Meanwhile, Back in the Jungle

[MurderWeasel]

((Karen Ruiz continued from Lucidity))

It hadn't taken all that long for Karen to abandon her pursuit of the others. They had not only held a head start, but also seemed to have diverged in path, as best she could tell. She'd attempted to stick to the boy from her team, but he had been the first to clear the area, and she hadn't wanted to get too close, not knowing his weapon. On the positive side, she was fairly sure he hadn't seen who she was, either, which meant that her so-called teammates would still be unlikely to be prepared for the greetings she had in store for them.

She'd eventually melted back into the rain forest, skirting the edges of it. It made for good cover, which was fairly critical, given her strategy. A direct confrontation would, at this stage of the game, probably be the end of her. All it would take would be one bullet wound in a bad spot, and she'd be dying of infection inside a half week. The incident on the beach had gone well, notwithstanding her failure to actually achieve her primary goal, but it had also driven home the fact that other people had been assigned decent weapons too. For all Karen knew, in fact, everyone on the island had a gun. Certainly, she had seen no evidence of non-firearm weapons.

So she was going to take it a little bit slower here. After all, she'd been on the move for under two hours. She still had plenty of time to meet her quota.

Two opponents.

She still wasn't entirely sure that she hadn't killed someone in there. She still wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know.

The heat remained fairly oppressive. She was sweating badly. A turtleneck was all wrong for this. She had rolled the sleeves of it up, along with those of her coat, and cinched them with the wrist ties, but it wasn't doing that much to help. She could feel the dampness of her hair, the stickiness of her back. She felt like she did after a particularly vigorous soccer practice.

It was okay, though. She'd have plenty of time to rest later, after she'd accomplished what she had to do. Her gun was in her right hand, always at the ready. It wouldn't be too long before she ran into someone. The map said she was relatively close to an area called the hot spot. It looked fairly menacing, but she was willing to bet people were there. In all likelihood, it was a good cinematic location, so they had probably dropped students likely to cause trouble there. It was certainly not on her list of desirable destinations.

She was just making her way past it, sticking in the jungle, trying to keep a low profile. She knew that she could be attacked at any moment. She had to be aware, had to be ready, had to pay attention to the sounds of the animals.

She was moving slowly now, though. No point in burning out too quickly. She had a lot of work left to do.

Two opponents.

She could see a clearing up ahead, and made her way towards it.

[MurderWeasel]

Ten minutes of rest. It was a decent amount of time. Plenty for Karen to once more switch clips and replenish the bullets in the one she'd been using. She kept her guard up, but it had been very quiet so far in the game. At a couple of points, she'd almost convinced herself that she heard gunfire, but it had just been her imagination. She couldn't understand it. Were people all lying low? Were they just as afraid as she was? Was there some sort of strategy she was missing, some blindingly obvious flaw in her actions thus far?

Or was she just the only person able to see the right way to handle things?

It was possible that the others were unwilling to cast the first stone. It would, after all, mark them as dangerous. It would show them as something different, something that the world would judge. Karen was being judged, she was sure. The viewers at home probably thought she was insane or evil. There was no way they could understand her reasoning.

In this game, though, anyone who lived had to be a bit twisted, unless they slipped into the finals and their opponents killed themselves. Everyone had the potential for violence somewhere within them. Those who were unable to harness it were the ones who would be tortured to death by the closet sadists. Hard as it was to believe, Karen knew that some people fought and killed not exclusively to survive, but to have some sort of sick fun with it. That was Karen's competition. The thought of going up against one of those sickos without something to her name to make them think twice made her incredibly nervous.

Two opponents.

Her ten minutes were up. She took a drink from her bottle, packed it back into her pack, and headed off to the north, in the direction of the normal forest. It had all the benefits of her current location, but, with any luck, would be a little less oppressively hot.

((Karen Ruiz continued in Friendly Fire))