LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BOYZ WHERE WE DROPPIN’

[Shiola]

Ty stood still, waiting to see if Katrina would emerge. Given that the front door was still closed, he could only conclude that she was in the other room. Still, he wasn't inclined to let the sword taste any more of his flesh. Nor was he particularly inclined to turn his back on anyone at this point, which he'd have to do to explore the rest of the house. The crowbar was still on the ground, and Ty moved over to pick it up.

In the moment he looked down to grab the weapon, he heard a cry from the other room. With his assigned weapon in one hand and Felix's pistol in the other, he prepared himself for another assault. To his surprise, he saw Yuko doubled over in the doorway, collapsing to the ground as Katrina stood over her. For a moment, he locked eyes with Katrina. He shot her a mournful, almost apologetic look and shook his head.

Though he didn't say a word, he hoped she understood.

Now you know how I feel.

Ty made no effort to stop her as she turned and ran, exiting through the back window. Looking through the nearest window on his end of the building, he saw another house. In the dim light he could still see the bloody prints he left on the door. Felix's body was slumped off in another corner. The two others were still on the ground, likely just waiting for him to commit some other heinous and unforgivable act. Ty felt sorry for them. There were no doubt others on the island who in his position, would have tried to end all of their lives.

Whatever's left of them, that is.

"Stay down."

All he'd wanted was somewhere to stay. Katrina had been right, he supposed. There were other houses. With any luck those places didn't have soon-to-be rotting corpses in them.

He tossed the crowbar back into his duffel bag, shouldering it and then grabbing the bag lying next to Felix. The additional supplies would help, as he had a feeling he'd need more than a few bandages to take care of the myriad cuts and scrapes he'd suffered. Plus, he was down to his last t-shirt by this point. Felix was at least close enough to his height, so he might be able to make something work.

Ty turned to the others as he left, motioning with the gun towards them at first before pausing, and flipping the safety to "on".

"I'm leaving. Go help Yuko, she needs a friend right now."

As he walked back into the near-total darkness outside, he felt the adrenaline which had carried him through this encounter rapidly fade. His eyelids started to feel heavy, and the world inside of his mind became as dimly lit and unforgiving as the abandoned houses he stumbled past. Before long he had found a tiny shack at the edge of the village that looked like it once stored garden tools, and passed out within moments of slumping to its dusty, wooden floor.

((B#09 - Day 1, Concluded. Tyrell Lahti continued in Strategic Realism))

[Laurels]

Katrina froze in place, her jaw shaking as she looked down and realized that it was Yuko who was running in. Yuko must have been trying to flee from Tyrell, and now Katrina had slashed her open. She looked down at the girl on the floor, then over to the nodachi, now stained with Yuko's blood. Katrina's hand shook as she saw her own reflection in the blade cut by the blood.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," she muttered as she looked all around.

She turned back to the other room and could see Tyrell looking at her. There was a body on the floor near him. Felix. He killed Felix, and now he was looking at her with such a look of shame and pity she couldn't bear it. He still had the gun, and from how he was looking at her, she knew he wasn't probably going to just let her go.

"I'm sorry," she muttered, hoping Yuko heard it.

She then bolted to the window. Putting more force into it than she did before, she finally got it open enough that she could climb out. She quickly grabbed the bags and sheath and jumped out. Without looking back, she bolted from the house and into the jungle behind it. As she ran, her face and body hit by the branches and leaves that got in her way, she started to feel tears run down her face. She ruined everything. Felix was dead because she moved at the wrong time, and now Yuko was probably going to die. Tyrell was still in the house with his weapons, so Demetri and Charelle were probably going to die soon as well. That left her all alone in this terrible place.

Katrina knew now that she had made the biggest mistake of her life, and she was probably going to pay for it for the rest of her life. But couldn't they forgive her for this screw-up? After all, she didn't want to die, and she wouldn't have done this if she wasn't put here to begin with? Surely she could be forgiven and shown mercy.

These thoughts raced through her head as she disappeared into the jungle, away from the house, and away from the modicum of safety she had known. All that lay before her was danger, and she ran blindly into it.

((Katrina Lavell continued in Freedom is a fleeting dream, an ephemeral hope, a transient wish in the wind.))

[Cicada]

Demetri was sure at some point that the loud and ringing emptiness stuffed in his ears like fluffy cotton was the ambiance of the afterlife. Claustrophobic.

He only realized it was just his eardrums nearly snapping from the loudness of the gun when it started to clear. Tyrell said something indistinct, something underwater.

