We Can All Agree Snow Kinda Sucks, Right?

[TheLordOfAwesome]

((Dani Bird continued from Breakdown in the Meantime))

She didn’t know when she realized that she left the town, but it certainly took her a while to figure it out.

After what happened in that house she was in such a panicked rush to flee that she hadn’t really been mindful of her surroundings. Granted, her vision was largely obscured by the snowfall, but she was so scared out of her wits she kept running. And running. And running. Moving in such a way it would have been hard to track her, especially with the blizzard. By the time she stopped to catch her breath, she had come to realize she wasn’t even sure where she was anymore.

With the snow and her panic she had no clue where she had ended up, but what she did know was she was clearly not in town anymore. It wasn’t exactly her plan to be in the elements any longer than she had to be, but since when did things go her way? Cold, scared, and lost she could only numbly continue her trek through the snowy landscape. It took every ounce of willpower she had to keep pushing forward as the cold bit at her.

Time passed as if it were a blur, unable to really gauge how much time had passed or how far she traveled.

Eventually something did appear in her vision: a cabin.

Tired and sore from the walk in the cold, Dani found herself renewed with vigor as salvation from the cold was within grasp. She continued to push herself forward, crossing the distance quickly. She threw open the door to the cabin, rushing inside and slamming it shut behind her.

Now safe from the cold, Dani stood still, breathing. A moment passed, silence reigning in the cabin.

Silence soon broke.

Dani laughed. A quiet, soft giggle.

Then she laughed a little louder, going on longer.

Her laughter soon became uproarious as she was unable to contain her raw emotions.

But then that laughter quieted down, devolving into blubbering sobs.

She took a few steps into the cabin, dropped her bag to the floor, then collapsed as well. She huddled herself into a ball as she cried to herself.

“I can’t do this anymore…”

[Gundham]

Dani's breakdown was met with silence from all areas of the cabin, but the silence that emanated from a small hollow created by two overturned armchairs was a slightly different shade than the rest. This was because it wasn't an organic silence. Those tend to be dusted with little fragments of ambient noises. But artificial silences, like, say, the silence created by someone who's trying really, really hard not to be heard in their makeshift fortress, are made by a deliberate removal of sound. The silence moves against the ambience, not with it. It's unnatural.

Karin Han hadn't been here long - just long enough to find the place abandoned and trashed all to hell, scarf down a good chunk of her reclaimed bread, then pull a few of the toppled armchairs together into a little cave. She'd barely finished moving them into the corner when she heard the sounds of someone approaching and drove for cover. She hadn't moved a muscle since then. She didn't recognize the voice. But anybody who was comfortable bursting down doors on an island full of murderers had to be either very well-armed or completely insane. The way the peals of laughter dissolved into despairing sobs suggested the latter, but just because the intruder was crazy didn't mean that she wasn't dangerous. Kitty Graves was loopier than a rollercoaster, and she had slaughtered half a dozen people already.

Karin couldn't see the intruder from where she was lying. She moved very, very slowly, trying not to make her presence known.

The floorboards, however, had other plans.

Creeeeeeeeeak...

[TheLordOfAwesome]

So here was Danielle Bird, sitting curled on the floor and bawling her eyes out as the combined stress of the day reached a tipping point. All she wanted to do was have a quiet moment where she could get her emotions out without something happening to her. Was that too much to ask? She didn’t think so. She hadn’t cried since the first day after she woke up in that gym, but that was interrupted by Billie rolling on in. Even after all this time on murder island, emotional vulnerability was something she was comfortable with letting people see.

So of course her poor luck would continue as a pretty audible creak echoed through the interior air of the cabin.

Instantly Dani stopped her sobbing, freezing in place on the floor as her head perked up to listen intently. Her mind wandered back to the house she had fled from. While she was talking to a dead body she heard a creak of someone skulking around, followed by someone firing a gun.

