Survival Of The Fittest

So Alda was with two other people, and one of them was Iselle. Meera felt her blood turn to ice as she stared at the girl who had run away from her and Joey and then gone on to kill someone not a day later.

It had been Sven, Meera recalled. Sven Olsen. Meera had no idea how it had happened, if she'd acted in self-defense or not, but it didn't really matter. After Alda's distrustful reaction to their appearance and Iselle's curses, Meera began to realize they'd made a massive mistake in coming here.

Iselle had killed someone, and that made her dangerous. More than that, she was probably still playing the game. People who weren't guilty of anything didn't usually react the way Alda and Iselle had.

Rosemary was talking to them, trying to convince the three girls to let them stay. But something about the way the three girls were staring at them as she spoke unnerved her. There was no way this situation could end well for any of them if they stayed.

"Rosemary, we should go," said Meera, keeping her eyes on Iselle as she drew her curved knife. "This was a mistake."

"How is this my fault," Kathryn demanded of Iselle. "You agreed to go and explore." Her eyes widened at her friends' reactions to the newcomers and decided maybe she should try to defuse the situation.

Kathryn came down a couple stairs, past her two teammates, attempting to block their view of Iselle. She kept the gun deliberately pointed at the ground. "We don't want any trouble," she said then glanced back at her friends. "But that may be for the best."

Iselle huffed as Kathryn shouldered past her down the stairs and engaged the intruders in conversation.  Despite her words, it seemed like maybe Meera wanted to beef with them. 'She needs to stop trying to stare me down, that's what she needs to do', Iselle thought as she glared at the other girl.  Fuck that bitch if she thought Iselle was going to be the one to back down here.  In terms of numbers, location, and weapons, it was advantage-Team Softballers.

Her hands started to sweat as Meera made a show of drawing her knife.  Iselle shifted her walking stick in her hands, tightening her grip as she raised it toward her shoulder.  "Any reason you're pulling out a knife, Meera?  Something going on here? I mean, since my friend here made a big deal of not pointing her gun at you and politely agreeing with you.  Your mouth is saying one thing while your behavior is saying another," she called out from her spot on the stairs.  

There was no way she was staying stranded up on these stairs if Meera thought she was going to try and jump Kathryn with that knife.  No way in hell Iselle was going to allow that to happen.  She stepped down until she was crowding Alda for space.

Waving that knife around seemed to qualify as "something", at least as far as Iselle was concerned, and Alda wasn't in a mood to disagree. "See, I think you got this all wrong," she murmured as she stepped off the stairs, keeping her eyes on the knife, "coming in here wasn't the mistake. Pulling a knife, though? Iselle's right. That's a problem. I don't think I believe you."

She glanced back at Iselle and Kathryn as she steadied herself at the bottom of the stairs. They seemed ready. Kathryn has the high ground with her gun. If Meera tried to rush them and somehow didn't catch a bullet, Iselle was there to turn her head into a home run. No more fucking around. They had momentum, and she was gonna press it.

"Answers. Right fucking now. Who else do you have with you? Did they follow us in here too?"

"M-meera." Rosemary whispered weakly as the other girl drew the kukri. That had agitated the girls, and now it looks like they were in trouble.

"We're sorry if we did anything that seemed hostile." she said urgently, trying to calm things down. Neither her nor Meera deserved to end up as target practice for  Softball group's rage. They had been through too much stuff as it was.

"A-and we're telling you the truth!" Rosemary pressed. "There's nobody else in our group. We're... we're all that's left of it."

Garrett leaving. Joey... dead. Paulo dead.

"And we didn't track you! We were going to come in anyway until we saw you, outside. So we wanted to warn you first in case you were surprised. We just want out of the rain." Rosemary tried to stay firm. She moved closer to Meera. This wasn't what she had wanted to happen.

((Reworked this post to fit in with the plan))

Damn it, Meera thought. Maybe pulling the knife was a mistake, but backing off now wouldn't help anything. Rosemary was trying to smooth things over, desperately trying to convince the angry trio they were alone and not hostile.

She wanted to angrily answer Alda, explain to her and the others that she and Rosemary weren't hostile. In fact, had Rosemary not answered first she probably would have done so right away. Each one of these girls was heavily armed, but Meera and Rosemary had two weapons between them as well. At this point, still sickened and angry at Paulo's murder, Meera was almost spoiling for a fight.

