The Art of Accepting Each Other

[Ruggahissy]

((Michelle Wexler continued from Ave Imperator, Morituri Te Salutant))

Michelle blinked in the semi-darkness. She couldn't go back to sleep.

She'd grabbed Virgil's bag and ran towards the sound of the gunshot and found she'd arrived either too late or just late enough. Daniel, the nice kid who was always signing with his deaf friend had been shot dead. Too late if she wanted to save him, just late enough if the murderer had nefarious designs for anyone he or she came across.

She was stunned looking at the dead boy, so stunned that she didn't really feel it much when Virgil took back the bag. She wasn't sure how to feel. Michelle didn't know him well so she couldn't conjure up many memories to remember him by, but still he was a living person who was now dead. Past that, there was also the fact that someone that they'd gone to school with had shot him.

Even further past that was that the game was now extended at least one more day. The clock reset every time someone died. They had to get a 24 hour period without any deaths to trigger the end. There was a certain sense of hopeless that Michelle was fighting hard to keep at bay. She would have thought it would have been so much easier to keep the senior class alive for 24 hours. They did it every day at school.

Gwen, Virgil and Michelle ventured close by to the harbor to see if there were any other people or supplies around. They'd taken shelter for the night in Carlos' Crab Shack, some kind of family restaurant on the boardwalk. There wasn't much in the way of food besides some cans of imitation crab meat.

"I can't eat those," Michelle said, wrinkling her nose. "I'll see if there's some....pickles or canned vegetables or something."

They were exhausted and barricaded the crab shack before settling down to sleep. But Michelle'd had a nightmare and she was the only one awake now. She didn't remember what about, but considering the situation it wouldn't have been hard to guess. A few thin streams of light snuck around the boards and furniture piled at the front of the restaurant and the particles of dust floated lazily around her. Her eyes were fixated on the bag by Virgil. He'd seemed very concerned with it ever since he'd gotten it back, almost possessive....paranoid. She asked for a meal bar from the bag and he flinched when she went to open it herself. He offered to get it for her and moved it away from her when he unzipped it.

He consolidated our stuff together. It's my stuff too. I can open it if I want. I'm thirsty. Yeah, totally. I want some water.

Michelle crawled over to the bag. The floor creaked, but no one woke up. She swallowed and grabbed the metal zipper. Michelle bit her lip and for a moment her fingers curled back into her palm. A few seconds passed and she proceeded. She got it open and started tossing out things feverishly until


"Oh..."

She pulled out gun magazines.

[Espi]

((Gwen O'Connor's story continues from  Ave Imperator, Morituri Te Salutant))

When they caught up with Michelle, and found Daniel's body, Gwen had felt numb inside.

No. That wasn't true. When they found Daniel, only a few hours after Gwen had seen him being so friendly and polite in the lighthouse, Gwen had felt thorny vines twisting in her chest, vicious dagger-sharp tips in her heart, lungs, stomach, crushing her so she couldn't breath, she couldn't move, she could barely think.

It'd taken a while to recover.

She'd known, subconsciously, that people would die. She'd tried to ignore it, hoped that Michelle had the right idea, prayed that they could die in peace instead of in a murder, but in reality she had probably always known some people would turn psycho, murder for fun and profit and their continued albeit temporary existence and

she wished she'd figured it out earlier. Would've saved some pain.

She'd been silent as they traveled to what ended up being an abandoned restaurant of some kind, but she'd known what they were thinking. The plan was a failure. There were already murderers, monsters, killers. There were people here who would never give up, never let them blow the collars, and now their end would just come via blunt force trauma rather than defiance.

Gwen had taken some time to fall asleep. She hadn't been able to take her mind off of Daniel's corpse, his blank half-closed eyes and the bloody wound. Gwen's moral code was just straight-up against the very concept, and it sickened her to see such violence committed against an innocent person.

Gwen eventually fell into a restless sleep, and she dreamed of, oddly, her previous day. She saw Daniel, but this time she begged him to come with her, but he wouldn't couldn't had somewhere else to be and he went off and she was chasing him until he arrived in the trails and an ominous figure approached and shot him.

The gun turned to Gwen.

