It all went wrong.

[MK Kilmarnock]

This all seemed familiar. Yet...

((Justin Greene continued from 7 Rings))

This place carried itself completely differently in the evening. There was no way to be sure of the exact time but, if they were home, Justin would have guessed about 7:30. Maybe 8 o'clock... it was almost summer, after all. The way the sun shone through the trees cast endless narrow shadows like shutters on a window... or bars on a prison cell window. The art pieces that he'd hardly noticed on that first morning were now the focus of his attention. Justin thought about who made them, why he made them, what they were supposed to represent. Maybe there was writing on the sculptures or a plaque fallen down. He didn't get up to go check.

After another long session of contemplating nothing in particular, Justin moved his left shoulder, rolling it gently in the socket to feel the tightness of the bandages restriction his arm. He'd had to wrap up the wound twice, first haphazardly wrapping gauze around the wound without much of an anchor point. He cried a little bit when, in a safer position, he forced himself to unwrap the dressings and apply the butterly stitches to the gash, something rather difficult to do with one hand but if he attached one end, then squeezed the slice closed with his thumb and middle finger his index finger could place the other end. And even then, the butterly stitches may as well have been slapping some duct tape onto a leaky dam. Just regular flex tape, not even that flex tape shit ("that's a lotta damage!" Justin thought to himself sardonically). But it would have to do. Anything to hold himself together until the end when he could fall apart on, hopefully, a hospital bed. Like a toy soldier who'd taken one too many knocks down the stairs. His legs could come off at any moment, but not before his arm.

Now there was a new layer of bandages over the butterfly stitches, starting over his shoulder and running down to the elbow. He'd gotten that far and in a gesture that reeked of 'why the fuck not', he kept mummifying his arm until it was bandaged to the wrist. It wasn't moving anyway, so might as well make sure it wasn't going anywhere or spilling out.

The tatters of Justin's once-bright yellow shirt that he had to cut off himself were now strewn across the face of the dead rainbow-haired girl next to him. He didn't need to take a closer look to know exactly who it was. Hair like that was a... no pun intended, a dead giveaway. Forrest was nice and funny. Even if they never talked, Justin didn't want to see her like that, so he covered up her face. Now, she was just sleeping. With ketchup stains on her clothes. Justin hated himself for thinking it, but having a dead body for company was better than nothing at all, and it was likely the best company he was going to get now.

"Thanks for the sling," he muttered. The shirt he'd haphardly crafted into a makeshift sling before was now Justin's shirt proper, a very dirty and grimy plain white tee. It was in desparate need of a wash but it was better than nothing. Searching in vain through Forrest's bag instead unearthed a pair of handcuffs and... a ballgag? Why did she have these packed on the trip? Justin blushed as he tried not to let his mind go wild over the activities of a very deceased girl next to him who may not appreciate them, and he was about to discard the items when he thought of a potential use. Once he'd finangled the dirty shirt onto himself, he attached one of the cuffs to his left wrist. The ballgag was looped very carefully under his collar, which fit snugly but allowed the leather band underneath. Fastening the beltloop was a bit finnicky when he could hardly see it but after some effort, Justin got it. Then it was a matter of clipping the other cuff around the ballgag and... he'd made a very weird, somewhat uncomfortable sling, but it would have to do the trick. Some cotton from the first aid kit padded the cuff so it wasn't cutting into his wrist so much. For a better arrangement, He'd have to wait until he could find his way back to where his old bag had been, if Ace had the decency to leave it there and only take what was useful for him.

Justin tried to remember if he packed a spare hat somewhere as he slipped in and out of consciousness.

[Namira]

((Garnet Barnes continued from +1 DETERMINATION))

Shotguns were loud.

That could be a positive and a negative. For instance, when setting up a couple of makeshift targets to see if she could at least try to use this gun, well, yeah, that was pretty much a negative because her ears hadn't stopped ringing for what felt like an hour—and Erika had been right anyway in that you didn't really aim buckshot.

On the other hand, if, say, you were thinking about announcing yourself, maybe by blasting the head off of some weird leering clown sculpture.

Well... then being loud was much more of a bonus.

