SOTF Mini

Badass Johnny stifled a smile as Roy went on about gay faces or something like that. Actually, what exactly made a face gay? That had never occurred to him before. Like, sure, with people, animals, the definition's pretty clear-cut. Guys liking fellow guys, girls liking fellow girls. So, yeah, there was that, but gay faces? So, like, a face attracted to a fellow face? OK, no, that was just- no. A face that belonged to someone gay? So, if Dan were gay, would that make his fingers gay? His feet? Or, like, maybe, it just looked like it belonged to a gay person. Like, effeminate and stuff. Actually, yeah, that made the most sense. Why didn't that occur to him immediately? The knockout gas? Yeah, OK, let's blame it on that.

He broke into a grin when Dan offered to split the soda with him. Goal accomplished.

"Sounds great. Want me to try spraying it now? And, Roy, want to have some?"

To be honest, he kinda hoped Roy bought into his own paranoia about the soda being carbonated arsenic and refused. After all, soda was probably a very rare commodity on this island, more so than gold. It was to be treasured. But leaving people out never sat well with him. He'd been there.

Suddenly, Roy shouted. He looked into the kitchen and suddenly gold nuggets. Glass shards, too. Fuck. Is this where the fight had happened? It looked like a few bullets had landed here, based on what Roy was holding.

He tip-toed around the place, and said a thank you to the Badass Johnny of yesterday for deciding to wear shoes instead of flip-flops. OK. No blood here also, so that was a good sign. Maybe he'd just heard someone doing some target practice. That would be nice. Of course, he'd prefer no one have to practice for anything, but pans with bullet holes were better than beings with bullet holes.

He laughed at both Roy and Dan's quips, and felt his shoulders slump a bit. He hadn't even noticed they were tense in the first place.

He looked at Dan. "I don't know, man, maybe the food was too raw."

Hey, that was a good sound! Getting some laughter up in here, yeah, that’s the good shit! Roy cracked a grin (and somewhere across the world, several girls (probably several boys as well) swooned), and lowered his brand-new frying pan/sieve combo. They were all trapped on an island with apparently no escape. People had already started shooting and using their weapons, hell, probably planning on grabbing their one kill to guarantee they wouldn’t be chucked back the next time the terrorists got bored of playing solitaire and mah-jong. Roy himself had already chosen to withhold information from his erstwhile allies.

But goddamnit, there was no point in moping around like a goth locked out of Hot Topic… or, y’know, a goth full stop. You head out on to the football field already prepared to get your face smashed into the dirt, you were making great headway on a self-fulfilling prophecy. Same thing applied here, except it was even more important. Joking around wasn’t gonna harm anyone, so long as they put their game faces on when it was time to get serious.

And after all, if a rescue did happen or they did find some magical hidden escape route inside a wardrobe or some shit, that didn’t mean they’d all be there to see it. If he could, he was gonna make every second count.

After some fumbling around, futilely trying to open his bag whilst holding onto the frying pan, Roy eventually hit upon the genius idea of putting the pan down, before-

Okay, hang on, saying that Johnny’s laugh sounded good earlier was kinda gay, wasn’t it? Fuuuuuuck. Okay. It was the fact that the guy was laughing at all that was good. Obviously. Johnny could have laughed like a donkey busting a nut for all he cared.

Man. It’d be just his fucking luck if Dan was a mind reader or something.

Roy grumbled under his breath as he shoved the pan into his bag, then shrugged at Johnny’s invitation for a drink, before shoving his hand into his pocket.

“Sure, why not? So long as neither of you start convulsing on the ground I’ll give it a shot. Make it a toast!”

He nudged one of the larger glass shards with his toe.

“Even if we don’t decide to stick around here, we’ve got plenty of shit to make weapons with. Hit anyone who tries attacking us with a cast-iron pan, lessee how eager they are to stab shit when they’re missing half their teeth.”

Dan tried not to be annoyed that Johnny had offered Roy his soda. He really did try, but who gave Johnny the right to do that? If he'd wanted to offer Roy his soda he would have. He wasn't the smartest guy in the world, but he could speak English. He knew he hadn't offered Roy any.

He exhaled out his nose with a little force.

He wasn't going to argue. It was possible he'd already pissed off Roy with his jokes, and excluding him probably was a bad idea given where they were.

He held the bright orange can and forced himself to smile again. Roy wasn't all bad and a toast would be fine. It could be a toast to not dying or some shit like that.

"Catch."

