Top Ten Anime Betrayals

[KamiKaze]

((Ashlee Donovan continued from Fort Hunting Lodge))
((CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of sexual harassment/assault))

Ashlee didn’t typically listen to the announcements.

Don’t get her wrong, she wasn’t callous or anything! It was just… it was just a lot to take in, you know? She knew that if she listened too closely, thought too hard about it, she’d get sad, and she’d cry. Maybe it was best for her mental health if she didn’t know who lived and who died.

But she still thought about K and Norbert a lot, you know? Maybe that it wasn’t a good idea for them to run out like that.

Her not listening, though, caused a problem, because… uh, they kicked them out. Maybe because it was too quiet, maybe because they wanted to push them closer to everyone else. So Ashlee had to pick everything and leave in a hurry.

She clutched the musket close to herself as she walked a bit towards the back of the group. She figured it would be a good call to find another building, like the large one in the northeast. Even if it meant, well…

More people.

Ashlee normally liked people, but even though she hadn’t seen anyone die other than…

She didn’t want to think about their introduction into the game. Her fists tightened whenever she did.

Ashlee had talked some as they walked.. Mostly about home. She chatted a bit about her cosplay, schoolwork, social media, new shows, cheerleading, anything to keep her mind off. Eventually, she stopped. She wasn’t sure if they were interested right now.

However, Ashlee hadn’t yet received word about anything to do with Victor.

[Ryuki]

(Karen Nguyen, continued from Fort Hunting Lodge)

The hunting lodge had become a danger zone. What was left of the group had gathered their things and set out to find shelter elsewhere. Karen kept her right hand in her pocket, her fingers tightly wrapped around her gun. She needed to be prepared to defend herself and the others from any hostile students.

What Han had said about Victor loomed in the back of her mind. Was Han telling the truth? Could he really be such a creep? Karen didn’t know Victor that well, but then again, she didn’t know Han that well either. Either way, she didn’t want to keep traveling with a potential threat.

“Hey,” Karen whispered to Julia, “Maybe we should tell Ashlee about Victor.”

Karen walked up to Ashlee.

“Hey, Ashlee,” Karen said, “Han told me and Julia something concerning the other day.”

Karen and the rest stopped on the path.

“Han said that she’d seen Victor watch you and Julia sleep,” she explained.

[decoy73]

((Victor Grail continued from Fort Hunting Lodge))

More people dead, and their hideout had become a danger zone. Just their luck. Micah was down. He would have been able to add to the team. Now everyone was just plodding along. The others had been quieter. Like there was something on edge, and someone could come out with an Uzi. The thing that really kept him going for the moment was a shot of his Jim. Ashlee had mentioned something about a building to the northeast, so it was a little weird when everyone else stopped, and Karen, Naren Nguyen said something.

“Han said that she’d seen Victor watch you and Julia sleep.”

Victor's eyebrows went up at that. Why did Han say that? More importantly, why would Han care? What would watching them sleep at night in this situation mean to anyone?

"Uh, yeah. No shit I was watching. What, did you expect that I'm not watching to make sure we don't get attacked?"

[Carlisle]

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

The irony of the timing of the announcement, and the hapless news that they were all hanging out in an impending danger zone, sure was not lost on her.

The organisers were clearly having the time of their lives as it couldn't have been any worse timing if it tried. Minutes before the announcement she was in the side-room with Karin and Karen, finding out all about Victor's equally unfortunate transgressions. Then more names. Then the danger zone announcement. Then the announcement that Kitty Graves would be heading their way for a luxurious meal. She had been mentally keeping tabs on the names of those who had succumbed to the brutality of the game and Miss Graves had popped up more than once.

It was all a bit of a flurry. They rallied together to get everything packed up making sure not to leave anything behind. Then Ashlee had a plan. Ashlee always had a plan. It was that type of critical thinking that she lacked in this survival madness. What good was having intelligence if you lacked initiative? They bid farewell to their fort and headed out. Victor stayed close with them but Julia lingered towards the back. They had to make a quick getaway or risk Kitty jumping them and from the graphic detail of the announcements it didn't seem like she was finding people to make friends with. How did they know they weren't walking straight in to danger?

