Lachesism
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 9:21 pm
Survival of the Fittest was, more than anything else in her recollection, an endless political firestorm. An event that reoccurred and was likely to reoccur again. The matter had played a fairly major role in every presidential election in her memory; it probably wasn’t the reason they were saddled with Canon now, but it was certainly a reason. Easy enough to understand; hundreds of teenagers were dead, because of something the American people could not understand why the government seemed powerless to stop. She couldn’t have said when they had started, or how many there had been, exactly; its relevance to her began and ended with its effects on the American political landscape.
Nia always knew she’d live to regret her lack of knowledge in one field or another. This, she could admit, was not the one she was expecting.
[G014] APOLLONIA "NIA" KARAHALIOS: START
When she woke up, rubbing sleep from her eyes, reality asserted itself rather quickly. She was on a beach, which was an unusual place for her to be waking, considering she had never been to a beach in her life. Her memories came back to her as soon as she sought them out and established exactly why she was here, what she was doing, and why there was an unfamiliar bag present with a number on it
G014. 14. A decent enough number. Not all that meaningful, but not ugly, either. She had a habit of attaching meaning to numbers where there was none. She liked numbers, generally. They were easy to understand. She didn’t feel particularly positively about being a number, but she supposed she didn’t have much of a choice.
She also supposed she should be feeling more strongly about this.
She would. Given time. Some of her peers were convinced to the contrary, she knew, but she was not an automaton. She had emotions. She was… unhappy, to put it politely, but at the moment she couldn’t be bothered to give that any attention. There was proof of years and unreturned bodies behind the reality of her current situation, proof that she wasn’t about to ignore at the altars of panic and self-pity. She could die, easily, for less. She would assess the situation, she would figure out what tools she was working with, she would find somewhere safer—she was about as exposed as she could possibly be, sitting unarmed on the beach—and then she would allow herself to cry, or have whatever emotional reaction she felt appropriate.
She probably wouldn’t cry. This felt like a reasonable situation to do so, if she needed to, though, so she gave herself advance permission regardless.
Her bag. Two bags, rather, the one with her number emblazoned on it and a second, similar, equally unfamilar one. The former, she recalled, was more important in terms of immediate needs, as it presumably contained her means for survival. She remembered, vaguely, discussion of weapons, as she unzipped her bag.
Convenient for her that she remembered, or else she would be far more confused as to the… item that had somehow found its way to the top of her new set of belongings. As it were it was still more than enough to momentarily shock her out of her self-induced dispassionate state and into total bewilderment. She… could see how it could be considered a weapon, she supposed. It certainly was large enough. Probably fairly heavy, as well, though she was loathe to pick it up to find out. It was technically better than nothing, though it wouldn’t be for as long as she wasn’t willing to touch it. She closed the bag. She could work all that out later.
Were people really elastic enough that something that big could fit inside them? The mind boggled.
Priorities, she chided herself. She assumed that bag contained other things; food, water, first-aid. She could investigate more thoroughly at a point that was not right now. She glanced inside the second bag and found some of her own belongs, primarily a couple of changes of clothes; she didn’t look thoroughly, but it appeared to be the contents of the knapsack she’d taken on the bus. A quick pat-down of her pockets told her what she already assumed; her phone was long gone. Of course. She imagined someone with more technical know-how than herself could do something quite clever with a phone given the chance, even if all signals were blocked. Better safe than sorry, etcetera.
It was only at this point—and it was this point that she was truly irritated with herself for, so caught up in her own need to detach from the situation that she had missed the most obvious threat to her immediate safety—that she realized she was not quite alone.
The figure was some distance off; their (for she couldn’t even guess at gender from this distance, let alone identity) clothing was dark, starkly contrasting with the sand. She could of course argue with herself that had the person in question actually intended to attack her she would have noticed them more quickly, and therefore her lack of attentiveness was irrelevant, but it hardly felt like much of an excuse. Had they been luckier than she had been, and all things considered it would be difficult not to be, they could be shooting at her by now. She could already be dead. She kept the reality of that at a safe distance, facts measured and set aside, the sudden feeling gripping her stomach not something she could deal with right now.
