In Bloom

[Courtography]

BRN1: SIMMONS, NICK START

The blonde boy's eyes opened.

He had been rather unlucky in the way he had been set up. It was comfortable, but laying straight across with his face towards the sky meant one bad thing: the sun was right in his eyes, what with it being right at noon.

"Awfuck," he let out as he turned over. The light would of course been going like that ever since he had been laying there, causing massive floaters to obscure his vision. He rubbed his eyes, nudging the bandanna that was wrapped around his forehead.

Bandanna? He didn't remember putting on a bandanna...wait a minute. And that was when he remembered he had been put on SOTF-TV. He jumped up with a start. "fuck Fuck FUCK!," he yelled out before tripping and falling right on his ass. He wasn't the best balanced at the best of times, and he was still part blind from the sun.

Damn it. He loved the show tons, but he never thought he would be on it. It was extremely bad, he didn't have that many friends back in Detroit so of course people wouldn't care about killing him now. He had seen it so many times before.

He still had a chance though, just had to look through that bag. He found it, his vision was clearing up, which was good. He opened the bag, going through it for a few moments to find a power drill. Damn he was hoping for a gun, something nice, like a freaking uzi, be real fucking badass and pump people full of bullets.

Okay fine he was screwed, no badass uzi. But didn't they mention something about teams? Right there were teams, if he could find his teammates he could survive. Yeah, but running around when people just woke up was stupid, if they were blinded like he was they could easily shoot someone if they found their guns. No he would stay there, and wait for that mentor instruction they said he would get. Yeah he would wait.

Well that's fucking boring.

[Chib*]

[Enter PNK5: Isaac King]

Well damn. There Isaac had been, minding his own business, when out of nowhere comes The Man himself, the one he'd sometimes joked about but never really taken seriously, armed as if for a war and dressed somewhere between Darth Vader and Bad Boys. And what was he supposed to do, resist when they told him he was going with them, and he was going to be on Survival of the Fittest? Not likely. After the disbelief and the "You've got to be kidding me, you've got the wrong guy.", he eventually just capitulated, and went along with it.

That's how he came to be laying on his back in a field of grass, a short distance from a rocky protrusion in the ground he couldn't quite identify. After waking up, he'd decided to stay there for a while, relaxing while it was still possible to, mourning the death of any normality he'd had in his life. But then another boy had woken up too, he wasn't sure how long after himself, and started screaming and yelling. So much for chilling out.

Isaac got up, pretty slowly, and looked himself over for the first time. No different to how he'd been back in Detroit, save for the pink bandanna he soon discovered on his forehead. Pink. With a stylised heart, too. Whilst he wasn't much of a homophobe, it was quite frankly the gayest thing he'd seen in a long time, and not something he wanted to wear. But he didn't have a choice. So he moved it, tying it around one of the belt-holes in his jeans instead, where it looked a lot less like he was proud of it. Just a "I'm on the pink team, doesn't mean I have to like it." sort of affair.

After that, he slung his new backpack over his shoulders, not really bothering to take inventory of what was in it, and looked around for the one that had been shouting. Blond boy, a few hundred meters away. Holding a power drill. Brown bandanna on his head. Maybe finding his weapon would be a good idea after all. Isaac hastened through his non-combat supplies, eventually finding a gleaming metal barrel. The handle came next. A Desert Eagle. A Desert. Fucking. Eagle. Hell yes, the most awesome kind of handgun in existence. Isaac didn't even dwell on how pistols weren't really his thing, he didn't care, he had the sweetest one available. Ammo came next, which he stuffed into his pockets, and finally, a instruction manual. He made a mental note to read that later. The unidentified (maybe SDA?) boy came first.

Isaac tucked the gun into the back of his jeans, and approached slowly. No need to start up hostilities right away, but best to be prepared just in case. A drill against a gun at long range, easy bet as to what wins.

"Hey. You alright?"

