Let's Awaken, By the Day

[Espi]

The gunshots broke the tension, a surprise that made Blair's heart race.

As she jumped to her feet, spun in place, and faced their assailant, Blair found herself surprised that, initial fright aside, the sight of a girl with a gun didn't bring about a jolt of existential terror like she'd been expecting. Her breathing was quick, her hands shaky as she reluctantly raised them above her head, but she glared defiantly, as if daring Nancy to shoot her.

Because in a way, she wasn't sure Nancy could.

Oh, sure, she'd murdered people. With an axe or something, apparently, if her recollection of the announcement was correct. But Blair wasn't doubting Nancy's ability to try to kill her. But, for some reason, Blair didn't feel any more afraid of dying than she did any other given day. The fear was always there, and the clock speeding up didn't seem to change that.

So as soon as that blue-haired dork's voice trailed off, Blair blinked, a crazy reckless thing springing into her mind, and she moved. Letting out a yell, Blair ran forward and raised her shoulder, attempting to body-check the assailant.

[ViolentMedic]

Rene rambled. So did Noah. Neither of them said much that sounded useful. Lily didn't know what half of Rene said even met. Richard Nixon facsimile? What did that even mean? The gist seemed to be that they saw some people not doing anything, met other people, lost someone... nothing that helped.

Lily had been about to ask for clarification—although half of that she didn't even know what questions to ask.

Gunshots.

Nancy.

Murderer.

Run. Fight. Run. Can't do anything to Nancy. She has a gun. Lily had a shard of mirror. Four against one. One of them can deal with her. She killed Sabrina. But Isabel killed Tina, and Lily didn't do anything then. Run. Fight. Kill. Hide. Run. Hide. Steal. Kill.

Too many ideas, and already Blair was charging at Nancy. Wait, what, she didn't even have a—

Instinct kicked in. Lily lunged and made a grab for Blair to try and pull her back. Trying to stop her from doing the stupidest thing possible. Noah wouldn't be able to shoot through Blair if she got in a way, if he had the sense to shoot at all.

Lily sincerely hoped he had the guts, whether Blair got in the way or not. It was what Nancy deserved. And Blair was already heading for the Darwin Awards if she was going to act like this.

[Aura]

There were three things that Rene knew for sure about Nancy Kyle.

First, she really liked Japanese culture, to the point that some may say that she comes off as a bit obsessive at times.

Second, Nancy had killed a few people over the past couple of days.

Finally, and most importantly, Nancy was shooting at them right now oh shit.

Rene jumped when she heard the shots, and when she turned around and saw Nancy holding the gun, her body couldn't decide whether it should flee or freeze, so instead she hopped back a step and stared in terror at the anime fan turned multiple murderer that was threatening them.  Her own gun was in the duffel bag at her side, but there was no way that she could unzip and grab it without Nancy shooting her first.  Right now, she was in a powerless position, and had to hope for some outside force to intervene, like maybe Noah being a quick shot with that whatever-the-fuck-it-is.

Instead, Blair was the one who wound up stepping forward, shouting and running at Nancy with all the tactics of a pissed-off rhinoceros.  With a startled cry of "What?", Rene watched her companion go charging away.  She had no idea what the hell Blair was thinking there.  Sure, Blair had talked about how she was dying anyway, but... fuck, is that why she was doing this?

She was too far away to do anything about what Blair was doing, but she realized that she had an opportunity.  Since Nancy was probably more focused on Blair at the moment, this might be the opening that Rene needed to get strapped.  Keeping her vision split between Nancy and Blair, she started feeling around her duffel bag with all the precision and grace of a panicked teenager, searching for the zipper.  If she could reach it in time, she might have a fighting chance against Nancy.

Oh man, I really hope you had a plan for this, Blair...

[Laurels]

Noah was still mentally chuckling at his Whose Line reference when suddenly there was a loud succession of popping sounds, followed by the sand next to Noah exploding. Well, not exploding, but it suddenly popped up like there was something going on underneath. Maybe some hermit crabs were having a civil war and firing artillery, or maybe there was some alien monster lying beneath the sand proceeding to attack them for stepping into its range. Unfortunately, it couldn't be anything that fantastic, because there was some crazy girl trying to kill them.

Noah turned and saw Nancy Kyle holding a gun at them. His eyes widened and he let out a gasp at the triple killer. Noah stepped back and fell to his rear, dropping Sawlaska to the ground. He couldn't believe he had fallen to the ground when faced with a murderer. Wasn't that how people died in this game? If so, Noah was primed to be nothing more than a new beach side attraction: a restaurant for seagulls.