She lamented her poor fortune yet again at the series of events that was her damn time on this accursed rock of an island, that when she thought she was safe and alone SOMEONE just had to be out of sight and could hear her. Billie at the gym, then outside that one building on the first day, then the house with Billie’s dead body, and now here.

Slowly Dani moved to sit upright, sniffling and wiping her eyes on her sleeve. She didn’t bother trying to move more than that to prepare herself for a fight or anything. She was too tired; emotionally and physically. Stress had worn her down, and the cold had sapped her strength. Whatever happens, happens. She just didn’t have the energy anymore to run.

“H-Hello?” She called out hesitantly, her throat tight as her heart beat increased in speed. “Is someone there?”

[Gundham]

Oh. She recognized the voice. The sobs and laughter had garbled it a bit, so it'd taken her a second. But you couldn't go a day at school without hearing it somewhere.

Dani Bird. John Endecott Memorial's resident queen bitch. Head cheerleader, prom queen, homecoming queen (c'mon, everybody knew that Rebekah Hayes only "won" for the meme). The girl who always had to be the richest, the prettiest, and the best at everything. Instagram model, cosplayer, the face that launched a thousand nerdgasms. Karin hadn't given her a nickname, for the same reason that seasoned alcoholics didn't go out drinking on Saint Patrick's Day. There just wasn't any sport in it.

Dani Birdbrain. Dani Nerd. Fanny Bird. Dani looks like a man-i. Dani-pedi. DDani Bird, with a double D. Daddi's Money. She's an attention whore and a regular whore. The (giving) head cheerleader. Took Karin about five seconds to come up with those. Imagine what she could have come up with, if she put some actual effort in? Dani was just too easy - in more ways than one.

If you had told Karin a week ago that she'd have a front-row private seat to watch the most popular bimbo in school having a mental breakdown, she'd have sworn that Christmas came early. (Just like Dani. Seriously, the material wrote itself.) The deranged laughter, the cry face, the bewildered look when she realized that her meltdown had been witnessed... chef's kiss. All of it. That wasn't just blackmail. That was blacker-than-black-mail. Vantablackmail, even.

But she couldn't take any real joy in Dani's humiliation. Because, like... who the hell was she gonna gossip to? Soo-Bin wasn't here, and everybody else in school who'd have cared was either dead or dying. Gossip was a group activity. When you were doing it all by yourself it was just... mean. Which didn't mean it wasn't fun, but it didn't have that spark, ya know?

When Dani called out asking who was there, Karin hesitated a moment. It was hard to imagine what circumstances had led Miss Congeniality to be here bawling by herself. Karin had assumed that Dani would surround herself with a protective ring of suck-ups and would-be consorts, string them all along and manipulate them into sacrificing themselves for her when things got hairy. Who knows, maybe that's what had happened. The announcements were noticeably light on mentioning context. Maybe Aoin and Amos had been part of the throng. Well, no. They were probably immune to the glare of Dani's headlights. But, like, the theory still stood. Karin wasn't gonna rule out the possibility that Dani had wandered off into the snow and gotten lost while looking for the perfect spot to take pouty death island selfies - or that a throng of white knights were out there looking to get the lost princess back. That, plus she didn't know what Dani might be armed with. So she'd have to be careful how she approached this one.

The big question was, would Dani even know who Karin was? Like, they were in drama club together, so Dani probably knew that she existed. Which, sadly, ruled out the possibility of trying to fool her by pretending to be Karen Nguyen. But, like, did Dani know what Karin said about her behind her back? Would she know, for instance, that Karin was the one who spread the rumor that Dani's panties had been on so many bedroom floors that Carpet Wholesalers named an area rug after them? It was hard to say. After all, pretty popular girls lived in their own universe. They didn't pay attention to the little people. And it wasn't like Dani had ever retaliated. So, maybe she was in the clear? Or maybe Dani just had bigger problems right now, and she'd take a big picture approach about the whole thing.

