The Commutative Property

[Applesintime]

"Oh shit, a dead body!"

((Gregory Miller continued from Shavasana))

Alright, so maybe that whole fishing boat plan was now a bust. Turns out that for all his skill at video games, map-reading in Total War was much more simple compared to map reading in real life. There were a lot more jetties and boats than the map had indicated, and so they had kinda got lost for a little while. Eventually, they had made their way to this shop boat thing or whatever it was, only to discover that they weren't the first people to make it here. This guy probably didn't stab himself in the eye and then the chest twice. Maybe there were some people who would be fucked up enough to do that on this show, but somehow Gregory didn't think he had done it to himself.

Right now, Gregory was crouched over the body, examining it. Whatever Nate and Cory were doing, they weren't his concern now; Cory was probably crying and shitting himself like some little kid because y'know, he's never watched SOTF so he's completely taken aback by the fact that yes, people do end up killing each other on the muder gameshow, what a damn surprise. He vaguely recognised the guy from his year – some kind of Biblical name, he knew that much. David? Jesus? No, it was something shorter than that. Did it even matter? Whoever he was, he was dead. One of the unfortunate early deaths that slipped through the cracks, only remembered by his friends and family and the few weird kids who took an early kill and created a small fandom around them.

"Hope you get remembered, bro." Gregory whispered. For a second, he reached to close the dead boy's eyes before realising that he was missing one and he didn't want to get his hand all bloody because eugh, that would be gross. Whoever his killer was, they certainly had no qualms about murder. It was late, so announcements would probably be soon, and then he’d get to see who was to be consigned to the back of the history books, and who were the jet-setters of this season. Man, he had really wanted to get someone today, but it would be bad optics if he just randomly turned and started beating Cory to death or something. Nate would probably stop him, too, and then he'd be the one dead.

"Hey, after announcements, you guys wanna sleep and I'll take first shift on watch? Then, uh... Cory next maybe? I dunno, whatever works. You guys can decide." They could always go to the fishing boat tomorrow.

[Dogs231]

((Cory Cartwright continued from Shavasana))

Nothing could have prepared Cory for the sight of a corpse.

He'd written about murder victims before. He'd described their rotting bodies in detail. But nothing he could have penned could have conveyed the horror of the bloodied mass of flesh and bone that had once been a fellow student of his high school.

He had seen it as he turned the corner entering the room.

He wished he hadn't.

He turned his head away, propping his arm against the wall near the doorway as nausea began to set in. He felt sick to his stomach.

He tried to pose a question to his allies, attempting to keep his voice steady as he grappled with the fact that his classmates had already begun turning on each other mere hours into the game.

"Do either of you recognize him?"

Cory didn't think he recognized who the body had once been. He couldn't place a name to the bloodied face with the ruined eye.

He scarcely noticed Gregory speaking until his nausea briefly subsided. He brought up a schedule for taking shifts - first Gregory, then him. It worked well for his plan. He'd have the perfect opportunity to get away from the others while they slept, and he could look for some people who were more willing and able to think things through with some modicum of sense.

"That sounds fine to me, yeah. I'll take the second shift."

Nausea set back in after the words left his mouth.

[Somersault]

((Nate Suchinda continued from Shavasana))

So, the current elephant in the room was obviously the dead body in the room, but Nate was too busy trying to go and find the best sleeping area in the room to pay much attention to that. Obviously, that was fricking BS, because how could you not look at a dead body, but still. He was trying not to think about that. Even if it was a constant reminder of why he needed to GTFO of this whole trio whatever.

"Third shift for me? Cool."

Cory and Greg were obviously planning or chatting or something, and while the Nate of Mangrove High would've been exceedingly pissed that conversations about such things were happening under his nose, the Nate of Murder Boat Place was significantly less discerning. Maybe he was finally chilling. Maybe his self-preservation was slowly dwindling.

Either way, the warning signs of how this group was going to go up in flames were all there. He just didn't care enough to do much other than watch it burn.

Putting his backpack on the ground as a makeshift pillow, Nate closed his eyes. Tomorrow, maybe he'd feel more. Or he'd feel nothing at all. Pretty equal chances at this point.