[zabriel*]

GRN5 Michael Clark - Start

Michael woke to the sun shining down on his face. His eyes fluttered open and he began to stretch and shake out his limbs. Unlike some, he didn't have that moment of panic that comes with remembering where he was. He never forgot. Still, he was rather calm for somebody in his circumstances. People only occasionally died in the first hour of waking up ever since they started moving the bodies around the arena instead of calling out names and sending them running out the door. That was always chaos, especially if the first person out scored a good weapon.

Once Michael started thinking about weapons he sat up and grabbed his bag. It was about then that he noticed that he wasn't alone, and what was more he actually recognized both of the boys near him.

The first was a boy that sang in the same choir as him. He knew a bit about him and had gotten along pretty well with him back in Detroit. The second he recognized as being from his own school and having a few classes with, but he couldn't come up with a name.

He reached up to his head and removed his bandana to look more closely at it. It was green with a leaf on it. Guess that means I'm on the green team.

Neither of the other boys wore green. Michael replaced the bandana and sighed.

"Shame we're on different teams Nick. Was hoping they might pair up people from the same circles, but where's the drama in that?"

His eyes flitted to the other boy who was wearing a pink bandana. He couldn't put a name to his face, or really think of anything he knew about him, but he knew that he was Detroit through and through. He just had that look about him.

"Hey. Nice bandana. You could play it off as like a Mr. Pink thing if it weren't for heart." He couldn't actually make out the heart, but they'd seen the insignia before being gassed.

"Wonder when we'll hear from our mentors..."

[Courtography]

All right? No he was not all right. He was stuck on national TV with a power drill, risking getting shot by a bunch of crazy gangsters and hos. As he often thought of his Detroit classmates. Of course he never told them that, he kept his head down. Actually doing that might be good here, especially with nothing but a power drill.

So yeah, don't upset the guy with the, shit, yep he had a gun tucked in his jeans. "Could be better bro. Ya know?" Yeah the normal words that didn't mean a thing, say small talk and some wannabe rapper wouldn't call you a fag for having awesome hair. They were just jealous anyway. Yeah. Had no taste in music either. Grunge was where it was at.

Then another guy, wait it was Michael, Michael Clark. He was a pretty good guy actually. They were in choir together. Different teams, oh well people teamed up when they could die on the show anyway, wouldn't hurt. He knew it could, had watched enough of the show.

The mentors. Right. What he was waiting for. Still, it wouldn't hurt getting himself help from these two, especially Michael before he could find his team, which he hadn't checked. Brown bandanna. Okay brown he guessed. "Well man, three of us could work things out will we find our teams. Beats shootin the shit out of each other." Real smart, remind the guy with the gun that he can shoot you. You've seen that happen before, two seasons ago, real messy.

[Chib*]

Blond boy didn't look terribly happy. Fair enough, really. Isaac wasn't really pleased with the state of affairs at that very moment either. Sure he was still healthy and not under immediate threat, but he'd also just been handed a gun and told to go kill a bunch of people, otherwise they'd kill him. And if he successfully killed a bunch of people, he'd get to go home. Or he might get really lucky and the rest of his team would do the killing a bunch of people for him, then he'd still get to go home without doing anything short of surviving.

Did he mention he wasn't a big fan of killing a bunch of people? Because killing a bunch of people wasn't something he liked the idea of, really.

"Could be better bro. Ya know?"

Well at least he's putting a brave face on it. Not one of the guys that starts kicking and screaming and crying. Or worse, waves their new weapon around like a nutter and starts trying to disembowel you with something ridiculous like a cheese knife.
No really. Isaac had seen that attempted once before. On a guy with a machine pistol. It was messy.

But enough thinking about that kind of morbid thing. Accentuate the positive, right? The other guy was agreeable enough, and he didn't look like he was gonna try to attack Isaac, not just yet, so he could relax for a bit.

"Shame we're on different teams Nick. Was hoping they might pair up people from the same circles, but where's the drama in that?"