Before he could panic, Blair had taken to running directly towards the armed and crazy weeaboo. Noah tensed up. Was Blair really that suicidal since she was already predetermined to die young? He looked as the remaining girls all reacted to Nancy, with Lily trying to stop Blair and Rene standing around. Noah finally shook his head, reached over for Sawlaska, and stood up.

"Would everyone just calm the fuck down?!?!" he shouted at no one in particular.

He tightened his grip on Sawlaska, keeping it raised to about waist level. He turned towards Nancy. If this girl was really going to kill them, he needed to be prepared to fight back. Sandra was missing, and Noah wasn't going to let any of his allies die either. Even so, he could feel his hands starting to shake. The steps for using Sawlaska replayed in his head as he waited for the girl's next move.

[CondorTalon]

They all turned to her in a panic. All eyes were on her, now. She could shoot, take them all down. Four kills in a day... that would get everyone's attention.

But then... one of them did something she didn't expect. She charged at her. She definitely didn't expect that.

"What are you..." she started, before realizing the implication of what was happening. She saw one of the other girls lunge for the charging girl. Nancy shouted, before discharging another set of shots. Three.

She didn't stick around to see what happened. She ducked to the side and up the beach, taking cover behind some rocks.

[Espi]

As she passed the tiny student, Blair felt a sudden drag on her arm. It wasn't much, certainly not a full-on grip, but it threw Blair off-balance and she stumbled to the ground.

That might have saved her life. She was in the process of shaking sand of of her hair, having all but faceplanted onto the beach, when gunshots echoed through the air and reminded her of the severity of the situation. Blair jumped to her feet, still in a state of adrenaline-fueled mania, and looked over at Nancy, ready to do...something.

But, in defiance of Blair's expectations, she found that Nancy was running down the beach towards some large rocks. Blair took a second to recognize what the assailant was intending, but a response sprung to her mind nonetheless.

"Let's run!"

Blair's stamina was of course less than that of the average person, but she figured a headstart on Nancy could get them out of the radius of death of her gun. So Blair dug her heels into the sand and took off away from Nancy, making a slight detour to grab her bag on the way out.

Because really? Fuck that bitch. Trying to kill her? Blair was probably going to die, but fuck if she was going to make it easy on these psycho fucks.

((Blair Moore continued in What I Needed They'll Pay))

[ViolentMedic]

Bullets. A little plume of sand inches from one of Lily's feet. For the first time in her life, Lily was thankful for the fact that she was so small. Blair was already running off after being yanked down like that. She seemed uninjured.

Lily couldn't be sure if one of the bullets would have hit Blair if she'd kept charging. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know. If not, Lily had possibly risked her life for nothing. If she had, she'd given Blair something that she'd refused to give Tina.

Nancy vanished behind some rocks. Still there. Still armed. Lily's eyes flickered up. If she went around... got on top of the rocks somehow, jumped down... maybe... if she took Nancy by surprise.

No, what was she thinking? There was too much that could go wrong here.

Nancy had a gun. Lily couldn't beat a gun. No matter how much she wanted to see Nancy lying in a puddle of her own blood, the same way she'd undoubtedly left Sabrina.

Lily glanced at Noah and Rene before fleeing. Noah holding the saw thing and Rene rifling in her bag. Another gun? Maybe.

Lily left them with three words.

"Learn to shoot!"

And she was off, heading in a slightly different direction than Blair had gone. Bullets had only started flying once she appeared around those three, after all

((Lillian 'Lily' Caldwell continued in TFW you will never find out what's in the basement.))

[Aura]

More shots, all coming from Nancy. Rene jerked her hand away from the zipper and recoiled at the sound. She didn't see where the bullets hit, but even if they hadn't ended up anywhere near her, that wasn't going to be a comfort when the person who fired said bullets and was almost certainly willing to let a few more fly was still right in front of her. The only good thing about this situation was that Rene hadn't been hit. She had certainly been demoralized and dissuaded from the idea of fighting, though.

Rather, she felt inclined to follow Blair's advice and book it out of there with great haste. She turned around, continuing to look at Nancy for as long as possible before her head followed the rest of her body in pushing itself as far away from the gunslinging fangirl as fast as she could. She caught sight of Blair fleeing and directed herself to follow to the best of her ability.

True, Rene wasn't a particularly fast or athletic person in general, but it's impressive what adrenaline can do for a person given the right circumstances.

((Rene Wolfe continued elsewhere...))

[Laurels]

When Noah saw Nancy raise the gun again, he decided to give up the notion of trying to attack her. There was a reason "flight" was an option along with "fight," and he was fine taking it. Sure, it would have been good to try and stop one of the most notable killers on the island. But not when his team was vastly outmatched in weaponry, accuracy with said weaponry, and the mental fortitude to commit murder. He just needed to get away with his friends in tact.

