Game Over

[Wham Yubeesling]

“Kuh-huh-”

The laugh came out so hard, so unintentionally that Verity had to spend the next few seconds coughing. Had to spend a few seconds breathing. Had to spend a couple of seconds recognizing that that was what he really said. It was like… the difference between a neck laugh and a belly laugh. If somebody went up on a stage and told a joke then… then you’d laugh from the neck. Because you expected it to be funny. Because you knew what was going to happen and could brace for it. This was different. This was when the guy on stage just up and punched you in the stomach. This was when the guy who killed nearly twice as many people as you try to claim he wasn’t insane. It was so unexpected. It was impossible to prepare for. It was impossible to brace and stop it all from coming out, right there, right before everything was about to end.

“You’ve killled- you’ve killed fucking ten people, dude-”

She brought the one arm she still had and clutched her stomach. Tried to hold it all in.

“Don’t think you get to claim you’re better than us.”

[Applesintime]

Anthony scoffed, wondering why he didn't just shoot Verity already. This wasn't productive, this wasn't doing anything, all this was doing was increasing the chance that somehow Ivan and Olivia snuck up on him and ended up winning this thing. But even still, in the face of making that ten an eleven, he still felt compelled to respond.

"I didn't bloody start murdering the second I woke up, I - shit, you think Ivan wouldn't have started fucking murdering people if FIsk and his little circlejerk didn't beat his ass or whatever? I didn't start kneeing people in the balls fighting over stealing weapons." He was still pissed off about that, honestly.

"Maybe I'm not exactly some fucking moral paragon but yeah. I didn't come into this shithole of a boat expecting to murder people. It was you players that forced my hand."

[Wham Yubeesling]

“So what-”

There was something rising up through the back of her head. Tight. Constricting. Angry. She didn’t know what he’d said that’d made it appeared, but she… but she let her eyes close, for a second. Tried to see just what image burst through her mind. She saw… she saw one of the corridors. The wreckage of the banquet hall. The chandelier, the rubble…

And a girl who Verity hadn’t realized was even here before she’d found her almost-corpse in the wreckage. Mary. Someone Verity had… never been on the right foot with at school, but someone who… things maybe could’ve gotten better with. They’d… had that talk at the bus station. They were able to chat a little without things going bad. It… honestly probably wasn’t even much of anything, but it was… something. A sign for the future. A what could’ve been.

Something that could never be, now. Because of here.

Because of Anthony.

Because somebody started it. Because somebody, somehow, forced his hand. Forced him to attack her. Forced him to force her down the pit. Left her broken. Burned. An almost-corpse, that Verity could only ease as Mary’s brain caught up to her body.

And Anthony would never lose any sleep over what he did.

Because at least, somehow, he was the better man.

“All those people you killed-

“-are somehow my fault?”

[Applesintime]

"Yeah."

"They are."

[Wham Yubeesling]

No way.

No-

No fucking way.

She almost blanked out when Anthony uttered those words. Almost couldn’t comprehend anything in the moment immediately following. One moment, she was here, on the deck, on her back, feeling all she was feeling in her arm and her shoulder and the lump that used to be her eye, and the next, she wasn’t. She was in her head, now. The thought zone. Time slowed here, almost. Paragraphs and paragraphs could happen in the brief space of action between call and response. Everything instinctual had its reasons, if you looked deep down enough. If you slowed your brain enough, you could put everything on the table. Thought to action. A to B. Beginning to end.

Her end. Here. Presumably, at Anthony’s hands.

Apparently, for the greater good.

Because that was the narrative Anthony had in his head, wasn’t it? That he was the good guy. That he was doing the right thing. That everybody who he killed had it coming. He was never, ever, going to second guess himself. He wasn’t ever going to question whether he was really doing what was right. No. He was ironclad. He was going to keep doing this. And everybody he killed was going to fall under the same umbrella. Either they started it, or they were a bad person or maybe if they didn’t want to die they should’ve not gotten shot, did they ever think about that? Anything that dissolved personal responsibility. Anything that meant it wasn’t really his fault.

