Are We Alive Or A Dead Generation?

[DerArknight]

((The following was almost completely written by InferKit, a program for text generation. I only wrote a few parts to steer the overall direction.))

Fumiyo Fujiyochi is a japanese highschool girl who knows some stuff about first aid. Her weapon is a gun. Keita Iijima is a japanese highschool boy in the year 1997, missing two fingers. He has a grudge against Fumiyo because she was the one who made him lose his fingers. His weapon is a broken boomerang.
The two start fighting. Fumiyo has the advantage because she is armed with a gun. Fumiyo has better aim because she spent six months taking school examinations. Keita is good with boomerangs, but he is short.

Keita throws his boomerang at Fumiyo. She catches it in mid-air. But Keita hits it again, this time at Fumiyo's foot.

Fumiyo: my dog has lost control of his urine glands! Now he urinates everywhere! Keita: My god, Fumiyo, I'm impressed.

Fumiyo kicks him in the face. Keita falls to the ground.

Fumiyo: you bastard! But... is... Keita... can... see...

Keita manages to rise, but he is bleeding profusely from his nose. He is at a disadvantage.

Keita gets up, having lost consciousness. Fumiyo gets to her feet.

Fumiyo: are you...

She looks at her right arm.

Fumiyo: (a little panicky) my right arm!

Fumiyo looks at her left arm. She now has one hand.

Fumiyo: I'm also out of bullets!

Fumiyo grabs Keita by his collar, which detonates, but since this is a dream sequence he survives.
Back in the reality that I was in, Fumiyo and Keita are fighting. Fumiyo has more health, but Keita has better aim.

Fumiyo calls him an idiot.

Keita: I'm glad you could come here for a visit.

Fumiyo: let's fight!

Fumiyo punches Keita. Keita punches her back. Fumiyo calls him an idiot. Keita punches her back.

Fumiyo: how's that working out for you?

Keita: the faster you punch me, the more I like it!

Keita moves towards Fumiyo, but this time he gets distracted by a piece of metal falling from the sky. He sees it as a gun.

Keita: this piece of metal is a gun! It fires pellets at a rate of 50 pellets per second! I'll use it to beat you with it!

Fumiyo: I'm glad you find this so interesting!

Fumiyo catches the gun before Keita can. Now she has two guns.

Fumiyo: This gun has five pellets, but you'll never get me with it! You see this one? It has one shot and it fires it at a rate of 150 pellets per second!

Fumiyo: My second gun has one shot and it fires it at a rate of 700 pellets per second!

Keita tries to shoot her with the gun. She dodges.

Fumiyo: (feigning indifference) Oh, that gun is so old! It's still effective.

Keita shoots her in the arm. Fumiyo falls to the ground, wounded.

Keita runs towards Fumiyo. But then he notices a large number of bullets coming towards him.

Fumiyo looks at the bullets.

Fumiyo: Yes, it is, is it not?

Fumiyo picks up one of the bullets, but realizes that it has the word 'ROCK' written on it. She looks at another bullet.

Fumiyo: What's this? It's written with the same kind of shaded ink.

Suddenly, Superman appears. He is a flying invicible superhero. He flies in and kicks Keita. Superman then flies away, which also kicks Keita, and Keita falls to the ground.

Back at the present, Superman is working out. He makes fists, punches, kicks, swings. But that is boring, so let's go back to the other two.

Fumiyo: (looking at a photo) and now this!

Fumiyo points at a photo of herself.

Fumiyo: I don't have any bullets!

Superman flies towards Fumiyo.

Superman: You don't have bullets? Wow! What a terrible thing!

Superman swings his cape, which looks like it has the Superman logo on it, towards Fumiyo.

Superman: What are you doing?

Fumiyo looks up and screams. Superman flies into the air.

Keita: What the hell is that?

Superman looks up at the sky, puzzled. He flies to the top of a building.

Superman: Hey, where did the Batman go?

Batman suddenly appears behind Superman.

Batman: (to Superman) Hey, didn't you see me? I've been hiding behind you the whole time!

Batman swings his fist at Superman. Superman ducks. Superman throws Batman into a wall. Batman gets up, laughs, and gloats.

Batman: Don't be silly, Superman! You know it's impossible for me to get hurt by this armor you wear.

Batman runs at Superman, who dodges. Batman is hurled backwards, hits the ground, and lies there, stunned. Superman sees this and smiles.

Superman: I know you know this, Batman, but that's okay. I'm just going to stay away from you for a while.

Batman stands up.

Batman: Yeah, right.

Suddenly both of their collars explode, killing both Superman and Batman. Keita is shocked to see his two favorite heroes die.

Keita: ...

