TFW you will never find out what's in the basement

[Rattlesnake]

((Steve Dobson continued from The Gadfly Cometh))

He sat at the edge of the plateau on the island's local maxima, gazing out at the boundaries of his wall-less prison while his fingers rifled dumbly through the medical supplies spilled out around him.

Turns out sickles didn't really do well in bags.

Like people on islands. Or inside walls. He twitched the corner of his mouth and pulled his hoodie tighter against himself as a stray breeze wandered by. If only the wings on his back would sprout and he could fly... where? There was nothing over that horizon. Just a straight shot through the narrow inlet into nothing whatsoever. More glittering water, more aimless gusting air, more birds. And beyond that, even more nothing. He shivered again, not from the cold. As wide as Evangelion was good. There you go, that was language you could use to put a point across. Some might even consider it an understatement.

He turned back to the blood oozing from his leg. Bump after bump after bump - not that it really took that long - the razor edge of his designated weapon ate through the thin-walled canvas bag. And then, stupidly on his part, it broke through his flesh just beneath his hip. That was what he got for his sudden wanderlust. Running to and fro like they were trapped in a blender - did that not tire his classmates out? Provoke stress and surprises and dramatic sudden meetings? Which was why

That thought, and the unrolling of something promisingly white and medicinal-looking, was interrupted by a mechanical whine that nearly jolted him over the edge of his perch. Apparently this was a good place for sound to carry from, because the list of gruesome deaths blared painfully loud from close by, rattling his bones as the news quite literally flooded through him. Some were sliced and some were shot and one of his classmates had simply offed himself. For some reason, that was the one that stopped the breath in his throat. Maybe he was just feeling particularly wretched at the moment, but he couldn't help feeling like they were kindred spirits, connected in some profoundly disturbing way he didn't want to think about - though there were a lot of things recently that weren't exactly his choice.

And then it ended, and only the screech was left in his ear to attenuate gradually towards thick, heavy silence. Aside from absolutely everything, nothing seemed amiss.

[VoltTurtle]

The wind howled around the top of the supply depot.

((Isabel Ramirez continued from Be Prepared))

Isabel had spent quite some time wandering around after she had killed Danny. She ended up sleeping in a tree when she couldn't find shelter when night fell before awaking to another set of announcements detailing the dwindling numbers of her fellow students.

It didn't take long for Isabel to see the imposing figure of the storehouse and decide to make her way to the top of it to get a good look at her surroundings. The wind picked up from a gentle breeze as she ascended to the helipad on top of the building, only for her to be greeted by the sight of some kid sitting at the edge of the building. He was distracted treating some sort of wound. He didn't see her, and probably couldn't hear her over the wind blowing.

Isabel could easily just walk right up and push him right off the edge of the building. The fall would probably kill him and then that would be that. It'd be the easiest kill she's gotten so far. Letting a chance to eliminate some of the competition like this would be such a waste. Isabel slowly tip toed towards him, doing her best to keep her halberd and bag from clattering and potentially alerting her newest victim. She wouldn't get too much enjoyment out of doing this, but that didn't matter right now. The main goal was still just to survive. Anything else was secondary.

Isabel stood, just a few feet away from the boy, glaring at him, sizing him up, determining exactly how hard she'd have to kick him to make him fall off. As she looked, she caught a glimpse of a weapon in his bag. Another bonus to killing him. This was probably the easiest decision she's made so far.

And just like that, Isabel deftly moved forward, abandoning all pretense of stealth and kicked the boy right in his back, sending him, and his bag, off the edge of the building just as he turned around to get a glimpse of his killer.

[Rattlesnake]

And then, without warning, he was sitting on nothing at all.

For one ridiculous moment, it seemed like just another gust of wind. And then the realization that pounded his leaping gut back down where it belonged: there was nothing but wind.

The ground tilted up toward him at a crazy angle, and his bag followed along behind more out of simple entanglement than any purposeful reaction. There wasn't time for that, or much of anything else, really. Only one thing made it through his mind intact, and it spewed directly out his lips.

"Oh fu-shit!"

The printed wings on his jacket billowed out mockingly, medical supplies fluttering out in his wake like ticker tape to celebrate another murderous triumph. His last half-formed thought before the ground connected was a frantic survey for the brake pedal.