Again, more irony. A safe haven turned in to a danger zone sending them out of the frying pan into the fire. Brilliant.

The group stayed mostly quiet. Who knew what Victor and Ashlee were contemplating but Julia continued to look over at Karen and Karin, trying her best to soak in the harsh reality of those accusations against Victor. If nothing else, they were certainly damming. And then the silence abruptly ended. Karen whispered to initiate the plan to inform Ashlee and the rest was history. Was this really the best time for this discourse? Absolutely not. But Karen's conversation was the necessary catalyst for their next, safe, moves in this situation. Metaphorically, those words to Ashlee were the knife cutting the obvious tension in the air.

Victor immediately went on the defensive when he overheard the conversation happening. The tone. The cussing. It wasn't the escalation that Julia had hoped for but regardless she felt loyally required to stick up for Karen. She was the quiet one like her after all, they had been in this together since the start.

"And what about the rest? We know what you were doing back at the lodge."

She did all she could to sound confident and strong, although the reality was muffled trembles in her voice as she confronted Victor head on.

"Watching us sleep is just the tip of the iceberg. Come clean about what you were doing when watching us!"

Her tremble was replaced by newfound confidence. She had always struggled to be extroverted or assertive but this was really felt like her

"Han told us everything she caught you doing - why would you do that to us?"

The confusion in the group had turned to bewilderment and Julia had said her piece. She turned back to Karin to see if she had anything to add. Now wasn't the time to suddenly go quiet.

[Gundham]

(TRIGGER WARNING for mention of/implied sexual assault)

((Karin Han continued from Fort Hunting Lodge))

Well, crap.

Karin hadn't been expecting Karin+ and Wholia to just go ahead and blab the whole thing right away, or to name her as the source of the information. She'd been hoping for more of a slow burn, to seed the information out slowly and get the girls paranoid about Victor for a while before actually making some kind of move.

She was no stranger to making things up on the fly - things went wrong in productions all the time. When they did, it almost always fell on the narrator to stall. You had to know how to play the audience, keep them immersed in the fiction you were presenting so that they wouldn't notice the stagehands frantically moving set pieces around behind the curtain.

Step one - confidence. Say your lines like you believe them, and the audience will believe them too.

She looked Victor in the eyes. Glared at him cagily. Like she was feeding off of Karen and Julia's conviction, like they were emboldening her to get over her fear and confront him.

"It's true. Both nights, when you were on night watch. I saw you. You had your hand down your pants and you were... you were p-perving on them." She threw in a little tremor there at the end, like it was just too disgusting for her to be able to get the words out.

"I think you should just leave us alone, Victor."

[decoy73]

((GMing of Karin Han done with approval from Gundham))

And then Han gave it up. Why they were pissed at him. Or should he say say "why" they were fucking BULLSHIT. Having his dick out? Jacking it? Literal sexual assault? Victor just stepped up to Han and grabbed her coat and lifted.

"And I think that you are LYING." He tried to remain calm, but he knew his reputation, and his limits, and they spoke for their goddamn selves. His hand, with Han, no, Thing, in it went up a good few inches, eliciting a surprised yelp. "I'm not leaving shit. You are gone." With his other hand, he snatched Thing's bag, before pushing, no, throwing her away.

"This is your bitch tax." He knew his limits, and she should be grateful. If he had punched her, she would be dead.

[KamiKaze]

Ashlee… was still trying to digest that. But it sat in her stomach like rotten meat.

She… was familiar with that sort of thing, in her own way. Sometimes, as a cosplayer, she’d get creepy online comments, or people saying things to her while she was in costume. She’d been well-acquainted with the phrase ‘cosplay is not consent’ for a reason.