All right. Think. Get in character. What did a girl like Dani need right now? What was her motivation? Dani was the alpha. The leader of the cheer cheerers. Dani needed followers. And by the looks of things, she didn't have any right now. Yeah, all right. Karin knew how to play this scene. Tiny little drama class girl, afraid of the big, scary island. Overwhelmed by the horrors she'd seen, and what she'd been forced to do to survive. She couldn't pull that off long term, but she could probably do it long enough to get to the door or get her drill into a combat position.

"I-It's Karin," she whimpered from the shadows, her voice small and pathetic. "I-I don't want any trouble. P-Please don't hurt me..."

[TheLordOfAwesome]

A voice called out in response, the name of the one who had been hiding being revealed. At least this time it was someone she actually knew off the top of her head from the name and sound of her voice.

Karin Han, a fellow classmate who was in Drama with her. Didn’t interact much with her outside of that, but she at least knew who she was for the most part. Small girl, lacking any real physical features that Dani would be intimidated by. Dani stood at 5’7” and was pretty physically fit, so if they came to blows Dani was fairly confident that she could kick her ass in a straight fight. Not that Dani necessarily wanted to or had the energy to engage in right now.

Now, normally Dani wouldn’t think of fighting as her first instinct if it weren’t for the fact that Karin has actually killed people. Rather hard to forget about that little factoid. Two people died by her hand to be precise. One of them being her friend Ashlee. Ashlee was a good member of the cheer team and a buddy when it came to cosplay, so Dani wasn’t exactly pleased to be in the same room as her murderer. Especially since she shot Ashlee and thus had a gun, because it seems the terrorists specifically wanted to fuck Dani over by making her the only person on the goddamn island not to have an actual weapon. Though given how scared and pathetic Karin was sounding right now, Dani considered that maybe she didn’t have the full picture even if she had some biases on the matter. Did she necessarily believe Karin’s whole scared attitude? Not really. She, again, killed two people and at that point it was hard to believe she was actually scared of being hurt by anyone.

Not that Dani could probably actually be a threat if Karin actually had a gun. Bullets tend to be faster than people.

She wasn't actually scared of Karin doing anything at the moment. Cold, exhausted, and having been shot at this day more or less ground her down to the point where she hardly cared. She just wanted to be out of the goddamn snow and not go anywhere for a while.

Dani sighed, slumping her shoulders.

Good Lord, what she would give to be alone right now.

“Hi, Karin,” Dani greeted, sheer exhaustion lacing her tone of voice. She sniffled a little and continued to dry her eyes on her sleeve. “How are you today?”

[Ryuki]

(Wendy Kennedy, continued from Here in the rage and the resign)

Wendy had come a long way from the trapping camp. She had spent the whole day trudging along in the snow. And now the snowfall made her journey more difficult. Still, she carried on in the hopes of finding some form of shelter. Wendy felt as though she had never walked so much in her lifetime. If she made it off this island, she felt like she'd take a rest for years.

She thought back to her family once more. She hoped she'd see them again someday. However, there were plenty of students left on this island, and only one of them could leave. And that's only if they killed a fellow classmate. Wendy despised the thought of taking another student's life. But if left with no other option...

Just before she could finish that thought, a cabin in the distance came into view. Wendy felt elated. She could finally rest. If there weren't already occupants inside the cabin.

Her steps hastened, the cabin getting closer and closer. When she finally made it the the cabin's front door, she hesitated. She mindfully put her ear to the door, closely listening for any voices inside. Sure enough, she her two female voices. Hostile, maybe, but she couldn't be sure. Wendy peered inside the cabin through the front window. She recognized both girls. Danielle Bird, and...Karin Han. Great.

[Gundham]

Dani seemed to want to talk to her. Wow. She must have been alone for a seriously long time.

"I'm doing f-fine... I-I'm just gonna come out, okay?"

