SOTF Mini

((Bunny Barlowe continued from When There's Nothing Left to Burn, You Have to Set Yourself on Fire))

She should have been celebrating.

If she’d had a bottle of champagne with her, she would have popped the cork, watched it ricochet off of the shower walls, then chug straight from the neck. Probably smash the empty bottle against the wall when she was done before letting out a cry of triumph. She should have been bouncy and perky, with a spring in her step and a song on her lips and a broad smile on her blood-spattered face.

Everything that had happened yesterday had gone in her favour. Wendy had been all self-righteous and acting like Bunny was a terrible, awful person for shooting at Jeanette and Sophie, but what had the tell-tale announcements this morning let the world know? That Miss Wendy Fischer was a cold-hearted murderer too. Oh gosh, Bunny could only imagine what was going on between Scarlett and Wendy and Tania right now! The betrayal! The drama! The realisation that Scarlett had trusted one killer over another! The only downside was that Bunny wasn’t there to see it firsthand.

On that subject, losing Tania was, well… no great loss, really. Sure, it sucked that she had lost a meatshield and another easy notch on her killsheet if things had ever turned sour between them and Tania had grown another braincell, but what had Tania proven so far? That she cracked under the smallest amount of pressure and that she could be swayed so, so easily, like bringing out treats for a dog. The girl really didn’t have a chance, and it would honestly probably be kinder if her new allies left her in a danger zone. At least then she’d go out quickly and painlessly.

Most important was the fact she now had a kill on the board! She could just rest on her laurels until she was the only one alive, and then the terrorists would let her go, and that would be that! She’d get to go home, and become a celebrity overnight, as ‘The Girl Who Survived Death Island.’ She had an airtight alibi if anyone tried to accost her simply because her name had been on the announcements, too. She would cry, and beg for mercy, and insist that Everett had been trying to get a second kill for himself, that he’d tried to pick on poor, innocent little Bunny, and that she’d acted in self-defence and that she was really really really sorry and just so scared.

And if they didn’t swallow that, then there were still plenty of bullets left in Bunny’s gun.

So, yeah! Everything looked shockingly great for her! She should have been the happiest girl on the island!

Instead, she was slumped in a dim corner of the showers, struggling to breathe.

She had ran, the previous day, hole in her side raw and painful and bleeding, not stopping to bandage it up until she was sure that Scarlett wasn’t following her, hellbent on revenge. Then she had fallen asleep, before finally struggling her way inside the showers. Both the cut on her forehead and bullet hole in her side had stopped bleeding by now, the blood that had soaked through both her bandages and her top now dried into an ugly brown splotch, but she still hurt like hell, each and every movement making the mess in her side send shockwaves of pain throughout her body. There was a deep purple bruise on the other side of her stomach, where the cooler had smacked into her, and Bunny had made the unwise decision of touching it when she’d woken up. Her eyes began to water again at the mere thought.

She didn’t even want to think about just how much blood she had lost by now.

Bunny let out a strangled little groan, then looked across at one of the shower cubicles. There was a dead body in there. She couldn’t tell how she’d died; there was no blood or anything, no exploded collar, no sign of a struggle. She looked in better condition than Bunny did right now, that was for sure.

“Still doing better than you,” Bunny mumbled at the corpse.

She could only muster a tired imitation of her trademark giggle.

((Tessa Blackridge continued from That Sound is Your Soul Stirring))

She lead with the barrel of the gun.

Not all the time, of course. Just now. The thing made her shoulders ache, and by this point she was probably building up strength from all the exercise. How long until the lack of food and sleep took that away was anyone's guess, but today she woke up and listened to the names of her friends who had died and picked up her sniper rifle and felt almost normal about the proceedings. They were surviving, and they could keep surviving until rescue came. As long as things didn't really hit the fan before then.

She turned back to Soren. A little half-smile on her lips from the lack of clear and present danger and the question that, despite herself, she felt surprised to find was still alive. It really was kind of stupid to think that anything around the place might work, but, hey, it was worth exploring. At worst, they might meet someone else who was sane enough to run their fingers through their hair and find that grease and dandruff were notable entries in things that posed a threat to their happiness. If there was anyone else like that still on the island, she sure as hell wanted to meet them.

There was a whimper, or something, and her heart slammed inside her chest. The point of the gun danced before her, leaving burning impressions of its path of destruction in her mind like a kid waving a sparkler. She checked again to make sure Soren was close, and peered slowly around for the source of it. She didn't want to use her weapon, but if someone did then she had to accept that responsibility. That was why her thoughts of handing it over and keeping the ammunition for herself hadn't manifested into reality.

The sight that greeted her was startling. Startlingly pathetic. And a stark reminder, lest anyone forget, of why you should never give into the terrorists' demands. She recognized the girl huddled in the corner, knew what she'd done. More or less. And Tessa could only feel pity gazing down at her.