Unfortunately, when the shot went off, Noah felt a sharp pain in his left leg. He ignored it for a few seconds, around the same time the other girls began to run past him, but soon it became unbearable. He stumbled in the sand and tripped, falling face first into the sand. He looked up and saw the girls running away. Lily was going some other way, but Blair and Rene were going in the same direction. He wanted to call out to them. Cry for them to help. But they were getting farther and farther away. If he called out to them, that could make them targets for Nancy. He bit his tongue, tears starting to well up in his eyes, as he watched the girls continue to run.

Don't stop. Please don't stop running.

He quickly turned back and looked at his leg. His pants leg was torn, and blood was starting to seep down it. He rolled his leg over so her could better look at the wound. It didn't look like the bullet had entered his flesh, but the graze looked like it took out a bit of the flesh of his calf. He tried to stand up, but soon found himself falling back into the sand again.

His breathing starting to increase, Noah turned back in the direction Nancy came from. If she was still here, he was likely an easy target to be picked off. He quickly pulled Sawlaska closer, trying to use it to give himself something to stand up with. Noah winced as he tried to use Sawlaska to prop himself off the ground. He was now sitting up and facing where Nancy should have been. He wanted to believe Nancy could be dissuaded from killing; that he could succeed where those three other kids failed. But at the same time, a part of him worried this was where it would all end: gunned down on the beach to be either food for seagulls or to be swept out into sea when high tide rolled in.

He kept his gaze in the direction. He couldn't see Nancy, but she could be hiding behind the rocks. Noah braced himself for what could be next, keeping Sawlaska close to his body as a pathetic attempt at armor.

[CondorTalon]

She heard footsteps. They were running. Nancy took a few seconds to breathe, before popping from behind the rocks. She held the gun up.

Noah was still there, sitting on the ground, holding his weapon close to him.

"What are you even doing?" she cried, before noticing the red staining the sand around his leg.

"Oh," she uttered. She let the gun fall to her side.

"And they all left you behind, huh?" she said, "Pathetic..."

She couldn't even raise the gun again, even if she wanted to. She knew this was a bad idea, after all, he wasn't harmless. He still had... that thing in his hands. She kept her distance, even if it meant raising her voice a bit over the waves.

"What are you going to do? Fight back?" she asked.

Please. Give me a reason to kill you.

[Laurels]

Noah's eyes widened as Nancy emerged from behind the rocks. His heart began to race as she appeared, although he was surprised to see she kept the gun at her side. That only bought him a few extra seconds on this Earth, so he knew it had to matter. She was asking what he was doing, asking if he was going to fight back.

"I'll lose..." Noah began, struggling to adjust himself in the sand. "I'll lose harder than...uh...I dunno...someone who loses hard..."

Noah used Sawlaska to prop himself up, finally getting to stand on his good leg. His left leg was still bleeding, and kept at a bit of an angle so he could at least attempt to stand without immediately falling over. Like Nancy, he kept his weapon to his side. Not like keeping it raised would do any good; that'd tell her immediately he wanted to fight.

Noah had to ponder what to do. Here he was, face-to-face with an actual crazy person. This was what it probably felt like to be clubbing in the gay bars of Milwaukee in the late 80's, only to learn the guy you went home with was actually Jeffrey Dahmer. He knew this was either the part where he could let Nancy kill him to add to her collection of souls to take to Hell with her, or the part where he could get out of this with some of his sanity in tact.

Thus, he decided to do what he did every week for his web show: he talked.

"I know I can't win if I tried to fight you with this fucking Evil Dead thing they gave me," Noah said, wincing at the throbbing pain in his leg. "So sorry to disappoint, but I know fighting you will not end well for me. But then again, what will killing me accomplish? You're not leaving this island. Karma's probably set in motion the events that will lead to your demise, and rest assured, it won't be kawaii. It will be cold, merciless, and probably bleak. But you know what? It will be exactly what you deserve.

"After all, that's what you get for drinking the SOTF Kool-Aid. You really thought playing their way will help you survive. But it won't, Nance. My life might end right here on this beach, but your life ended the minute you decided to kill."

Noah raised Sawlaska so it was pointing at Nancy. Sure, it was a meaningless gesture that wouldn't defend him from her bullets, nor would it show he was able to attack her. But he needed to make his point to her, and this at least made him feel like the hero in a medieval film or a samurai movie.

"So, do you feel like gunning down another peer in cold blood, or would you rather just walk away?"

Even though Noah tried to convey an expression of determination and certainty, in his mind, he began to incessantly pray she'd pick the latter.

[CondorTalon]

"Survive?" Nancy said, running her hand through her hair, "I think... I think you're misunderstanding the situation here."

He thought she was playing to win. Maybe that's what they all thought. Maybe that's what every other big killer was doing. It would make sense, of course, but Nancy wasn't trying to survive. She knew she wouldn't.