Fumiyo walks up to Keita.

Fumiyo: Keita-kun, you're safe now.

Keita hugs Fumiyo.

Keita: Why did you show me the photos?

Fumiyo: It was nothing, really. Just a very strange coincidence.

Fumiyo: This power we have called metahumor has many functions, but in this case, we're using it to see what you'd feel, if you saw your loved one go out of control.

Keita frowns.

Keita: I thought we'd worked out something like this.

Fumiyo: We are working on it.

Fumiyo and Keita kiss.

Fumiyo: We worked it out, didn't we?

Fumiyo: We're dating!

Keita: No, that's too much.

Keita: I don't have time for dating.

Fumiyo: You said you loved me.

Keita: I do. But we don't need to be dating in order to do that.

Fumiyo: Ah, but we need to make ourselves happy.

Keita sighs.

Keita: I don't know. There's so much going on right now.

Fumiyo: Well, that's true, but it doesn't mean you have to live your life in stress. It's okay to have an occasional break.

Keita: My life's so messed up with this Battle Royale stuff, you know? We might all die on this island, just like Superman and Batman.

Fumiyo: It'll be okay, I'm sure.

Keita: I have to go to the hospital soon and see what I can do.

Fumiyo: I'm coming, too. We can make a party of it!

Keita: I can't today. I have to go see Shinji. I never apologized for that one time I didn't help him.

Fumiyo: You can't apologize now. It's too late. I've already forgiven you.

Keita: I need to explain why I did that.

Fumiyo: It's nothing. Really.

Keita: It's important. It's because I love Shinji and I want to help him.

Fumiyo: This is all silly, you know? Don't worry about Shinji.

Keita: Okay. But, I have to go see him, Fumiyo.

Fumiyo: Fine.

Fumiyo: But, I have to ask him about the video game.

Keita: For sure.

Fumiyo: It's what I'm supposed to do. I'm a doctor.

Keita: I know.

Keita: I'm just going to talk to Shinji.

Keita hugs Fumiyo.

Suddenly they hear a voice from nowhere. "Looks like there hasn't been a single death for over a day. Goodbye y'all!"

BOOM!

---

((Keita Iijima continued from Dead Man's Hand))

Whenever Keita slept anywhere else than in his own bed, he was often disoriented when waking up, needing some time to remember where he was.

This was not one of these times.

Memories of the classroom, of his short run through the forest and his meeting with Fumiyo were already there waiting for his mind to start working again while it was still dealing with the fallout of the weird dream he could remember surprisingly well. Was this his mind's way of dealing with the situation?

Keita opened his eyes. The room that had been only barely lit last night was now bathed in sunlight. He must have slept for hours.

Still somewhat groggy, Keita started to raise from the bed. He tried to rub his eyes but was stopped by the odd sensation of bandages.

Oh yeah, it would have been cool if this had been a dream as well!

Where was Fumiyo?

[Applesintime]

((Fumiyo Fujiyoshi continued from Dead Man's Hand))

As it turned out, Fumiyo was sitting on a bed opposite his, having only just woken up herself. Her hair tussled, she tried to pat it down. This always happened in the mornings, and while she normally had a hairbrush to hand, there wasn't any in the clinic, so she had to make do with just a hand. Spotting Keita was up, she nervously smiled at him. His hand seemed to be doing well at least, though she still felt bad.

Opening her mouth, her initial words were drowned out by Sakamochi.

[DerArknight]

"Good morning, everyone. This is your teacher, Sakamochi. It is now 6 AM. Are you up bright and early for your new day?" Sakamochi's voice asked from seemingly nowhere. "It's time to find out which of your friends are dead."

Keita gulped. After a worried look at Fumiyo, he sat down on the bed again as Sakamochi read through the list.

Why would anyone want to hurt Yoshio? Guy was one of the most harmless people of the class.

Kazuishi on the other hand was a foul-mouthed jerk, so no surprises here.

The next name made Keita visibly flinch. This had to be a lie, right? Sakamochi was just listing random classmates to fool them into actual murder, right? There was no way his best friend just died while Keita was lying in a warm bed in a safe house with his personal nurse!

The last name made the list even more unbelievable. Everyone knew that Hiroki Sugimura was a beast with his martial arts. Not someone who would die during the first hours of a dangerous situation.

This news left Keita speechless, so he didn't react when Sakamochi instructed everyone to get ready to write down the forbidden zones for the day. It was only when the announcement came to an end that he snapped out of it.

"..."

Keita had to say something. The silence was terrifying.

"Do you think... they are really gone?"