Then, silence. Demetri only got up slowly. Slowly scrambling, like Mom with her eggs. One hand at a time, to push him up one foot at a time. At any moment in time of the process he expected a gunshot to ring out and for all the strength in his spine to give out. That moment didn't come, and with weary eyes he now had a room full of aftermath to inspect. The light hadn't changed, everything was still washed in the vague sickly orange of a setting sun.

Felix too. Demetri now realized where all the sounds of guns firing had been aimed.

Like walking on clouds, Demetri took uneven steps towards Felix. He'd had a dream like this, memorable, where one of his faceless classmates had been lying on the ground and Demetri had been in the position to help. Felix was that patch of blood and skin staring at heaven. Demetri didn't want to say corpse yet, he guessed. It was way too obvious that corpse was the thing sprawled out at broken angles in front of him, though. Like an abandoned Barbie roadside, casually dirty, slowly sinking into churned soil. Demetri could kneel down, did kneel down, hold Felix's arm by the wrist up.

No tone already. Floppy. The hand didn't fight gravity, it lamely drooped.

Demetri wasn't, like, accomplishing much of anything with this. Felix was already gone. 'Oh shit'. Silent, not actually spoken, just traced on his lips. A pretty underwhelming response, but Demetri suddenly didn't have the energy for hysteric screaming and crying. He wanted to sit down and stare at a wall for a while- one of those moments.

The only thing that suddenly forced his youthful vigor to rally- the others. Charelle was alright, unless she'd somehow managed to die in the ten or so seconds that Demetri hadn't been on top of her.

"Guys," Demetri said hollowly. "Don't look." He cast his eyes about for sheets, or something to cover the worst of Felix's mangled bits.

Then the next second he was sprinting.

"Yuko- Yuko!"

The difference was that Felix was clearly dead- Yuko was merely clearly dying. That made it worse when Demetri was just as helpless either way.

[Polybius]

Yuko body was failing, her thoughts were slipping away. She tried to hold on to them. Focus on a thought, and grasp onto it for dear life. Why had Katrina betrayed her? She should've had the gun ready. She was going to die. She hadn't been able to find Yuki and Yuka. Did the others escape Tyrell? She didn't want to die. They still needed her. She wasn't ready to die.

Yuko opened her eyes and watched the blood pooling around her. She felt tears welling up in the corners of her eyes and didn't even try to hold them back. All of a sudden, a voice called out her name and rose above the thoughts. She turned her head around and saw Demetri coming into focus. She could see Charelle behind him. They were alive, somehow. She couldn't see Tyrell or Katrina. Demetri ran to her. He was right next to her, right within reach-

Using the last strength she had, Yuko lunged and grabbed onto Demetri's shirt. She pulled him down to her. Lifted her head and looked into his eyes. He was alive, he was here. There was still so much she needed to tell him.

"Dem... tri..." she mumbled "The plan... you have to... please. Yuki. Yuka. The plan... make sure... don't let them..."

It was getting harder to focus, harder to get the words out. Not enough time.

"My bag... gun... should've..."

She let go of him and fell back to the ground. She couldn't...

"Dem... plan... remember..."

She couldn't keep her eyes open. The thoughts and the fear were gone, and then...

G058 - Yuko Hayashibara: DECEASED

[Yugikun]

Wow. Talk about another literal dirt nap.

Charelle sat up. Stared forward. Kept herself still ‘cause a. her ass fuckin’ hurt rn and b. she wasn’t really sure whether she wanted to look at whatever was around her now that all the shit that happened in front of her had now, like, stopped being a thing. She sorta knew that shit had happened ‘cause, like, there’d been gunshots and shouts and fuckin’ hands going out everywhere but she hadn’t seen any of it. Demetri’s fat ass (okay that was rude, Demetri had a perfectly slim if kinda regular ass) was placed like, right on top of her, stopped her from really doing much of anything (if she could’ve even done anything) but stopped her from like, getting hurt by anything either. Kinda hurt a little but hey, least it meant she wasn’t one of the people-

...

Uh.

Yeah.

Probably be best she didn’t finish that sentence.

So she looked around. Kept her eyes closer to the ceiling than to the floor. Meant that she could stop herself from seeing most of the shitty stuff that had happened (least until she eventually stopped thinking and looked down by accident) but... it was clear who went down. Who... Charelle didn’t really know what the best way to say it was.

She breathed out, put her hat a little bit more firm on her head, and spoke to the room.

“Everything, uh, everything ‘kay with you?"

[Cicada]

"... I. Uh."