She was not under attack. She was alive. The figure was not moving. Squinting against the sun, she could see that they appeared to be lying prone, likely still unconscious.
It was then that she had an idea, one that she had no choice but to implement quickly if she wished to implement it successfully. Considering how far her sight lines went she felt confident that no one was close enough to storm in and steal her possessions, and for that reason she did not think about it further before rising to her feet and padding, slowly, frustrated by the lack of traction, toward the boy in the sand. Boy, she knew quickly enough. His identity quickly became equally obvious. She exhaled sharply, her shoulders shaking, a slight wheezing sound escaping her. Laughter. Lucky, for once, that hers didn’t make a sound, because she couldn’t guarantee her ability to have resisted it otherwise. Because what were the odds? What kind of ridiculous joke was this?
The unconscious boy in front of her, terribly overdressed for his day at the beach, was Alexander Brooke.
She knew him, or knew of him, more accurately; his dog was unlikely to escape notice, and was also conspicuously absent from his person at the moment, along with the cane he sometimes carried. He seemed like an interesting person, quite intelligent if nothing else, more than capable of holding his own in class discussions. They had mutual friends; she had asked about him in passing, out of curiosity. But she only knew of him for the quite obvious reason that it was nearly impossible for them to communicate. She could not speak for him to hear, he could not see her signs or her writing. A possible barrier to cross using text-to-speech, but not one that seemed worth making the effort in the past.
Of course, now that it was a matter of life and death, even that option had been taken from her. Short of making physical contact, something she loathed to do even with her family, she could not speak to him in any meaningful sense.
Not that she necessarily intended to speak to him, considering her plan. Her plan was not focused on him but on his presumably-primary bag, identical to hers but for the label of B068. Another unremarkable number, comfortable but not special in any sense. The bag was unzipped, not proof that he had truly not yet awakened, but evidence, at least. Her steps were more cautious as she traversed the few feet that separated her and the bag; she leaned over to open it, one hand cupped over the zipper as it moved across, muffling the distinctive sound.
… Despite her attempts at impassivity, Nia felt her heartbeat catch in her throat.
Living in Tennessee it wasn’t as though Nia had never seen a handgun before, but she certainly hadn’t touched one, lacking both the occasion and the desire. Her hand trembled a bit as she reached out to take it, looking almost toylike to her untrained eyes, wondering if it was loaded, if the safety was on, if she could figure out how to use it? There was ammo, too, and what appeared to be a manual; she made a note to herself to peruse it as soon as she was safe and alone. It wouldn’t do to have obtained such a thing only to ruin the whole enterprise through lack of basic knowledge. She glanced up at the still-sleeping Alexander; he couldn’t possibly use such a weapon properly, right? Of course he could probably still attack someone trying to attack him directly, but he was potentially a danger to unintended targets if he used it in other circumstances.
It was for the best, she tried to convince herself, but the ableism in her own thought process was so ironic that the selfish explanation was preferable. It wasn’t for the best, for him, not at all, but she needed this gun.
She glanced back to her own bags, unsurprisingly still untouched. No as of yet unseen invaders arriving to ruin her day. She wondered, staring at the gun in her hands, if she ought to replace them with what she had received. Perhaps it would be kinder to not subject the blind boy to having to feel up a horse dick. As a bonus she wouldn’t have to subject herself to holding it for too long, either. She examined the bag again for a moment and, in a stroke of inspiration, opened the first aid kit she found hiding within. She removed a small bottle of aspirin before closing the kit and setting it on top of the rest of the contents. Taking advantage of his disability, perhaps, but it would keep him from asking questions in the short term. He would likely assume he’d been given some sort of poison, or drug, or something of the like. Not that it would necessarily matter, to her.