This wasn't smart. She knew she wasn't being smart, as she strolled down the trail, but she'd spent so much goddamn time in her head, so much time, that couldn't she be a little stupid? Unlike before, kicking a door down, she wasn't riding high on a wave of adrenaline, in fact if she put it into words it was a dangerous lack of care, but like—fuck it. Anyone not looking for trouble would probably bail, and if they were looking for trouble... then they'd probably be the kind of person she'd tried to tell herself so many times she was trying to do something about.

And if she was going to test that, test that and make it mean something...

Fuck it. She was alive and lucky and all she had to show for it was being alive and lucky.

Garnet wondered if Erika had already killed again.

She continued down the trail.

At least there was one less freaky clown in the world.

But... that wouldn't be much of an epitaph.

[MK Kilmarnock]

An explosion startled Justin and ruined his chances at taking a nap.

His very first instinct was 'I'm being shot at!', leading him to snatch at his new bag near-instantly. He grabbed the two most important items from it: the SMG that was partially poking out of the bag, and the tire iron that lay just beneath it. Picking up the items one at a time, he placed the SMG next to his right leg and the tire iron went across his lap. He tucked his left knee up as well, offering the barest of security blankets by pinning the iron against him and at least covering up a minimal portion of his vital areas.

Who was it? Why did they shoot? Were they shooting at him or was there an unseen person skulking about that served as the target instead? Justin wasn't sure what terrified him more.

He lowered his head, peering up from underneath the bandages across his brow. His right eye still itched and burned and couldn't handle light well, but opening only one eye hurt it even more, so he'd put a gauze pad over it and taped it at the top to act as an eyepath, shading his eye and if he really needed two eyes for whatever reason, he could just flip up the bandage. In theory. He hadn't had to put it into practice yet.

[Namira]

Garnet considered firing again, just to really dangle the bait, but her ears were starting to hurt once more. She kept on down the trail instead, scanning either side for things that weren't more strange art. Metallic glint—no, that was a twisted and gnarled sculpture. Garnet lowered the shotgun, finger hovering over the trigger. Easy, easy. She didn't have unlimited ammo, and there was a good-great chance that nobody was even here. Even with all the dangerzones crowding them in, there was a lot of ground for... for well, not all that many people. Garnet wasn't sure how many, exactly. She couldn't bring to mind the faces of everyone who had been on the buses, but she wanted to believe that there were people out there who weren't killers, or if they were that like—y'know, they were the Arizonas or—others weren't coming to mind right now. People who'd killed active dangers to the rest of them. A-anyway, not everyone would be like 'shooting? Sign me up!'

Great way of saying that this loud and aggro introduction could be completely and totally pointless.

Garnet tipped over another clown.

[MK Kilmarnock]

He caught a glint of something orange.

Justin raised his chin and tried to understand what he was looking at. It didn't seem distinctly human which confused him and caused his overtired mind to skip, generating possibilities for what might lie below the orange tip of the thing hidden behind the foliage. The moment couldn't have lasted more than four or five seconds but the human brain, particularly a scattered one, could work with terrifying efficiency. Of course, only his brain would decide to be so efficient at such an inopportune time for him.

Then that feeling of dread akin to Dad looking over his report card and wondering what he was going to say all washed away. The orange thing was a hat, atop a girl. And at that point, Justin remembered seeing that hat before. Garnet. Nice girl. Totally harmless. Just like he himself was totally harmless. That was all before the island, Justin chastised himself for his instinctual assumption. If somebody was still alive at this point, it's because they knew how to defend themselves. He wondered what he should do... and he was still wondering, chin dropped and peering from under his bandages with the iron on his lap, when they came into full view of each other.

[Namira]

There was the kind of split second that you could hold a couple eternities as a gauzed-up face met her eyes from just off the trail.

It hung in the air, a spit second which could have been anything in the world, limitless pointless.

That just as quickly came crashing down to earth.

Before all this, could Garnet have said with certainty that she knew the guy? No.

But now that he had a bodycount, a pile of corpses at his feet?

Garnet could call the face to mind.

"JUSTIN YOU MOTHERFUCKER!"

This time around, there was no agonising doubt before she pulled the trigger.

[MK Kilmarnock]

"Uh-uh-hi-FUGH!"