[Applesintime]

Nate was apparently going to sleep already, which was fair enough; today had been a pretty exhausting day after all, what with all the walking around the maze that was this flotilla and the whole being on SOTF thing. Man, he was on live TV! He still hadn't gotten used to that fact yet - sure, he had made a couple of funny cracks that were mostly aimed at the audience rather than his fellow Buccaneers, but it was hard to get used to knowing there were people watching everything you did, just waiting to pick you apart like a vulture eyeing an animal with a broken leg. Or something like that. He hoped he had an audience.

"He was in my year I think! Some kinda biblical name, like, uh... Jesus or David or something." Gregory chirped in response to Cory's question. Was David a biblical name? He couldn't actually remember. Ah well, it probably was! And if it wasn't, then it was just too bad. It was something from the Bible, though! He was sure of it. Probably. Man, whoever had stabbed him in the eye had gone through his glasses. Gingerly picking the frame of the glasses up by the bit that went over your nose, he examined them. They were glasses. Gregory wasn't sure why he picked them up in the first place, so he dropped them. They fell onto his chest, bounced off and clattered into the space between his arm and his body.

"Hey, uh..." Swinging around to talk to Cory, who was hiding from the body - didn't this guy realise he was gonna have to see one sooner rather than later? - Gregory noticed something. Lying on a counter, seemingly unscathed amid all the destruction and chaos that this guy's death must have caused, was a towel. Neatly folded, with his team's colours and a big Ben's Crabs logo on it. Was it from one of his teammates? Abel's bandana was pink, so maybe...

"Hey, I think my teammate killed this dude. Look! It's like, one of my team towels!" Picking it up Gregory held it up, shaking some residue off it. He wans't sure how Cory was gonna react to this, but with the sudden hum of the loudspeakers switching on, his attention shifted. The pleasant tones of Ritzy Daggers came through, signalling that the Three Buccaneers had survived at least twelve hours. Woo! All he had to do was survive what? Eighty-four more at the most, and then he'd be back home with a nice Wikipedia entry, a bunch of money and probably a lot of fans. He could go back to the little ranch Sammy owned, and they could make some kinda special SOTF themed honey thing and they'd both get rich.

Five killers. This dude here wasn't thrown off a ship, or crushed between crates, or shot or strangled, so this guy must be...

"Abel!" That was it! Abel! He knew it wasn't David or Jesus or whatever, it was something shorter, and Abel was shorter than David and Jesus! In like, letter count, not height. Who knows, Jesus himself might have been really tall. Hey, come to think of it, wasn't Abel some dude in the Bible who lost his eye? Standing up, he felt a brilliant joke coming to mind. Gregory smirked.

"Heh, eye guess Abel shoulda seen it coming." He let out a short giggle. Now that one was definitely for the guys at home. Cory wouldn't appreciate it. Nate was like, sleeping but he probably wouldn't care either, which was a shame because come on, that was brilliant! He was the guy who lost his eye, and with the whole 'I' and 'Eye' thing and saying how he shoulda seen it coming? Brilliant!

Hearing no laughter behind him, he sighed. His wit was wasted here.

[Dogs231]

Gregory pointed out the corpse had been someone in his year before casually desecrating the body. As callous as he was, hearing him say or seeing him do something awful was becoming less and less shocking. Cory hated that feeling of numbness. He was barely surprised when Gregory mentioned that it could have been a teammate of his who had committed the murder, in a tone that Cory could swear sounded almost prideful.

Cory sighed and took a breath in, just before the announcements blared. Immediately, the sickeningly cheery voice of the announcer began screeching throughout the arena. She opened with meaningless pleasantries but then moved on to list the names of people.

People who had killed. People who had died.

Verity Stewart, Timothy Torales, Carol Hong, Oliver Sheffield, Xander Miles, Rhonda Rollins, Akeno Kudo, Maxine Schwimmer, Abel Kuntz, Seo-yun Lee.

Names he couldn't place. Faces he could scarcely remember. People who he had barely known. People who he'd never meet.