Thankfully, there hadn’t been many… incidents of that nature at the Anime Club since she got the President title. Anything bad that had happened was on the smaller end, and not anything to do with… that.

Her skin crawled like filth had covered her body. Her face turned ashen.

It was terrifying if what they said about Victor was true. What if he had eventually decided to touch them? What if he–

Ashlee wanted to throw up. She wanted to deny it, hear Victor say something, that it wasn’t true, or if it was somehow a misunderstanding. She wanted to hear him out, any little scrap that it didn’t happen. She knew Victor, he couldn’t do something like that, right?

Then, he started yelling, and–

He lifted Han up, snarling, and pushed her away. He was at the very least, capable of hurting women like this.

Ashlee tried to step in between them, her voice authoritative.

“Calm. Down. No violence.”

She was shaking.

[decoy73]

Ashlee spoke up. To try and keep things from getting too bad. Victor just breathed in as he slung Thing's bag around his shoulder.

"You're right, Ashlee. I'm going to that place you told me about. The rest of you can come." He glared at Thing. "But if that liar decides to follow, I'll kill her myself."

Victor turned around and continued in the direction that they were going.

[Gundham]

There was a Shakespeare play they'd read in drama club once. The Taming of the Shrew. The whole play was put on for a common tinker, who a bunch of nobles were pranking by convincing him that he was a noble, too. The shrew was Kate, a headstrong, opinionated girl who was bitter and nasty because everybody treated her like garbage. Kind of a boring play, 10 Things I Hate About You did the whole thing way better. But the point of the whole thing was that you eventually became whatever people told you you were. People could turn a tinker into a noble if they wanted to. But mostly they turned girls into shrews.

Call a girl a liar long enough, and she'll stop caring what's true.

---

Slush and tears clung to the side of Karin's face. Everything hurt. Her drill was gone, flung out of her grip.

She raised herself up on one elbow, lifting her face out of the snow.

Her breath came in ragged gasps, and tears ran down her face as she fought the urge to vomit. Her heart was beating insanely fast, like a hummingbird beating its wings against her ribcage. It was always like this when it happened. When something reminded her. Whenever she saw a bright light or a strange shape in the sky, it was the aliens paralyzing her to take her away. Whenever she was plucked up off her feet, she was caught in the tractor beam, about to be sucked up into the belly of the mother ship. Every time. No matter how many times they told her it was all in her head, no matter how many times they told her she was faking it or making it up.

Her ears were ringing, but she could still hear the echo of Victor's words.

That liar.

She saw the word writ large, all in capitals. LIAR. Scrawled in red crayon under a crude drawing of a UFO. One picture out of dozens crammed into her locker.

Liar, liar. Pants on fire.

She heard the stupid rhyme chanted over and over, from a ring of laughing, jeering faces. They'd chanted it so loud that she'd still heard them even with her fingers jammed into her ears.

Of course she'd become a liar. After all that, what else could she ever have become?

Karin lied about a lot of things. She lied every time someone asked her how she was doing. She lied to her parents and her therapist about getting better. She lied to Soo-Bin about it being fine that she'd gotten a homecoming date when they'd been planning to go solo together, and about it being fine that she bailed on the winter trip. Eventually, it all became second nature.

But she wasn't lying about the aliens. And she wasn't lying about Victor, not really.

Sure, he hadn't actually done what she'd accused him of. But she'd been completely right about one thing: he was still dangerous. He was still the kind of guy who'd attack a girl, who'd drag her off her feet and shake her in midair, who'd steal her things and throw her away. Who'd hurl insults at her while the trauma set off every alarm bell in her head. That was the truth. The real, honest truth.

Now he was walking away. Walking away with her bag. Walking away with all of her food and water, with her day pack full of the only things from home she'd ever see again. Taking away her life in more ways than one.

Karen+ and Julia were still here. Just standing there, useless, not helping her up. Watching this happen. No doubt paralyzed with indecision, unsure whether to help her or go with Victor.

Fine. If they couldn't decide, then she'd decide for them.

