All The World's a Stage

[Applesintime]

((Previously, on SOTF TV...))

Stepping over Ivan, Anthony picked up the De Lisle and racked the bolt. Two more shots. Maybe not even two.

"It's over, Olivia." It was shouted in her direction manner-of-factly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Because, really, it was. Ivan was out of the picture. Chris was missing his arm and his head. Kaya lay there dead with a bullet in her heart, like so many others on this voyage of the dead. And Verity had jumped off rather than face her justice. Closing his eyes, Anthony imagined what it would be like to go back home. To know that he was victorious. To know that he was righteous.

Because righteousness was all he would have left after this.

But righteousness was the one thing he would only ever need after this.

That, and a lot of surgery.

It was the only thing he would have. His friends were dead or would abandon him. His girlfriend would be very unhappy with him killing people on TV, let alone professing his love for another girl on live television broadcast across the world. Fuck, he'd never hear the end of it if she hadn't just blocked him. And Anthony knew that Rebecca was the type to just end it there and then. Same with everyone else.

At least he'd have God. The one person that would never abandon him, even in the darkness of the smoke that blocked the beautiful vision above, His creation. The stars and the sun and the moon. It was beautiful, unspoiled.

Deep breath.

"Benny boy, look. Didn't lose a single fucking finger. Go stick that in your hole you dug, you neurotic fuck." With his free hand, Anthony gave the camera of his collar the finger. Oh, he had words for that little shit when they next met. He didn't know what they'd be. Hell, maybe he'd deck the fucker instead. Cunt deserved it.

Stepping past Ivan's limp soon-to-be-corpse, Anthony started walking towards Olivia. Slowly. Surely. Like a man who knew there was no running from him, not when the decks below were clogged with choking smoke.

He wanted Ivan to watch her die. Like he'd watched Ashanti die. Like he'd heard all of their deaths, Giselle and Leah, over a radio. He wanted Ivan to know that it was all his fault that she was dead before he sent him to burn in Hell alongside her.

For all of them.

Beau's blood-spattered cap felt heavy on his head.

The Lord, his family, his friends, everyone he ever had known was watching his victory.

A confident grin slipped onto his face.

And he would relish in that victory until the very end. The Lord your God is going with you, and he will give you victory.

[carduinal-cyn]

(Olivia del Rio continued from Immortality)

Boy, did this look bleak.

Olivia was only a few inches from the zip gun when Ivan Rodriguez, her last lifeline, went sailing off to a nearby section of floor with a shotgun shell in his leg. So much for "phone a friend"; the only number on the line was Emmy's Selkies number eleven, now Anthony Golden's ninth or tenth or whateverthehellth kill.

Anthony saw fit to prolong her suffering, rambling about Benny Benjamin Ben and his stupid crabs. She hoped Anthony got crabs. She wanted him to be every bit as disgusting and awful to the outside world as he was in this vicious moment.

As Death with his pale sickle loomed ever closer over Olivia's broken body, she shut her eyes and began to mouth the words:

"Thank you".

That wasn't meant for the psychopath, of course. In her mind's eye she was standing on the stage of the Academy Awards, with Lucia in an elegant black suit, handing her the gleaming golden trophy.

I want to thank my dad, who encouraged me when I was a little girl to fight as hard as I can on the field, but not on TV, where it really matters.

I want to thank my mom, who I butted heads with all the time over stupid homework when I could have been studying hard enough to stay in public school.

I want to thank my favorite tiel Holly, who never bit me or pecked me when I was five years old and tried to take her with me to the bathtub.

I want to thank Chris, who watched me after school, no matter how many times I bugged him to let me watch the show that killed me.

I want to thank Coach Kay and all my teammates, who treated me like a sister and a great player, even when I took penalties that cost us the game.

I want to thank RJ and Vas, who are probably up in heaven somewhere, joking about how insane this whole situation is.

But most of all, I want to thank...

[Applesintime]

No response. Evil could never accept that it was defeated until it was all over, and for this pair, this team, every goddamn fucking player who'd survived to the end of all this, it was all over. Chris was headless. Verity was at the bottom of the ocean. Kaya was shot in the heart (it took a lot of effort to not get that song stuck in his head). Goliath was collapsed and he would watch his ally die for his hubris.

"I guess I'll go with the axe." Anthony hummed. He didn't want to draw this out, he wasn't Seo-yun, but he wanted to make a mess of this. Show Ivan the consequences of his actions, that all he did was get his friends killed in painful ways. Maybe he'd take her head like he did Chris. Maybe he'd lop her arms off. Or maybe, and this was most likely, he'd just bury the thing in her stomach and let her go into shock.

"Remember how you said that I must have a thing for pinning girls up against walls at the start of this, 'Livia? There's one thing I like more than that." Withdrawing the axe from his bag, Anthony dragged it along the deck of the cruise ship, letting the gentle scraping sound drive fear into evil's heart. Slowly, he continued to advance on the girl, the flames slowly licking their way up the top of the stairwells illuminating that mad glint in his eyes.