Gwen awoke from the sound of the shot, and let out a tiny gasp as she found herself awake, and in total safety. She looked around at the other two, and noticed Michelle sitting by Vergil's bag. This raised alarm flags to Gwen.

"Michelle, what are you doing?" She whispered.

[BROseidon†]

((Virgil Jefferson-Davis, continued from Ave Imperator, Morituri Te Salutant))

Virgil slept.

He hadn't been able to push everything to the back of his mind. He hadn't noticed Daniel's body until he had already taken his bag back from Michelle. Virgil hadn't wanted to see it; he didn't want to believe it. Maybe this was all a joke. The teachers would come pick them up from this island and the dead kids would all get up and talk about how great this prank was.

Or not.

Virgil moved all of Michelle's things into his bag as well before they had kept going. The goal was to find people. Even though the killing had started, it didn't mean that they couldn't still try to make it stop. However, the dead body with the bullet would through his head had told Virgil one thing: he was going to need to be armed for this to work.

Michelle wasn't going to like this. She wanted him to remain disarmed, not to use his weapon. What choice did he have, though? Someone shot Daniel Whitten straight through the head. That kind of shot isn't an accident. There were people already playing the terrorist's game, hoping to be the one person to go home.

Virgil had slipped the instruction booklet that the terrorists had given him for his gun into his pocket while he was moving things, and he'd taken a quick bathroom break as an excuse to read it. He'd need to practice using it at some point. An automatic shotgun. Virgil didn't even know those existed.

But as they kept moving and continued to find nobody, the sun began to set and the group settled on shacking up in the little crab shack. Virgil pushed all of the concerns as much to the back of his mind as he could. Keep the nerves down, go to sleep. Being well rested was key to preventing rash decisions.

So Virgil slept a touch uncomfortably. The hard floor was far from optimal, but it was good enough. Sleeping on buses full of rowdy ruggers had taught Virgil how to zone everything out to get some shuteye. So, as Michelle rummaged through his bag, and as Gwen woke up to see what was going on, Virgil kept on sleeping.

[Ruggahissy]

Michelle fished around and found a total of three clips. She struggled to hold them all in her left hand when Gwen spoke up behind her. She squeaked and dropped the clips.

"Shhh," she said with a finger to her mouth.

She scrambled, trying to collect the fallen magazines.

"I- I found these.....in his bag. He said-"

The PA system started up. The announcements.

Michelle froze.

[Espi]

Oh lord have mercy.

Gwen was distracted from her momentary confusion by the announcement of doom. Dave Russell had indeed fallen to his death, apparently in suicide. Gabriella Parker...she was murdered, shot to death by some guy named Theodore Fletcher. Apparently she'd begged for mercy.

Poor girl.

Hansel Williams, who Gwen recognized for being extremely conservative, had murdered Daniel. She'd already known, but apparently it'd happened so early. She may have been the last person besides Alex to see him alive. Gwen felt sick, but they kept coming. Theodore killed someone else, Dan Liu. Gwen started breathing heavily. What if he thought it was a competition to be top murderer? It certainly sounded like that was the case.

Kelly Peterson was apparently stabbed with...a scythe? A violent, horrid death. Gwen was frozen in horror, but they kept coming. David Zimmer fell off a balcony to his death. Hopefully it was quick; Gwen wasn't sure what else to hope. That they go to heaven? Gwen was doubting the idea of heaven now, with eight or nine people dead already.

Jason Meyers was shot by a friend, who he probably cared for and trusted. And some girl named Iselle beat Sven Olsen to death it seemed. Gwen didn't even know what to think now; Sven was a father, and he was dead.

Gwen stared ahead, numb with mental anguish. So much horrible, violent, cruel, sadistic, vicious, hateful, despicable, inexcusable, incomprehensible, unacceptable

murder.

8 people dead so early. How could this happen? How could their perfect plan go so wrong so quickly? There was no solidarity, no defiant last stand. People were already descending into the hyena habits of primal horrors. This couldn't happen, shouldn't happen. Gwen let out a sob, and started to cry right there.

There would be no revenge. They would all be murdered by this game.

No other escape but death.

[BROseidon†]

The high pitched screech of the loudspeakers woke Virgil. It took him a moment to waken enough to recognize the voice and discern individual words, but Virgil knew what was happening.

