Infighting

[Outfoxd]

"You let him get this round, you're done."

Bryant's boxing coach, Mr. Washington, is coaching him. More like yelling at him as he sits on his stool, waiting for the last of this 3-round fight to start. The boy across the ring is some kid from a rich family who wanted to box because it was helping him build character or some shit. He was tall, and for the past two rounds had been hiding behind his jab and his five inch reach advantage.

All the judges were white, and so was the kid (Brandon Sturges, the judge had said). Bryant had already been docked a point for a headbutt that wasn't even his fault, just an accident when he'd gotten to the inside in the first round.

Not that it mattered. Bryant had been on the losing end of decisions even when he tripled the other kid's workrate. Way of the world.

"You slip that fucking jab kid, you listening to me?-" Washington slaps Bryant on the side of the head to make sure he's paying attention, "You slip that jab, you get inside, and you work that power. I want all power shots. You ain't winnin' this on points, and he knows that."

Bryant nods, knowing it's the truth but only partly hearing. One of the other boxers from his gym gives him a drink of water from the bottle. The bell rings.

"Smother him and put him to sleep, kid." Washington gives a parting shot, and Bryant stands up, heading out to the center of the ring to meet Sturges.

Sturges's gameplan was evident, predictable. His lanky arm shot out, and for the fiftieth time Bryant's back was straightened out by the kid's formidable jab. Bryant bit down hard on his mouthguard, pissed. Was this all the fucker was going to do? He could've counted on one hand the amount of crosses the kid had thrown.

Bryant circled to his right, avoiding Sturges power hand. The jab shot out, and Bryant cuffed it with his rear hand, sending it harmlessly downward. Even more irritated, Bryant tapped his chin with his lead hand while dropping his right, goading the kid to come in and throw something worth a damn.

Sturges took the bait. Bryant could see a little fire in his eyes as he came forward to fire the jab one more time, this time probably with a cross behind it. Bryant bent his knees sharply and his head moved to the outside of Sturges's hand, slipping the punch. Bryant shuffled in and tucked his shoulder into his opponent's midsection, pushing him back and into the ropes as he threw a sloppy right hook into Sturges's ribs.

"Yeah, motherfucker. My fight now." Bryant muttered, quiet enough that only he heard it. He felt the white boy trying desperately to push him off with his elbows, circle out, get away, but Bryant stuck to him (like shit to a blanket, haha), planning to work for real now.

Bryant kept digging his left shoulder into Sturge's sternum. He cocked his right side, torqued his hips into a power hook that ripped into the taller boys ribs. He felt it thud, felt Sturges fold into the punch. Bryant followed through, switched his shoulders and brought his right hand up to cover himself. With his left shoulder pulled back, Bryant shot an uppercut up the middle that split Sturges's gloves and lifted his chin.

Sturges tried moving away, and Bryant still stuck with him.

"What's wrong, never been this close to a nigger before?" He said, a little louder now. Bryant punctuated that with a couple short uppers to the stomach.

They stayed like this for thirty seconds. Bryant wasn't letting this go to the judges. He wasn't letting Sturges play to his race. He separated just a little from Sturges, dropped his left shoulder, and blasted another vicious body shot with his left hand. Bryant felt the impact of the punch ripple up his arm and through his shoulder.

Sturges folded again, backpedaled; he was hurt. Bryant almost grinned. He came straight forward, intending to finish the job. His hands were down.

Soon enough his whole body followed. The ref was over him, starting a count. It took him seconds to figure out that Sturges had hit him with his only good power shot of the night.

"One." The ref was counting.

Bryant put his hands to the ground, tried to push off and failed.

"Two."

Bryant rolled to his side, thinking he could raise off his elbows easier. He started to rise.

"Three."

He felt dizzy. Part of him wanted him to stay down. He could see the judges. One of them was smiling. He kept pushing up.

"Four."

Get up.

"Five."

Get up.

"Six"

Get fucking-

Up!

Bryant's eyes opened, then closed as the headache from whatever they had gassed him and the rest of his class with made its presence known. "Fuck."

The dream had been vivid, and it was an unwelcome one. The knockdown Sturges had scored easily cinched the match. Bryant had never fought him again. Maybe they thought Bryant would've killed him. Probably would have. It wasn't the first time a white boy had played the system against him, but the fact that he had almost finished the job (and got to laugh in the judge's faces) that pissed him off.