Except one. Akeno Kudo. She was in the library, with the book report she needed a book to read for. She had seemed like a normal, reasonable person at the time. And she'd killed someone already, strangling them out of what seemed to be petty revenge. People were losing their minds already. That was obvious. He'd have to keep his wits about him or run the risk of becoming just another victim. He tried to commit the killer's names to memory, just in case he was ever to stumble upon one of them.

As he ran through the causes of death in his head, Cory had concluded that the corpse - who Gregory had shortly before identified as someone in his year - could only be Abel Kuntz. None of the others would have fit the description. He hated having to picture the body in his head, but it was less horrible than looking directly at it. Gregory, evidently, had come to the same conclusion, blurting the name out loudly. Cory turned himself slightly to look at Greg, taking care to keep the body out of his line of sight, as the other boy seemed to think for a brief moment about his next words.

And then, Gregory opened his mouth again. As with every other time he opened his mouth to speak, he said something completely terrible, and in this case, it was a pun.

Cory had concluded that Gregory was a terrible person before hearing this, but it only reinforced his belief of how horrible his choice in ally had been. With every syllable of that sentence, he disrespected the dead, adding onto it at the end a wide, smug grin. And afterward, he sighed disappointedly, as if he had expected anyone to find that funny.

Cory didn't even want to dignify what he said with a response. It wasn't worth it. He walked away from both Greg and the corpse into the storage room and placed his bag on the ground. He unzipped his bag, removed the towel from inside, and placed it neatly on the ground to serve as a pillow.

Cory sat down in front of it and took out a bottle of water and half of the sandwich. He wasn't hungry, but he knew he would need to keep his strength up.

"I think I'm going to try and eat and then go to sleep. Wake me up when it's my shift."

He doubted he would need to be woken up. After everything he's seen and heard, rest wasn't on his mind.

Escape, however, most certainly was.

[Applesintime]

Gregory just watched Cory walk away into the storage room disappointedly. Come on, if that could make him laugh, what could? Man, was he one of those egghead nerds who didn't actually find anything funny and told the teacher that you had homework due when you like, really needed another day to due it and so you were just shooting glares at this guy begging him not to bring it up? Probably.

Either way, they were both asleep. One of them was actually snoring, which was kinda funny. Of course, it would be less funny if they were snoring and someone found them and killed them but ah, that probably wasn't going to happen. Gregory was here, after all! And if anyone tried to kill them, he would kill them first. Of course, if he wanted to, he could kill them right now. It would be easy. Grab Cory's knife from its sheath, and then slash Cory and Nate's throats. Two kills, easy peasy, and he'd have a whole bunch of stuff!

But of course, that would be too easy. What was cool or interesting about killing two guys while they were sleeping? Nothing, that's what. So, after watching them sleep for a while longer, he eventually walked away. His attention was now directed at the shelves, wiping away the dust and the weird spicy thing that made his eyes hurt slightly just being near them trying to find some kind of timer or watch or something. Eventually, he found a Yamana-branded egg timer - seriously, who the hell would buy an egg timer with Yamana's face on it? - and set it to the maximum time; one hour/ He'd wake Cory up in three, he decided.

---

Hour 1 was exceptionally boring, to be frank. He didn't have any phone to play games on for one, and there wasn't much here but a SOTF Monopoly set with the box crushed in the middle and so he couldn't really get it open without breaking it open and he didn't wanna do that because you couldn't play Monopoly with one person. At first, he had just wandered looking around at all the stuff on the shelf, but that was boring now. So here Gregory was, rambling to a camera about bees and honey. It was like nine or ten so nobody would be watching this, they'd be watching the highlights but darn it, he can ramble about bees any time he wants!

"So like, one time that summer we got called out all the way to Fort Myers because none of the beekeepers there wanted to deal with that one. So we loaded up in Sammy's truck and drove all the way there with all the beekeeping stuff in the back and when we arrived there, you could like, see why nobody wanted to deal with it because the dude was like, a hoarder or something and there was a bunch of abandoned coffee tables and couches and bureaus and shit and it was kinda hard to tell which one the bees were in. We found them eventually but it took a while and then like - they were like, in the drawer part of a coffee table that had cracked and you could see all the bees crawling about inside and it was cool! Anyway, once we had done that we drove back to his ranch and got them set up in a new hive! It was cool."