He gave the can a light underhanded toss to Johnny. It would be stupid to throw it hard. Dropping it on the ground and having it explode everywhere would be the worst thing that could happen.

Well, besides the other kind of exploding anyway.

((GMing approved))

Badass Johnny wasn't exactly eager to start knocking out teeth and tenderizing people's faces with pans because Violence is Not the Solution, but to be honest, it was probably just Roy chest-thumping. Hopefully. They would cross that bridge when they got there. Badass Johnny would practice his dialogue skills for when that moment came, and when he got out of here, they could hire him to become a UN Ambassador or something. Or, no, wait, that was Daniel's job. Like, maybe he could settle for being his bodyguard or back-up ambassador, if that was a thing. But anyways.

"Great!" he said to Roy. "But make it a toast for what?"

And then Dan threw the can of soda at him, and Badass Johnny almost got dishonorably discharged from the football team. He fumbled with the can for a few heart-stopping seconds before finally catching a grip on it, placing it slowly on the table. OK. Yeah, he totally intended that. Just a bit of juggling for the showmanship and all. He let out a bit of nervous laughter.

He looked underneath the table. Whoever had been shooting the gun had been nice enough to leave a few unshattered cups. He got out the liquid nitrogen, sprayed what was apparently a can of Moxie, and awkwardly waited around 30 seconds or so, because warm soda is death and you can never be too careful, before pouring roughly equal amounts of soda into each cup.

He raised his cup. "Cheers to... uh, not dying, I guess."

None of them died of arsenic poisoning.

--

It was the middle of the night, and it was Badass Johnny's turn to keep watch. They'd set up camp in the cafeteria proper since glass shards weren't exactly a comfortable surface. So, while Dan and Roy slept, Badass Johnny stayed near the entrance, making sure no one came back to do some more target practice or whatever. There weren't any gunshots tonight. Or at least, he didn't hear any.

But there had been gunshots earlier in the day.

Some sounded closer than others. And he should've left to check them out. To be honest, Badass Johnny should've left the mess hall as soon as he realized no one was there. Should've worked on finding Rachael, or Daniel, or Clio, or Yaz, or really anyone. Or maybe he should've tried to find the players, stop them somehow. Get rid of their weapons, or talk them down before they did anything they'd regret. Dan and Roy were great, yeah, but there were so many other people to find, so many other people to talk to, plan with.

Why did he stay then?

He could say that it was part of his 4D chess strategy. Or, at least, coming up with it. After all, rushing into a football game with your only plan being 'to win' sounded nice and all, but got you slaughtered. Er. Poor choice of words. But, the point was there. He really did need to think of the exact game plan. So, what did he have?

Well, find people. Friends, preferably. And, uh, talk down any potential players. And try to find a way to get out of here. Something about collars.

In other words, the same vague half-semblance of a plan he'd had when he woke up. He hadn't spent any time planning.

The truth of it was the same truth that fucked up his grades at school. Because he could get serious right now, he could get started on what needed to do. But there was always tomorrow. And, to be honest, shooting the shit with Roy and Dan felt normal. It felt safe. Fun. If it weren't for all the abandoned buildings, he could pretend they were on some extended camping trip. Which was odd. When Badass Johnny first woke up, he expected to be able to actually live up to his nickname. To go in, dodging bullets and all, and save the damsel in distress or something. Yet, he'd simply shot the shit. Anyone watching him had probably flipped the channel to watch Survivor or something.

He could get up right now, you know. Just leave them behind, maybe carve down a note with a knife or whatever since the bastards had taken his pen. They were asleep. Not like they could stop him. But then he'd be leaving them defenseless. Or, at the very least, he'd leave them worried. Think he'd been kidnapped or whatever. He'd be doing something bad to do something good.

And there was always tomorrow.

And eventually, with the screech of the speakers around the island, tomorrow came.

Roy woke up with his face in a puddle of drool. Nice. At least it was his own drool, this time (fuck, he really hoped it was, he’d need to have some serious words with Dan and Johnny if it wasn’t). For one, blissful second, he experienced that wonderful tranquillity of having just woken up, where everything is warm and soft, and it feels like you’re just floating in a vat of pudding, or something.

Then, all at once, everything smacked him upside the head, and the world begin to load in. He groaned, and rolled over onto his back, tipping his makeshift blanket of Bag and Jacket off himself in the process. He stared up at the ceiling, eyes drawn to a small shaft of light, a makeshift skylight born from years of disuse. Of course. It was too much to ask for this to have all been a dream, huh? The setting hadn’t changed since yesterday. There was still a shell casing a couple inches away from where he’d decided to rest his head last night. There was still a gun disguised as a tube of lipstick in his jacket pocket. They were still all stuck on murder island, surrounded by people who’d be more than happy to take up an impromptu chainsaw carving course.

