The Hunt is On

[Gundham]

Nobody seemed to be shooting or shouting, so it seemed like it'd be relatively safe to join back up with Karen+ and Julia. Coolia, if they were taken as a unit. And a few more seconds of observation showed no sign of Battleaxe Beefatrice either. Huh. Guess she was slow in more ways than one.

Karin pursed her lips, mulling over her options. She could still take off and leave Coolia none the wiser, but there wasn't really any benefit in that. Karen+ had a gun, which could be stolen or looted if and when she bit the big one, and Julia seemed to be more on the timid side, which meant she'd be pliable and could be bossed around in a pinch. Karin couldn't recall spreading any particularly nasty gossip about her, either. Well, maybe one or two comments about how she dressed like a grandma, but that wasn't, like, an insult or anything. It was just a true thing about her. Her odds were better sticking with them than by rolling the dice out there on her own.

That settled, the problem now was how to make a believable excuse for why she was showing up late, why she hadn't waited for them, etcetera. She'd probably have to go with some variant of the truth on this one. After all, she had warned them about the Beefy Butcher back there, and in a sense she'd led them to safety. It was easy to get turned around in unfamiliar territory, and in the heat of the moment she'd lost sight of them. These were true statements, the fact that she'd deliberately outpaced Karen+ in an "I don't need to outrun Beatrice, I only need to outrun you" sort of way notwithstanding. If they pushed back, she could just claim "I panicked" and fake some contrition. She was good at contrition; it came in really handy at church.

All right, she knew her lines. Now to seal the effect with a little stagecraft. Karin slipped through the gap, and out the other side, away from the bar where she wouldn't be seen. She did a few speedy pushups, until her arms burned and it got hard to breathe. Then she ran around the building, circling so that she'd come up the street from the other way, and staggered into the hunting lodge, breathing heavily. There were a few new faces here, but she focused her attention on the one she needed to sell to most.

"Karen? Oh, thank God..." she said, letting her bag slip from her shoulder to the floor. "I'm sorry, I... I got all mixed up, and when I looked back and saw you guys weren't behind me anymore, I freaked out, and tried to retrace my steps... I thought Beatrice might have gotten you... I'm so glad you're okay."

She took a deep, rattling breath, and swallowed hard. Kept her gaze low, so she'd appear properly ashamed of herself. "I... I was just so scared."

[Carlisle]

As they wandered in she looked around the room, the mood felt light and cheerful despite the unprecedented terror they were all having to endure. Julia scanned the mixed reactions of the classmates that were gathered by the bar. She first laid eyes on Victor. He was tall, huge and muscular and was famous for being one of the star basketball team players. Admittedly anybody could be a star on that team, hell even she would be a better shot than half the players. He looked shifty and uncomfortable but that was understandable given the circumstances... right?

Next to him was Ashlee Donovan. She knew Ashlee a little better as she'd always been kind and wasn't a typical cheerleader. Some of the other cheerleaders were pretty standoffish to those outside of their clique, so it was nice that Ashlee always had a bit more of a personality about her. Perhaps lady luck was on her side that it was one of the nicer ones that she'd bumped into. In contrast to Victor's hesitance, her reaction was reassuringly warm. Ashlee smiled and waved at the girls and Julia gently smiled back, with the cheerleader reaching out to them welcomingly. Karen started to talk with her but she wanted to continue examining the room to make sure there were no threats.

And lastly, Norbert. Like Ashlee he didn't seem averse to them rocking up which was great. He was another one that had never been anything but friendly and kind to Julia. They rarely hung out but he always had a quirk that she liked... even if his dress sense much left to be desired. She was happy to see him, having had somewhat of an embarrassing crush on him when they were younger. Thankfully she had snapped out of that one pretty quickly but he still had that likeability and charm which was sweet.

Julia stepped closer to the bar, finally pulling her hand away from Karen's grasp as she approached the others. She'd seen plenty of The Walking Dead to know there was safety in numbers. Granted, a zombie apocalypse would've been even crazier than what was happening but maybe they could still make it work. Hole up together somewhere cool and hope they get to see another day.

A few seconds later Karin stumbled in to the bar on the borderline of choking for breath, each gasp for air somehow a little more dramatic than the previous. She sounded fifty percent terrified, fifty percent desperate, but hell she must've been stressed after the Beatrice encounter so maybe it was worth forgetting that it was her waving that drill around.

"Thank god you're safe, Karin! It was all happening so quickly and we just legged it out of there." Julia paused before turning to the others, "I hope you don't mind us joining you guys?" Julia continued, "I checked my bag and I don't even have a weapon in there. Just some basic food supplies and the other survival tools."

She pulled the ice cream out of her bag to show the others, curious about what flavours the rest had received and more importantly whether they had a spoon she could borrow before it melted.

It was a bummer that they must've forgotten to put a weapon in her bag...