"Winning."

[Wham Yubeesling]

And then an arm reached out from behind Anthony and curled an elbow around his throat.

[Applesintime]

Anthony choked, spluttered, coughed, an elbow flung back to try and get the person who'd just wrapped their arms around his throat off of him.

Ivan was on the floor with a fucked knee. Olivia was in front of him. Chris, Kaya and Verity were dead. So who the fuck-

Ah.

[carduinal-cyn]

...the powers that be!

Olivia lurched after the gun, and her arms closed around the fateful prize.

Every muscle was electric.

Blood screamed.

Nerves roared.

Her teeth grit, her eyes threw sparks.

Today, Anthony Golden would pay for his crimes.

[Wham Yubeesling]

An elbow flung back, hit Verity in the face, and as her neck snapped back she could almost see everything around her. Ivan, and Kaya, their bodies to each side. The night sky above. Smoke and embers closing in on this little arena. Verity, in the middle of it all, standing behind Anthony. He was struggling. Trying to overpower her. The elbow he’d thrown was no doubt not going to be the only thing he could muster, but Verity held on. Her arm was too weak, at this point, to actually choke him, but she held on, kept her arm hooked around him because, because she…

Because she could see the girl in front of the two of them. Olivia, she’d said her name was. The same girl from the fight in the hallway. The girl who could’ve shot her but didn’t. The girl who had an opportunity right in front of her and had done absolutely nothing with it.

Verity wasn’t going to presume anything had changed with her. If she wanted this, she was going to have to do it herself.

So her left arm — the less fucked up one, all things considered — kept up the offensive, pulling back on Anthony’s neck. The other went to her side, grabbed Akeno’s harpoon from around her belt.

[Applesintime]

It was Verity.

Somehow, she'd survived a plunge that would have killed anyone else. A final test, a spanner in the works. The elbow nearly got the bitch off of him, but she held on firm like a dog with a bone, like someone who rightfully knew their fate would be one of pain and death if they let go.

"FUCK OFF!" Anthony screamed, redoubling his efforts to get Verity off. Kick Olivia into the fire once he was free, whirl around and put the axe in Verity's stomach. Take her head off for good measure, because apparently that was the only fucking way to make sure that people died on this goddamned hellhole of a boat. Probably put another bullet into Olivia. Maaaaybe one into Kaya just to be safe. And then maybe he'd just eviscerate Ivan's skull with the shotgun that Olivia was scrambling for.

His head flew back to try and hit Verity's. His arms, elbows, everything he had desperately thrown backwards in an attempt to get Verity off of him. He was even stamping on her goddamn feet.

Evil would not fucking prevail today. He hadn't come this far to die now, not at the hands of someone who should be dead!

"YOU FUCKING CUNT, GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME!"

She would give, it was only a matter of time, Anthony assured himself.

[carduinal-cyn]

With shaking arms, Olivia's hands closed around the gun. She wasn't sure how many shots were left in the chamber — she needed to aim and fire like there was only one chance, because functionally there was. Miss, and Anthony fucking Golden would chop her body apart like firewood.

She was so tensed-up, so focused on the crucial moment that she didn't see Verity there — the doe-eyed girl who played at being a true killer, but had since recast herself in the role of a deus-ex-machina, a Hail Mary. Verity danced some kind of deranged strangling tango with the crazed Brit-boy. Each of them stepped on each other's toes, thrashing everywhere.

She'd have laughed if she didn't have her hands on the trigger, ready to blast Anthony into head-cheese. Her hands were slick with sweat. Her shoulder was off-kilter, still pulsing painfully.

Fuck! she cursed. Hold still, will you?!

[Wham Yubeesling]

She was gonna give.

Not now, not immediately, but soon. Anthony had redoubled his efforts and it was like… like some mechanical bull. Verity had never been on one — never would, at this rate — but this seemed like an appropriate approximation of what it was like. She was being hurled back and forth, one hand on him, one hand still on Akeno’s harpoon, and every little touch was a full impact. His head hit her nose and she was pretty sure blood gushed out. His elbow hit her stomach and she didn’t even have enough breath left to cough something out. He’d stomped on her feet, and… and on any day before this, that would’ve been enough to hurt. Make her swear. Take five minutes off to seethe in pain. Here? Now? After everything?

Anthony was going to need to do a lot more than that.

He swung around, again, and this time the momentum was enough to collide them together. That was when she made her move. She swung the harpoon, as hard as she could. It moved in an arc around his waist, stabbed into his stomach, dug through him, entered into her.

[Applesintime]

Verity's grip loosened with every swing, every action Anthony made. It wouldn't take too much more to break her grip and let him finish this once and for all. Salvation and freedom was within reach, and all he had to do was reach out and grab it. Or in this case, break the grip of evil holding him back. It was a little admirable, really, how Verity had fallen from that height and wasn't, like, a mess of shattered bones and drowning. Olivia was readying the gun, but she wasn't shooting. Maybe she was afraid of hitting Verity. Maybe she'd realised that it couldn't make a difference anymore.

