When You Kill What You Are Meant To, There is No Remorse

[Emprexx Plush]

Now the plan loose as it was was to crash on top of Bush Person and Marija. Best case nobody could commit any murders trapped under their fat ass, and sort of worse case the attention got turned to them and they'd figure it out from there. Except they wouldn't, right? Because they weren't gonna get that far? 'Cuz what they were doing was playing chicken with two people already in a fight, so when they broke the brush somebody was gonna flinch first. It could even be them! They didn't know what they were doing! It was more than likely they were gonna eat shit over a branch, and if they didn't they probably weren't pointed the right way, and if they were whoever was on top would probably see them coming and move before they caught up, yeah? So they should have had an actual plan for when this not-plan fell apart, and that was about as far as they got before they rammed into-oh was that Lori?-Lori and squashed the whole situation flat.

Huh.

So they were kinda dazed. Neither Marija or Lori sounded relieved about the fun new cuddle puddle they were in and like, they couldn't blame them? This was a bad plan, but it was kinda working, they weren't fighting each other anymore. Hel took a deep breath to try and get their bearings, they were kinda sorta not really but more than usual in control of the situation and they could force the other two to talk this craziness out before they got up, yeah? Now that was a plan, and nobody had to get hurt.

"I'm not trying to get weird or anything, this is an emergency."

What, uh, was going on down there exactly? Hel couldn't see much from their position but Marija's face, and then kinda Lori's hands on the ground, kinda like a weird push-up thing? She wasn't touching anybody else so this was probably okay, until it super wasn't with Hel's perspective shifting faster than their awareness. It was her turn in the threepeat with a "Hey what the f-" that went unfinished thanks to an MLG Montage worthy O O F when they hit the ground ass over tea kettle. They tried to sit up quick but they were shaky, the best they could do was leaning on their arms in time to get Lori glaring daggers at them. Behind her was a shape pointing, wait, that wasn't a hand, it was aiming, Hel tried to find breath to call out to her and

He lowered his arm. She turned. He vanished. She broke down.

Hel turned their head to Marija, then to Lori crying into her gun, then to their waistband, then back where they started. What? The? Fuck? they mouthed to her just kinda at...everything.

This would be a lot simpler if one of them had shot them.

[Kermit]

The bush rustled, then made a noise somewhere between a grunt, a laugh, and a choke. It rustled again, and then Val limped out into the open, holding her own gun at her side.

She made a mental note never again to go into a situation under the assumption anyone else involved was competent at functions more complex than breathing.

Raylene was crying about nobody liking her. Val wasn't quite sure why Raylene expected people to appreciate being harassed while they hid in bushes, but okay. Hel was still there too. They were physically present, at least. Just kind of looking at things. Val trusted them less with a gun than she did Raylene. Raylene's emotional desperation and um, political fervor, had the potential to be of use, actually! The problem with Val's previous allies had been that they were devoid of initiative, and if Raylene had one thing, it was initiative (and also a gun). Hel had initiative (and a gun) too, she supposed, but it was the kind of initiative that involved bodyslamming bushes, and that wasn't the kind of initiative she needed.

She stepped towards Raylene. "Hey, I like you," she lied through her teeth, "and I think you're smart. I was wrong when I said it was bad to tell Republicans to go kill themselves, and I think it was very rude of Hel," she glanced backwards and gave Hel the stink-eye, though she allowed a bit of levity to break through in the form of a little wink, just in case Lori didn't work out, "to, um, attack us like that."

[Ruggahissy]

Lori walked back to behind the bush where she had dropped her bag before jumping into it for cover. She sobbed openly and clumsily clutched her rifle as she dragged the bag back into the clearing like a young child dragging their stuffed animal along the ground.

"I ju-- I ju -- I just s-- saw Claudeson. Been with him for like a week -- He saw th-- the struggle and he just -- just -- " she got out between her hiccups.

Then Val said that she liked her. That she was right in her political opinions at school and she looked upset with Hel.

"R-- Really?" Lori said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She plopped down, sitting on the ground.

He'd left her there. She had tried so hard to be the kind of good person that people liked and all it had gotten her was ditched. She had tried (no) as hard as she could and really, it wasn't what she wanted and it yielded no results, so why keep trying down that route? Deep down, she had admired people who didn't have to deal with considering others and did what they wanted. It was like that for the billionaires and the Tracee Bluebells of the world and deep down, it had been what she always wanted as well. Every cent she made on her stocks and with her vending machines around town was one step closer to being able to ignore the whims of others and just buy everything, including admiration and companionship.

Stop thinking these people could ever like you. They didn't give you a chance before and they aren't going to start now. Just live.

"No you don't," she said sternly, tears still running down her pink face. "I'm done fucking around. Either I get out of here and all you jerks are dead or I die -- and either one is an improvement, honestly."