That's why she was killing.

"What I deserve, huh..." she said idly to herself, repeating his words.

"Maybe... maybe I will deserve it. Maybe karma will come back and strike me down, but... you know what? I really couldn't care less."

A smile crept onto her face at that point. A small one, but it finally... she finally had a chance to let it all out.

"Because that won't change the fact that I'm already dead. Whether I kill twenty people or zero, I'm going to die, because look at me. Of all the people on this island, what are the chances that I'll get out alive? What do you think?"

She kept a grip on the gun. She was expecting at any point in her explanation that he would just swing that thing at her face. Even if she didn't know how it worked, she knew getting hit by it would be big trouble.

If Noah said anything at that point, she didn't hear it.

"So why... why die as... just another number? A statistic? No... no one will forget. They'll remember. They'll remember, and they'll hate, they'll loathe, they'll grind their teeth at the very mention of my name... but they'll remember."

Her throat was getting hoarse. She cleared her throat.

"I never really believed in an afterlife, anyway."

[Laurels]

Noah remained stone faced as Nancy began to speak. She was now smiling as she talked about why she was playing. As Noah saw it, her name must have been Melanie Martinez, because apparently she wanted a pity party. Nancy was going on and on about how, unlike literally everyone else on the island, she had no chance of surviving, and how playing would at least be her way of being remembered instead of just being forgotten as a statistic of each game.

"Okay, afterlife or no afterlife, is that really the best way to be remembered?" Noah asked.

Noah shook his head at the girl. The pain in his leg was continuing to cause winces and grunts, so he knew he'd have to deal with it soon.

"I mean, I don't care about how I'll be remembered. I've got a family who will remember me. I've got a whole fucking YouTube channel that will last as long as the website does and as long as anyone cares to copy the videos to their channels. I mean, it's not the best thing to remember me by- certainly some of the earlier videos are shit- but I'd rather be remembered for that than for brutally slicing the heads off my high school classmates with some saw blade throwing garage project.

"And what do you mean 'what are the chances you'd get out alive?' How the hell are you immediately counted out of this thing? Wasn't the last winner some beauty queen or something? Anyone can survive this game; hell, thirty-some kids in 2008 survived by just doing nothing. Okay, you might not be as physically strong as other people, but literally anyone can survive this game. 'Survival of the Fittest' is practically a misnomer at this point. For fuck's sakes, I don't even think anyone would believe I can win at the outset. I don't even believe I can win this! But I'm gonna try to survive, and I'm going to do it right."

Noah took a few steps back, keeping a tight grip on Sawlaska and keeping his eyes trained on Nancy. If Nancy really was going to do nothing to him, then this would be a good chance to try and leave so he could patch up his leg.

"Besides, the ones people remember from this shit are almost never remembered positively. So yeah, you'll be remembered and scorned for all of this, Nancy. Hell, that's how I'll remember you from now on. Congratu-fucking-lations! I hope you're proud for winning a Lifetime Achievement Award for Poor Decision Making. And I hope you're okay having your actions forgotten the next time this game is played and some coward like you decides to butcher their friends. Cause guess what: they will be!"

[CondorTalon]

"Whatever," Nancy said.

"And no, it's not the best way. But right now it's the only way."

Nancy wanted to raise the gun up right then and there and end him, but something stopped her. It was the trembling in her hand, her mind telling her that she would miss, even at this distance.

"You can think whatever you want. Get out of here. Before I change my mind."

[Laurels]

Noah let out a quick sigh of relief when Nancy told him to get out of there. Towards the end of his last bit of criticism towards Nancy, he started to realize he was letting his fear of being killed and his anger towards Nancy for shooting him cloud his judgement. That was more likely to get him killed than anything else, and he was immediately regretting a lot of his actions. Despite being a crazy killer, Nancy seemed to have some sanity left to her already fractured mental state. He slowly began to turn away.

"You say this is the only way," Noah said to Nancy, "but believe me: you're soon going to realize just how wrong you were. Goodbye."

Noah turned away and began to quickly limp away from Nancy. His leg was too fucked for him to properly run away, so he was aware Nancy could probably shoot him from behind as he tried to hurry away. He knew it was still a possibility, so he tried to move as quickly as he could. He could feel his sock starting to get wet with blood, mixing with the sand that was already in his shoes. All in all, this was proving to be an uncomfortable run.

He tried to keep going in the direction the girls ran in. If he had a chance, he could hopefully catch up to Blair and Rene. If not, he'd be the new Sandra of the group.

Noah continued to run along the shoreline. He prayed he wouldn't be the new Sandra. He really didn't want to be alone right now.

((Noah Whitley continued I'll Carry On When the Valley's Deep))