Smoke on the Water

[Flayer*]

Axel stopped short at the girl's sudden outburst as she backed away from him. Holy Christ, she is loud. He just stood there a second as she screamed at him to get away from her. This wasn't what he'd pictured happening. He wondered if maybe she'd been sexually abused before, that was what caused a lot of the "nobody touches me" trauma.

He threw a glance over his shoulder at the other two people as the girl redirected her speech onto them. The girl in the bear suit and the other guy were just standing there, looking about as shocked as he was. The girl seemed to have forgotten she even had a gun in her hand; she wasn't making any move with it.

As the girl on his team moved on to petty insults, Axel looked back and realized his hand was still hanging there in midair, right where it had been when she started screaming at him. He let it fall back to his side. He was trying to think of something to say that would calm her down, make her stop and realize their bandanas were the same color. And that the other girl had a gun and that standing around calling her a slut was a bad idea.

He looked in his other hand and saw the crude knife he'd made. He moved his hand so it was at his side and the scissor blade was pointed behind his back. Taking the weapon out of her field of view was needed in order to stop scaring her, but putting his hand behind his back too obviously would look just as threatening. But Axel still hadn't figured out the right combination of words by the time she'd disappeared behind the tree line.

He turned back again to the boy on the beach and Panya, who he recognized by now. It was one of those infinitely awkward moments. Axel looked from one face to the other, noticing the sock lying there in the sand between them. He had no idea what to do. The thing with the blue team girl had completely thrown him off his groove. He'd been pretty much an automaton since he'd woken up, obeying the SOTF mantra of Arm thyself, seek out thy foes, slay them remorselessly. Amen. Now he was consciously thinking again, and what he thought of was the impact having teammates would have on the game. You had to keep their trust, not start the 'playing' too soon or too eagerly. There were new rules, and Axel realized he'd have to abide by them.

Besides, there was no good way to carry on with more violence against a guy who was bigger than him and a girl with a gun. The idea you had ten seconds ago, of running like hell after you threw it? That was a good idea. Axel started taking steps back towards the trees, and tried to think of a good parting line. But he still wasn't having much inspiration with words. "See you later," he said," and then turned and started running out in between the trees, feeling the sand under his shoes give way to dirt. He was confident he wasn't about to get outrun by Panya with a bear suit hanging off her hips (or really, by Panya under any circumstances) and that she couldn't shoot a moving target.

He needed to get that girl and find the rest of the blue team. Safety in numbers was the rule now, when other people had guns and he didn't. Not that he cared too much if the rest of his team made it off the island, but it would be awful nice to have someone there to take the bullet or the stab or the weedwhacker to the face. Guess I can't *bear* to be around you anymore, I'm out. God damn it, why do always think of these lines when it's too late? "Hey! Wait up! We're on the same team!"


<<Axel Stadler continued in Just a Quick Swim>>

[Mini_Help]

How Dare They?

...

HOW DARE THEY!

One by one all three of them... INCLUDING her leading man... just abandoned her here! As if she was just some sort of "Extra" rather than the starlet which she was. To top it all off, that loud mouthed troll, Anna - or what ever, she wasn't important, ruined it all! Her lover boy, the handsome one from the other school; he left because of the trash Anna shouted. Then she had the nerve to insult her twice in the process!

Panya was certainly taken aghast at it all. Her hand went to her chest with her mouth opened in outrage. Anna ran off before Panya could speak and so did Axel. She had turned to speak to her lovely co-star, but he was also heading out, parting ways with only a: "Take care of yourself, Smokey."

She had the urge to scream, but held it in. She couldn't let them get to her. She had to compose herself. A real star would overcome such petty obstacles. Recover. Redo. Renew.

Yes. That is what she'll do. Just take care of her bruises from those thrown rocks, gather that smokey head she'd thrown in the sea and redo what she intended here. Soon she would find another "Leading Man" and he would be her co-star. Then all of them: Anna, Axel, whoever was hiding behind those bushes, and even lover boy would pay for embarrassing her like this on national television.

Panya dusted the sand off her Smokey the Bear costume and picked up the discarded head that had drifted back onto the shore from where she had left it. She readied her firestar with a smile and winked at a camera before traveling south bound. Her audience would not be disappointed!

[[BLK 5: Panya Bishara, Continued To: Time To Pretend.]]