Oh, another boy to talk to. Apparently he knows the other guy, Nick, evidently. And he wasn't on the same team as him, so little chance of getting ganged up on.

"Hey. Nice bandana. You could play it off as like a Mr. Pink thing if it weren't for heart."

Mr. Pink? Jesus, Reservoir Dogs? Takes a special kind of awesome to be able to make reference to a classic like that, most of the other Detroit kids had never heard of Tarantino, let alone seen his work. Come to think of it, though, maybe pink wasn't such a bad colour. That was Steve Buscemi, right? The one that kept trying not to flip out and kept going on about being professional? Yeah. One of the cooler ones. At least he wasn't Mr. Blond, or Mr. Orange. Hell, Pink was the only one that didn't die at the end, that's something.

Wait, shit, Isaac wasn't paying attention. Were they saying something? Probably still saying something. Nick? Yeah, Nick was talking.

"Beats shootin the shit out of each other."

Yeah, getting the shit shot out of you's never pleasant. At least, nobody that had it done to them and survived was exactly lining up to get it done again. And Isaac wasn't really in any mood to start killing other people right off the bat, either. He was Mr. Pink, not Mr. Blond, after all.

"Yeah, sounds good to me." he responded, hoping what he'd missed was actually a plan that would've sounded good to him.

[chitoryu12*]

((Bob Lazenby continued from Down By The Water))

Angry, damp, hot, uncomfortable, and terrified were all good words to describe Mr. Lazenby as he trudged through the tall grass. His jeans felt uncomfortably tight and the large damp spot between the legs wasn't making him sweat any less, but he was too self-conscious to remove them. Not in front of all the cameras he knew were surrounding him.





zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Bob looked up. Some small, single-engine plane was making a pass over the island. He could vaguely make out the SOTF-TV logo emblazoned on the fuselage. Probably a camera plane making a dramatic flyby over the island to show off the environment. He waved his laser around the windows of the plane, but he doubted the pilot would even notice it in the glaring noon sun.

Then all of the scenery changed.

The grass was shorter now, like it had been neatly trimmed, and it suddenly ended around a small rock hill jutting out of the ground. It was amazingly jarring.

And there were more people standing around it. Not one of them had a black bandanna.

He froze.

And then he panicked.

"Fuck! Fuck shit! Fuck! Fuckin' fuck!"

Stumbling over his feet, Bob Lazenby took an immediate left and ran until he couldn't run any more.

((Bob Lazenby continued in Hello World))

[zabriel*]

Michael was about to reply when he noticed a boy a black bandana approaching. He would have waved at him if it weren't for the string of expletives and the running away at full-tilt. He shook his head and sighed.

"Looks like the game has already gotten to some people. This could get messy."

Michael finally decided to have a look in his bag to see what they issued him.

"Food, water, condom...seriously? Looks like I drew the short straw on weapons."

He pulled out a butter knife and laughed a little. This was not going to be very helpful, though if he found some Nutella on the island he'd be in serious business.

"I suppose it could be worse. Anyhow, I'd rather try to escape first. I'm willing to bet the collars have some sick flaws. If I remember right there hasn't been an escape in ten games. I think it's about time to change that."

[Courtography]

The stream of fucks got his attention, but the next moment that guy was gone. Crazy shit there. Most people he had seen didn't go real crazy until at least two days in. Something must be happening somewhere on the island to really scare people. Unless they brought in a crazy person to make things interesting. He had seen tons of twists on various seasons of the show, the team one being one that was fresh and interesting. He would have enjoyed it if he hadn't been stuck on it.

He noticed Mike's weapon. He pulled the button on his power drill letting it ring out. "This is what I got, clearly he's the one with the luck here," he said pointing to Issac. Well that's what he thought his name was, he knew he was from Detroit like them.