Karin staggered to her feet, and lunged at Karen+. With the element of surprise on her side, it wasn't too hard to wrest the gun from her hand.

She raised the gun and pointed it at Victor's back. Tried to pull the trigger. It barely moved. The gun shook in her grip. It was heavy, hard to keep steady. She let out a furious cry and clenched her fingers around the trigger with all of her might.

This time, it fired.

[KamiKaze]

It didn’t hit Victor.

Redness leaked out from underneath Ashlee’s jacket as she fell to the ground. Her musket and bag fell nearby. Her body shook with gasping breaths for a few moments.

You know, one trope Ashlee always liked was the idea of hope perservering over all. She was well-acquainted with Danganronpa, for one, even cosplayed a bit from the series. She liked dressing up as villains, so she was Junko. It wasn’t that she liked the idea of despair, more like she liked the theatrics of villains. Plus, they always have the best costumes. All things that made dressing up like them fun.

Anyways, it wasn’t just Danganronpa.

It was a common trope in anime, in fiction in general. If you just held out, kept that hope, you could survive. Not just survive, but thrive.

Maybe that’s why she kept trying. Even when things got boring, even when things got sad, even when she was crying her eyes out, she had hope. That everything would turn out fine. Maybe that was why she tried to tune out the announcements, so she could keep that hope. She even had a small glimmer of hope that things weren’t what they seemed with Victor.

Maybe that wasn’t enough.

Maybe she was foolish to hope.

Whatever was left of Ashlee’s hope had died.

A second later, her body died too.

Student #090 Ashlee Donovan- DECEASED

[decoy73]

The pain wasn't what Victor was expecting when he heard the shot. There was the impact of the ground, and the pain from it, and the gurgling that ... wasn't ... his ...

He looked up at Ashlee, red spurting from her mouth, and then behind to see Thing pointing a gun at him.

Shit. SHIT.

He took a quick look around himself before grabbing Ashlee's gun with his left hand and using that to raise himself up as he grabbed Ashlee's bag with the other. The gun was pointed directly at him. No way was he going to be able to disarm it, and he didn't know how or if Nguyen or Julia would react.

Shit.

Victor turned around and sprinted out of there as fast as he could.

Bail

((Victor Grail continued elsewhere ...))

[Ryuki]

It all happened so fast.

Victor lifted up Han by her jacket and took her bag. And then, as Karen was processing the scene before her and trying to figure out how to defuse the situation, Han grabbed her gun and…

Now Ashlee was on the ground, not moving, blood everywhere.

Victor had bailed.

Han looked to be stunned. Either she was horrified by what she did, or was still processing what had happened.

Either way, Karen took this opportunity to grab the gun and free it from Han’s hands.

Karen then ran over to Ashlee and put her fingers on Ashlee’s neck, checking for a pulse. It was no use. Ashlee was gone.

Karen cursed her own inaction, then turned to Han, glaring at her. She had nothing to say to her.

(Karen Nguyen, continued elsewhere…)

[Carlisle]

Over the last few days Julia had given death some real thought... Would it be better to be the first to die? To shut her eyes for one final time before she had to see anything happen to her friends? There was a mental block that it was feasible she was simply chasing some silly idea of peace in a dangerous world. Call it hope perhaps. Of course, hope was stupid. She had taken a personality test for school earlier in the term and she came back as a strong blue profile, meaning she valued logic and fact. She was the master of her own destiny - there was no point hoping for something that you could control without your action.

And yet she hoped. Hoped for a return to simpler times. Hoped for survival.

If somebody was to meet their gory demise in front of her very own eyes, how would she react? Violence and gore in the movies never really phased her. Admittedly it wasn't that she took any enjoyment whatsoever from a slasher, but it never really phased her either. She just thought it was silly or unnecessary. When friends harped on about feeling squeamish, faint or even crying she just sat there entirely unbothered. After all, the movies and dramas were not real. If anything it just wasn't her thing. She had little interest in watching the latest horror movies or violent shows that enjoyed death and brutality almost a little too much. But what about real life? The peaceful ambience that surrounded her life had never involved violence or aggression. So anticipating hostility was a strange thought. She predicted that it would be messy, perhaps like that runny fake blood with the awful texture. The annoying liquid-type that would infiltrate every inch of your body and exude in to every crevice.