So she unshouldered the gun. Let the butt drop to the ground as had become her habit. A nonthreatening stance, though it partially belied the point. She didn't honestly know if she could bring herself to pull the trigger, but she could sure as heck imagine herself grabbing the barrel in both hands and making space for herself. Her bag, too, dropped to the ground, contents thumping lightly as the hit and the strap catching on something and hanging somewhere around her knees. Stupid thing was making a habit of that lately, fraying a bit and snagging on all the bits that stuck out everywhere and made it feel less like a simple gun and more like something that could take out, say, Alderaan.

A hand on her hip. "...Gosh, you look bad."

Maybe she was dying.

The thought didn’t scare her as much as it should have. She wanted to be scared. She wanted to be really scared of that thought. She should have been partying moments ago, and she should be terrified out of her mind right now. But it felt as though everything had been drained out of her body, leaving only this shattered husk behind, a lich that could only vaguely imitate human actions.

If only she’d managed to drag herself the last few metres into the showers instead of passing out in view of the entrance. Bunny had never been a girl scout, and the one time she’d gone camping with her family it had rained a hole through their tent and they’d gone and stayed in a hotel for the weekend instead. But she could say with pretty much certainty that passing out in the weeds, with open, untreated wounds, wouldn’t do anything to help your medical state.

She exhaled, her body violently fighting against her as she did so, and she good feel bile in her throat, threatening to match the same patch of vomit she had left outside earlier. She heard the sound of footsteps echoing in her ceramic prison, and her first thought was that it would be someone willing to patch her up better than her rushed job, and she didn’t react.

Then she realised there was just as much a chance it was someone who’d be more than happy to finish her off without any chance of a fightback, and her reaction was the same.

Bunny waited for the newcomer to find her, as they would inevitably do, and when they finally did, and she looked up to see Tessa Blackridge aiming a gun in her general direction, there was no look of surprise on her face. Not even a look of resignation. Just a thin, pale smile.

It didn’t look like Tessa had any plans to shoot her, though. Yay. That was how she was supposed to respond to that, right? There was a feeling of relief buried somewhere. It was just near impossible to feel it with all these dark clouds masking everything.

“That’s not very nice,” Bunny muttered, idle smile still on her face. She tilted her head to the side.

There was still some Bunny inside of her. She just needed to make sure it stayed alive.

((Soren Rosendahl continued from That Sound is Your Soul Stirring))

Soren watched silently from as the two girls spoke. After the last screw-up, he didn’t really trust himself to be of much help here. Whatever Bunny had gone through here must have made Yumi’s traumas seem like a spring picnic in comparison, and he was in no way equipped to deal with that. Dealing with other people was Tessa’s job, it seemed, well, that and protecting the two of them with that gun.

On the other hand, Soren’s job was to be completely and utterly useless. He was unable to talk to people, unable to protect anyone he cared about, unable to act out of anything other than cowardice. He gritted his teeth and stared at the ground for a moment before looking back up at the pair in front of him, taking a few tentative steps toward Tessa as he hoped not to make his presence too obvious.

As he got closer to where Bunny was lying, the full extent of her injuries became apparent. Soren’s stomach churned. That was a lot of blood on her clothes. She didn’t appear to be, er, leaking too badly at the moment, but he could still see from her face that she was in desperate need of a doctor. In other words, something that just wasn’t available right now. A quiet sigh of despair began to make its way out of his throat as it began to sink in that the friendly actress girl from school had a good chance of dying right in front of him, and there was nothing that he could do about it.

A few careful steps more brought him right behind Tessa, hoping that his movement wouldn’t startle the girl on the ground into doing anything risky. Not that she seemed to pose a danger to anyone but herself, though in this place one never really knew for sure. There was supposed to be medical supplies in the bags they were assigned, right? He never got the chance to go through his own before it was stolen, but he was certain that he caught a glimpse of something like that in Tessa’s bag. It looked like Bunny had already attempted to patch herself up, but those bandages were probably due for a change. After the introductions were finished, he’d probably make the offer.

In the meantime, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to just stand there creepily and not say anything at all. He didn’t want to intrude too deeply into their conversation, so he settled for a weak wave of his hand, letting out a quiet “Hi” as he waited for Tessa’s next words.

Bunny seemed... unhinged? Defiant? Straight-up crazy? She had to know the score, staring at someone with a gun that Tessa thought despite herself should garner at least a little respect. Bunny of all people should know what it could do. She'd shot someone herself. Or stabbed? If she'd shot someone, then surely she'd still have the gun? Whatever. Everett was dead because of her, and Tessa didn't stop to consider if he had been the aggressor. There was only room for cause and effect in her mind; Bunny had played an idiotic game and won a prize no less than she'd deserved. But she really didn't understand how she messed things up for people like her, did she? Tessa didn't want to kill anyone, and that opinion was starting to seem frighteningly unique. Every day someone else gave in to the terrorist demands. But the thing was, who exactly did those people jump on? The people who hadn't given in, that's who. You made yourself a target by trying to stay aloof, that was the real kicker of it all.