Escape? He hadn't thought about that, he had just wanted to survive. Wait for instructions from his mentor and overall just try to live. "Escape? Yeah that's cool, no clue how that shit works though. I normally tune in for the fighting, ya know?"

[Chib*]

Speaking of paying attention, if he hadn't snapped out of the Reservoir Dogs-related daydream of his own accord, the random crazy train from nowhere probably would've woken Isaac up pretty sharpish. A guy running past at top speed, yelling random variants on the word fuck at the top of his lungs? Yeah, that tends to grab your focus, if you're not really doing much at the time.

"Looks like the game has already gotten to some people. This could get messy."


True that. But this early on? Apparently somebody was more easily spooked than was even close to the normal level. Isaac and Co. were clearly finding it easy to be calm and have a chat like ordinary people, after all. Then again, Isaac was the only one with a gun, and he was clearly not using it, so there wasn't much to be scared of in the immediate vicinity. Perhaps running shouty fuck-yelly guy came from somewhere scarier.

Remember, don't go back the way he came.

Meanwhile, Nick and his friend were comparing their weapons. A butter knife, and the power drill he'd already seen. So even if Isaac did want to kill them, he wouldn't get much out of it, besides two kills towards that tempting 10-and-home offer. But then there was the escape idea, too. That was even more tempting...

"I suppose it could be worse. Anyhow, I'd rather try to escape first. I'm willing to bet the collars have some sick flaws. If I remember right there hasn't been an escape in ten games. I think it's about time to change that."

Exactly. Isaac and his friends in Detroit had tossed around the idea that the flaws were a little too convenient and easy to exploit not to be intentional. Almost like they wanted people to escape. Good idea to, though, escapes put some variation into the formula, failed or successful, for all the drama and "will they won't they?" moments they provided.

"Yeah, like, I think there's meant to be bugs in them," he began, mentally translating the rather garbled version of the information that existed in his head as fast as he could. "So like, you know, it isn't impossible to escape? Because if it was all just killing and stuff, like, people would get bored of the same old routine, right? Same reason for the teams. Escape attempts put some, like, different scenes into it. So you've got, like, hope as well as all the death and stuff."

He didn't care to count how many times he said "like" in the course of that little speech. Suffice to say this is why Isaac never had too many friends. Or ever tried to write his own rap, he'd probably end up sounding like Colin Mochrie on crack.

[zabriel*]

He nodded. "Yeah, it's like that. Besides, when you escape it's like a big fuck you to 'the man', and kids gobble that shit up."

It didn't matter that "the man" owned every outlet of teenage rebellion. The concept of "Youth in Revolt" was a laughable one. Everything stayed the same. The fact that rebellion was an expected part of teen development just reinforced the fact that no matter how loud they screamed they just continued to feed the machine they raged against.

"So, did they give us a map of this place? If there's like a village or something we can probably find some stuff. The residents sometimes leave things for us to find, and I'm sure some stuff will be planted to make things more interesting. I'm thinking food, arms, and anything that might come in handy with getting these damn collars off. So, I guess the question now is, where do we go, and do we go together?"

[Courtography]

Map? Oh. Yeah he thought they usually provided one of those. He wasn't sure though, the show wasn't too into watching people reading maps. It didn't make for very good viewing.

He dug through his bag, finding a pack of jerky before getting his hands on the map. "Found it, now better question. Where are we?" He checked the locations on the map, and looked at his surroundings, finally noticing the signs for the geyser. "Looks like the geyser," he said pointing at the location on the map.

He scouted out places on the map with his eye and suddenly an idea he thought would be really badass popped into his head. "Dude! A cruise ship! So badass if we could just drive that thing out of here. Sweet."

[Chib*]

Again, exactly. Fans love a good escape attempt. And better yet, so do the kids that actually succeed in them. Why? Because they escape, duh. Why was Isaac even thinking about it so deeply? Escapes are good because you get out of the game without killing anyone or getting killed, fuck what the fans think, making them happy for a remotely positive reason is just an added bonus.