He'd been, for the briefest of moments there, assuming Charelle was also calling him over. To communicate her last words to him, by means of dabbed morse code.

Wrong time for jokes, even the guilty ones he couldn't bring himself to say aloud. Jokes floated around like the tickle of an itch though, far outlasting their welcome. For a moment at least Charelle's face superimposed on top of Yuko's, a bad Photoshop blocking out the worst of the life literally leaving Yuko's eyes. Demetri imagined, like, the life force was pressurized and seeping out like soda from a punctured can. Fizzy-like. Because of the whole squinted eyes deal acting like the snapped tab on a-

Okay, he couldn't do this.

Yuko had asked him to remember the plan, at least. He could do that and focus on that. As long as they as a class didn't all explode, and they definitely would not be exploding tonight for reasons as obvious as they were splattered over the floors and walls of this house and as obvious as Demetri was trying to ignore those exact visual bits of proof. As long as Demetri could still walk, he could still gather friends and allies. Yuko's sisters. God, what were they going to think or say? How the hell was Demetri supposed to tell them Yuko was half the girl she used to be?

Well, probably exactly like that. Mumbled, staring at the ground, shuffling his feet. Sounded exactly like him, and if he was really lucky, he'd also find Yuka and call her Yuki. Fuck. He was about to take a shit all on Yuko's memory, wasn't he? Cuckery never before seen.

But he had something to do that wasn't flipping out and running screaming like a castrated bitch into the night, something kept the buzz of cowardly anxiety infecting his muscles like workout aftermath steady...ish. He could start himself by grabbing Yuko's bags, set far enough aside as they'd been to not get stained by all the blood. One of them was heavy, bulky, something metal rattled when he took a step. He'd been wondering about that, and now he knew. It was long too, dug right into his side as the bag settled against his flank. He hoisted the strap, adjusted it until comfortable. He was still, for a moment, briefly unsure of where to go and his eyes roaming and tracing the jagged splatters of-

He had to get out of this room.

Felix was right there in the other one though, he'd forgotten that tiny fact. He stared at the kitchen island, Charelle included. For once he was glad his gaze tended to awkwardly drift the way of the feminine form- there was one whole one to drag the less thoroughly formed ones out of his vision.

"They're all gone, dude. All of them. Katrina and Tyrell ran and... Yuko and Felix. You know."

"... It's just us now. Us and the plan."

They were fucked, but Demetri was used to that being true anyways. Welcome to the other side, DJ Furry. My side. It's lonely over here and nobody will want to have sex with you.

[Yugikun]

There was kinda a sense coming from Demetri that he was kinda bringing her down to his level and hey. Hey. No comparing Charelle with you, fuckboy. One of the two of em’ had done the big secks at some point in their life, and that person was-

...Well, done the big secks at multiple points in their life. Thinking about it Charelle was... kinda a high-key playa, actually.

...

...

Whatever. She was kinda getting away from the point here.

“The, uh, plan?” Charelle just kinda stayed sat up. Scratched that noggin of hers a little bit. She, uh, probably missed something during the time when Demetri had her lying on the floor, her body feeling wrecked, doing any other thing that could fit in with the joke that he totally 69ed her. “Like, uh, I know I kinda have my own plan here but I also know I didn’t tell anyone here about it so, uh, it’s probably your plan and not mine.”

She took another look around the room and she still couldn’t really look at the bodies without doing the thing where she didn’t actually look at the bodies. She knew that there was a point where she needed to give some non-f respect to the dead people in here and that doing that... wouldn’t really stop her from doing the non-specific plan™ but... man, she was sorry, but she couldn’t really do it right now. Things still felt like... things, if you get what she meant. Bad shit happened before and it still felt like bad shit was happening right now. Didn’t really put her in the mood to put the past behind, or any shit like that. Maybe she could do it later, but god, man, this was a serious ringer, and not the type she’d feel good about after the fact.

[Cicada]

Shit, he'd almost followed her example when she'd looked around the room again. Nothing in here, no sir. Bestgore.com had certainly not come to life before his very eyes- like jeez, he'd been too chicken shit to handle bloody things even when it had been photos he and his SA goons had been daring each other to click the links for.

Somehow it almost wasn't so bad, this close and personal. Could have just been the adrenaline speaking, though. What was left of it, which was wearing off soon, and very coincidentally Demetri was increasingly losing the nerve to stand around. Focus, he had to focus. Charelle had said something about having a plan of her own. Really, now? People like her could actually have plans somewhere between all the drugged-out slut sessions?