She stared down at Bunny, balling a fist, privately aching to hear the announcement of someone standing up against it all like the guy from the 2012 attack. Which was supposed to happen any day, wasn't it? Was that not what the real-life Milgram had shown? A few gave in right away. Most stood back for a while, but eventually the innocent became the complicit. And a few people, they took a look around themselves and declared it all nonsense. At great risk to themselves—the guy from last time looked more like he'd spawned somewhere than grew up—but groups were surprisingly rigid in how people acted. Right?

For now, that person wouldn't be her, though she certainly felt a healthy dose of indignation. The muscles in Tessa's face jostled among themselves, and she loomed. Not something she had much experience in, but something she could sure as heck take the opportunity for. Unrepentant, that's what that little smile was.

"Yeah," she fired back, "and it sure was nice when you went and shot—" she punctuated the word with a solid kick. Her bag swung obligingly out, tethered at its limit by the strap snared securely around the trigger of the gun.

Lightning lanced through her. Thunder crowded the room.

She reached instinctively to her chest and tilted her hand away, dripping from the short contact like she'd dunked it into a swimming pool. A vibrant, bubbly red that clashed horribly with the purple spots eroding her field of view. She tried to blink things back into focus, to grab everything drifting softly, insistently out of reach. The gun was gone somewhere now. Her knees had started vibrating without her notice. Faces, voices. Warmth spilling down her front.

"Holy fuck," she said weakly, and then the ground spun crazily upward in her moth-eaten vision.

The pain came after a moment, darkness quick on its heels.

G27 Tessa Blackridge: Deceased

Tessa stepped up close to Bunny, and from her prone position, looking up at the other girl, she suddenly looked very very tall. Slowly, the smile slid off her face, her eyebrows creasing into a frown that sent a spasm of pain through her body. Maybe she’d misinterpreted. Maybe Tessa had just come here to berate her before killing her. Just because she, like a whole bunch of the other no-names at school, didn’t understand why she’d done what she’d done, and what she was probably gonna keep doing. If you had even half a brain, you could see why. She didn’t do this because she enjoye-

Well.

She hadn’t set out to do this because she enjoyed it. And neither had anyone else whose names kept on appearing on the announcements. You weren’t any better or any worse if you decided to hunt for the players. All you were doing was feeling like you were forced to kill people who had, guess what? Been forced to kill people!

No-one but Bunny needed to know about the electricity that had buzzed through her after she’d put a bullet into Everett.

She let out a pained noise as she adjusted her position. This wasn’t how it could end. She wasn’t prepared to be shot by some nobody and left to bleed out in a dingy, grimy shower halfway across the world from home. She wanted, needed to rifle through her pockets to grab her own gun and defend herself, but the mere act of breathing felt like a chainsaw ripping through her lungs and the fact she was finally feeling fear barely registered as Tessa lashed out with her foot and

The shower room exploded with noise and light and pain and Bunny let out a shriek, forged from shock and fear and the sudden bone-crunching agony as Tessa’s foot slammed into her ankle. Her eyes instinctively screwed shut and she pressed herself even further into the corner of the room, the thudding of her heart flooding all of her senses.

The gut-punch of a bullet wound hadn’t hit her yet. Slowly, Bunny opened her eyes, scanning her own body. Her clothes were coated in so much blood she couldn’t tell which was fresh and which had dripped down her forehead on that first day by the lakeside.

She looked up just in time to see the hole in Tessa’s chest, red spilling out of it, before the girl toppled forwards and crashed into the floor. She didn’t move after that.

Bunny could see the boy who had been standing behind Tessa now, and she stared up at him with wide eyes, breathing heavily, suddenly feeling everything.

She briefly glanced down to where Tessa’s gun had been flung, then looked back at him.

“I…” was all she could stammer out.

Soren instinctively let out a scream as he heard the gun go off, jumping back from the source of the noise. He stood there for a moment, stunned, before he realized what had happened.

Down by his feet lay Tessa, a crimson pool expanding outward from her prostrate form, staining the muddy white sneakers that lay just at the edge of his vision. Soren’s face contorted into an expression of pain as he took in the horrific scene, his ears still ringing from the shot. He could feel his vision blurring as he jumped down to the body on the ground, gently flipping it over as he stared into those wide-open, unblinking green eyes.

