And No Lessons Were Learned

[DerArknight]

There was a snap, and suddenly it was all over. Derek slipped from Kai's grip, his body only barely responding. The ground greeted him with its cold and hard embrace.

He didn't need a doctor to realize what had happened. Nor did he need light to know who just fell down next to him. If the other dying classmate had been Kai or his companion, the fight would still be ongoing.

Chiara wasn't the only one who had things to say.

With whatever parts of him still worked, Derek managed to turn his head in the direction he assumed his dying or dead friend to be and spurted out two short sentences, barely understandable.

"Thank you... I am sorry..."

All this time, Chiara had been by his side without ever complaining or demanding anything in return. She had had every justification to leave him alone, a classmate who she never met at school. A classmate who was already hurt and lost his supplies. A classmate who got her killed with one or two terrible decisions.

And yet she didn't until the end. What else could he do but give his thanks?

With this business concluded, there was another person Derek wanted to reach out to.

He was sure that Abel wouldn't watch the terrorist's stream. Derek made sure to teach his brother about right and wrong, and watching snuff made by terrorists couldn't be any wronger. So he had to hope that his murderers would carry his words, or that someone watching the recording would reach out to Abel.

"Y-you..." he sputtered, words becoming harder to form as his senses failed him one after another. "Tell my brother... That..."

Tell my brother that I am sorry for not keeping my promise.

Tell my brother that he needs to be strong now.

Tell my brother that all my money is under the loose floorboard in my room, and to take it quickly before our parents steal it.

Tell my brother that this world is a harsh place, but that there is no reason to ever give up.

Tell my brother that I love him, and will always be by his side, even if he can't see me anymore.

So many words. So many things Derek wanted to convey.

And yet, all that left his throat was a sharp exhale as the beast called Survival Of The Fittest claimed another victim.

S007 Derek Caldwell - Deceased
64 Students Remain

[VoltTurtle]

When Derek stopped breathing, Katelyn relaxed, the tension leaving her body alongside their newly departed souls. Her hearing started to come back, though the ringing was still loud enough to be irritating. She looked over to Kai in the dim light, her eyes no longer carrying that violent emptiness. She made no attempt to free her arm from his grasp, instead allowing fresh tears to leak down her face.

Her cheek burned so badly. For a moment, the sensation and ringing in her ears sent her back to the wreck of that car, and she froze up, staring past Kai, at something far away that nobody else could see. It only lasted a few seconds, and when she came back, she was trembling. She hated it here.

"Y-You're, um," she mewled, having trouble speaking through the pain in her face, "you're n-not hurt, right?"

Everything she just did, she did for his sake. The violence couldn't have been for nothing.

[backslash]

The ringing only faded from Kai's ears on the left side. On the right, where the gun had been fired right next to his head, everything stayed muffled underneath the constant tone. Kitty's voice came to him through the drone, and Kai dropped her arm.

He finally tore his gaze away from Derek's limp body and looked down at her instead. For a moment, he couldn't even remember how to speak. Numb with shock one second, and then-

Then some kind of dam broke, and a deep, profound anger that he wasn't sure he'd ever felt for anyone, especially not her, welled up in his chest. It choked him into silence. In a way, he was grateful for that.

Kai took a step back from Kitty and Derek. Kept going until he hit the wall, and then he slid down, exhaling long and slow as he did. His hands were shaking, and he clasped his knees tightly to try to stop it. A vivid memory of slapping Marshall across the face crossed his mind, and he didn't- wasn't going to let himself imagine it being Kitty, even subconsciously. He'd never do that.

He'd never have said that he would have hit Marshall or snapped somebody's neck in a fight, either.

"No," he finally rasped, staring straight ahead at her. Knew that what he was feeling showed on his face, even if it was too dark to really see. "I'm not hurt."

Didn't that feel wrong to say? Shouldn't he have been at least a little hurt, after what had just happened? He didn't need to look over at Chiara to know that she was dead too. Two people dead in a minute, and all Kai had was a headache.