But worst of all, Roy still had the taste of that soda in his mouth. God. Blech. Guh. Drinking an entire can of arsenic would have been preferable. A toast to not dying didn’t exactly work when it felt like Dr. Idiot’s Pisswater was poisoning him. At least it had an upside; living off of bread and water sounded a lot more appealing now. Fucking yay?

There was a spider dangling by its little self-made bungie cord a few metres above Roy’s head. He rubbed his eyes and groaned again, trying to force himself into focusing on the little dude spinning away above him. It wasn’t easy, not with some asshole yelling in his ear, spouting some bullshit good morning cheer and talking about all the people who had-

Like the guy who inadvertently invented the boomerang, it hit him, and Roy felt all the tiredness flood out of him, body on high alert, laser focused on the announcements. There was important stuff he needed to remember. Important names he had to keep in mind. The terrorists had taken his notepad and pens (bastards (not that Roy would have been caught dead willingly writing anything, he had an image to maintain)), so he was gonna have to hope his memory stayed up to snuff.

Roy lay there in silence, listening to the dickbag who called himself Danya begin to roll out the names. He’d started repeating the first one over and over in his head, when something else demanded his attention. There was someone at the door. Could be a friend. Could be someone injured. Could be a killer. Could be a girl scout selling cookies. Aw, fuck dude, he wished it was cookies.

Whatever the case, it needed dealing with, especially if it was the last one. Roy scrambled to his feet, hastily trying to fling his jacket onto his shoulders with one hand, succeeding only in getting his hand in the pocket and the rest of the jacket wrapped around his arm.

“Fuck, shit, goddamnit why’d this have to happen so fuckin’ early, Who’s there?”

Inside his jacket pocket, Roy’s hand curled around the kiss of death.

Would it have killed those terrorist bastards to have given them sleeping bags? Dan's sleep was restless, and while a lot of that could probably be blamed on being kidnapped by those same bastards, he was going to blame at least some of it on lying on the hard floor of the mess hall.

But hey, he wasn't dead, although that was probably true of almost everyone.

Static began and the terrorist leader started listing off dead classmates. Dan was surprised it was more than two people, but what was more important was the noise he heard. Although Johnny was closer and could hopefully make sure no intruder was going to shoot up the place. Well, shoot it up again anyway.

He staggered to his feet. Then took two tiny steps forward. His back felt the most sore it had been in his life. Sleeping on the floor was the worst idea he'd ever had. If they were still on the island by the next night Dan was going to try and get them to sleep somewhere else.

Because fuck this sore back bullshit.

Tomorrow came with a vengeance.

Badass Johnny was probably running on four hours of sleep, which, to be fair, was normal-ish. A bit lower than usual, yeah, but not too bad. His eyelids couldn't really bear to separate themselves, were getting a little too close for comfort. Or maybe close enough to become comfortable? or- something about comfort. But they shot open with the announcer's greetings.

It sorta felt like that one time in ninth grade when he'd gone to some sketchy pizza place in Central Mall because food, and he'd been a devotee of pizza before, especially Hawaiian. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever the time, he'd have it, but then the pizza they served him was cold and there was a single piece of pineapple, but he still went for it because Hawaiian, and then he finished it whole. But then he ended up in the hospital the next night. Food poisoning. And he never touched another slice of Hawaiian again.

And, it felt like that, but with the pizza as humor, and the food poisoning as those little riffs the announcer made after every death, if that made sense? Did it? Probably not. Maybe it was a bit of a loopy analogy because four hours of sleep left him feeling loopy and out of it, and having some man joking, almost waiting for a ba-dum-tss after every death announced, having some man going on like that left him feeling loopy and out of it.

So, after all was said and done, Yasmin and Panya and Aaron were down for the count. And he would never see them, hear them, talk to them again. Same for the others named. And it was almost funny how there was some type of priority list in his head of the people he'd mourn. Like some waiting list for the figments of his imagination in his mind. Just wait in line, Will, I'll think of you later. Same for you, Lyndi, get in line. It was almost funny.

Really fucked up when you thought about it, though. Maybe he could do without joking for a while. He wouldn't let the terrorists ruin it, no way. But a little rest would be fine.

