. Wasn't like Jason wasn't trying to pull shit himself, trying to take Kyran's gun and run off with it. Wasn't hard to know what he was planning to do with it.

Michael's lips clicked in disdain as he spoke his next line, with all the grace of a government agent in the dystopian future. "He was a good man." That was a lie. "What a rotten way to die." That was not as much of a lie, but it couldn't have happened to a nicer person. It was funny almost, Jason got hit with his dose of karma before he even started. That was some poetic shit if Michael seen it.

Michael watched as Chuck passed him up to run to Kyran's side, asking if he was alright. This was a question Michael didn't even know the answer to.

"So like, basically... He's like still breathing, but I don't know what in the fuck caused him to pass out. He just sort of puked his guts up and fell over after getting pissed at me and Jason for pointing guns at each other."

Michael walked up to the group of Chuck, and... Natali? That name was right, wasn't it? Fuck it. "Yeah, I mean, I tried to wake him up, but he isn't really responding, I mean, I can't see whatever's fucking with him so I don't know what to do with it. It's not like a cut I can stitch up or anything."

Then Natali mentioned not eating. Michael noticed Kyran didn't have a bag.

Everyone else had bags. Saachi had two bags. Jason had none. Adonis chased after he-

The hamster flopped out of the wheel in Mike's head after running too fast.

Okay yeah that makes sense!

"You gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

If he hasn't been eating, he probably hasn't been drinking either. That meant he was pretty fucked up on the 'how fucked am I' scale. People tend to die when they don't eat or drink anything, that shit should've been obvious by now!

"Okay... So now we know the problem at least, but how the fuck are we gonna wake him up?!"

[General Goose]

Oh hey. A word!

Granted, 'mom' probably wasn't the most apposite word for the context. Chuck and Michael were many things, but motherly they weren't. So, okay, Kyran's grasp on reality was currently very tenuous, and if he was shifting back into the fringes of consciousness, he wasn't currently able to tell who or what he was surrounded by. Seemed to be in some sort of familial safe space. Seemed almost cruel to wake him up.

But Chuck was a firm believer in not letting people cling to delusions and fantasies, and so he positioned himself directly by Kyran, following Michael's lead in improvised attempts at reinventing the science of resuscitation. And then Natali made a suggestion. And it was a damn good one.

Chuck's mind, too, thought about drinking as a connected problem. "I mean, we can pour some water down his throat?" Chuck was not an expert at this kind of thing. The threat of choking weighed all too heavily on his mind. Dehydration would be the mortal danger at the moment. Though he probably needed sustenance, making sure he had water was the easiest and the most urgent hurdle to overcome.

"I mean, Michael, you been with him the longest. How's he been eating?"

[Somersault]

"I mean, he just said he hasn't been eating, so..."

It wasn't polite to say those nasty little passive-aggressive comments like that, but they had to come out at some point, right? It was a redundant point, after all, and something had to be done about Kyran now. Standing in the middle of some bushes or whatever wasn't gonna help them fix whatever was wrong with his body. Maybe Mom and Dad'd be angry now, but it'd all be worth it when she got back home.

As long as she kept on telling herself that, it had to be true.

So, no apologies from Natali would come on that front. Instead, she pursed her lips and tried to remember the rest of what Chuck had said, mentally nixing the "force water down his throat" idea from her brain near immediately. Two snarky comments in a row probably wasn't a good thing to do, though, so she just stayed silent.

Perhaps she could learn more about the situation if she got even closer, and so she went to kneel down by Kyran, Michael, and Chuck, making very sure that her injured knee wasn't under any sort of unnecessary strain. The bandage had gotten kinda nasty-looking, but she didn't know how to really fix it, and the guy who had done it for her last time was currently laying unconscious in front of her.

"Maybe we should start by moving him somewhere that's not, like, in the woods." That seemed like the best start to any plan that involved Kyran not up and dying on them. Still was a bit sorta-bitchy, but helpful. The two balanced each other out, right?

