This massive, multi-story cruise ship is at the center of the flotilla, the largest vessel present and one of the most reliably sturdy. Multiple avenues of approach allow it to serve as a hub for transit to other parts of the arena, but also leave it all-but-impossible to fortify against entry itself.
Selkies stuck together, or so it seemed. That must have been Ivan's rationale — better to keep your friends closer than your enemies when those enemies could blow your head off with a well-placed gunshot.
Olivia stayed close to his side, perhaps a bit over-cautious. Her eyes were squinty, and her expression occasionally winced — a continuous gift from the bullet hole in her shoulder. Each time she heard a sound besides the steady clanking of Ivan's feet against the ground, she swivelled around, prepared to use Tenga on anything as she glanced side to side.
Silence.
But surely her vigilance would pay them off sooner rather than later. The amount of space left on this ruined old cruise ship was dwindling down the longer they waited. Sooner or later, one of the "Y-are-you-still-alive" club would show their face...
LOLITA666: I fucking hate Ivan. LOLITA666: He's such a fucking loser. LOLITA666: I'm sure he smells like a pocket of sweaty pennies.
UR HAIR IS LIKE MILK?: Shut The Fuck Up They All Smell Like Rolled Up Pennies. It's Been What Four Days? Don't You Have Math Homework to do.
LOLITA666: I'm literally on summer break.
UR HAIR IS LIKE MILK, HOW COME?: Don't You Have Summer Classes To Do
LOLITA666: Eat shit. I wanna' talk about Ivan and he sucks LOLITA666: I literally don't get why people like him LOLITA666: He has the same vibes of people who
UR HAIR IS LIKE MILK, HOW COME?: Don't You Have Summer Classes To Do
WHY DO YOU STILL BELIEVE IN GOD?: Why is everyone name's in allcaps
Olivia wasn't much of a horror buff, but the atmosphere was putting her every nerve on edge. If Lucia were still alive (and willing to work with meatheads), she'd probably say something about lighting and suspense, or namedrop some pretentious black-and-white film director Liv had never heard of. Perhaps an Anthony jumpscare was just around the corner, ready to unleash hellfire. (But of course not. Anthony was too loud and too British to bother.)
Verity, on the other hand... There was no way to tell the kind of approach that girl would use. Olivia couldn't predict anything she'd do. They'd have more luck hunting down a question mark. And the longer they waited...
LOLITA666 didn't really care about SOTF-TV. She wasn't like even like into it as much as she pretended to be. She wanted to pretend to be into it because it meant she could pretend to be friends with people who pretended to care about her. It was a fun game of play-pretend, and it was a game that LOLITA666 played. A progression to this was hidden between her and her screen.
The distance she could set was perfect. Not too close to her and not too far away. Just right. Just in between that distance, she found comfort. Anything too tight or anything too far made LOLITA666 uncomfortable. It was the perfect distance to study and to read others, and online, it was made easier to understand what people meant when they said things like 'I love you and 'I hate you.'
She was funny, allegedly, and she liked making people laugh.
That was a fact.
There were a handful of testimonials she carried to her heart, like the subsequent interaction she had, about Ivan:
WHY DO YOU STILL BELIEVE IN GOD?: Thanks for the new username, 666 Deblod100: Aren't you supposed to be in jail by now? idle chorts: you should rlly try to not admit crimes youve commited within the last seven years, did you know that yonagoda is a cop Yonagoda: click this is going to the evidence pile
"To the end?" There was a pause. He moved like a zombie. "Yeah."
He pointed a door with his shiv. A hallway. "Let's go there."
PV3: F01: Michelle White — "Because if you can forgive me, then… then maybe I can try to forgive myself. Amen." — 68%
Kills: 1 | Equipped with: Ghille Suit, Combat Knife w/ Sniper Scope, Speargun
SANDBOX — Past: N/A | Present: ♘
PV3 — ♘♘♘♘♘♘
THEME: Tommy Körberg — Anthem
Supers: S034: Isabella Lugosi — "Stay. Away. Stay- away-" — 32%
Kills: 1 | Equipped with: Phenomena
Supers — Memories: N/A | Game: 𓆦𓆦𓆦𓆦𓆦𓆦𓆦𓆦
THEME: John Carpenter — From The Fire
TV2: SP5: Michael Robinson (Adopted from Polybius!) — "Oh shit." — 77%
Kills: 0 | Equipped with: Large Fishing Net
SANDBOX: N/A
TV2 — 123456789
TV3: BC08: Marion Rosales — "Doesn't- matter if it works or not. You get- a chance to try." — 27%
Kills: 0 | Equipped with: Decorative Mareon Rosalales Nameplate
SANDBOX — Past: ☪ | Present: ☪ | 𓅓
TV3 — ☪☪☪𓅓☪☪
THEME: Dessa — Ride
Waldo Woodrow — The Best Friend — "Yo! Bro! Check out this shark I caught!" Warion Roux — The Bumblebee — "Homme qui regarde même les signatures en notre année 2022?"
"UR HAIR IS LIKE MILK, HOW COME: Lolita's Been Offline For A While Now," LOLITA666 read from the hospital bed. "UR HAIR IS LIKE MILK, HOW COME: Usually She's Here Everyday, Especially For Movie Night."
There was a pause in the messages, and LOLITA666 almost flickered her status to Online. Discord had the nice little thing that lets her be invisible whenever she wanted, and she took the hospital as an opportunity to be logged "off". She still read everything, and she still looked at every single thing people said about her, but LOLITA666 wasn't about to reply.
There was a mixture of shame and annoyance, and she wasn't sure how to exactly word to the others.