[Namira]

Just pool? That was a little disappointing. Confirmed partway what he was thinking though. Unless K. had smuggled out the right tools for the job but... no, Norbert was getting to be overthinking this. Eyes on the prize and stay focused.

That became more challenging when the lodge abruptly became more occupied, and in force at that. Whoa whoa, alright, alright, whole lot of new information for him to process. Slow down just one second. Norbert shifted off away to the side, trying to keep everyone in his field of view. He didn't think, hope, anyone would try anything, but he needed a moment. Especially with more than one person saying that Beatrice had come at them with an axe. That couldn't be right, could it? No, that wasn't right. Like come on. It was Beatrice. That was nuts. Had to be a misunderstanding. Had to be.

"Hi, hello, I guess we've got a party here." At least he could always rely on being able to talk the talk. He paused and tilted his head to one side, looking at Julia. "I... am not so sure that ice cream falls into the survival tools."

[decoy73]

Victor let out a breath in amusement as he put his Jim back. Ice cream, here. The news of an axe, though, was not good. Victor just looked around.

"I've got no problem with you sticking around. What did they give you?"

[Gundham]

(skipped with recommendation)

Well, nobody seemed to be waving any weapons around, so this place already had a leg up on the last one. And nobody seemed particularly suspicious of her, which was pretty good.

Karin looked around at the bar's residents, making a few quick judgements.

Victor. Ironic first name, given that he was a major loser. On first impression, the guy came off as a cocky douchebag, presumably because he had nothing else in his life to be proud of except for being the okayest player on the worst team in the school. Victor also came off as a cocky douchebag on the second and third impression, so it was safe to say that he actually was a cocky douchebag. Not someone she wanted to get into a physical altercation with, though, so she'd probably have to play nice for now and stroke his ego a bit.

Ashlee. Ugh, of course the kawaii cheerleader was sucking up to the jock for protection. Clichés wouldn't be clichés unless they were true, would they? Ten to one Cultural Appropriation Barbie's survival plan involved waving improvised pompoms made out of mop heads while she manipulated Vicky Boy into doing all the fighting for her. Anybody who wanted to take Barbie out would have to go through her douchey Ken first.

Oh, and Norbert was here too. It was a shame Juanita Reid was nowhere to be found. The two of them could have teamed up to make one pair of functional legs. In retrospect, Karin regretted never trying to hook them up back at school. Juanita was a closeted lesbian so that absolutely wouldn't have worked, but it still would have been funny. The fact that he was named Norbert and allowed people to call him Norbert was a testament to how much pain the guy could endure, so that was worth keeping in mind.

Could the trio of herself, Karen+ and Who?lia actually stand a chance against these three if it came down to it? Eh, maybe, as long as Karen+ was quick with the gun and Karin only had to fight the limpy one. Who?lia's "weapon" was pretty useless unless she force-fed it to a lactose intolerant person, so it was going to be up to Team Karen if shit went down. She edged a bit closer to Karen+, just to be on the safe side.

Vicky Boy was asking about weaponry, so Karin held up her drill for everyone to see. "I've got a power drill. Pretty useless, but I could probably slowly take apart a desk with it if I had to."

[KamiKaze]

Ashlee frowned. Sniffled.

They were talking about ice cream and drills, now, almost normally. But her fist clenched on the table. Not out of anger, but out of tension.

“I have a rifle,” she said, almost to herself. “We could hole up here, maybe eat the ice cream if it’s still good and it isn’t too cold out…”

But she breathed. Remember, club leader voice.

“What happened with Beatrice? She had an axe?”

[Carlisle]

It turned out Julia really did get the raw end of the stick.

There's her waving around her ice cream, naively believing that they'd just forgotten to pack her weapon. Meanwhile, it looked like the ice cream... it was her weapon. Fat lot of good that would do! The most outrageous part was there wasn't even a spoon. It had always felt like lady luck had been on her side throughout the past couple of years but evidently between being caught up in this awful situation and now being essentially unarmed that luck had ran out. Sure, she was unlikely to ever instigate with a weapon even if she got something really powerful like a gun or a samurai sword but now she was left defenceless.

She didn't have many close friends in her study year and without any weapon there really was no deterrent. Beatrice made it clear that people were playing this madness. They didn't care about their friends why would they care about poor little Julia?

Meanwhile in the lodge bar, the others were sharing their guns, drills. A chilling vibe started to bite into the warmth they were greeted with as some seemed more hesitant to share their own trump cards.

"We were in the Sheriff's office just across town. Well... I woke up in the bathroom there and then when I came out Karin and Beatrice were facing off. But Beatrice had this giant axe, almost bigger than her, that she was lumbering."

Julia paused. The gravitas of what had happened probably hadn't sunk in yet as with each word of the retelling her stomach churned.