It was probably just lines read off a script. It was read all too steady to be anything but that. Just lines read off a script containing the lives of eight of his classmates, and the mistakes of five of them. And for the first couple of seconds after the names were read, while the danger zone was being announced, it felt almost like waking up in the morning and hearing about some terrible plane crash. Like, yeah, they'd mention the names of the victims, their ages.

But you typically didn't run into all the victims on a regular basis up until yesterday.

Badass Johnny was left staring at the wall for a few more seconds. And then he looked up. Roy and Dan were staring at the door. He hadn't heard a thing.

"Wh-what's up?"

The door was still. Sitting uneasily in it's own frame, a single hinge partially rusted with swirling eddies of jagged earthen tones. Stoic, staid. Wood that had borne a single splinter ridden crater and the visible glint of a piece of metal bullet as a testament to it's violent reintroduction to the whims of the living. The door stayed still even as observed, refusing a storybook compelling to cliche and action, happily defying anthropic principal.

The noise beyond the door, the creaking of flesh uneasily on top of bone and the crack of concrete pebbles under a wooden sole, made no such pretensions.

"..."

And heavy thuds and impacts along the wall, perhaps a few degrees to the left of the abandoned door frame, something gracelessly plopping with the rustling tones of heavy breathing. Desperate breathing. The noise sped to a rapid heartbeats per minute. A squeak, in a decidedly human tone. A rumble as the earth resettled to accommodate something, dirt crunching and creaking as it was dug anew.

No answer. Probably not scouts, then, damnit. Roy knew scouts, and they… Actually, no, Roy had never met a scout in his life. But he had seen Up! And that kid hadn’t shut up about being a scout and getting his badges and all that shit. God. What an asshole. Roy would probably have just pushed him out of the balloon house at the first opportunity.

Anyway. The point was (yes there was a point, shut the fuck up) that to Roy’s knowledge, scouts didn’t pass up the opportunity at telling other people they were scouts. Scratch that one off the list, then. But it didn’t narrow things down any further. There were a pisston of reasons why you wouldn’t respond. You could be scared of everyone and everything and not wanna draw more attention to yourself. You could be too injured to raise your voice. You could, y’know, have already scampered off, like some idiot playing ding dong ditch.

And, of course, you could be one of those names on the announcements, lying low and hoping no-one found you. Or maybe, hoping that someone did.

Roy didn’t consider himself a pessimist – if a glass was half empty, that was still an entire half-glass of coke or whatever to drink, dipshit – but he had adapted quickly to the bullshit this island was throwing at him. Adapt on the fly, that was what he was good at on the field, nice to see that part of him hadn’t gotten rusty. And out here, if you were ever in any doubt, you had to assume the worst-case scenario and prepare for it. Better that than waking up to find your throat had been slit.

Time to switch his tactics up. Working carefully this time, Roy untangled his jacket from his arm, letting it drop to the floor as he moved the kiss of death from his jacket pocket to his pants pocket. Then, he – wait, had Johnny seriously not heard someone at the door? What the fuck. How much of a heavy sleeper was the guy? The mess hall could be exploding around him and he’d snooze right on through it.

Roy put his finger to his lips to shush Johnny, then knelt down and reached into his duffel bag, drawing out a long, thin shard of glass, one of Roy’s socks wrapped around part of it. It felt REAL gross, walking around with one bare foot inside his shoe, but having a weapon made the gentle stabbing of gravel in his shoe worthwhile.

As softly as his big, clumping footsteps would allow, Roy sneaked over to the door. He looked at Dan and Johnny, nodded, and allowed himself three deep breaths. Then he threw the door open, and pointed the makeshift dirk at the person’s torso.

Or, at least, where a person’s torso should have been. There was someone out here, alright, but they absolutely weren’t planning on doing anything malicious. Not sprawled out on the ground, face in the dirt, still breathing but probably hoping the earth would swallow them whole so they could escape their embarrassment. Roy couldn’t tell who she was from the back of her head, but she wasn’t a threat by any stretch of the imagination.

“Hey, uh, y’know that’s not what they mean by a dirt nap, right?”

Fucking nice, jot that one down. Roy lowered his arm, and looked back inside the mess hall, jerking his head in a ‘come on out, a literal fly would be more harmful than this chick' kind of motion.

A small robin had flitted down by this point, and had started to bounce around on the girl’s head.

Was Roy completely insane? Or just stupid? Dan had no idea why anyone would carry around shards of glass. I mean, sure, they weren't exactly the best armed group in the world, but shards of glass just seemed to be asking for Roy to injure himself.