People like hot dog apgoitravte weren't like going to understand. There was distance between them, and the miles that separated them were nothing compared to the relationship and generational gap that had been created. There's gravitation in this.
Hadn't Fisk done the exact same thing, just before he'd prepared to blow her brains to kingdom come? What was it with psychopaths and playing music at all the wrong moments? Some kind of psychological warfare? Or, perhaps, a way to get their weird music tastes into the history books...
Her grip slipped. Tenga slid a few inches. Her fingers caught the weapon, millimeters from the barrel.
Be careful, Olivia, she thought. Keep yourself calm...
And as the vocals gave way to slowly building synths, and the two realized they weren’t alone, a figure popped out from a corridor both Ivan and Olivia had passed, pointed their gun, and-
"Tch," Olivia snorted. Shoot, he said. Like Verity Stewart was going to get the upper hand against a trained athlete with a much, much scarier gun! All she had to do was cock it, act like she was going to fire, and this chunky gamer girl would turn tail and run before her brains got splattered into equally chunky brain-salsa on the ground. Her body gave a shudder, and her mouth curled into an unsettled smile. Better not to think about that. Not like she'd be firing that killshot anyway.
But she'd be damned if she didn't want to frighten this girl some.
With a smirk, Liv raised Tenga into a mock firing position.
"Hey Verity!" she called.
cha-chk
"Gonna fuckin' die young, huh? Well, make one wrong move...!"
First order of business: go back to where she’d found Mary. Hope that the place wasn’t on fire or that her stuff wasn’t hidden under rubble. Thankfully, neither of those had happened. She’d gotten Timothy’s gun (and her own, for what it was worth) her harpoon, and, as a bonus, the remote for the boombox Fisk had always carried around. With that, it was… time for turtle strats. She found a room in the corridors, boarded in, and waited. Rested, a little bit. When someone walked past, she’d turn on the boombox, hope that wherever it was it’d make enough noise for a distraction, then rush out, aim, and fire. Wasn’t amazing, but… best thing she had. Best thing she could do, given the circumstances.
And it’d worked. Almost. They’d been distracted. Facing the wrong way. If Verity still had both of her eyes — if she’d had more opportunities to figure out how to adjust her aim — maybe it could’ve been a hit, but it wasn’t. The bullets hit a wall halfway down the corridor. Now it was a fight. Two-on-one-
One-on-one. Ivan was bailing down the corridor, Olivia the one shield between him and Verity. She’d raised her own gun, and as Verity tried to get behind her corner, Olivia-
Stood there.
Taunted her.
Didn’t fire.
Verity knew now wasn’t a good time to reminisce, to come up with a paragraph’s worth of old memories with as little time as she had, but she felt her mind flashing to the banquet hall. The night before now. With Junji. He’d gotten Fisk down on the ground, so she stepped in… and it hadn’t been a fight. At all. He tried to shoot her back, but there was only so much someone could do once they’d already been shot four times. He’d killed — as many times as she had before that point — and yet the fight was already over before he knew it’d begun. She struck, the first moment she could, and there’d been nothing Junji could do to fight back. Same with Alyssa. Same with Akeno.
Olivia had just been given the same opportunity and had done nothing with it.
The juxtaposition was clear.
Verity came back out, pointed her gun, and let rip down the corridor, before Olivia’s empty threat could even finish hanging her.
They say when a deer gets caught on a lonesome country road and a car comes by, it freezes and stares all goggle-eyed until the big bright headlights make impact.
They say it leaves quite the mess...
This couldn't be!
Olivia's plan had been foolproof. Shove a shotgun in Verity's face and nothing could go wrong. That was the theory, at any rate. But sometimes you misjudge the situation, you swerve, you pass the lacrosse ball to the wrong teammate, you slash when you should have poked. All kinds of little miscalculations. Anything could go wrong without the ability to adapt on the fly.
The blast echoed through the steely corridor like a loud-mouthed fruit bat. Oh, it wasn't a direct hit — but the shock was more than enough. The girl with the shotgun braced for lethal impact and crumpled to the floor. Her cocky, brazen smile gave way. She swore on contact with the hard metallic floor. Tenga clattered out of her hands and spun in displeasing circles a few feet in front.
Not even Vas did suspense like this, she thought, and for whatever brief moments might remain to her, she was satisfied with this bit of inward snark. Willful ignorance solved many a problem, or so it seemed.
Undeniably, LOLITA666 was an attention whore. It was a medicated problem, allegedly, and one she had managed to "solve" by not seeking attention. Thing is: she was way too fucking cool to not attract stares and looks. If she was boring, maybe that wouldn't be a problem, but now it was like, 'oh my god where's LOLITA666'.
It was never like how she is doing, or what is she doing. Not even who's doing. It was just where. Never a how.
As the last drip of chemo fell through the iv drip, LOLITA666 only thought about one thing though: her phone.
She wondered how the gay people in it were doing.
She didn't fucking shoot, and now Ivan was being shot at. The shotgun, that he had trusted with Olivia with, falling near him. He fell to the ground.
The shotgun went flying, Olivia fell to the floor, and Verity moved. She rushed out from her corner, closed the gap between them, and before Olivia could do anything Verity pointed her own gun down towards her. Curled her finger around the trigger again.
She looked up. Down the corridor. No Ivan — not as far as she could see. The shotgun was clattered on the floor, within Olivia’s sight but not her reach. Coast was clear. No further threat.
So she looked down again. At the girl lying face down on the floor. She couldn’t see Verity. Or the gun, pointed, point blank. She lodged a foot under one of Olivia’s arms, pushed, and with one motion Olivia had been flipped onto her back, face up, looking at Verity. Looking at the gun in her hands.
