Alpha Mike Foxtrot

[Applesintime]

He waited. For the rifle to be raised up and spit lead at them. For Shawn to lose his nerve and grab the shotgun again — hell, Matthew was worried that he'd lose his own nerve and start shooting — for something to come along and fuck up this peace that they had. It was a shitty peace, one that was still ringed by tension, but it was something rare on this shitrock of an island. Even as their peace lingered, he still couldn't help but expect someone else to come along and break it.

"So, she has a collar radar? Fucking great. News I just wanted to hear." Yeah, that would really screw shit up. Him and Shawn would sneak up with their close-range weaponry and Katelyn would eviscerate them because she saw them coming, or however the fuck this radar worked. So that left the only two options; catch her while she was sleeping, or hit her from longer range. Or hell, maybe they'd find her in one of those traps that littered the forest and put her down.

"Meanwhile, we're just looking to kill her. She's on what, nine, ten? She's the most prolific murderer here and I want to be the one that gets her. I was so fucking close..." Matthew scowled, unhappy about the memory. He'd focused on Ren because they had pissed him off, and because of that Kai and Katelyn were free to run around and kill whoever they wanted.

Every fucking time her name sounded off of Danya's lips, he couldn't help but feel like it was his fault.

[Fiori]

"A collar radar?"

It never occurred to Shawn that collar radars were even possible, let alone a potential assignment. Did that mean their collars all had tracking devices? Well, duh, of course they did. How else were Danny and his goons meant to keep tabs on everyone? Probably also how they were able to tell whenever someone blunders into a dangerzone, so a doodad that detects nearby collars wasn't that big a stretch.

Damn. No wonder Fitz was so keen on finding her, a gizmo like that would come in handy. Suddenly the idea of seeking Katelyn out had a lot more appeal, even if that radar of her's posed some issues. It'd be basically impossible to sneak up on her, so they would either need to take her out from a distance, or try to press the numbers advantage and straight up outgun her.

It'd be risky, no doubt about it. Maybe even impossible with just the two of them.

Three of them, however...

"Huh... Seems to me like we're all looking for the same cat" said Shawn, an idea or two formulating in his head as he leant back against the doorframe, hands firmly in his jacket pockets. "Don't suppose you're fussed about her being alive? If not, well..." 

Shawn clicked his tongue. "Perhaps we can help each other out."

[decoy73]

((Kaede Tsurumi continued from In spite of terror,))

Evie had killed Dani. Was Evie the one talking to her yesterday? Kaede just shook her head. Was she supposed to feel sad that Dani had died? Angry that Evie had killed her? Scared that Evie could come after her?

Instead, it all seemed to cancel out into ... nothing. She was more concerned that there were fewer and fewer places she could go and that people were trying to kill her, and she'd actually seen bodies. Jack, and some other people who had died in previous days. It was all starting to run together and become routine. Like the fear had become boring.

So while she was looking around wherever she was, she wasn't sure whether the trio in front of her would be friendly or if they'd shoot her. However, she'd been in enough life threatening scenarios (read: one) that her legs just didn't seem to care. She just hung onto her bag and walked toward them, hoping that they wouldn't (or couldn't) shoot.

[ViolentMedic]

“You were already chasing after her? Why? Vengeance? Or… ‘heroics?’” The quotation marks were palpable.

Fitz shifted the gun in his lap, hand running briefly over his jacket – he could feel the shape of the ammo clip through the fabric – before he crossed his legs, making like he was just trying to get comfortable. Two sets of eyes focused on him. Not proper conditions.

“Eh. I don’t know. The last few people I teamed up with were either bad with gun safety, fucked off, or eyed my gun like they wanted to fuck it and then fucked off. Before that...” He stopped talking, reaching up to hook a finger under Cedar’s choker, still wrapped around his neck as a perpetual reminder. “Groups haven’t gone well. Besides. Do you trust me to watch over you as you sleep?”

He heard footsteps crunching nearby and straightened up, hand going to the gun but stopping when he saw the girl, Kaede, was unarmed. He jerked his head up slightly in a casual, silent ‘hey,’ his eyes then flickering back to the boys by the cabin. Watching for where their focus went.

