Come Out, Juanita, Don't Let Me Wait

[Gundham]

There was a pew against the foyer wall, in an area that looked like it had once been used for hanging coats and whatnot. Juanita managed, with a bit of effort, to pull herself onto it. She settled back, stretching her leg out a bit to take the weight off of it. It eased the pain, but only a little. She leaned back and closed her eyes, breathing heavily.

Don't think about the pain. That was the key. Just don't think about the pain, and the meds will start to work. The more you focus on it, the longer it'll take. If you can forget about it, it'll go away. You just have to forget about it.

It was a tall order, but luckily, distractions weren't hard to come by at the moment. Whoever was screaming in the basement was getting louder and more frantic. Juanita couldn't make out whatever was being said in reply, but the angry, argumentative tone told her enough. She clenched both hands around the haft of her weapon. It didn't sound like it'd take long for whatever was going on down there to boil over, and then the down-there problem was going to become an up-here problem.

[backslash]

It didn't take long at all.

((Iris Waite continued from Help I'm Alive))

Iris burst up through the cellar's trapdoor much like June had done before her, tossed another shrill call of "Stay away from me!" back over her shoulder as she ran, and tore through the church to the front doors without so much as a greeting to Juanita. She barely noticed Juanita standing there at all really, her vision blurred with tears, and oh God where were her glasses? June had taken her glasses!

Iris could have started sobbing again, but she needed all her breath now for running away from the pain and humiliation behind her.

((Iris Waite continued in Goblin Castle))

[AnimeNerd]

[[Enter Jezzie Stark, continued speaking.]]

"-to team up with her! As in he offered to make a story about her killing someone while they slept and make it sound not as bad, then when he killed someone, she would do the same for him! It was insane, and the only reason why I feel like I'm not dead after seeing it all is because he decided to bail once she opened the door to him. Like Hell am I going to say you could trust him, though. Not when he was so casual about it all."

Was it a bit much for her to rant all that to Jack? Probably. But maybe she was allowed to rant. She'd seen someone die and had to play Seven Minutes in Hell with the girl's corpse. If she wanted she could scream, and anyone that could knock her for it could go to that house and do the same thing she did.

Anyway, a church. One she thought she heard talking from before barrel girl started screaming. She didn't get to search around before that happened, so may as well get it done now.

The door to the main hall, or whatever the biggest room in a church is, was already open. Screaming Sarah probably.

Jezzie peered through the doorway, a bit unsure of what she'd find.

"Hello?"

[Anderson]

[[ Jack Anderson followed Jezzie out of the basement.]]

As Jezzie's story came to an end and he squinted at emerging from the dark of the basement, Jack shook his head once more in disbelief. "What the fuck? Like...okay, this isn't some...I dunno, tea party...but..."

Jack huffs out a breath in frustration.

"Has nobody ever watched a horror movie?" he asked, still shaking his head. Teaming up with a killer is a GREAT way to get yourself killed.

The screaming from the sanctuary is all but ignored - Barrel Girl might have the right to be freaked out, but she'd also used up his early-morning supply of fucks. Otherwise glancing around at the sanctuary, Jack shrugs. "Any ideas on what we should do from here?" Wandering aimlessly seems like a bad idea, but he...doesn't think they have anything useful they can really do. And Jezzie...well, she doesn't seem like the murdering type, so she seems safe enough to pair off with for now.

[decoy73]

Things were starting to come back to her. Awareness of what was happening was returning. She felt the cold, the hardness of the wood, and the fact that she was squeezed into a podium. And the noise. She knew that people were there. People that were going to hurt her, to

"Eeeeeep."

[Gundham]

When the yelling started up again in earnest and footsteps started clomping from the sacristy, Juanita immediately readied her weapon. This was it, she thought. Game time. She wasn't sure who or what to expect, but it certainly wasn't a sobbing, furious Iris Waite. Based on her screaming for somebody to stay away and the blood matting her hair, it definitely seemed like she was the victim rather than one of the aggressors. Juanita readied herself just in case, but Iris didn't really even seem to notice her as she just barreled through the sanctuary and out the front doors.

This now marked the third person who'd gone blitzing out of the church, and the second who'd come running out in a panic from the back room specifically, which meant that either there was someone or something seriously bad back there, or... well, she couldn't really think of a better explanation.

Okay, what were the options here?

Option one, follow Iris. Iris had a headstart and was moving at a pretty good clip, and she seemed like she wanted to be alone. Limping along after her and begging her to slow down didn't seem like a great plan.

Option two, don't follow Iris, but still get the heck outta here. She wouldn't get far, but she'd seen what looked like a small village from up in the belltower, so there were were definitely places around here. They couldn't all be occupied, could they?