He was now listening to the announcements, the names of those who died and those who had killed. They had already seen Daniel's body, but hearing that the killer had been Hansel stung. Virgil never liked the guy, but he also never figured the guy to be a murderer.

Theo. Hansel. Joe. Katarina. Iselle. They were the killers for the day. They had chosen a path Virgil could not understand. What would drive them to murder? What would drive Theo to murder twice? It didn't make any sense.

Virgil didn't want any of this. He wanted to find a group that he could protect until they ran out the clock. Michelle's idea was good, but others were trying not to make it happen. They needed to get moving, to collect more people into their group.

Virgil looked over at Michelle and at Gwen, both of whom were awake.

Fuck.

Michelle had found the bullets.

[Ruggahissy]

Michelle was still in her half bent position trying to get the last clip on the floor. She didn't move as the announcements ran. Her eyes were stuck in a wide, thousand yard stare. It looked like she was staring in the direction of the clip, but there was an unfocussed kind of glaze that suggested she wasn't.

Her long curls were brushing the dirty floor. She stayed that way for a few moments after the noise was over.

"They.....they're dead."

She has memories of all the people listed and her mind flashed through snippets of them.

Michelle was brought back to animation when she chucked the clips at a wall with an anguished screech. She sat up and hugged her knees with one arm. Her fingers brushed against a sparkly butterfly patch that served to cover up a rip.

"It's accidents. They hopped us up on sleepy drug and gave everyone weapons and told us that we were all going to kill each other so that it would happen. A bunch of scared, jittery teenagers with guns and stuff in a dark, scary, unfamiliar place. They were counting on it!"

[Espi]

Gwen, to be perfectly blunt, did not care one shitty little iota about what Vergil and Michelle said or did. She was long-gone, lost in a spiral of terror. She was broken like the wings of a fallen bird, lost as a sad, lonely little lamb in a murky wood, and scared like her youthful self at night listening to her parents fight.

Gwen was going to die.

Some sicko would hunt her down and kill her in some horrible manner and according to the terrorist she'd deserve it because she was American even if she didn't love the American Way. Gwen didn't understand why, but in between sobs she started giggling. In a demented way, it was humorous to her how stupid and surreal was.

She was going to be known all over the nation. Maybe. Her classmates certainly were, that Theo boy who murdered 2 people would be talked about.

Michelle screamed, then started talking just as Gwen was calming down. What she said...it almost made sense. People were scared, hurt, lost, confused, angry, unsure, and they were given a simple and direct command with the promise that obeying would take it all away and save them.

And they complied.

Gwen took a shaky, deep breath, and then she looked at the other two in the room. "What can we do?" she whispered, rasped almost, as she tried to regain a little of her already shaken composure. She curled up in the fetal position, arms wrapped around herself like she was hugging her sadness away.

Oh, how she wished it worked like that.

[BROseidon†]

The clips clanged against the wooden wall of the shack. Michelle and Gwen both were taking the announcements hard; harder than Virgil was, even. Michelle didn't want to think that any of the kills had been intentional. Virgil didn't want to either, but.

They'd seen Daniel.

He was shot clean through the head.

That kind of shot isn't an accident.

The terrorists had broken through the defensive line of Aurora high. A flanker by the name of Tracen Danya had powered his way through a gap in the line between Theo Fletcher and Hansel Williams. He was now running towards the try zone as Virgil and Gwen peeled off to chase, but the only way to stop him was for the fullback to land the tackle. Michelle was the fullback.

"Michelle, I'm not so sure how accidental those were. Hansel shot Daniel straight through the skull. A shot like that is no accident." Things had gotten seroius. It was time for Virgil to step up and become the leader he knew he could become. He'd always been a leader on the pitch, and he'd read the works of the great Roman leaders. Now was the time to prove himself.

"We need to get people together. We need to get them to calm down and sit down together and let the timer run out." Virgil knew he could only do this so well.

Michelle was the one who could truly make it happen.