He recognised that yeah, people probably didn't care much about bees but hey, this was the biggest show in the world! If he could even get like, one or two people interested in the whole bee thing then that would be cool. And better yet, he could kinda use it as a platform to talk about why pesticides and stuff are bad for bees! Silver linings, right?

"Anyway, there was also this one time where we got called out to a junkyard..."

---

Ring! Ring! Ring! The Yamana timer went off and Grgeory jumped out of his skin; it wasn't loud, but all he had for company was the sound of someone snoring and the gentle sensations of the boat rocking to and fro, so he was interrupted in the middle of a story about a mishap at the ranch.

"And so yeah, we had to mop up after that because the extractor broke open and all the honey went everywhere. It sucked, but you don't wanna eat floor honey!" Gregory warned his audience, as eating floor honey was bad and unhygenic. His legs were getting kinda cramped from sitting criss-cross and looking up at the camera like he was back in elementary school, so he stood up, leaning against the counter for balance. He wondered who that towel belonged to. Ritzy had mentioned that nobody from his team had killed, so who was it? Why had they left it there? Were they dead now, or had Seo-yun attacked them too and they had to bail?

Well, they weren't dead, so that was good! Ending up like Abel was not good. It's a good thing he wasn't Abel to see what had happened to him, anyway.

FUCK! Fuck, he should have used that one! That was better! 'I guess he wasn't Abel to see it coming'! Damn it. Maybe Cory would have laughed then. He didn't get his whole schtick, to be honest. He seemed like one of those mopey people who just wandered around feeling bad for themselves because they got put in SOTF and ended up getting picked off by someone more willing to play than them. Honestly, it would probably be a mercy to kill him, but slitting throats while they were sleeping made for bad TV. Besodes, everyone was sleeping. He'd get the European audience maybe, but that was it. No action, just some dude getting killed.

Sitting down again, he pulled out his Subway sandwich and looked at it. He didn't like tuna, but he was hungry. So he ate it anyway. Man, they could have given him like chicken or beef or something. They knew like, everything about everyone, they could at least give him the food he preferred! Damn executives, he thought, eating more of his sandwich. There were crumbs everywhere. It probably didn't look very good but that wasn't a concern of his at the moment. Soon, the sandwich was finished, and he washed it down with an entire bottle of Gatorade. Yum! Man, he wished there was a microwave somewhere. Cold Subway was never good.

---

Ring! Ring! This time, Gregory didn't jump, and instead he had been watching the timer excitedly. Two hours had passed quick as lightning, and now there was only one to go. Admittedly, he was starting to feel sleepy himself. He compensated by eating an entire packet of Life Savers; the fruity ones, to be more specific. They were tasty, and now he had enough sugar to keep him going for another hour. This time, he found himself walking over towards Abel. He didn't know why, so he sat next to him, staring at his corpse. He had seen a lot of them on TV, of course, but never one in the flesh. It was almost... breathtaking in a way. Here was someone from his school, dead on SOTF. You never think you'd get so close, actually be on the show until you are.

"Hey buddy. I'll get Seo-yun for you, don'tcha worry!" Gregory patted Abel on the arm because his head was bloody and he didn't want to get any of that on him because ew. He could handle a body, sure, but not the getting blood on him part. They had a bathroom, but man, he didn't wanna use the water up when he could like, use the water to refill a bottle. Actually, he could do that! So he got up, went to the bathroom and refilled his Gatorade bottle with water. Then he came back to Abel's body and an idea ran through him. It was nearly midnight, which means it was time to wake Cory up soon, right? So grabbing Abel's glasses, he put them on. He couldn't see well because they were covered with blood, so he wiped them on Abel's shirt.

"Sorry, Abel!" Abel, being a corpse, didn't seem to really care about the theft of his glasses.

Walking over to the stockroom, Gregory bent over Cory, gently shaking him awake. He was gonna play a little prank on Cory with these glasses, he decided.

[Dogs231]

Cory's eyes slowly raised as he realized that he must have drifted to sleep at some point. He raised his head and back above the ground, placing himself in a sitting position while he rubbed his eyes. It must be his shift.