Meera didn't really believe she could actually die here. She wasn't going to end up like Joey and Paulo and all of the others who'd died uselessly. She could see the anger and determination in these girls' eyes, but knew they wouldn't actually try to shoot her. Rosemary had a gun, for god's sake. Mutually assured destruction and all that.

They could either back down, or fight fire with fire. Rosemary was trying to placate them, but Meera could already see it was useless. There was a firm resolve in the girls' eyes as they stared back at her and Rosemary, and in that moment Meera knew there was no way to placate them without seeming weak. And Meera was so tired of being weak, so tired of being unable to save people, so tired of being pushed around by people. These girls needed to understand that trying to fight her and Rosemary was suicidal.

Then, maybe, they'd back off and Rosemary could come to terms with them.  

"Look, I don't know who you think you are, to talk to us like that," said Meera, at first quietly, but then with growing confidence. She walked past Rosemary toward Alda, keeping the knife at the ready. "But we have weapons too. There's no one else with us, but it's not like we need anybody else to handle you three."

Now they were getting somewhere. Meera's posturing was probably meant to be intimidating, but instead it just made Alda laugh. "I don't think you're following this shit," she smiled as she stalked forward, "Your little knife doesn't scare me."

The cat cracked through the air for emphasis as she stared Meera and Rosemary down. "You're gonna drop your weapons. Then you're gonna come wait by the stairs. And then, if it turns out you're not bullshitting us about being along? Maybe you can leave."

Their move.

Meera made it worse, but instead of getting angry... Alda just mocked them. They weren't going to let them go.

Rosemary fumed at the little knife comment. Did Alda really want to see an actual little knife? Or want to see what it could do?

Paulo was her brother, and he just died. She should know the most about how the Alda felt, and she did. Alda wanted something to hit that wouldn't be able to take it. But even then it would never go away. The feeling to shake and rip and tear anything would not kill the emptiness inside you when family dies.

But Rosemary was fucking tired of her and Meera being the universe's punching bag.

"Just- just stop it." She started, looking at Alda. Her face was hard. "You need to just fucking stop before someone does something they'll regret. No matter how many tantrums you have,  how many trees and people you lash out with that whip of yours, it's not going to change the fact that Paulo. Is. Dead. He won't come back."

"You want everything to hurt as much as you do, but it won't stop the hurting. So just stop threatening us and then all of us can calm. Down."

Iselle raised an eyebrow at Meera and Rosemary.  "Tantrum?"  She echoed Rosemary, letting the disdain drip from her voice.  What the hell was up with these two girls?  Maybe Alda was right.  Maybe they were the advanced scout of one of their crazier classmates.  That made a lot of sense since the pair suddenly had a backbone made out of the strongest steel.  

The oddness of the situation made Iselle think it might even be worth her and her friends giving up this place to avoid a confrontation.  Too bad Meera and Rosemary wouldn't MOVE THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY so that could happen.  

It was like they were trying to force a confrontation.  Well, if that's the game they wanted to play ... game on.

"Oh, sweetie." Iselle drawled out the word, making a sad face at Rosemary. Maybe if she explained things r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y, the dim duo in front of her would get a fucking clue.  "If you think Alda's in a bad mood right now, you've not ever spent any time with her.  I can assure you that Alda's being an absolute fucking peach right now.  But if you keep pushing her, she'll pitch a real tantrum all over you.  Probably with that cat o'nine tail."

She felt satisfied with her warning.  Anyone sensible would have beat feet at this point. So why wouldn't they fucking GO AWAY?!

Iselle was saying something, but Alda wasn't paying any attention to her, or to Kathryn, or even to Meera and her knife. She'd frozen and honed in on Rosemary's little speech. Her condescending, ignorant, self-righteous bullshit, capped off with a declaration about Paulo that sounded so fucking self-satisfied, like she knew him, like she knew her, like she had any fucking idea how she felt right now, dismissing her reaction like the only reason she was pissed was because of Paulo and not her little toadie waving that fucking knife around.

There were a thousand insults, comebacks, and threats spinning around inside her mind that she wanted to say, but none of them came out. Instead, as she opened her mouth they all coalesced into one pointed, rage-filled scream of hatred as she sprung forward.

That's when her vision went red. It would be roughly half a minute before her rationality kicked back in and, when it did, it would find a very different room awaiting it.