He shouldn't have been surprised. In all honesty, he wasn't surprised. The chances that Justin had killed somebody Garnet knew, maybe even liked, were quite high in the wake of all the people he'd had to kill to get this far. And some of those were people he'd liked, or at least come to like by the time he had to end their lives. 'Justin you motherfucker' may as well have been the standard greeting by now. Like a scripted response, the moment somebody saw him: 'Justin you motherfucker!' Somebody out there on the internet was going to watch his demise, get a sick kick out of this, and mod skyrim NPCs to shout that at you. Because his was the sort of life whose death got turned into a meme, surely.

Justin saw Garnet raise her weapon and rolled in a panic. He rolled to the right, Forrest's body was to the right, and there was no time to muss or fuss about putting all of his weight on a corpse for a few moments while the tree he'd found respite against sprayed a shower of bark from getting blasted directly in the spot Justin had been sitting in front of. Justin shrieked and winced, reaching-pulling back-reaching and snatching up the Madsen before diving behind the same tree. The tire iron... where was the tire iron? His friend, his defender, even if it was useless at range? He'd dropped it in the shuffle, but knew he made the right choice with what to grab as he hunkered behind his arboreal shelter.

Garnet and her shotgun could come around either side, and Justin tried to listen for footsteps to see which way he'd have to strafe around his shelter, or if he had to abandon it entirely. A shotgun... damn it, another shotgun! Ace had a shotgun, Shauna had a shotgun, Garnet had a shotgun... any more shotguns he needed to know about!?

"Wait! Guhwa, Garnet, wait se- wait a sec!" Justin bleated. "Wuhzi- I was just trying re- to sleep! I don't weha- wanna hurt you!"

He balked at his own words. As if anybody was going to listen to him at this point.

[Namira]

This anger was less of the teetering at the brink and more fired out of a fucking cannon. There were no brakes on this ride, what she thought was a dead ember stoking a raging furnace fire.

She didn't know she still had this in her.

Garnet's first shot had obliterated an abstract bison and a chunk of a tree. Justin was still scrambling away, and she didn't think she'd hit him. She dashed across to the opposite side of the path, grabbing some cover, trying to track where he'd gone.

He called out, and that saved her from looking. Sleeping? Didn't want to—

"Did you not want to—didyou fucking not—YOU KILLED SHAUNA! YOU KILLED—" the words, barely present in the first place, dissolved into a rising, boiling shriek of rage. All those people and he wanted to talk now!?

She saw Erika's face for a second.

She shut it out and dashed out from her spot, trying to get an angle on Justin. She blasted off another shot the second she saw a hint of him. Gunfire and rage both roared in her ears.

[MK Kilmarnock]

"IN MY DEFENSE I KILLED A LOT OF PEOPLE!" Justin squealed.

Another crack of thunder from Garnet's shotgun told him that she wasn't particularly enthralled with that response. In the same instant, but with just enough difference in time to be perceptable, scattering hail littered the opposite side of the tree trunk. With his body pressed up against the bark the way it was, Justin thought he could feel the individual impacts. Maybe that was just his imagination, a figment caused by a stressed out mind pulling on whatever it could to see him through this.

In a few seconds, that could be his guts or his face feeling the fury of the shotgun. He looked out beyond the tree, trying to plan his escape route. He'd need his bag and his other weapon. Were they worth dying for? No singular thing was, but they were also keeping him alive. The 'your money or your life' decision didn't really work anymore in the context where what meager possession you had with you could BE your life later on down the line. If Garnet didn't back off... he'd have to make her back off.

"I kl- I killed people I liked!" Justin cried back. "Wuh, w- I wanna live! You do too, right!?"

[Latin For Dragula]

((Marco Hart Continued From We Are The Last Of The Legion, The Last Of The Bastion, The Best Of The Bastards, And Slave To None))

He didn't want to be back here. Too fresh. They were running out of options, though. The cave would be even worse, he couldn't linger on the cliffs without feeling a pull towards the temple, and the whole area around the manor was the first place people would head for reliable shelter, if it wasn't swarming already it would be in days. Looking over the map it was still their best option if they were willing to fight for a corner of it, and with Katelynne…

Marco didn't fully know what to make of Katelynne right now. They were friends as far as Marco had ever had friends but their interactions since finding each other had been distant. Not that he could blame her. He couldn't imagine what she'd been through, but then he didn't feel comfortable asking her either. Katelynne hadn't asked about Nick. Or Kayla. Fair enough he didn't go digging through her trauma either. So when she came loaded with a rifle and handed him a new bag with a crossbow inside, he didn't ask any questions about where she got it. He didn't ask what she had to do for it. If it was worth telling he'd here about it from her or the morning announcements.