Karin eased herself out of the armchair fort, a process which was made slightly more difficult by the bag strapped around her torso. She'd consolidated all of her supplies into her own bag and ditched Choi's somewhere in the woods, burying it so it couldn't be scavenged. Gotta do what you can to avoid giving anybody else a leg up, right?

Once she'd extricated herself, she sat cautiously on the backside of one of the overturned chairs and looked Dani up and down. If the head cheerleader had a weapon, she didn't appear to be holding it. Good. Either meant she had something lousy or something that she couldn't draw without telegraphing her movements. She also made note of what Dani was wearing, and to her surprise, she felt a small mote of pity. It was well below zero out there, and even with Charlotte's hand-me-down winter gear Karin had been shivering the whole way here. Dani's ski bunny chic getup looked like it had all the insulation of a cocktail napkin. She must've been freezing.

Karin drew her legs up to make herself smaller, and held tightly onto the bag strap like she was frightened. Had to show some deference to the queen bee. Especially since she'd gunned down one of Dani's pom-pom pals a few days ago.

"I... I've been hiding, mostly," she said. "A lot of people have tried to kill me. Most of the time I managed to run away, but sometimes... I h-had to defend myself..." Her voice trailed off.

After a moment of silence, she spoke up again, a little more resolve in her tone. "I... I didn't want to do it. I didn't wanna hurt anybody. With Ashlee, it was an accident. I got beat up by Victor Grail, and he tried to steal my bag... I grabbed a gun and tried to shoot him, but I... I missed and hit her by mistake... I tried to save her, but she faded so fast... there was nothing I could do. Look, I... I know she was your friend, and I'm... I'm just so sorry. Every time I think about it, I feel like I'm gonna throw up. "

She left it there. Didn't bother explaining about Choi Latte yet. She'd have to see how Dani reacted to her apology first, and tailor the rest of her story around that.

She was so intently focused on gauging head cheerleader's reaction that she didn't even notice the movement outside the window.

[TheLordOfAwesome]

Karin had come out now, crawling out of some armchairs. Dani studied the other girl and as far she could tell she didn’t have a weapon on her, or at least it wasn’t immediately obvious. Which was a net benefit for Dani as that meant she wasn’t going to be shot at for the third time. At the same time, it helped put Dani more at ease to finally see someone else after a few days of not speaking with anybody. Corpses notwithstanding.

Karin talked, all curled up and looking scared. As Karin explained herself, Dani just sat there and listened to her explanation about how she accidentally killed Ashlee and how she was sorry about killing her. Dani wasn’t sure how much she believed it, but given how scared Karin was acting it might be true. On the other hand though, Karin was in the Drama club. Even if she didn’t exactly do on stage work like a lot of the members, Dani didn’t doubt she was capable of some level of acting. Karin did on occasion do offstage narration roles. In addition, Karin had every reason to lie to Dani at the moment. It was generally not a wise idea to outright admit your unrepentant murder of a person to someone who might want to kill you for it.

Still, Dani did feel conflicted as part of her did want to believe her, while another part was more skeptical. Two sides of the same coin at war with each other in her mind.

Dani scanned the room around them, looking to see if there was maybe anything she could potentially grab and start beating on Karin with if it came to that. She was incredibly tired from the trek through the snow, but maybe adrenaline from beating Karin’s ass might warm her up enough to not wallow in her own misery for a bit. Assuming she managed to find the energy needed to do that as she was still very much feeling too tired to give a fuck right now.

She focused her gaze back on Karin; miserable, cold, and exhausted as an expression can be on her face.

“I see.” Dani said simply.

What else could she really say at that moment? Did Karin expect forgiveness? What sort of dipshit would hear someone admit to killing someone and that they felt super bad about it, then forgive that person? Dani considered that maybe she shouldn’t pass too hard of judgment since she did pal around with Team Murder for a while, but she didn’t get this far by being a moron.

She’ll stay quiet and gauge Karin’s next response.