[Emprexx Plush]

Val's 'we' nonsense got blown up faster than Hel could be offended by it. Like damn, that was such a stupid play they weren't sure they could be offended by it. Maybe Val, shit, Marija, shit, why were they playing along with that, whatever! Whoever! Had hit her head during the whole thing and forgot that Lori was the one that jumped her. No, back up, not just jumped her but screamed at her, pulled a gun on her, had some wild pincer maneuver plan going with her partner in the brush until he decided she wasn't worth the hassle, and when Hel was the one who got in the way to keep her from getting shot or choked or stabbed or concussed or whatever, they got all the dirty looks? And when she came sauntering out on the back of all her talk to get Hel to put their gun down, she had one of her own that was probably trained on them the whole time? That shit should be hurtful but it was so fucking absurd they almost laughed. Almost not cuz they didn't but because it was more of a snort than a laugh and that only half counted right?

Was it the most sensitive move with two unhinged people rocking guns stand in front of them? Nah. Not at all. But reality was batshit. They couldn't do anything right and anyway who was even kinda thankful to them either died or ditched. Gallows human and witchy coping met in the middle to paint them a picture. Yeah. They'd put their weird bullshit curse intent out into the universe and staked their life on seeing it through so they'd stop trying and failing to take themself off the table, and this was the test they were getting back. A friend of a friend too far gone or maybe just too fucking selfish for them to be anything but leverage and the aftermath of a murder-couple ghosting. Find the fucks to get out of this without getting shot or wanting to put one under your chin, kid!

Loud and clear, cosmic whatever.

"Really picked the wrong horse to back, huh Val?"

Their gun wasn't drawn. They couldn't get this stupid, absurdist grin off their face. What could they say? Hel was shit at tests.

[Kermit]

Oh. Well. Val hadn't realized Claudeson was there.

She knew Claude was a coward and a liability from experience, and he'd gone on her would-have-shot-on-sight-if-she-had-any-ammo list as soon as he'd killed Meka.

Her eyes shot between Raylene, Raylene's gun, and Hel.

Hel was talking about horses. Wait, no. They were comparing Raylene to a horse. Also, they were calling Val Val now.

They looked very smug about it.

"HEL, BE QUIET, YOU WON'T EVEN SHOOT A TREE," she snapped, absentmindedly waving her own gun around before glancing over at Raylene's gun. "UM - Claudeson was - he left me too! On the second day!" she stuttered. Establishing a common ground was important.

Val's eyes moved from the crying girl's gun to her face. "I understand what you're going through, um, Raylene!" she said, taking a step away from the others in the clearing (just in case she needed to limp away at speed!).

[Ruggahissy]

Hel told Val that she made a mistake by trying to talk to Lori. Well, what did Hel know? Why was Lori such a bad pick? Before she could say anything, Val had yelled at her.

"Yeah, go play in traffic," she said a little quieter, trying to hastily wipe away her tears and hide any evidence that they had existed.

What Val said next surprised her. She said that Claudeson had abandoned her as well way back on day two. That was probably just a day before Lori had met him. Maybe he saw Lori and realized that she was a better, stronger ally and then he'd ditched Val. That made her feel a little bad for Val.

"It's Lori," she said forcefully. "I -- I'm sorry to hear that," she said, still trying to regain her composure. He was someone who had used them and used Val even worse, maybe.

"Should we -- should we kill him?"

[Emprexx Plush]

"So this is it, huh?"

It hadn't gotten any more or less funny. At least they could stop smiling.

"Last days on Earth and y'all wanna spend it lying to yourselves?"

'Cuz either Lori was playing a headgame too big brain for Hel or somebody had to point out how bad Val's shit smelled. Near as Hel could tell she had some sorta hyper mutated Stockholm Syndrome where if you had a gun and some neutral comments about her failures then boom, she's in, when does the murder start? Taken totally out of context it was wild, like, imagine SNL decided to do an SotF skit. Not for TV, gods no, one of those low tier YouTube only joints they slapped a Cut For Time label over for the illusion of quality control. Back in the writer's room floor there was a version with Aidy Bryant as Val and Kate McKinnon as Lori that they couldn't sell so now they wheeled out Heidi Gardner and like, Mikey Day in sloppy ass drag and he won't stop doing that thing he does with his eyes that makes him look like he's getting his temperature taken rectally and he's waaaaay too high to remember how he got in this vet's office.

Mm, as tangents went that was a B+, A- sorta range to distract them from the hella great decision they'd made to call out to murderous psychos. That sure was a thing they were doing that they probably shouldn't, and like, they'd already covered shitty dark humor on one tangent so it'd be easy enough to swing this one the other way to self-destruction, they were on a roll killing their two aesthetics with one stone. Except fuck it. If Val was gonna shoot somebody she had 80 different opportunities, and Lori wouldn't need to be asking everybody else to be her homocidsual life partner if she was any better at pulling the trigger than Hel.

