Survival Of The Fittest

((GMing of Jenna approved by Fiori.))

Jack was saying something. He wanted her to leave the weapon. Why?

He took a step back, so Yukiko took one forward to match him. Then another. And another.

Why was he trying to settle things peacefully when they were already set on betraying her? Her grip tightened to the point where her knuckles were white. She raised her weapon and took two quick, shaky steps forward before she was pushed off balance by... something.

Yukiko had been focusing all of her attention on Jack, and almost forgot that Jenna was there.

It was a light push, maybe. Yukiko didn't know. All she realized was that the weight of her weapon was causing her to tip faster than she could right herself.

The next thing she knew, she was falling.

There was a thud, a sharp pain on the side of her head, and the sound of glass breaking.

Everything went black.

---

It was all a blur. Yukiko didn't know what had happened, or where she even was. There was that pain in her head that wouldn't go away. She tried to shut her eyes tight, but her eyelids didn't work. She tried to move, but body felt sluggish. She felt woozy, nauseous, almost like she was in a body that didn't belong to her. And the pain. She slowly moved her hand towards the side of her head, which seemed to take all of the energy she had.

She felt something wet.

It vaguely registered to her that it was probably blood, which would explain the symptoms she was experiencing.

Strange lines crossed in front of her vision, oddly sharp compared to the rest of the scene.

Ah... my glasses.

It was dark. How much time had passed? Was anyone even here... still...?

Her eyes closed, and she was out again.

---

Her eyes were barely able to open when she came back again. The first thing that struck was how bright it was.

This was too tiring. Her eyes drooped. She laid there. It was quiet.

She... wasn't sure what anything was anymore. Everything felt so indistinct. All of her sensations--whatever little there were left--felt jumbled. She felt so far away.

The mechanical sound of the speakers crackling to life was so quiet to her ears. Yet, that was all she focused on. The noise of that voice, droning on. Not that Yukiko had the presence of mind to understand any of the words, but she tried to hold on, to that one feeling she had left.

But eventually that started to fade away as well.

Then there was nothing but silence.

G024 - Yukiko Sakurai: DECEASED

It was astonishing just how quickly it took for everything to go to hell within a matter of seconds.

The moment Jenna saw Yukiko exit the truck brandishing her bladed whacker, she knew that whatever happened next was not going to end well. Had she been right earlier, about Yukiko's state of mind? Was one of her closest friends in the world really intending to try and hurt them?

Please stop? Oh god, had she been listening to them the entire time? Had she got it into her head that... That they were actually planning to hurt her? And that she was just acting preemptively or something?

She had seconds to act before something irreversibly terrible happened. Jack's attempts at calming her down didn't seem to be working, which meant that Jenna had to step in and make good use of those self defence lessons her father had been paying for. It shouldn't have been too hard. All she had to do was disarm Yukiko and get her to calm down. Fairly straightforward stuff, really.

So naturally, things did not go nearly as well as she had hoped.

Jenna meant to snatch the weed whacker out of Yukiko's hand. Or at the very least, grab a hold of her friend's arms and try to wrestling it out of her grip. But as she reached forward, Yukiko raised her makeshift weapon above her head, prompting Jenna to instinctively shove her out of the way with the palm of her hand the moment she had an opening.

However, whilst she had only meant to just push Yukiko back a couple of feet, she had not counted on Yukiko stumbling over and slamming her head against the side of the truck with a sickening thud.

Jenna stood back in shock for a good few seconds, her eyes widening in horror as her mind tried to comprehend what had just happened. No. Nonono, this did not just... No, this... Oh god, oh dear god...

"YUKIKO!" she shouted as she rushed to Yukiko's side, tears rushing down her cheeks as she checked her friend's pulse.

"S-She's still breathing! Oh god, what have I done?!?"

She quickly opened up her bag and took out her first aid kit, desperately trying to remind herself as to how one was supposed to approach this kind of situation. It had been so long since she had learned anything about first aid, and in her current state of mind thinking of anything other then that fact that one of her closest friends was suffering for a major concussion was not helping.