[Ruggahissy]

Michelle looked up from her own internal fury when Gwen quietly, sadly, asked what they were supposed to do next. Her hands unclenched and she felt her eyebrows smooth back out from their tense, furrowed scrunch. It reminded her sort of when she was leading the younger girl scouts on a nature hike. There was a patch of weird icky trees that he brothers told her had dead people in just to scare her. She knew it was stupid, but she was still afraid of them. When they passed by the trees she had to just hum something happy and lead the girls quickly by because if she wigged they'd wig too.

Michelle chewed on her lower lip and put her hand out, retracted it as if thinking, then reached out fully. She gently made contact with Gwen's shoulder and looked up at her from under he mass of honey brown curls. Her eyes had a hint of dark circles that weren't normally there. She let out a deep sigh and rubbed Gwen's shoulder reassuringly.

"C'mon, Gwenifer. We....we'll figure it out," she said squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. Virgil started talking again. Michelle frowned very hard. She gave Gwen a one-armed hug and buried her head against the other girl. Partly to comfort her and partly to hide how incredibly angry she was at Virgil. She doubted she could hide, it would be all over her face. She wasn't really ready to start talking to him again after finding the extra clips in his bag. He lied by omission. He didn't want to give up the clips even though his claim to keeping the gun was self-defense or to scare people off. What kind of self-defense made it essential for him to have 50 bullets or however many that was she'd hurled at the wall of the crab shack? She was angry at him and at the terrorist and at the island.

A moment passed and she felt like she might be able to speak somewhat calmly. She let go of Gwen and sat back up on her legs. "We....." she swallowed. "We....CANNOT condemn these people. They're our friends," she said looking at the dusty floor. "Some of them might not have been accidents in the true sense of the word, but it's only because they're scared and they think they have to. Do you know about mirror theory?"


"If we treat these people like they're killers, how do you think they're going to react? If everyone treats someone  like a killer, what do you think they'll do? After awhile they'll believe it. No. We go ahead like before. We're going to explain to everyone what we're doing, that this is the best way. We're going to stop it and we're going to end this as classmates instead of enemies. You can keep your stupid clips, but you can shove off on your own if that's what's important to you."

[Espi]

Gwen probably couldn't have asked for a better response than what Michelle offered. When Michelle gave her a hug, Gwen's immediate response was to sniffle and give a sad smile. Just the gentle physical contact with another person made her feel better. She almost giggled at Michelle calling her Gwenifer; it certainly wasn't her real name, but it sounded like a term of endearment, and that made Gwen feel better.

When Michelle pulled away, Gwen sniffled, rubbed her eyes and mussed her hair. It was probably going to be okay. The plan would still work, Michelle thought so and Vergil she was pretty sure thought so, so that was good.

Michelle even had a theory, Mirror Theory or something? It was something Gwen had an understanding of, or at least she could understand what Michelle was saying. Treat someone like a monster, and they'll conform to it. And obviously that would end very poorly for everyone.

And then Michelle dropped a bomb. Gwen wasn't entirely sure what had led up to this, but it seemed Michelle was concerned about Vergil having gun clips, which must've been the ones Michelle had thrown. Michelle didn't want Vergil to keep the clips, which was strange.

"Uh, I think I missed something here. What's wrong with the gun clips?"

[BROseidon†]

Shit. Michelle was pissed. Virgil couldn't have Michelle pissed. She was the brains behind the plan. She was the charisma. She was the smile and cheer and positivity that could bring a resolution to all of this. She was the fullback calling the shots from behind the line and controlling the pace of the game; Virgil just needed to be the prop or lock to muscle through the big guys.

Gwen wasn't even fully registering at this point. Gwen didn't really matter right now, what mattered was calming Virgil down. Hopefully he could diffuse the situation without having to leave while still keeping his safety.

"Yes, of course, if we go into every encounter treating them like killers, they'll lash out. But what happens when you run into someone who is intent on winning this thing. Someone who's come to that decision without the help of others?"

Michelle probably didn't want to hear this, and she may very well not believe it, but she had to hear this.

"People aren't all good. We have over two thousand years of history cataloguing all of the ways that people have been shitty to each other. People have been killing each other for as long as there have been people. What makes you think that we are any better than the rest of humanity? Yeah, most people are not going to kill, but it's dumb not to hedge our bet.

"Did Daniel look like an accident or panic-kill to you? That was a pretty fucking precise shot."