[Applesintime]

Matthew couldn't help but be a little pissy about Fitz' attitude, but at the same time if a couple of guys had pointed guns at him and then dropped them, he didn't think he'd be in the cheerful kind of mood either. Shawn already proposed they team-up before he could, and given Fitz's big fucking rifle he tended to agree. At the absolute worst-case, they could shoot him and take the rifle once he'd let his guard down a little more. At best, hey, they now had a sniper in their little fireteam. Granted, fireteams normally had more armaments and armor than a 9mm, a shotgun and a sniper rifle, but this was an SOTF fireteam so it was shit by nature.

"Bitch deafened me in one ear. Not fully, but..." Ring, ring. Matthew tapped at his left ear, feeling his finger more so than hearing it. It felt like it'd gotten worse over the past couple of days, kinda like when you had a bad cold and your ear got all swollen and blocked or when you were going up in an unpressurised airplane. That was the end of the Marines. And probably any kind of army job that didn't involve a desk. "But yeah. Sure as shit I want revenge. For me and for everyone that psycho bitch's killed."

"And I mean, you haven't killed anyone in what... a week? You don't seem to be in the same calibre as Katelyn or uh, Salem. You're looking to kill her, we're looking to kill her. Doesn't mean we have to shake hands and be best buddies, but we have a common purpose.

Leaves crunched.

Matthew's gun pointed at the source of the noise, already thinking about who it could be. Katelyn, Salem, Jo- no, Josh was dead, right, Evie then —

But it was just Kaede. One of the girls who'd hung around Dani. Matthew'd always thought of her as being kinda weird, but Dani saw something in her that nobody else did. She'd been an easy target in freshman year before that, but once the queen of JEM got involved she was off-limits, at least to him.

"Heya, welcome to the 'We're Gonna Kill Katelyn' Club." Eh, they could workshop the name.

[Fiori]

Shawn nodded his head at Matthew, thankful that they were on the same page regarding Fitz. Of course, there were certain particulars he wanted to iron out in private about their proposed alliance, but those could wait until they had a moment to themselves.

"MMmm, I think we can all agree that Katelyn's the most dangerous player in this game. At this point she's more battle-hardened than any of us, so it'd be suicide to go after her alone..."

He glances back at Matt, hoping that his friend would keep his ego in check long enough for him to sell his pitch.

"Together, though? We're all well armed..." he began, tapping the shotgun leaning against the wall. "...and we're all competent, doubt any of us could've made it this far if we didn't have a good head on our shoulders."

"Most importantly, we outnumber her. So I reckon our best shot at pulling this off is to help each other out" he continues, sitting up to start gesturing with his hands. "You get your gizmo, and we get to take down the island's top predator. Everybody gets cake."

Except for Kitty, obviously, but that was kind of the point.

"Unless of course... You'd rather ask her nicely for it? See how well that goes" he adds at the end, with a little shrug.

It was at that point that a newcomer arrived, drawing everyone's attention elsewhere long enough for Shawn to finally grab his shotgun. Fortunately, as it turned out it was only Kaede, Shawn keeping his gun lowered as he let out a sigh of relief. An unexpected development, but one that gave him a chance to finally arm himself without provoking Fitz.

"Yeeeah, unfortunately we haven't got any shirts printed off yet..." he threw in, before turning back to Fitz. "She, uh... With you?"

[decoy73]

Katelyn. Yeah, she'd been on the announcements a lot. They were after her for, well, obvious reasons. Of course, two of the people in front of her had also killed, but given how she'd killed more than all four of the people in the area combined, it was probably not as bad being around them. Probably.

Kaede just squirmed a little as she moved forward, a little slower this time, and with her hands out. They were starting to talk to her (well, Matt? was), but it still seemed like it was the three guys and Kaede right now. That being said, it didn't seem that bad. Hanger on was better than hostile.

[ViolentMedic]

“Hrmm,” Fitz grunted, before he said, “Well, since we have a deep, lasting thirty-second-long friendship, based on me ‘not being quite as bad as the, uh… hold on.’”

He fished his manual out of his pocket and held it up to his face.