Dan hobbled forward, hoping his back would sort itself out soon, when Roy opened the door.

And what Dan saw wasn't threatening at all. He couldn't help but chuckle a little. A girl lying in the dirt was what had them all so nervous? This place was clearly messing with their thinking. Maybe they were just a bit too paranoid. After all it would freakin' suck if they were too paranoid to go with any rescuers that showed up.

"I think her way is preferable, dude."

Dan would take his face in the dirt over face under the dirt any day.

They didn't answer, but their tense positions, the way they looked at the door, the finger Roy pressed against his lips, all of that answered Badass Johnny's questions. And then something glinted in Roy's hand. A long glass shard. Where had he gotten that- he'd gotten it from the shattered window just behind them. Right. That should've been obvious. But yeah, a long glass shard.

A lump formed in Badass Johnny's throat. Maybe this was just for the sake of appearances. Like him with his pan. Badass Johnny didn't plan on actually using it. Just for waving-around-menacingly purposes. Like, he avoid violence to look all good and noble and stuff. But the announcements said it. Not everyone did.

Pebbles rustled outside. His skin felt cold, prickly. He stood up, holding a pan up. He held his breath as Roy prepared to open the door.

Nothing.

What was it with this island and anticlimaxes? First, the mess hall and its complete lack of people, and then-

Roy told them to come out. Coast was clear. So, he followed, and saw someone lying on the ground. And then Roy and Dan joked, and suddenly humor was a thing again. The terrorists had failed at taking that from them. Another point in their favor. Badass Johnny 2, terrorists 0- well actually there was the announcements and the 8 deaths and it would be best not to dwell on any of that.

He laughed. And then he came closer, looked closer. The girl was wearing a green blouse.

He'd told her it looked nice, the day before yesterday.

Badass Johnny walked forward, past Roy and his glass shard, and leaned down.

"Rachael?"

The collapsed lump of flesh was clothed in two day old clothes that friends said modestly drew the eye. Wrapped in wrinkles and folds like a wet sack of bagged groceries, discarded over the uncaring earth. It writhed as thundercracks broke the air in bursts of cadence.

“Hey, uh, y’know that’s not what they mean by a dirt nap, right?”

"I think her way is preferable, dude."




A blurb of inappropriately colorful warmth and fluff briefly alighted on a crown of gordians knots worth of hair. It scratched at the chocolatey brunette feed before judging it unworthy and fluttering off with
gentle chirps.




"Rachael?"

Rachael flipped over with a near cracking of her own neck, so wildly she twisted. Eyes scanning

One silhouette of muscle and unruly ginger hair lingered aside the door, one silhouette of cropped brown hair and almond eyes. One silhouette, closer, stealing the sunlight from the girl's skin.

Rachael felt her stopped breath twisting and gnarling, stabbing her lungs then her brain in quick succession.

She flipped over so fast she nearly clipped Johnny's cheek with her already malformed knuckles. Escape. The wall. One way. A familiar face. The other way. No comfort. No relief for her adrenaline exhausted dregs of existence. Her legs kicked and thrashed. Drowning in dirt. Hyperventilating, each desperate gasp running over the previous one, each desperate gasp a failed scream for help as she failed to recognize a friend as anything more than another person who'd hurt and kill her like the others but she deserved it

Rachael managed to put one arm's length between herself and Johnny, pinning herself against her own cornered animal's corner, she grabbed at the cool metal handle of the gun erupting from under her own hip where she'd trapped it in her wrestling with herself, she failed to grab it with flailing fingers over and over again as her thoughts were only fight or flight and how she'd gorily die either way.

[[Wendy Fischer Continued From: Cursed are the ones who can't abide.]]

"So, let's see what 'extra supplies' Bridgette found littered on the island, shall we, Mr. Dolph?"

The corners of Wendy's eyes squinted a bit, head slightly turned at an angle, as her lips gave the carp a sheepish smile. It rested on the remnants of the still somewhat frozen section of ice-cubes, water from the melted pieces already drained, leaving the cooler with a lighter burden.

She peeled through the contents of the heavier bag, marked G26, looking for anything out of the ordinary. It seemed like Bridgette had a little extra of everything Wendy had in her own bag. Double in fact. That was hardly fair. That was okay though, because everything the gardener had was now hers. Including this large cooking pan-pot hybrid jammed into the pack, with everything stacked on top. Interesting. Bridgette had already provided the pretty knife, but she went through the trouble of finding a nifty large sauce pan, too. How nice. She could definitely use this. Little by little, Wendy lightened the load, taking the essentials of Bridgette's sack into her own.