[VoltTurtle]

He wasn't hurt.

Katelyn breathed a long, relieved sigh. All the tension in her chest and back disappeared, and she finally allowed herself to relax. As long as he wasn't hurt, then she was okay, even if he was mad at her, and even if she had gotten herself hurt. Another stab of pain forcefully called her attention to the wound, and the subsequent trickle of warm blood caused her to flinch.

Chiara's parting gift was the worst injury she had gotten so far. It burned white-hot, needling her whole face with dozens of painful pinpricks as her blood steadily drizzled down her chin and neck. Tenderly feeling the site of the injury made it clear just how close she had come to disaster. The bullet had narrowly missed both her cheekbone and her jaw, tearing only through the soft flesh, but nearly splitting her cheek completely open at its deepest. If the bullet's trajectory had been even slightly different, she would be dead.

She trembled at the thought of just how close she had come to the end. She wanted to say she had gotten lucky, but this was starting to feel like a pattern to her. How many times had she narrowly avoided death at this point? There was the crash, both of her suicide attempts, Mitch, and now Chiara. Surviving that many near-death experiences was beyond lucky. Maybe she really was cursed to survive as long as possible, so as to suffer as much as she could.

Katelyn shook away the thought, as she had more pressing matters to attend to. In the interest of not wasting time, she hoofed it over to where she had left her belongings. Feeling her way to her bag, she removed her flashlight and turned it on, leaving it on the ground next to her while she got to treating her wound. After a minute of work, some closure strips, gauze, and tape, she had a good stopgap treatment to staunch the bleeding until she had a mirror and better lighting with which to stitch it up.

With that out of the way, Katelyn shined her light on the corpses. Looking at the two of them laid out on the ground, she felt a small pang of guilt, but bit her lip and dashed it away just as quickly as it had come. She was long past berating herself for doing what she had to do. Both of them had been carrying guns, and Derek had chosen to threaten Kai.

Right, Kai. She brought her light to bear on him, still sitting against the wall. He hadn't said anything while she had been bandaging her wound.

"Um, K-Kai," she mumbled, meekly, as if she was speaking to Ashlyn. "Are you- are you gonna yell at me now?"

[backslash]

If she hadn't asked, maybe he would have. Kai had sat silent, fighting down the turmoil that threatened to boil over, while Kitty attended to her injury. He'd felt like he should have offered to help. Couldn't bring himself to say it.

When Kitty did prompt him to speak, he heaved a deep breath before grinding out each word with effort.

"This. Didn't. Need. To happen." He dug his fingers harder into his knees.

[VoltTurtle]

Katelyn closed her eyes and let out a short, exhausted sigh. She had been expecting this response from him, but actually hearing the words come out of his mouth couldn't help but leave her annoyed. He had enabled this mess to begin with by calling out instead of running away like she had wanted. They had gotten lucky that they were both alive and mostly unharmed, in spite of his mistake. Yet, she bit her lip and choked her irritation down. He had just killed someone for the first time, and she knew from experience how emotionally fraught that murder hangover was. Her retort had to be gentle.

"You're right," she said, looking away from him and back to the corpses, "we sh-should've run away. They should've l-let us go."

Absentmindedly, while she spoke, she went over to the bodies, crouching down next to them to collect their revolvers, before rooting through their supplies for the obligatory pillaging.

"But they h-heard me," she continued, "and he," she gestured to what used to be Derek, "pointed a g-gun at you. So I did what I could to keep you s-safe."

In no time at all, she had their rations, water, and ammunition laid out to pick through, dividing them into even piles for herself and Kai. She knew her words likely wouldn't have the impact she wanted, as it seemed like nothing she said caused Kai to waver on his moral stance. She was sure Ren would've understood, if they were still here, but thinking about how they weren't made the weight in the pit of her stomach even heavier.