And… if he made it out, if he managed to win this, then that’d be what the narrative would become. SotF Season 67. Not the story of Mangrove Garden. Not the story of everybody forced into this game. No. It’d be Anthony’s story. Never mind the fact that he had enough kills to have possibly gotten out of here. Never mind all the other perspectives. No. Verity had seen enough fan discussions to know the trends. She’d looked through enough forums to know that… talk about versions always just ended up being talk about the winners. Their story. Everything else was peripheral. Nothing else really mattered — what worth was going through someone if they weren’t the one who made it out?

No. It’d be all about Anthony. His story. Nothing would ever be his fault ever again. He’d taint the narrative and make it his own and-

And where would that leave her?

She’d just be another villain. The one who started it. The temptress who drove the paragonic and virtuous hero Anthony down the wrong path despite the fact they hadn’t even fucking met until earlier tonight because she was just that vile. And- and she knew that she’d done bad things — she’d thrown Timothy off the edge, she’d put Alyssa down, she’d cut Akeno open after she’d already won the fight — but the idea that she was somehow responsible for all the shit Anthony did was fucking insane. She wasn’t the good guy, she knew that, and she also knew that admitting it didn’t actually mean anything, but…

…But she knew it meant more than if she’d just tried to deflect it. Tried to insist that actually, no, her hand was forced, she had no choice in what she was doing. Tried to act as if nothing was her fault.

But if she… if Verity let him kill her, then… then everything Anthony was saying would be validated. Nobody else would be around to counter the narrative.

And all the people in the back of her head. All the people part of her story. Timothy. Keegan. Alyssa. Junji. Akeno. Ashanti. Bacchia. James. Vasily. Sofia. Rhonda. Leah. The girl she’d… never get to actually know. Lucille. Stokes. Chris. Matias. Mandy.

Fisk.

Mary.

They’d be forgotten.

Unimportant.

Whited out of the narrative.

Could she do that to them?

…

…No.

She couldn’t.

She couldn’t get far, given how hard she’d been fucked up.

She couldn’t win — she knew that — but…

But she had to try.

So she came back to the real world. Reared up her leg. Kicked Anthony right in his knee.

[Applesintime]

"Gh-" Anthony's leg buckled, but the rifle was already being gripped with the other hand, stock and barrel, shoved in her direction to push Verity away. This wasn't going to end with her on the top and Anthony at the bottom. May as well make this easier on herself.

[Wham Yubeesling]

Go time.

Win condition one: get out of here alive. Win condition two: grab Timothy’s gun, maybe do something with it. It was a choice, technically, but either way sent Verity down the same path. The path up the stairs Anthony was blocking. The path up the stairs that Anthony used his gun to push her away from.

No matter.

She rolled to her right. Found enough adrenaline to move her arms and push her body off the ground. She ran, away from Anthony, to the first spot of cover she could see — a doorway. Small, but-

But it worked for Ivan. And it was going to have to work for her.

[Applesintime]

Verity dodged the shove, rolled out of his sight to the left. Thrown off balance for a second, Anthony dug his heels in tight, assuming that she'd try and shove him overboard, do what he would have done with her. But instead she ran, and Anthony was too slow to flip the rifle back round to firing position and turn around before she'd got some cover.

But it didn't matter. Her gun was right here at his feet. His gun was right here in his hands. What else could Verity do at this point but die? Whether it was from falling two dozen stories into the ocean, a bullet to the head or whatever else happened here, she was done. If she'd just accepted that, it would be a lot quicker for both of them. But she wasn't going to accept that.

No matter. The bullet that killed her could be for a lot of people. Timothy. Alyssa. Keegan. Junji. Akeno. Ashanti-

He didn't know if the bullet would punch through the cover. But Anthony fired anyway.

[Wham Yubeesling]

The bullet made it through the cover, but that wasn’t enough — the force of the bullet against the mass of the wall caused the former to ricochet, fly out at an angle over the railing and into the ocean. Rubble dislodged, burst open the wall, and fell onto Verity, who was crouched down, close to the door. Waiting for the sign that she’d just received. He’d just fired, and from what she could tell, his gun wasn’t like Timothy’s. He couldn’t just let rip like Verity could. He was going to have to take a second to fire again, maybe. Re-aim. Reconfigure. Hopefully. If there was a time to fight back, this was the best chance she was going to get.

Step two.

Maybe.

She hoped this worked.

She ran out towards him. Stayed low. Put her shoulder up in front. Aimed for his legs.

[Applesintime]

Anthony pulled the bolt back, and then before he could push it back in, load another round Verity was upon him, rushing at him. Going right for the knockdown.

She knocked him flat onto his front, quickly rolling over onto his back and pulling the bolt forwards. He wasn't going to make a mistake again. He was going to go for the shot.

But, with a sudden pang of fear through his body, Anthony realised she hadn't been going for him.

[Wham Yubeesling]

And she’d gotten what she’d been going for.

Timothy’s gun went from the floor to her hands, pointed directly at Anthony. There were thoughts maybe running through her head, pain in her arm that she was going to have to feel, implications that she was going to have to reckon at some point, but not here. Not now. This was an opportunity. Anthony was in front of her, at point blank range, and she was the one pointing the gun at him. Couldn’t think about this. Couldn’t waste time.

So she didn’t.

She pulled the trigger. Let rip.

[Applesintime]

Anthony's face shifted, for a second, into a look of fear. This was it. He'd escaped death a good few times, went much longer than anyone else should have, but this was it. She'd never get justice. She'd never watch all of her murderers burn in hell after dying in agony. Closing his eyes, he accepted death.

And then he opened them again after hearing the click of a trigger, looking at Verity with a confused experession. Oh. Oh.

Anthony grinned, full of teeth.

[Wham Yubeesling]

And just like that, the tides turned. Verity went from near-victory to certain loss. Anthony’s face shifted from a grimace to a grin, as he lifted his gun, pointed it at her.

And just like that, it was over. Her last stand stood too still to matter for anything. She was still going to die here. She was still going to be Anthony’s eleventh. All she’d went through was going to be overwritten. Her story, her memories, all the people she wanted to carry through this, they weren’t going to matter. All she’d be is someone who had it coming. Just another bad guy for the real hero to slay.

All because she hadn’t had an opportunity to reload. If she’d had then… then this would’ve gone the other way. She could’ve had a chance. However many more fights were still up ahead, she… she could’ve had a chance.

Now she didn’t. Now she was… walking the plank, basically. Her feet were right on the edge of the ship, where the fence would’ve been if she hadn’t… done what she did. There was no room. One step forward and Anthony would fire. One step backward and she’d fall, spinning, spiralling however many stories were between her and the ocean. Either way… this was it.

The final page. One last chance to get her foot into death’s door. Try and take her story back, before it ended. No producers, no cameras, no Anthony…

Just her. Her and the sense that maybe she’d done all this before.

The author of her own demise, once again.

“Say their names.”

[Applesintime]

"Timothy Torales."

The grin widened.

"Keegan Garcia."

She'd asked him to say their names. She never said which set of names.

"Alyssa Tibbett."

The grin was forced on, Anthony's brow furrowing a little. She'd started all of this, and she was playing at being better than him.

"Junji Yamada."

They say eyes are the window to the soul. His eyes were showing just how much he despised the murderer in front of him.

"Akeno Kudo."

His grip tightened on the rifle, glaring at Verity with a burning hatred Anthony couldn't disguise no matter how much he grinned at her.

"Ashanti Baker."

Nothing but pure venom in his voice.

[Wham Yubeesling]

"You know what I mean.

"You killed ten people.

"Say their names.

"Take some fucking responsibility."