Fuck it. Worse case scenario it'd be the second time somebody shot them for calling out their fantasy island nonsense, and after everything else? They hardly felt the wound anymore.

"You really wanna waste your time hunting down some prick who didn't even have a goodbye for y'all? There's nothing else you want more?"

[Kermit]

Well, maybe wasting time was exactly what Val was trying to do. The less people alive, the less people that needed to be coerced into peace. She knew that the SOTF attacks followed a formula, in which the final few students left alive were forced together into one area. She knew that, as the attack progressed, it would become easier to stop.

Raylene — no, Lori — was a possible means for that coercion. Val had led wild goose chases looking for Claudeson before. She could make it work.

She knelt down next to Lori, wincing a bit as a stabbing pain shot out through her knee when it bent. "Of course we kill him," she said softly.

She glanced up at Hel. "It isn't about me," she stated. "It's...

"Someone once said, 'Change must come with the barrel of a gun', and they were not wrong."

[Ruggahissy]

"I don't need your judgment," Lori said, glaring at Hel. "Which one of our classmates died and assigned you're the moral authority of this rock? Huh? Bullying club prez Wyatt have that certificate up his Nazi-ass before he died?"

Lori took a big, shuddering breath and sniffed a bit. Her sobbing was going from a torrent to a trickle.

But then Val bent down and said they were going to kill Claudeson. There was something appealing about the simplicity of that. Did someone wrong you? Kill them. Problem solved. It was kind of what she wished she could do in the past. Paloma got her banned from Chinese food and ruined her notes. Kill her? Not in the regular world, she got ejected from the restaurant and obviously would have gone to jail if she tried to retaliate with violence later on. But here it was childishly simple. Boy abandoned you to die and you didn't die? Kill him. She had the might which made right in her hands. Lori squeezed the rifle.

She got up and offered a hand to steady Val, who seemed to have a hurt leg or foot or something.

"I agree with that," she said nodding slowly. "I mean, sometimes it's the only things people understand I think if you look at the people who are left, that's probably the safest bet. Yes, sometimes you just have to use force," she said, nodding faster.

[Emprexx Plush]

Lori was a lost cause. Pound for pound Hel was pretty sure they could out-debate Val on a good day but they didn't have a conclusion that was gonna appeal to this Patty Hearst wannabe; supposing Val didn't look so appealing to her anymore, by Lori's own admission her ideal futures all included every one of them dead. There was a conversation there if that was like, a grim nihilism thing. Hel could for sure relate to that. Lori's vibe was full of spite though, she wanted to lash out for its own sake. Being kinda incompetent at the whole murder game didn't change her intent, and Hel didn't have the time, training, or insurance buckling fees to try and dig into whatever was going on there. When she talked Hel acknowledge her, way they figured it best way to get her more reasonable was to starve her like a fire. Ignore her bait, don't give her anything to latch on to, that kinda thing.

That left them with Val quoting Chairman Mao which, cards on the table? Was way more buck wild than Lori being upfront about wanting to merc a motherfucker because he hurt her feelings. Way easier to work with too though; Val had some kinda point. A goal maybe she thought got best met by knocking folks off. It was fucking insane, but it was maybe a need that could be met alternatively if they could figure it out. If they could figure out the solution then all they had to debate was the method.

Hel could out-debate Val on a good day.

"What kinda change you figuring here? 'cuz there've been like..." Their brow furrowed as they counted up and down on their fingers, "I dunno, like eight of these fucked up games already, and unless you got some inside scoop I missed nothing's changed since the first time around. I mean, fuck," Hel snapped their fingers. "Didn't they pop the guy who was supposed to run all this awhile back? That's about as direct a change as you can ask out of a barrel and..." They shrugged. "We're still here. What're you gonna change, Val?"

[Kermit]

Val took Lori's hand and slowly stood up, conveying more pain on her face than what she was actually in. She looked into her eyes and nodded, smiling lightly. "That's exactly it — um, and thank you for helping me up, Lori."

Then Hel spoke up again, and Val shuffled over a little bit closer to Lori. Lori didn't ask questions. Hel did. Ergo, Lori won in the short-term.

"It's not them that need changing, Hel. It's -" she paused, thinking of the right way to word it. Then, she started talking really fast. She'd made a mistake back when she'd allowed Julien get a word in edgewise. "- We do what none of the classes before us did. The attacks are ideology-based — they have to be — they're trying to make a point; after which, the attacks stop. Like you said, there's been eight attacks. All of them so far have ended in a sole survivor, or a sole survivor and an escape attempt -"

She took a big breath in.