From a distance, Wendy had seen the green blouse flow toward the meal-giving shelter as its owner moved through the fields, a grasshopper in winter. Wendy wanted to call out on its adventure, as the green made haste to the home of ants. Fly little cicada, fly. — She did not.


Loud speakers blared and a call of "Gooood morning, children..." a voice all too familiar, beat into her skull, right from nowhere.

The lost girl shrank into the grass, hands trembling over covered ears, back pressed to walls of the open cooler, cowering.

A scene replayed. The blood splattering, on her cheek, on her braid. Her own screams. Her own fingers raking against her face skin. The large man, voice booming as he spoke, standing over their teacher, face shrouded in shadows, only the whites of his eyes and teeth glowing with menace.

Wendy had a front seat view.

She listened, of death, as before. This time of the others. Others on the bus, like when she turned and looked at her friend Will. First to kill. Now a carrion meal. She wept into her palms. No sounds just tears. The loud speaker went off. The voice was no more. She thought of the names of varying love turned loss, former acquaintances, fellow cheerleaders, all around good people either killing or dead. Her attention went back to the carp, Mr. Dolph, at the hole in its scaly flesh.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to let her stab you."

He had taken a knife to the gullet for her. Even without a head. It was a reminder not to let his sacrifice be in vain. It made her sad, but she couldn't keep thinking sad things. Especially not every-time that man's voice filled her ears. Mr. Dolph would have wanted her to be fearless. Daddy too in fact. She couldn't disappoint them. Not for all they've done.

Then she thought of Vincent - it was pretty funny. Oh, and Panya too. Sounds like Bridgette had indeed plucked and pruned poor Panya's petals. Apparently, the gardener was still alive too with her absence from the death toll. How she managed to escape while Wendy slept and not decide to prune her as well, was a mystery no doubt. She washed the few tears from her eyes, using some of the melted ice-blocks. Everything would be okay.

The only somewhat recognizable girl in green had crashed, in front of the building, face down in the dirt. Now the door was opening. Wendy grabbed her stuff, leaving the bag labeled G26 on the ground, devoid of essentials. She turned away.

What if the terrible man was making his announcements from in there. The one named Victor Danya. She couldn't stay. She needed to be fearless not stupid.

Definitely not dumb.

Wendy rubbed her forearms and fled. Her quest for pants and help for Kasumi would have to continue elsewhere.

[[Wendy Fischer Thinks: When There's Nothing Left to Burn, You Have to Set Yourself on Fire.]]

“I dunno, man, you ever tried to eat dirt? Tastes like shit, literally.”

Roy grinned at Dan, letting his arm fall to his side, glass knife now ready and waiting to stab that greatest evil of all, the ground. He could feel his heart beating again, as Johnny made his way forwards. Anticlimactic the revelation of the newcomer might have been, but being able to actually breathe and laugh again afterwards was worth it five times over. If they could recover like that when things were really looking south, then maybe they’d all make it out of here fine and-

No, wait, shit, fuck, he’d fucked up, he’d fucked up big time.

“I, uh, so I’ve heard. Allegedly.”

Phew. A liar with a hidden gun and, until now, a hidden knife he might be, but Roy wasn’t going to be remembered as a dirt eater. He rolled his shoulder as Johnny approached the stricken girl, trying to get rid of the exhaustion stubbornly clinging to his body.

The robin had fluttered off somewhere, all this noise and commotion probably too much for its dumb little brain to handle. Man. It would be pretty legit to be a bird right about now. Get yourself into a shitty spot, or a scrap when you had a busted arm, or, y’know, a bullshit situation where some tiny-dicked pisswipe in desperate need of a toupee was strapping bombs to peoples’ necks, and you could just peace out and fly to warmer climates.

Such as away from the scenario Roy currently found himself in.

The girl had scrabbled to her feet in the blink of an eye, panic flooding her eyes and her face behind her tangled and dirty hair. She was trying, desperately, like a drowned sailor searching for a plank of wood, to grab at something at her waistband, and Roy didn’t have to be Uri Geller to figure out what it was.

“Whoa whoa whoa, hey, whoa, hold up!” Roy sputtered out, taking a healthy step back from her. Slowly, as calmly as his heart (now way too fucking noticeable) would allow, he moved his hand up along his leg and back into his pocket.

“We’re cool, we’re cool, everything’s cool, alright? Knife’s going back in my pocket.”

His fingers brushed against the lipstick gun once again.