As he finally opened his eyes, he was greeted with, of course, Gregory Miller. This time, in his endless hilarity, he had decided to desecrate a corpse again and was now wearing Abel's broken, bloody glasses. He had only taken the barest minimum effort in cleaning them, as evidenced by the smudges all over the lenses.

Cory sputtered out a disgusted response as he dragged himself off of the ground.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

Gregory was evidently a master of taking everything way too far. His desire to escape, already solidified, continued to grow. Cory, at that moment, wanted nothing more than to be anywhere else but that room.

"You know what, I don't even want to hear the answer to that question. I'm going to take my shift."

He spat out his words with a somewhat concealed contempt before folding the towel and placing it back in the daypack. He heaved the bag over his shoulder and walking out of the room, utterly disgusted.

At the very least, this would most certainly be the last few hours he spent listening to and seeing Gregory's horrible behavior.

[Applesintime]

"Aw man, you're no fun." He called as Cory left. He didn't seem to find this very funny, which just baffled Gregory. Honestly, it seemed like the dude just spent all his time staring at a blank wall when he wasn't in school or something. Although Gregory was normally a cheerful guy, something about the way that little... that little fucker had talked to him just infuriated him.

He was going to die tonight. One way or another. Nate was cool, though, so Gregory would leave him alive. It wasn't even just about wanting to look cool when he got kills, Cory was genuinely pissing him off at this point, what with his stupid fucking anti-SOTF views and the way he was speaking to people. If it wasn't Gregory that dealt the blow, got that little tick next to his name on those betting sites, it would be someone else. And god damn it, he wanted a kill under his belt.

Sighing, he shut the door, shrugging his bag off and setting it down on the floor. He pulled the glasses off, staring at them before throwing them full force at the wall. They bounced off and both legs flew off the frame, which brushed past a shelf full of Season 65 plushies and hit the floor, where the right leg took the opportunity to land next to it. He let out a deep sigh, turning to his bag. Instead of lying down, he unzipped it and pulled the bolas from it.

Then, crouching down, he crept to the door and opened it slowly, making sure it didn't creak.

[Dogs231]

Cory began taking stock of the room as he walked - there was little he could work with. He picked up some rope and some clamps and placed them both in his bag. He pulled out the map for a moment and began to assess what path to take. There were two ways out of the shop boat, on opposite sides. One led to the yacht. The other, where he had come from, led to the jetties, where multiple paths broke off.

Perfect. He'd be able to lose them that way. Doubling back to the houseboat seemed like a poor choice. Too far and too easily expected. He'd make his way to the ferry.

He folded the map back up and placed it in his bag. He checked over once, then twice.

Nothing missing.

He looked up from his bag as he pulled out the flashlight and turned it on, scanning it across the room.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

As he opens the door, he heard a small crunching noise. He quickly turned, only to see the glint of metal as the bolas swung towards him.

[Applesintime]

Cory's footsteps echoed through the room as Gregory crouched behind a few shelves and followed his movements. Sneaky and slow, like he was playing Battlegrounds and the weapon RNG hadn't been kind to him, which it hadn't been - he still wished he had a sword. Cory grabbed a rope and some clamps from a shelf, much to his confusion; was he gonna do like a Lukas but instead of shooting himself just hang himself? Man, that would be boring. You were put on SOTf so you can kill or be killed, not to just kill yourself.

And then, he pulled the map out. That was weird. Why would he need the map if he was just gonna like, take watch? Maybe plotting out a route for them to take? Wait.

He was trying to bail on them, wasn't he? The little fucker. Sure, Gregory was gonna kill him, but that was just a coward move. Ah well. It wasn't going to last long. His last thoughts may as well be something like, happy and brighter instead of him pissing himself like a kid because he got put on the show. Asshole.

Finally, Cory paused near the door, glancing around the room, before doing a final sweep with a flashlight; Gregory hadn't been prepared for that one, and he froze. Still, Cory seemed to not notice him. It was time to end this.