Nia slowly closed the bag, cupping the zipper again, before slowly backing up—eyes locked on Alexander’s sleeping face, examining it for any sign that he might awaken—and then, having determined he was still out cold, turning tail and heading straight back toward her own things. She did not plan on being here when he woke. Smart though he might be, she would have her own disabilities to cope with. If he had potential as an ally in this situation, it was heavily outweighed by disadvantages that would be present even if she could speak, let alone with their total inability to communicate. She slipped the gun and assorted accessories into her bag, eyeing her assigned weapon for a moment before picking it up with some distaste and tossing it, letting it roll toward the sea. Good riddance.
She picked up her secondary bag, lighter than she’d expected—she decided it would be for the best to empty the contents into the other bag if they would fit, though that could wait until she reached a safer location—and then picked up the bag with her number on it. It wasn’t extraordinarily heavy, though a bit moreso than she was used to. She would have to be careful with how much she travelled. She glanced at Alex, in the distance, still fast asleep, and some measure of pity came to her. Being unable to speak on an island where people are trying to kill you was one thing. Being unable to see was quite another entirely. Unfortunate, for him. It wasn’t her problem.
The beach was a particularly unfair spot for him to have been dropped. Not much to orientate himself with, here. No one else here to help, either.
Shame, really. He would die eventually either way.
The ease with which that thought came to her churned her stomach despite her best attempts to keep her emotions at bay. It was true. If she wanted to leave here, he would die. So would everyone else, names and faces she refused to think about for as long as she could. Every one of them. But he was right here. She knew his name, his face.
She had taken the one thing that might have given him any hope. Now he was nothing more than cannon fodder.
That was not her problem. She did not care about Alexander Brooke. She would not care about anyone else. She refused. The feeling in her stomach was crawling up her throat. She kicked at the sand, frustrated. Since when was she so irrational? Why was she choosing the worst possible time for this particular impulse?
She kicked at the sand again, but this time she set on a path back toward the boy she’d just robbed. This was, quite possibly, the worst idea she had had in her entire life. Convenient that she didn’t have much time to have a worse one.
Gallows humor. It wasn’t helping. She was beginning to think she might throw up.
Nia always knew she’d live to regret her lack of knowledge in one field or another. This, she could admit, was not the one she was expecting.
[G014] APOLLONIA "NIA" KARAHALIOS: START
When she woke up, rubbing sleep from her eyes, reality asserted itself rather quickly. She was on a beach, which was an unusual place for her to be waking, considering she had never been to a beach in her life. Her memories came back to her as soon as she sought them out and established exactly why she was here, what she was doing, and why there was an unfamiliar bag present with a number on it
G014. 14. A decent enough number. Not all that meaningful, but not ugly, either. She had a habit of attaching meaning to numbers where there was none. She liked numbers, generally. They were easy to understand. She didn’t feel particularly positively about being a number, but she supposed she didn’t have much of a choice.
She also supposed she should be feeling more strongly about this.
She would. Given time. Some of her peers were convinced to the contrary, she knew, but she was not an automaton. She had emotions. She was… unhappy, to put it politely, but at the moment she couldn’t be bothered to give that any attention. There was proof of years and unreturned bodies behind the reality of her current situation, proof that she wasn’t about to ignore at the altars of panic and self-pity. She could die, easily, for less. She would assess the situation, she would figure out what tools she was working with, she would find somewhere safer—she was about as exposed as she could possibly be, sitting unarmed on the beach—and then she would allow herself to cry, or have whatever emotional reaction she felt appropriate.
She probably wouldn’t cry. This felt like a reasonable situation to do so, if she needed to, though, so she gave herself advance permission regardless.
Her bag. Two bags, rather, the one with her number emblazoned on it and a second, similar, equally unfamilar one. The former, she recalled, was more important in terms of immediate needs, as it presumably contained her means for survival. She remembered, vaguely, discussion of weapons, as she unzipped her bag.