Cutting through the art exhibits had been mostly quiet. Straight through and on to a well so they could refill supplies, that was the plan. Marco had no speculation to offer about the hows and whys of their temporary home anymore. No, that wasn't accurate, the thoughts still came half-formed but they stung to focus on. So he didn't. He just thought about getting out. They were making pretty good time when the first boom sent wood splintering some distance away. Marco was on the ground before it stopped echoing, scanning back for any sign of who was coming for them now. He caught Katelynne's gaze and started to open his mouth.

JUSTIN YOU MOTHERFUCKER

"Oh no."

Garnet hadn't shown up on the announcements all this time. Eight days, nine, seven, couldn't count straight, he kept waiting and stewing and hoping all about how it was a matter of when not if like that would fix things, she'd snap understand and let go of all that anger, she wouldn't hate him anymore but she kept kept kept holding off not a word worth mentioning over in so long he was starting to think maybe she didn't need to maybe she could understand without maybe she'd figured but no. No. No.

"Garnet!"

Breathless. His voice barely carried. Started running and just, where was he going? He hadn't gone far before he was winded enough for his brain to catch up to his feet. The crossbow in his arms slowed him down well enough. Katelynne wasn't so far behind. "It's, it's Justin and, Gar and, and, g-gotta help her, she'll-"

Another gunshot.

He was off again in its direction. Everybody alive only knew one Justin worth mentioning. Garnet and Marco maybe most of all now. It'd been lost in the shuffle of everything else, so many names, so much gone wrong, but she'd been in there before Marco had a chance to see if she'd hate him too. Justin had killed Shauna. It was possible that between they fell asleep on the bus and now Shauna'd become a hardened survivalist who came at Justin first, but he doubted it near as much as he doubted all Justin's other kills were anything but victims. People made mistakes. They didn't make the same mistake every day for close to two weeks. He was going to get what he deserved.

Wood splintered under a third shot. Garnet said her name. Marco couldn't tell sweat from tears running down his face.

He was going to get what he deserved, but it didn't have to be Garnet. At least a dozen people ran across this island jumping to kill anyone that moved and Justin was lucky. Not one of them had found him yet. The world was shrinking, though. Odds went up every day that one would do to him what he'd done to more people than Marco could remember, and whatever that did to them was damage they'd lived through before. Not Garnet. Garnet had come eleven days without letting her anger consume her to the point she took a life.

Worst case scenario she faltered and became another body in Justin's count.

Best case she started her own.

Maybe he had those backwards. It didn't matter. The Garnet he knew wouldn't survive either, justice or none.

"GARNET!"

He had to find her before she made that mistake.

[Namira]

Garnet didn't dignify his initial yell back with a response, not unless another shriek of anger counted. How dare he. How dare he fucking quip at her with all that blood on his hands? She fumbled at the trigger next, holding off on shooting for just a couple seconds. She wanted to blast a hole straight through him, but she needed a shell for that and she didn't have time to fuck around reloading it for the first time.

She shut out his whining, his bullshit justifications. She didn't fucking care. She didn't fucking—

Her own name split through the murderous haze and she faltered.

"Marco?"

Garnet blinked hard, repeatedly, tried to refocus. She needed to—had to keep on...

The shotgun wavered, and she ducked behind another tree, dozens of contradictory thoughts whirling through her head.

[MK Kilmarnock]

Justin squeezed the sweat out from between his fingers and the gun, thumb squirming along the grip like a worrystone. The rough texture gave him something to focus on and quelled the panic in his chest, just the tiniest bit.

He still had a weapon, the means to kill her. It sounded like Garnet was only getting angrier, and there was no other way he'd get any rest. She'd have to die sooner or later, Justin knew that. The difficulty in killing no longer came from moral questions. Now, it was a matter of his own ability to get it done, with difficulties and injuries both mounting on him. He'd burned too brightly, killed too much and made too many enemies.

Don't kill, and you die because you set yourself up to be killed by somebody else. Kill, and everybody who ever loved, liked, cared about or sat with that kid in class was suddenly after your ass. There weren't too many of them left, but most if not all of them probably had a reason to hate him. Double-edged sword.