He hit feet first, legs breaking his fall. And break they did. One bent before him. One simply shattered beneath him. Both produced the sorts of noises that sent people out of theaters with their hands over their ears. Or mouths. He crumpled heavily onto his side, completing his inadvertent, and unfortunate, demonstration of how exactly to survive a lengthy fall.

The comet's tail of debris struck all around him, though he didn't notice. Only vaguely did he even register his bag impacting not far away, his designated weapon scything into the ground through the thin canvas with a sharp, wet sound.

[VoltTurtle]

Isabel smirked as the kid fumbled through the air only to hit the ground below hard. That was that.

Now she just needed to head down and grab his stuff, maybe even keep his bag as an extra supply carrier. Her bag was almost packed full at this point from all the pillaging she had done.

Isabel looked back down at the kid's broken frame, his legs having twisted in awkward directions after they broke from the fall. An image of a job well done... except... was he moving? His head was turning to look around. He was still alive.

"Eugh," Isabel vocalized. The smirk she had on her face from yet another show of power and dominance faded, only to be replaced by an angry glare, teeth clenched in frustration. Now she had to go down there and finish the job too. Such a waste of time, this kid wasn't even worth the effort she'd have to put in to carve up.

Isabel sighed as she turned back towards the staircase. She might as well look on the bright side, she thought to herself, as she readjusted her bag straps. Even if putting the extra effort into this kill was a waste of her time, at least it was more enjoyable this way. Killing someone so quickly with so little fanfare wasn't her style. Drag it out, make it vicious, and maybe, just maybe she might get that best kill award that she wanted. That she deserved. She didn't understand why she hadn't gotten one already. After all, the terrorists wanted to reward people that were playing, right? Nobody else was playing the game as right as she has been. All the rest of them were losers destined to be crushed under her boot. She was the only one that mattered.

The stairs clanged as she walked down them, the rusted metal groaning as she made her way back down. The boy had noticed her at this point, and was fumbling for his sickle that was nearby, just out of his reach. A smile began forming and growing on her lips as she got ever closer to him. When she finally was just a few feet away from him, she cocked her head to the side as he looked at her in panic. The fear reflected in his eyes was probably the best part of all of this.

"Oh... now, what do we have here?"

[Rattlesnake]

Breathing hurt.

Hmm.

Not breathing hurt.

That was unfortunate.

Steve rolled his head from side to side, which hurt, and looked around. Some vague inner monologue tried weakly to direct him without quite cracking the surface of consciousness. Try to stay calm, try to take stock, try not to scream from the pain until his legs were bloody paste.

Groaning, he raised his head up a little. One of his legs stuck out at a sickening angle. The other sprouted a jagged mess of white and red that might have sent him vomiting if it didn't promise to hurt so badly. He tried to sit up instead, and compromised by laying back and doing absolutely nothing. For what seemed like an age, he tried simply to withdraw from it all. Let it be a dream, let it be a hallucination. Let him be back up there at the very lease, please just grant him that, even if it meant he was still listening to the growing roster of his dead friends.

Nobody replied but the girl who'd leaned in after him like he has a toy she'd tossed out her window just to see it hit the ground. Getting closer. Smiling. Every gear left inside him kicked up to full tilt.

Weakly he reached for the bag, though he didn't really know what he'd do if he did grab it. It was just- despite the pain flaring so hard it melted his proprioception into one indistinct blob of agony, despite the blood and the labor of his breathing, despite everything logic told him about becoming a helpless lump in the middle of a killing field, the sudden realization hit him so hard that there could be no depth of desperation left unplumbed.

She was going to kill him.

"I don't suppose," he said with gritted teeth and no small amount of hissing and straining between syllables, "you're here to help?"

[VoltTurtle]

"Well..."

Isabel lightly waved her sword around in the air while innocently tapping her bottom lip.

Those were an interesting choice of words from someone staring death in the face. Isabel was expecting more begging and grovelling. Still, at least it gave her an opportunity for her own witty comeback. "I guess you could say I am here to help..."

Isabel directed the sword towards the boy's face, the point just out of his reach. "...myself."

Isabel lowered the sword slightly. Nobody else was in sight, there was no reason she couldn't savor the moment as much as possible. She spoke up, her tone condescending and devious. "Can't move an inch? Well, that makes this situation a whole lot more interesting."