He pulled himself to a sitting position and looked around. He was in a garage or something. A jeep was next to him.

It was real. All that shit about the program, about killing each other, it was real.

Bryant looked to his right, and saw the daypack. Another confirmation that yes, he was in the Program, and yes, his classmates would be killing each other shortly. There was a shovel next to it, a wooden one with the blade covered in a thin film of rust.

He grabbed the bag with his nearest hand and opened it. He started pawing through it, slowly at first, then faster as the adrenaline of the situation set in. There wasn't a weapon in here, none that he could see. Then he looked over at the shovel, blinked, not believing at first.

He was one dead nigger.

He bet the white kids in the class had all gotten heated and strapped up, with fucking flamethrowers and assault rifles and samurai swords and lynching ropes and shit. He was surprised they didn't give him a fucking Nerf gun, for all the good this shovel was going to do him. Especially because he was sure he was dead meat as soon as anyone found him. He wasn't one to promote goodwill among his peers.

Bryant stood up, slinging the bag across his shoulders and hefted the shovel in his right hand. He caught a glimpse of a camera in the corner. He pointed the shovel at the camera.

"Just wanna say, from the bottom of my heart. Eat a dick, America. Eat a fucking dick."

[WickedIcon*]

((Jesus, that's gonna be a hard act to follow. M08, Sean Tucker, start.))

For several minutes, all Sean Tucker knew was pain. The government goons that had handled him had not been gentle.

He sat up, groggy, took his glasses off, and rubbed his eyes a bit. He put them back on, looked around and noticed that he was in a garage, between two apparently broken-down trucks.

Let's assess the situation here, Sean thought to himself. He opened up the daypack he had been given. MRE, loaf of bread... probably tastes like cardboard... pack of saltines... definitely tastes like cardboard... a few bottles of water. Looks like I'm good as far as keeping myself decently fed. Map... should come in handy. Compass, ditto. First aid kit, looks like it's pretty nicely stocked, don't feel like tearing it apart just yet though... oh shit, jackpot.

Sean picked up the machete and deduced that he was probably one of the better armed students around. Against someone with a gun, he was pretty well fucked, but he could stand up against just about anyone wielding a melee weapon. He didn't want to fight, and he hoped to find other people who weren't gonna play this sick little game, but if worst came to worst he was good.

Then, he heard a voice from the other side of the garage, saying something along the lines of "fuck America." The man clearly wasn't alone in that mindset, and Sean had a feeling he was gonna be a decent ally. He decided to take a short little jaunt over to the unknown man.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not, Sean actually knew this mystery man. Bryant Carver. They weren't particularly well-acquainted, but he knew who Bryant was, and most likely vice-versa. Sean decided to pipe in.

"I can sure as fuck agree with that statement," Sean said, bitterly.

[Outfoxd]

Bryant whirled around on the owner of the voice, caught off guard. The shovel was in both his hands now, ready to bludgeon the living shit out of whoever it was.

He knew the kid a little bit. Sean Tucker, not one of the more high profile kids in the school. Quiet, one of the smarter kids. Didn't seem to want to start anything with anybody.

Didn't change the fact he was white. And holding a fucking machete.

Bryan almost wanted to laugh. What had he just been thinking about? First person he meets in all this shit is a white boy with a better weapon than him.

Could take that shit.

A truth. The kid wasn't in bad shape, but not in any level of fitness that could touch his. Bryant was about 99% sure he wasn't trained either. The boxer ate kids like him for breakfast. He heard his coach talking:

Get to the inside, kid. Get past his reach.

Wouldn't be too hard. He could get in close, crack the cracker on the head, take his blade and be on his merry fucking way. He could even

Could you?

finish the job, be one student quicker to getting out of here.

But he relaxed his shoulders. He didn't like the idea of being a lone nigger running around a compound full of froggy white assholes just waiting to leap, at least not alone. Hell, maybe having a white boy with him might save him from a few of the more ornery motherfuckers.

"Here I thought this shit was just gonna be a bunch of the ethnics the government wanted to get rid of. Least they got SOME integrity."

Bryant let his arms drop a little, the shovel still level with his navel. He wasn't about to trust this Sean. He was white, and that automatically disqualified him for a trust loan at the First National Bank of Carver.