No...no...this couldn’t be happening. There had to be something he could do, some way he could help her! She was the only person on this entire island who had trusted him to watch her back, and the thought of her dying and leaving him alonewas too much to bear.

"Don't die... Don't die..."

There was one main problem with that plan, and it was that Soren knew basically nothing about first aid. He cradled Tessa’s form in his hands, desperately wracking his brain to figure out what to do in this type of situation. With no good ideas in mind, he went with what people always did in movies when somebody stopped breathing, if only because it seemed like it was better than nothing.  

Lowering her to the ground, he placed his mouth on hers, breathing outward in a method that he assumed would at least help with her breathing. His body trembled at the feeling of her soft lips against his. He had never kissed a girl before, and though this was hardly similar, it was probably the closest he would ever get in the rest of his short life. Clenching his eyes shut, Soren continued to fight through the torrent of emotions rushing through him as he brought himself up from her and began to push on her chest. Every push brought a new rush of blood onto his already completely stained clothes, though he barely noticed. He was working completely on autopilot now.

After what seemed like hours of useless effort, he looked up at Bunny, a crazed sort of panic in his eyes. He could feel his mouth opening, though his movements felt...distant, somehow, almost as if he was watching someone else act through him. A hoarse voice emerged from his lips, one that he belatedly realized was his own.

“Don’t just sit there, please, help me!”

Bunny did nothing but stare at the scene in front of her for a while, Soren’s desperate plea passing right by her like he hadn’t even said it. Because, really, what could she do to help her? Tessa was dead. The kiss of life wasn’t gonna help when there was a bullet lodged in your chest, spewing blood everywhere. The girl wasn’t moving. She was dead, no matter how much Soren cried or begged or prayed. And Bunny wasn’t going to waste her medical supplies on a dead girl, when she herself needed them so badly.

Of course, even if she could have done something, she wouldn’t have. She barely knew Tessa. They’d been classmates and that had been it. Now, she was – or more rather, had been – an obstacle in her way. The most shocking and horrifying part of her death had been that it had happened right in front of her, not who it had happened to.

“I… I’m sorry,” Bunny lied. Slowly, she pressed her hands against the wall, almost slipping twice as her palms coated the tiles with sweat, clambering ungainly to her feet. Her first step forwards almost sent her tipping over again, all the blood that was remaining inside of her rushing to her head.

“I don’t… I don’t know what to do…”

Sure she did. There was only one thing on her mind, and it was a few feet behind Soren, lying motionless on the ground. Bunny bit her lip, winced, then unhooked her bag from her shoulder, slid her jacket off, and dropped it on the ground in front of Soren.

“Maybe… Maybe you could use this… Y’know, um, to, uh, cover her…”

The bulletproof vest would keep her warm enough. And if there was one more person on the island that believed she was innocent, then that was just one more feather in her cap. She picked her bag up again and looked quickly down at the floor.

“Sorry…”

She staggered past Soren, eyes laser focused on the Dragunov lying on the blood-stained tiles, and she eagerly gathered it up. She stood still for a moment, a grin breaking across her face as she looked at the weapon, her weapon now, before she shuffled out of the showers.

Her wounds still stung, but if anyone tried to add to them, they wouldn’t live long enough to regret it.

((Bunny Barlowe continued in The Snakes of Ireland))

Several more agonizing minutes passed as Soren desperately worked on the body in front of him, his movements beginning to slow as the lack of response became more and more apparent. The haze around the edge of his vision began to fade, and as his breathing returned to normal, he took his shaking hands off of Tessa’s shattered chest. It was hopeless.

He sat there for what felt like ages as he just stared at her corpse, his gaze focused on her so intensely it was as if he was attempting to will her back to life with his mind alone. The whole situation just felt so... unreal. Soren had never seen anyone die before, except in movies, and that didn’t really count. Especially when compared to the thought of one of your friends dying in front of your eyes.

It just wasn’t fair. Just when he thought he had found somebody that he could trust, somebody that could stay with him, she was taken away in the blink of an eye. Just a single bang out of nowhere, and she was gone. He was alone, with nobody to stay by his side. Nobody to protect him. He was exposed, vulnerable to the danger of every roaming psychopath on this island.

Soren sighed, a familiar warmth beginning to pool in his eyes. Everything had to happen for a reason. Was God punishing him for his cowardice earlier - for abandoning Paris in his time of need? It did make a strange kind of sense. He failed to protect his friend, and now his protector was taken away. It didn’t seem like a very loving thing to do, but…

He shook his head, really not wanting to think about that right now. A glance around the room revealed that Bunny was gone, probably having had run away while he was wasting his time trying to save someone who was already dead. All in all, just one more person who had left him, just like everyone else he had met on this accursed island.

Soren lay his head in his blood-soaked hands and sobbed.

((Soren Rosendahl continued in That's So Ravine))