"I'm sorry. I know it s-sucks," she said, somber and quiet. "But both of them had already k-killed. If they were willing to th-threaten you, even though you hadn't hurt anyone, what would they have d-done to me? If I had just come out with my hands up, they would've sh-shot me. At least this way we're both st-still alive, and only I got hurt."

Briefly, as she started loading her own pile of supplies into her bag, she considered the possibility that she could've controlled the situation with the grenade launcher. An explosion in the tunnels likely would've killed them all, sure, but that was a mighty powerful threat. Maybe she should've come out and made her presence known after all, and sent them packing for their own self-preservation. Then, all of them would still be alive, Kai wouldn't be as mad at her, and she wouldn't have a hole drilled through the side of her face.

The thought and subsequent regret hit her like a punch to the stomach and made her grimace, but she forced herself to power through and push it aside. She had made dozens of mistakes already, so there was no use crying over yet another added to the pile. All she could do was keep the idea in mind for the future, in case they ran into another situation like this.

Standing up, she looked back over to Kai and frowned, her gaze downcast. It hurt her to see him like this, so upset and angry.

"I'm s-sorry, again. I wanted to avoid this. We can- we can m-move on, whenever you're ready."

[backslash]

"Leave the guns," Kai muttered as Kitty started rooting through Derek and Chiara's belongings. He slowly got to his feet and then repeated himself, louder.

"Just leave the guns! What do we need more guns for? We can barely carry everything that we have."

He hadn't been consciously ignoring where all the belongings they were lugging around came from before now, but watching Kitty methodically sort out food, weapons, and other supplies with two bodies laying just feet away- still warm-

He couldn't take it. He couldn't. He wasn't going to stand here and watch this.

Three days. They'd made it three days before everything fell apart. They hadn't even lasted a day before Ren died, and now-

Some victory.

Kai turned away to retrieve his umbrella. The shotgun too, though maybe he could have made more of a point by leaving it. It was all they had of Meena. Even if Meena had died hating everyone, it felt wrong to leave that last piece of him here in the dark.

Kai had taken Dominiqua's extra rations even though he'd figured he wouldn't need them. They'd taken everything that Meena and Ren had left behind. Still, he didn't look at Kitty again as she finished gathering the things that had belonged to the people they had just killed and joined him to move on in search of the exit.

((Kai Rosado-Prince continued in And When I Bite Down, I Don’t Stop Until My Teeth Are Touching))

[VoltTurtle]

Katelyn flinched at Kai's response, staring at him as if he was about to bite her, perplexed. That wasn't the retort she had been expecting. Had she done something wrong? Leaving the guns would be bad, someone else could find them and use them. Even if they didn't want them, they'd be better off tossing them into the sea or a danger zone instead of leaving them here. She could spare the room, given how small they were.

And, well, Katelyn wanted one. Even if the ear-splitting cracks they produced always brought her emotionally back to the crash. There would likely be plenty of threats where her grenade launcher would be too dangerous or impractical to use against them, like it was here in the tunnels, and plenty who would be too far away for her blades to reach in time. Especially so if they were traveling to populated areas like they were now, instead of hiding in the wilderness like they had been before.

With Kai looking away from her, she somewhat defiantly stuffed what supplies she could into both of her bags, including both revolvers and their ammunition, along with the butterfly knife one had been keeping. Even if Kai didn't like it and brought it up later, she'd at least like to make sure nobody else got their hands on better weapons. By the time she was done, four water bottles and two loaves of bread were left over, unable to fit. Perhaps she would take the time to gorge herself on her spoils once they found somewhere to stay, to gather as much strength as she could for the coming days.

She had to be ready, after all. Her end was only drawing closer.

Katelyn returned to Kai's side with the guns in tow, but one melee weapon shy. Almost as an accidental admission to Kai's assertion, she absentmindedly left the digging bar behind, leaving overall a little lighter.

((When she followed Kai out, she didn't say anything, too afraid of how he'd react.))