In the meanwhile, Nick and friend had discovered the nature of that weird rocky hole - a Geyser, Isaac had heard of them before, never actually seen one in real life - and where that put them in relation to the rest of the island. Didn't need a map to know it was always an island. The whole cruise ship part made it even more obvious as well.

"Dude! A cruise ship! So badass if we could just drive that thing out of here. Sweet."

Yeah, that bit. But there was that one major problem with the sail-away-like-a-boss plan. That they'd probably have already taken all the fuel out and disabled all of the controls for good measure, just in case any of the kids had experience sailing hilariously huge boats. Unlikely, but still. And who were "they"? The wizards, of course. The unseen masterminds of the show, henceforth to be referred to as "the wizards".

"Yeah, but, like, they'll have already broken the controls and emptied the tank, you know?" However... "But still, always wanted to chill on a cruise liner. Might not get another chance to, so like, might as well go check it out. Not exactly a free boat ride for three, but we'll still be on a boat."

...was that seriously a reference to The Lonely Island? Yes, Isaac, yes it was. And frankly, in his opinion? Hell yes, that was awesome.

[zabriel*]

Michael chuckled in spite of himself. He thought about busting out a little of the song, but decided he'd rather wait until they actually reached the ship. They might need a good laugh by that point.

"Okay, cruise ship it is. A good cruise ship will have a kitchen on it, which means even if we don't find food, I might be able to upgrade my butter knife to something a little sharper. Food would be nice too. I'm jonesing for a little Nutella about now. Might not get quite that lucky, but a guy can dream can't he?"

Michael rifled through his bag for the compass he knew would be there and checked it.

"Okay, so if we're here, and that's north...the ship will be over this way. We won't be the only ones to have this idea, but if we're lucky we might find some more allies, maybe even some teammates. We might also find more crazies like that last one, so be careful."

Michael secured his things and started off toward the ship.

((Michael Clark continued in Breathless))

[Courtography]

Nick hadn't wanted to think about how they had almost definitely disabled the cruise ship. That wasn't the important thing. Fact was that none of the locations on the map screamed escape to him. So the ship it was.

It was still a far distance away, passed a few other locations before. Still he could deal with a walk. It was almost never walking that killed people on this show. Now tripping like his dumbass self, that could kill him. Actually it would have majorly blown if he had tripped into the geyser. Boiling water and everything.

"Yeah look out for the crazies," he muttered remembering various deranged young people from previous seasons. Course the bad ones started a little off then got steadily worse. Not fun.

Then he began to walk after the other Detroit boy.

(Nick Simmons continued in Breathless)

[Chib*]

[Generic leaving post go!]

By the time Isaac finished chuckling inwardly at his odd choice of reference, the other two had already started moving. Nick and somebody. Still didn't know who the somebody was, really needed to make a point of sharing names properly later on.

But for now, better to just get moving. Same team or not, keeping good company had always been the opening move of anyone that survived particularly long on SOTF. Not a guarantee of anything, of course, total party kills were hardly rare occurrences, not when SMGs and even LMGs were occasionally starting weapons. Heck, even kids with pistols or shotguns wiped out whole teams every so often, and that's without even considering groups of like-minded killers. And then there was Clayton's legendary grenade kill, that'd been the talk of the school for months after it happened, still came up in conversation even seasons later.

But, yeah, it was best not to think about that. Isaac wasn't planning on shooting someone armed with grenades, and if he ever did, he'd be sure to double tap. Wait, what? I'm seriously making that kind of plan already? Could be worse, at least it's a self-preservation plan...

Making sure to avoid the large hole in the ground, and to stop thinking morbid thoughts so early into the game, Isaac moved his Desert Eagle around to his front right pocket, and set off following his new allies, Nick and Mr. Green. Yeah, he can be Mr. Green for now, until I find out his real name. Between him and The Wizards, we can have a great nickname party.

[Isaac King --> Breathless]