Option three, stay here. Not a fantastic plan, but people seemed to be steering clear of the church at the moment, so maybe not as bad of an idea as it seemed. She could hide out somewhere and let whatever was in the sacristy keep scaring people away.

Option four, as it turned out, was to think about options for too long and have them all canceled out by voices emerging from the sacristy. They were talking about killing and horror movies, which immediately set Juanita on edge. They didn't seem concerned about Iris, or whatever had been happening in the basement. If anything, they seemed vaguely annoyed.

All right, she could work with this. Annoyance meant that they didn't want to deal with any hassle, which meant that the quickest way out of a confrontation here was to be as much of a hassle as possible.

She stood, swaying slightly as her leg took the weight. The voices were closer now, inside the sanctuary. She entered the room, and was taken aback. There was a boy she didn't recognize, but along with him was Jezzie Stark, from school. Jezzie didn't seem like the kind of person who'd attack Iris. She worked at the same grocery store as Juanita's dad, for crying out loud! But she'd heard the screams, and seen the blood in Iris' hair. Juanita brought up her weapon and adopted a defensive stance. Hassle time.

"She's gone, Jezzie. I don't know what you guys were doing to her back there, but it sounded pretty messed up. I could hear her screaming all the way from outside." An intentional lie, designed to make them think that she'd come strolling in here to investigate. She needed to make herself sound confident, and, more importantly, mobile.

Not half a second after she said this, something in the church podium went "Eeeeeep." Another student? Maybe another escapee from the basement? Impossible to say.

Juanita's dagger blade glinted in the early morning light as she pointed it at Jezzie and the boy. She didn't see any weapons in their hands, which was good. It meant she had a bit more control here. "I don't have a problem with you, Jezzie. So I'll let you leave. If you go peacefully, my friend in the podium and I won't come after you."

[AnimeNerd]

"Thank you."

Someone that actually seems reasonable. Maybe there was some hope for their class after all.

But, of course, before she could even answer the question Jack asked, someone else has to make her presence known. And Jezzie couldn't even feel good about being recognized as the girl went on, basically accusing her and Jack of...torturing screamer girl? Trying to kill her? Just plain attacking her? Seriously?!

Again, she can't even get a reply in before someone else made a sound, not really a scream as much as a squeak. Then the girl, who's name Jezzie struggled to remember but could note she looked familiar in a weird way, had her much-larger-than-her-own-double-pointed knife in her and Jack's direction, telling them to get lost or her and podium squeaker would fight.

And, you know what? You fucking know what?

"...alright then."

Fuck this shit, she is OUT!

Jezzie's focus is on keeping herself from being justifiably mean instead of acting oblivious or even trying to defend herself. At this point, more and more people were just proving themselves to be annoyances, and she was NOT about to get stabbed just because she wanted to stay in a church.

So she simply raised her unarmed hands up, turned back around and started walking to an open window.

"Best idea at this point is getting out of here before we can get stabbed. After that, it's up to you Jack, because I am not dealing with this crap."

One leg followed the other until she could duck out.

[[Exit Jezzie Stark, grumbling under her breath.]]

[Anderson]

Jack raised his hands. No weapon, no real ability to pretend that he had one...

"Do you want me to clear out as well?" he asked. "Because I can do that."

Beat.

"I..." Shrug. "I got up late..." he admitted, as if it would somehow make the whole shitshow that was...well, his experience on SOTF so far...make sense.

[Gundham]

Juanita kept the blade pointed at the guy. His partner had left without any trouble, but he didn't seem like he wanted to take his chances out there.

"I don't know what you two were doing back there," she said, keeping her tone hard and authoritative, the way you did on the sports field when it was time to call the next play. "All I know is I heard a ton of screaming and saw a girl come running out crying and bleeding, and then you two came in here chatting all casually. I hear someone else in here, trying to hide from the two of you. So unless you've got a great explanation for those things, I'll give you to the count of ten to get out of here. Now start talking, and keep your hands where I can see them."

[Anderson]

Jack took a deep breath, raised his hands, and began...

"It's...complicated. You see, what happened was..."

And with that, Jack began a recap of the events since he'd woken up.

(Jack Anderson continued elsewhere...)

[decoy73]

And this was it. Without a second, or even a first thought, Kaede did the one thing she never thought she would do until she did it.

Slowly, she eased her head out of the podium, and into visibility, followed by the rest of her body.

((Kaede Tsurumi continued in Legion of Doom, Assemble!))

[Gundham]

Juanita's facial expression remained skeptical, but she lowered the weapon a fraction as she listened.

((Juanita Reid continued in Legion of Doom, Assemble!))