He barely realised what Verity had been doing before the harpoon ripped into his core. Anthony immediately gasped, all the air shooting out of him like a balloon you'd just stamped on. This was a different kind of pain, not your face lighting on fire, not the kind of pain being shot gave you. This was something different, something that he instinctively knew was very, very, very bad. His struggling lessened, with every fucking movement sending a wave of agony throughout his body.

It wasn't over, though. It wasn't over. He wasn't going to stop. Even if that stupid, stupid bitch had put it right through him and into her, like fucking skewered meat, he could still do this. He just had to kill her, get her off, kill Olivia and Ivan and he'd be home.

Anthony tried to reach down for his axe, maybe he could try and cut through it with the axe but it'd clattered to the ground when Verity started to choke him, he couldn't reach. Was there anything left?

The shiv.

Fumbling, wheezing, his hand reached into a pocket, desperately hoping that it was still there, that the explosion in the cruise ship hadn't knocked it away or shattered it or something, because it was his last chance.

A tinge of desperation crept into his mind. Anthony tried his hardest to push it down and to ignore the feeling, the sight, of something deep inside him, the taste of crimson in his mouth.

Lord, deliver me victory.

[Wham Yubeesling]

It hurt.

Hurt enough to matter, anyway. On the scale of what Anthony was doing to what Akeno had done… it was closer to the latter end. Her breaths… weren’t autonomous now. Every movement made the pain spread, envelop her body. Like blood in water. Like rot on skin. But even then… she kept pushing. Through him, into her. Through him, into her. She was sure she was fucking churning her intestines into some sort of mush right now but that didn’t matter. Adrenaline was taking away the worst of it. Whatever happened, however this went, this injury wasn’t going to mean anything in a couple of minutes. All she could do was focus on the now. Figure out the next move. Find a way to take him down for good.

And she found one, maybe. A shape, in the corner of her eye, almost covered by the smoke. Olivia had the gun again. And was just sitting there. Pointing it. Doing nothing. Like…

…Like she didn’t have a steady target.

Fuck was it a long shot, but…

She turned. And Anthony, whether he liked it or not, turned with her. The harpoon inside the two of them was doing most of the work, but she made sure to bring her arms under his. Grab him above his shoulders. Made sure he was stuck to her, not the other way around.

And eventually, Olivia wasn’t on the edge of Verity’s vision anymore. She was in focus. Front and centre. They would’ve been staring each other down, if it weren’t for Anthony in-between. Unable to break free. Right in the path of the gun.

She hoped Olivia had learned her lesson the last time she’d had somebody in her sights.

“Fucking do something!”

[carduinal-cyn]

Olivia fucking did something.

As if of its own will, the gun barrel turned on Anthony and

BLAM.

[Applesintime]

Anthony screamed as Verity turned around, the harpoon inside him jostling and digging deep into his guts, probably making the situation there a hell of a lot worse. He was certain the docs could patch up a massive fucking spear through your guts, but he had no idea what recovery would look like. Although, considering he now knew exactly what Verity was trying to do, the part of him that didn't think he'd get to surgery was suddenly a lot stronger.

She was fucking human shielding him. Making sure that Olivia's blast hit him. Killed him. And from how they were connected... fuck. This had been why she stabbed through herself. To make sure there was no escape. But there always was an escape. There was a way out of this, he just had to figure out how to get the gun outta Olivia's hand first and then everything would resolve itself, Verity screamed something and Anthony screamed back through the fuzz in his brain, something filled with hatred and rage and fear and

then pain.

The gun had fired upwards. Maybe she'd tried to avoid Verity. Maybe she'd missed.

Anthony tried to laugh.

A wet, pained gurgle came out, and then his throat, his body, everything was on fire in a way that would never ever go out, and he reached up to his neck and oh god there wasn't anything there there was just void and blood and pain where his neck should have been and all he could feel was hot blood gushing out of his neck and his chest and his arm and all over his body oh god oh god fuck fuck fuck he slammed his palm against the gash but there was too much and it was too big and it was too sore to keep it there but he tried to press as tight as he could bear because if he stopped the blood here then he'd be fine but he knew he couldn't be fine shit fuck how had he let this bitch win how had he let them win he still could fix this he could win this and then he'd go home and see mum and dad again these bastards couldn't win just as soon as he stopped the bleeding he'd be fine and then he could kill them

[Rattlesnake]

"Hey, Anthony."

"I know this, this, this isn't really how either of us were imagining things would end up. You the last of my team, me the last of your, well, anything. But there's something I've been wanting to tell you, and I wasn't really sure when or where or if I'd be able to share it. And given the present, uh, time constraint, I think now might be a good time if you don't mind?"