"Jack, please help me! Yukiko's hurt real bad. I... I don't know what... Oh god..."

Crunch.

Thud.

...

Shout.

"I've watched two friends argue over something pointless," Owen's voice echoed through Edgar's memories. "I found Sven's dead body, I... I s-saw Summer kill Naomi, and all I did was run..."

Death. Killing. Murder. They were all ever-present theoretical occurrences, brought to him every morning through the filtered and distorted lens of those announcements he was so bad at paying attention to.

He'd done so much to avoid dying or being killed that the threat of either still didn't quite seem to have shaken off its air of unreality. It was all just a game, just something he'd needed to find the right strategy to beat. Like chess. Where all that happened if you lost was that all the little wooden pieces in your colour ended up sitting at the opposite end of a table.

"No, sorry... I've been doing fine, compared to most people here... It's just everyone I've met that..." Owen continued taunting him. Owen, the only friendly face he'd talked to in four days, yet broken and suffering under the weight of all that he'd seen. Things that Edgar hadn't even come close to seeing, unless you counted one day-old corpse.

"I've threatened someone with this -" and he pointed to the very scalpel which lay just out of reach of Edgar's fingertips where it had fallen from his own hand.

He'd barely even listened to what Owen had said at the time, too wrapped up in his own guilt.

"I've been doing a lot of running."

And all Edgar had thought of it was how Owen hadn't done anything worse. Owen had been trying to tell him about what it felt like to witness yesterday's Best Kill personally, and Edgar hadn't even considered what it might have meant.

In one moment, the haze of unreality dissipated.

He was on his feet before he was even aware of having got up, much less aware of why. As Jenna completed her cry for help, he was crunching rapidly across the gravel, exhaustion forgotten, bottle and scalpel back in each hand as if they'd never left.

Jenna's cries barely even registered with him. All he heard was that she had done it, and that was enough.

He'd never thought about what he'd do if he witnessed something like this. He'd never thought about how something like this could happen. There were people like Edgar and Owen, the normal ones just trying to get by, and then there were the killers - the bogeymen, the Codys and Travises and presumably Summers, who didn't have any feelings of their own, who didn't have any motives but to make other people's lives a misery and/or considerably shortened, who hadn't grown up in the same neighbourhoods as Edgar or seemed perfectly normal enough around school.

There were two sets of names on each announcement, and there was no doubt about which was which.

And there was Jenna, looming over Yukiko's prone and bleeding body, and there was Edgar, the kid who had been going to save them all, determined to make right what had gone wrong, pounding across the hilltop with a knife clenched in his fist, and you know, he'd never liked her much anyway...

"What the fuck did you just do?!" he almost yelled, his voice still cracked and weak, but a determination showing through behind it which had been absent since the first day.

What was he going to do?

He didn't know. And this almost terrified him more than anything else.

Life wasn't fair.

The realization probably hit Jack around the same time Yukiko's head hit the truck.

It was a sickening sound that incited an instant recoil from him, turning around and shutting his eyes, just trying to get the sound out of his head. It was akin to the sound of a garage door hitting the ground, only so, so much worse. And yet he felt like it would be repeating in his brain for the rest of his life.

He didn't know what to think, so he simply didn't think. There wasn't any time for that. Jenna was obviously distressed, showing how it was an accident - what freaking wasn't? - and going for her first aid kit. Before he knew it, someone else came up and started yelling at them. Someone from school, obviously. Eddie? Edgar? Edgar. That was it. Had a sister. Somewhat quiet.

None of that mattered right now.

Jack's head whipped back and forth between his dying friend and the new arrival for a couple seconds. Which was more important? Should he help with Yukiko? Was it too late? What was Edgar doing there? Was he ar-

Screw it.