“Uhhhh… ‘the five-time murderer.’” Fitz lowered the manual a little. “Then yeah. Maybe. If you could absolutely guarantee me that you’d actually hand the radar over, and not… shoot me, you know? Absolute guarantee. Like, uh, ‘giving me your first-born for ransom’ level sure.”

Fitz looked back at Shawn. The shotgun was in his hands by then. Fitz shrugged and looked back at Kaede.

“Nope. I figured she was with you. What brings you here, uh… Kaede?”

As Fitz spoke to Kaede, shifting his attention back to her, he put the manual back in his pocket. The same pocket as the clip, followed by him trying to discreetly remove the clip and slide it back into place within the gun.

[Applesintime]

"At this point I think you can double that. She's been on that announcement way more than five times. And she has a grenade launcher, so that's also something you gotta worry about." Things weren't going... well, they weren't going bad. They weren't going well, either, but Matthew was confident enough that he could persuade Fitz. As far as he could tell, the guy'd never encountered her, or one of them would be dead. He didn't know that Kai was with her (why she hadn't killed him too was another question) or the probable extent of her armaments at this point. What Matthew could offer was intelligence.

"I don't give a shit about the radar. All I want is Katelyn dead and maybe a couple of her guns if Kai doesn't scoop them up. Because he's travelling with her too, and two versus one isn't gonna end well. Three versus two, all armed, however, that's gonna work out a lot better." Maybe four versus two if Kaede wanted to be involved, but she didn't have a gun by the looks of things. Should have taken that revolver, just in case they needed something to intimidate with. An empty gun was better than empty hands.

If Fitz said no, well, it wouldn't be hard to shoot him.

[Fiori]

"Ahuh..." huffed Shawn, raising his brow as he took note of Fitz' manual. Seemed someone had been taking notes, though how exactly remained to be seen. Shawn hadn't been able to find so much as a fucking crayon anywhere across the island.

He kept silent as Matt spoke his piece, thinking to himself about how best to go about this. Fitz was perhaps a little too cautious for his own good, not that Shawn could blame him. Probably why he had made it this far by himself. All they needed to do was convince him to trust them.

Failing that... Well, there was always Plan B.

"Yeah..." he began, once Matt was finished talking. "Besides, you gotta remember that trust is a two-way street. Matt and I are putting a lot of faith in you with this offer, when you haven't even properly told us why you need a collar detector anyway. Or a... Fuckin' axe or whatever..."

It was at that point that a thought struck Shawn, his right hand letting go of the shotgun. "In fact, now that I think about it, might have something you'd be interested in..." he continued, slowly reaching down to lightly pat his jacket pocket, tapping a metal object sheathed inside. "Found a machete a while back. Not exactly an axe, but if it does the trick I'd be happy to toss it to ya. Provided you're game for helping us, of course."

He slowly moved his hand away from the pocket for now, trying to avoid any sudden movements as his other hand maintained a firm grip on that shotgun. "Look, I... I Know we maybe got off on the wrong foot, but believe me, we're just trying to do our best out here" he said, before using his free hand to gesture in Matt's direction. "Matt here's a goddamn hero, busting his ass trying to take Katelyn down whilst everyone else seems too afraid to do anything about it. Jezzie would've gunned me down days ago if it wasn't for him. Owe that beautiful son of a bitch my life..."

Shawn gave Matt an affirmative nod, before turning back to Fitz. "As for me?" he continued, with a shrug "I'm just trying to make the island a safer place, is all. And if that means putting down a rabid cat... Well, so be it."

[decoy73]

"Nothing, really." said Kaede. It was the truth. She was wandering around, unable to really do anything to Evie, and in fact, she didn't even know if she wanted to. "I guess I've just been out of it since the announcement." Kaede looked at them. IF she heard correctly, so long as they didn't talk too much to her. She didn't know if she had much to say.

"I ... I want to trust you." She really did, if only because it meant they weren't going to try to kill her.

[ViolentMedic]

“Nah, I was limboing under the bar set by Salem, I know Kitty’s is way higher.” Fitz hissed through his teeth and added, “A grenade launcher? ...Shit. And a second guy. Kai’s pretty huge, too.”

Fitz lifted his beanie a little to scratch his head, eyes slipping briefly shut. Mouth in a tight frown.

He mumbled, “Yeah, Matthew’s a beautiful and heroic man, okay, I get it. Okay… okayokayokay.”