"What kind of plan are we talking here?" Yeah, sure. Demetri was already going to latch onto the first thing that wouldn't be him taking responsibility for Yuko's dying breath.

He picked at the elastic of his pockets, hoping that ghosts didn't exist.

[Yugikun]

“I’d could tell you but then I’d would have to kill you.”

She stuck her tongue out at Demetri.

[Cicada]

Had to admit, she almost got him there. It was unfathomably adorable, out of context and even in. Stutter step in his heartbeat, and it wasn't even like she was the sort he was really attracted to, it was just... him almost failing his wizard virginity vows in that moment. Defense Against the Dark Arts, said dark arts only barely averted. The brief moment of near-miss seduction almost managed to distract Demetri from the whole 'traumatized by the death of people he at least sort of liked' nonsense.

"Well thanks for cucking me," he managed to grumble, forcefully rolling his eyes in a gambit to avoid looking her in her own and betraying his moment of weakness.

Like, for fucks sake, the white girls were supposed to be the one doing the cucking. Charelle proved Demetri was a perpetually tumbling third wheel no matter who was involved or the color of their skin. He guessed that made him the champion of diversity liberals always self-fellated themselves into being.

"I mean, then by default we're going with Yuko's plan. Except... I dunno. More than one person's already died so we're all safe for today, and. Uh- that means? We don't have to think too hard about, like... the moral implications..." Of the part of Yuko's plan Demetri had been putting off really evaluating in full. The idea that someone had to die everyday, and the implication that it had to happen no matter what. Or who, who died, and who did it.

Demetri touched the counter top, and clenched his free fist, suddenly sure of at least one thing.

Demetri wasn't Tyrell. He was better than Lord of the Flies type people like that. Sucks to Demetri's assmar, he guessed.

[Yugikun]

Ladies and gentleman, she had got him. Like, seriously, dude had been fucking wrecked by what was (somehow) her sick burn. Dude was blushing stuttering and exclaiming about how he got cucked and the idea that this could turn into a really bad porn scene was sorta what Charelle was using to try and ignore the fact that the two people she’d talked to most these past couple hours were sorta fucking dead. Turned out that doing, like, the big meme kinda helped. It was kinda hella rude to do and Charelle was pretty sure that Felix and Yuko wouldn’t really approve of her meming over their dead bodies but, like, hey, this place was the place where you were supposed to be a totally selfish fucko and stuff. Wasn’t really like being selfish was really Charelle’s jam, but hey, maybe there were points where it worked?

Well, maybe. Wasn’t exactly like she could be totally selfless all day every day. Pretty sure that whenever she ghosted a dude and/or dudette she wasn’t really doing it for the common good, so, uh, yeah. Point made, and stuff.

“Nah, I’ll tell you what I wanna do,” she said. “It’s just, uh…”

She pointed up, down, all ‘round the place. She was pretty sure that there was a camera doing the whirr thing wherever her finger went, so she didn’t think it mattered if she didn’t look around.

“Y’know. Wanna keep it on the DL. Y’get me?”

[Cicada]

"Yeah, yeah."

Demetri muttered his reply under his breath, staring down at the fascinating detailing on the counter (it all looked the same, could have been any fake granite slab harvested from any Jap sweatshop) instead of up where blood had arrayed itself over the wall in mind-bendingly twisted shapes.

He needed a minute to think, and maybe if he had that, he'd be a minute closer to coming up with something. Some next course of action that wasn't marching the one person who hadn't died or killed on him in the past hour to her own death. He owed Charelle that much- and that was the head in his skull talking, not the head in his pants, that was an important distinction to make.

[Yugikun]

C’mon man that was like, a perfect hint to get over here so that Charelle could whisper sweet nothings into your ear. Like, hey, DL, keepin’ stuff down to a whisper, two things kinda went hand in hand, right?

Well, whatever. Guess she just had to do it the hard way. She grabbed Demetri, pulled her close to her, put her mouth right up to where way too much of his hair was, and shoved a set of words she wasn’t gonna kiss and tell about right into his earhole.

[Cicada]

This may have been the closest he'd ever unironically gotten to a girl... As if he'd ever managed to get this close even under the guise of irony.

He processed it for a moment, contemplating the best way to mansplain, then:

"I mean you could start by sleeping with me or something, that'd be a pretty big WTF."

He would swear on his death bed- so tomorrow, pretty much- that it had sounded more like a casual joke and not a bargain bin line in his head. Oh well, humiliation aside. Not like she'd take it seriously anyways.

((Demetri Futscher and Charelle Chernyshyova continued in why does mario sometimes jumps and sometimes he fists))