"- The world is making the mistake of assuming the terrorists are, outwardly, um, reliable narrators — we have no proof they'll blow the collars if we go a day without a kill, for example. But they're - it's - they want us to prove their point — but they're dumb stupid pretentious idiots who won't tell the world what the point they really want to make actually is, and um, are waiting for us to show the world what their point is. So we try to do that. And people like Claudeson are in the way of achieving that, and -"

She raised her eyebrows and stared at but not into Hel's eyes, vaguely exasperated.

"- If they won't live in peace, then they'll have to die for peace, yes?"

It felt good, saying that out-loud in front of actual people.

[Ruggahissy]

Now Lori and Val stood on the same side, physically if not mentally, across from Hel. Lori listened to Val's grand plan and it was a noble goal.

"That's a pretty noble goal," she said, echoing out her thoughts.

However, it wasn't one that Lori agreed with. She wasn't going to sacrifice her own life willingly just to make a greater point about the human spirit, or even in the hopes that the terrorists wouldn't do this again. She wanted to live if the option was on the table. She had just as much right as anyone else. Maybe she wasn't pretty like Madison or rich like Ivy or a suck-up like Mercy, but that didn't mean she didn't have the right to live less than any of them.

But...

For now, Val's goal aligned with her own. Kill killers. Kill people she didn't like. So it was fine, for now. Lori didn't have much to add to that so she just kind of smiled smugly at Hel acting as Val's cheerleader.

"It's at least something to do with the hope for a better future," she said as a minor addition. "What are you doing to make anything better?"

[Emprexx Plush]

Gods.

They were totally insane.

Hel wanted to buy into it too. They'd been throwing themself at anything to keep going and there was the hint of a good cause here. What if it could all mean something? What if they could change the message? What the fuck would it matter? Because it wasn't gonna stop. Not because some kids got uppity and went Jonestown, like that was ever gonna happen anyway. If Val figured she could just keep killing people until everybody who was left agreed to die...Hel shook their head. "There's always gonna be another Claude, Val. Things go right and it gets to be you. That's about as good as you're gonna get."

For Lori they shrugged and turned away. She'd yes man whatever Val put out now and it'd make them feel bad for her if she wasn't such a vindictive fuckin' harpy about it. "Me? I just wanna make sure nobody's gotta remember me with blood on my hands. 's not much, but it's the best future I can picture out here." Hel shouldered their bag and headed for the treeline, pausing with a hand against the one they marked. "But I guess you don't gotta worry much about folks remembering you, huh Raylene?"

Petty? For sure. Unnecessary? Indisputably. More trouble than shooting her? Yeah. Probably. It was as near as they were gonna get to catharsis, though, and it kept their head up while they walked away.

Call that a victory. They deserved at least one.

((Helena Fury Continued In @shdwmstr recordings and transcripts june 19th))

[Kermit]

It was becoming increasingly obvious to Val that Hel was caught in the same kind of circular, fatalistic thinking as Claudeson and Julien had been. 'It's hard to do, which means nobody will want to actually do it, which means it's going to be even harder to do it, which means it's pointless to try, plus anyways if we fail, the end result is the same as if we did nothing at all, therefore I'm just going to mope around and be sad and inconvenience you.'

Like... did they not realize the problem was them? Did they not realize that since trying and failing ended the same as not trying at all, there was no reason not to try?

At least Hel had no intention of actively working against Val's goal. That meant Val was okay with letting them go. Watching their back fade into the woods, she thought about how much better the encounter with Julien would have gone if she'd had a Lori to shoot him.

She glanced sideways at Lori. "I - um, sorry about calling you Raylene. I sometimes have trouble with American names, is all," she said, pausing to scratch the back of her neck.

"Claudeson can't have gone far yet, so," she picked a random, arbitrary direction, and pointed, "let's go get him."

She limped off into the forest, and made it a point to stay next to the other girl.

((Valerija Bogdanovic continued elsewhere))

[Ruggahissy]

Lori stared at Hel as she made her parting shot. The thing was, she wasn't sure what to say in response. Val had totally not used even a small amount of brain space before the island to remember who she was, even though she knew who Val was.

She had spent the whole time on the island failing to really achieve anything but being a subordinate to Claudeson, who saw fit to dump her the very second things were mildly inconvenient. Lori stared at the gun in her hands. What should she say? "Nuh-uh!"? She felt a tightness in her chest that came with the familiar feeling of failure. She looked up and Hel was gone. You missed your chance. You blew it. Failed again. Like always. Forever.

"Y-yeah. It's ok. It's important to support immigrant communities so that's not something I should get hung up on," she said mechanically in response to Val. Lori took one last fleeting look at where Hel had just been, telling her that she wasn't worth remembering.

Lori picked up her bag, then turned and went with Val.

((Lori Martin continued elsewhere))