Isabel was more than aware that she was acting like a villain that one would see in a cheesy action movie, but that was intentional. It would make her stand out from the growing crowd of killers, give her a chance to rise above the pack. And more importantly, it would mean all the more fear she could squeeze out of her latest victim.

Isabel loomed over the boy, her figure menacing in the light of the morning sun. She chuckled, unable to contain her growing excitement. "You wanna know something?" Isabel set her sword on the ground outside of the boy's reach before fumbling around for the halberd as she spoke. "Your life... doesn't mean anything. Your life doesn't matter. The most important moment of your life is this one right here." Isabel slowly drew her halberd out from behind her back. "And the only reason this moment is important? Because you get the honor of having your life ended by me."

Isabel got into position next to the boy's broken legs, halberd at the ready. "So, where do you want me to start? Or actually, let me rephrase that... which organ is your least favorite? Don't worry, I know where they all are, I had to do a lot of studying for anatomy class to get those good grades that I got."

She smiled.

"I won't miss."

[Rattlesnake]

He'd never realized how much effort writhing in agony took. His whole body ached, not just from the beating and the cracking and the shattering, but like he'd run a marathon. Everything not slick with blood was hot and clammy with sweat. A weight on his shoulders he couldn't let go. Another lesson filed under things you only ever learn once, he thought dizzily, almost blearily. A small comfort that, though he snapped back to reality with a sudden bitter fury.

Why had he left those kids arguing about whatever and struck off on his own? Those who didn't learn from the past were doomed eternally to repeat it, that was something it didn't take a bone-shattering fall to learn. Anyone who struck out on their own made easy targets. They got hunted and stalked and toyed with. You were as good as bleeding in shark-infested water, except the sharks were fucking coward assholes who kicked you off buildings.

Oh, and one more thing. She wasn't about to kill him.

The terror he held back so tentatively sprouted in full. On the balance, things really couldn't get much worse. People had died horribly before. And he was going to be one of them. Maybe, he thought with the misplaced optimism of someone facing a truly incalculable trial, he'd get to be top of the list. That would be something to brag about in the afterlife. But people had killed each other truly in horrible ways over the years. Horrible, terrible, stomach-churning ways. They'd spent thousands of years figuring out that art. Over days, sometimes. Even weeks. Scap-something. Or skip-? The one with the boats and the honey. Or good old fashioned flaying. Or breaking on the wheel. As long as the victim didn't have any means to move things along, the sky was the limit.

He was teetering on the edge of a brink far deeper than he'd ever imagined.

There was no plan. Just desperation. No begging, no pleading, sure. Don't feed her ego. But other than that? Hope she'd screw up? Make her mad, take the edge off the creativity? That was risky as hell. But it wasn't like any of the things oozing from her were creativity.

"S-screw off with your stupid games," he said with undisguised effort.

[VoltTurtle]

Isabel chuckled noiselessly at the boy's continued defiance.

It was cute, almost. He thought that he could make her mad, make her do anything other than savor this kill with meer words alone. The only things that would make her kill him fast were someone else showing up, or him actually trying to attack her. Given the second possibility wasn't a concern...

"Well, I guess since you wouldn't pick for yourself, I'll just have to pick for you." Isabel waved the pointed end of the halberd in the air just out of the boy's reach, tauntingly changing angles and positions based on the various organs that she could puncture. "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe..."

The halberd's wicked spear aimed itself at the boy's stomach. "...catch a tiger by his toe..."

The cruel javelin pointed itself at the boy's left lung. "...if he hollers let him go..."

The vicious pike itched to embed itself in the boy's heart. "...my mother told me to pick the very best one..."

"And... you.... are..... it......"

With all the force that Isabel's arm could manage, she forced the halberd down into the boy's pancreas. The hard resistance of the boy's body, his screams of pain, the brutal spectacle, the metallic stench of blood welling up in her nostrils... all combined together gave Isabel a taste of true power. It was all she needed, this feeling of control, this rush from the kill, this symphony of agony. It was all she wanted.

Isabel twisted the halberd in the boy's body, viscera oozing from the wound. Isabel laughed, unable to contain the energy channeled through her.