Convenient for her that she remembered, or else she would be far more confused as to the… item that had somehow found its way to the top of her new set of belongings. As it were it was still more than enough to momentarily shock her out of her self-induced dispassionate state and into total bewilderment. She… could see how it could be considered a weapon, she supposed. It certainly was large enough. Probably fairly heavy, as well, though she was loathe to pick it up to find out. It was technically better than nothing, though it wouldn’t be for as long as she wasn’t willing to touch it. She closed the bag. She could work all that out later.
Were people really elastic enough that something that big could fit inside them? The mind boggled.
Priorities, she chided herself. She assumed that bag contained other things; food, water, first-aid. She could investigate more thoroughly at a point that was not right now. She glanced inside the second bag and found some of her own belongs, primarily a couple of changes of clothes; she didn’t look thoroughly, but it appeared to be the contents of the knapsack she’d taken on the bus. A quick pat-down of her pockets told her what she already assumed; her phone was long gone. Of course. She imagined someone with more technical know-how than herself could do something quite clever with a phone given the chance, even if all signals were blocked. Better safe than sorry, etcetera.
It was only at this point—and it was this point that she was truly irritated with herself for, so caught up in her own need to detach from the situation that she had missed the most obvious threat to her immediate safety—that she realized she was not quite alone.
The figure was some distance off; their (for she couldn’t even guess at gender from this distance, let alone identity) clothing was dark, starkly contrasting with the sand. She could of course argue with herself that had the person in question actually intended to attack her she would have noticed them more quickly, and therefore her lack of attentiveness was irrelevant, but it hardly felt like much of an excuse. Had they been luckier than she had been, and all things considered it would be difficult not to be, they could be shooting at her by now. She could already be dead. She kept the reality of that at a safe distance, facts measured and set aside, the sudden feeling gripping her stomach not something she could deal with right now.
She was not under attack. She was alive. The figure was not moving. Squinting against the sun, she could see that they appeared to be lying prone, likely still unconscious.
It was then that she had an idea, one that she had no choice but to implement quickly if she wished to implement it successfully. Considering how far her sight lines went she felt confident that no one was close enough to storm in and steal her possessions, and for that reason she did not think about it further before rising to her feet and padding, slowly, frustrated by the lack of traction, toward the boy in the sand. Boy, she knew quickly enough. His identity quickly became equally obvious. She exhaled sharply, her shoulders shaking, a slight wheezing sound escaping her. Laughter. Lucky, for once, that hers didn’t make a sound, because she couldn’t guarantee her ability to have resisted it otherwise. Because what were the odds? What kind of ridiculous joke was this?
The unconscious boy in front of her, terribly overdressed for his day at the beach, was Alexander Brooke.
She knew him, or knew of him, more accurately; his dog was unlikely to escape notice, and was also conspicuously absent from his person at the moment, along with the cane he sometimes carried. He seemed like an interesting person, quite intelligent if nothing else, more than capable of holding his own in class discussions. They had mutual friends; she had asked about him in passing, out of curiosity. But she only knew of him for the quite obvious reason that it was nearly impossible for them to communicate. She could not speak for him to hear, he could not see her signs or her writing. A possible barrier to cross using text-to-speech, but not one that seemed worth making the effort in the past.
Of course, now that it was a matter of life and death, even that option had been taken from her. Short of making physical contact, something she loathed to do even with her family, she could not speak to him in any meaningful sense.
Not that she necessarily intended to speak to him, considering her plan. Her plan was not focused on him but on his presumably-primary bag, identical to hers but for the label of B068. Another unremarkable number, comfortable but not special in any sense. The bag was unzipped, not proof that he had truly not yet awakened, but evidence, at least. Her steps were more cautious as she traversed the few feet that separated her and the bag; she leaned over to open it, one hand cupped over the zipper as it moved across, muffling the distinctive sound.