It wasn't exactly amazing, but it was something. Something that meant after she did her little Good Samaritan act or whatever, she could go flee once they realized she had shot someone. Not that she wanted to do it again, but yeah. Murder was not exactly people could just forget about just like that.

Wouldn't change the fate of the boy laying in front of her, but it was food for thought nevertheless.

[ItzToxie]

" I mean, yeah, maybe the longest, but only by like three minutes max!"

Michael bent down and picked up a pebble. He tossed it towards Jason, the little rock plonking off of his unmoving head.

" I was only here long enough for that dumb fuck over there to start pointing his gun at me before trying to run off with Kyran's. Outside of Kyran passing out, I had no idea what in the fuck was up with him."

Natali mentioned moving him somewhere. After Saachi's little stunt, that probably was the best course of action.

"Yea probably... Not in the mood to get a fork in my ass, anyways. Adonis could find us later, hopefully."

Yeah, like you're going to eventually find Everett and Scarlett, right?

"But uhhh, where do we go? It's not like there's some safe zone set up or anything."

[General Goose]

Natali provided some sarcasm that Chuck was pretty sure wasn't warranted. For starters, Chuck had not heard Michael say anything along those lines. "Oh, had he?" he replied, snappily, but beneath his breath. But, more fundamentally, there was zero harm in clarification. In seeking to have all the information at hand. And, as Chuck had hoped, his posing a question yielded new information.

"Okay, well, it's good that I asked then. So only...Adonis knows." Chuck said those words pointedly, hoping it served as an effective riposte to Natali. He very much wanted to give Natali an angry glare, but stopped himself. It was ill-warranted. Would have been an outlet for his anger towards Saachi, for the trauma of seeing Lance and Jason die brutally in rapid succession, and a rather self-destructive outlet at that.

"Shelter's a good idea though." He nodded towards Saachi, hoping that sincere acknowledgement would go some way toward mending the air between them. No point in retaliating to frustrated sarcasm with frustrated sarcasm. "I would suggest the lighthouse but...it's occupied."

He shrugged. "The parish?"

[Somersault]

Natali returned Chuck’s nod, with as blank a face as possible. It was a good idea, yeah, the one about the parish, and she supposed there was no better time than now to just pretend like everything was water under the bridge. It would have been so satisfying to have rolled her eyes at his remark, but there was work to do, and just pissing people off because she was annoyed at them was not how she was going to get out of here alive. Had to stay smart, and not make stupid decisions.

“Yeah, the parish could work. But, how far away is it?” She said this with a shrug, and began to reach down to open up her bag, before promptly realizing why that was a very bad idea. Namely, the two bags worth of supplies in it, as well as the two guns. Shit. Of course she just had to put her only means of self-defense where it wasn’t easily accessible, and where it would’ve looked shady as fuck to reach for it. Still had to find the way to the parish somehow, but she guessed she couldn’t be the one to do it anyways. Not without revealing what she had done.

There were other things she could be doing though, like finding out a way that they could bring Kyran to their potential shelter, in a way that wouldn’t mess up his body even more. Both her and Chuck didn’t exactly look as if they could carry another person, and Michael...looked like he had gotten really fucked up.

“If we’re gonna bring him there,” she pointed at Kyran, with a raised eyebrow. “How’re we gonna do it?” It was a valid question, after all. Best to have all the pieces in order before doing anything, even if those pieces were increasingly annoying people in Boo hats.

[ItzToxie]

"Well... Any of you good with an AK?"

Michael held out the rifle by the barrel, looking back and forth between Natali and Chuck.

"I can carry him if you guys are good at keeping us covered."

[General Goose]

"I mean, I know how to fire a gun." Of course Chuck did. He was the son of a Cajun cop. Chuck had some traits that were pretty stereotypical, some aspects of his upbringing that corroborated the demographic statistics. And he had grown up with guns, around firing ranges, with a family that thankfully was stringent about safety but also prone to fetishising gun rights.

He'd never fired an AK. Lacked the composure and constitution to be a Rambo-style figure with assault rifles. But, against the competition, Chuck trusted himself to hold his own.