Another voice, calling out her name. It sounded like they were here to help. Justin thumped the back of his head off the tree... and just as he made contact, a realization... a distraction? Garnet could have been distracted by this person. Distracted enough, even...

Justin turned to the left and peeked out. Judging by the last shot, Garnet was somewhere off closer to the right side. This side offered marginally more cover, but too far and he'd still be out in the open. A wordless curse burned through his mind as he realized the bag was too far forward to grab. The tire iron was less so, but he couldn't hold both that and the Madsen. That's what the bag had been most useful for. The tire iron had always been there for him and was a reliable backup that would never run out of ammo... but the Madsen was a gun. Couldn't run at Garnet waving a big metal stick in his hands, and it was clear which weapon served him better in more situations.

But he didn't wake up with the Madsen at his side. It wasn't there from the beginning. And illogical as he knew it was, he couldn't let it go.

Justin froze up, unsure of what to do. Unsure of how many he'd have to kill.

[Jilly]

A hand caught up to and snatched Marco's arm, dragging him behind some foliage.

(( Katelynne )) didn't let go, neither Marco nor the kind-of heavy rifle affixed in her other hand. Her breath shook as she looked around and tried to gather her thoughts. Didn't look like no one was out in the open at least, but still. She gotta think of something to de-escalate this, or at least stall and kick the can down the road.

She spoke up, her words louder than usual as they carried through the vicinity. "Can we all just... stop and cool down for a second!? Please, we don't wanna see no one else get hurt."

[Latin For Dragula]

Stupid. Stupid. Exposed. Could have been shot. Could have gotten Garnet or Katelynne shot. Stupid. Marco wanted to believe he'd got all that reckless energy out of his system by now; honestly what right did he have to any of it after all these exhausting days? Clearly he wasn't thinking straight as he should though. Garnet had the power here, but not enough to close in on him. She had to know that Justin was armed so she wasn't just, she did the whole Rage thing but she wasn't an idiot. She couldn't be, or she'd be dead any number of ways before now. So Marco took a deep breath and shifted the crossbow back and forth in his arms. "It's Marco and that, that was Katelynne. She's right. Nobody has to get hurt right now."

Nobody listening would believe that on its face. It was naive to the point that maybe Garnet would worry he'd looped back around to the delusions she'd found him in. At least two killers and at least one person with a gun firing off rounds, and nobody had to get hurt? What kind of idealistic bullshit would that be? Marco wasn't about to start appealing to anyone's sense of morality.

"We're armed."

They could all be practical though.

"All of us. Everybody's armed. I heard Garnet and I...I know what you've done. Justin."

It was all out in the open now. Justin didn't have any easy targets, and if he tried to fight back it was three on one. The situation could freeze out; Garnet didn't know where he was, he wouldn't attack her or them, and they could all put their senses back together. "You don't..." Louder. Clearer. He kept his chin up and his eyes around the corner searching for her. "You don't want to do this Garnet. Not even him."

[Namira]

For a second, Garnet pressed her head against the tree trunk, but as she did so she knocked her hat askew, and her stomach lurched as she felt it dislodge. She snapped a hand up off the gun and caught it before it fell, then pushed it back into place. No calm and no respite here.

Even if the hat would only had fallen to the floor, Garnet felt certain to her bones that if it had dropped, she'd never have retrieved it. Luck like back at the waterfall didn't come back around every day.

Nobody was shooting—she nearly added a yet but that wasn't right. Garnet had fired already, she'd just stopped. Justin hadn't returned fire, though he'd squealed and yelped plenty. Did he have a gun? Maybe she'd caught him off guard, with the weapon not there. Tough to say.

Any and all of these thoughts though, they were just a distraction from the main man... from Marco. Katelynne was there too, but that almost wasn't important, not that she wasn't important, but with the person who, in a way, was where this all began and where it had led and where it was now—sorry, Katelynne, you didn't share the history.

"It's... it's different," said Garnet.

Wasn't it?

She wasn't wailing on someone who didn't want to fight back, or punching a person for a crime she never saw. This was—this wasn't accidental and heat of the moment. You didn't blunder into murder over and over again. Didn't that deserve justice? Didn't Shauna? Didn't all of them?

"It's different," she murmured to herself.

He was wrong.

He was wrong he was wrong.

Her hands tightened back on the shotgun.