Rushing towards his back, Gregory raised the bolas, ready to swing it. Then something crunched under his foot; glass or something, it didn't matter. Gregory stumbled forwards, Cory turned around to see what the noise made and inadvertently flashed Gregory right in the face with the beam of the flashlight. And of course, the bolas swung right above his head. If he just hadn't stunbled, hadn't tripped, Cory would be dead. Fuck. He was probably gonna die. Staggering backwards, unable to see much due to the light, he waited for the pain.

[Dogs231]

Cory hadn't expected Gregory to follow him. He hadn't expected the ambush. And he certainly hadn't expected to survive it.

By a stroke of pure luck, the flashlight had blinded Gregory before it fell out of Cory's hands, and the metal and rope had aimlessly swung through the air above him. He swung his arm without thought, hoping to land to a hit against his attacker, however weak it might be. He felt his hand strike what felt like skin before he scrambled to the ground to collect his flashlight.

As he picked it off the ground and began to stand back up, he saw Gregory fall to the floor out of the corner of his eye. A window for his escape had opened. He made a break for the door as the other boy lay on the ground, his bag swinging lightly at his side.

He ran as fast as he could, the light of the device in his hands illuminating the way.

((Cory Cartwright continued in Crash Course))

[Applesintime]

Ow, his eyes! Fuck, no matter how hard he tried to blink it away the lingrering effect of the bright flashlight shined directly into his eyes weren't going away. Shit, shit. If only he had managed to watch where he was fucking going, Cory would be dead by now and he'd have that knife of his! Raising his bolas, he prepared himself to strike again-

Something made contact with his nose, a fist. combined with the piece of glass or whatever it was underfoot skidding at the worst possible time, his leg slipped and he went down to the ground with a crash. It didn't like, hurt much, but he could already feel the uncomfortable sensation of a warm liquid in his right nostril, lingering for just a second on the tip of his nose before drip, drip, dripping down. Gregory could hear the sound of the jetty creaking as Cory ran away. What a fucking coward. Gregory was here, an easy target, and one that he could probably justify killing morally because he had attacked him, and he wasn't even taking it?

"FUCK YOU, YOU ASSHOLE!" Gregory screamed at the direction that he thought Cory was in. As his vision started to return, he discovered that a shelf had been the target of his yelling instead. Reaching a finger up to his nose, he confirmed that yes, he was having a nosebleed. Worse, with no tissues or anything, his shirt was all stained with a few drops of blood, and it was only getting messier. Tilting his head back and blindly groping at shelves, he eventually discovered a stack of old napkins, which he balled up and held to his nose.

Cory was long gone, that was certain. And now Gregory had a nosebleed and just looked like a fucking idiot. He could only imagine the memes they were making of him. Honestly they would probably be funny, but like, they were probably gonna make fun of him and really that would be annoying. Sitting down next to Abel's corpse, he just waited for his nosebleed to subside, tilting his head down so it would end quicker.

After what, five or so minutes? It felt like five minutes - his nosebleed had finally stopped. His shirt was bloody now, but he didn't wanna change it. It was a good shirt. Besides, even a few minutes would let Cory get even more of a headstart on him. There were a lotta places he coulda gone. And after that, he wasn't going to let anyone else kill him. Cory was his, goddamn it. And if anyone else killed him, he was gonna kill them, too. Even if they were on his team.

Shoving his bolas back into his backpack, he prepared to leave. The night was long, he was probably on a sugar high right now from all the Life Savers he had ate, but screw it! He was gonna kill Cory, and if he couldn't kill Cory he was gonna kill someone else! Either way, he didn't want to leave without a kill.

He was taking the Yamana egg timer with him, though. It was cool.

((Gregory Miller continued in Time Out))

[Somersault]

"What the...?"

See, here was Nate, trying to get his beauty sleep before he ended up going to the eternal sleep, only for him to hear crunching, or shouting, or whatever the hell people did when they were trying to murder someone else. With a groan, he instead just tried to curl in further into his bag. That was then interrupted by screaming, which sounded vaguely like Greg, so in summary, Nate couldn't get sleep. Shit.

Still, he didn't bother moving. No need to get accidentally shanked.

It was only later, as in a half an hour or so later, that Nate finally got up and saw the mess in front of him. He blinked once, and then twice.

And then, he went back to sleep.

((Nate Suchinda, continued elsewhere))