Kathryn took a step back, she knew what happened when her teammates got this angry. What happened was they got kicked out of tournaments. She'd tried to calm everything down, but apparently the girls at the door were a little too dense to realize that all they had to do was turn and leave. Why they were antagonizing her team, Kathryn couldn't imagine.

"In case, Iselle's speech wasn't clear enough. You really need to leave, now," Kathryn said.

Meera quickly realized that they'd made the situation much worse. But it wasn't until Alda opened her mouth to scream in hatred that she realized the situation was life or death.

"Rosemary! Run!" Meera shouted as Alda lunged toward her. Her eyes met Meera's, and her eyes were filled with such breathtaking hatred that Meera hesitated for a crucial second. Alda seized the opportunity, grabbing Meera's wrist roughly with one hand, wrestling for the knife.

Meera gave a cry of shock and pain, a cry that was abruptly cut off as Alda rammed an elbow into her stomach, twisting her wrist at the same time. For a few seconds the two girls wrestled for the knife, but Alda was stronger, and Meera could only watch as the knife clattered to the floor. Alda's other hand grabbed Meera roughly.

Meera tried to turn around, tried to to run away, but Alda's hand refused to let her go. She pulled as hard as she could, desperately trying to extricate herself from the enraged girl's grasp. But Alda was stronger, shrugging off Meera's desperate kicks and punches as though they were nothing.

Alda grabbed Meera by the shirt and threw the struggling girl to the floor at the feet of her two companions. Pain lanced through Meera's arm as it hit the floor. For a moment, the world was spinning and Meera could make out nothing more than a dark shadow approaching her. The shadowy figure suddenly coalesced into Alda, her face still filled with hatred as she stared at her fallen opponent.

Adrenaline kicked in, obliterating the pain and all other sensations besides fear. Meera began to climb to her feet, slowly and unsteadily. She knew that Alda was physically stronger, but Meera was a dedicated runner and was confident she could outrun Alda if it came to that.

She'd was rising to her feet,, ready to run, when she realized she was face to face with Iselle and Kathryn.

((All GMing etc. approved.))

Alda screamed, Meera screamed. And Rosemary did what she was told.

She ran, making it outside and feeling the rain pelt her head and back as she sprinted from the house.

The rain stung, but it was nothing that she hadn't already experienced before while swimming, it was almost like swimming as she ran. Her skin soaked, eye vision cloudy, and panting breaths as if she had just hit the wall with a new record time. The only difference was her bag, lighter than the first day with the consumption of rations, banging against her leg. The heavy, heavy gun in her arms that made each step soon harder to make physically. And no sound of Meera saying anything behind her.

How was Meera not beside her? She was a much faster runner than her, even if Rosemary had gotten a head start. But she had to be behind her. Anything else was impossible.

Three softball players could never outsprint a runner like Meera.

But eventually her breathing became to labored to go any further, and Rosemary lost momentum before half-crashing, half-falling under a thick-leafed tree. Rosemary wheezed, finding it hard to breathe through her nose and gasping through her opened mouth. She kept breathing, in and out, in and out, then struggled back to her feet, looking for her friend.

"M-meera!" She got out. "W-we made it! I-I think we out ran them..."

No response.

"...Meera?" Rosemary called out. Her heartbeat hitched back up. Rosemary dropped her bag and gun down under the tree, stumbling out and looking around. She had probably ran far enough away from the mansions not to be seen, but she heard no reply from Meera agreeing with her.

"Meera? Meera, where are you?" Rosemary walked out a few more yards, her footsteps rushed, turning her head back and forth, hoping to see that familiar form come out from the trees.

"Meera! MEERA!"

In a more aware state of mind, Alda might have recognized that the girl she just threw backwards was only blocking the one she was really pissed at. She might have noticed that that girl was hastily fleeing behind her. It might have occurred to her that the girl shakingly finding her feet below the stairs under Iselle and Kathryn's narrow gaze wasn't the one she really wanted to hurt.