"The next thing I know we were running. IT was too scary to stop in case she was following us. Karen and I didn't even look back, and then thank god Karin found us safely here too."

All eyes were glued on Julia. One final breath.

"She tried to kill us!"

[Ryuki]

“I have a handgun,” Karen said, “I don’t plan on using it unless I have to.”

Julia then explained what happened at the sheriff’s office.

“Yeah,” said Karen, “That’s pretty much what happened.”

Karen was staying relatively quiet as she thought over the idea of holding up in the lodge. It looked to be a decent shelter from the elements, plus there was safety in numbers. Everyone seemed to be getting along. Also, Julia had some ice cream on top of the rations everyone had in their bags, so they wouldn’t starve.

“I’d be grateful if you had us stay,” said Karen.

[Namira]

Norbert shrugged easily, smiling in a way that he didn't particularly feel. "Hey, if you all want to stay then I don't have a problem with it. I got here later than these two anyway."

Truthfully he really didn't like what they were saying about Beatrice. Call him naive maybe, but he just couldn't line that up in his head. Even panicking, would she really go after someone else? With an axe?

Norbert couldn't help feeling that there was something being held back.

Still, even if his hunch was correct, that was three people all on the same page over there so... yeah. He wasn't going to start giving them the third degree. Could still keep an eye open though.

[decoy73]

Two guns and a drill, against an axe. That didn't seem too bad. Right now, they weren't being fucking stupid, so why not?

"No problem here, either. You're cool. If we do everything right, we probably won't have to worry about shooting anything for a long while." That was, of course, a very optimistic view, but it wasn't impossible. Even if, no, even though people were probably going to kill each other, there was nothing saying that, under the right leadership, they couldn't stay together and repel/remove the others.

[Gundham]

"Seems like a solid idea to me," Karin said. She had no real interest in getting into a scrap with any of the bar's denizens at the moment - at least, not while they were conscious and vertical. It was good to note who had what, though. On the off chance that she found herself needing to cut and run at some point, she'd know, for instance, that it was better to steal Cultural Appropriation Barbie's bag than Loser Grail's. No-Knee Norbert hadn't volunteered his own weapon, which was interesting. If pressed, she'd guess that he either got something amazing or something lousy, and she'd have to keep an eye on him to figure out which.

But for now nobody seemed to be paying any particular attention to her, so she figured she'd slip into Backstage Mode and blend into the background while everybody else talked.

((Karin Han continued elsewhere))

[KamiKaze]

“... oh dear.”

People were really trying to kill each other? She knew it was SOTF, but like, it was still hard to imagine many people trying to kill their classmates.

She laughed a little, but it was a nervous laugh. To hide the tears that were threatening to leak back out and start all over again, like what happened in the backroom.

“Uh… sorry. I mean…”

Ashlee’s heart had started pounding again.

“If she comes here, we can fend her off, right?”

She didn’t want to hurt Beatrice. She didn’t want to hurt anyone.

“You’ll be safe here, I promise.”

Is that a promise she could keep?

((Ashlee continued elsewhere))

[Ryuki]

Things were looking up. Karen and her allies found a new shelter, and now they had safety in numbers. And they had some decent weapons to defend themselves if they were threatened. A couple of guns could be effective to deal with an axe.

“Thank you,” Karen said.

(Karen Nguyen, continued elsewhere…)

[Carlisle]

The tension in the atmosphere had certainly calmed and the group seemed well equipped. Well, except her.

Julia’s mind was doing somersaults, weaving from fears that she would be seen as the weak link without any proper weapon or way to protect the others, to reassurance that she was safe in this refuge with Karen, with Ashlee, with Norbert. This was all going to work out, right?

Besides - whilst Julia may not have some super crazy rocket launcher or samurai sword, she did have ice cream! Everybody needed something sweet every now and then so that could be her contribution. It was questionable whether she’d even be able to successfully wield a big fancy weapon. She’d probably end up chopping off a limb.

As the warmth of the bar battled to keep the cold air from wafting in and the group started to do their own thing, Julia started to relax for the first time so far in this game. Perhaps it was a false sense of security however for now that dusky veil was the only thing keeping her going.

The group chatted long into the night as they sat together eating the ice cream, isolated from the horrors unfolding outside.

[S119 - Julia Guercio - continued in Fort Hunting Lodge]

[Gundham]

((Karin Han coughed quietly.))

Karin had learned a long time ago that she was most tolerable in small doses. The less of herself she revealed, the more people would be willing to put up with her. So she mostly stayed out of the conversation, and instead spent her time dipping crackers into the ice cream and then popping them into her mouth and letting them dissolve. She did make a show of nodding along with things that people said, silently building as much goodwill as she could. Quiet, unobjectionable, but existent. It wasn't a great way to get by, but it was what it was. She had to play the cards she was dealt.

((Karin took another cracker, and silently nibbled it, and she will continue in Drops of Jupiter.))