He rubbed a palm over his eyes, trying to get the sleep out of them, before shifting forward a little. His eyes flickering over to Kaede.

“I think we all want to trust each other. Wanting and doing are real different, though.” His gaze went back to the two boys by the cabin. “But with a grenade launcher and collar radar involved… I guess there’s no choice. I’ll help, for the radar and the machete. Heck, I only need to borrow the latter. Just… y’know.”

He slightly lifted the gun, then lowered it again, making extra sure it wasn’t accidentally pointing anywhere near the three.

“Don’t expect me to be tackling her. It’s a sniper rifle, it’s for sniping.”

((Russell ‘Fitz’ Fitzroy continued in This Can Only Go Well.))

[Applesintime]

Christ, Shawn, laying it on a bit thick aren't we? Still, Matthew couldn't really say much more to bring Fitz over to their side. They were doing the best they could here, even if that wasn't enough and more people kept dying every goddamn day. Katelyn, Salem, Evie, they were all beginning to be constants on Danya's murder list announcement, along with the spattering of more minor killers who kinda ebbed and flowed as more people died. Sure, if he saw say, Trinity or Julia they were still good targets, but that wouldn't put much of a dent in the death toll. It had to be the big ones. And with Fitz's sniper rifle? That'd make things a lot easier and a lot less dangerous. Especially if Katelyn had what Fitz thought she did. It'd be pretty fucking useful if he and Shawn could get their hands on it.

"We can all go our merry ways once she's dead. You can go, uh... I dunno, do what you wanna do with a collar radar. Me and Shawn can go looking for someone else, and Kaede can... uh, I dunno. I mean," Matthew turned his attention to Kaede now, "if you wanna tag along we uh, don't really have anything to give you. A couple of blades, but a lot of people have a gun now so you'd be at a disadvantage, unless you've, I dunno, got a secret talent or some shit. You wanna bail out, I'm not gonna blame you, but... Evie's still out there. We can go after her next, maybe." Really, he didn't have too much of a plan after Katelyn.

That dark thought he'd had earlier crept back in to his head. Would there be anything stopping him from playing Judas and putting bullets in all three of them then walking away with everything? Anything but not wanting to kill Shawn?

A slight frown crept onto his face, and Matthew slightly shook his head, trying to push that thought back down to where it belonged. He couldn't. No way could he say he was better than Katelyn if he started shooting people who hadn't done anything.

"Alright, yeah. You stay in the back, do overwatch. Me and Shawn, we'll go ahead. We've got the shottie, after all. Kaede can stick with you, make sure you don't get crept up on." Two forward, two behind. It'd be better if they could get everyone a gun, but there was still the makings of a cohesive squad identity in here. Just needed to refine it.

The safety was flipped back on, and the gun went back into his waistband. Really couldn't have given them a holster, huh? Fucking cheapskates.

((Matthew Bell continued in Далеко бежит дорога))

[Fiori]

Shawn nodded his head, reaching down into his jacket pocket to tug the date machete free. "Sure, feel free to hold onto it until you're done with... Whatever it is you need it for."

Truth be told, he wasn't too fussed about handing it out, not like he was lacking options at this point. Besides, all goes well, he'd be getting it back in no time.

Following alongside Matthew, he passed the blade over to Fitz as they walked past, doing his best to hide the shit-eating grin that was threatening to spring loose. After all, they now had something of a posse coming together, one with a simple goal and one hell of a prize waiting for them. All they needed to do now was find Katelyn, ice the bitch, and bam... The collar radar would be theirs.

Well, more accurately, it would be his.

But, baby steps...

"Whose ready to be a fuckin' hero?"

((Shawn Bellamy continued in Далеко бежит дорога))

[decoy73]

So, Matthew's idea was for her to stay with ... Fitz was it? FItz and her would stand guard and give support from afar. Kaede just nodded in agreement. This time, it was at least because she actually liked the plan. She had nothing, so going against people who had killed and had the means to wasn't the best idea for her when she only had pepper spray.

All she had to do was help Fitz not die. And if one of the real killers got taken down, then even better for her (and them).

((Kaede Tsurumi continued in This Can Only Go Well))