But how would she react when confronted by these distant nightmares? Would she impulsively retch or vomit, perhaps sob, snivelling more with each and every convulsion. Perhaps fall to the floor distraught with what she had just seen or maybe urinate like in some of the movies?

The reality? She just froze.

She stood there uselessly as it all unfolded around her. She watched on in horror and disbelief as Victor literally picked Karin Han up. Grabbed her bag and tossed her aside like she was garbage.

Her eyes followed Victor as he begun to march away from the girls. Karen to her right and Ashlee to the left.

BANG.

What good was having hope now?

The firing of the gun sent a deafening shockwave to mercilessly ravage her ear drums as she reopened her eyes. Had she just been shot? She peered down to find blood splattered across her jacket and down her left hand. This blood felt weird. It wasn't anything like that cheap, watery fake blood. It was warm, it was darker in colour and it oozed down her hand rather than gushed. It felt heavy.

She raised her hand slightly in horror as she looked for the bullet hole. She didn't feel pain like she had expected but maybe the numbness she felt all over was the reality of being shot. She had no idea how she was even still on her feet but the wind had been well and truly taken out of her. And then Ashlee collapsed. Less than a metre away she just fell down like a toy soldier hitting the floor with a graceful thud. Through Julia's hysteria she realised in those few moments that she hadn't been shot. She stood there shell-shocked as Ashlee gargled her last breaths.

To answer her earlier question - she did not feel faint. She did not scream, vomit or burst in to tears. She just felt completely numb, immobilised by the adrenaline which had her sealed. Frozen in time as the others raced around her. Her ears were ringing and melancholic fuzziness engulfed her.

Within a few seconds, Victor had sprinted off. Karen dashed to Ashlee's side. In her adrenaline-fuelled haze, all she could concentrate on was Karin and the corpse. Her dead classmate was now being enveloped in to the snowy ground around her, painting the peaceful white around her with a dissenting shade of red whilst the other two helplessly looked on.

As the shock wore off; she fell to her knees beside Ashlee's body. Julia shook her gently to try and get her to wake up getting more relentless with each shake, tears brimming from her eyes.

Her efforts were for nothing. Ashlee didn't stir. She really was gone. Dead. Just like that.

The rush of emotions made her uncontrollably brash. She glared upwards to see Karin still stood there almost as motionless as Ashlee.

"Why?" she yelped, choking on her own saliva, "How could you do this to her?"

The silence that met her only made her more frantic. Standing up she stepped towards Karin screaming as she took the step, "You killed her!"

The only thing left to say?

"YOU MURDERED HER!"

What was the point in hope?

[Gundham]

There had been two bangs. First, the bullet blasting out of the chamber. Second, her own forearm walloping her across the face from the force of the recoil.

The blow had left her stunned, standing there swaying like an idiot, with the gun loose in her numb fingers.

One blob disappeared, and another fell to the ground. Sirens were blaring in Karin's eardrums. Someone ripped the gun out of her unresisting hand. She had the urge to protest, but couldn't think of the right noises to make. Then the world stopped being blurry, and everything was back in focus. Karen+ was hunched over... Barbie? No way. She'd missed Victor, and hit Barbie?

Nausea hit her like a fist. Karin trembled. She hadn't meant to... Barbie must have gotten in the way, or the stupid gun must have kicked to the side, or something! Karen+ was glaring venomously at her. What was that all about? It was an accident! It was obviously an accident!

There was another voice. Julia was screaming something. Screaming at her. Then she was right up in Karin's face, calling her a murderer.

Karin's teeth grated together.

"I didn't mean it! It was an ACCIDENT!" she snapped back at Julia.