Alda Abbate had checked out of consciousness for a little while, though. Right now, there was only the anger, and it had been denied too many times in the last few days to die quietly now. The glaring red tint filled her mind's eye as she stalked forward, wrapping an arm around the bewildered Meera's neck and forcing her head back. Muscles and veins tensed as she squeezed down as hard as she could in the choke-hold. The taut, exposed flesh of Meera's stretched neck strained for purchase as she flailed and pushed at her arms, but Alda didn't feel a thing. Not pain from her writhing attempts at escape, not victory from feeling them get weaker and weaker, not remorse from feeling the life slowly slipping away, not even the old, familiar anger that had driven her here in the first place. It all fell away as she slipped into a detached, neutral space.

She wasn't in the mansion anymore. She was on her back porch at home, watching Paulo and his dumbass friends roll around in the grass with each other. He had a tawny boy with a stupid looking mohawk pinned down, with his arm locked around his neck in tight, unforgiving submission hold. The smaller boy struggled, wriggled back and forth, but finally tapped, and Paulo let him up with a laugh. That triggered them all, a whole mass of swaggering and howling and strutting while they fetched more beers and tried to sort out who was fighting next.

There in the middle of it all was Paulo, with the biggest, dumbest grin on his smug face. Despite how fucking ridiculous she found the whole thing, she found herself smiling too. She didn't like Paulo's MMA bullshit. She didn't like his friends, or the sneaking around behind Mom's back, or any of the things it was turning him into. She liked seeing him happy, though. Every time she thought about turning him in, she remembered that. No matter how much what he did pissed her off, or how distant it made them, he was her brother. They had a strange way of expressing it sometimes, but they loved each other. She hid the smile behind her hand, and decided to keep his secrets one more day.

As she turned around in her mind, she found herself back in the mansion. Her hands weren't covering her mouth, but instead locked tight together to hold her elbow around Meera's throat in the same hold she'd seen Paulo do so many times. Except in this case, if Meera had tapped, Alda never felt it.

The last of Meera's struggle died out with Alda's perspective adjusting back into the present. As her body went limp, the tears finally came.

Meera struggled desperately against Alda's grasp as the girl wrapped her hands around Meera's neck. From her position on the floor she could no longer see what Iselle and Kathryn were doing, but knew that neither one would lift a hand to help her. As she felt Alda's grip tighten, choking off her last gasp of breath, Meera's struggle became even more desperate. She kicked, punched, and though she knew it was futile, tried to scream for help.

She couldn't die here. She had too much to live for, too much to look forward to. All her life she'd lived with wild abandon, as if she could care less if she'd lived or died. But now her survival actually mattered, was actually important.

She had to get to Rosemary, had to escape. She'd do whatever it took. At that moment, Meera would have been willing to do anything if it would save her life.

No—please—it can't end this way—please, make it stop. Paulo...Joey...Rosemary...

As she thought of them, their faces flashing before her eyes in an incoherent mess, Everything her friends had done, everything they'd sacrificed, was so that the rest of the group would survive. If Meera died here, she had failed in a way neither of the others had. Rosemary would be on her own again.

Please...let me go, Meera's eyes begged Alda, but the girl did not loosen her hold, instead tightening the grasp until the last of Meera's breath drained from her lungs.

Meera fought Alda's death grip until she was completely exhausted and long after. But it wasn't until the last of the strength began to leave her limbs and she felt the world going dim around her that she realized she was finished. No matter how hard she fought her, there was no way she could break Alda's hold.

Everything Meera and the group had done had been for nothing. They were all gone now except Rosemary, the girl that Meera had failed completely. It was that final, crushing sense of complete defeat that caused the fear in Meera's eyes to fade. She let her body go limp, knowing she was too weak, too tired, and too broken to fight on.

She realized she would never have a chance for any final words, never see her friends or family again. Alda had no intention of letting go until Meera's life was choked out of her. She could only stare into Alda's eyes, helplessly pleading for her to let go, even as her vision turned to black.Coherent thought was impossible, but as her life began to slip away Meera's last thoughts were ones of desperate hope. She hoped Rosemary was far away from here by now. She hoped her family would understand why she'd done what she'd done, and could be proud of her.

She hoped Rosemary would escape. Or win. But no matter what happened now, it wouldn't be because of anything Meera had done. Everything she'd done on the island had failed, and every action she'd taken had led to death, first Joey's, then Paulo's, now her own. She would end up an empty shell like the rest of them, while her murderer walked away alive.

Her last thought was something that would have once made her laugh, had the island never happened to her. And if she wasn't about to die.

Survival of the Fittest...guess I'm not the fittest, then.

She hoped—