Jack quickly dashed over to where Yukiko and Jenna were, kneeling down a bit to get a better angle. It was not a pretty sight, but Jack was able to get somewhat used to it. As used to it as he was ever going to get, at least.

"T-try bandaging it up as best you can. Let me know if you need anything... specific."

He then turned to look at Edgar.

"It's a long story, but right now we've got to deal with this. Are you going to help or n-not?"

Jack stumbled at the end. The adrenaline had been getting him through all of this, but it was starting to set in more. The tears were welling up, but he had to fight them, at least for now.

I... I hate this. I hate this so much. Why can't we catch a break? Why our group? Why our CLASS? Why can't any of us just get some freaking PEACE?

Life wasn't fair.

What the?!? Who on Earth...

As it turned out, Jack and Jenna were not as alone as she had first assumed.

She quickly jerked her head to spot none other than Edgar glaring at her with accusing eyes, his judging gaze causing her to clench her hands in anger. This was absolutely the last thing she wanted right now. Her friend had just had her head crack open, and this boy who had shown up out of NOWHERE had come along and started acting like he had any right to judge her.

Needless to say, she was not happy about this in the slightest.

"What did I just do? What did I just do?!? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?!?"

She quickly stood up, grabbing Yukiko's bladed weed whacker and pointing it dangerously in Edgar direction.

"Go away, GO THE FUCK AWAY! I'm not in the mood to play around right now!"

((Sorry if this is GM-y at all, but Edgar needs to get out of here like now. Let me know if you want anything changed.))

Edgar had kept trying to convince himself that he really could make a difference. That he could confront his fears and do what was right, stop the killing, get people together and find another way.

He'd failed.

He was too late once again. It had taken the sickening crunch of Yukiko's skull against metal to even spur him into moving, and now he couldn't do anything but scream vaguely at those responsible based on the bits of conversation he had half-overheard.

And every moment he spent here was a moment he was too late to stop something else.

In a way, it came as a relief when Jenna responded to his opening gambit by placing him on the wrong end of a large and nasty-looking blade.

Not least because her fury provided him with the perfect excuse to ignore her companion accomplice's obvious distress. What did such things matter, when there was a girl bleeding out on the ground between them? They'd done that, they must have done it, they wouldn't have done it if they hadn't meant to do it.

And now they were about to attempt to do it to him. Only this time, with a circular saw instead of a shotgun.

There was a tense standoff. It lasted all of one second.

Then Edgar suddenly darted to one side, dashing around the side of the truck and scooping up Yukiko's duffel bag in one fluid movement.

He ignored the scene behind him. It was already too late to save Jack and Jenna; they'd let the game win. It was already too late to save Yukiko.

Praying that he wouldn't get shot in the back, he vanished down the hillside and into the nearest bit of overgrown undergrowth he could find.

He'd been too late for the last time.

((Edgar Tolstoff continued in For What Happened to Daisy))

Things were happening so quickly, and yet they seemed to last a lifetime.

Before he could even do anything about Yukiko, Jenna was screaming at Edgar again. Before he could even think of a response, she had picked up the weed whacker and was now pointing it threateningly at him. Jack was having trouble even breathing normally at this point.

"Jenna, put it down!" he yelled out in frustration. He didn't need this. They didn't need this.

More movement. Edgar went for the bag.

Jack instinctively dove towards it, but all that he got for it was a faceful of ground. He could only lay there stunned for a second as Edgar ran off with a third of their supplies.

I hate this. I hate all of this.

He wasn't even thinking now, just going through the motions. He sat back up, going for the first aid kit again. He took out some bandages, doing his best to wrap them carefully around Yukiko's head wounds. It was quite sloppy, but it was the best he could do for the moment.

"What... what now?" he stammered out.

Jenna could not bring herself to answer Jack's question.

All she could do was stand there, Yukiko's weapon hanging limply in her hands as Edgar ran off with her dying friend's bag. Despite her immediate desire to chase him down and retrieve what was rightfully theirs, her body refused to budge an inch. She couldn't even turn her head to check on how badly she had harmed her friend.

