Rest When You Can

[MurderWeasel]

((Karen Ruiz continued from The Mourning After))

Human interaction, as Karen understood it, was based entirely on wants and needs. Nobody bothered to talk if they didn't want something. Normally, these desires were simple, stupid things. Validation. Affection. Some transient sense of respect. All of it was totally meaningless, and always had been. Karen hadn't bought into it back at school, and she certainly wasn't about to do so now. The only reason she was contemplating this was that she was mildly puzzled by her own choice to speak to Mason rather than eliminating him. He would have been an easy kill. A couple squeezes of the trigger and Karen would have officially been halfway to safety, and with a decent chance of filling in that other half. She'd wanted—no, needed—something else. Something more. She had to know what.

She was in the rain forest. Announcements were still a few hours away. Karen held her Glock in her right hand, while with her left she played out the fishing line she had taken from the hut. She was laying it at ankle level, stringing it around trees, creating a circle thirty feet in radius around a low, wide bush she had found.

She was tired. That was bad. It was time to rest, and Karen had no intentions of being killed in her sleep. Since she couldn't trust anyone to watch her, that meant alternate methods of defense. She'd been planning for this from the start, though. Sleep would become less perilous as more contestants were eliminated, but, for now, she had to be perfectly vigilant. This was why she was making an alarm.

About five feet from the bush stood an awkward pyramid of soda cans, each containing a small number of pebbles. The cans were tied to the end of the fishing line Karen was currently spreading. She was making a perimeter. Anyone who came close would almost certainly catch the line, toppling the cans. As soon as that happened, Karen would wake up and shoot the interloper. It was a pretty simple plan, really. She had no doubts, though, that half of her classmates would never even think to secure their sleeping arrangements. Yet another thing she could never understand about people.

It was a lot of work, but it would be worth it. She would wake up in the morning. Many other people would not. That made it worthwhile.

Once she had finished, Karen crawled under the bush, and curled up in the dirt. Her coat made an adequate blanket, her pack a passable pillow. She held the Glock in her hand, but made sure the safety was engaged. A stupid accident would be one of the worse ways to die.

She fell quickly into a deep sleep. She was exhausted; it had been an eventful day and a half, and she hadn't had any time to rest yet.

---

Perhaps three hours later, she was awakened by the announcements. She listened, trying to pick out any patterns from the jumble. She was top player, it seemed. Odd, that. A few people had killed themselves. Wasteful. Odile Jones was apparently a real threat. One to watch for, one she could recognize, at that. The people she could actually name all seemed to be killing. Interesting.

Also, the girl she had eliminated, the one who had been the machine gun's original owner, had apparently not killed anyone after all. There was probably some story there, behind her having two guns. Karen was loosely curious. Any answers were almost certainly lost forever, though. Well, except to the millions of viewers, the people getting their voyeuristic kicks off of all of this. Karen experienced a brief flash of anger, but clamped down on it. No need to get upset: that way lay poor decisions.

Then, the kicker: she was in a danger zone.

Her movements were quick, mechanical. She shot out of her hiding spot, checking for other people nearby. None. Then, she collected her cans, stuck them in her pack, and ran a quick lap around the perimeter of her rest zone, retrieving the fishing line. She stuffed this into her pack. Her collar beeped three or four times, reminding her she was on a deadline. She was near the edge of the rain forest, at least. It would not be hard to get out in time.

So she got moving, at a light jog. After a few seconds, she paused to remove the sword from the loop of her backpack and jam it into the ground. It was slowing her down, and nobody would be able to do anything with it for at least twelve hours. It was an acceptable risk. Better than being delayed.

And she ran, going along, getting away. And it was during this run that it came to her.

Everything felt like before, like she was running down the soccer field, about to pass the ball to one of her teammates. She could almost believe she wasn't here.

And that was what she had wanted, what she had got from her conversation with Mason: in the back of her mind, it was all real, because she knew she was hated. Some boy she had never met before hated her, wanted her to suffer and die. Her classmates were the same. They hated her, and they feared her, and there was no going back. Interaction, conversation, they were dead relics of the past. Mason had been a test, designed to prove that. That was it. He was her motivation. He was symbolic of the entire population of the island, her own team included. He was her monster, just as she was his. He was the mob who would tear her limb from limb.

She was hated. She'd chosen her path. Only one way to go from here. Survive, through whatever means necessary. Anyone else was a liability. They would get her killed. If she tried to play nice, to be friends, they would stab her in the back, because they all hated her now. She didn't blame them for it. If she'd been in their shoes and wanted to survive, if she'd heard of some girl blowing her way through the competition, she would have hated her too. She was a threat. She could never forget it. She could never let anyone convince her they viewed her as anything else.

So she ran out of the forest, and her collar stopped beeping, and she was back in things, and this time she knew exactly what she—and everyone else—wanted.

((Karen Ruiz continued in Banhammer'd))

[Fenrir]

(Vincent Sullivan continued from Deconstruction)

It didn’t take long for Vincent to lose sight of Lexi after striking Tim, not that he had expected or really wanted to catch her anyway; she had too much of a head start and she was such a none threat that her escape didn’t really matter anyway. Not like Jonas mattered, not like the girl from the field or the guy from the beach matter.

Not like Karen mattered.

So instead he had headed east – or straight as he saw it – and ended up on the edge of the Rain Forest. Even a few minutes ago this would have been a concern, it had been a Danger Zone after all and Vincent didn’t feel like committing suicide today, but the announcement had barely finished by the time Vincent saw the trees appearing over the horizon and it should be safe to enter now.

The announcement itself had been something of an eye opener as well. It looked like everything Karen had told him had been true; she had three kills, one of them being Kathy and she was right about Kathy having a kill to her name. There had also been a three kill streak by some guy called Zack; he was probably from the other school since Vincent didn’t know of anyone by that name in Detroit, either way he was apparently one to watch. Other than that, nothing of mention other than the fact the Resort Beach was now off limits; annoyingly that was going to be his next stop on his way to the other side of the island, now he would have to skirt around it.

Vincent hesitated as he reached the forest, reluctantly taking each step just in case the Danger Zone had not yet been turned off; sixty four seasons under their belt or not, Vincent didn’t trust these technicians not to fuck up even something simple like this.

With that in mind Vincent was about to simply walk around when he spotted something ahead of him, something sticking up out of the ground that – judging from the way the light caught it like that – was made of metal. His curiosity caught he stepped forward with only some hesitation, walking forward until he stood directly in front of the object.

It was a sword. A very big sword. Vincent placed a hand on the handle and gripped it before stopping, it momentarily occurring to him that this might be a trap of some kind; after all, who just left a sword laying around like this?

There didn’t seem to be anything attached to the sword and if it was a distraction for an ambush the person would be long gone now. Taking hold of it with both hands Vincent pulled, the heavy weapon coming free from the dirt with ease and letting Vincent get a good look at its entire length for the first time. It was about five feet long in total – roughly the same length as the wooden oar he had discarded in the forest, though much heavier – it would make a good replacement for his lost weapon.

Walking back out of the Rain Forest Vincent took some time to get used to the weight and take a few practice swings before placing the sword through the loop in his bag strap where he used to keep the oar; it was a long walk to where he wanted to go and there was no need to carry the sword at this point. The length of the object was no more troublesome than the oar had been, though the weight would take some time to adjust to.

With his surprisingly profitable trip to the Rain Forest dealt with Vincent turned away from the trees and began walking towards the Open Plains; if he couldn’t skirt the edge of the island like he planned then he would just have to cut through the middle instead.

(Vincent Sullivan continued in Metanoia)