[Gundham]

Dani's response was flat, unenthused. Karin noted the way the other girl's eyes had been glancing around the room while she spoke, like she was looking for something. An escape route? Someone else who might have been lurking around the place? Hard to say. Coupled with the dull reaction and the look on Dani's face, she didn't exactly figure that a sympathetic hug was in the cards.

"A-Anyway, after that, everybody abandoned me, and I was on my own... I got attacked by Maya Press and Shannon Choi. They tried to strangle me, and I thought I was gonna die. I hit Shannon in the head and managed to escape. I... I didn't even know that she was dead until a day later."

She looked away, contriving to appear ashamed. And that's when she saw the face in the window, and nearly fell off her chair.

"GAAH!" she cried out. "Someone... someone's out there!"

[Ryuki]

As Wendy listened in on their conversation, she couldn't help but roll her eyes. Karin had to have been lying when explaining her side of the story of Ashlee's death, if not at least stretching the truth. Wendy thought about entering and just laying into Karin, but she didn't want to surprise them, and make them pull out their weapons if they had any.

Just then she heard Karin scream. Karin had alerted Danielle that Wendy was outside. Guess the jig was up. What to do now. Well, Wendy didn't just want to venture out into the snow again. It had taken her a long time to walk here. And she could use a rest. So, Wendy knocked on the door to the cabin.

"Hey, it's Wendy!," said Wendy, "Sorry to spy on you. Could I come in? I won't hurt anyone."

[TheLordOfAwesome]

Karin kept talking, explaining her second murder and how she didn’t realize they were dead until the next day, but Dani was starting to tune her out. She was really not in the mood for the rambling justification of murders and really just wanted Karin to shut the hell up and leave. As Dani feigned attention to Karin’s little speech, the other girl looked past her…

"GAAH!" Karin cried out as she stumbled out of her seat. The suddenness of it snapped Dani back to reality, becoming more alert as her posture straightened up to get ready to bolt. "Someone... someone's out there!"

Dani spun herself around to face the entrance of the cabin so fast that her neck audibly popped. Someone was standing at the window, having been watching the whole interaction go down. The newcomer knocked on the door and announced who they were and if they could come in. Dani eased up a little, but her eyes still darted around as she scanned her environment. She was now a little more annoyed at the presence of yet another person, intruding on a place she was hoping was private. At least Wendy didn’t kick in the door and start gunning them down, so she probably didn’t have a gun. Maybe.

“Yeah, sure, why not?” Dani called out to Wendy, tired sarcasm lacing her words. “Let’s make it a goddamn slumber party while we’re at it.”

[Gundham]

So Dani had not only invaded Karin's cabin, but felt entitled to just go ahead and invite Windy Kennedy inside without so much as asking Karin's opinion - and she was being a snarky bitch about it. Ugh, you want to be inside during a snowstorm? Like, can't you peasants just freeze outside instead of being near me?

Christopher Columbus would have been proud.

Ordinarily in a situation like this, Karin would have acted thrilled by the newcomer's arrival and fawned all over them just to make Dani look like a bitch by comparison (not that it really required much effort, let's be real), but seeing as it was Windy, she wouldn't bother. Last time she'd seen Windy had been right before Josh James had hunted her for sport, and Karin wasn't feeling particularly enthused about the prospect of seeing her again. Ugh, and she'd been bitching Karin out about Ashlee, too. How many friends did Cultural Appropriation Barbie have, anyway?

Like, here was how the scene was gonna play out. Enter Windy. She and Dani sob dramatically about how much they miss Cultural Appropriation Barbie, because of how kawaii and chosugoi she was. They daisuki'd her something fierce. They demand that Karin sumimasen her ketsu off. Karin attempts to do, but in a reasonable way, because it isn't exactly her fault that Karen+'s gun was shitty and it isn't her fault that Victor used Barbie as a human shield. Windy and Dani heap abuse on Karin, and insist that she must have shot Barbie on purpose, because Karin is short and ugly and she's probably jealous of the pompoms, and couldn't wear a cheerleader skirt because it'd reach all the way down to her ankles. They pretend to make nice, and then shank Karin in her sleep and steal her power drill. Dani forces Windy to hold it, because manual labor is for peasants. Windy sobs and cries, but does so. They exit, to go whoring. Karin decomposes peacefully.