Sure, he already had a crossbow, but, truth be told, he did not yet trust Natali. Not to say he mistrusted her. There had been a slight edge of tension between them. Some sarcastic barbs shared. Not a reason to permanently mistrust her, but coupled with the lack of personal history, yeah, Chuck was wary.

Plus, and God he felt like a sexist ass for thinking this, but he had not had good experiences with his female classmates so far on the island. It wasn't a reason for distrusting Natali. But he had to explicitly make clear, in his own mental narrative, that it wasn't a reason. Which, you know, is the sort of suspiciously specific denial you never should have to make.

[Somersault]

"Umm...no, haven't really had a lot of experience with guns." That wasn't really a lie, as she hadn't touched a gun before this; but it didn't help that it felt like the two guns in her bag were burning a hole through, leaving it all out in the open. If she showed all her cards now, showed the fact that she had all of this shit, where would that leave her? Nowhere, and so she said nothing more on that topic.

Her hand was shaking now, though. It was inching closer to the the bag that just wanted to be opened; grabbing the gun that had made her feel so safe and yet so dead. Not that Natali actually did that, though. It was too risky, and trying to pull a gun at two antsy guys didn't seem like a good way to live. Probably could take Chuck one-on-one, Michael, not so much.

It would have been easy to continue bitching about Chuck and how he managed to irritate her, but she was here for a purpose. She was here because she had stumbled upon this mess and decided to help out, and not because she was some psycho like Saachi who was trying to kill people.

Just trying to live. That's all it was.

"Seems like it's all settled then," she motioned to herself and Chuck, "we go and make sure everything's safe, and you go carry him?"

That seemed like it was the plan of action, and the one that wouldn't end in her being forced to reveal herself this early. Could just go split off in a bit, no harm done, just like that. Still didn't like Chuck, but no murder was good. No murder was great.

[ItzToxie]

"Alright Boo, catch."

Michael tossed the AK towards Chuck as his focus shifted to Kyran. Michael wanted nothing more than to leave this shithole of a forest. Anywhere but here was fine with him, and the parish sounded decent, especially considering the other options. He knelt down and picked Kyran up.

"Let's get out of here before someone else comes in trying to start shit."

((Michael Crowe continued elsewhere.))

[General Goose]

With an AK over one shoulder and his bag over the other, Chuck began to whistle. He was a cheery traveller by nature. Couldn't suppress that instinct, not even now. Even though the bag, with a bulky crossbow contained within, was rather hefty. Made this confident new-dawn journey-of-a-thousand-miles demeanour a bit ergonomically unsustainable.

"Right guys. Let's go find God."

He'd have to ask Michael about the killing. But hey, unless this was some elaborate plot (and hey, he didn't see Michael Crowe being that sort), he seemed trustworthy at the moment. Passing him the AK was a rather good way of earning Chuck's trust, it earned out.

Chuck still had doubts about Natali. But her name hadn't been on the announcements, so whatever.

((Chuck Soileaux continued in A Detour from God.))

[Somersault]

The thump-thump of her heart beating, and the blood rushing in her ears slowly subsided as they seemed to have not paid attention to whatever Natali was saying. Arguably, that was a good thing. If they weren't really listening, that meant they didn't really notice how she shook as she said those words, how her hands shook near the zipper of her bag. Wasn't like she even enjoyed the feeling of adrenaline that rushed through her veins, just like before the dive into the water, and the frenzy of the pool. Hadn't she quit the swim team to get away from all of that?

"Yeah, let's get to it?" The hint of a question at the end of her voice lingered uncomfortably, before passing like a breeze. It was time to go, time to get a move on. If they stayed here too long, then they would inevitably start asking her questions, and she was sure she wasn't in the best state of mind to go do that right now.

Still didn't trust anyone here, but that was what the gun was for, right? The blood that still stained her mind, the crumpled face of Aria as she stood over him. It was to live, and she needed somewhere to stay, at least for the night.

If she kept her eyes out, kept on listening for whichever way the wind blew, she would know what to do. She had to.

((Natali Greer continued in The Cape of No Hope))