Maybe he could talk some sense into her.

[Ruggahissy]

"What's wrong with them is why does he need them? I told him I didn't want that thing around and he said he wanted to keep it for self defense and I said I trusted him to do the right thing. Why would you magazine after magazine for self defense?"

She curled back into herself. "Why do you need it at all?" she whispered.

Michelle closed her eyes and laid back down on her back staring up at the ceiling of the crab shack. She gently removed her right arm from the sling and stretched both of her arms out like she was going to start making a snow angel. It hurt a little when she moved her arm but once it was still, it was mostly fine. It felt good to straighten out her elbow.

Virgil didn't understand her. She could tell Gwen was having a tough time too.

Breathe.

Her left hand went up and started taping the center of her forehead. Her mother used to tap the center of her forehead when Michelle wouldn't listen to her. Some stupid new-age thing about the center of the forehead being something or other. She never paid attention to it, but it was a signal to be calm and to think.

"If we find someone like that then we give them the choice to make a new decision. We don't judge them and we tell them that it's not too late to choose differently. Do you want to kill all of the killers and then have our peaceful resolution. I won't do that."

Did she trust people? Did she think people were good? Did she think this random assortment of teenagers were somehow better than the rest of humanity?

The last question made her frown. She wanted to sit up and blurt out "Yeah, and what does a panicky gun shot look like, all squiggly or something?", but she didn't. She tapped her forehead again with her eyes closed. Michelle opened her eyes.

"I also think it's likely someone pulled that trigger and killed Daniel and they did it knowing what they were doing and knowing he would die."

"However," she said slowly. "I think that they did it because they were scared and one way or another they thought they had to they convinced themselves that it was the right way. No one ever does anything and thinks they're in the wrong with it or else they wouldn't do it. We tell ourselves it was the right thing. I don't trust people, no. But I trust our friends. I think that they think they don't have a choice and we have to show them that they do and I think they'll make the right one once they see. I think they're afraid."

[Espi]

Gwen believed Michelle. It was an accident, yeah, or if not accidents, people had just panicked or been tricked. It was all going to work out. They'd die on there own terms, not in an act of foolishness. It would be fine.

Gwen took a deep breath as she listened to Michelle talk, and when she was calmed a bit she fished for the right words. "So, when we leave here, to go look for the rest of the class...what do you want to do? Where should we go?"

Gwen looked over at Vergil, trying to read his face. Was he still angry? What if he and Michelle couldn't agree? What if he left and got killed? What if the plan would fail without him? What if

no.

It's be fine. Michelle's plan would work, and everything would be fine. They would win this time, not the terrorists or the killers. The students would win one.

[BROseidon†]

Michelle was being stubborn. She wasn't going to drop this point, for whatever reason. Virgil couldn't understand why the mere presence of the bullets offended her so greatly, since merely having them was indicative of nothing.

"Why should I get rid of them, then? Having them hurts nobody, and you should know that I'm not going to use them unless I need to." If he was going to be a gladiator in the arena, Michelle would be resting next to Dave and Virgil would be off on a killing rampage. She should have known that.

He didn't know if anything he said would help at this point. She seemed intent on being upset at the very presence of the weapons themselves, like the weapons would do the killing. It was hypocritical, in a way. Michelle wanted to destroy the weapons so that people wouldn't kill each other, but she trusted them enough to follow her on her plan without trying to kill her. There was a disconnect somewhere.

"What happens if we don't judge someone and they decide that they don't want to join us anyways, huh? What do we do about people who've decided that they would rather live with this haunting them for the rest of their lives, than take a stand and die together?"

Virgil didn't want to think that anyone, if presented with that decision, would choose the former. Virgil hoped that his hypothetical was far from true, but he knew it wasn't. Mankind had been playing these sorts of games forever. They were nothing more than gladiators in the arena, fighting it out with each other and the surroundings for their Roman overlords. And they would be forgotten, too, just like the throngs of slaves the Romans killed for their own amusement.

"There may be people who've convinced themselves that killing is the right thing and won't even give us the option to respond. I'm not going to let your plan fail because of them. We should try to find people, build numbers. The residential areas are probably a good place to start."