"You just wake up?"

[WickedIcon*]

Sean rubbed the back of his head.

"Yeah."

He looked Bryant over. Bryant was a decent guy, but from what Sean knew, the man was a little bit racist; Sean decided the best way to deal with this was to use extreme caution, so as to avoid getting his ass kicked by a trained boxer.

"Look, I'm not in this for a fight. Especially not with you. You and I both know you could lay my ass flat in a few seconds, so I'd rather not mess with you if I've got a choice," Sean said. "However, it looks like we've got the same opinion about all this bullshit. Why don't we stick together for a bit? Might make us both last longer."

Sean knew, in the back of his mind, that this was a gamble. However, he hoped it would pay out. Bryant, risky as he was, would make a great ally if Sean could win him over.

[Outfoxd]

Funny how the world worked out. First guy Bryant meets in the program is a white guy. A white guy who was deferring to him. Flattering him. One of the '"lesser races". Fuck was up with this kid? Either he was naive about what went on, or he was playing him.

Still, it was fun thinking Sean was damn near asking for a friend. Was fun thinking he might have a white guy giving him a hand.

Who knows, maybe I'll get him to pick my cotton.

He nodded at Sean's logic, stifling a grin.

"Yeah...yeah. Good idea, Sean. I like the way you thinking. One less kid to worry about, right?" Bryant shifted the shovel, released the grip of his left hand.

"You got any ideas what to do? I'm all ears. Somehow I don't think we got a good hiding spot in here."

Oh yes. This would be fun.

[WickedIcon*]

"Yeah, we should probably find somewhere else to go. This really doesn't seem like a good place to hole up," Sean said.

Sean could tell that his gamble certainly was paying off. However, even with his admittedly meager skill at reading people, he could tell that Bryant was suspicious. Understandably so. African-Americans, or any ethnic minorities for that matter, weren't well liked due to the endless tide of government propaganda, and Sean could totally see Bryant's reasons for not entirely trusting him.

"And one more thing. I know what you're probably thinking, and the answer is hell no. I'm not sure if you know this, since you probably don't know me very well, but I'm no bigot. I had parents that raised me right, unlike a lot of my peers... hell, I'm more inclined to trust a minority than a white. People who've been through a lot of bullshit tend to have their heads on straighter than fuckups who had everything handed to them on a silver platter," Sean said. "God, look at me fucking ramble. I really need to get out of the habit of that," he muttered as he opened up his daypack, fished through, and removed his map. He glanced at it for a bit.

"Armory sounds good, but I'd be surprised if they didn't ransack it before throwing people here. What do you think?"

[Outfoxd]

Bryant kept a straight face as Sean plead his case, telling him all about how his parents raised him right, and he didn't see the upper class people as being the smart ones.

Keep jawing, son. We'll see if I'll believe what you talkin' later.

Bryant had the shovel resting on his shoulder now, the blade of it facing outward. Sean was pulling out a map now, plotting a course. Bryant wasn't entirely bullshitting when said he wasn't sure where to go. During their conversation they could hear gunshots ringing out through the complex, and the boxer wasn't sure of any place they could go that was a good idea.

He shrugged. "Worth a shot. If we get strapped, then good deal. If we just find nothing, not like we got shit better to do."

Bryant adjusted the daypack on his shoulders and took hold of his shovel in both hands again. He turned to what looked like the nearest exit, a heavy looking iron door with a small window, and headed toward it, glancing over his shoulder to be sure Sean wasn't just waiting for him to turn his back to drop the progressive little hippie act.

Ahead of him was a bunch of his class. Already killing each other, from the sound of it. Bryant wondered if he too would be notching somebody on his belt soon.

Ahead of him was opportunity.

Equality.

He grinned and opened the door.

((Bryant Carver continued in Strange Fruit))

[WickedIcon*]

Bryant was grinning.

Either I'm on his good side or he plans on bashing my skull in. Time will tell, Sean thought to himself. He had his daypack in tow and was holding on to his machete like a vice grip.

Bryant opened the door.

Hey, worst case scenario, I'll die knowing it's my own damned fault for trusting someone with an actual reason to kill me, Sean thought, slightly dejected. He loosened his grip on the machete a bit and followed Bryant out the door and into the abyss.

((Sean Tucker continued in Strange Fruit))