...Yeah, no thanks. Time to drive a big ol' wedge in there before the Ashlee Donovan fan club really got started.

"Dani! Dani!" she hissed before Wendy opened the door, keeping her voice low, and mouthing the words, "She nearly got me KILLED!"

[Ryuki]

Wendy heard Dani from inside the cabin welcoming her inside with the most sarcastic and unenthusiastic voice. Regardless if Dani was less than enthused at Wendy's arrival, Wendy wanted to get out of the cold. She opened the door to see both girls, and the furniture set up like a couch fort. It really was like a slumber party.

"I didn't mean to disturb you," Wendy said to Dani. She glanced at Karin. She thought she heard her whisper something before she came in, but she wasn't too sure. She then looked over at the furniture fort.

"So, did you do that?," Wendy asked Karin, tilting her head towards the furniture.

[TheLordOfAwesome]

The way Karin was hissing in name in clear distress made it very obvious to Dani that she was NOT particularly happy with having Wendy being invited into the cabin. Apparently from a previous run in where Wendy tried to kill her. Given that Karin was still very much alive and Wendy didn’t try to burst in to kill them, Dani suspected that whatever had happened between them was purely Karin’s fault. If Wendy was really this big threat, Karin would be acting far more concerned than she was currently.

In short, this was a Karin Han problem, not a Danielle Bird problem.

Dani just shrugged at Karin, giving her a look that tried to silently convey “who hasn’t had someone try to kill them at this point?”

She turned back to Wendy who had entered and apologized. Dani shrugged again, then started scooting backward with her bag until her back was pressed to the wall. She sat there, looking back and forth from the two other girls in the room, expecting some sort of shitstorm to start if Wendy had tried to kill Karin.

[Gundham]

Windy entered - with absolutely no resistance from Dani, thanks for that - saying that she hadn't meant to disturb them. If she really cared about disturbing people, Karin thought, she'd wear a mask everywhere to keep them from having to see her face.

The first fifteen seconds of the interaction went well enough. Karin had half expected Windy to come in saying something like, "Oh hello, Karin. I see you've found another cheerleader to murder" and really kick the hornet's nest, but instead she'd chosen to comment on the interior decorating. Kind of annoying that she chose to blame Karin for trashing the place, instead of the nutcase head cheerleader visibly undergoing a mental breakdown, but sure. Karin was guilty of murder and armed robbery, she'd probably be dastardly enough to mastermind the Cabin Carnage Caper too.

"Yeah, it was me," she deadpanned. "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids."

Truth was, the place had been trashed when she got here. Probably a big fight of some kind, but she hadn't seen any bodies or blood. She hadn't bothered to clean it up, partly because a welcoming environment would broadcast the wrong message to intruders, and partly because, cleaning up a house she didn't live in wasn't exactly how she wanted to spend her last days alive.

She drew the bag a bit closer to herself. Just the sight of Windy standing there made her blood boil. And stupid Dani was sitting there shrugging her concerns off, because yeah, who cared what Karin said? Her Royal Highness didn't get off her duff for the petty concerns of the peasantry. Well, Karin wasn't about to let Windy swan in here and start bitching about who killed Ashlee and who didn't.

"You here alone?" Karin asked, choosing her words carefully. "Last I saw, you were hanging around with Daniel Ozanne."

There. Good. Name drop a recent murderer, put Windy on the back foot. Get her stammering to justify her actions. Then if Windy tried to being up the Ashlee stuff she'd just look like she was trying to be all "I'm rubber, you're glue" about it.