Time Out

[Deamon]

"Yeah, I'm still going!" Alaska responded with a genuine smile. "I missed you too."

It felt good to be reunited with her best friend. It was a weight off her mind, at least to some degree. She couldn't help noticing that Laura's bandanna didn't match her own. But by the same token neither did Sergio's and she had been planning on sticking around him for a while anyway, so clearly she wasn't being picky about that kind of thing. Sylvain however was on her team—Selkie pride—which meant that he had to stick around no matter what.

So, somehow, she had stumbled her way into having an actual full group. Haha, fucking sick, she was the best at Survival of the Fittest.

Did this cause issues for Future Alaska? Abso-fucking-lutely. Was that Future Alaska's problem? Hell yes.

It was actually a serious issue and she didn't know what to do about it.

Laura addressed Sergio and Alaska nodded along. Happy for the distraction of the ongoing and slightly awkward introductions. It was becoming apparent that Sergio wasn't one for words. It was starting to look luckier and luckier that he had even allowed her to stay.

"Sergio let me stay on the boat with him and helped make sure this other weirdo didn't come aboard." She explained to Laura then turned her attention over to Sylvain.

"Speaking of coming aboard," Alaska waved her actual teammate over. "Get over here Sylvain."

[backslash]

Sylvain caught the package of seaweed snacks that was tossed his way, one-handed. Cheers and air horns sounded in the background on the stream, probably. This stuff was salted, he was pretty sure, and was probably going to just make him thirstier, which he'd be willing to bet that Laura had done on purpose if she had put any more than five second of thought on it. But hey, carbs were carbs or whatever. Actually he thought that the selling point of these was that they didn't have many carbs. But whatever, it was his ocean lawn clippings now.

Alaska invited him up. He had already been planning to come up, but Laura pushed past him and he let her, because he was a gentleman and shit. He stuck the barrel of the gun into his pocket - not the waistband of his jeans, even though that was less secure, because he had some respect for gun safety and his dangly bits both - and climbed up after Laura. And yes, he gave it enough time so that he wouldn't be looking up her swimsuit... skirt... thing. There were some abysses he didn't wish to gaze into.

Once aboard the boat, Sylvain leaned back against the deck's railing, blinking again in the sunlight. He should probably take his contacts out soon. "Seriously though, water? I think Lucille has all my stuff and I'm real thirsty." He shot Sergio a glance and a smile. Sergio did not seem inclined to return to sentiment or the gesture.

There was a dynamic here already, one which Sylvain wasn't entirely sure if anyone else was aware of yet. See, he and Alaska were on the same team. Alaska and Laura were best friends. Sergio was... a guy. Maybe he and Alaska had something, but Sylvain knew that Sergio had no prior connection with him and was pretty sure that Sergio had nothing with Laura.

Now, one third wheel was enough, in Sylvain's estimation. Given the existing relations, he wasn't sure yet whether that was him or Laura. Neither of them was at the bottom of the totem pole, though. Physical fitness, weapons, and all of that aside, Sergio was the fourth wheel. So the question was: did he know it yet?

If he did know - or when he realized - what would he do?

[Pippi]

Laura had noticed the bandannas as well.

This was the key thing about Laura, the thing that made her such a goddamn nuisance. She could give a sum total of zero shits about anything and everything, she could look just like an idiot asshole stoner with no life and no future, and hey, maybe that was about 91.7% true. But what that all meant as well, was that she could just… notice shit, and get away with it. She noticed exactly how to get under peoples skin. She noticed exactly what things to say that would hit people where it hurt the most. She noticed the things that upset and angered people, and took them into her own mind, so that she would always have a leg up on people.

So, like, it wasn’t really a huge surprise that she took careful note of the lines dividing their little shitty boat party, the little groups that had already been invisibly, instinctively created. Divisions made by both the bandannas they all wore, and by their pre-existing relationships. It was easy to tell, just from a brief exchange of words, who exactly was on the bottom rung right now.

Course, Laura really couldn’t care less about all that for the moment, the only reason she really cared about the bandanna colours was that it meant, once again, odds were she wasn’t anywhere near close to finding the coke that was so rightfully hers.

“We’re fuckin’ surrounded by water, aren’t we?” Laura said, folding her arms and glancing over at Sylvain. “I don’t see the problem here, buddy.”

A sardonic little snort escaped from her nose, as her bag slithered off of her shoulder and down her arm, plopping onto the floor. She nudged it with her foot. The pack was open, the contents of it directly in Sylvain’s line of sight. The dude looked like a fucking clown, but Laura had faith that he could at least figure out this most fiendish of goddamn brainteasers. Although she kinda hoped he’d just blindly grab a bottle and try and take a fucking sip of explosives, babes.

“Anyway, good thing you kicked the weirdo out, we don’t want any freaks on this boat, do we?” said the girl in the maid swimsuit. “‘Laska’s got shit taste in SOTF husbandos and waifus, but she’s generally sound when it comes to the fuckers she hangs out with, so I guess I can spare my precious time to hang out with you guys.”

She grinned at Alaska, her usual smile with her mouth, not with her eyes.

“Even though I’ve got a REALLY important task to be getting on with. Jewel approved and all that shit.”

[Courtography]

"It's not to dye your hair black is it?"

Sergio gave a half-hearted chuckle.

Jewel may have killed ten people, but she was still a joke. Interesting to know that she was a mentor on this season. Well, assuming it wasn't some bullshit that Laura had read on twitter before everyone had been yoinked from Miami.

This guy looked like a joke too, but his bandana matched Alaska's so he probably was going to insist on sticking around.

"I'll do you one better," he mentioned, looking at Sylvain.

He reached into his bag to grab a bottle of Gatorade and gave it an underhand toss towards him.

It flew a little too easily, and that's when Sergio realized this one was half-empty.

But he hadn't drank any Gatorade yet.

Whoops.

[Deamon]

"There's a Cure CD hidden in the arena and you need to find it," Alaska said, joining in with Sergio's joking.

It was a nice and brief return to school life. Little jokes and one-liners that didn't mean that much in the grand scheme of things. It wouldn't—and didn't—last of course but for a brief moment Alaska had visions of being in the school cafeteria.

But on a more serious note, the group they had wasn't actually tenable in the long-term. That was just basic math and Alaska was good at advanced math so it wasn't a hard calculation to run if she was thinking logically. Now of course she wasn't a robot built to win Survival of the Fittest. Oh, how easy things would have been if she was. But no.

The logical, robot play would be to stick with Slyvain no matter what, he was her teammate after all and the other two didn't matter. She could string them along as much as possible then cut them loose at the most tactically convenient time. There were probably people in her season who were running that exact plan as she thought about it.

She wouldn't be one of those people though. Alaska-bot didn't yet exist so she was instead stuck with dumb meat brain Alaska who kinda wanted Sergio to stick around and definitely wasn't going to ditch Laura thanks to the best friend clause. That meant that the group was stuck at four. A group where only two people had any real tangible reason to stick together.

It wasn't a good foundation for a solid group.

As she had been considering all of that the conversation around Alaska had continued moving and she saw Sergio toss a half-drunk bottle of Gatorade to Slyvain that looked suspiciously...like...hers.

Oof.

Okay! So that was awkward! Her drink had just been given away for her. But it was cool, she could roll with it. It wasn't a big deal.

"Uh..."

Nope! It wasn't a big deal. She could roll with it.

"So! What's your important Jewel-approved task?" She asked Laura.

[backslash]

Okay, so Sylvain hadn't really expected two people to actually offer stuff to him, but nice. He tried to go for the one-handed catch doubleshot with the Gatorade bottle that Sergio tossed his way, but he slipped and had to clap both hands around it, crushing the poor packaged seaweed. It had already gotten a little squished when he climbed up the ladder with the package in hand, too. Rest in fucking pieces, seaweed. That was definitely going to get all over his shirt when he opened it.

Also everyone just kind of overlooked his comment about Lucille, which was fine, because Laura then dumped some much more relevant information on them.

"Wait, you got Jewel?" He spoke up as he rearranged the snack package and drink, resting the seaweed in the crook of his elbow so he could twist the cap off the Gatorade. It had already been opened and half-drunk, so thanks for the backwash Sergio, but whatever, Sylvain was fucking thirsty. He took a couple gulps and then looked back to Laura. "How's that working out?"

There was a sardonic edge to his voice to match hers, but he was genuinely curious. He'd expected one of the winners of the previous season to come back, since they had done that last time, but it had been really up in the air which one. Corin hadn't been much of a public face, and going by the things that leaked out online here and there, the SOTF behind-the-scenes people kinda hated Jewel.

Now to Sylvain, Jewel was kind of meh. Sloppy and not nearly as striking a 10-kill winner as Karen had been, but she had Aesthetic™ and only sometimes did annoying shit like long monologues at the camera. Mid-tier at best. Corin would have been better as a mentor with some marketing behind him, probably, but Sylvain guessed it was easier for them to go with the Season 66 winner that wanted to be marketed more.

He took another swig of Gatorade while he waited on Laura to answer the ribbing. He hoped that the quest from Jewel was something appropriately stupid.

[Pippi]

Sylvain just totally went and ignored Laura’s kindly and incredibly clear offer of water and salvation, going in favour of the shit-tier taste of Gatorade instead, which was just like, so incredibly rude, so completely and utterly indescribably rude. So indescribable that Laura, in all of her graciousness and good manners, decided not to say anything at all. And then promptly forgot all about it half a second later.

“Yeah, she actually told me to change up my entire fuckin’ outfit. Said there were way too many colours and too much cheerfulness, told me to grab some clothes “blacker than a raven’s wing and darker than the depths of humanity’s despair”, whatever the fuck that all means.”

Laura was more than happy to keep on rolling with the goth jokes, cause they were just so fucking easy to make, and in her world, there was no such thing as low hanging fruit. Jewel got a pass, cause she was hot, but all the other weirdo goths and sub-goths and goth lites that wandered gormlessly around Mangrove Garden were hot in a different way. Cause it was Miami. And, like, sunny, all the time. So they got all overheated and shit. Look, she didn’t need to spend more time than necessary on a joke about weirdo sweaty nerds, she was pretty sure a better one would come to her more naturally soon enough.

“But yeah, it’s pretty fuckin’ sick, like-”

She paused midway through speaking to tear a chunk of her sandwich away with her teeth, continuing to talk even through a mouthful of bread and tuna.

“- I’ve only properly gotten to talk with her, like, once, she’s got a fuckton of other losers to talk to, y’know how it is. But I’m getting mentored by, like, not just someone who’s won this shit already, but someone who got the ten kills to do so, not just by sitting around like a pussy and waiting for everyone else in endgame to cap each other, so, like, shit’s legit. Anyway.”

Laura wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, flinging crumbs onto the deck around her. She grinned, and said nothing for an infuriatingly long time, letting the tension and intrigue draw out until it had turned into annoyance and a desire for her to hurry the fuck up. Y’know, her brand ‘n all.

“There’s a baggie of coke somewhere out here on this floating field of fucks, and someone on my team has got it, and I’ll be damned if I’m getting stabbed in the gut before I can do a line on the fucking cruise ship. So if one of you’ve seen someone wearing this-”

She tapped the bandana tied around her plait.

“- And they were high off their goddamn tits, do me a solid and lemme know, yeah? Or if you killed ‘em and took their shit, that’d be pretty neato to know as well.”

[Wham Yubeesling]

A voice comes out of Sergio's collar, audible only to him:

"I'm not sure whether acting on this information would be the best idea, but I think it might benefit you to know that that gun Sylvain has used to be your teammate's. Don't trust him."

[Namira]

Another voice, quieter, from Alaska's.

"Alaska, it's me, I...

"I'm... I..."

Click.

[Courtography]

Well he hoped Sylvain enjoyed Akeno's backwash. Sergio hadn't noticed that the bottle had been opened when he took what Akeno had left behind, but now he was glad to be rid of it. The fluid of hers that he wanted wasn't spit. The mentor chick let him know that Sylvain had taken the gun from one of Sergio's teammates. As long as the teammate wasn't someone he cared about, Sergio didn't really care. Stealing weapons was part of the game if you wanted to win. Speaking of, he really should get a hold of something other than a laser pointer at some point.

The more important thing was that as the mentor pointed out that the gun had come from Sergio's teammate, is that he finally took the time to process where he had seen Sylvain and Alaska's bandannas before: Akeno had been wearing the same kind. That really fucked up his plan.

He couldn't stay with this group forever. Maybe if he kept watch or something he could take the gun and waste the sucker and then leave Alaska and Laura behind.

Not now though.

Right now the cocaine that Laura mentioned sounded like a more fun diversion.

Party on SOTF, Miami style.

"There better be enough for two," he quipped back at Laura.

Not that he had done cocaine before. Prior to this he wouldn't have taken the risk of screwing up his baseball scholarship. Now though? He could probably take the risk.

So he left with the rest of the group.

(Sergio Gallo continued in CocaineQuest 2021)

[backslash]

"Oh my god, yes. Yes. Shut up, don't say anything else, I'm in."

Actually, Sylvain had little interest in doing drugs, in general. Like oh yeah, throw some fucking cocaine in the weapon pool because everybody in Miami is coked out of their minds all the time, haha, peak comedy. That by itself was trite.

The idea of going on a wild goose chase all across the arena, toting a gun, with fucking Anime Maid Laura leading the way on the instruction of Jewel Fucking Evans, though? That shit was next-level.

Sylvain finished off the Gatorade and then stepped over to Laura's bag, swapping the empty Gatorade bottle with one of her unopened water bottles in what would have been a neat bit of sleight-of-hand if he hadn't been looking her in the face the whole time. He opened that one too and took several gulps, and once his thirst had finally been slaked, he put it back in the bag.

"What the hell are we standing around here for? Let's go find some drugs!" And with that, he vaulted himself back down the ladder. Stuck the landing on the jetty, and off he went. Things were looking up, now.

((Sylvain Kessler continued in First The Sirens, Then The Lights))

[Deamon]

Cocaine.

That was...cool...she guessed. Yeah sure, it was something to do and there was a reward at the end she supposed, plus she'd never done cocaine so it would be an experience at least. Maybe she wasn't one-hundred percent on board but there was at least an end goal they could work towards and that had to count for something.

Alaska was about to say as much when out of nowhere and for the first time since she had woken up on the submarine her mentor decided to talk to her.

And she froze like a deer in the headlights. And she listened to the six whole words she was given. Then the anger rose in her chest as her hand tightened around the screwdriver as it pushed into her thigh.

She had been trapped on a fucking manmade boat island for an entire fucking day and her mentor couldn't even give her a complete sentence. She was the safe one! She was in no danger, all she had to fucking do was sit in the control room, watch some screens and talk to them and be helpful. But no, she had been silent for the whole time. She had watched Larry ditch her and not decided to speak up. She hadn't decided to enlighten her as to whether or not the weirdo the night before was a threat, which was information she would have possessed and been able to actually pass on. There was also no way she hadn't contacted the other members of the team, so what the actual fuck was this?

What fucking purpose did contacting her to say fucking nothing serve? Was her goal to be as upsetting as possible? Because it was working,

The screwdriver had pierced her skin long ago but Alaska hadn't released her grip.

The more she thought about it, the more she needed some cocaine.

“Sounds good!” She said as Sylvain started to head off, screwdriver retracting from her leg. “Let’s go get some coke!”

((Alaska Ferguson continued in Champions 202))

[Pippi]

Hell yeah, hell fuckin’ yeah, that was more like it, that was the reaction she wanted to fucking see. Hear. Whatever, they’d throw up some subtitles in post-production and shit anyway, so, take that, checkmate atheists, get fucked, Laura was right once again. Three peeps who were totally down to clown and fuck around with a bag of coke was a way better party than two pretentious-ass losers who got off to theories of modern art and shit.

Then again, an icepick lobotomy while watching a lecture on paint drying sounded more fucking fun than doing hanging out with those two any longer.

“Fuckin’ dank, lets fucking go then, bitches,” Laura said. She woulda returned Sylvain’s unblinking stare, as she knelt down to zip her bag up and double check all the important shit (explosives, food, bra and panties) was still in there, but he had already yeeted himself off the side of the boat. Hardcore parkour style, unfortunately, not into the water like a lemming with shit tier Vtuber hair. He had to realise that his actions were an act of war, right? He’d wake up one morning with half his shit missing, and Laura would be lounging naked in the pool, yards away, with his tuna sub in one hand and her well-earned drugs in the other.

Also everyone else seemed to be expecting an equal share of the treasure, which, lol? Lmao? Laura was willing to share, she wasn’t a fucking tyrant, but the majority of the coke? That was hers and hers alone. She was, like, really totally stressed out by this whole shebang, so, really, she deserved little a bag of cocaine, as a treat. It was only logical.

“Oh, yeah, head’s up, don’t have a fucking clue where the coke actually is but, hey, that’s part of the adventure and shit and whatever, yeah?”

She grinned, as she grabbed the railing, hoisted herself over the side, and dropped down to the jetty below - that’s right, she was more than just a bitchy face, thank you, years of martial arts training. That bitchy face had a big-ass grin on it, though. And why the hell shouldn’t it? Everyone around her was on the same page, she was reunited with her bad bitch ‘Laska, and operation pool party was a-goddamn-go.

With life this good, Marion’s escape plan could go and suck it, tee bee aitch.

((Laura Hakštok continued in CocaineQuest 2021))