"Anything funny to say now?" She said, her voice oozing malice, and a wicked grin plastered on her face. "Because it doesn't matter, all that matters is that you don't die yet. We've got more fun ahead of us after all..."

[Rattlesnake]

Brave and proud and whatever else you might want to be, there were limits to what a person's body could endure. And Steve was fast approaching them. The game, he had to admit, wasn't so much resisting it all as making her think he was. And even that was skating on dangerously thin ice. His resolve wavered each time the spearpoint locked another target, sent a fresh wave of primal what-ifs roaring through his mind. Enough to to produce full-body shivers like a giggling child recoiling from a tickling finger before it even hit home. Just... different.

He wanted to give it up. Just start crying and begging and pleading for help or mercy or his mom or his brother or something other than this. But the fact he knew, that nothing of the sort was coming, only made resisting the pleas that much more difficult. He was traveling that road by himself, he couldn't even pretend otherwise. And it was costing him so much of his last strength. So much effort, so much pain.

The only reason he didn't turn aside was because that would have made things so much harder.

He reaped his reward, a blade searing through his abdomen. Tearing, crushing, burning, all of them together or something new entirely. To inflict that level of agony had to mean that she really did hit whatever she was aiming for, though it registered to him only as shock that anything could hurt so badly. He shuddered as the blade hit sunk through to the ground beneath him, loosed a choked gasp as it twisted through the intricately-layered tissue of his body.

She gave him a laugh that would have curdled his blood had he not been so preoccupied with dying. Asked if he had anything to say.

"Mhm," he said and nodded, though it would have been easy to mistake the effort for a simple gasp and a spasm. But she was hooked, waiting for his witty retort, for the grand magnum opus of the final scene of his life.

And, well, so did he.

He had nothing, assuming he could even get his lungs to cooperate. The most eloquent half-constructions assembled in his mind and crumbled over their lack of foundation. So he seized on that.

"Unoriginal," he forced out weakly.

She slid the halberd out of his gut at that and began brewing the most vile, biting storm she could. A storm of words, grown and and polished and hurled like hailstones. Completely absorbed in in her own delusional grandeur. Completely oblivious to the fact that her sticks and stones had already broken his bones.

Perfect.

He rolled his shoulders, bucked his hips, did whatever he could to jerk his weight away from the ground for just one moment. In that moment he was beyond pain as adrenaline spiked through chest and through his legs and he kicked out with everything he had. His bent and broken limbs absorbed the better part of the impulse collapsing in on themselves, but what little made it through was enough. He didn't need all that much distance. Stretching his arm out to the maximum, his fingertips just barely hooked the strap on his bag. And then he pulled, pulled with his last might, ripped the cord across his collar like he was starting the world's most stubborn lawnmower. His bag followed without resistance, unstaking from the soil and pulling the embedded sickle along with it. rushing toward him like an oncoming train.

He almost smiled as he bared his throat to the rushing blade.

[VoltTurtle]

Isabel almost couldn't believe what had just happened.

The boy had managed to slash his own throat with his sickle. With a hole in his stomach and two broken legs.

Isabel let out a rage filled scream as the blood started gushing out of the boy's throat. He was trying to deny her the kill, give the terrorists a chance to make his death out as a suicide in order to mess with her. Deny her the glory and the chance to be even more formidable than she already was to the rest of the student population.

Too bad for him that it takes some time to die from slashing your throat. Isabel knew that from experience.

Still, she wasn't about to let this act of defiance pass without action being taken.

"You... you!" Isabel spat out as she lifted the axe end of the halberd up above her head. "You're not taking this away from me!"

The halberd slammed down with a sickening crack, embedding itself in the boy's head.

[Rattlesnake]

Blood pooled beneath him at an alarming rate. He wasn't dead yet, but he would be. That was something, right?

Yup.

And that was it. Yup. And on the whole, with his body throbbing and his mind fuzzing over from an lack of blood and an abundance of every chemical his brain had to dump, he felt... neutral about it all. He'd given the girl - who was shouting words he didn't care to process again - the finger in his own little way, but he was still dying for it. At least the pain had gone and wandered off, or maybe ascended to a higher plane of existence. Perhaps his body had simply run dry of anything, including fucks, to give.