[Applesintime]

Fumiyo was messily scribbling down the forbidden zones, pausing to look up at Keita's upset face. He must have known someone on the list. A friend. Setting the requisition form she had been using as paper to the side, she eyed her gun, set to the side of the bed which she had been sleeping in. Of course they were gone. Her actions last night had proven that she was capable of that kind of violence. Maybe it had been her who killed someone on that list. A bullet had found its target in a major organ, or ripped through an artery. And just like that, another person was gone.

But she couldn't tell Keita. Not when he looked like he was close to tears.

"No. Sakamochi's probably just lying to us. It's not like we would kill each other, we're all classmates. Good friends." Well, apart from Kiriyama. Gently smiling at him, all too aware of how fake it was, she grabbed the paper and tucked it into her blazer pocket. "I'm gonna see what they have in the kitchen. There's probably something better than dry bread, right?" Pushing herself off the bed and grabbing a gun, she went into the kitchen, rooting through the cupboards.

"Oh, uh, I think there's some plastic cutlery and stuff in one of the cupboards. You can maybe set a table or something!"

[DerArknight]

"Yes. Uh... Yes." Keita responded.

He faintly remembered seeing something like a break room when entering the clinic for the first time, so he went through the hallway, passing the bathroom door. Indeed, he found a small room with a table and some chairs. However, the room was pretty cramped, apparently only intended for one person to use. Keita would have to drag the stuff into the treatment room.

On closer inspection, the table was a foldable one. Keita raised his right hand to fold it, sighed, then brought forward his left hand to do the job.

A few clicks later he was trudging though the hallway again, carrying the cheap table.

He heard Fumiyo in the kitchen. It sounded as if she had been successful in finding food. At least their breakfast promised to go well.

For a moment Keita believed to hear a sound from the bathroom, but then he shook his head and moved on. Old houses like this one tended to make noises now and then on their own, after all.

[Applesintime]

Humming to herself, Fumiyo continued to search through the cupboards. There wasn't really much of note; a small bag of rice and some canned chicken. Still, they could just make rice and chicken. There was no soy sauce or anything to spice it up, but it was better than the bread that they had been given. Grabbing a small saucepan and putting water on it, setting it to boil for a little, Fumiyo closed her eyes. It was like she was back at home.

[DerArknight]

Back in the treatment room, Keita was looking for a good spot to place the table.

Placing it close to the window would allow them to see outside, but also make it easier to see them.

Placing it in the middle of the room meant more space, but would look awkward.

Placing it against the northern wall would look neat and give them space, but also make them vulnerable.

...

Maybe he should ask Fumiyo about her take?

[Applesintime]

On Fumiyo's part, she really didn't have much to do, did she? Just sit and wait for the rice to cook, add the chicken so it was heated up, and then serve it. If she was cooking back home, she'd have a book to read when she was cooking, or she could listen to some music. But all Fumiyo had to accompany her here were her thoughts.

[DerArknight]

Standing with the back to the exit of the kitchen, Fumiyo could only hear light steps stopping in front of the doorway.

[Applesintime]

Keita must have already finished setting the table up, then. That was quick, especially with missing two fingers. But Fumiyo thought nothing of it. There were probably some painkillers around for him, if he was feeling any pain. Which, he probably was. Deciding now was probably a good time to add the chicken, Fumiyo responded to the person behind her. "Breakfast'll be done in a few minutes. I could only find some rice and chicken, but it's better than those bread rolls."

[DerArknight]

No answer.

[Applesintime]

"Keita?"

Fumiyo glanced behind her.

[DerArknight]

It wasn't Keita.

((Noriko Nakagawa continued from Missing Out))

Maybe she really had wanted to just talk. To confirm the unknown forbidden zones and to ask about Megumi.

Or maybe this had been just another excuse she told herself.

In any way, the sight of another girl in the kitchen engaging in something as mundane as cooking on this island struck her off-guard. Just what was going on?

Then the other girl spoke, and Noriko remained speechless. Should she announce her presence? Or should she just back away?

Finally, the girl - Fumiyo, as Noriko realized - turned around.

It was then that Noriko became aware of the gun in her hands.

Oh. So it had been an excuse after all.

[Applesintime]

A brief pause.

And then Fumiyo shrieked "KEITA!" as her hand fumbled behind her for the Browning she had set besides the stove, hoping that she was quick enough to grab it and shoot Noriko before she could do anything else.

[DerArknight]

If she would have had enough time to properly access the situation, Noriko would have sighed a breath of relief.

Fumiyo was going for her weapon. That meant that Fumiyo's first reaction to seeing a classmate was violence. That meant that Noriko wasn't the outlier, wasn't the only screw-up around.

But there was no time, so all she did was raise her Beretta and pull the trigger. Hastily. Unfocused. Still lacking in commitment to the cause.