Friend? Now there was an outdated phrase to describe Yukiko. After all, why would Jenna harm one of her friends like that? Better yet, if Yukiko really had been her friend, why would she have attacked them in the first place? Jenna had only reacted defensibly when she shoved her over. She didn't intent to have her smack her head against the car's hard surface, now did she? No, this was all an accident. A big mistake. Could have happened to anybody!

That's what this 'game' was really about, wasn't it? Everything bad that had happened to them so far had been because of people making stupid accidents. David 'accidentally' got shoved over a bannister. Stacey was 'accidentally' shoved off of a hill. Yukiko 'accidentally' got shoved over and cracked her skull open on a truck's bonnet.

No, there was no such thing as accidents on this island. Nobody cared whether or not you meant to hurt anyone. Didn't change the fact that people were now dead because of your stupid actions. Jenna had realised this long before she found herself turning around to find one of her only allies bleeding out on the floor. All because of her.

"We... We keep moving..." she stuttered, gazing off into the distance.

"We can't stay here, people... People might, notice... I..... We need to get out of here before..."

She looked down at Yukiko.

"She... She brought this upon herself. You saw what she did! She attacked us! I was only... I was only defending myself. I never wanted to..."

She gulped, looking away for a brief moment before returning her gaze.

"Look, we... We have to stay calm, we... We.... I......."

She fell to her knees.

"Oh dear god, what have I done?"

Jack bit his lip. He bit his lip so hard that if he had chewed all the way through and exposed his jaw, he wouldn't have been the least bit surprised.

The eternal silence was back. The not knowing what to say. The feeling of helplessness. The feeling that whatever was said next wouldn't do nearly a good enough job at conveying what was going on, because the English language just didn't stretch that far.

The numbness.

Jenna fell to her knees at some point. Jack didn't particularly know, or to be frank, care all that much when it had happened. At the moment, his eyes were transfixed on the exact place where the truck met the sky. Anywhere but the body.

Acting on instinct, he bent down so that he was around Jenna's level. He considered a hug for a second, but he didn't want to startle her. He just... started talking.

"... You're right. We... we should probably... get going. Nothing else we can do here."

The talking kept him from facing what he was feeling.

There was a long pause. Like every single second since Jack woke up in the hotel room, it lasted too long.

Slowly, Jack stood up, his eyes wandering over to the ocean behind them. An odd peace rolled over his whole body. Not of relief, but of self-preservation.

"... We can leave. Everything will be alright."

In his own head, Jack was sure that if he convinced Jenna to believe in that one simple statement, he would be able to convince himself of the same.

((Jack McDonald continued elsewhere.))

"Y-Yeah, alright..." was Jenna's eventual response as she forced herself onto her feet, her knees feeling as though they could hardly hold up her own weight.

So, this was what it felt like to be a murderer. It wasn't a good feeling, to say the least. Jenna could hardly bring herself to even look at Yukiko. How could she, after what she had just done? She was now no better than any other killer on this damned island. There was no going back from this. For the rest of her most likely brief life she would have to live with the fact that one of her closest friends died at her hands

Good god, what was her father thinking about this? She could only imagine how disappointed in her he must be. Here she was, trying to figure out some way to make a difference, and all she had managed to achieve thus far was lead two people to their deaths. If Yukiko and David had never decided to join her, then maybe they would both still be alive. But no, she had to have taken the lead didn't she? Helpless to save one, then personally killing the other. Why the hell did she ever believe that she could any good on this cursed rock?

She couldn't stand around any longer. The more she looked at Yukiko's broken body, the more she wanted to fall back onto her knees and never get up again. And no matter how much she wanted to say something, no matter how deeply she wanted to apologise for what she had done, whenever she opened her mouth all that came out was silence.

So instead, she simply turned around and slowly followed after Jack, never daring to look back.

((Jenna Rhodes continued elsewhere...))