Speaking of which, Steve realized, he hadn't properly said any goodbyes. Obviously it didn't matter to anyone else who obviously couldn't hear him, but at some point you had to turn it on yourself. Death was only an adventure to a well-organized mind, or something.

So first off, he thought, he was really truly sorry that he had only one life to give, because he'd really bunged the first one up. A spare he could maybe take sheepishly out of the closet would be great. But, he continued with a sense of vertigo as the halberd split the air, for everyone watching and judging and calling him this or that, taking some sort of lesson from his defiant flailings, he was sorry again that he coul-

B044 STEVE DOBSON: DECEASED

[ViolentMedic]

((Lillian 'Lily' Caldwell continued from Let's Awaken, By The Day.))

'Maybe there was something in that helicopter.' That had been the thought that brought Lily here. Focusing on that over anything that had happened. Over a flash of red that she only realised she'd seen once she'd already fled Nancy.

All she'd done was run straight from one murderer to another. From Sabrina's killer to Tina's. Lily had heard the yelling coming up the stairwell. She hadn't recognised the voices. And now she saw a broken mess of a corpse, and Isabel standing over him.

One second.

Nausea. Revulsion. An odd sense of thankfulness now that Tina had been killed first, because between Conrad and this... at least Tina's death had been fast. Simple.

Two seconds.

Logic. Calculation. Isabel had no gun. Isabel was dangerous, but not the long-range threat Nancy was. Isabel could be killed, if Lily had her own gun.

Three seconds.

Isabel was wearing Tina's scarf. Tina's scarf. The one that Lily had made, had knitted with care and given to Tina as a present. And Isabel was wearing it like it belonged to her, like it'd been given to her.

And in that third second after seeing Isabel and the ruined corpse that Lily couldn't put a name to, Lily felt a wave of cold but potent rage. And it felt good. It made everything else so much easier to ignore. Lily touched her bag, thinking of the mirror shard within.

But rage did not mean she was just going to charge in.

Lily backed away, retreating down the stairwell but keeping her eye on Isabel's back as long as she could see her.

No-one would blame her for Isabel's death. They'd all know that Lily was in the right. But more than that... Isabel just plain deserved to die.

So Lily retreated down the stairwell, looking for a place to hide. And she'd hide. And wait. And when Isabel left, Lily would be right behind her. And Isabel would never know until there was a chunk of glass sticking out of her back.

((Lillian 'Lily' Caldwell continued in Violence Is Usually The Answer.))

[VoltTurtle]

Isabel ripped the halberd out of the boy's skull, a trickle of blood making way to a full flow, gush after gush leading to more chunks of brain and bloody pieces of bone and flesh sloughing onto the ground next to the corpse.

Whatever movement the boy had demonstrated after slashing his throat stopped shortly after impact, the only motion left being some mild twitching of the fingers and thighs. He was gone.

Isabel took ragged breaths as she stared down at the corpse, the metallic stench of a violent death filling the air. Any and all feelings of power that she had gotten out of this had gone away in an instant. He defied her. He demonstrated that in the end, he was the one that was really in control of his destiny. Not her.

After spending a few minutes regaining her breath and her  composure, she screamed in frustration.

Isabel let her legs give out from underneath her and she fell to her knees, only to get to work on the boy's bag. Her own duffel bag was stuffed full of the supplies she had pillaged from those she had killed, but she could fit a few more bottles and some more food, if she tried hard enough, she could probably get the medical kit in there too.

Isabel wrapped her hand around the sickle the boy had used to slash his throat. A decent weapon that would likely compliment her current fighting style well, given that she had been swinging her sword around mostly one handed up to this point.

Isabel fished her makeshift flail out of her pocket and dumped the padlock and rock out of it, before putting the sock back on the foot she had pilfered it from. She had no need for her flail anymore, and she needed the space in her pockets to stick the sickle's handle. With some careful positioning she could keep it nice and steady without it poking her or cutting into her flesh, provided she didn't attempt to run with it like that.

And, well, she was probably never going to have any need to run in any situation where having an extra weapon in her hand is a bad thing.

Swinging her now chock full bag over her shoulder and re-fastening the halberd to the bag and her bag, Isabel set off for a new place, one that hopefully didn't smell of death.

((Isabel Ramirez continued in Violence Is Usually The Answer))