… Despite her attempts at impassivity, Nia felt her heartbeat catch in her throat.
Living in Tennessee it wasn’t as though Nia had never seen a handgun before, but she certainly hadn’t touched one, lacking both the occasion and the desire. Her hand trembled a bit as she reached out to take it, looking almost toylike to her untrained eyes, wondering if it was loaded, if the safety was on, if she could figure out how to use it? There was ammo, too, and what appeared to be a manual; she made a note to herself to peruse it as soon as she was safe and alone. It wouldn’t do to have obtained such a thing only to ruin the whole enterprise through lack of basic knowledge. She glanced up at the still-sleeping Alexander; he couldn’t possibly use such a weapon properly, right? Of course he could probably still attack someone trying to attack him directly, but he was potentially a danger to unintended targets if he used it in other circumstances.
It was for the best, she tried to convince herself, but the ableism in her own thought process was so ironic that the selfish explanation was preferable. It wasn’t for the best, for him, not at all, but she needed this gun.
She glanced back to her own bags, unsurprisingly still untouched. No as of yet unseen invaders arriving to ruin her day. She wondered, staring at the gun in her hands, if she ought to replace them with what she had received. Perhaps it would be kinder to not subject the blind boy to having to feel up a horse dick. As a bonus she wouldn’t have to subject herself to holding it for too long, either. She examined the bag again for a moment and, in a stroke of inspiration, opened the first aid kit she found hiding within. She removed a small bottle of aspirin before closing the kit and setting it on top of the rest of the contents. Taking advantage of his disability, perhaps, but it would keep him from asking questions in the short term. He would likely assume he’d been given some sort of poison, or drug, or something of the like. Not that it would necessarily matter, to her.
Nia slowly closed the bag, cupping the zipper again, before slowly backing up—eyes locked on Alexander’s sleeping face, examining it for any sign that he might awaken—and then, having determined he was still out cold, turning tail and heading straight back toward her own things. She did not plan on being here when he woke. Smart though he might be, she would have her own disabilities to cope with. If he had potential as an ally in this situation, it was heavily outweighed by disadvantages that would be present even if she could speak, let alone with their total inability to communicate. She slipped the gun and assorted accessories into her bag, eyeing her assigned weapon for a moment before picking it up with some distaste and tossing it, letting it roll toward the sea. Good riddance.
She picked up her secondary bag, lighter than she’d expected—she decided it would be for the best to empty the contents into the other bag if they would fit, though that could wait until she reached a safer location—and then picked up the bag with her number on it. It wasn’t extraordinarily heavy, though a bit moreso than she was used to. She would have to be careful with how much she travelled. She glanced at Alex, in the distance, still fast asleep, and some measure of pity came to her. Being unable to speak on an island where people are trying to kill you was one thing. Being unable to see was quite another entirely. Unfortunate, for him. It wasn’t her problem.
The beach was a particularly unfair spot for him to have been dropped. Not much to orientate himself with, here. No one else here to help, either.
Shame, really. He would die eventually either way.
The ease with which that thought came to her churned her stomach despite her best attempts to keep her emotions at bay. It was true. If she wanted to leave here, he would die. So would everyone else, names and faces she refused to think about for as long as she could. Every one of them. But he was right here. She knew his name, his face.
She had taken the one thing that might have given him any hope. Now he was nothing more than cannon fodder.
That was not her problem. She did not care about Alexander Brooke. She would not care about anyone else. She refused. The feeling in her stomach was crawling up her throat. She kicked at the sand, frustrated. Since when was she so irrational? Why was she choosing the worst possible time for this particular impulse?
She kicked at the sand again, but this time she set on a path back toward the boy she’d just robbed. This was, quite possibly, the worst idea she had had in her entire life. Convenient that she didn’t have much time to have a worse one.
Gallows humor. It wasn’t helping. She was beginning to think she might throw up.