Karin looked from one to the other, reading the disgust in their facial expressions. White hot anger flared up inside her, and her blood began to boil. Her hands clenched into fists. They were the ones who ratted her out to Victor. They were the ones who stood there watching while Victor beat her up. They were the ones who let him go with all of her stuff and didn't do a damn thing to stop him. And now they were ganging up on her, not even giving her a chance to defend herself. It wasn't FAIR!

If they didn't want to listen, then fine. Fuck them. Fuck Victor. Fuck Barbie. Fuck everybody.

Her drill was lying in the snow. She scooped it up, and ran away as fast as she could.

((Karin Han continued in by talos this can't be happening))

[Carlisle]

In the world there are many people. There are the sensible, the rash. The extroverted or the introverted. The intellectuals and the idiots. In this game? There were only people you trusted with a weapon, nobody, and those you kept at arm's length, everybody (especially Karin).

And ultimately her gut instincts about Karin had proven to be correct. From the very start of this hellish nightmare they were caught up in, there was something off about her. The way she waved that drill threateningly at Beatrice then feigned victimhood in front of the others. It was the subtleties in their exchanges that left a sour note for Julia. It felt calculated. Perhaps unwittingly so - after all nobody wanted to be seen as a threat when trying to form alliances. But her conclusions has already been drawn. Karin Han was trouble.

An accident, she proclaimed. Accidents happen. Of course they do. It was impossible to deny that. But this accident left Ashlee dead in the snow. Motionless. Nothing more than a bloodied corpse. There's an accident and then there's an accident.

Karin grabbed her drill, pivoted with her ankle and bolted. Like Ashlee was nothing. Not even valuable enough for a second thought.

She showed zero grief. Zero remorse. Zero accountability.

Julia was still angry, desperate to give Karin a piece of her mind. She wasn’t sure why, as she was usually very mildly tempered and she knew it wouldn’t bring Ashlee back but that didn’t matter. Instead, all she could do was watch on as she disappeared in to the distance, eventually her small figure fading completely out of sight as four became three. Or two. Do you count dead people? It was probably going to be the last time she ever saw her, or at least she hoped it would be. The other Karen had used that time to collect her things and back off. She was heading off too, just leaving Ashlee burying in to the snow in an awkward heap. She invited Julia to go with her but it just didn't feel right. She wasn't ready to say goodbye to Ashlee and move on with her life just like that. She needed time. She had been lucky throughout life with those close to her; she had never known death and was inexperienced at mourning. But it just didn't feel right to walk away like that. She bid farewell to her friend and hoped, perhaps naively, that she would be ok out there.

Her insides were churning. Twisting and turning like that feeling of butterflies. But instead of the nice and pretty type, these butterflies were filled with turbulent rage. They felt ready to burst out of her stomach at any second like some grotesque nod to cinematic great Alien. But there was no Chestburster. Just ruffled emptiness and mental anguish.

Just Julia. The silence of the withered snow, and Ashlee.

She dropped once again to her knees. The pool of blood around Ashlee's body was only growing, seeping deeper in to the fragmented snow on the path. The still tranquillity that surrounded the two of them was an unsettlingly perfect juxtaposition for the havoc that had just ensued but it gave her that time she needed to mourn. As she sat there, the tears started to finally fall. First as light individual drops that fell to the ground after rolling down her rosy cheeks. Then as an unconstrained flood of biblical proportions. It was hard to stop the torrents of tears and so she cried until her eyes hurt and her ducts were depleted.

Time was difficult to track. Had she been perched there for two minutes? Ten? An hour? It all felt like one moment.

But the harsh reality... was she crying because she was mourning Ashlee? Or was she simply crying because Karin and Victor had come and ripped off the safety blanket that had been keeping her wrapped up, nice and secure.

This game finally felt real. And for the first time she was going it alone.

It was time for her to prove to any doubters that she can survive. She is not just that quiet girl.

[S119 - Julia Guercio - continued in The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters]